Thursday, January 26, 2017

Tulsi Tells Truth

Dangerously Honest,

Hawaiian Congresswoman and Army National Guard officer, Tulsi Gababrd, who resigned from the DNC over election rigging against Bernie Sanders, and who visited President-Elect Trump to counsel against Neocon influence and aggressive foreign wars, visited Syria last week, along with former Congressman, Dennis Kucinich.
Tulsi met with Syrian widows of both sides, and representatives of all sides, and heads of state of neighboring countries. Syrian President Assad offered a meeting, and Tulsi met with him, too. 
The people of Syria and surrounding countries report the horrors of this war, and want the outside funding and supply of the anti-government forces to stop. There are no distinctions, moderate-rape-murderers change names conveniently,
I rarely send money to politicians, but I just sent Tulsi Gabbard a high-five contribution for this. It's a political risk. The Democratic and Republican parties are still largely run by Neocons. Most of the news stories I found were disparaging of Congresswoman Gabbard, with varying degrees of sneer implied. Huffington Post was notably that way. Here is her press release, and local coverage from Hawaii.

Details are provided here of US military supporting ISIS ground operations for years.
The US-led “anti-ISIS” coalition airstrike of  17th September 2016 struck a key Syrian military position in the Thardeh mountains, which protected the Syrian forces’ key air base in the area.  It killed 83 Syrian soldiers and destroyed vehicles, weapons stores, radar stations, tanks, and other armoured vehicles. The air strike was immediately followed by an ISIS attack which overran the position, enabling ISIS to break through to the road leading through the Al- Therdah Mountain which the terrorists had been trying – until then unsuccessful – to reach since 2014.  http://theduran.com/us-isis-deir-el-zour/
Moon of Alabama has a confusing update on ("our") confusing Syrian war:  Further east the fighting in Deir Ezzor continues. The city is besieged by ISIS and a large attack recently managed to split the Syrian army garrison from the living quarters of the 100,000 inhabitants under government protection. Air supplies were impossible. A large Russian air campaign has helped to push ISIS back. Up to a 100 strikes per day have disabled ISIS artillery in the area and helicopter landings to bring in supply and reinforcements are now again possible. Food supplies for the population are again being dropped from large transport planes. During the last three days the Russian airforce flew strategic bombers from Russian territory to Deir Ezzor and intensely bombed ISIS held positions. ISIS reinforcements coming from Raqqa and Palmyra were interdicted before they could reach the area. Deir Ezzor already looked lost but it now may survive the latest ISIS attempt to storm it. In various areas of Syria different configurations of enemies and allies are fighting each other. The situation seems to get more complicate by the day as Turkey and the U.S. are permanently changing their positions and intentions. While U.S. supported "moderates" in the north fight the former allied al-Qaeda, the "moderates" in the south receive resupplies despite their intimate local alliance with al-Qaeda. ISIS is fought by the U.S. in coalition with the Kurds but not in coalition with its NATO ally Turkey. Meanwhile ISIS is supported by the U.S. in its campaigns against the Syrian army.  http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/01/syria-rebel-infighting-and-turkish-losses-help-the-government-and-its-allies.html
"Safe zones" in Syria, for internal refugees? What does that mean from President Trump? More US troops? How could that not suck for everybody?  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-26/trump-proposal-syria-safe-zones-escalate-us-military-involvement-region
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the army will stop at nothing to defeat the enemy in conflicts to come, and they won’t stop until the adversary “waves a white flag.” “If a quarter of the Strip is needed, then we occupy a quarter of the Strip. If more, then more,” he said, according to Haaretz. “The over-involvement of the world powers, especially Europe, is only disrupting. They don’t contribute anything to the problem’s solution, they only complicate things,” he said, as cited by The Times of Israel, while advising “whoever wants to help solve” the conflict, “first forget it.” (Nukes, then?)  https://www.rt.com/news/374990-israeli-army-full-force-lieberman/
The US military leadership was never on board with the policy of relying on those armed groups to advance US interests in Syria in the first place. It recognised that, despite the serious faults of the Assad regime, the Syrian army was the only Syrian institution committed to resisting both al-Qaeda and Islamic State. It seems likely that the Trump administration will now return to that point as it tries to rebuild a policy from the ashes of the failed policy of the Obama administration.  http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/23/us-intervention-in-syria-not-under-trump/
Eleni sends this assessment from Thierry Meyssan. Donald Trump's appointment of Generals Michael Flynn, James Mattis, and  John Kelly to key positions implies realignment of military and intelligence services under a more unified and patriotic command structure. These generals have pulled together before, and exercised prudent military judgement, but were overridden by neocon-political-elements. (There is a broad constituency within the military which is deeply disgusted by what has been done to this country from the inside since 9/11/01.)  http://www.voltairenet.org/article195017.html
Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller wrote the Trump Inaugural Address (not Trump himself, as stated above).  http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/315464-bannon-miller-wrote-trumps-inauguration-address-report
"Why the corrupt, worker-hating, New Democrats must be purged", Bill Black  http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/bill-black-not-4-sale-corrupt-worker-hating-new-democrats-must-purged.html
"The real issue is that the social contract between citizens and governments in the West are being broken. There is always a deal between citizens and their governments. But now governments are defaulting on their citizens because of the debt problem. They can’t deliver retirement at 65...They can’t deliver the healthcare that had been expected. Frankly they can’t deliver police, fire departments or roads without potholes."  http://www.sldinfo.com/pippa-malmgren-on-brexit-and-shaping-the-way-ahead-the-next-phase-of-european-development/
The IMF officially refutes IMF official policy of enforcing neoliberal-austerity in IMF Bailouts. http://www.globaldashboard.org/2017/01/26/austerity-economics-just-smashed-imf/
InfoWars IN. Alex Jones' show is offered White House Press Corps position. (CNN out?)  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-26/alex-jones-infowars-offered-white-house-credentials
"If we bombed you, we ban you" policy to avoid importing radicalized Muslims into the US. "Anti-blowback feature", you could call it.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/trumps-muslim-immigration-executive-order-if-we-bombed-you-we-ban-you/5570949
The entire senior management team at the State Department just (unexpectedly) resigned. This is a brain-trust of protocols, procedures and personality-knowledge that can't be readily replaced. It makes the State Department much less effective in performance of any task for the next few years.  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-26/entire-senior-management-team-state-department-just-resigned 
Secretary of State Tillerson, recently CEO of Exxon, is expected to normalize relations with Russia and get oil flowing from the now-less-frozen Arctic. "In their very first effort on the Russian Arctic shelf, where Exxon is believed to have invested around $1 billion, the companies struck oil in a reserve estimated to hold some 750 million barrels of oil, with a market value of some $40 billion, at today’s oil prices... He also responded that he would not attempt to ease U.S. sanctions against Russia. Yet, observers are also suspicious that he may never have to do so since the sanctions are due to expire in March. There is little expectation of sanctions renewal by the Trump Administration." http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/How-Tillerson-Could-Fuel-A-Russian-Arctic-Drilling-Boom.html
Proposed oil-taxation changes could raise the wellhead price of domestic US oil above global average, from current position below global average, which would increase pumping of oil within the US in the next few years. This would be a tax break for US oil that would be exported. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/25/us-tax-reforms-could-transform-global-oil-market-goldman-sachs.html
Kyle Bass looks at moderate US protectionist policies under Trump administration "throwing gasoline on Chinese fire" of smoldering bad-debt. This is a push toward a huge, inevitable bad-debt-writedown, an unwelcome one.  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-25/kyle-bass-calls-trump-gasoline-on-smoldering-fire-in-china
"Trump Loves Debt, but It Won't Love Him Back" (Bloomberg) about spending on American infrastructure.  https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-01-25/trump-may-love-debt-but-it-won-t-ever-love-him-back
"Trump and the Debate on America's Infrastructure: How to Cut Infrastructure Costs in Half", Ellen Brown again points out the waste in paying financiers to conjure your money at interest, when the government can do it and all benefits accrue to the public interest, instead.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-and-the-debate-on-americas-infrastructure-how-to-cut-infrastructure-costs-in-half/5570974
Revolting Debt Slave

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