Category Archives: Middle East

UPDATED (10/30/018): Another Cudgel Against Trump: Suddenly Moron Media Want To Protect Treaty With Russia

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Islam, Jihad, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Russia

For the past 2 years, the duration of Donald Trump’s presidency, all mass media has done is pour petrol over the relationship with Russia. Now, the same insane fools are berating Trump for answering their call to escalate with Russia, a move one has to repudiate, as Rand Paul has done. Rand Paul, however, veers into the neoconservationism he so condemns when he advocates the removal of the Saudi Crown Prince.

Here is Republican Senator Rand Paul, a key member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, talking sense to a great interviewer, CHRIS WALLACE, of FOX NEWS SUNDAY. (Putin first, then Khashoggi and the Kingdom of Saud.)

WALLACE: I want to get, and we’re running out of time, to one final subject. It appears that President Trump is about to pull out, to tell the Russians that we’re going to pull out of the INF medium-range missile treaty, a treaty that Ronald Reagan signed with Mikhail Gorbachev back in 1987.

Here was the president yesterday afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We are the ones who have stayed in the agreement and we have honored the agreement but Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So, we are going to terminate the agreement and we’re going to fall out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: I got about a minute left. The president says he will stay in the treaty only if Russia and China, which was not a signatory to the INF treaty, will abide by its terms. Your reaction to this, sir?

PAUL: I think it’s a big, big mistake to flippantly get out of this historic agreement that Reagan and Gorbachev signed. This was a big part of Reagan’s legacy and we should not get rid of it. It was an important step. We went from 64,000 nuclear-tipped missiles down to 15,000. It has been an historic agreement.

I think what we should do instead of getting out event is I’ve asked the president, and I advised him privately and in public, that he should appoint nuclear negotiators, nuclear arms control negotiators to actually work with the Soviets. We have complaints that they are not in compliance. They also have complaints that some of our missile launchers in Europe are not in compliance.

Let’s have a rational discussion with experts on this and see if we can resolve it.

WALLACE: You sent out a tweet that said you think this is one reason why John Bolton should stay out of this. Why him personally?

PAUL: I think John Bolton is the one advising the president to get out of the INF Treaty and I don’t think he recognizes the important achievement of Reagan and Gorbachev on this. Look, I spent an hour with Gorbachev a couple of months ago and they still regard this, this reduction of nuclear arms and a disaster that would be nuclear war, I think in a very sincere manner, at least from Gorbachev, that reducing the arms was very important and I don’t want to see another nuclear arms race with Russia or with any other country.

I’m all for trying to sign an agreement with China, but that would have to be a brand-new agreement and there’s no reason to end the agreement we have with Russia.

…   WALLACE: your reaction to the Saudi account that Khashoggi was killed by accident in a fist fight at the consulate and that the Saudi crown prince had nothing to do with it.

Do you believe the Saudi account?

SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY.: Absolutely not. I think it’s insulting to anyone who’s analyzing this with any kind of intelligent background to think that, oh, a fist fight led to a dismemberment with a bone saw. So, no.

But I think we should put this brazen attack, this brazen murder in context with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has basically over the decades been the largest state sponsor of radical Islam and violent jihad. They sponsor thousands of madrassas that teach hatred of Christians and Jews and Hindus around the world. So, this isn’t the first instance. This is just another in the line of long instances of Saudi insults to the civilized world.

WALLACE: I’m going to get to the larger relationship in a moment, but I want to stay with this case at this point. What do you think was the involvement of the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? The king has absolved them and in fact has put MBS, as he’s known, in charge of the overhaul of Saudi intelligence.

PAUL: I think it stretches credulity to believe the crown prince wasn’t involved in this and I think that’s the way they’re going to write this off. And people in Saudi Arabia ought to be aware when you were told what to do, you go and do it, and then they will execute you and put all the blame on someone else. There’s no way 15 people were sent from Saudi Arabia to Turkey to kill a dissident without the approval of the crown prince. And that’s why I say we have to be stronger than just saying, oh, we are going to sanction a few of these people and pretend like we’re doing something.

I think we really need to discontinue our arms sales to Saudi Arabia and have a long and serious discussion about whether or not they want to be an ally or they want to be an enemy.

WALLACE: Well, you say we got to get tougher. President Trump was asked about the arrest of 18 people involved in the case and the firing of five officials, some of them with close ties to the crown prince. Here’s what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I think it’s a good first step, it’s a big step, it’s a lot of people. A lot of people involved and I think it’s a great first step.

REPORTER: Do you consider it a credible explanation?

TRUMP: I do. I do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Does President Trump know something that you don’t, Senator, or, frankly, do you think he’s covering for the Saudis?

PAUL: I think the Saudis are an authoritarian government. They are directed from the top down and you don’t have people just going off and doing things on their own. I feel certain that the crown prince was involved and that he directed this and that’s why I think we cannot continue to have relations with him.

So, I think is going to have to be replaced, frankly. But I think that sanctions don’t go far enough. I think we need to look at the arm sale, because this is not just about this journalist being killed, it’s about the war in Yemen where tens of thousands of civilians are being killed. It’s about them spreading hatred of Christians and Jews and Hindus throughout the world. I mean, thousands and thousands madrassas teaching radical violence against the West.

The Saudis have not acted as our friend and they need to change their behavior.

WALLACE: I understand that but I’m asking you directly about the president’s reaction. He says he finds credible an account that you find incredible. Why do you think he’s doing that?

PAUL: Exactly. I don’t know the reasoning or can answer for, you know, the president’s thought process on this. I can only say I think many of us looking at the situation think this couldn’t happen in an authoritarian government without the crown prince being involved.

WALLACE: All right. Let’s talk now about punishment and what to do about it. The president says he’s going to work with Congress to find a way to sanction the Saudis, but he made it clear one of the things he doesn’t want to do. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I would prefer that we don’t use as retribution canceling $110 billion worth of work, which means 600,000 jobs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Now, last year, long before all of this. You came within four votes of blocking further arms sales to the Saudis. First of all, what do you think of the chances that you can get those four votes and block them this year? And what about the president’s argument that this hundreds of thousands of American jobs?

PAUL: I think if we were to have a vote in the next couple of weeks on whether or not to sell arms to Saudi Arabia, we would win overwhelmingly. And so, I think the powers that be will try to prevent us from having that vote. They have to announce a specific case of arms being sold and my prediction is they’ll avoid doing that as long as possible.

With regard to jobs, I don’t think arms should ever be seen as a jobs program. Our arms, our military arms, the sophistication of our arms are part of our national defense. These aren’t something that are just owned by private companies, they are owned by the country, and I think we should never sell arms to any country in less it’s in national security interest.

I think the war in Yemen actually increases our national risk. It makes us less secure in the Middle East. It makes us more likely to be involved in another war in Yemen.

So, I think we should not be supplying the Saudis with bombs. They’ve been indiscriminately killing civilians. Just in the last month, 50 schoolchildren were killed in the bombing of the school bus. They killed 150 people at a funeral possession.

The Saudis have not been acting in a just fashion. Yemen’s one of the poorest planets on the earth. Millions of people there face starvation, over a million people had cholera and the Saudis continue to block their ports. So, no, I don’t think that there’s a national security reason for us to be involved in the war in Yemen and that’s where our arms are going.

So, I would cut off arms sales. It’s the only thing the Saudis will listen to.

WALLACE: Well, an interesting figure. Russian President Putin talked about this and he said that he believes that the U.S. has a double standard. He noted that after the alleged poisoning of that Russian spy in Britain that the U.S. expelled 60 Russian diplomats and imposed sanctions and he looks at the lack of action so far and says that’s a double standard.

One, does Putin have a point? And beyond blocking arms sales, you say that you don’t think the White House is even going to offer them at this point, what else should the U.S. do if anything to punish the Saudis?

PAUL: Well, I think there is a double standard and I think the Saudis need to be treated as who they are in the context of who they are. I don’t think they are a friendly ally. They have been spreading hatred of our country for a decade after decade.

With regard to whether we sanction them or whether we have arms sales, I think the arms sales actually will go on. I think they will avoid announcing the arms sales to try to prevent us from blocking them. So, I’m not saying that the Trump administration will stop arms sales. I think they will continue the arms sales and I think this is a danger that Congress, many in Congress will act tough on this and they will pretend to do something, which is sanctions.

But I’m not calling for sanctions really against Saudi Arabia in general, I don’t think we should quit trading with Saudi Arabia. I think we should specifically quit aiding and abetting them in an aggressive war in Yemen.

WALLACE: You have been — as we pointed out, you have been a real skeptic of our relationship with Saudi Arabia for many years and you’ve certainly given evidence of that today.

But here’s a counterargument from President Trump. He says that we depend on Saudi Arabia for cheap oil or cheaper oil. He says we depend on Saudi Arabia as a potential counterweight to Iran and its ambitions in the Middle East and that we can — we hope that Saudi Arabia will help us broker a peace deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Do you think he’s wrong on all those fronts?

PAUL: I think this is thousand-year-old war in the Middle East between Sunni and Shia, and Saudi Arabia is pitted us against Iran. The biggest thing that destabilize the Middle East and I think the president agrees with me on this was the Iraq war.

There was much more of a balance in the Middle East at that time, but if you look at military spending right now, the Saudis and the gulf sheikhdom that are their allies spend eight times more than Iran. And so, there is an arms race, but when we supply arms to Saudi Arabia, Iran responds.

So when we complain about the Iranians having ballistic missiles that they are developing, they are doing that in response to the arming of the Saudis. It’s a bilateral arms race that goes on and on. And so, I wouldn’t continue it, I don’t think we need the Saudis.

The Saudis need us much more than we need them. We have incredible leverage. Their air force is entirely American planes. They can’t last a couple of months without parts and mechanics to help them run their air force. We train their pilots.

They are completely dependent on us. We need to tell them to behave, and if they’re not going to behave, and that includes cutting off the funding to all these schools that teach hatred of Christians, Jews and Hindus.

HERE.

UPDATED (10/30/018):

THE Tipping Point. Liberals just can’t get a break:

Comments Off on UPDATED (10/30/018): Another Cudgel Against Trump: Suddenly Moron Media Want To Protect Treaty With Russia

Written by on

UPDATED III (9/13): Lindsey Grahamnesty Lies About Putin, Syria & The Alawite Alliance

Foreign Policy, Islam, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Russia

NEW COLUMN IS “Lindsey Grahamnesty Lies About Putin, Syria & The Alawite Alliance.” It’s now on WND.com and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

On just about every issue, in 2016, candidate Trump ran in opposition to Sen. Lindsey Graham. Donald Trump won the presidency; Lindsey Graham quit the race with a near-zero popularity, as reflected in the polls.

The People certainly loathe the senator from South Carolina. A poll conducted subsequently found that Graham was among least popular senators.

No wonder. Graham is reliably wrong about most things.

But being both misguided and despised have done nothing to diminish Sen. Graham’s popularity with Big Media, left and right. Thus were his pronouncements accorded the customary reverence, during a July 10 segment, on Fox News’ “The Story.”

Which is when he told anchor Martha MacCallum that, “Putin is not doing anything good in Syria.”

Then again, Lindsey is being consistent. The revival of “one of the world’s oldest Christian communities,” in Syria, is not something the senator we’ve come to know and loathe would celebrate.

It’s true. “A new Syria is emerging from the rubble of war,” reports The Economist, a magazine which is every bit as liberal and Russophobic as Graham and his political soul mate, John McCain, but whose correspondents on the ground—in Aleppo, Damascus and Homs—have a far greater fidelity to the truth than the terrible two.

“In Homs, … the Christian quarter is reviving. Churches have been lavishly restored; a large crucifix hangs over the main street.” ‘Groom of Heaven,’ proclaims a billboard featuring a photo of a Christian soldier killed in the seven-year conflict. And, in their sermons, Orthodox patriarchs praise Mr. Assad for saving … the Christian communities.”

Don’t tell the ailing McCain. It’ll only make him miserable, but thanks to Putin, Assad “now controls Syria’s spine, from Aleppo in the north to Damascus in the south—what French colonists once called la Syrie utile (useful Syria). The rebels are confined to pockets along the southern and northern borders.”

“Homs, like all of the cities recaptured by the government, now belongs mostly to Syria’s victorious minorities: Christians, Shias and Alawites (an esoteric offshoot of Shia Islam from which Mr. Assad hails). These groups banded together against the rebels, who are nearly all Sunni, and chased them out of the cities.” (“How a victorious Bashar al-Assad is changing Syria,” The Economist, June 28, 2018.)

A Christian teacher in Homs rejoices, for she no longer must live alongside neighbors “who overnight called you a kafir (infidel).”

The teacher’s venom is directed at John McCain’s beloved “rebels.” Internet selfies abound of McCain mixing it up with leading Sunni “rebels,” against whom Putin and Bashar al-Assad were doing battle. Who knows? McCain may even have taken a pic with the infamous “rebel” who decapitated Syrian Franciscan monk Father Francois Murad.

Ignoramuses McCain and Graham had both urged the US to send weapons to the “rebels”—even as it transpired that the lovelies with whom McCain was cavorting on his sojourns in Syria liked to feast on … the lungs of their pro-Assad enemies. A devotee of multiculturalism, Lindsey could probably explain the idiosyncratic cultural symbolism of such savagery.

Infested as it is by globalist ideologues, the permanent establishment of American foreign policy refuses to consider regional, religious, local, even tribal, dynamics in the Middle East. In particular, that the “good” guys in Syria—a relative term—are not the Islamist “rebels,” with whom the senior Republican senator from Arizona was forever frolicking; but the secular Alawites.

You likely didn’t know that Alawites like al-Assad also “flinch at Shia evangelizing. ‘We don’t pray, don’t fast [during Ramadan] and drink alcohol,’ says one.” …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMNS, “Lindsey Grahamnesty Lies About Putin, Syria & The Alawite Alliance,” is now on WND.com and the Unz Review.

UPDATE I (7/14): Some readers get it:

—–Original Message—–
From:  Don
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 9:22 AM
To: ilana@ilanamercer.com
Subject: Re: “Lindsey Grahamnesty Lies About Putin, Syria And The Alawite Alliance”

Ilana, I salute you.  Maybe the most important article you have written in some time.

Further, the obvious black op of chemical weapon use to frame Assad is so significant.  Sadly Trump fell for it.  While the ‘rebels’ (ISIS) were torturing and decapitating purging Christians Assad was protecting them.

Can’t have that now can we?  The ‘songbird of Hanoi’ may be one of the most evil men alive today.

Keep up your most excellent work.

Yours,

Don

UPDATE II (7/15):

Rich says:
July 14, 2018 at 4:00 pm GMT

Excellent column. It’s amazing that this information is blocked throughout the mainstream media. How, in Heaven’s name, did any Westerner, or American, think supporting these insane rebels was a good idea?

UPDATE III (9/13): There they go again. 

Lindsey Graham Lies About The ‘New Syria,’ Which Is Now Safe For Christians & Way More Secular

Christianity, Islam, Jihad, Middle East, Propaganda, Russia

On just about every issue he ran on, candidate Trump was in opposition to Sen. Lindsey Graham. Including Russia. Now Graham, whose popularity as a presidential candidate in 2016 was around 0%, is advising President Trump.

Forty eight seconds in to his July 10 segment on Fox News’ The Story, Graham says, “Putin is not doing anything good in Syria.”

You lie, Lindsey.

The Economist is a superb news magazine—its reporters do old fashioned shoe-leather reporting, rather than rely solely on what the Anglo-American Deep State dishes. Which is how Lindsey gets his news.

More fundamentally, the Economist is liberal and vehemently anti-Trump. Under an ostensibly dim headline, the magazine relays some very promising news about the new Syria, what with the Alawites and their allies having consolidated power, once again.

Remember, “The country has been led by Alawites since 1966, but Sunnis held senior positions in government, the armed forces and business. Even today many Sunnis prefer Mr Assad’s secular rule to that of Islamist rebels.”

“How a Victorious Bashar al-Assad is Changing Syria: Sunnis have been pushed out by the war. The new Syria is smaller, in ruins and more sectarian”:

… the Christian quarter is reviving. Churches have been lavishly restored; a large crucifix hangs over the main street. “Groom of Heaven”, proclaims a billboard featuring a photo of a Christian soldier killed in the seven-year conflict. In their sermons, Orthodox patriarchs praise Mr Assad for saving one of the world’s oldest Christian communities.

Homs, like all of the cities recaptured by the government, now belongs mostly to Syria’s victorious minorities: Christians, Shias and Alawites (an esoteric offshoot of Shia Islam from which Mr Assad hails). These groups banded together against the rebels, who are nearly all Sunni, and chased them out of the cities. Sunni civilians, once a large majority, followed. More than half of the country’s population of 22m has been displaced—6.5m inside Syria and over 6m abroad. Most are Sunnis. …

“We lived so well before,” says a Christian teacher in Homs. “But how can you live with a neighbour who overnight called you a kafir (infidel)?”

For the warring factions, this is a regional conflict . The local powers want “the Iranian-backed Shia militias” to go back whence they came. Russia, seemingly, is urging the same.

Mr Assad’s men captured the last rebel strongholds around Damascus in May. He now controls Syria’s spine, from Aleppo in the north to Damascus in the south—what French colonisers once called la Syrie utile (useful Syria). The rebels are confined to pockets along the southern and northern borders (see map). Lately the government has attacked them in the south-western province of Deraa.

Government departments are functioning. In areas that remained under Mr Assad’s control, electricity and water supplies are more reliable than in much of the Middle East. Officials predict that next year’s natural-gas production will surpass pre-war levels. The National Museum in Damascus, which locked up its prized antiquities for protection, is preparing to reopen to the public. The railway from Damascus to Aleppo might resume operations this summer. …

… Syrians are experienced construction workers. When Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1990, they helped rebuild Beirut. But no such workforce is available today. In Damascus University’s civil-engineering department, two-thirds of the lecturers have fled. “The best were first to go,” says one who stayed behind. Students followed them. Those that remain have taken to speaking Araglish, a hotch-potch of Arabic and English, as many plan futures abroad.

Sunni states, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, should also give up on the John McCain-Lindsey Graham style Sunni regime change.

Early on, minorities lowered their profile to avoid being targeted. Women donned headscarves. Non-Muslim businessmen bowed to demands from Sunni employees for prayer rooms. But as the war swung their way, minorities regained their confidence. Alawite soldiers now flex arms tattooed with Imam Ali, whom they consider the first imam after the Prophet Muhammad (Sunnis see things differently). Christian women in Aleppo show their cleavage. “We would never ask about someone’s religion,” says an official in Damascus. “Sorry to say, we now do.”

The country’s chief mufti is a Sunni, but there are fewer Sunnis serving in top posts since the revolution. Last summer Mr Assad replaced the Sunni speaker of parliament with a Christian. In January he broke with tradition by appointing an Alawite, instead of a Sunni, as defence minister. …

… A decade ago Mr Assad toyed with infitah (liberalisation), only for Sunni extremists to build huge mosques from which to spout their hate-speech, say his advisers. He is loth to repeat the mistake.

Now, “Mr Assad sees no reason to make concessions.” But “UN mediators and his Russian allies,” whom Graham maligns, have been pushing for inclusive solutions.

Is this ideal? Of course not. But it’s better than the alternative promoted by the diabolical duo, McCain and Graham and the rest of the Anglo-American foreign-policy establishment: rule by fundamentalist rebels.

Russia has called on all “foreign forces to leave Syria,” including Iran, which has stationed “80,000 foreign Shia militiamen” in Syria.

Skirmishes between the [Iranian] militias and Syrian troops have resulted in scores of deaths, according to researchers at King’s College in London. Having defeated Sunni Islamists, army officers say they have no wish to succumb to Shia ones. Alawites, in particular, flinch at Shia evangelising. “We don’t pray, don’t fast [during Ramadan] and drink alcohol,” says one.

All share a wish for the Iranians to depart, but Turkey, Israel and America would also do well to stay out of Syria, too.

THE ARTICLE IS: “How a Victorious Bashar al-Assad is Changing Syria: Sunnis have been pushed out by the war. The new Syria is smaller, in ruins and more sectarian.”

Comments Off on Lindsey Graham Lies About The ‘New Syria,’ Which Is Now Safe For Christians & Way More Secular

Written by on

Secular Syrian Patriot Tells The Anglo-American-Saudi-Qatari Axis Of Evil TO GET OUT OF HIS COUNTRY.

Britain, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Middle East, Neoconservatism, War, WMD

Thank heavens for some news channels who still cover hefty news, even if it’s news a la the imperialist, neoconservative, BBC News.

Instead of listening to dumb, young bimbos on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, squeak their “geopolitics” nonsensical insights like chipmunks, one can hear the brilliant Fares Shehabi, representative for Aleppo, Syria. On BBC News.

Shehabi smacks BBC’s Hardtalk anchor—beats him in every argument possible. It transpired that the venerated BBC News, just like America’s sub-intelligent news organizations, still considers a famous fraud—one 7-year-old Syrian girl named Bana al-Abed, with a managed Twitter account—to be a serious news source. Via the New Yorker:

Bana’s English video statements often have a scripted quality, as if she is being coached by her mother to communicate her thoughts in a language that she is only beginning to learn. Once, Fatemah posted a video of Bana traipsing through rubble; her guileless face and long pigtails, cinched with pink bows, presented a shocking, cinematic, and seemingly deliberate contrast to the devastation around her. Such moments have invited skeptics to question how, for example, Fatemah charges her phone to post videos when electricity lines so rarely function in her part of Aleppo.  …

MP Shehabi tells the Anglo-American-Saudi-Qatari axis of pure evil, and their UN white hats and Jihadi recruits the world over—the men John McCain takes pics with and calls “moderates”—TO GET THE HELL OUT OF HIS COUNTRY, reminding them what they visited on Iraq and Libya, and suggesting that if Assad is to face an international tribunal for war crimes; so must Tony Blair, George Bush (for Iraq) and Obama for Libya.

I would add that their Saudi friends should be in the dock for Yemen and much more. (This tot is feeling the love. Yemeni ports have been barricaded by the Saudis, to whom we’ve sold the weapons. A good deal for the military-industrial-complex, for sure.)

Brilliant.

AND Bravo.

LISTEN.

Comments Off on Secular Syrian Patriot Tells The Anglo-American-Saudi-Qatari Axis Of Evil TO GET OUT OF HIS COUNTRY.

Written by on