Month: September 2018

Ambassador Kurt Volker: US To Drastically Expand Military Assistance To Ukraine

Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Washington is upping the ante in Ukraine. Kurt Volker, US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations, said in an interview with the Guardian published on September 1 that “Washington is ready to expand arms supplies to Ukraine in order to build up the country’s naval and air defense forces in the face of continuing Russian support for eastern separatists.” According to him, the Trump administration was “absolutely” prepared to go further in supplying lethal weaponry to Ukrainian forces than the anti-tank missiles it delivered in April.

 “They need lethal assistance,” he emphasized.

Mr. Volker explained that “[t]hey need to rebuild a navy and they have very limited air capability as well. I think we’ll have to look at air defense.” 

The diplomat believes Ukraine needs unmanned aerial vehicles, counter-battery radar systems, and anti-sniper systems. The issue of lethal arms purchases has been discussed at the highest level.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019 allocated $250m in military assistance to Ukraine, including lethal arms. The US has delivered Javelin anti-tank missile systems to Kiev but this time the ambassador talked about an incomparably larger deal. Former President Barack Obama had been unconvinced that granting Ukraine lethal defensive weapons would be the right decision, in view of the widespread corruption there. This policy has changed under President Trump, who — among other things — approved deliveries of anti-tank missiles to Kiev last December.

Ukraine has officially requested US air-defense systems. According to Valeriy Chaly, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, the Ukrainian military wants to purchase at least three air-defense systems. The cost of the deal is expected to exceed $2 billion, or about $750 million apiece. The system in question was not specified, but it’s generally believed to be the Patriot.

Volker’s statement was made at a time of rising tensions in the Sea of Azov, which is legally shared by Ukraine and Russia. It is connected to the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait. The rhetoric has heated up and ships have been placed under arrest as this territorial dispute turns the area into a flashpoint. Russia has slammed the US for backing Ukraine’s violations of international law in the area. According to a 2003 treaty, the Sea of Azov is a jointly controlled territory that both countries are allowed to use freely.

The US military already runs a maritime operations center located within Ukraine’s Ochakov naval base. The facility is an operational-level warfare command-and-control organization that is designed to deliver flexible maritime support throughout the full range of military operations. Hundreds of US and Canadian military instructors are training Ukrainian personnel at the Yavorov firing range.

NATO has granted Ukraine the status of an aspirant country — a step that is openly provocative toward Russia. Macedonia, Georgia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina are also aspirant nations. Last year, Ukraine’s parliament adopted a resolution recognizing full membership in NATO as a foreign policy goal. In 2008, NATO agreed that Ukraine along with Georgia should become a full-fledged member. In March, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia announced the formation of an alliance to oppose Russia.

The US is to render substantial military assistance to a country with an economy in the doldrums, reforms that have foundered, a democracy that is in question, and corruption that is widespread. It will be no surprise if those weapons fall into the wrong hands and are used against the US military somewhere outside of Europe. lIt was the US State Department itself that issued a report this year slamming Ukraine’s human-rights record. The UN human-rights commissioner tells the same story. So do human-rights monitors all over the world.

By supplying the weapons that Special Representative Volker talked about in his interview, the US will become an accomplice to a conflict that has nothing to do with its national security or interests. The situation in the Donbas is being used by Kiev to distract public attention from the country’s worsening domestic problems. But to Washington Ukraine’s government is the apple of its eye, “a bastard but it’s our bastard” that is ready to do what it’s told.

The move is provocative and it may have consequences. For instance, Russia could supply the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine with up-to-date weapons systems in quantities sufficient to deter any military action on the part of Kiev. Once the Minsk accords are no longer functional and cannot command obedience, Moscow could recognize those republics as independent states that are eligible for military cooperation agreements, which would include stationing military bases on their soil. If their governments invited the Russian armed forces to be deployed inside their borders, it would be quite natural to agree to those requests. No international law would be breached. In a nutshell, if the US crosses that red line, Russia will act accordingly.

Nobody seems to want a war raging in Ukraine, but that’s what the US weapons supplies would promote, egging the Ukrainian government on to seek a military solution.

And what if it loses? Washington would be to blame for such a scenario.

By the way, is it a coincidence that Mr. Volker’s interview appeared just as Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the Donetsk self-proclaimed republic, was assassinated? Just asking. 

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The Upside Of ‘Global Warming’

An interview from the Russian Ministry for Maritime and River Transport published on website PortNews says that Arctic ports along the Northern Sea Route are experiencing a surge in cargo. Up to August 24th of this year, 9.95 million tons of goods went through ports in the region, an 81 percent increase on last year’s 5.5 million.

As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, even though the passage is only feasible for three months of the year, global warming is making it increasingly viable for major shipping companies.

This year, temperatures in the Arctic Circle have been unusually warm, topping 30C on several occasions.

That resulted in Maersk confirming that it was sending a ship with a 3,600 container capacity, the Venta Mersk, over the top of Russia on a test run. The decision has been welcomed in Russia where it’s hoped the Arctic route will compete with the southern route through the Suez Canal and Straits of Malacca. The Northern Sea Route runs from Murmansk near Russia’s border with Norway all the way to the Bering Strait in Alaska with all transiting ships requiring a permit from the Russian authorities.

Even though travel-time can be reduced by two weeks compared to the southern route, costs are generally higher because vessels have to be accompanied by a nuclear-powered icebreaker.

The Venta Maersk left Vladivostock before docking in Pusan, South Korea.

It embarked on its long journeythrough the Arctic and its expected to pass through the Bering Strait at the start of September before finishing the trip in St. Petersburg at the end of the month. The following infographic shows how a general container-ship would travel between Europe and East Asia, using Hamburg and Shanghai as example ports.

Infographic: Global Warming Opens Arctic Passage For Container Ships | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

A ship traveling between those two cities on the Northern Sea Route would travel about 14,000 kilometers, sparing at least two weeks over the 20,000-kilometer long southern route through the Suez Canal and Straits of Malacca.

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Washington’s War On Canada’s Health Plan

Authored by James Petras via Unz.com,

Introduction

Republicans and Democrats are befuddled by President Trump’s attacks on Canada and Prime Minister Trudeau; his repudiation of NAFTA; the bilateral agreement with Mexico; tariffs, trade quotas and threats of trade constraints of billions more to come.

Many are the experts, political leaders and media commentators who have offered a variety of explanations. The most frequent explanation is that the White House is pursuing a nationalist – protectionist policy to weaken and dominate Canada and to increase the US competitive position.

The problem with that argument is that for the better part of a century Canada has followed US imperialism in global and regional wars and interventions on four continents – even where Ottawa has paid a high military, financial, political and human cost. Canada has always been considered a bulwark of the US led NATO alliance, a reliable trading partner and staunch defender of cross border controls.

Trump critics attribute his hostility to his unruly, impulsive and unstable temperament which blocks him from an understanding the ongoing historical legacy. Paramount long-term links are sacrificed for short-term economic gains according to some academics.

Most senior diplomats, accustomed to friendly negotiations, have privately expressed objections to Trump’s ultimatums and his effort to brow-beat Canada into submission, believing that a few genial tweaks over a re-packaged NAFTA would secure Canadian compliance and submission.

Yet Trump refuses to accept Canada’s partial submission to a modified NAFTA. Apparently, Trump is after long-term, large scale changes which will have a major political, economic and social impact on the US competitive position in the world economy.

Trump’s War Against Canada’s National Health and Education Programs

The US economic elite and workers spend hundreds of billions of dollars in a failed private health system. Canada’s capitulation to Trump’s conditions for a bilateral trade agreement will eventually shift the burden of healthcare from a low cost universal public program to the high cost exclusionary private sector – reducing the competitiveness of Canada’s economy especially its exports.

Trump is neither a demagogue nor an irrational nationalist. He has succeeded in changing Mexico’s trade terms in favor of the US economy, increased the share of US exports and retained a dominant role in setting the terms for re-negotiating agreements. Trump aims for the same result with Canada.

He sizes up Trudeau as an easy mark-‘very dishonest and weak’. The Saudi Arabian reprisals over a human rights issue caused Trudeau to retract. Trump’s on and off the record remarks are intended to humiliate Trudeau and force him to plea for mercy. Trump’s disparaging remarks of Prime Minister Trudeau ,presiding at the 2018 G-7 meeting in Quebec Canada—accusing Canada of ‘robbing the [US] piggy bank’- and his unilateral slapping of tariffs– went uncontested.

Trump’s aggressive posture is directed at eliminating those features of Canadian society and economy which are appealing for US working families. Trump’s strategy is to lower Canada’s competitiveness not raise US living standards. US prescription drugs are 60% higher than Canada; the US private health bureaucracy costs the economy five times more than Canada’s public health administration.

Conclusion

Trump’s trade rules are intended to pressure Canada to lose competitiveness and reduce its attractiveness to the US public. If he succeeds Trump will reduce pressure from the ‘single payer’ majority and gain support from US exporters to Canada.

In sum, from a US capitalist perspective, Trump is using his political bullying to increase profits and exports markets.

The vast majority of Canadians back their public administered and financed health system. They will resist any effort to reduce it via incremented ‘rulings’ by bilateral US-Mexican-Canadian bodies. They will realize that the deck is loaded in Trump’s favor. If Canada is to retain what remains of its welfare state it will have to break with its dependence on Washington – including its support for overseas wars, trade sanctions and Washington’s drive for world domination. A new political leadership in the fashion of Tommy Douglas will need to replace Justin Trudeau. The question is where will it come from?

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Nevada In Deep Trouble If Recession Strikes, Report Finds

States deploy reserves and balances to manage budgetary uncertainties, deal with revenue forecasting mistakes, prevent severe spending reductions or tax increases when there are unexpected revenue shortfalls, and cope with unforeseen emergencies. Because reserves and balances are essential to managing sudden changes and maintaining fiscal health, these levels are watched closely.

According to a report by The Pew Charitable Trusts, if a recession strikes tomorrow and Nevada was forced to run only on reserves, the state government would be out of money in approximately 3.6 days.

The study determined that Nevada had just $39 million in its rainy day fund for the fiscal year 2017, and ranks 44th out of 50 states in how long government can operate solely on reserves. Nevada was not alone in this potentially dangerous budgetary mess. Three states including Kansas, Montana and New Jersey had no reserve monies at all. Across the board, the median time for all 50 states was roughly twenty days.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Alaska and Wyoming lead the rankings, with each having enough reserves to run their respective governments for more than a year.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal said it is a low probability that any state would be forced to operate on just reserves. The report paints a troubling picture of what could happen to Nevada in the next economic downturn.

“The funds in those accounts are used to help offset revenue shortfalls and alleviate the need for spending cuts or layoffs during times of economic hardship,” said Las Vegas Review-Journal, adding that without enough reserves, a recession could result in exploding deficits. This would be bad news for the state’s S&P Global Ratings, as for example, the credit rating agency downgraded Massachusetts’ debt rating in 2017, citing its “failure to follow through on rebuilding its reserves.”

Robert Fellner, director of policy for the Nevada Policy Research Institute, said Nevada’s extremely low reserves is reflective of a “tax-and-spend mentality,” noting attempts by Gov. Brian Sandoval and the State Legislature to increase funding for K-12 education, including the 2015 commerce tax.

The state, Fellner added, “needs to get spending under control.”

The Journal noted that the state had nearly $270 million in reserves in 2007, enough to run the government for roughly 27 days. Then the recession hit, and by 2010, the fund was bone dry. Over the cycle, the state attempted to bring up the account’s balance, but financial stress in 2015 through 2016 emptied all funds.

“Every time we put a dime in there, we had to pull it back out just to keep the government running,” said Mike Wilden, chief of staff to Gov. Brian Sandoval, who took office in 2010.

Wilden said the state ended the fiscal year 2018, which ended on June 30, with $180 billion in the fund– good for about 14 days of government funding. The significant contributions to the fund have been tax revenues from recreational marijuana industry. Marijuana taxes add about $4 million per month into the account, which started in July 2017, Wilden said.

As for Nevada and a handful of other states with limited reserves, well, it is a race against time to increase state funds before the next economic slowdown, which could arrive as early as next year.

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World Misses The Point Amid Internet Frenzy About Bush Sneaking Candy To Michelle Obama

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via CaitlinJohnstone.com,

As of this writing, a tweet by disgraced Broadway fraud convict Roland Scahill has 113 thousand shares and 472 thousand likes, which if you’re not used to Twitter is a ridiculously high amount that nobody generally hits. The tweet features nothing but four seconds of video footage from the John McCain funeral, and the caption “George W. Bush sneaking a piece of candy to Michelle Obama is warming my heart.”

That’s it. That’s all it took to win Twitter for the day. Those four seconds of footage have been circulated around TV news stations to ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s of fawning establishment pundits yammering incessantly about how the death of War Hero John McCain™ has let everyone Put Aside Our Political Differences™ and Come Together As Americans™ to celebrate the life of a man who dedicated his entire political career to sowing death, suffering and devastation at every opportunity. A war criminal giving a piece of candy to the wife of another war criminal at the funeral of a war criminal is all it took to get mainstream American brains gushing with dopamine and oxytocin.

Because that’s how compartmentalized Americans are from the reality of what war is and what it means. The explosions, the screams, the charred and shredded human bodies, the chaos and displacement and all the suffering, terrorism, slavery and rape that necessarily always comes with it, the million Iraqis killed under Bush, the unfathomable humanitarian disasters created in Libya and Syria under Obama, all the devastation created in all the military interventions McCain helped push for, all of that is so peripheral and distant in American consciousness that it can be dismissed with a wave of the hand and a piece of fucking candy.

And it isn’t really their fault. The more woke Americans who’ve grown to resent their brainwashed countrymen hate it when I say this, but it isn’t. It’s not a coincidence that the nation with the most powerful military in the history of civilization and the most billionaires in the history of civilization also happens to have the most sophisticated propaganda system in the history of civilization, and that propaganda system is pointed at them from a very early age to normalize the war machine that is used to protect the empire of the billionaires.

The United States is the most important player in the imperial alliance centralized around it, and therefore its citizenry are necessarily the most propagandized people on earth. You can’t have the populace of such an important nation suddenly demanding that troops be brought home and the resources being spent on bombs be spent eliminating the economic inequality on which your empire depends instead, so you’ve got to get into their minds early and aggressively to manipulate the way they think about war. Everything from flag worship to the fetishization of military personnel to Pentagon-controlled Hollywood movies are used from early childhood to install the assumption that their nation’s bloated military budget is only ever going toward good and never evil, and to prime their minds for the war propaganda they will be fed by the plutocrat-owned news media.

Day after day after day after day, from when they are small until their dying breath, the American psyche is pummeled with this relentless assault upon its natural sense of empathy and reason. So it’s understandable that every now and then one of them snaps and shoots up a building full of people, inflicting the same kind of mass murder at home they’ve been trained to accept as normal abroad. And it’s understandable that they’d be duped into thinking the monstrous evils that have been inflicted upon our world by Bush, Obama and McCain (and Henry Kissinger, who also made an appearance at the funeral) are innocent little oopsie-poopsies which pale in comparison to something so monumentally heroic as correcting a woman who called Obama an Arab once, or sharing a piece of candy.

But if Americans are ever going to escape from the chains of oligarchy, they’re necessarily going to have to cease consenting to imperialism. Without their resources being funneled into hundreds of bases and countless military and intelligence operations overseas, there’d be a chance to fix America’s infrastructure and make sure everyone gets what they need. Without the US economy being propped up with the barrel of a gun to ensure the success of globalist agendas, Americans would have a chance to create a real economy based on real things that they themselves own and control. Without the ability to use the US war machine to advance their agendas, the oligarchs who control America’s economy, government and media will be unable to rule over the increasingly wealthy and powerful masses. Without the best technology and the brainpower of the brightest Americans being sucked up into the war machine, the nation’s most creative minds will lose their incentive to point their ingenuity at death and destruction, and can point it at useful innovations instead.

And then the propaganda machine which holds the whole empire together will be useless and impotent, and the shackles on American minds will crumble. And the rest of the empire will follow.

The first step in this direction is to cease normalizing the monsters who facilitate human butchery around the world. Stop believing they need to be regarded as “heroes” just because they wore a uniform at some point. Stop believing that it’s ever okay to push for needless wars which butcher innocent men, women and children. Stop believing a man can facilitate the slaughter of a million people and not have that clearly be his single defining legacy. Stop believing that it’s worse to criticize a warmonger than it is to be a warmonger.

Because if it’s up to the bastards who rule us currently, they’ll happily keep shushing us into polite silence while continuing to march us along our current ecocidal, omnicidal trajectory until it gets us all killed. They’ll make saints of warmongering empire loyalists and uphold their murderous lives as exemplary and virtuous, and if we say we want to move things in a different direction we’ll be shouted down with buzzwords about heroism and decency until we shut up. If we leave it up to these pricks, we’ll become the first species to go extinct due to politeness.

Stop letting them normalize and elevate people who embody the very essence of the imperial oppression machine. Stop letting them humanize psychopathic war whores. Stop letting them twist this into a conversation about respecting those with different political opinions and make it about what it is: the mass murder of innocents for power and profit. Refuse to be reprimanded into polite silence. Refuse to die of politeness. Seize control of the narrative and force sanity into our imperiled world.

* * *

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Israel Warns It Could Attack Iranian Military Assets In Iraq

In response to what could soon be a big headache for Israeli PM Netanyahu and US “military advisors” to Baghdad, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman indicated on Monday that it could launch air strikes on suspected Iranian military assets in Iraq, as it has widely done in war-torn Syria, Reuters said.

Last week we reported that according to Reuters, Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to allies in Iraq over the last several months. This revelation comes as tensions between Washington and Tehran are at their highest point in years as aggressive sanctions continue crippling Iran’s economy, and after threats and counter-threats over Tehran laying claim to the vital Strait of Hormuz oil waterway over the past weeks, through which one-third of the world’s oil passes.

Israel views Iran’s regional expansion as dangerous for its well-being, and has frequently launched air strikes in Syria to thwart any Iranian forces defending Damascus in the war.

“We are certainly monitoring everything that is happening in Syria and, regarding Iranian threats, we are not limiting ourselves just to Syrian territory. This also needs to be clear,” Lieberman told reporters Monday.

Explicitly asked if this included new operations in Iraq, Lieberman answered: “I’m saying we will handle any Iranian threat, no matter where it comes from. We are maintaining the right to act… and any threat or anything else that comes up is dealt with.”

Reuters said there was no response from the government of Iraq – which is technically at war with Israel – nor from the Pentagon, which oversees US military operations in the country.

The report cited several unnamed Iranian, Iraqi and Western officials who said that several dozen rockets capable of hitting Israel and Tehran’s Sunni rival Saudi Arabia had been deployed with Iran’s Shiite groups in Iraq. It added that Iran was working to provide its Iraqi proxy armies with missile manufacturing facilities, and training to local militia members in operating the new missile systems.

On Saturday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that he was “deeply concerned” by the reported Iranian missile transfer. “If true, this would be a gross violation of Iraqi sovereignty and of UNSCR 2231. Baghdad should determine what happens in Iraq, not Tehran,” he said referring to a United Nations Security Council Resolution endorsing the 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran. The Trump admin abandoned that agreement in May, citing Iran’s ballistic missile projects, said Reuters.

Iran’s missile deployment in Iraq would be intended to increase its missile capacity in the region, and to retaliate against any Western or Arab attacks on its territory, as the threat of an upcoming war grows.

* * *

Iran on Saturday denied the report. “The lie disseminated by some media on shipment of Iran-made missiles to Iraq is totally irrelevant and unfounded,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said.

“Such news comes merely to cause panic among countries in the region and is in line with their policy to spread Iranophobia,” Qasemi said.

At the end of the conference, Liberman also reiterated his previously stated opposition to ongoing negotiations being moderated by Egypt and the United Nations for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel are unlikely to succeed because Israel says the current blockade is in place to stop weapons and other military assets from entering the Strip.

“I know exactly what’s going on, I’m aware of the negotiations but I’m not involved in that, I don’t believe in it,” Liberman said. “We need to understand that negotiations, whether with [the Palestinian Authority in] Ramallah or with [Hamas in] Gaza, won’t lead us anywhere. All the negotiations have led us to dead ends.”

He maintained Israel should act unilaterally both in Gaza and the West Bank “and mold the reality as we see fit.” And now it appears that Israel is preparing to launch military action in Iraq over reports from anonymous sources. What is more curious that these developments are taking place just before the US midterm election.

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Kunstler Warns “Some Kind Of Epic National Restructuring Is In The Works”

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

And so the sun seems to stand still this last day before the resumption of business-as-usual, and whatever remains of labor in this sclerotic republic takes its ease in the ominous late summer heat, and the people across this land marinate in anxious uncertainty.

What can be done?

Some kind of epic national restructuring is in the works. It will either happen consciously and deliberately or it will be forced on us by circumstance. One side wants to magically reenact the 1950s; the other wants a Gnostic transhuman utopia. Neither of these is a plausible outcome.

Most of the arguments ranging around them are what Jordan Peterson calls “pseudo issues.” Let’s try to take stock of what the real issues might be.

Energy

The shale oil “miracle” was a stunt enabled by supernaturally low interest rates, i.e. Federal Reserve policy. Even The New York Times said so yesterday (The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground). For all that, the shale oil producers still couldn’t make money at it. If interest rates go up, the industry will choke on the debt it has already accumulated and lose access to new loans. If the Fed reverses its current course – say, to rescue the stock and bond markets – then the shale oil industry has perhaps three more years before it collapses on a geological basis, maybe less. After that, we’re out of tricks. It will affect everything.

The perceived solution is to run all our stuff on electricity, with the electricity produced by other means than fossil fuels, so-called alt energy. This will only happen on the most limited basis and perhaps not at all. (And it is apart from the question of the decrepit electric grid itself.) What’s required is a political conversation about how we inhabit the landscape, how we do business, and what kind of business we do. The prospect of dismantling suburbia — or at least moving out of it — is evidently unthinkable. But it’s going to happen whether we make plans and policies, or we’re dragged kicking and screaming away from it.

Corporate tyranny

The nation is groaning under despotic corporate rule. The fragility of these operations is moving toward criticality. As with shale oil, they depend largely on dishonest financial legerdemain. They are also threatened by the crack-up of globalism, and its 12,000-mile supply lines, now well underway. Get ready for business at a much smaller scale.

Hard as this sounds, it presents great opportunities for making Americans useful again, that is, giving them something to do, a meaningful place in society, and livelihoods. The implosion of national chain retail is already underway. Amazon is not the answer, because each Amazon sales item requires a separate truck trip to its destination, and that just doesn’t square with our energy predicament. We’ve got to rebuild main street economies and the layers of local and regional distribution that support them. That’s where many jobs and careers are.

Climate change is most immediately affecting farming. 2018 will be a year of bad harvests in many parts of the world. Agri-biz style farming, based on oil-and-gas plus bank loans is a ruinous practice, and will not continue in any case. Can we make choices and policies to promote a return to smaller scale farming with intelligent methods rather than just brute industrial force plus debt? If we don’t, a lot of people will starve to death. By the way, here is the useful work for a large number of citizens currently regarded as unemployable for one reason or another.

Pervasive racketeering rules because we allow it to, especially in education and medicine. Both are self-destructing under the weight of their own money-grubbing schemes. Both are destined to be severely downscaled. A lot of colleges will go out of business. Most college loans will never be paid back (and the derivatives based on them will blow up). We need millions of small farmers more than we need millions of communications majors with a public relations minor. It may be too late for a single-payer medical system. A collapsing oil-based industrial economy means a lack of capital, and fiscal hocus-pocus is just another form of racketeering. Medicine will have to get smaller and less complex and that means local clinic-based health care. Lots of careers there, and that is where things are going, so get ready.

Government over-reach

The leviathan state is too large, too reckless, and too corrupt. Insolvency will eventually reduce its scope and scale. Most immediately, the giant matrix of domestic spying agencies has turned on American citizens. It will resist at all costs being dismantled or even reined in. One task at hand is to prosecute the people in the Department of Justice and the FBI who ran illegal political operations in and around the 2016 election. These are agencies which use their considerable power to destroy the lives of individual citizens. Their officers must answer to grand juries.

As with everything else on the table for debate, the reach and scope of US imperial arrangements has to be reduced. It’s happening already, whether we like it or not, as geopolitical relations shift drastically and the other nations on the planet scramble for survival in a post-industrial world that will be a good deal harsher than the robotic paradise of digitally “creative” economies that the credulous expect. This country has enough to do within its own boundaries to prepare for survival without making extra trouble for itself and other people around the world. As a practical matter, this means close as many overseas bases as possible, as soon as possible.

As we get back to business tomorrow, ask yourself where you stand in the blather-storm of false issues and foolish ideas, in contrast to the things that actually matter.

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Nike Launches Ad Campaign Starring Colin Kaepernick

In a move that will likely infuriate president Trump, and/or lead to a sharp decline in Air Max sales, on Monday afternoon Nike and Colin Kaepernick unveiled a new ad campaign featuring the controversial former NFL quarterback as part of the company’s 30th anniversary “Just Do It” ad campaign.

The image, which Kaepernick tweeted out, shows a black-and-white closeup of the quarterback’s face and the words, “Believe in something. Even it if it means sacrificing everything. Just do it.”

According to ESPN, Kaepernick – who is suing NFL owners for allegedly colluding to keep him out of the league – is one of the faces of a new Nike campaign meant to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the brand’s iconic “Just Do It” motto. It also adds that while Nike signed Kaepernick in 2011 and kept him on its endorsement roster over the years, the company had not used him in the past two years.

“We believe Colin is one of the most inspirational athletes of this generation, who has leveraged the power of sport to help move the world forward,” Nike V.P. of brand in North America Gino Fisanotti told ESPN.

Perhaps, but for now Kaepernick is entering a second NFL season without a team and has an active collusion grievance against the NFL. That case cleared a hurdle last week with the league’s request to dismiss the grievance was rejected. A trial hearing that requires testimony from NFL owners could happen at some point in the future.
“We wanted to energize its meaning and introduce ‘Just Do It’ to a new generation of athletes,” Fisanotti told ESPN.

Kaepernick became a household name in August of 2016 when he began kneeling in what he said was protest of racial injustice during the national anthem, provoking a major backlash by the president, and eventually NFL fans.  The protests during the national anthem, soon embraced by other players too, raised the ire of some NFL fans and U.S. President Donald Trump. The result was a steep dropoff in NFL viewership in 2017.

In response, Trump said the players disrespected the American flag and the military, and he has said he would love to see NFL owners fire football players who disrespected the American flag.

As Reuters notes, Kaepernick and another former 49ers player, Eric Reid, have not been signed by any of the NFL’s 32 teams since their protests spread around the league. Both have filed collusion grievances against NFL owners.

With news of Nike’s ad campaign breaking just days before the first game of the NFL season on Thursday, the controversy over pre-game protests could flare anew.

Predictably, responses on social media ranged from one extreme of the gamut to the other.

“Nike has always been and will continue to be my family’s favorite shoe,” wrote Twitter user @TheDionneMama, while @jimispr said “I’m a United States Navy Veteran. I gave up my freedom, left my family and fought for this nation. I fought so Mr. Kaepernick could protest anyway he chooses. He isn’t hurting anyone nor is he inciting violence. Let him be.”

Others were not quite so happy. “Time to throw away all my Nike crap,” wrote @SportDuh 17; “Nike will never see a dollar of mine again. Let’s see how long they survive now” said user @TheyCallMeAzul.

Others were even more graphic:

Even Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, commented from Tehran, saying “The #NFL season will start this week, unfortunately once again @Kaepernick7 is not on a NFL roster. Even though he is one of the best Quarterbacks in the league.”

We now await Trump’s inevitable reaction.

As for Nike, if the public backlash against other corporate brand names who have taken a vocal political stance is any indication, the company is making a gamble: companies from Dick’s (which saw a sharp decline in sales after it stopped selling guns), to ESPN, to Papa John’s, to Twitter and Facebook, to In-N-Out burger, have all seen an angry customer backlash – from either the left or the right – once these corporations entered the political arena, resulting in a hit to the top line, and ultimately, the shareholders’ pocket.

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Asia’s Shifting Alliances In The Time Of Trump

Authored by Conn Hallinan via Dispatches From The Edge blog,

“Boxing the compass” is an old nautical term for locating the points on a magnetic compass in order to set a course. With the erratic winds blowing out of Washington these days, countries all over Asia and the Middle East are boxing the compass and re-evaluating traditional foes and old alliances.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars in the past half-century, and both have nuclear weapons on a hair trigger. But the two countries are now part of a security and trade organization, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), along with China, Russia and most of the countries of Central Asia. Following the recent elections in Pakistan, Islamabad’s Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, has called for an “uninterrupted continued dialogue” with New Delhi to resolve conflicts and establish “peace and stability” in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s new Prime Minister, Imran Khan, is a critic of the U.S. war in Afghanistan and particularly opposed to the use of U.S. drones to kill insurgents in Pakistan.

Russia has reached out to the Taliban, which has accepted an invitation for peace talks in Moscow on Sept. 4 to end the 17-year old war. Three decades ago the Taliban were shooting down Russian helicopters with American-made Stinger missiles.

Turkey and Russia have agreed to increase trade and to seek a political solution to end the war in Syria. Turkey also pledged to ignore Washington’s sanctions on Russia and Iran. Less than three years ago, Turkish warplanes downed a Russian bomber, Ankara was denouncing Iran, and Turkey was arming and supporting Islamic extremists trying to overthrow the government of Bashar al Assad.

After years of tension in the South China Sea between China and a host of Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei, on Aug. 2 Beijing announced a “breakthrough” in talks between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). After years of bluster— including ship-to-ship face-offs—China and ASEAN held joint computer naval games Aug. 2-3. China has also proposed cooperative oil and gas exploration with SEATO members.

Starting with the administration of George W. Bush, the U.S. has tried to lure India into an alliance with Japan and Australia—the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or “quad”—to challenge China in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. The Americans turned a blind eye to India’s violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and dropped the ban on selling arms to New Delhi. The Pentagon even re-named its Pacific Command, “Indo-Pacific Command” to reflect India’s concerns in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. is currently training Indian fighter pilots, and this summer held joint naval maneuvers with Japan and the U.S.—Malabar 18— in the strategic Malacca Straits .

But following an April Wuhan Summit meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi’s enthusiasm for the Quad appears to have cooled. New Delhi vetoed Australia joining the Malabar war games.

At June’s Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore, Modi said “India does not see the Indo-Pacific region as a strategy or as a club of limited members,” and pointedly avoided any criticism of China’s behavior in the South China Sea. Given that Indian and Chinese troops have engaged in shoving matches and fistfights with one another in the Doklam border region, Modi’s silence on the Chinese military was surprising.

China and India have recently established a military “hot line,” and Beijing has cut tariffs on Indian products.

During the SCO meetings, Modi and Xi met and discussed cooperation on bringing an end to the war in Afghanistan. India, Pakistan and Russia fear that extremism in Afghanistan will spill over their borders, and the three have joined in an effort to shore up the Taliban as a bulwark against the growth of the Islamic State.

There is also a push to build the long-delayed Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline that will eventually terminate in energy-starved India.

India signed the SCO’s “Qingdao Declaration,” which warned that “economic globalization is confronted with the expansion of unilateral protectionist policies,” a statement aimed directly at the Trump administration.

The Modi government also made it clear that New Delhi will not join U.S. sanctions against Iran and will continue to buy gas and oil from Teheran. India’s Defense Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman also said that India would ignore U.S. threats to sanction any country doing business with Russia’s arms industry.

Even such a staunch ally as Australia is having second thoughts on who it wants to align itself with in the Western Pacific. Australia currently hosts U.S. Marines and the huge U.S. intelligence gathering operation at Pine Gap. But China is Canberra’s largest trading partner, and Chinese students and tourists are an important source of income for Australia.

Canberra is currently consumed with arguments over China’s influence on Australia’s politics, and there is a division in the foreign policy establishment over how closely aligned the Australians should be with Washington, given the uncertain policies of the Trump administration. Some—like defense strategist Hugh White—argue that “Not only is America failing to remain the dominant power, it is failing to retain any substantial strategic role at all.”

White’s analysis is an overstatement. The U.S. is the most powerful military force in the region, and the Pacific basin is still Washington’s number one trade partner. In the balance of forces, Canberra doesn’t count for much. But the debate is an interesting one and a reflection that the Obama administration’s “Asia pivot” to ring China with U.S. allies has not exactly been a slam-dunk.

Of course, one can make too much of these re-alignments.

There are still tensions between China and India over their borders and competition for the Indian Ocean. Many Indians see the latter as “Mare Nostrum” [“Our Sea”], and New Delhi is acquiring submarines and surface crafts to control it.

However, since some 80 percent of China’s energy supplies transit the Indian Ocean, China is busy building up ports in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Djibouti to guard those routes.

India has recently tested a long-range ICBM—the Agni V—that has the capacity to strike China. The Indians claim the missile has a range of 3000 miles, but the Chinese say it can strike targets 5000 miles away, thus threatening most of China’s population centers. Since Pakistan is already within range of India’s medium range missiles, the Agni V could only have been developed to target China.

India is also one of the few countries in the region not to endorse China’s immense “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure initiative to link Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe into a vast trading network.

A number of these diplomatic initiatives and re-alignments could easily fail.

Pakistan and India could fall out over Kashmir, and resolving the Afghanistan situation is the diplomatic equivalent of untying the Gordian Knot. The Taliban accepted the Russian invitation, but the Americans dismissed it. So too has the government in Kabal, but that could change, particularly if the Indians push the Afghan government to join the talks. Just the fact that the Taliban agreed to negotiate with Kabal, however, is a breakthrough, and since almost everyone in the region wants this long and terrible war to end, the initiative is hardly a dead letter.

There are other reefs and shoals out there.

Turkey and Russia still don’t trust each other, and while Iran currently finds itself on the same side as Moscow and Ankara, there is no love lost among any of them. But Iran needs a way to block Trump’s sanctions from strangling its economy, and that means shelving its historical suspicions of Turkey and Russia. Both countries say they will not abide by the U.S. sanctions, and the Russians are even considering setting up credit system to bypass using dollars in banking.

The Europeans are already knuckling under to the U.S. sanctions, but the U.S. and the European Union are not the only games in town. Organizations like the SCO, ASEAN, the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and Latin America’s Mercosur are creating independent poles of power and influence, and while the U.S. has enormous military power, it no longer can dictate what other countries decide on things like war and trade.

From what direction on the Compass Rose the winds out of Washington will blow is hardly clear, but increasingly a number of countries are charting a course of their own.

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“Grave Mistake”: Trump Threatens Assad Over Impending Idlib Assault

It seems to happen just about every September and April over the past years: every time the Syrian proxy war seems to have receded from international media attention for a period of a long summer or a winter, a mass attention-grabbing event or massacre happens to suddenly yank the world’s (and the White House’s) focus right back on the war and a return to intervention and escalation mode. 

And curiously, this seems to occur the moment Assad and the Syrian Army alongside the Russians are on the path to overwhelming victory.

On Monday evening of Labor Day, President Donald Trump weighed in with what’s clearly a veiled threat warning Syria and its allies via Twitter:

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria must not recklessly attack Idlib Province. The Russians and Iranians would be making a grave humanitarian mistake to take part in this potential human tragedy. Hundreds of thousands of people could be killed. Don’t let that happen!

And immediately following, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley tweeted here own statement based on the president’s words, while specifically invoking the US charge that Assad plans to use chemical weapons.

Haley wrote: All eyes on the actions of Assad, Russia, and Iran in Idlib. #NoChemicalWeapons#

These latest threats confirm what we previously reported over the weekend: that the US is seeking to create a quagmire for Russia and Iran in order to pressure both countries to acquiesce to Washington’s demands. In the case of Iran the White House is seeking new negotiations after the US pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) last May. 

In 2013, top Obama Administration officials described their policy in the Syrian War as one of keeping the war going. The administration wanted a big seat at the table for a political settlement, which officials clarified meant ensuring that the war kept going so that there was never a clear victor.

The Trump Administration is now slipping into that same destructive set of priorities in Syria. The Washington Post last week quoted an unnamed Administration official as saying that “right now, our job is to help create quagmires [for Russia and the Syrian regime] until we get what we want.”

During the two prior Aprils, Trump ordered massive airstrikes on Syrian government targets after blaming Damascus for claimed chemical weapons attacks on civilians. 

Trump’s latest tweet, for the first time addressing the final showdown over Idlib specifically, singles out “the Russians and Iranians” as “making a grave humanitarian mistake” should they “recklessly attack Idlib Province”.

Thus the president seems to be precisely calculating that the battle for Idlib can be used an opportunity for putting increased pressure and global attention on Tehran and Moscow. 

So clearly, something big is coming  possibly in the form of a “rebel” claimed “provocation” as the Pentagon and US officials have over the past week continued pushing the gambit, setting the stage to play the “Assad is gassing his own people” card should so much as an inkling of a White Helmets allegation emerge, in an unprecedented level of telegraphing intentions for leverage on the battlefield. 

Except someone should remind the president that the “rebel” coalition in control of this major “final holdout” is but the latest incarnation of al-Qaeda, calling itself Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and has held the province, the capital city of which is Idlib city, since a successful Western and Gulf ally sponsored attack on the area in 2015.

Regardless, it now appears the US stands ready to respond militarily to even the most unlikely and flimsiest of accusations issued by al-Qaeda terrorists and groups like the ‘White Helmets’ which operate alongside AQ-linked groups.

And why wouldn’t Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militants, now surrounded by Syrian and Russian forces and facing imminent defeat, redeem what’s essentially the US offer to “call in the Air Force” against Assad’s army? All they have to do is utter the words “chemical weapons attack!” to their friends in the Western media and in Washington. 

But in terms of the trustworthiness of such a claim that’s surely being prepared, all the president needs to do is honestly listen to his own top State Department official, Special anti-ISIL envoy Brett McGurk, who accurately described in an unusually frank assessment a year ago: 

“Idlib provice is the largest al-Qaeda safe-have since 9/11, tied to directly to Ayman al Zawahiri, this is a huge problem.” 

But again, Trump’s latest words appear more designed for leverage — unfortunately with the threat now on record (similar to Obama’s 2013 “red line” threat) it now matters little whether the president actually believes Assad will use chemical weapons or not. 

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