Who's behind the mysterious 'Iran-backed terror cell' haunting Europe?

Wyatt Reed | The Gray zone

Claims that an Iran-backed group is carrying out attacks in European cities raise questions about why they're not targeting countries directly involved in the US-Israeli war, and why they appear to communicate like Israelis. Strangely, suspects arrested in the attacks have been released on bail.

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of Ashab al-Yamin. Officially known as "Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (HAYI)," or the "Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right," the group mysteriously appeared in early March, and, according to mainstream media, it's taking the continent by storm.

But a closer look at the supposedly Iran-backed terror organization suggests that it does not exist in any concrete form, and may be a confection of Israeli intelligence.

Though the nebulous HAYI claimed credit for torching ambulances belonging to a Jewish community organization in London on March 23, two suspects in the attack have been released on bail, and are not charged with any terror-related crimes. What's more, London Metropolitan Police have so far refused to release the men's names, raising questions about their identities. Were they even Muslim?

HAYI's first public mention in the West came on March 9, when the previously non-existent organization released a video showing an explosive device detonating outside a synagogue in Liege, Belgium, alongside a statement taking credit for the attack. Within hours, the group had somehow been identified by the "SITE Intelligence Group," an Israeli-led private intelligence firm founded in the aftermath of Sept. 11 to cash in on the newly-minted Global War on Terror.

The materials HAYI published were promptly circulated on social media by Joe Truzman, a self-described "Senior Research analyst examining Palestinian armed groups and Iranian proxy organizations" at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative DC-based think tank founded in 2001 with the stated goal of working to "enhance Israel's image." As The Grayzone reported, the Trump White House plagiarized its public justification for attacking Iran word-for-word from an FDD paper.

Though Truzman declined to state where he'd found the materials, he wrote that "Telegram channels linked to the Axis of Resistance... widely disseminated the publications," using a reference to a variety of resistance factions sympathetic to Iran and Palestine throughout the greater Middle East. The group he linked to, a popular Telegram channel called Sabereen News, made it clear they were reposting the video, which they said was the work of a group calling themselves "the companions."

Almost immediately, Truzman began asserting that these "companions" were all but guaranteed to be a Tehran-linked cutout. For starters, he told British media, "their logo with the wording is a sign of a classic Iranian front organization." And Iran had already threatened to carry out just such a wave of attacks, Truzman claimed. After all, he wrote, "On March 8, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran's deputy-foreign minister, warned that if a European country joined the US and Israel in the current war against the Islamic Republic, it would be a 'legitimate' target 'for Iranian retaliation.'"

Read more

Screw the Pooch, Betray the Base

Comment: Excellent article and well worth reading in full.

--------------------

Harrison Koehli | Political Ponerology

According to Gallup polling from last year, up to 45% of adult Americans identify as political independents. That's a plurality, as the remainder is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with 27% each. Forty-five percent is around 120 million adults, and that number has been growing for the past 20 years, driven largely by the younger generations. It's easy to see why. Neither party represents them.

Every four years, independents are put in the position of either throwing their vote away for a third-party candidate who will get at most 3% of the popular vote, or choosing what they see as the lesser of two evils. (In the last 50 years, only Ross Perot came close, winning 19% in 1992.)

That's not to say independents are a homogeneous group. Slightly more independents lean Democrat than Republican (20% vs. 15%), with a core 10% who explicitly reject both parties. Given the choice (and an electoral system that would support it), their votes might be split among a handful of parties, as is the case in most democracies. The end result is that the largest segment of the American voting population does not have consistent political representation, at least on the federal level.

That's not always the case, however. Independents may genuinely favor a particular candidate, despite his alignment with one of the parties. This was arguably the case with Donald Trump. As Bret Weinstein — a liberal Democrat who voted for him — described it recently on Tucker, Trump did the impossible: "he beat the duopoly, both sides of it, took over the Republican party, defeated the Democratic party soundly." He did that by dipping into the pool of independents and disaffected liberals like Weinstein. And he did that by presenting a platform that voters largely agreed with, e.g., no new wars, MAHA, unrigging elections, mass deportations, DOGE.

In the first year of his second term, he seems to have at least tried to follow through on many of these promises, despite obstruction from judges and the immobility of Congress. And even when his decisions were controversial among some of his base, such as last year's Iran strikes and January's kidnapping of an El Presidente, those operations were successful one-and-dones, over as soon as the news reached the homeland, with any ex-post-facto criticism just coming across as lame.

All of that seems to have changed with Operation Epic Fury. (And the only reason I say "seems" is because of the meme.) Regime-change war is back on the menu (but it's not a regime change war, in fact, it's not a war, it's an excursion to prevent a war, which might still turn into one, but it's war for peace) and the price of gas is no longer important. Within days, the White House was already caving on another central policy, mass deportations: "Don't mention them anymore." Along with the handling of the Epstein files, voters who aren't Catturd are notably pissed. For many, not going to war with Iran was the main reason they voted for Trump. Here's how Weinstein put it:

Now, I will say I'm very upset with President Trump at the moment. I feel personally burned as somebody who worked to get him elected. I did it for a reason and frankly if given the same choice today I would have to make the same vote, because I think what the Democratic party offered was anti-constitutional. We had a demented president who they pretended wasn't, and then we had somebody who hadn't won a primary installed by the party. This is not the consent of the governed. So I would have to vote for Trump again just because he's at least a qualified person who was the nominee of his party through a lawful process. But I'm angry at him because I voted for no new wars. And when I voted for no new wars, Iran was top of mind for me because I knew that it was on the agenda of the neocons. So I expected somebody to try to force this to happen.

This was Vance in 2024: "America doesn't have to constantly police every region of the world. Our interest, I think very much, is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country."

When Trump said "no new wars" on the campaign trail, and when voters gave their support to that policy with their votes, they had precisely Iran in mind. The neocons have been blue-balled for decades over Iran. They have gotten practically every other country on their list: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria. Iran was the last one, probably because it was the biggest challenge. (Unless they really want to try Turkey after this.) Now the Lindsay Grahams and Mark Levins have their war — a war that never would have happened if Trump were president, I'm sure.

Read more

Ex-CIA Director Joins Board of Ukraine’s Largest Drone Company

Jeremy Kuzmarov | Covert Action Magazine

Mike Pompeo, CIA Director and Secretary of State in the first Trump administration, has long been a Ukraine war hawk, calling Russia’s actions genocide, stating that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine (when its people voted overwhelmingly to be part of Russia) and consistently advocating for increased military aid to Ukraine.

Pompeo’s tenure as CIA Director in 2017-2018 coincided with a significant expansion of the CIA’s involvement in Ukraine. The CIA set up 12 clandestine bases following the February 2014 CIA-backed Maidan coup that fueled the conflict with Russia.

In November, AP News reported that Pompeo had joined the advisory board of Ukraine’s leading defense company, Fire Point, which develops long-range drones capable of striking targets deep inside Russia.

At a press conference announcing his appointment, Pompeo said that his mission with the company was to help Fire Point become an important supplier for Western hardware [i.e., drones].”

CovertAction Magazine reported last February on how the CIA—going back to Pompeo’s time as Agency director—had played a key role in the development of Ukraine’s drone industry by making billion-dollar investments in it and sending intelligence officials to help out with it.

The same article detailed how Ukrainian drone strikes had struck oil refineries and gas processing plants, causing terrible environmental damage, and struck civilian infrastructure, including apartment buildings and hospitals, and killed three civilians walking on the street in the Belgorod border region.

Read more

U.S. strikes Venezuela and captures Maduro; Trump says "we're going to run the country" for now

Comment: Nothing to do with drug trafficking which the CIA has been involved in for decades. It's all about the oil. Trump has joined the same Zio-Con playbook as his predecessors. 

--------------------

CBS News

• President Trump said Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife were "captured and flown out of the Country" early Saturday morning, confirming a "large scale strike" by the U.S. that drew quick condemnation and concern from across the globe.
• Mr. Trump said in a press conference that the U.S. will "run" Venezuela on a temporary basis.
• The U.S. Army's Delta Force, an elite special forces unit, carried out the operation to capture Maduro, officials told CBS News.
• A Republican senator said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had indicated that Maduro would face criminal charges in the U.S., where he was indicted years ago, and that Rubio "anticipates no further action in Venezuela." The Trump administration has long accused Maduro of drug trafficking and working with gangs designated as terrorist organizations, which Maduro denies.
• The strikes follow months of U.S. military buildup in the region, with the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier and numerous other warships positioned in the Caribbean.
• In recent weeks, the U.S. has seized two oil tankers off Venezuela, launched deadly strikes on more than 30 boats the administration says were carrying drugs, and struck what President Trump called "the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs."

Read more

The real story behind the Russia-Ukraine war — and what happens next

David Stockman | International Man

Notwithstanding the historic fluidity of borders, there is no case whatsoever that Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was "unprovoked" and unrelated to NATO's own transparent provocations in the region.

The details are arrayed below, but the larger issue needs be addressed first.

Namely, is there any reason to believe that Russia is an expansionist power looking to gobble up neighbors which were not integral parts of its own historic evolution, as is the case with Ukraine?

After all, if despite Rubio's treachery President Trump does manage to strike a Ukraine peace and partition deal with Putin you can be sure that the neocons will come charging in with a false Munich appeasement analogy.

The answer, however, is a resounding no!

Our firm rebuke of the hoary Munich analogy as it has been falsely applied to Putin is based on what might be called the double-digit rule. To wit, the true expansionary hegemons of modern history have spent huge parts of their GDP on defense because that's what it takes to support the military infrastructure and logistics required for invasion and occupation of foreign lands.

For instance, here are the figures for military spending by Nazi Germany from 1935-1944 expressed as a percent of GDP. This is what an aggressive hegemon looks like in the ramp-up to war: German military spending had already reach 23% of GDP, even before its invasion of Poland in September 1939 and its subsequent commencement of actual military campaigns of invasion and occupation.

Read more

The Rubio Doctrine: Neocons are back!

Ron Paul | Mises Institute

According to several recent news reports, the two major Trump foreign policy shifts last week are the handiwork of Marco Rubio, the President's Secretary of State and (acting) National Security Advisor. As with all neocon plans, they will be big on promises and small on delivery.

First up, according to Bloomberg it was Rubio who finally convinced President Trump to take "ownership" of the US proxy war on Russia, and for the first time place sanctions on Russia. Up to this point President Trump chose to portray himself as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia. But with this move against Russia's oil sector he can no longer credibly claim that this is "Joe Biden's war."

The Trump move followed a confusing few weeks since the Trump/Putin Alaska summit in August. After that meeting Trump dropped the neocon position that a ceasefire in the Russia/Ukraine war must occur before any peace negotiations. It was a sign that Trump was looking more realistically at the war. He also said he did not think Ukraine would win, which is pretty obvious.

A surprise call to Putin the day before Ukrainian president Zelensky was to arrive in town just over a week ago reinforced that position and Zelensky left Washington empty-handed. He was seeking Tomahawk missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory.

Then out of the blue President Trump last week announced through his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that the US would be sanctioning Russia's two largest oil companies until Russia declares a ceasefire in the war before negotiations. That won't happen, but what it does mean is that Rubio and the neocons have successfully gotten Trump to step on the escalation escalator. That is what they always do. It will be much harder to back down now.

At the same time the US Administration was jumping deeper into the Russia/Ukraine war, a long-time neocon dream was suddenly back in play. Although in Trump's first term a "regime change" operation was attempted against Venezuela, it failed spectacularly. But the neocons have long dreamed of overthrowing the Venezuelan government - they almost got their way back in 2002 - and suddenly after several weeks of extrajudicial murder on the high seas in the name of fighting the drug war, President Trump announced that land strikes on Venezuela would begin soon. 

Read more

Is Peace with Russia Possible?

Armstrong Economics

ANSWER: Europe and NATO are the aggressors – not Putin. Zelensky is meeting with Trump today. Trump has to realize who his real opponents are. Peace with Russia is easy if you do what is right. Putin warned Zelensky that the Minsk Agreement was the key. Zelensky has been taking his orders from NATO, NEOCONS, and never from his own people. I had two employees there, and I can say many people questioned if he was even legitimately elected. We have witnessed what the EU and NATO did in Romania. Do you really think they were hands-off in Ukraine? There would have BEEN NO WAR if the EU, NATO, and Neocons had not lied and honored the Minisk Agreement.

 You cannot defeat Putin and think that is somehow the answer. When Khrushchev had to back down after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a coup occurred, and Brezhnev took power, deepening the Cold War.

Then there was a proposal that Russia join NATO when the USSR collapsed. Just as our Neocons in the CIA killed JFK to keep war on the table and rejected his peace initiatives, the Russian Neocons staged coup #2 and overthrew Gorbachev. That is when Yeltsin stood on the tank and pleaded with the military not to fire on their own people. The military stood down, and the coup collapsed. Anyone who thinks they can beat Putin and force him out of Ukraine is not just a fool; they are a dangerous asshole. You will get coup #3, and this time you will get the Russian Neocons in full power. Just imagine if John McCain had become president with Lindsey Grachm as his VP. You would probably be dead by now. 

Read more 

Straussians take control of the United Nations and NATO

Thierry Meyssan | Voltairenet.org

It had not been planned, but the proponents of the generalized war, the Straussians, expelled from the governing bodies of the United States, have regrouped in intergovernmental organizations. To everyone’s surprise, they are certainly present in the European Union, but especially in the United Nations and in the Contact Group on the Defence of Ukraine. Institutions dedicated to peace have been recovered by the warmongers.

For almost a year, President Donald Trump has been handing order to the United States. It has restored the principles of equality before the law and promotion to merit to the detriment of those of diversity, equity and inclusion (IED). He slashed in federal budgets everything that corresponded to imperial expenses and tried to restore the primary function of the armies, the defense of the homeland. 

At the same time, we all see how he fails to conclude the peace he hoped for in Ukraine and Palestine. He lets the Europeans fight not for Ukraine, but against Russia and the coalition of Benjamin Netanyahu persist in his program of a “Greater Israel”, that is to say annexation of his neighbors.

However, we do not see the most serious: the Straussians, who held the dragee high under the mandates of George Bush Jr., Barack Obama and Joe Biden are still not defeated. They have withdrawn to two intergovernmental organizations: NATO and the UN.

On the sidelines of NATO, they have taken control of the Contact Group on the Defence of Ukraine (formerly the Ramstein Group) which, since 9 September, no longer meets alternately at the US military base in Ramstein and at NATO headquarters in Mons-Brussels, but now also in London.

They were the ones who organized, with the Ukrainian secret services, drone flights over the Western and North European airports. Then, they pushed for the delivery of German Patriot missile batteries to Ukraine, after secretly organizing the transfer of the first batteries from Israel.

They are still the ones who falsified the reports of the United Nations General Secretariat on the meetings of 19 and 26 September of the Security Council. Unlike these – which we have been wrong to believe in – the Security Council has not validated the return of sanctions against Iran. He did not have the power.  

Read more

Zionist Gatekeepers

Comment: The Israeli genocide against the Palestinians has brought into stark relief those who have built their conservative caeers on anti-Woke polemics and the support of Israel. 

It is now easy to see who is a Zionist shill and who attempts to honour objective fact. 

Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray and Ben Shaprio are three political and cultural commentators who have made a lot of money as anti-Islam, anti-left and anti-Woke commentators. These critiques have been often accurate and on target. 

However, we can see very clearly how this is all about personal belief in the face of obvious genocide. Their so-called support for free speech, morality and the democratic values therefore rings entirely hollow.

In the case of Peterson, he has been seduced by Israeli propaganda based on a suprious rendering of Biblical studies and his own inability to see objectively beyond his own emotional instability. For a man who has studied tyranny and totatlitarianism it takes an enormous amount of self-deception to maintain that belief. For a person who is a psychologist and a believer in God, it bespeaks a level of delusion that has inevitably resulted in thousands of supporters leaving his usually wise words in droves. 

One only has to discern how this man twists and distorts information to suit his own beliefs to understand that no matter how many academic qualifications we have, it's all just window dressing when it comes to the ability to perceive reality beyond our cherished beliefs. 

In the case of Shaprio, his fundamentalist adherence to Zionism is a product of his authoritarian/narcissistic personality that allows him to see no hypocrisy in supporting free speech while cheering Israel's genocide against Paelstinians. He is an Old Testament/Rabbinic Jew whose religious fanatacism is matched only by his addiction to profit that welcomes a $130,000 dollar speaking fee to bash leftist politics and Wokeism. But when it comes to Israel his pathological bias is woefully apparent, as is his intellectual dishonesty. 

Douglas Murray is a rather slimy example of the worst of Oxford-educated British establishment acaedmics. Author of The Madness of Crowds (among others) which offers a biting critique of Islam and immigration, Murray, a self-avowed neo-conservative and war hawk-apologist was recently revealed as the propagandist that he is. 

In the now viral Joe Rogan "debate" with Jewish-American comedian Dave Smith, one offers facts and a conscience beyond politics, the other offers arrogance, flimsy opinion and juvenile cheap shots that betray the paucity of his "argument". 

So, in case you haven't seen it yet, take some time to observe what kind of people are attempting to dilute essential human morality while hiding behind a so-called intellectual legacy that is as fake as Murray's collagen injections:

 

 

 Joe Rogan Experience #2303 - Dave Smith & Douglas Murray

Whistleblower Who Warned About False Flag Attacks to Justify U.S. Invasion of Iran Found Dead, YouTube Channel Removed

State of the Nation

Whistleblower David Goldberg, a resident of New York City, has reportedly died of unknown causes.

Yesterday, the governmentslaves.news site reported that the White House insider who was quoted — David Goldberg (59 years old) — has since been found dead in his New York apartment on June 8th. His death is being investigated and no cause of death has yet been disclosed.
Goldberg also said that a false flag attack would be used to escalate the situation, which appears to be what we’ve seen take place in the Gulf of Oman with the two attack of two oil tankers. (Source: False Flags, Cooked Intelligence and the ‘War on Terror’ Con)

In April of 2019, Goldberg warned the world of a false flag attack planned by the U.S. Military and Intelligence Community working in concert with Israel’s Mossad.

What follows is the original Alt Media news report that explains the entire black operation.

Since Goldberg first issued his warning to the world community of nations, there have been two sets of obvious false flag attacks: one in the Gulf of Hormuz and a second one in the Gulf of Oman. See: Gulf of Oman False Flag Bombing Obvious Pretext for US Attack on Iran.

Each of these attacks was immediately blamed on Iran without a shred of evidence or any type of meaningful investigation.  Both the Trump administration and Israel falsely accused Iran of attacks that were in fact orchestrated by US-Israeli operatives and/or proxies. See: NSA Bolton Conspires With Israel to Trigger War with Iran Based on False Flags

Read more

False-Flag Empire: Oil Tanker Attacks in The Gulf Have US Fingerprints All Over Them

Tommy Sheridan
Sputnik

It was the Spanish philosopher, poet and novelist, George Santayana (1863-1952), who warned us all:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Watching the unfolding US promoted narrative in the Persian Gulf seas over this past few days and weeks those words should ring loudly in the ears of everyone who values peace and opposes the carnage, destruction and horrific waste of life delivered by war.

If you swallow the American propaganda plastered across newspaper front pages and dominating news bulletins on every Western TV news channel then you really are as bright as a dark night.

On the morning of Thursday, June 13th, two oil tankers were allegedly attacked in the Gulf of Oman, just off the coast of Iran. The US government immediately blamed Iran for the incident, without providing any evidence. 

The vessels happened to be en route to Japan at precisely the same time that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in Tehran. The first Japanese leader to visit Iran since its revolution 40 years ago, Abe was holding a historic meeting with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei when the incident took place.

What a great plan. It must have taken months of intense thought and deliberation amongst the smartest cookies at the very top of the Iranian government.

Let's get this Japanese dude over here for groundbreaking talks about peace and trade in the region and while he's here we should attack two oil tankers on their way to his country... It's ingenious. It will really endear us to Japanese hearts and show the world just how committed to peace we really are... Oh and while he is here we will take him to an Elvis Pressley concert and transport him around Tehran on a flying carpet.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton have honed their skills in deceit and downright lies over many years dedicated to promoting scenarios to justify wars and US Military interventions regardless of the truth and subsequent loss of lives.

Bolton was such a strong advocate of the US war in Vietnam that he supported it from afar in the safe confines of Yale Law School. He was also convinced Iraq had to be invaded to destroy their weapons of Mass Destruction no matter the cost in lives or the amount of blood spilt.

Pompeo and Bolton lie incessantly about Venezuela, Iran and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, North Korea and now the tanker incidents in The Gulf of Oman. They are as credible as Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men and their lying abilities make Pinocchio rage with jealousy.

Those with even a morsel of brain matter between their ears can see right through the two chancers selling wars like a second-hand car salesman would be punting cars with doctored miles and baldy tyres. The fact they are given media platforms and space to spout their horror fantasies makes them dangerous individuals. They are however only following the well-trodden US path of inventing incidents to justify wars. 

 Read more

See also:  Gulf of Oman Tanker attack: War Scripted By Washington

Provocations in the Gulf of Oman: Will John Bolton Get His War on Iran?

Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Pepe Escobar, and Yves EnglerGlobal Research 

“America’s declared policy should be ending Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary…Recognizing a new Iranian regime in 2019 would reverse the shame of once seeing our diplomats held hostage for 444 days.” – John Bolton (January 15, 2018) [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW 




Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Coincidentally or not, America’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran began within a month of John Bolton’s installment as National Security Advisor. On May 8th of 2018, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. was backing out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the U.S. under President Barrack Obama along with the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany and the EU in July of 2015. Consequently, the sanctions imposed on Iran previous to the JCPOA were reinstated, and additional sanctions imposed by the end of the year.

In April of this year, the Trump Administration took the unprecedented step of declaring the Middle East country’s military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be a terrorist organization.

Two weeks later, the Trump Administration ended the waivers it had extended to other countries which had to that point allowed them to escape sanctions for purchasing Iranian oil. The aim of this manoeuvre being to strangle the Iranian economy by preventing its ability to profit from the sale of its main source of revenue.

Two weeks after that, Bolton announced the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group and Air Force Bombers to the Middle East as part of an effort to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

The following week, four tankers were attacked in the Persian Gulf. Bolton and Secretary of State Pompeo blamed Iran for the attacks.

America’s choke-hold on Iran’s economy continued to tighten with further sanctions on May 8th of this year, the anniversary of Trump’s JCPOA pull-out.

Read more

See also: Gulf of Oman: Unconvinced EU foreign ministers call for independent investigation after US claim Iran is behind tanker attack

Bipartisan Support for Trump’s Aggressive Iran Policy Reveals the Hollowness of Russiagate

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

In early May, MSNBC news host Rachel Maddow — known as one of the top promoters of the new Cold War and Russiagate in American media — emphatically endorsed regime change in Venezuela after she claimed that President Donald Trump’s hawkishness towards the South American country had changed, all because of a single phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. 
 
Though Maddow’s claims were arguably the most extreme in suggesting that Trump was “taking orders” from Putin on Venezuela, she wasn’t alone in making them. For instance, Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks also made the claim that the Trump-Putin phone call on Venezuela was “direct evidence that he is literally taking orders from Putin.” In addition, several corporate media outlets supported this narrative by suggesting that Trump “echoed” Putin’s Venezuela stance after the phone call and directly contradicted his top staffers and even himself in doing so.

Yet now, strangely, those same corporate media voices remain silent on the Trump administration’s other regime-change project — in Iran — despite the fact that the Putin-led Russian government is set to be the biggest winner as tensions between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic boil over and threaten to send the Middle East into a fresh bout of destruction and chaos.  

As tensions between the U.S. and Iran have grown in recent months, analysts in both corporate and independent media have speculated about what country is set to benefit the most from the U.S.’ campaign of “maximum pressure” and regime change against the Islamic Republic. Of the many analyses, two countries have stood out as likely beneficiaries: Russia and China.

The cases for China and Russia’s benefit are somewhat similar given that the Trump administration’s focus on Iran results in less pressure on both Russia and China. This is despite the fact that, officially, the U.S.’ current National Defense Strategy explicitly calls for focusing attention on preparing for a “long war” against Russia and China to prevent either from superseding the U.S. as a global superpower. Yet, with the U.S. focused on regime change in Iran and Venezuela, Russia and China can avoid bearing the brunt of U.S. military adventurism, either directly or by proxy, while the U.S. wears itself thin by trying to do it all at once.

Read more

Trump Attacks Military Industrial Complex and Calls for Infrastructure Investments in the Middle East

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture

For the first time in over half a century, an American President has actually come out attacking the Military Industrial Complex. Of course, everyone knows of President Dwight D. Eisenhauer’s famous outgoing 1961 speech warning the world (and the incoming President Kennedy) what sort of monster had arisen at the heart of America’s defense institutions. Very little on the matter was said on the frightening topic by decades of political leaders who rose to prominence in the shadow of JFK’s corpse. Instead, the beast grew like a malignant cancer over the ensuing years as a major branch of the British-run deep state that carried out a coup with Sir Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in 1946 and the MI6-directed re-organization of American intelligence with the creation of the CIA in 1947.

After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, networks of neoconservative contaminated all branches of government in both parties bringing the USA into a frenzied military doctrine centered on regime change wars, oil-centered geopolitics and unipolarism totally uncharacteristic with the better constitutional traditions of the nation. This geopolitical doctrine nearly drove the west into a full military confrontation with Russia and China in recent years.

The Tide Begins to Turn

On May 20 speaking to Fox News, President Trump echoed Eisenhauer’s warnings. Under a coterie of Trump’s war-mongering advisors such as John Bolton, Gina Haspel, Terrence O’Shaughnessy and Mike Pompeo, America has recently been brought to the brink of war with Iran. While Trump has too often accommodated this hive of neocons, his recent statements and repeated calls for cooperation with Russia and China demonstrate a sound push back which should be taken very seriously. In that Fox interview Trump said:

“With all of everything that’s going on, and I’m not one that believes—you know, I’m not somebody that wants to go in to war, because war hurts economies, war kills people, most importantly—by far most importantly.”
You know, in Syria, with the caliphate, so I wipe out 100 percent of the caliphate. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have these crazy people who run around blowing up stores and blowing up things—these are seriously ill people. I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, they’re wiped,’ you know, ISIS. But, I wiped out 100 percent of the caliphate. I say, ‘I want to bring our troops back home.’ The place went crazy. You have people here in Washington, they never want to leave.”
‘You know what I’ll do, I’ll leave a couple hundred soldiers behind,’ but if it was up to them, they’d bring thousands of soldiers in. Someday people will explain it, but you do have a group, and they call it the military-industrial complex. They never want to leave. They always want to fight.”

Read more

62 Organizations to U.S. Congress: Pass Legislation to Halt a “March to War” with Iran

NIAC Action

In light of President Trump and John Bolton’s dangerous escalations against Iran and a forthcoming intelligence briefing on Capitol Hill this afternoon, 62 organizations – including J Street, Indivisible, NIAC Action and Win Without War – sent a letter calling on Congress to pass legislation to halt a march to war with Iran.
 
The combined groups, representing millions of Americans concerned about renewed threats of war with Iran, signals a strong desire for Congress to step up and block Trump from leading America into yet another war of choice.

“Last Fall, Americans voted for a new Congress to act as a co-equal branch of government that would finally serve as a check on this president and his reckless impulses,” said NIAC President Jamal Abdi. “Now Trump and his National Security Advisor John Bolton are taking this country to the brink of a completely avoidable military confrontation. It’s time for Congress to turn its words into action by passing legislation to stop Trump and Bolton from starting an illegal war.”
“President Trump’s chaos-first foreign policy centers around his penchant for turning challenges into crises,” said Win Without War Advocacy Director Erica Fein. “His Iran policy is no different: President Obama took us off the path to war, but now Trump and Bolton have put us back on it. It’s time for Congress to put the brakes on a Trump-Bolton war with Iran.”
“If the Trump administration were to launch a war of choice against Iran it would have devastating consequences for the United States, Israel and the entire region,” warned J Street head of government affairs Dylan Williams. “Congress must fulfill its constitutional responsibility by making absolutely clear that the president is not authorized to trigger a new conflagration in the Middle East.”

According to the letter,

“As the drumbeat for war grows louder, Congress must fulfill its Constitutional duty and enact further constraints to unequivocally prevent the administration from launching an unauthorized war.” The letter concludes, “The American people do not want another disastrous war of choice in the Middle East. Congress has the chance to stop a war before it starts. Please take action before it is too late.”

Please see full text here.

That Time John Bolton Said It’s Good to Lie About War

Caitline Johnstone
Activist Post

Journalist Whitney Webb recently tweeted a 2010 video clip I’d never seen before featuring US National Security Advisor John Bolton defending the use of deception in advancing military agendas, which highlights something we should all be paying attention to as Trump administration foreign policy becomes increasingly Boltonized. 

On a December 2010 episode of Fox News’ Freedom Watch, Bolton and the show’s host Andrew Napolitano were debating about recent WikiLeaks publications, and naturally the subject of government secrecy came up.

“Now I want to make the case for secrecy in government when it comes to the conduct of national security affairs, and possibly for deception where that’s appropriate,” Bolton said. “You know Winston Churchill said during World War Two that in wartime truth is so important it should be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies.”

“Do you really believe that?” asked an incredulous Napolitano.

“Absolutely,” Bolton replied.

“You would lie in order to preserve the truth?”

“If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it,” Bolton answered.

Read more

Insider Says Israel Poised to Stage False Flag Attack Against U.S. Targets to Start War with Iran

The Millennium Report

U.S. Military fighting yet another war to advance the Greater Israel project

If there is one cataclysmic train wreck happening in slow motion on the global geopolitical chessboard, it’s the Neocon-instigated war being waged by the Trump administration against Iran.  The financial terrorism and economic sabotage already inflicted on Iran by the U.S. have themselves been egregious acts of war.

Trump Administration Goes All Out to Wreck Iranian Economy

 

Truly, it does not get any more serious than this colossal foreign policy fiasco.

Once again, the apartheid state of Israel has successfully hijacked the U.S. Military, State Department and Intelligence Community in order to wage an unprovoked war of naked aggression against a sovereign state in the Middle East.

It’s of paramount importance to understand that this war-in-the-making is the culmination of a covert plan to advance the Greater Israel project.  As follows:

General Wesley Clark: “The US will attack 7 countries in 5 years” (Video)

 

Only with this critical understanding will such a transparently illegal, reckless and catastrophic war make any sense.  Catastrophic because such misguided  warmongering by the Neocons is guaranteed to trigger the hot phase of World War III.  Of course, the New World Order cabal is counting on exactly that eventuality.  See: The Only Remaining Option for the NWO Globalist Cabal is: World War III

The global crime syndicate known as the International Banking Cartel, which runs the perpetual war economy across the planet, knows that the end is very near for them.  The entire Global Economic & Financial System is teetering on the precipice of a total and final collapse.  Their only way out is war—a Third World War with which to implement the last stage of the NWO agenda—the establishment of a totalitarian One World Government.

Iran is the lynchpin in this insane scheme to plunge the world community of nations into chaos out of which the NWO cabal will fabricate a draconian communist order not too unlike the 20th century’s Soviet Union.  This is precisely why President Trump was ordered by his Neocon Zionist masters to form his stone-cold war cabinet of Bolton, Pompeo, Pence, Haspel, Abrams and Shanahan.  Each inveterate warmonger was hand-picked by Israel to develop and implement the war plans necessary to conquer Iran.

Read more

Death of Free Speech: Criticizing Israel Will Land You in Prison

Kurt Nimmo

Soon, this blog will be illegal.

No, I’m not selling drugs or peddling child pornography. I write about America’s wars and the primary objective of those illegal and immoral wars—to make Israel the hegemon of the Middle East along with Saudi Arabia. All US foreign policy in that region centers on those two nations.

The following may soon be classified as hate speech and anti-semitism (as increasingly criticism of the Jewish state and its Zionist political ideology are considered crimes). 

Jewish neocons found their way into the Reagan administration and later the Bush Junior White House and Pentagon. Huddled under the wing of Vice President Dick Cheney, they plotted to attack and destroy Israel’s enemies. Neocon ideologues strategized and published papers on these manufactured wars, most notably a paper presented to then Israeli president Bibi Netanyahu. It called for taking out Iraq and Syria. Israeli academics have written on this subject for decades. The nation’s early leaders engineered border provocations and false flag attacks (the Lavon Affair) to destabilize the region. Southern Lebanon is considered a valuable asset primarily for its water resources (e.g. “Operation Litani”) and the Golan Heights in Syria was occupied for its strategic value. 

Israel, of course, is unable to destroy its enemies, so that task is left to America and its neocons. The American people were lied into a war on Iraq. Both Israel and the US knew Saddam Hussein didn’t have the capability to threaten Israel militarily. Beyond its oil, Iraq held little strategic value for the US and its corporatocracy. However, it did have the ability to cause trouble, especially in regard to the Palestinians. 

Syria’s relationship with its Lebanese neighbor and its stubborn refusal to simply handover the occupied Golan to the Israelis is also a problem. It was one of several objectives behind a manufactured color revolution in Syria under the aegis of the “Arab Spring,” an objective that has thus far resulted in the murder of around 600,000 Syrians. 

The Bush era neocons (including John Bolton, now national security adviser, and Elliot Abrams, a key Bush coconspirator) had an ambitious laundry list of nations to be destroyed—Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and importantly Iran, the only serious challenger to Israel. The Obama administration added Libya and began covert operations in Africa. 

Trump took the baton from Obama after he told us he wasn’t into “nation-building” and was a populist “America First” noninterventionist. The American people were lied to again, but then this is now normal behavior. 

After 9/11 and years of aggressive war propaganda, it is now common for the American people to believe these lies. Meanwhile, endless diversion in the form of super-hyper and potentially violent partisanship between factions of the establishment political class keep most Americans distracted from larger issues—war and the bankster-rigged economy. It should be noted that criticism of central banks and monetary policy are also considered hateful antisemitism. 

In short, US foreign policy, directed by high-level neocons, is not conducted in the interest of the American people. It benefits Israel, which also takes billions every year from the American taxpayer.

Read more

Trump's Neocons See Erdogan As Their Ticket To A Region-Wide MidEast War

Mike Whitney
The Unz review

Turkish troops and armored units are massed along Turkey’s southern border awaiting orders to invade northern Syria. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to clear a ten mile-deep swath of land east of the Euphrates River in order to remove terrorist-linked militants (YPG) currently occupying the territory. The proposed offensive would put US Special Forces in the line of fire which significantly increases the likelihood of US casualties. If American troops are killed or wounded by the Turkish operation, Washington will respond in force leading to a potentially catastrophic face-off between the two NATO allies. The possibility of a violent clash between Turkey and the United States has never been greater than it is today.
 

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Turkey that any unilateral action in Syria would have “devastating consequences.” Pompeo’s comments were intended to intimidate Erdogan who stated on Tuesday that the military offensive would begin shortly after last weekend’s elections. If Erdogan proceeds with his plan, Pompeo will undoubtedly give the military the go-ahead for retaliatory attacks on the Turkish Army. This will either lead to a speedy retreat by Turkey or asymmetrical strikes on US strategic assets across the region. In any event, the fracas with Turkey is bound to widen the chasm between the two former allies forcing Erdogan to reconsider his commitment to the western alliance. Any further deterioration in relations between the US and Turkey could result in a dramatic shift in the global balance of power.

Washington’s problems with Erdogan began years before the current dust-up. The Turkish leader has always steered an independent foreign policy which has been a constant source of frustration for the White House. During the war in Iraq, Erdogan refused to allow the US to use Turkish air bases to conduct their operations. (Erdogan did not support the war.) Presently he is purchasing air defense systems from Russia (S-400), (which VP Mike Pence has strongly condemned), he has attended summits in Sochi with Moscow and Tehran in order to find a political settlement for the war in Syria, he has signed contracts with Gazprom that will make his country the energy hub of southern Europe, and he has been harshly critical of US support for the its Kurdish proxies in east Syria (the SDF) which is an offshoot of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), a group that is on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

Read more

“The Russians are Still Coming” “Without RussiaGate”: The “Fake News” Witch-hunt against the Independent Media

Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research

From one day to the next,  following the release of the Mueller report, the shaky RussiaGate consensus created by the corporate media has collapsed.  

What the Mueller investigation contends is that there is no proof that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential elections. 

The demise of the RussiaGate narrative, however, does not mean that the Trump administration will renew its relations with the Kremlin. “The Russians are still coming”… without RussiaGate. Russia is still portrayed as a threat to America’s National Security. 

In this regard, the objective of the Neocons has been achieved. The Trump administration, with its hawk team of  advisers including Pompeo and Bolton, not to mention Gina Haspel at the CIA, is towing the line. 

Corporate and Political Rivalries

The RussiaGate narrative was required to sustain the multibillion dollar contracts in favor of the military industrial complex including the 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program.

What was at stake in 2016 were fundamental rivalries within the US establishment marked by the clash between competing corporate (and political) factions, each of which was intent upon exerting control over the incoming US presidency.

In this regard,  Trump was not entirely in the pocket of the lobby groups. He was not a groomed politician. As a member of the business establishment, he had his own corporate sponsors and fund raisers. His stated foreign policy agenda including his “commitment” to revise Washington’s relationship with Moscow did not fully conform with the interests of the defence contractors.

Prior to the elections, a smear campaign was launched by the media on behalf of the  “Clinton faction”. At the height of the election campaign Trump was portrayed by the US media as  “an agent” of the Kremlin, a modern Manchurian candidate.  Barely a month before the November 8 2016 elections, former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leo Panetta  intimated that Trump represented a threat to National Security. The Atlantic (October 8, 2016),  described Trump is a “Modern Manchurian Candidate”. 

Read more