Jan 27

Today’s News 27th January 2019

  • McCain May Be Dead, But "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" Still Resounds

    Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    In 2007, when making a speech during his bid for the presidency of the United States, the late Senator John McCain spoke about Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons’ programme and when questioned as to whether there might be US reaction to such allegations responded by singing “That old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran… bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb.”

    This jovial retort about killing people by bombing them was not surprising to those who remembered that during the US war on Vietnam McCain was shot down on a mission to bomb a power generation plant in Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam, in the course of the entrancingly-named Operation Rolling Thunder.  If he hadn’t been shot down before he released his bombs there would almost certainly have been civilian casualties and deaths. Power stations in cities are not manned by soldiers, after all, and around the Hanoi plant there were houses that would doubtless be struck by errant bombs.   

    But who cares about civilians who are killed or maimed in bombing or rocket attacks?

    In Syria, for example, in October 2018 “the US-led coalition was responsible for 46% of civilian casualties from all explosive weapon use in Syria.” 

    And in November Reutersreported that “At least 30 Afghan civilians were killed in US air strikes in the Afghan province of Helmand, officials and residents of the area said on Wednesday, the latest casualties from a surge in air operations aimed at driving the Taliban into talks.”

    Forbes records that “the US has never dropped as many bombs on Afghanistan as it did this year. According to U.S. Air Forces Central Command data, manned and unmanned aircraft released 5,213 weapons between January and the end of September 2018. The UN announced that the number of civilian casualties in the first nine months of 2018 is higher than in any year since it started documenting them in 2009.” 

    On January 25 Defense Post reported that “Afghanistan is investigating reports that at least 16 civilians including women and children were killed in an airstrike in southern Helmand province, the defense ministry said in a statement.” On and on its goes — Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Afghanistan.

    There’s nothing new in this, so far as US Secretary of State Pompeo is concerned. As a member of Congress in 2014 he made it clear that he was one of the bombing club. As The Nation reported, “Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS), participating in the same [Foreign Affairs Committee] roundtable, urged the United States and its allies to strongly consider a pre-emptive bombing campaign of Iran’s nuclear sites. He said ‘In an unclassified setting, it is under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity. This is not an insurmountable task for the coalition forces’.”

    The fact that when Pompeo was asked at a US Senate hearing in April 2018 if he was supportive of a preemptive strike on Iran he declared “I’m not. I’m absolutely not” is indicative only of the fact that he is given to duplicity. 

    Which brings us to Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, who has been an advocate of bombing for many years.  He is the man who declared in November 2002 that “We are confident that Saddam Hussein has hidden weapons of mass destruction and production facilities in Iraq” and four weeks before the US invaded Iraq, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper in February 2003, “US Undersecretary of State John Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials on Monday that he has no doubt America will attack Iraq, and that it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea afterwards.”

    Iraq was duly bombed and rocketed and reduced to chaos, and Bolton was totally unrepentant. In an article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph in 2016 he pronounced that “Iraq today suffers not from the 2003 invasion, but from the 2011 withdrawal of all US combat forces. What strengthened Iran’s hand in Iraq was not the absence of Saddam [Hussein], but the absence of coalition troops with a writ to crush efforts by the ayatollahs to support and arm Shi’ite militias. When US forces left, the last possibility of Iraq succeeding as a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional state left with them. Don’t blame Tony Blair and George W Bush for that failure. Blame their successors.”

    In November 2016 Bolton was aptly described by MSNBC host Joe Scarborough as “a massive neocon on steroids” but the Financial Times argues that he is not a neocon, because “Neocons believe US values should be universal. Mr Bolton believes in aggressive promotion of the US national interest, which is quite different.”  Be that as it may, there are some things that are certain, such as that Bolton is a rabid warmonger who avoided serving in Vietnam just like Donald Trump and George W Bush and Bill Clinton and Dick Cheney and many others. (And here it has to be said that my feelings are strong about this, having served in Vietnam in the Australian Army in 1970-71.) 

    As noted by the Daily News of his Alma Mater, Yale, “though Bolton supported the Vietnam War, he declined to enter combat duty, instead enlisting in the National Guard and attending law school after his 1970 graduation. ‘I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy,’ Bolton wrote of his decision in the 25th reunion book. ‘I considered the war in Vietnam already lost’.”  But now that it is obvious that Washington lost its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bolton is ready for another one.

    In July 2018, while tension between the US and Iran was heightening, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, warned Washington about pursuing a hostile policy against his country, saying “Mr Trump, don’t play with the lion’s tail, this would only lead to regret… America should know that peace with Iran is the mother of all peace, and war with Iran is the mother of all wars.” 

    That was a red rag to a bull, and Trump responded in his normal way by tweeting “To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)”

    That is frightening.  Any world leader who tweets such things as “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen” is verging on the psychotic. And, in his own words, the demented.

    Trump’s former foreign policy officials were not altogether in favour of having Iran and North Korea suffer unspecified but obviously terrifying consequences for having expressed its views on Trump policy, but now, as the BBC notes, “Mr Trump has built a foreign policy team that is largely on the same page – his page.” 

    That’s the Fire and Fury ‘page’, and it’s being proof-read and expanded by Pompeo and Bolton.  Stand by for Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran.

  • Americans Are Fleeing Illinois And Moving To…Idaho?

    Every year, roughly 14% of the US population moves from one state to another, according to Census Bureau data. But after a careful analysis of the data from 2018, North American Moving Services published its latest report on American migration patterns…and it contained some surprising conclusions.

    For example, while Illinois was once again the top state for outbound moves (thanks, we imagine, to its dysfunctional state government, high taxes and massively underfunded pensions), the top state for inbound moves was…Idaho?

    A quick glance at the data reveals a familiar pattern: Americans are leaving high-tax blue states in favor of red states with low taxes and low cost of living.

    Moving

    Here are some additional takeaways from the report (text courtesy of North America Moving Services):

    Northeastern states

    Until this year, Connecticut has consistently been in the top 8 of outbound moves since 2013. It was #1 in 2013 and #2 in 2017. Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey have also made the list of outbound moves consistently since 2013. Massachusetts and Rhode Island have both gone back and forth in having more inbound or outbound moves over the years.

    Southern states

    South Carolina was in the top 3 of inbound moves starting in 2011, then started to slip down starting in 2016. They were still in the top 4 but lost their top ranking as the state with the most inbound moves. North Carolina beat South Carolina for the first time in 2016. They kept their rank in 2017 for inbound moves until falling back down below South Carolina in 2018. Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and Texas remained constant in the top 8 from 2013-2017 for inbound moves. Tennessee, Texas and Florida held their spot in the top 8 list for inbound moves in 2018. Overall, the Southern states have had more inbound moves than some of the other regions.

    Midwestern states

    Illinois has consistently been in the top 3 positions of outbound moves since 2013, getting the #1 position 4 times. It may not be surprising due to the fact Illinois is one of the highest tax burden states. Michigan has been on the top 8 list of states with the most outbound moves since 2011. Iowa consistently had more outbound than inbound moves until 2017, when it had more people move out of the state than in the state. However, in 2018, Iowa had more inbound moves. Minnesota and Ohio have stayed constant, having more outbound moves than inbound. Over the years, Wisconsin has gone back and forth in having more inbound or outbound moves.

    Western states

    In 2013 and 2014, Idaho wasn’t in the top inbound states. Then in 2015 it was #1. It remained #1 in 2016 and slipped to #2 in 2017. Based on the most recent Census data, Idaho is currently the nation’s fastest growing state, with its population increasing 2.2% between July 2016 and July 2017. Now, in 2018, Idaho is back up to #1 for inbound moves. This is not overly surprising to also know that Idaho is one of the least tax burden states which may be a contributing factor. Oregon, Arizona and Colorado have consistently been in the top 8, with Arizona #2 for 3 years and topping at #1 in 2017. The western states also have had more overall inbound moves than the Midwest and Northeast.

  • The End Of Russia's "Democratic Illusions" About America

    Authored by Stephen Cohen via The Nation,

    How Russiagate has impacted a vital struggle in Russia…

    For decades, Russia’s self-described “liberals” and “democrats” have touted the American political system as one their country should emulate. They have had abundant encouragement in this aspiration over the years from legions of American crusaders, who in the 1990s launched a large-scale, deeply intrusive, and ill-destined campaign to transform post-Communist Russia into a replica of American “democratic capitalism.” (See my bookFailed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia.) Some Russian liberals even favored NATO’s eastward expansion when it began in the late 1990s on the grounds that it would bring democratic values closer to Russia and protect their own political fortunes at home.

    Their many opponents on Russia’s political spectrum, self-described “patriotic nationalists,” have insisted that the country must look instead to its own historical traditions for its future development and, still more, that American democracy was not a system to be so uncritically emulated. Not infrequently, they characterize Russia’s democrats as “fifth columnists” whose primary loyalties are to the West, not their own country. Understandably, it is a highly fraught political debate and both sides have supporters in high places, from the Kremlin and other government offices to military and security agencies, as well as devout media outlets.

    In this regard, Russiagate allegations in the United States, which have grown from vague suspicions of Russian “meddling” in the 2016 presidential election to flat assertions that Putin’s Kremlin put Donald Trump in the White House, have seriously undermined Russian democrats and bolstered the arguments of their “patriotic” opponents. Americans, who may have been misled by their own media into thinking that Russia today is a heavily censored “autocracy” in which all information is controlled by the Kremlin, may be surprised to learn that many Russians, especially among the educated classes but not only, are well-informed about the Russiagate story and follow it with great interest. They get reasonably reliable information from Russian news broadcasts and TV talk shows; from direct cable and satellite access to Western broadcasts, including CNN; from translation sites that daily render scores of Western print news reports and commentaries into Russian (inosmi.ru being the most voluminous); and from the largely uncensored Internet.

    How many Russians believe that the Kremlin actually put Trump in the White House is less clear. Widespread skepticism is often expressed sardonically:

    “If Putin can put his man in the White House, why can’t he put a mayor in my town who will have the garbage picked up?”

    Others, who believe the allegation, often take some pleasure, or schadenfreude, from it, having grown resentful of US “meddling” in Russian political life for so many years. (In recent history, the remembered example is the Clinton administration’s very substantial efforts on behalf of President Boris Yeltsin’s reelection in 1996.)

    But what should interest us is how Russiagate allegations have tarnished America’s democratic reputation in Russia and thereby undermined the pro-American arguments of Russia’s liberal democrats, who were never a very potent political or electoral force and whose fortunes have already declined in recent years. Consider the following:

    • Russian democrats argue that their country’s elections are manipulated and unfair, including, but not only, those that put and kept Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin. “Patriotic nationalists” now reply that Russiagate rests on the allegation, widely reported and believed in the United States, that an American presidential election was successfully manipulated on behalf of the desired candidate and that the entire US electoral system may be vulnerable to manipulation.

    • Russian democrats protest that oligarchic and other money has corrupted Russian politics. Their opponents argue that special counsel Robert Mueller’s convictions and other indictments – in the cases of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, for example -prove that American political life is no less corrupt financially.

    • Going back to Soviet times and continuing today, a major complaint of Russian democrats has been the shadowy, malevolent role played by intelligence agencies, particularly the KGB and its successor organization. Patriotic nationalists point to disclosures that their US institutional counterparts, the CIA and FBI, played a secretive and major role in the origins of Russiagate allegations against Trump as a presidential candidate and since his inauguration.

    • Russian democratic dissidents have long protested, and been stifled by, varying degrees of official censorship. Their Russian opponents argue that campaigns now underway in the United States against “Russian disinformation” in the media are a form of American censorship.

    • Many Russians distrust their media, particularly “mainstream” state media. Their opponents retort that American mainstream media is no better, having undertaken a kind of “war” against President Trump and along the way having had to retract dozens of widely circulated stories. In this connection, we may wonder what Russian skeptics made of an astonishingly revealing statement by the media critic of The New York Times – an authoritative newspaper in Russia as well – on January 21 that the “ultimate prize” for leading American journalists is having “helped bring down a president.” By now, Americans may not be shocked by such a repudiation by the Times of its own professed mission and standards, but for Russian journalists, who have long looked to the paper as a model, the reaction was likely profound disillusionment.

    • Putin’s Russian democratic critics often protest his “imperial” foreign policies, so imagine how they interpreted this imperial statement by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen on January 15: “Nations, like children, crave predictability. They need to know the rules. The United States is like a parent. Other countries look to it for guidance and to enforce the rules. Trump has utterly failed in that regard.” Any Russian with a medium-range memory is unlikely to miss this echo of the Soviet Union’s attitude toward the “children” it ruled. And yet, a columnist for The Washington Post – also an authoritative newspaper in Russia – emphasizes Trump’s failure to “enforce the [imperial] rules” as a Russiagate indictment.

    • Perhaps most Russians who are informed about Russiagate believe that all the various allegations against Trump are actually motivated by US elite opposition to his campaign promise to “cooperate with Russia.” This means, as Russia’s “patriotic nationalists” have always argued, that Washington will never accept Russia as an equal great power in world affairs, no matter who rules Russia or how (whether Communist or anti-Communist, as is Putin). To this, Russia’s liberal democrats have yet to find a compelling answer.

    One Russian, however, who personifies biographically both that system’s recent democratic experiences and its nationalist traditions, has had a mostly unambiguous reaction to Russiagate. Despite US mainstream-media claims that Russian President Putin is “happy” with the “destabilization and chaos” caused by Russiagate in the United States, such consequences are incompatible with what has been Putin’s historical mission since coming to power almost 20 years ago: to rebuild Russia socially and economically after its post-Soviet collapse in the 1990s, and to achieve this through modernizing partnerships with democratic nations – from Europe to the United States – in a stable international environment. For this reason, Putin himself is unlikely to have plotted Russiagate or to have taken any real satisfaction from its woeful consequences.

    Which leaves us with an as-yet-unanswerable question. Eventually, Trump and Putin will leave office. But the consequences of Russiagate, both in America and in Russia, will not depart with them. What will be the subsequent, longer-term consequences for both countries and for relations between them? From today’s perspective, nothing good.

  • Ban Cars In Florida? US Pedestrian Deaths Soar In Last Decade

    Pedestrians are the only group among U.S. road users that are being killed at a significantly higher rate than ten years ago.

    While deaths of motor vehicle occupants decreased by 6.1 percent and deaths among non-motorists like bikers remained relatively stable, Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes that fatalities of pedestrians increased from 11.8 percent to 16.1 percent of all road accident deaths. Meanwhile, the number of people taking trips walking has not increased significantly.

    Florida is the most dangerous state for pedestrians, as a study by activist group Smart Growth Americashows. An average 2.7 people per 100,000 inhabitants get killed in the state every year while walking on streets or roads. Among the six most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians in the U.S., five are in Florida. In general, a lot of Southern states exhibit pedestrian death rates that are higher than the national average.

    Infographic: More Pedestrians Killed in U.S. in Last Decade | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Smart Growth America estimates that this is because Southern metros are more likely to be designed for cars rather than for a variety of road users. Southern cities, for example, experience more sprawl, which is again linked to more pedestrian deaths.

    The study also highlights that older people, poor people and people of color are killed while walking in higher numbers. A person over the age of 75 is twice as likely to be fatally hit by a car than the average American. The same is true for Native Americans and Alaska Natives. Black Americans are 25 percent more likely to die in this fashion. Americans in areas where the median income is below US$36,000/year are 60 percent more likely to get killed on the road while walking.

    According to Smart Growth America dangerous roads with no provisions for pedestrians are more likely to have been built in low-income neighborhood or communities of color. The National Highway System also predominantly cuts through these communities. Reservations for Native populations were historically put in places unsuitable for walking. Finally, research has shown that motorists yield to minority walkers less frequently.

    Given the logic that has permeated the ever-increasing nanny states of America, we wonder how long before cars are banned (or speed limits are lowered to walking pace, or all vehicles are mandated to be made from bubble-wrap)… especially in Florida?

  • Netanyahu's Risky Election Run-Up Bombing Campaign Of Syria May Lead To War

    Authored by Elijah Magnier, Middle East based chief international war correspondent for Al Rai Media

    Israel has attacked Syria many times during the last seven years of war imposed on Syria. It has run red-lights and broken taboos in order to provoke the “Axis of the Resistance” inside Syria, but has refrained from infuriating Hezbollah in Lebanon. Nevertheless, the most recent Israeli attack has pushed Syria and its allies beyond tolerable limits. Thus, President Assad prepared himself for a battle against Israel between the wars, knowing that such a battle could last weeks. But the president of Syria won’t be alone: Assad and Hezbollah’s Secretary general Hassan Nasrallah will both be running any future battle against any Israeli aggression when the decision to engage will be taken.

    Most recently Israel bombed the Syrian army and destroyed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) offices and bases in Syria without inflicting any human casualties. At the same time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put himself on the level of IRGC-Quds brigade General Qassem Soleimani, by challenging him on social media.  In fact, Netanyahu fell right into the trap the Iranian general set for President Donald Trump. 

    Soleimani asked President Hassan Rouhani “to avoid answering this thug (Trump) who is beneath your level” and to allow him (Soleimani) to respond to Trump’s provocations of Iran. Thus Soleimani, a mere officer in the Iranian security forces, directly engages leaders of countries and even an arrogant Prime Minister who commands what he considers the best army in the Middle East and among the strongest in the world. But Soleimani’s style is different from Netanyahu’s. He doesn’t have a twitter account; he spends his time in the battlefield and in meetings with group leaders, officials, and sometime presidents and prime ministers. Soleimani is patient but he can be expected to respond to provocations sooner or later.

    Well-informed sources say that Iran is unwilling to abide the repetitive Israeli aggressions against Syria and IRGC positions. The Axis of Resistance is aware that Netanyahu is trying to pull it into a confrontation while US forces are deployed in Northeast Syria and before the Warsaw meeting organized by Trump against Iran. It is a difficult moment for Iran to react, but that doesn’t mean its allies can’t respond.

    As noted in a previous article about the decision of the central government in Damascus to establish a new rule of engagement against continuous Israeli attacks, Syria was planning retaliation against any future Israeli attacks. This Syrian decision came just before Trump’s announcement of his intention to withdraw from Syria. This statement gave pause to Syria and its allies, as they reflected upon the best way to respond.

    Tel Aviv is aware of the limitation of Iran in this critical moment and understands that the Resistance Axis would rather see a US withdrawal than to retaliate against Israel’s continuous attacks. Nevertheless, the most recent Israeli attack has pushed Syria and its allies beyond tolerable limits. Netanyahu announced his responsibility for the multiple bombardments of Syria–an unprecedented break with Israel’s protocol of silence. He used the army as an advertising tool for his forthcoming election.

    The Israeli Prime Minister perhaps doesn’t realize that Soleimani won’t reply to his provocation in Syria because Iranian targets were not bombed in Iran. Damascus responded to the attack by launching missiles against Israel, which in turn resulted in Israel bombarding tens of targets in Syria while stopping short of a larger escalation. Nevertheless, the Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari warned that Tel Aviv airport could be bombed if Israel repeats its aggression on Syria. What al-Jaafari didn’t reveal is the fact that President Assad prepared himself for a battle against Israel between the wars, knowing that such a battle could last weeks.

    Indeed, a long battle between Syria and Israel would put an end to Netanyahu’s chances to be re-elected. No Israeli Prime Minister has been elected who has exposed his country to danger and triggered the death of citizens.

    2010 SANA file photo of a meeting between Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

    But how can Syria retaliate if, as Israel claims, all Syrian and Iranian warehouses have been bombarded and destroyed with their thousands of missiles? How can Hezbollah support Syria if, as Israel claims, it has crippled all convoys transiting from Syria to Lebanon? How is it possible to re-supply Lebanon if the US is occupying the al-Tanf crossing between Syria and Iraq, allegedly to stop the flow of weapons from Tehran to Beirut?

    In 2006, Israel paid the price when it believed that it had undermined Hezbollah’s arsenal and discovered, through the massacre of the Merkava at Wadi al-Hujeir and the bombing of the Saar-5 vessel, that its intelligence about Hezbollah missiles and Syrian support was poor and that the US and Israeli intelligence failed. Tel Aviv wrongly believed it could easily fulfill the US dream of establishing a “new Middle East” announced by its Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. No one in Israel expected Hezbollah to stand with its Kornet anti-tank guided missiles and its Chinese anti-ship missiles.

    Today, the Resistance Axis, i.e. Syria and Hezbollah in the Levant, not only possess greater experience of warfare, but they also have more modern anti-ship missiles (Yakhont) and other lethal surprises like precision missiles capable of hitting any target anywhere in Israel.

    Moreover, Hezbollah has several bases for its strategic missiles on the Lebanese-Syrian borders. The group will not hesitate to generously use them against Israel if Israel attacks its ally Syria. But Hezbollah is not expected to limit its support to weaponry. Hassan Nasrallah is not only a compelling orator and a skilled psychologist of warfare, but also a meticulous military planner and commander. He was present in the military operational room in every single battle against Israel and participated in every single move his men took against Israel in the 2006 war and since.

    Logistic-technical-military planning and command and control between Hezbollah and Syria is today united. Nasrallah knows how to fight Israel, how much fire power to use and when. Assad and Nasrallah will both be running any future battle against any Israeli aggression when the decision to engage will be taken.

    Syrian air defenses fire missiles to repel Israeli warplanes attacking government positions during a major offensive in November, via Reuters.

    Russia is aware of determination of the Resistance Axis to respond and the danger this could pose for everyone in the Levant. The Russians tipped the IRGC to evacuate their command and control bases less than an hour before they were attacked by Israel. Russian military command asked the IRGC about their new command and control bases and were told that “their bases, from today onward, will be spread over the entire Syrian geography alongside the Syrian army, in every single barracks”.

    This answer pushed Russia to ask Israel, more directly and overtly, to stop bombing Syria. Russia would hate to find itself in the middle of an exchange of missiles between Syria and Israel flying above its head in the Levant.

    Netanyahu’s arrogance pushed him to abandon Israel’s policy of refusing to admit responsibility for its aggression, confusing the military command. The Prime Minister transmitted his electoral gossip inside the military establishment; he prefers to become a social media star rather than to follow the discreet example of his predecessors. 

    If Netanyahu wants to be re-elected, he needs to avoid a battle with Syria whose outcome he cannot control; his best strategy would be to keep silent until the polls.

  • Hawks Are Trying To Convince Trump To Keep This Tiny Piece Of Syrian Soil Indefinitely

    As the Pentagon appears to be moving forward on President Trump’s ordered troop draw down from Syria, administration hawks as well as foreign allies like Israel have one final card to play to hinder a total withdrawal. They argue that some 200 US troops in Syria’s southeast desert along the Iraqi border and its 55-kilometer “deconfliction zone” at al-Tanf are the last line of defense against Iranian expansion in Syria, and therefore must stay indefinitely. 

    Al Waleed border crossing, known in Syria as al-Tanf, is one of three official border crossings between Syria and Iraq. It’s long been blocked and controlled by US special forces and US-backed local militias. 

    Despite Trump’s pledge for a “full” and complete American exit, the Tanf base could remain Washington’s last remote outpost disrupting the strategic Baghdad-Damascus highway and potential key “link” in the Tehran-to-Beirut so-called Shia land bridge. Foreign Policy magazine identifies this as but the latest obstacle to an actual complete withdrawal of US forces:

    “Al-Tanf is a critical element in the effort to prevent Iran from establishing a ground line of communications from Iran through Iraq through Syria to southern Lebanon in support of Lebanese Hezbollah,” an unnamed senior US military source told the magazine.

    Washington’s initial justification for establishing the remote special operations outpost was to train local fighters to counter ISIS; however, not only has ISIS now been driven almost completely underground but Russia has accused US forces at al-Tanf of actually allowing ISIS terrorists to maintain a presence in the area in order to put pressure on Damascus.

    With the Islamic State now in tatters and defeated, the “counter Iran” argument is being pushed hard in order to convince Trump to keep a small US island of occupation in the heart of a volatile desert region where Syria, Iraq and Jordan meet.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is among the foremost foreign allies pushing hard, and “has repeatedly urged the U.S. to keep troops at Al-Tanf, according to several senior Israeli officials, who also asked not to be identified discussing private talks,” per Bloomberg. The Israelis have reportedly argued “the mere presence of American troops will act as a deterrent to Iran” even if in small numbers as a kind of symbolic threat. 

    And Bloomberg also confirms White House advisers are pushing an indefinite Tanf presence as an “obstacle” to the president’s plan to leave:

    The American base at Al-Tanf, originally established as a southern foothold against Islamic State and a training ground for Syrian rebels, has become one of the main obstacles to the president’s plan to leave. Israeli and some U.S. officials argue that a continued American presence there is critical to interrupting Iran’s supply lines into Lebanon, where Hezbollah — Iran’s proxy and Israel’s enemy — has been building up its arsenal.

     

    Both Washington and Tel Aviv’s past decade of Syria policy has been driven by fears of this so-called “Shia crescent” or Iranian land bridge which would conceivably connect Tehran with the Mediterranean via pro-Shia Baghdad and Damascus in a continuous arch of influence. 

    However the much hyped “land bridge” is somewhat nonsensical given Syrian allies Iran and Iraq can (and have) simply fly both personnel and weapons into Syria anytime they want. 

    The internal administration debate, following incredible push back against Trump’s withdrawal decision, has made entirely visible the national security deep state’s attempt to check the Commander-in-Chief’s power. And now US presence at al-Tanf represents the last hope of salvaging the hawks’ desire for permanent proxy war against Iran inside Syria. 

    And yet, with no greater operational support structure in place in eastern Syria after a broader US draw down (where some 2,000+ have for the past couple years been concentrated), the small American outpast at Tanf would be a sitting duck for any renewed terror insurgency, not to mention a potential target of both Syrian government and Russian forces, who’ve long vowed to liberate every inch of natural sovereign Syria. 

    Aaron Stein, director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, told Bloomberg: “He ordered U.S. forces to leave Syria. There have been efforts to pare that back and to treat Tanf as separate from the northeast, but it’s unclear if the president will be convinced.”

  • What Is 5G? Here's Everything You Need To Know About The Newest Cell Phone Technology

    Authored by Lisa Dunn via UpRoxx.xom,

    Just the other day, I was sitting on my couch in North Carolina, face-to-face with my nieces, who were cuddling on their couch hundreds of miles away. They were breathlessly recounting, in the way children of a certain age do, how they spent their snow day. The usual: sledding, screaming, making snow angels. But just as my eldest niece was about to tell me her favorite part of the day, both her face and her voice shuddered and shut down. FaceTime had frozen. Suddenly the miles between us, collapsed by technology, expanded to separate us once again. I cursed. I tapped my phone with my index finger, like a Boomer typing a letter to the editor. I dialed again and again to no avail. My 4G phone, which gives me the ability to talk to loved ones hundreds of miles away, had failed me.

    It’s time, I thought. Time for 5G. No more of this nonsense timing out and taking an entire 30 seconds to download a song. No more AirDrop that doesn’t work every once in a while. I need more Gs!

    Well, the Gs are coming. In fact, 5G has already arrived on some carriers in some parts of the country. Here’s everything you need to know.

    So what is 5G, anyways?

    First things first: the “G” in 5G. You probably really started noticing all the talk about Gs right around the time that ear-worm there’s a map for that commercial was released. So let’s make things simple: the “G” stands for “generation.” And those generations specifically refer to the different stages of wireless technology called mobile networks. For those who really want to get technical, PC Mag explains,

    1G was analog cellular. 2G technologies, such as CDMA, GSM, and TDMA, were the first generation of digital cellular technologies. 3G technologies, such as EVDO, HSPA, and UMTS, brought speeds from 200kbps to a few megabits per second. 4G technologies, such as WiMAX and LTE, were the next incompatible leap forward.

    In other words, if you think 1G, think Zack Morris. If you think 3G, think those extremely pixelated videos you watched on your LG enV with all your friends. 5G will be more like gigabit-level speeds. So, those same videos, but high quality, fast loading time, less lag, and on a much nicer phone.

    So it’s just 4G, but slightly nicer?

    Yes and no. While providers build their 5G networks across different spectra, they’ll use their 4G networks for support, especially as some high-band spectra upon which certain 5G networks (specifically: AT&T and Verizon) are being built can’t penetrate certain buildings. So, for instance, if you’re a Verizon customer who uses 5G, you’ll frequently be using their LTE network either in buildings or in certain areas of the map that don’t yet have coverage.

    What does that mean for me? Why should I care?

    According to Digital Trends, users with 5G can expect “exponentially faster download and upload speeds. Latency, or the time it takes devices to communicate with each other wireless networks, will also drastically decrease.”

    In plain English: downloads and uploads will be 5-10 times faster, and because the 5G buildout will rely so heavily on 4G coverage, first generation 5G phones won’t experience the same battery drain as the switch from 3G to 4G about 10 years ago.

    In fact, at the 2018 IBM Think Conference, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam predicted that 5G phones will eventually have month-long battery life,thanks to the lack of lag the new network will provide. I mean, I think most people would take every 2-3 days, but sure, a month works, too.

    Is 5G really necessary?

    Is your attitude really necessary?

    All jokes aside, yes. Not only are we used to lightning internet connectivity now, thanks to the increased availability of fiber and other high-speed internet connections, there are more devices than ever that require wireless connectivity. This isn’t just about allowing you to watch HBOGo at the gym without the damn wifi password (though that is, admittedly, very important). Smart appliances also require wireless connectivity, so 5G will mean decent connectivity for the approximately 21 billion Internet of Things items predicted to be connected to the internet by 2020.

    Is it available yet?

    For certain places: yes.

    Verizon has already made what they’re calling 5G home service (aka regular old internet) available. Their home service is what PC Mag describes as a “nonstandard” version which “offers multi-gigabit wireless speeds and will be swiftly transitioned over to the standard version.” In other words, while it’s not technically 5G, it’s still wicked fast and will eventually be true 5G. They’ve announced plans to roll out their 5G mobile network sometime this year.

    AT&T’s 5G mobile service is currently available in 12 cities: Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Fla., Louisville, Ky., Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Raleigh, N.C., San Antonio and Waco, Texas.” Further, in “the first half of 2019” they plan on rolling out 5G mobile in “Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose.”

    T-Mobile has announced plans to start building a network in 2019 with full rollout in 2020.

    Phones will start rolling out shortly. Samsung’s Galaxy S10 is 5G-capable (among other capabilities) and will go to market around March. Other phones are sure to roll out in a similar time frame.

    Should I go out and get a 5G phone right now? Where are my keys? WHERE ARE MY DANG KEYS??

    Slow down there, speed racer. While early adopters of 5G won’t suffer as much as early adopters of 4G (first-gen 4G phones had terrible battery life, among other issues), we recommend you just chill. First of all, as the New York Timesreports, the security of the network is currently dubious. And given that the Trump administration repealed existing protections against cybersecurity threats, we’d wait and see how the roll-out actually goes, in a practical sense.

    Plus, as Ars Technica reports, odds are that it’ll take a while for 5G to come to your region, and we’re not quite sure what the trade-offs will be yet for early adoption. So let someone else do the frustrating work for you. And in the meantime, sit back, relax, and enjoy your current phone. Until you inevitably smash it in frustration and finally give in.

  • Doomsday "Experts" Warn Of Civilization-Ending Information Wars

    Just when you were running short on things to fear, a group of US doomsday “experts” said on Thursday that information warfare is amplifying major worldwide threats as the infamous Doomsday Clock remained at two minutes to midnight, reports AFP.

    Where does this lurking threat lie according to said experts? “The manipulation of facts, fake news and information overload — along with global warming and flirting with nuclear war — are all factors that have brought humans as close to destroying the planet as ever, said the non-profit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.” 

    “Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention,” said the scientists. “These major threats — nuclear weapons and climate change — were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.”

    The clock did not budge from last year, but that “should not be taken as a sign of stability,” said Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the group of scholars and international experts in security, nuclear, environmental and science fields.

    “It is a state as worrisome as the most dangerous times of the Cold War,” said Bronson at a press conference in the US capital, describing the current climate as “The New Abnormal.”

    “The velocity of information has increased by orders of magnitude, allowing information warfare and fake news to flourish,” she said.

    “It generates rage and polarization across the globe at a time when we need calm and unity to solve the globe’s greatest problems.”

    This “New Abnormal” is “a state that features an unpredictable and shifting landscape of simmering disputes that multiply the chances for major conflict to erupt,” she added.

    “We appear to be normalizing a very dangerous world in terms of the risks of nuclear warfare and climate change.” –AFP

    So – the “velocity of information” and fake news has generated “rage” and “polarization” across the globe – not decades of jobs lost to outsourcing, the erosion of purchasing power, supercharged nanny states, and a steady march towards globalization as cultural identities are erased in the name of “progress.”

    University of Chicago astronomy and astrophysics professor Robert Rosner described this “New Abnormal” as “the disturbing reality in which things are not getting better.”

    Created in 1947 to scare the shit out of Americans, the Doomsday Clock has changed time on 20 occasions – ranging from 17 minutes before midnight in 1991 – to two minutes to midnight in 1953, 2018 and now. Last year it moved from two-and-a-half minutes before midnight to two minutes while Dotard President Trump and North Korean Leader “Rocket Man” Kim Jong Un were calling each other names. 

    Over the past year, the “rhetoric” between North Korea and the United States “has eased but remains extremely dangerous,” said Bronson.

    Meanwhile, relations between the United States and Russia “remain unacceptably strained.”

    And on the environmental front, “carbon emissions began to rise again after a period of plateauing,” Bronson added.

    On tensions with North Korea, former US defense secretary William Perry said the latest talks between the Washington and Pyongyang may have done “nothing” to move North Korea away from its nuclear program.

    “On the other hand, and this is a big other hand, it stopped the insults and threats between our two countries, and therefore reduced the chances of blundering into a war with North Korea,” Perry said. –AFP

    Former California Governor Jerry Brown – executive chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, says that world leaders aren’t doing nearly enough to mitigate the threat of nuclear weapons. 

    “The blindness and stupidity of the politicians and their consultants is truly shocking in the face of nuclear catastrophe and danger,” said Brown. “We are almost like travelers on the Titanic, not seeing the iceberg up ahead but enjoying the elegant dining and music.”

    Brown also knocked journalists who report on all things Trump. 

    “Journalists, yes, you love Trump’s tweets. You love the news of the day. You love the leads that get the clicks but the final click could be a nuclear accident, or mistake, and that is what we all have to be worried about.”

  • Johnstone: Top 5 Dumbest Arguments Defending Trump's Venezuela Interventionism

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    Ever since the Trump administration announced that it was no longer recognizing the legitimacy of the elected government of Venezuela I’ve been arguing with people on social media about this president’s brazen coup attempt in that country. The people arguing with me in favor of Trump’s interventionism are almost exclusively Trump supporters, with leftists and antiwar libertarians more or less on my side with this issue and rank-and-file centrists mostly preferring to sit this one out except to periodically mumble something about it being a distraction from the Mueller investigation.

    I engage in these arguments not because I enjoy fighting with strangers on the internet, but because it helps me get an idea of what propaganda narratives have been seeded throughout various political sectors. Take a stand online and you’ll quickly have people running up to you saying, in effect, “My media echo chamber told me I’m supposed to disagree with you about that,” and spelling out what they’ve been told to believe.

    I have not received a single robust argument in favor of Trump’s Venezuela interventionism, but I have received a whole lot of really, really stupid ones. Here are the top five most common and most astonishingly idiotic of them:

    1. “Socialism is bad!”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    This one is easily the most common and most stupid of all the arguments I’ve been receiving. I’m not familiar enough with pro-Trump punditry to be able to describe how the MAGA crowd got it into their heads that attacking Venezuela has something to do with fighting socialism, but it’s clear from my interactions over the last couple of days that that is the dominant narrative they’ve got swirling around in their collective consciousness. Most of my arguments on this issue have either begun as or very quickly spun into an attempt to turn the debate about US interventionism in yet another South American nation into a debate about socialism vs capitalism.

    Which is of course absurd. The campaign to topple Venezuela’s government has nothing to do with socialism, it’s about oil and regional hegemony. The US has long treated South America as its personal supply cabinet and destroyed anyone who tried to challenge that, and the fact that Venezuela has the most confirmed oil reserves of any nation on the planet makes it all the more central in this agenda. Yes, the fact that large sectors of its economy are centrally planned means there are fewer hooks for the corporatocracy to find purchase to manipulate it with, but that just helps explain why the US is targeting it with more aggressive measures, it doesn’t excuse the aggressive targeting. Venezuela does not belong to the United States, and attempting to control what happens with its resources, its economy and its government is an obscene violation of its national sovereignty.

    Trying to turn a clean-cut debate about US interventionism into a debate about socialism is like if your family found out that your sister had just been raped, and you all started bickering about the pros and cons of feminism instead of focusing on the crime that had just happened to your loved one. It wouldn’t matter what kind of economic system Venezuela had; trying to overthrow its government is not okay. The narrative that this has something to do with championing capitalism is just a hook used to get Trump’s base on board with another unconscionable foreign entanglement.

    2. “It’s not interventionism! There are no boots on the ground.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Oh yes it is interventionism. Crushing economic sanctions, CIA covert ops, illegally occupying embassies, and a campaign to delegitimize a nation’s entire government are absolutely interventionism, and that is happening currently. It’s stupid to make “boots on the ground” your line in the sand when, for example, vast amounts of US resources can easily be poured into fomenting a “civil” war that could kill hundreds of thousands and displace millions as we saw with Syria. And from today’s news about the Trump administration’s appointment of bloodthirsty psychopath Elliot Abrams as the special envoy to Venezuela, it’s very reasonable to expect things to get a whole lot bloodier. Modern warmongering isn’t limited to the form of “boots on the ground”, and making that your litmus test is leaving yourself open to all the same disasters ushered in by the Obama administration.

    3. “Maduro is bad!”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    I’ve never entered into any kind of argument about whether or not Nicolas Maduro is a nice person, because it’s not my game. If I spent all my time analyzing the quality of all the world’s governments I’d never get anything done; I focus my time and energy on the imperialism of the US-centralized power alliance because I see it as the single most dangerous force in the world. I’ve got no more reason to go picking apart the quality of Venezuela’s government than I do any other country in the world, yet my arguments against US interventionism in Venezuela are consistently met with a tsunami of social media posts about what a bad, bad man Maduro is.

    I refuse to legitimize that false argument. It doesn’t matter whether Maduro is a saint or the worst person in the world; Venezuela is a sovereign nation and US regime change interventionism is always disastrous. Completely ignoring the obvious fact that the empire always launches an aggressive propaganda campaign to manufacture support for the elimination of its targets, there is no valid reason to support that targeting. Trying to drag the conversation into a debate about just how bad Maduro is is an attempt to legitimize an agenda that has no validity.

    4. “I support the Venezuelan people!”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Again, that’s not the argument. The argument is whether it’s okay for the US government and its allies to violate Venezuela’s sovereignty with starvation sanctions, CIA covert ops, an active campaign to delegitimize its government, and possibly much worse in the future in order to advance the agenda of overthrowing its political system.

    Of course there are people in Venezuela who don’t like their government; that’s true in your own country too. That doesn’t make it okay for a sprawling imperialist power to intervene in their political affairs. You’d think this would be obvious to everyone, but over and over again I run into people conflating Venezuelans sorting out Venezuelan domestic affairs with the US-centralized empire actively meddling in those affairs.

    The US government doesn’t give a shit about the Venezuelan people; if it did it wouldn’t be crushing them with starvation sanctions. It isn’t about freedom, and it isn’t about democracy. The US backs 73 percent of the world’s dictatorships because those dictators facilitate the interests of the US power establishment, and a leaked State Department memo in 2017 spelled out the way the US government coddles US allies who violate human rights while attacking nonconforming governments for those same violations as a matter of policy. Acting like Trump’s aggressions against Venezuela have anything to do with human rights while he himself remains cuddly with the murderous theocracy of Saudi Arabia in the face of intense political pressure is willful ignorance at this point, and it’s inexcusable.

    5. “You don’t understand what’s going on there! I talk to Venezuelans online!”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Do you now?

    First of all, this common argument is irrelevant for the reasons already discussed here; sure there are Venezuelans who don’t like their government, but their existence doesn’t justify US interventionism. Secondly, it’s a known fact that online trolls will be employed to help manufacture support for all sorts of geopolitical agendas, from Israel’s shill army to the MEK terror cult’s anti-Iran troll farm to the Bana Alabed psyop for Syria. And here’s this example, just for your information, of a Twitter account talking about how much fun she’s having in Paris and then a few days later claiming she’s in Venezuela waiting in “5+ hour queues to buy a loaf of bread.” Be skeptical of what strangers on social media tell you about what’s happening inside a nation that’s been targeted by the empire, please.

    And that’s about it for this article. Let’s all try and talk about this thing with a little more intelligence and sanity, please.

    * * *

    Thanks for reading! My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

Digest powered by RSS Digest