Tag Archives: Deep State

Biden’s Foreign Policy; the Biden Doctrine

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By Peter Van Buren

Source: WeMeantWell.com

Joe Biden ordered airstrikes on Iraq, against Iranian-backed militants, in retaliation for recent attacks by those militants that severely injured three American soldiers. Joe didn’t consult with Congress or anyone else before ordering the strikes, and no declaration of war exists of course. Yet no one believes the militias, following their spanking, will disappear or stop harming Americans.

That sums up the Biden Foreign Policy, call it a doctrine if you’d like: a series of geopolitically unsuccessful, inconsequential, mostly reactive unilateral actions, with no end game. Underlying it all is the sense that no one is particularly frightened, respectful or wary of American power anymore. Let’s see how this worked on a global scale over the last three bloody years.

The disastrous evacuation of Kabul in August 2021 should have warned all of us we were dealing with foreign policy amateurs. The rush for the last planes was an expected unexpected event. Yet the Biden administration did not quietly start the evacuation in February with high-value personnel, nor did it negotiate ahead of time for third country landing rights. Mistakes made as long ago as Vietnam evacuating locals who worked with us were clear, yet Biden did not kick start processing SIV visas for translators and others until literally the last flights were scheduled out. The entire evacuation appeared as an unplanned free fall, just “land some planes and see if that works.” No endgame really, simply a unilateral decision to cap the evacuation off at a certain point in time and declare it over no matter who was or was not saved.

Ukraine is some yellowed vision of cold war. The Biden plan was based on a Wonka-like act of imagination, that U.S. arms wielded by amateur fighters backed up by intelligence, space-based targeting, and special forces infiltrated on the ground would hastily defeat a determined opponent (See Afghanistan, failure of the same strategy, 2001-2003.) When the miracle cure strategy failed, there was no Plan B except to continue to pour arms in to a war that had no clear end game, that was not winnable, only sustainable. Meanwhile, Biden restrictions on domestic mining mean the United States is the largest purchaser of Russian enriched uranium. If the Russians are scared of American power they hide that well.

The results have not been better elsewhere. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine preceeded what one pundit described as “the 2023 brazen Chinese spy balloon’s uncontested trajectory over the United States, the recent Hamas invasion of Israel, the serial Iranian-fueled terrorist attacks on U.S. installations in Iraq and Syria, and the terrorist Houthis’ veritable absorption of the Red Sea. America’s enemies had become opportunistic, not deterred.” Biden took the bait at each open-ended opportunity, and now Joe is dangerously close to letting Gaza and Yemen spiral into a global conflict.

And so another “coalition” fight, this time in Ukraine with NATO, ended up a U.S. primary struggle. It is NATO mostly walking away from the meat of the Ukraine struggle, and the baby NATO coalition elsewhere of France, Italy, and others that was supposed to control the Red Sea breaking down. It is a thin gruel of happy talk about caring for civilians backed up by unlimited arms to Israel, handled so poorly diplomatically that the U.S. has inherited pariah status globally. The modern version of American power was demonstrated when Egypt snubbed Joe Biden’s visit over the mess in Gaza. The question of Palestine, always simmering, is now another major issue to divide Red and Blue and further polarize society. In addition to receiving $6 billion in frozen oil funds from Biden as a ransom for five American hostages, Iran controls the playbook, attacking with impunity via its proxies across Iraq, Syria, and southern Lebanon; Iran’s partners carried out more than 100 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea.  They decide if and when the 1:1 conflict with Israel goes regional, and the U.S. will be again forced to react. The Houthis, also Iran-backed, have dragged the U.S. into a broad promise to keep the Red Sea open to shipping, as the world rolls its eyes as Pax Americana once again looks like a punchline. Can anyone say we are still indispensable?

Another Biden foreign policy disaster has come home, literally, in the immigration crisis. For reasons too vague to enunciate, the Biden administration did away with any semblance of immigration law and flung open the southern border to anyone interested in wandering in. Already more than eight million illegal entrants have come across, with another quarter-million entering each month. As in Ukraine and elsewhere, there is no endgame. When will the border close? How much will caring for the millions cost (New York City has processed more than 160,000 migrants; some 70,000 remain in the city’s care. In Denver, caring for the new migrants has consumed 10 percent of the city’s budget)? The United States has now exceeded, both in real numbers and in percentages, all past numbers of non-native born American residents. What impact on our greater society will such an influx have, especially given how it is targeted at a handful of cities? Will the Russians ever surrender? What about the immigrants?

Three years ago, there was no war in Ukraine and certainly no U.S. military involvement in the Crimea and Donbas. Israel and Hamas existed in their tinder-like stasis condition, no brutal massacre of 1,600 Jews (30 of whom were Americans) and no invasion of Gaza. Campus protestors limited their protestations that they were not anti-Semitic in their hatred of Israel. Iran and the U.S. cooperated on fighting ISIS in Iraq, uneasy partners for certain but not shooting cousins as now. The Houthi struggle was confined within Yemen’s borders. On the positive side, efforts were being made to watch diplomacy bloom with North Korea, which instead is now test firing missiles aplomb once again. Biden has made no progress on China either to limit their opportunistic stance or reduce their hold over America economically. Biden has largely ignored most of Africa and South America as well as the world’s most populous democracy (and nuclear power) India. It is impossible to call it progress and all too easy to call it sadly the Biden Doctrine.

Criminality in the White House: The Rise of the Political Psychopath

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By John & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”—Richard Nixon

Many years ago, a newspaper headline asked the question: “What’s the difference between a politician and a psychopath?”

The answer, then and now, remains the same: None.

There is no difference between psychopaths and politicians.

Nor is there much of a difference between the havoc wreaked on innocent lives by uncaring, unfeeling, selfish, irresponsible, parasitic criminals and elected officials who lie to their constituents, trade political favors for campaign contributions, turn a blind eye to the wishes of the electorate, cheat taxpayers out of hard-earned dollars, favor the corporate elite, entrench the military industrial complex, and spare little thought for the impact their thoughtless actions and hastily passed legislation might have on defenseless citizens.

Psychopaths and politicians both have a tendency to be selfish, callous, remorseless users of others, irresponsible, pathological liars, glib, con artists, lacking in remorse and shallow.

Charismatic politicians, like criminal psychopaths, exhibit a failure to accept responsibility for their actions, have a high sense of self-worth, are chronically unstable, have socially deviant lifestyles, need constant stimulation, have parasitic lifestyles and possess unrealistic goals.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans.

Political psychopaths are all largely cut from the same pathological cloth, brimming with seemingly easy charm and boasting calculating minds. Such leaders eventually create pathocracies: totalitarian societies bent on power, control, and destruction of both freedom in general and those who exercise their freedoms.

Once psychopaths gain power, the result is usually some form of totalitarian government or a pathocracy. “At that point, the government operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups,” author James G. Long notes. “We are currently witnessing deliberate polarizations of American citizens, illegal actions, and massive and needless acquisition of debt. This is typical of psychopathic systems, and very similar things happened in the Soviet Union as it overextended and collapsed.”

In other words, electing a psychopath to public office is tantamount to national hara-kiri, the ritualized act of self-annihilation, self-destruction and suicide. It signals the demise of democratic government and lays the groundwork for a totalitarian regime that is legalistic, militaristic, inflexible, intolerant and inhuman.

Incredibly, despite clear evidence of the damage that has already been inflicted on our nation and its citizens by a psychopathic government, voters continue to elect psychopaths to positions of power and influence.

Indeed, a study from Southern Methodist University found that Washington, DC—our nation’s capital and the seat of power for our so-called representatives—ranks highest on the list of regions that are populated by psychopaths.

According to investigative journalist Zack Beauchamp, “In 2012, a group of psychologists evaluated every President from Washington to Bush II using ‘psychopathy trait estimates derived from personality data completed by historical experts on each president.’ They found that presidents tended to have the psychopath’s characteristic fearlessness and low anxiety levels — traits that appear to help Presidents, but also might cause them to make reckless decisions that hurt other people’s lives.”

The willingness to prioritize power above all else, including the welfare of their fellow human beings, ruthlessness, callousness and an utter lack of conscience are among the defining traits of the sociopath.

When our own government no longer sees us as human beings with dignity and worth but as things to be manipulated, maneuvered, mined for data, manhandled by police, conned into believing it has our best interests at heart, mistreated, jailed if we dare step out of line, and then punished unjustly without remorse—all the while refusing to own up to its failings—we are no longer operating under a constitutional republic.

Instead, what we are experiencing is a pathocracy: tyranny at the hands of a psychopathic government, which “operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups.”

Worse, psychopathology is not confined to those in high positions of government. It can spread like a virus among the populace. As an academic study into pathocracy concluded, “[T]yranny does not flourish because perpetuators are helpless and ignorant of their actions. It flourishes because they actively identify with those who promote vicious acts as virtuous.”

People don’t simply line up and salute. It is through one’s own personal identification with a given leader, party or social order that they become agents of good or evil.

Much depends on how leaders “cultivate a sense of identification with their followers,” says Professor Alex Haslam. “I mean one pretty obvious thing is that leaders talk about ‘we’ rather than ‘I,’ and actually what leadership is about is cultivating this sense of shared identity about ‘we-ness’ and then getting people to want to act in terms of that ‘we-ness,’ to promote our collective interests. . . . [We] is the single word that has increased in the inaugural addresses over the last century . . . and the other one is ‘America.’”

The goal of the modern corporate state is obvious: to promote, cultivate, and embed a sense of shared identification among its citizens. To this end, “we the people” have become “we the police state.”

We are fast becoming slaves in thrall to a faceless, nameless, bureaucratic totalitarian government machine that relentlessly erodes our freedoms through countless laws, statutes, and prohibitions.

Any resistance to such regimes depends on the strength of opinions in the minds of those who choose to fight back. What this means is that we the citizenry must be very careful that we are not manipulated into marching in lockstep with an oppressive regime.

Writing for ThinkProgress, Beauchamp suggests that “one of the best cures to bad leaders may very well be political democracy.”

But what does this really mean in practical terms?

It means holding politicians accountable for their actions and the actions of their staff using every available means at our disposal: through investigative journalism (what used to be referred to as the Fourth Estate) that enlightens and informs, through whistleblower complaints that expose corruption, through lawsuits that challenge misconduct, and through protests and mass political action that remind the powers-that-be that “we the people” are the ones that call the shots.

Remember, education precedes action. Citizens need to the do the hard work of educating themselves about what the government is doing and how to hold it accountable. Don’t allow yourselves to exist exclusively in an echo chamber that is restricted to views with which you agree. Expose yourself to multiple media sources, independent and mainstream, and think for yourself.

For that matter, no matter what your political leanings might be, don’t allow your partisan bias to trump the principles that serve as the basis for our constitutional republic. As Beauchamp notes, “A system that actually holds people accountable to the broader conscience of society may be one of the best ways to keep conscienceless people in check.”

That said, if we allow the ballot box to become our only means of pushing back against the police state, the battle is already lost.

Resistance will require a citizenry willing to be active at the local level.

Yet if you wait to act until the SWAT team is crashing through your door, until your name is placed on a terror watch list, until you are reported for such outlawed activities as collecting rainwater or letting your children play outside unsupervised, then it will be too late.

This much I know: we are not faceless numbers.

We are not cogs in the machine.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are not slaves.

We are human beings, and for the moment, we have the opportunity to remain free—that is, if we tirelessly advocate for our rights and resist at every turn attempts by the government to place us in chains.

The Founders understood that our freedoms do not flow from the government. They were not given to us only to be taken away by the will of the State. They are inherently ours. In the same way, the government’s appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.

Until we can get back to this way of thinking, until we can remind our fellow Americans what it really means to be free, and until we can stand firm in the face of threats to our freedoms, we will continue to be treated like slaves in thrall to a bureaucratic police state run by political psychopaths.

Are the Houthis Being Punished for ‘Doing the Right Thing’?

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By Mike Whitney

Source: The Unz Review

“Whoever does not try to stop a genocide, has lost his humanity.” Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti, Houthi spokesman

Events in the Middle East are spinning out of control. In the last week, the United States has attacked Houthi positions on the Yemeni mainland 7 times while the Houthis have launched 5 attacks on commercial vessels and US warships in the Red Sea. At the same time, Iran has launched multiple attacks on sites in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan, while Israel has hit targets in both Lebanon and Damascus. Adding more fuel to the fire, the IDF has continued its relentless assault on Palestinians living in Gaza resulting in scores of new deaths and injuries. In short, there’s been a sharp uptick in military activity across the Middle East that is steadily increasing. This suggests that the low-intensity conflict we have seen for the last few weeks is about to explode into something much more violent, far-reaching and unpredictable. Many analysts believe we are on the brink of full-blown regional war which—in view of recent developments—may be unavoidable. This is from an article at the Washington Post:

The Biden administration is crafting plans for a sustained military campaign targeting the Houthis in Yemen after 10 days of strikes failed to halt the group’s attacks on maritime commerce…

Officials say they don’t expect that the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria. At the same time they acknowledge they can identify no end date or provide an estimate for when the Yemenis’ military capability will be adequately diminished…..

While the attacks have so far taken a greater toll on Europe than the United States…the Houthi campaign is already beginning to reshape the global shipping map. Some firms have chosen to reroute ships around the Cape of Good Hope off southern Africa, while major oil companies including BP and Shell suspended shipments through the area…

“It’s impossible to forecast exactly what’s going to happen, and certainly not [to predict] future operations,” the first U.S. official said. “But the principle that it simply can’t be tolerated for a terrorist organization … with these advanced capabilities to essentially shut down or control shipping through a key international choke point is one that we feel very strongly about.”…

U.S. officials also are concerned that attacking the Houthis has thrust the United States into a conflict with little exit strategy and limited support from key allies. Notably, America’s most powerful Gulf partners have withheld their backing for the American operation. The prime minister of Qatar, a key U.S. ally in the Gulf, has warned that Western strikes would not halt the violence and could fuel regional instability. As Houthis vow to fight on, U.S. prepares for sustained campaign, Washington Post

While the Washington Post article provides little new information, it does help to clarify a few important points:

  1. That the US is now embroiled in another “sustained military campaign” (War) that has not been approved by the UN Security Council, the US Congress or the American people. It’s clear that our domestic politics have deteriorated to the point where the president alone decides whether the country goes to war or not. And, not surprisingly, those wars invariably advance the interests of the billionaire elites who guide policy behind the fig leaf of representative government. In truth, all the war-making powers rest with them.
  2. Since, airstrikes alone will not “degrade” the Houthis military capability, “the operation will stretch on for years.” (So, get ready for another 20-year stint like Afghanistan)
  3. The real reason the administration has eschewed direct dialogue with the Houthis, is because “it simply can’t be tolerated for a terrorist organization …to control shipping through a key international choke point.” This is a tacit admission that Washington refuses to negotiate with people it doesn’t consider its equal. Thus, the only option available, is to “shoot first and ask questions later.”
  4. Interestingly, the Post admits that “the Houthis have thrust the United States into a conflict with little exit strategy and limited support from key allies.” What the authors should have added is that everything about the current strategy violates the so-called Powell Doctrine. There is no clearly attainable objective, nor have the risks and costs been fully analyzed, nor have all other non-violent options been exhausted, nor is there a plausible exit strategy, nor is the action supported by the American people, nor does the US have broad international support, nor is a vital national security interest threatened. All of the main precepts of the Powell Doctrine have been shrugged off by Biden’s foreign policy team. As a result, there’s no planning, no endgame, and no strategic objective, which is why the plan to wage war on Yemen is, perhaps, the most impulsive and poorly-thought out operation in recent times.

There’s also no guarantee that the plan will work at all. In fact, there is every reason to believe it will backfire spectacularly creating an even bigger crisis. Check out this clip from an article at Responsible Statecraft:

It would seem that the real threat here is the escalation from continued U.S. airstrikes, which are killing people. As RS has reported on these pages time and again, the Houthis are battle hardened and even emboldened by the reaction of the West to their provocations. … a number of realist voices are decrying the folly of once again falling into a spiral of retaliatory violence that will likely lead to a real military crisis, even the death of U.S. service members, before it is done.

“They (strikes) won’t work. They won’t sufficiently degrade Houthi capability or will stop their attacks on shipping,” says Ben Friedman, senior fellow of Defense Priorities. “Why do something that is so evidently reckless? Restraint reminds us that no such law says we must conduct airstrikes that won’t work. We always have the option not to employ pointless violence.” US strikes Yemen again, but Houthi attacks keep coming, Responsible Statecraft

The fact that 8 years of relentless airstrikes by the Saudis only served to strengthen the Houthis, has not dampened the administration’s enthusiasm for more of the same. Biden is convinced that the identical policy will produce a different result. But isn’t that the definition of “insanity”? And where do we see evidence that the prescribed method actually works: Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Libya? Ukraine? Are these the shining examples of ‘military triumph’ that have convinced Biden that he’s on the right track?

But even if the Biden team had a coherent military strategy, there would still be a fundamental problem with the current approach, mainly because it’s morally wrong. The United States should work alongside those who are trying to enforce the Genocide Convention, not treat them as enemies. The Houthis have taken a constructive and (so far) non-lethal approach to Israel’s depredations in Gaza, an approach that is consistent with Article 1 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which clearly states:

The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

The Houthis blockade of Israel-linked commercial ships passing through the Red Sea also hews to the tenets of The Responsibility to Protect – known as R2P which “was unanimously adopted in 2005 at the UN World Summit, the largest gathering of Heads of State and Government in history”, a document which—by the way—was signed by representatives of the United States. Here’s a short excerpt from the text:

Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity…. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity….

Pillar 1

Every state has the Responsibility to Protect its populations from four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Pillar 2

The wider international community has the responsibility to encourage and assist individual states in meeting that responsibility.

Pillar 3

If a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take appropriate collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter. WhatIsR2P? , Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect

While it’s true that the Houthis have not garnered UNSC approval for their unilateral blockade of Israeli-bound ships, that is because the US blocks all such measures just as it blocked the previous Ceasefire resolutions. But the fact that the international community is unable to enforce basic humanitarian precepts—due to the obstructionism of the US— does not absolve people or states from doing their duty. It would be vastly preferable to have the UN’s authorization, but it is not absolutely necessary. The higher priority is saving the lives of innocent people. Here’s how Houthi spokesman, Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti summed it up in a recent statement on Twitter:

Taking action to support the oppressed… is a true test of morality… and whoever does not take action to stop the crime of genocide… has lost his humanity.

Moral… values.. do not change with the race and religion of the person… If another group of humans were subjected to the injustice that the Palestinians are subjected to, we would take action to support them, regardless of their religion and race.

… the Yemeni people (are committed) ​​… to achieve a just peace that guarantees the dignity, safety and security of all countries and peoples Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti @M_N_Albukhaiti

Is it naive of us to think that the Houthis are acting in accordance with universally-accepted principles of justice and humanity? Are we wrong in assuming that the Houthis sound like men who can be reasoned with and with who one could negotiate an agreement that would end the blockade and the onslaught in Gaza at the same time? If that is so, then they why doesn’t Biden engage the group diplomatically instead of bombarding their ports and cities?

And, just for the record: The administration and their allies in the media continue to imply that the traffic in the Red Sea is at historic lows due to the “indiscriminate” attacks on commercial ships by the Houthis. But that is not the case. On Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian (in a visit to the United Nations) produced documentary evidence that traffic in the Red Sea remains relatively normal excluding the fact that Israel-linked ships are prevented from sailing the waterway. In other words, the western media is deliberately misleading the American people to accelerate the rush to war. Here’s the story from Press TV (Iranian state media):

The Iranian foreign minister noted that satellite images show that approximately 230 merchant vessels and oil tankers were cruising in the Red Sea at the time that the US and UK carried out their strikes against Yemen.

“This means that they (Americans and Britons) have well understood Yemenis’ point that only ships heading towards ports operated by the occupying Israeli regime will be blocked,” Amir-Abdollahian said. Iran has sternly warned Washington against attacks on Yemen, says Iranian foreign minister, Press TV

The Iranian FM’s remarks are underscored by an official Houthi statement that was published on X and which says the following:

The Yemeni Navy is steadfast to its commitment to ongoing operations in the Red Sea until the cessation of the blockade and the aggression against Gaza. Consequently, maritime activities and navigation in the Red Sea are securely facilitated for all vessels excluding those affiliated with Israel or bound for Israeli ports. For ships unaffiliated with Israel, it is crucial to maintain uninterrupted communication with Yemeni authorities throughout their entire journey through the following channels (radio and email) The Yemeni Armed Forces reiterates its dedication to conducting operations in strict adherence to international legal principles aimed at preventing genocide and punishing those responsible for it. Additionally, it underscores its commitment to facilitating unimpeded traffic flow and upholding maritime security in the Red Sea and the broader region. Yemeni Navy: “Here’s exactly what you have to do to identify your vessels so they’re not targeted” Houthi Spokesman

The idea that the Houthis are attacking commercial vessels willy-nilly just doesn’t pass the ‘smell test’. What’s more likely is that the narrative has been tweaked in order to demonize a rival of Israel.

Finally, I have taken the liberty of transcribing a short video by Tim Anderson who argues that the Houthis have not only seized the moral high-ground, but that the United States and Israel are acting in a way that is reckless, hypocritical and damaging to their own best interests. I think you’ll find it’s worth your time:

The United States has designated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization for what amounts to trying to stop Israel’s genocide…. Now the stated purpose of Ansar Allah’s (AKA—The Houthis) blockade, is to uphold Article 1 of the UN Genocide Convention. And given that Yemen is a member to the UN Genocide Convention, the Houthis say they have an obligation to stop the shipment of weapons and other supplies to Israel while it commits a genocide. …The US is saying that the “terrorists” aren’t the ones perpetrating a genocide, …but the ones who are trying to stop a genocide. …

Designating Ansar Allah as terrorists is also deeply ironic because the US is currently enforcing two unilateral economic blockades of Cuba and Venezuela. …and, unlike Ansar Allah’s blockade of Israel, which has yet to kill anyone, US blockades have killed thousands of people….Ansar Allah is using their blockade to stop a genocide whereas the US blockades are intended to starve and collectively punish the countries they target and can be considered a form of genocide. …

Ansar Allah is not being punished because of terrorism. They are being punished because their blockade is working. Israel imports 99% of its goods by sea. …The Israeli port of Eilat has been blocked by the Houthis and seen an 85% decrease in activity…. The shipping companies are going to pass the costs onto consumers which is going to cause prices to rise and imported goods to become scarcer. …The war resembles an economic recession for Israel. A survey taken in November found that one in three businesses in Israel is operating at 20% capacity or less, and more than half of Israeli businesses lost 50% of their revenue. According to the labor ministry, 18% of the Israeli workforce have been called up to fight the war which has left a huge hole in the Israeli workforce…. Over a million Israelis have left the country, tourism has collapsed, business investment has collapsed, and all in all the Israeli Treasury predicts that Israels GDP will have fallen 15% in the forth quarter, and that the war will cost Israel a total of $58 billion. …

State Department records show that for decades US elites were concerned they would lose control of the Red Sea. And, in 2015, the US would go on to arm, fund and support a genocidal war waged by Saudi Arabia against Ansar Allah. The war pushed two-thirds of the population to the brink of starvation and caused the worst cholera outbreak in human history. But it still failed to defeat Ansar Allah. And, now the same Yemeni people who faced a US-backed genocide only a few years ago, are now mounting the most disruptive actions against the US-backed genocide in Gaza. This is, of course, is humiliating to the United States.

It wasn’t so long ago, the US considered Nelson Mandela and his supporters “terrorists”. Then they defeated South African apartheid. In that sense, this latest terrorist designation of the Houthi movement, is just a continuation of this very long trend. Terrorism is a highly politicized term. Of course, apartheid states and their supporters are going to consider attempts to end their apartheid states as terrorism. But in Palestine and the Middle East, the real terrorists are the ones that are carpet-bombing hospitals, schools and entire neighborhoods; Israel and the United States.

The Four Horsemen of Gaza’s Apocalypse

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Joe Biden relies on advisors who view the world through the prism of the West’s civilizing mission to the “lesser breeds” of the earth to formulate his policies towards Israel and the Middle East.

By Chris Hedges

Source: ScheerPost

Joe Biden’s inner circle of strategists for the Middle East — Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk — have little understanding of the Muslim world and a deep animus towards Islamic resistance movements. They see Europe, the United States and Israel as involved in a clash of civilizations between the enlightened West and a barbaric Middle East. They believe that violence can bend Palestinians and other Arabs to their will. They champion the overwhelming firepower of the U.S. and Israeli military as the key to regional stability — an illusion that fuels the flames of regional war and perpetuates the genocide in Gaza.

In short, these four men are grossly incompetent. They join the club of other clueless leaders, such as those who waltzed into the suicidal slaughter of World War One, waded into the quagmire of Vietnam or who orchestrated the series of recent military debacles in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine. They are endowed with the presumptive power vested in the Executive Branch to bypass Congress, to provide weapons to Israel and carry out military strikes in Yemen and Iraq. This inner circle of true believers dismiss the more nuanced and informed counsels in the State Department and the intelligence communities, who view the refusal of the Biden administration to pressure Israel to halt the ongoing genocide as ill-advised and dangerous. 

Biden has always been an ardent militarist — he was calling for war with Iraq five years before the U.S. invaded. He built his political career by catering to the distaste of the white middle class for the popular movements, including the anti-war and civil rights movements, that convulsed the country in the 1960s and 1970s. He is a Republican masquerading as a Democrat. He joined Southern segregationists to oppose bringing Black students into Whites-only schools. He opposed federal funding for abortions and supported a constitutional amendment allowing states to restrict abortions. He attacked President George H. W. Bush in 1989 for being too soft in the “war on drugs.” He was one of the architects of the 1994 crime bill and a raft of other draconian laws that more than doubled the U.S. prison population, militarized the police and pushed through drug laws that saw people incarcerated for life without parole. He supported the North American Free Trade Agreement, the greatest betrayal of the working class since the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. He has always been a strident defender of Israel, bragging that he did more fundraisers for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than any other Senator. 

“As many of you heard me say before, were there no Israel, America would have to invent one.  We’d have to invent one because… you protect our interests like we protect yours,” Biden said in 2015, to an audience that included the Israeli ambassador, at the 67th Annual Israeli Independence Day Celebration in Washington D.C. During the same speech he said, “The truth of the matter is we need you.  The world needs you. Imagine what it would say about humanity and the future of the 21st century if Israel were not sustained, vibrant and free.”

The year before Biden gave a gushing eulogy for Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister and general who was implicated in massacres of Palestinians, Lebanese and others in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon — as well as Egyptian prisoners of war — going back to the 1950s. He described Sharon as “part of one of the most remarkable founding generations in the history not of this nation, but of any nation.”

While repudiating Donald Trump and his administration, Biden has not reversed Trump’s abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama, or Trump’s sanctions against Iran. He has embraced Trump’s close ties with Saudi Arabia, including the rehabilitation of Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, following the assassination of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2017 in the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul. He has not intervened to curb Israeli attacks on Palestinians and settlement expansion in the West Bank. He did not reverse Trump’s moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, although the embassy includes land Israel illegally colonized after invading the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. 

As a seven-term senator of Delaware, Biden received more financial support from pro-Israel donors than any other senator, since 1990. Biden retains this record despite the fact that his senatorial career ended in 2009, when he became Obama’s vice president. Biden explains his commitment to Israel as “personal” and “political.” 

He has parroted back Israeli propaganda — including fabrications about beheaded babies and widespread rape of Israeli women by Hamas fighters — and asked Congress to provide $14 billion in additional aid to Israel since the Oct. 7 attack. He has twice bypassed Congress to supply Israel with thousands of bombs and munitions, including at least 100 2,000-pound bombs, used in the scorched earth campaign in Gaza. 

Israel has killed or seriously wounded close to 90,000 Palestinians in Gaza, almost one in every 20 inhabitants. It has destroyed or damaged over 60 percent of the housing. The “safe areas,” to which some 2 million Gazans were instructed to flee in southern Gaza, have been bombed, with thousands of casualties. Palestinians in Gaza now make up 80 percent of all the people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, according to the U.N. Every person in Gaza is hungry. A quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water. Famine is imminent. The 335,000 children under the age of five are at high risk of malnutrition. Some 50,000 pregnant women lack healthcare and adequate nutrition.

And it could all end if the U.S. chose to intervene.

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.,” retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brick told the Jewish News Syndicate. “The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Blinken was Biden’s principal foreign policy adviser when Biden was the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. He, along with Biden, lobbied for the invasion of Iraq. When he was Obama’s deputy national security advisor, he advocated the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. He opposed withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria. He worked on the disastrous Biden Plan to partition Iraq along ethnic lines.

“Within the Obama White House, Blinken played an influential role in the imposition of sanctions against Russia over the 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and subsequently led ultimately unsuccessful calls for the U.S. to arm Ukraine,” according to the Atlantic Council, NATO’s unofficial think tank. 

When Blinken landed in Israel following the attacks by Hamas and other resistance groups on Oct. 7, he announced at a press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.”

He attempted, on Israel’s behalf, to lobby Arab leaders to accept the 2.3 million Palestinian refugees Israel intends to ethnically cleanse from Gaza, a request that evoked outrage among Arab leaders.

Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, and McGurk, are consummate opportunists, Machiavellian bureaucrats who cater to the reigning centers of power, including the Israel lobby.  

Sullivan was the chief architect of Hillary Clinton’s Asia pivot. He backed the corporate and investor rights Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which was sold as helping the U.S. contain China. Trump ultimately killed the trade agreement in the face of mass opposition from the U.S. public. His focus is thwarting a rising China, including through the expansion of the U.S. military. 

While not focused on the Middle East, Sullivan is a foreign policy hawk who has a knee jerk embrace of force to shape the world to U.S. demands. He embraces military Keynesianism, arguing that massive government spending on the weapons industry benefits the domestic economy.

In a 7,000-word essay for Foreign Affairs magazine published five days before the Oct. 7 attacks, which left some 1,200 Israelis dead, Sullivan exposed his lack of understanding of the dynamics of the Middle East.

“Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges,” he writes in the original version of the essay, “the region is quieter than it has been for decades,” adding that in the face of “serious” frictions, “we have de-escalated crises in Gaza.”

Sullivan ignores Palestinian aspirations and Washington’s rhetorical backing for a two-state solution in the article, hastily rewritten in the online version after the Oct. 7 attacks. He writes in his original piece:

At a meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, last year, the president set forth his policy for the Middle East in an address to the leaders of members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. His approach returns discipline to US policy. It emphasizes deterring aggression, de-escalating conflicts, and integrating the region through joint infrastructure projects and new partnerships, including between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

McGurk, the deputy assistant to President Biden and the coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa at the White House National Security Council, was a chief architect of Bush’s “surge” in Iraq, which accelerated the bloodletting. He worked as a legal advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority and the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad. He then became Trump’s anti-ISIS czar.

He does not speak Arabic — none of the four men does — and came to Iraq with no knowledge of its history, peoples or culture. Nevertheless, he helped draft Iraq’s interim constitution and oversaw the legal transition from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an Interim Iraqi Government led by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. McGurk was an early backer of Nouri al-Maliki, who was Iraq’s prime minister between 2006 and 2014. Al-Maliki built a Shi’ite-controlled sectarian state that deeply alienated Sunni Arabs and Kurds. In 2005, McGurk transferred to the National Security Council (NSC), where he served as director for Iraq, and later as special assistant to the president and senior director for Iraq and Afghanistan. He served on the NSC staff from 2005 to 2009. In 2015, he was appointed as Obama’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. He was retained by Trump until his resignation in Dec. 2018. 

An article in April 2021 titled “Brett McGurk: A Hero of Our Times,” in New Lines Magazine by former BBC foreign correspondent Paul Wood, paints a scathing portrait of McGurk. Wood writes:

A senior Western diplomat who served in Baghdad told me that McGurk had been an absolute disaster for Iraq. “He is a consummate operator in Washington, but I saw no sign that he was interested in Iraqis or Iraq as a place full of real people. It was simply a bureaucratic and political challenge for him.” One critic who was in Baghdad with McGurk called him Machiavelli reincarnated. “It’s intellect plus ambition plus the utter ruthlessness to rise no matter the cost.”

[….]

A U.S. diplomat who was in the embassy when McGurk arrived found his steady advance astonishing. “Brett only meets people who speak English. … There are like four people in the government who speak English. And somehow he’s now the person who should decide the fate of Iraq? How did this happen?”

Even those who didn’t like McGurk had to admit that he had a formidable intellect — and was a hard worker. He was also a gifted writer, no surprise as he had clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. His rise mirrored that of an Iraqi politician named Nouri al-Maliki, one careerist helping the other. That is McGurk’s tragedy — and Iraq’s.

[….]

McGurk’s critics say his lack of Arabic meant he missed the vicious, sectarian undertones of what al-Maliki was saying in meetings right from the start. Translators censored or failed to keep up. Like many Americans in Iraq, McGurk was deaf to what was happening around him.

Al-Maliki was the consequence of two mistakes by the U.S. How much McGurk had to do with them remains in dispute. The first mistake was the “80 Percent Solution” for ruling Iraq. The Sunni Arabs were mounting a bloody insurgency, but they were just 20% of the population. The theory was that you could run Iraq with the Kurds and the Shiites. The second error was to identify the Shiites with hardline, religious parties backed by Iran. Al-Maliki, a member of the religious Da’wa Party, was the beneficiary of this.

In a piece in HuffPost in May 2022 by Akbar Shahid Ahmed, titled “Biden’s Top Middle East Advisor ‘Torched the House and Showed Up With a Firehose,’” McGurk is described by a colleague, who asked not to be named, as “the most talented bureaucrat they’ve ever seen, with the worst foreign policy judgment they’ve ever seen.”

McGurk, like others in the Biden administration, is bizarrely focused on what comes after Israel’s genocidal campaign, rather than trying to halt it. McGurk proposed denying humanitarian aid and refusing to implement a pause in the fighting in Gaza until all the Israeli hostages were freed. Biden and his three closest policy advisors have called for the Palestinian Authority —  an Israeli puppet regime that is reviled by most Palestinians — to take control of Gaza once Israel finishes leveling it. They have called on Israel — since Oct. 7 — to take steps towards a two-state solution, a plan rejected in an humiliating public rebuke to the the Biden White House by Netanyahu. 

The Biden White House spends more time talking to the Israelis and Saudis, who are being lobbied to normalize relations with Israel and help rebuild Gaza, than the Palestinians, who are at best, an afterthought. It believes the key to ending Palestinian resistance is found in Riyadh, summed up in a top-secret document peddled by McGurk called the “Jerusalem-Jeddah Pact,” the HuffPost reported. It is unable or unwilling to curb Israel’s bloodlust, which included missile strikes in a residential neighborhood in Damascus, Syria, on Saturday that killed five military advisors from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and a drone attack in South Lebanon on Sunday, which killed two senior members of Hezbollah. These Israeli provocations will not go unanswered, evidenced by the ballistic missiles and rockets launched on Sunday by militants in western Iraq that targeted U.S. personnel stationed at the al-Assad Airbase.

The Alice-in-Wonderland idea that once the slaughter in Gaza ends a diplomatic pact between Israel and Saudi Arabia will be the key to regional stability is stupefying. Israel’s genocide, and Washington’s complicity, is shredding U.S. credibility and influence, especially in the Global South and the Muslim world. It ensures another generation of enraged Palestinians — whose families have been obliterated and whose homes have been destroyed — seeking vengeance.  

The policies embraced by the Biden administration not only blithely ignore the realities in the Arab world, but the realities of an extremist Israeli state that, with Congress bought and paid for by the Israel lobby, couldn’t care less what the Biden White House dreams up. Israel has no intention of creating a viable Palestinian state. Its goal is the ethnic cleansing of the 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and the annexation of Gaza by Israel. And when Israel is done with Gaza, it will turn on the West Bank, where Israeli raids now occur on an almost nightly basis and where thousands have been arrested and detained without charge since Oct. 7. 

Those running the show in the Biden White House are chasing after rainbows. The march of folly led by these four blind mice perpetuates the cataclysmic suffering of the Palestinians, stokes a regional war and presages another tragic and self-defeating chapter in the two decades of U.S. military fiascos in the Middle East.

If You’ve Just Started Paying Attention To US Foreign Policy

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There are always, ALWAYS lies, obfuscations and manipulations involved in marketing a new war to the public, or in hiding its involvement in foreign wars from public attention.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com.au

If you’re among those who have only just begun paying attention to US foreign policy and western media bias in light of Israel’s destruction of Gaza and Biden’s act of war against Yemen, it’s important to understand that none of the depravity you’re seeing is new. The lies. The insane double standards. The murderousness. The western political/media class always does this.

Every war the US involves itself in is always facilitated by lies promulgated in one voice by the official government in Washington and by the “independent” “free” press (actually propaganda services) of the western world. They deceived the world about Ukraine. They deceived the world about Yemen. They deceived the world about Syria, Libya and Iraq. There are always, always lies, obfuscations and manipulations involved in marketing a new war to the public, or in hiding its involvement in foreign wars from public attention.

All of this manipulation and deceit is necessary to hide the fact that the US-centralized empire is the most tyrannical power structure on this planet. And make no mistake, it is an empire. Washington serves as the hub of an undeclared empire comprised of alliances, partnerships, assets, public deals and secret agreements which knit a large number of nations together into what functions as a single power structure with regard to international affairs.

Most of the beneficiaries of this power structure reside in the west, or global north, while the most exploited and abused victims of this power structure tend to reside in the east, or global south. There are all sorts of rules and regulations and narratives and justifications for why this all happens the way it happens, but if you mentally “mute” the soundtrack on the verbal overlay and just look at what’s actually happening, what you will see is the lion’s share of the world’s wealth and resources moving northward and westward from populations of a darker average skin tone toward populations of a paler average skin tone. Wherever that movement is hindered, diverted, threatened or inconvenienced, you will see western war machinery moving southward and eastward to get it back on the desired track.

Most major international conflicts can be understood as either direct or indirect efforts by the US empire to shore up planetary domination, which are often met with resistance by populations who wish to retain their sovereignty. Much of this conflict happens in the middle east because that’s where the world gets a lot of its oil from, with US-aligned nations like Israel and Saudi Arabia frequently serving as the frontline for hostilities with non-US-aligned nations like Iran and Syria as well as non-US-aligned forces like Hezbollah, Ansarallah and Hamas.

This struggle for US planetary hegemony is disguised by the western political/media class as something other than what it is, because you can’t allow the public in a democratic nation to understand clearly that their government is on the side of evil. They’ll frame it as a US-led international coalition to liberate a nation from a tyrannical dictator. As a humanitarian intervention to protect human rights. As support for Israel’s right to defend itself. As protection of freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. But what’s actually happening is the world’s most powerful and murderous power structure killing human beings in western Asia in order to secure control over a crucial resource.

You see this all over the world against nations which refuse to allow themselves to be absorbed into the US-centralized power structure like North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, with China being by far the strongest of these and Russia a distant second. And you will notice that you have heard every nation I just mentioned cast in a very negative light by the western press over the years. This is not a coincidence. 

You don’t need to believe anything I’m saying on faith. If you just keep in mind what I said and start watching the patterns for yourself while seeking out the truth day by day, you will see it for yourself. You will see the same patterns emerging over and over again, year after year. Over and over again you will see the US and the states that are aligned with it acting with extreme aggression toward non-US-aligned powers in ways that benefit the US-centralized power structure, and you will see the western press deceiving the world about what’s happening. The next Official Bad Guy you see dominating western press coverage on international affairs will be a non-US-aligned power, and if you apply diligent research and critical thinking you will find that they are not presenting an accurate picture of what’s happening.

Just keep learning and studying the patterns with open curiosity and self-honesty, and the picture will inevitably become clear to you. And then you will clearly see who’s really driving the bulk of the violence and disorder in our world.

UNITED AGAINST NUCLEAR IRAN: THE SHADOWY, INTELLIGENCE-LINKED GROUP DRIVING THE US TOWARDS WAR WITH IRAN

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By Alan MacLeod

Source: Mint Press News

Most of the world has watched the Israeli assault on Gaza in horror. As tens of thousands have been killed and millions displaced, tens of millions of people around the world have poured onto the streets to demand an end to the violence. But a few select others have taken to the pages of our most influential media to demand an escalation of the violence and that the United States help Israel strike not just Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon but Iran as well.

“I might have once favored a cease-fire with Hamas, but not now,” wrote Bush-era diplomat Dennis Ross in The New York Times, explaining that “if Hamas is perceived as winning, it will validate the group’s ideology of rejection, give leverage and momentum to Iran and its collaborators and put [our] own governments on the defensive.”

In the wake of Hamas’ October 7 assault, arch-neoconservative official John Bolton was invited on CNN, where he claimed that what we witnessed was really an “Iranian attack on Israel using Hamas as a surrogate” and that the U.S. must immediately respond. When asked whether he had any evidence, given the implications of what he was saying, he shrugged and replied, “This is not a court of law.”

On December 28, Bolton doubled down on his hawkish stance, writing in the pages of Britain’s Daily Telegraph that “The West may now have no option but to attack Iran” – a position he has held for at least a decade.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Saudi state-funded broadcaster Iran International, senior Bush official Mark Wallace bellowed that, “This is Iran’s work. Iran will suffer at the hands of retribution and will suffer the consequences of supporting this terror group and its horrific attack on Israel.” Wallace continued:

No civilized country wants further conflict. But the Iranians are forcing the civilized world’s hand. And you will see a dramatic response soon as the United States, Israel, and our allies begin to position assets around the world in preparation.”

If there was any doubt as to what sort of “dramatic response” Wallace wanted to see, he added a message to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: “I look forward to seeing you hanged from the end of one of your own ropes.”

Iran was recently the victim of a deadly terrorist attack. As mourners commemorated the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani, two bombs exploded, killing 91 and injuring hundreds more. In this context, it was understandable why Iranian officials pointed the finger at the U.S. and Israel.

Warmongers, Inc

What these individuals all have in common is that they are board members of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a shadowy but influential organization dedicated to pushing the West toward a military confrontation with the Islamic Republic.

Founded in 2008, the group is led by neoconservative hawks and has close ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. It does not divulge where it receives its copious funding. However, it is known that right-wing Israeli-American billionaire Sheldon Adelson was a source. There is strong circumstantial evidence that Gulf dictatorships may also be bankrolling the group, although UANI has strongly denied this. In 2019, Iran designated UANI as a terrorist organization.

When asked by MintPress what he made of UANI’s recent statements, Eli Clifton, one of the few investigative journalists to have covered the group, said, “It’s very consistent with the positions and advocacy that the organization has taken since its inception.” Adding,

United Against Nuclear Iran does not miss an opportunity to try to bring the United States closer to a military conflict with Iran. And on the other side of the equation, they also have worked very hard to oppose efforts to de-escalate the U.S.-Iran relationship.”

UANI’s board is a who’s who of high state, military and intelligence officials from around the Western world. Among its more notable members include:

  • CEO Mark Wallace, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and deputy campaign manager for George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection.
  • Chairman Joe Lieberman, former senator and Democratic vice-presidential nominee for the 2000 election.
  • Tamir Pardo, Director of the Mossad, 2011-2016.
  • Dennis Ross, former State Department Director of Policy Planning and former Middle East Envoy under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
  • Field Marshall Lord Charles Guthrie, ex-Chief of Staff of the U.K. Armed Forces.
  • Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida.
  • August Hanning, President of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), 1998-2005; State Secretary at the Federal Interior Ministry, 2005-2009.
  • Zohar Palti, former head of the Political-Military Bureau, Israeli Ministry of Defense; former Director of Intelligence of the Mossad.
  • Frances Townsend, Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush.
  • John Bolton, former U.S. National Security Advisor and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
  • Roger Noriega, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Ambassador to the Organization of American States.
  • Otto Reich, former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and architect of the 2002 U.S. coup against Venezuela.
  • Michael Singh, White House Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs, 2007-2008.
  • Giulio Terzi di Sant-Agata, former Italian Foreign Minister.
  • Robert Hill, former Minister of Defense of Australia.
  • Jack David, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2004-2006.
  • Mark Kirk, U.S. Senator for Illinois, 2010-2017.
  • Lt. Gen. Sir Graeme Lamb, ex-Director of U.K. Special Forces and Commander of the British Field Army.
  • Norman Roule, former CIA Division Chief and National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Director of National Intelligence.
  • Irwin Cotler, Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General, 2003-2006.
  • Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, U.K. Minister of State for Security and Counter Terrorism, 2010-2011.

In addition, notable former board members include ex-CIA Director R. James Woolsey; head of Mossad between 2002 and 2011, Meir Dagan; and one-time chief of British spy agency MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove.

For 15 years, UANI has organized conferences, published reports, and lobbied politicians and governments, all with one goal: pushing a neoconservative line on Iran. “UANI are a force multiplier. They provide at least the veneer of an intellectual infrastructure for the Iran hawk movement. They did not invent being hawkish on Iran, but they sure made it a heck of a lot easier,” Ben Freeman, Director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy Program at the Quincy Institute, told MintPress.

Conflicts and Conflicts of Interest

For such a large, well-financed, and influential organization filled with senior officials, United Against Nuclear Iran keeps its funding sources very quiet. However, in 2015, Clifton was able to obtain a UANI donor list for the 2013 financial year. By far and away, the largest funders were billionaire New York-based investor Thomas Kaplan and multibillionaire Israeli-American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Kaplan, whose $843,000 donation supplied around half the group’s 2013 funding, is a venture capitalist investor concentrating on metals, particularly gold. He is the chairman of Tigris Financial and the Electrum Group LLC. Both of Kaplan’s firms employ UANI CEO Mark Wallace as CEO and COO, respectively.

A 2010 Wall Street Journal article titled “Tigris Financial Goes All-in on Gold” noted that the company had bet billions of dollars on the price of gold rising, more than the reserves of the Brazilian central bank. As Clifton has noted, both Kaplan and Wallace have marketed gold to clients as the perfect commodity to hold if there is increased instability in the Middle East. Therefore, both Kaplan and Wallace stand to make massive sums if the U.S. or Israel were to attack Iran, making their UANI warmongering a gigantic and potentially profitable conflict of interest.

Adelson provided the majority of the rest of UANI’s funding. The world’s 18th-richest individual at the time of his 2021 death, the tycoon turned his economic empire into a political one, supporting ultraconservative causes in both the United States and Israel. Between 2010 and 2020, he and his wife donated more than $500 million to the Republican Party, becoming GOP kingmakers in the process. He would often vet Republican presidential candidates at his casino in Las Vegas, and it was often said that this “Adelson Primary” was almost as important as the public one.

An ardent Zionist, Adelson bankrolled numerous pro-Israel lobby projects, such as AIPAC, One Jerusalem and Taglit Birthright. He also owned Israel Hayom, the country’s most-read newspaper, with 31% of the national share. Relentlessly pro-Netanyahu, it was said that the Israeli prime minister asked his friend Adelson to set up a newspaper to help his political career.

Adelson and his influence have been one of the driving forces of American hostility towards Iran. In 2013, during a conversation with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, he called for the United States to stop negotiating and drop a nuclear bomb on Iran to show that “we mean business.”

A potential third, even more controversial, source of funding is the Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Leaked emails show UANI officials soliciting support from the Emirati royal family. Both Mark Wallace and Frances Townsend, for example, emailed the Emirati Ambassador to the U.S. detailing cost estimates for upcoming events and inquiring about support from the UAE.

Thomas Kaplan himself is extraordinarily close to the nation. “The country and the leadership of the UAE, I would say, are my closest partners in more facets of my life than anyone else other than my wife,” he told the Emirati outlet, The National News, which also detailed his friendship with Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed.

Putting Iran in the Crosshairs

One of United Against Nuclear Iran’s primary activities, Iranian political commenter Ali Alizadeh told MintPress, is to create a worldwide “culture of fear and anxiety for investing in Iran.” The group attempts to persuade businesses to divest from the Islamic Republic and sign their certification pledge, which reads as follows:

The undersigned [Name], the [Title] of [Company] (the “Company”), does hereby certify on behalf of the Company that until the Iranian regime verifiably abandons its drive for nuclear weapons, support for terrorism, routine human rights violations, hostage-taking, and rampant anti-Americanism as state policy, that neither the Company nor any subsidiary or affiliate of the Company, directly or through an agent, representative or intermediary.”

One corporation that UANI targeted was the industrial machinery firm Caterpillar. UANI hectored the firm, even erecting a roadside billboard outside its headquarters in Peoria, IL, insinuating that they were aiding Iran in constructing a nuclear weapon. Caterpillar quickly ordered its Iran projects terminated. Wallace took heart from his group’s victory and warned that other businesses would be targeted.

These have included French companies such as Airbus and ​​Peugeot-Citroen, who were threatened with legal action. In 2019, UANI earned an official rebuke from the Russian Foreign Ministry for attempting to intimidate Russian corporations trading with Tehran. “We think such actions are unacceptable and deeply concerning,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. “Attempts to pressure and threaten Russian business … are a follow-up on the dishonorable anti-Iranian cause by the U.S. administration,” she added, hinting at collusion between the government and the supposedly non-governmental organization.

Some of UANI’s campaigns have been markedly petty, including pressuring New York City hotels to cancel bookings with Iranian officials (including then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) visiting the city on United Nations business. Others, however, have been devastating to the Iranian economy, such as the SWIFT international money transfer terminating its relationship with Tehran, cutting the country off from the global banking system.

On UANI’s actions against businesses, Freeman said: “It’s effective, and (in some cases, at least) it’s to the detriment of the people of Iran; it’s to the detriment of these companies; and it’s to the detriment of peace in the region.”

While the group presents itself as against a nuclear Iran, UANI was strangely opposed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the deal between Iran and the West that limited the former’s nuclear technology research in exchange for sanctions relief from the latter. As MintPress reported at the time, UANI spent millions on T.V. advertisements trashing the agreement. As Wallace noted, “We have a multi-million-dollar budget, and we are in it for the long haul. Money continues to pour in.”

After the JCPOA was signed, UANI hosted a summit attended by senior Israeli, Emirati, and Bahraini officials, touting its failures. Once UANI’s John Bolton was named Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, he persuaded the president to withdraw entirely from the deal. Bolton has deep connections to the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian political group widely identified as a terrorist organization. He has, for some time, considered them a government in waiting after the U.S. overthrows the current administration. “Before 2019, we will celebrate in Tehran,” he told the group in 2018, predicting that, with him at the helm, the Trump administration would soon cause the downfall of the Iranian government.

Bolton has long been a hardliner on regime change. “To stop Iran’s bomb, bomb Iran,” read the title of his 2015 New York Times op-ed. Yet this appears to be the dominant position at UANI. In March, Ross published an article in The Atlantic headlined “Iran needs to believe America’s threat,” which demanded that the U.S. “take forceful action to check Tehran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb.” Failure to do so, Ross claimed, would provoke Israel to do so itself – a “much more dangerous scenario,” according to him. Yet only two years previously, Ross called on the U.S. to “give Israel a big bomb” to “deter Iran,” noting that the “best way” to stop the Iranian nuclear program was to supply Israel with its own nukes, thereby taken as a given that Iran was indeed pursuing nuclear weapons itself (a highly questionable claim at the time) and ignoring Israel’s already existing 200+ stockpile of nuclear missiles.

“It doesn’t seem like UANI ever really took seriously the possibility of a diplomatic means to constrain Iran from continuing to increase its enrichment levels and moving towards a nuclear weapon,” Clifton told MintPress. “As a matter of fact, they generally fought tooth and nail against the JCPOA. They are eager to push the United States toward confrontation with Iran using the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons as a reason,” he added.

Intelligence Connections

That UANI is headed by so many state, military and intelligence leaders begs the question: to what extent is this really a non-governmental organization? “That is one of the dirty secrets of think tanks: they are very often holding tanks for government officials,” Freeman said, adding:

The Trump folks all had to leave office when Biden won, so a lot of them ended up in think tanks for a while, four years, let’s say. And if Trump wins again, they will bounce back into government. And the same is true of Democratic administrations, too.”

The U.S. government also clearly has a longstanding policy of outsourcing much of its work to “private” groups in order to avoid further scrutiny. Many of the CIA’s most controversial activities, for example, have been farmed out to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a technically non-governmental organization funded entirely by Washington and staffed with ex-state officials. In recent years, the NED has funneled millions of dollars to protest leaders in Hong Kong, organized an attempted color revolution in Cuba, organized anti-government rock concerts in Venezuela, and propped up dozens of media organizations in Ukraine.

These sorts of institutions blur the line between public and private sectors. But a 2014 legal case raises even more questions about UANI’s connections to the U.S. government. After UANI accused Greek shipping magnate Victor Restis of working with the Iranian government, he sued them for libel. In an unprecedented move for what was a private, commercial lawsuit, Attorney General Eric Holder intervened in the lawsuit, ordering the judge to shut the case down on the grounds that, if it continued, it would expose key U.S. national security secrets. The case was immediately dropped without explanation.

In the past, when the Justice Department has invoked state secrets, a high-ranking state official has offered a public statement as to why. Yet, this time, nothing was offered. Reporters at the time speculated that much of the material Restis wanted to make public was possibly given to UANI by either the CIA or Mossad, which would have revealed a network of collusion between state intelligence agencies and a supposedly independent, private non-profit. Given the glut of ex-Mossad and CIA chiefs at UANI, this speculation is perhaps not as wild as it might seem.

UANI’s funders certainly also have extensive connections to Israel. Kaplan is the son-in-law of Israeli billionaire Leon Recanati and is said to be close with Prime Ministers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid. He has also employed a number of Israeli officials at his businesses. An example of this is Olivia Blechner, who, in 2007, left her role as the Director of Academic Affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in New York to become Executive Vice-President of Investor Relations and Research at Kaplan’s Electrum Group – a rather perplexing career move.

Adelson, meanwhile, was given what amounted to an official state funeral in Israel, one that even Prime Minister Netanyahu attended. He was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem – one of the holiest sites in Judaism and an honor that very few figures receive.

A Network of Regime Change Groups

While United Against Nuclear Iran is already a notable enough organization, it is actually merely part of a large group of shadowy non-governmental groups working to cause unrest and, ultimately, regime change in Iran. These groups all share overlapping goals, funders and key individuals.

One example of this is the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), a non-profit that purports to exist to “combat the growing threat posed by extremist ideologies.” Yet the group focuses largely on Islamist extremism – and only those groups that are enemies of the U.S., Israel and the Gulf Monarchies (about whose extremism and violence the CEP has nothing to say). Ten members of the CEP’s leadership council are also on UANI’s board, including Wallace, who is CEO of both organizations.

Another group headed by Wallace is the Jewish Committee to Support Women Life Freedom in Iran. This organization claims to be focused on improving women’s rights in Iran. It very quickly, however, divulges that this is a vehicle for regime change. On its homepage, for example, it writes:

These freedom fighters continue with no sign of relenting on their calls for regime change. Calls for “Woman Life Freedom” and the removal of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei echo from rooftops, down street corridors, across campus hallways, and on government billboards. These brave Iranians have expressed their hatred for the ruling clerics not only in their words, but in their actions.”

Seven members of the Jewish Committee to Support Women Life Freedom in Iran’s steering group – including Wallace and Kaplan – also lead UANI.

Mike Wallace, second from right, poses with prominent anti-Iran figures at a lobbying event in Italy, February 2023. Photo | Twitter

Kaplan is well-known as a conservationist. However, his group, Panthera, which works to preserve the world’s 40 known species of big cats, has also been accused of being a secret regime change operation. Panthera has a number of UANI officials on its board or conservation council, including Wallace and Lamb (the ex-director of U.K. Special Forces and Commander of the British Army). Also on the council are Itzhak Dar, former Director of the Israeli Secret Service, Shin Bet, and General David Petraeus, former CIA Director and Commander of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

In 2018, Iranian authorities arrested eight individuals working with Panthera inside the country. All eight were convicted of spying on behalf of the U.S. and Israel. While many in the West decried the trials as politically motivated, any organization led by these figures is bound to cause suspicions.

This is especially the case as Wallace is also a founder of PaykanArtCar, an organization that attempts to use art to, in its words, “advocate for the restoration of human rights and dignity for all in Iran.” All three team members of PaykanArtCar also work at UANI.

The final group in this Iran regime change network is the International Convention for the Future of Iran. Set up by Wallace himself, the organization’s website explains that it exists to “end the repression of the regime and bring true change to Iran.” Further purposes are to “connect the Iranian opposition in exile [i.e., the MEK] with policymakers in the United States and internationally” and to “offer program grants and technical support” to groups working to overthrow the government. However, judging by the lack of updates and the group’s Twitter profile having only 31 followers, it appears that it has not had much success achieving its goals.

In short, then, there exists a network of American NGOs with the mission statements of helping Iran, opposing Iran, preserving Iran, and bombing Iran, all staffed by largely the same ex-U.S. government officials.

Iran, however, is not the only target in Wallace’s sights. It appears that he is also trying to give Turkey similar treatment. Wallace is the CEO of the Turkish Democracy Project, a non-profit established to oppose the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who, it says, has “dramatically altered Turkey’s position in the international community and its status as a free and liberal democracy.” The Turkish Democracy Project denounces what it calls Erdoğan’s “destabilizing actions in and beyond the region, his systemic corruption, support for extremism, and disregard for democracy and human rights.” There are no Turkish people among the Turkish Democracy Project’s leadership. But there are seven UANI board members at the top, calling the shots.

A Lesson From History

The history of Iran has been intimately intertwined with the United States since at least 1953 when Washington orchestrated a successful coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had refused U.S. demands to stamp out Communist influences in his country and had nationalized the nation’s oil. The U.S. installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a puppet ruler. An unpopular and authoritarian ruler, the Shah was overthrown in the Revolution of 1979. Since then, it has become a target for regime change, and its nuclear program is something of an obsession in the West.

Often orchestrated by UANI officials while they were in government, the U.S. has carried out a sustained economic war against Tehran, attempting to collapse its economy. American sanctions have severely hurt Iran’s ability to both buy and sell goods on the open market and have harmed the value of the Iranian rial. As prices and inflation rose rapidly, ordinary people lost their savings.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. turned the screw once again, intimidating both businesses and nations into refusing to sell Tehran vital medical supplies. Eventually, the World Health Organization stepped in and directly supplied it with provisions – a factor in the Trump administration’s decision to pull out of the agency.

While U.S. actions have severely harmed the Iranian economy, a future bright spot may come in the form of BRICS, the economic bloc that Iran – along with Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – joined on January 1. American economic power on the global stage appears to be waning. However, This new reality might spur Washington policymakers to reconsider a military option, as UANI desperately wants them to.

It is perfectly reasonable to be worried about Iran – or any country, for that matter – developing atomic bombs. Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to human civilization, and more actors with access to them increase the likelihood of a devastating confrontation. Already in the region, India, Pakistan, Israel and Russia possess them. But it is only the United States that has ever used them in anger, dropping two on Japan and coming close to doing so in China, Korea and Vietnam. And given the U.S.’ recent track record of attacking countries that do not possess weapons of mass destruction (e.g., Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan) and not touching those who do (such as North Korea), it is entirely understandable why Iran might want one. As Freeman said:

I certainly do not want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. But at the same time, you can also believe that it would be catastrophic if the U.S. were to engage in a war with Iran…And the concern with groups like UANI is that they are taking that [the worry of Iran getting a nuclear weapon] and pushing that argument to a point where it might lead to an active conflict.”

The slaughter in Gaza has been horrifying enough. More than 22,000 people have been killed in the Israeli invasion, and a further 1.9 million displaced. Israel is also simultaneously bombing the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon. The U.S. is facilitating this, sending billions of dollars in weaponry, pledging iron-clad political support to Israel, silencing critics of its actions, and vetoing United Nations resolutions.

But United Against Nuclear Iran is eager to escalate the situation to a vastly greater level, urging Washington to attack a well-armed country of nearly 90 million people, erroneously claiming that Iran is behind every Hamas or Hezbollah action. “This is not a nuclear non-proliferation organization” Clifton said, noting that there are plenty of genuine already existing peace and environmental groups worried about nuclear weapons that either supported the JCPOA or said it did not go far enough. “Their focus is more on working towards regime change in Iran rather than actually supporting efforts that might prevent Iranian nuclear weapons,” he added.

IF UANI gets its way, a conflict with Iran might spark a Third World War. And yet they are receiving virtually no pushback to their ultra-hawkish pronouncements, largely because they operate in the shadows and receive virtually no public scrutiny. It is, therefore, imperative for all those who value peace to quickly change that and expose the organization for what it is.

Biden, Israel’s accomplice in Gaza, pretends to be a bystander

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While the White House claims to be “frustrated” with Israel’s conduct in Gaza, US support for the carnage continues.

By Aaron Maté

Source: Aaron Maté Substack

On October 15th, President Biden took umbrage at a suggestion that his administration could not back both the Ukraine proxy war and Israel’s assault on Gaza at the same time.

 “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation… in the history of the world,” Biden told CBS News. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.”

Three months and well over 20,000 defenseless Palestinians slain later, the self-declared leader of the most powerful nation in the history of world now claims to be a helpless bystander.

According to four US officials, Biden is “increasingly frustrated” and “losing his patience” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has rejected “most of the administration’s recent requests related to the war in Gaza,” Axios reports. “The situation sucks and we are stuck,” one official complained. “The president’s patience is running out.” Another official fumes that “there is immense frustration” in the Oval Office. According to Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen: “At every juncture, Netanyahu has given Biden the finger. They are pleading with the Netanyahu coalition, but getting slapped in the face over and over again.”

Van Hollen is correct that the administration is getting slapped in the face by Israel. But he omits that Biden is a willing scene partner in a barely disguised performance: pretending to be up in arms about Israel’s genocidal conduct while doing everything he can to support it.

As Likud parliamentarian Danny Danon explained last month, any US demand of Israel’s military is perfunctory. “They didn’t agree to a ground invasion — we invaded,” Danon said. “They didn’t agree to [attacking] Al-Shifa hospital — we ignored their request. They wanted a pause without hostages — we didn’t accept that. We have no American ultimatum. There is no deadline from the US.”

The US not only imposes no conditions on its support for Israel’s mass murder campaign in Gaza, but has twice bypassed Congress to expedite weapons for it. After all, this administration professes to have “no red lines” when it comes to Israeli aggression, and is fronted by a president who has declared that there is “no possibility” of a ceasefire.

While Biden and his aides now pretend to have their hands tied, their instrumental role is undeniable. “Biden is president of the United States, still the most powerful country in the world by almost every measure and a country without whose support Israel has no future,” former US diplomat Patrick Theros writes. “A firm public demand to cease and desist immediately would have enormous domestic political repercussions in Israel — far less in the United States. Biden would not have to publicly threaten to cut off weapons deliveries; a few words delivered in private to Netanyahu and a few members of his war cabinet would probably suffice.”

“If you want to use your leverage, use your leverage,” former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy says of Biden’s stance. “You’ve chosen to give Israel a blank check.”

That choice continues. In meetings with Israeli officials on Nov. 30th, Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed his counterparts that they had “weeks, not months” to “wrap up combat operations at the current level of intensity,” US officials later told the New York Times. Upon a return visit to Israel this week, Blinken again touted his push for what he called “the phased transition of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.” That “transition” to a “lower-intensity phase,” White House spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday, “is coming here very, very soon.”

But away from the news cameras, the posture changes. A senior US official now explains to the Washington Post that it’s in fact “pointless to urge them [the Israelis] to change.” Accordingly, “Washington’s priority has now shifted to tolerating Israel’s high-intensity operation throughout January, while insisting instead that it downgrade the tempo in February.”

In other words, the US has decided to tolerate Israel’s genocidal tempo in Gaza as normal. From Washington’s point of view, saving thousands of Palestinian lives from murder at the hands of US-supplied weaponry would be pointless.

Biden is so committed to continuing the Gaza slaughter that he has even expanded the war zone to Yemen. In a statement announcing his authorization of US strikes last week, Biden declared that he was acting to protect “freedom of navigation” and the “free flow of international commerce.” Since mid-November, the group that controls most of Yemen, Ansar Allah (misleadingly known in the US as the Houthis), has been targeting commercial ships – primarily those with Israeli links – passing through the Red Sea in a bid to compel the Israeli government to halt its assault on Gaza. By contrast with Israel’s operations, which has an official death toll of 23,000 and counting, Ansar Allah has not killed anyone. It even lost at least ten fighters in a US counterattack on December 31st. As Biden noted, Ansar Allah’s main impact has been to threaten “weeks of delays in product shipping times.” (Others estimate that the delay time can in fact be counted in days).

As in Gaza, the ultimate targets of US aggression in Yemen are civilians. While the Pentagon claims to be targeting Ansar Allah’s military capabilities, the “greater risk from the air attacks is likely borne by ordinary Yemenis,” the New York Times notes. This risk to ordinary Yemenis is consistent with longstanding US policy, specifically the current Biden team’s 2015 decision under President Obama to green-light the Saudi-led war on Yemen that has caused the ensuing humanitarian crisis. Around 21 million Yemenis – two-thirds of the country – rely on aid for survival, while more than four million are internally displaced.

In facing “one of the world’s worst humanitarian calamities,” the Times adds, Yemen faces “a dubious distinction now shared by Gaza.” Given its critical support for Israel’s assault, the US therefore has the dubious distinction of fueling two of the world’s worst humanitarian calamities.

Because of Israel’s blockade and military assault, the risk of famine in Gaza is “growing by the day,” Martin Griffiths, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official now warns. “As ground operations move southwards, aerial bombardments have intensified in areas where civilians were told to relocate for their safety.” For Gaza’s civilians – more than 90% of them displaced — “dignified human life is a near impossibility.”

According to one anonymous official with Israel’s occupation authority for Gaza (COGAT), the lack of dignity for Palestinians in Gaza is a genetic trait. “There is no hunger in Gaza,” the official told Haaretz. “…There were stockpiles of food in Gaza. Don’t forget that this is an Arab, Gazan population whose DNA is to hoard, certainly when it comes to food.”

It is apparently in the White House DNA to share its Israeli client’s avowed bigotry. In a statement Sunday night, President Biden marked “100 days of captivity” for the Israeli hostages in Gaza. Biden’s emotional message failed to even mention the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed, wounded, and displaced under US-backed Israeli assault over that same period.

“No one should have to endure even one day of what they have gone through, much less 100,” Biden said of the hostages. By refusing to acknowledge them, Biden is affirming via omission that he believes the exact opposite — and in fact infinitely worse — for Gaza’s two million Palestinian hostages. After 100 days of genocide, the people of Gaza are fated to endure continued atrocities as a direct result of US policy, no matter the Biden team’s ongoing effort to pretend otherwise.

War Propaganda Intensifies as US Mainstream Media Calls for War on Iran to Stop the “Axis of Resistance”

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

Remember when the mainstream media especially FOX News was calling for an attack on Iraq because Saddam Hussein and the Bath Party was developing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)?  FOX News was the main cheerleader for the US and its European allies to invade Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein.  To be fair, CNN and MSNBC and other news outlets were also cheerleading for war, but FOX News was clearly, the loudest voice.  Today, FOX News is at it again with other right-wing media networks who have been also calling for the US and its allies to bomb Iran to stop the Axis of Resistance that includes Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, Syria, Iraqi resistance groups and now Yemen, with the Houthi rebels who have been launching missile attacks against Israeli and Western commercial ships in the Red Sea in support of Gaza. 

Fox News senior strategic analyst, who a former General with the US Army, Jack Keane, a war hawk who served as an advisor to manage the US occupation of Iraq and a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee.  Keane is also chairman of AM General, a heavy vehicle and automotive manufacturer that produces military Humvees for civilian and military use.  Recently, Keane spoke on FOX News regarding the 60 + strikes conducted by US and British fighter aircraft on Yemen.  The main points he made on the FOX network was that US and its British allies already had their targets pinpointed due to Centcom, the US central command, “they were likely tracking the Houthis were trying to hide some of this capability for the last few days.  But we got excellent surveillance there, and likely we will, we are able to determine whether they are moving a lot of this, they will finish the assessment, believe me, I think if there is capability there, that is still significant, we should reattack and then we got to remind ourselves what’s really happening here.” 

Keane went on to say that Iran is “the center of gravity”, therefore it must be attacked to stop its proxies in the region:

The center of gravity for the aggression in the Middle East that we’re experiencing is Iran. We have said this time and time and time again, and to deter the proxies themselves by hitting them will not be sufficient.  We have got to go after Iran themselves by hitting them will not be sufficient.  We have got to go after Iran, they are, as I mentioned, the center of gravity, Centcom has a table of targets that they have provided to the administration in how to go about doing that comprehensively to shut down their support for these proxies that has got to be high on our list.  And what that really means Brian, we have got to re-set the strategy in dealing with Iran in the region and admit the fact that this thing has failed.  When they came in, they removed the Trump sanctions.  Iran’s flush with oil money now, as a result of it, they went after the nuclear deal.  That failed    

Keane is not the only psychopath who wants World War III, another frequent quest on FOX News, Lindsey Graham who is South Carolina’s Republican Senator and a Pro-Israel activist was quoted in a FOX News article, ‘Lindsey Graham calls for warning Iran of retaliation if Hamas escalates, tells ‘Squad’ to ‘shut the hell up’ reported that the “South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham castigated the far left’s “appeasement” of Iran’s regime, which he said has not prevented attacks by Hamas against Israel, telling the Palestinian-friendly “Squad” contingent in Congress to “shut the hell up.”  On America Reports, a show produced by FOX News, Graham said that “The only way you’re going to keep this war from escalating is to hold Iran accountable. How much more death and destruction do we have to take from the Iranian regime? I am confident this was planned and funded by the Iranians.”

Sounding like a far-right Israeli politician, Graham also said that “Hamas is a bunch of animals who deserve to be treated like animals” he added that “Israeli forces should use this opportunity to invade Palestinian territory and “dismantle” the militant group.”  Graham used the Hitler comparison to the Hamas’ resistance as “an effort to kill Jewish people on par with that of former German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.” 

In 2005, a few years after Iraq was already invaded and destroyed, Pew Research found that FOX News was more biased in reporting on the war in Iraq than CNN and MSNBC, “measurably more one-sided than the other networks, and Fox journalists were more opinionated on the air” and that “the news channel was also decidedly more positive in its coverage of the war in Iraq, while the others were largely neutral. At the same time, the story segments on the Fox programs studied did have more sources and shared more about them with audiences.”  This does not mean CNN and MSNBC is innocent nor any better on the lead-up to the war on Iraq, but FOX News is surely on the frontline when it comes to war propaganda. 

Iran is the ultimate prize for the neocons in Washington and Israel.  Israel wants to get the US military into another war but this time to attack Iran.  They are using the mainstream media that they control to gain support from the US population who are clueless about what is happening in the Middle East.  FOX News is a major part of the propaganda machine, so they will continue to call for another major war to appease their Zionist masters in Israel. 

In an article published in 2003 by The Guardian that was correctly titled, ‘Their Master’s Voice’ on Rupert Murdoch, the owner of FOX News said that “you have got to admit that Rupert Murdoch is one canny press tycoon because he has an unerring ability to choose editors across the world who think just like him.”   It goes on to say how much influence Rupert Murdoch, who is a neocon at heart, has in his media empire:

Murdoch is chairman and chief executive of News Corp which owns more than 175 titles on three continents, publishes 40 million papers a week and dominates the newspaper markets in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. His television reach is greater still, but broadcasting – even when less regulated than in Britain – is not so plainly partisan. It is newspapers which set the agenda

What was Murdoch’s agenda during the war in Iraq? In an interview in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, one of the newspapers that Murdoch owns, said that “We can’t back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam…I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it.” He was also asked about another war criminal-at-large and former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair:

I think Tony is being extraordinarily courageous and strong… It’s not easy to do that living in a party which is largely composed of people who have a knee-jerk anti-Americanism and are sort of pacifist. But he’s shown great guts as he did, I think, in Kosovo and various problems in the old Yugoslavia”

Fox News is cheerleading for another war but this time against Iran who is not Iraq.  Iran has the capabilities to hit every US base in the Middle East especially those in Iraq and Syria. It has a formidable military that is ready to defend their territorial integrity. If the US and their Israeli counterparts decide to attack Iran, rest assured, the entire Middle East would erupt and they would support Iran and that will be the end of all US bases in the region and possibly, the end of a 75-year-old occupation of Palestine.      

FOX News has supported every war, it has supported every assassination of foreign military and political leaders, and it has supported every regime change operation on all corners of the globe.  There is nothing “Fair and Balanced” with FOX News and their paid propagandists who basically work for Military arms manufacturers, major corporations, the right-wing part of the American and European political establishment and of course, Israel. 

This is dangerous war propaganda all over again, we can call it, Iraq 2.0., but this is much worse because this coming war will involve many countries and resistance groups, especially those in the Middle East.