Wednesday, November 7, 2018


Paul Craig Roberts: What This Election Is Really About

Trump has been so harassed by the Establishment that he is having trouble thinking straight. 
Paul Craig Roberts
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I never cease to be amazed at the insouciance of Americans. Readers send me emails asking why I ever supported Trump when he was the Establishment’s candidate. If Trump was the Establishment’s candidate, why has the Establishment spent two years trying to destroy him?
The failure to put two and two together is extraordinary. Trump declared war on the Establishment throughout the presidential campaign and in his inaugural address.
As I wrote at the time, Trump vastly over-estimates the power of the president. He expected the Establishment, like his employees, to jump to his will, and he did not know Washington or who to appoint to support his goals. He has been totally defeated in his intention to normalize relations with Russia. Instead, we are faced with both Russia and China preparing for war.
In other words, the same outcome that Hillary would have achieved.
Trump has been so harassed by the Establishment that he is having trouble thinking straight. He was elected by “the deplorables” as the first non-Establishment candidate since when? You have to go back in history to find one. Perhaps Andrew Jackson. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were not the choice of the Democratic and Republican establishments, and the ruling establishments moved quickly to constrain both presidencies. The Democratic Establishment framed and removed both Carter’s budget director and chief of staff, depriving Carter of the kind of commitment he needed for his agenda. The Bush people that the Republican Establishment insisted be put in positions of power in the Reagan administration succeeded in blunting his reformist economic program and his determination to end the cold war. I fought both battles for Reagan, and I still have the bruises.
Trump is an outsider elected by “the deplorables” whose middle class jobs were offshored by America’s global corporations for the benefit only of the executives and large shareholders. A few people sold out the American middle class, which is shrinking away.
In the rest of the world, Trump’s true allies are the presidents of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, the former president of Ecuador, and the former president of Honduras, who was overthrown by “America’s First Black President,” the consequences of which are the caravan moving toward the US border. The Establishment has succeeded in so confusing Trump that he has declared the Establishment’s war against the non-establishment leaders in Latin America.
So what is this midterm US election about?
It is about whether “the deplorables” have been brainwashed by the Establishment’s media whores and fail to support Trump in the House and Senate elections. If the Democrats, whose politics is Identity Politics, get the House and/or Senate, Trump will be completely impotent. The Establishment hopes to drive the lesson home to every future presidential candidate to never again appeal to the people over the vested interests of the Establishment.
In America democracy is a scam. The oligarchy rules, and the people, no matter how they suffer under the oligarch’s rule, must submit and accept. No more presidential candidates, please, who represent the people. This is the lesson that the Establishment hopes to teach the rabble in the midterm elections.
What should this election be about? If America had an independent media, the election would be about the dangerous situation created by Washington that has caused two militarily powerful countries to prepare for war with the US. This is the most serious development of my lifetime. Everything President Reagan worked for has been overthrown for the material interests of the power and profit of the military/security complex.
If America had an independent media, the election would be about the American police state that, based on the 9/11 lie, the weapons of mass destruction lie, the use of chemical weapons lie, the Iranian nukes lie, the Russian invasion of Ukraine lie, was accepted by the insouciant Americans. Those responsible for these lies, which have caused massive war crimes, for which US administrations should be indicted, are feted and rich. The rest of us have experienced the loss of civil liberty and privacy. Any individual in the way of the police state is mowed down.
If America had an independent media, the election would be about the de-industrialization of the United States. Today, as this article makes clear—https://thesaker.is/the-pentagon-realised-what-it-has-done-the-chinese-put-the-us-army-on-its-knees/ —the offshoring of American manufacturing and industry has reduced the US military to dependence on Chinese suppliers.
And the Trump administration starts trouble with China!
If America had an independent media, the election would be about the 20 years of US and NATO/EU war crimes against Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen, and US and NATO support for Israel’s war crimes against the remnants of the Palestinian people, and US and NATO/EU support for the neo-nazi regime established by the Obama regime in Ukraine to commit war crimes against the breakaway Russian provinces, the populations of which refuse to become victims of Washington’s overthrow of the democratic elected Ukrainian government and installation by “America’s first black president” of a neo-nazi regime.
If America had an independent media, the election would be about the orchastrated demonization of Iran. The completely stupid dope that Trump appointed Secretary of State just declared (the utter fool should not be permitted to open his mouth) that Washington was going to drive Iran into the ground unless the government agreed to behave like a normal state.
What does Pompeo mean by a “normal state.” He means a state that takes its marching orders from Washington. Iran has not invaded any country. The government in power is the continuation of the government that overthrew the Shah, a dictator imposed on Iran by Washington when Washington and London overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran.
What the despicable Pompeo is really saying is that Iran has to go, because Iran, like Syria, is in the way of Israel’s expansion into southern Lebanon, because Iran and Syria supply the Hezbollah militia, which has twice defeated Israeli invasions of southern Lebanon. The vaunted Israeli army is only good for murdering women and children in the disarmed Gaza ghetto.
If America had an independent media, someone would ask Pompeo precisely what Iran is doing that warrants Washington unilaterally, in the face of opposition of the European, Russian, and Chinese signatures to the Iran Nuclear Agreement, pulling out of the agreement and imposing sanctions that no other country on the planet, except Israel, supports?
But, of course, America has no independent media. It has a collection of whores known as NPR, Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, MSCBS, Fox News, etc.
Without an honest and independent media, there is no accountability of government. America has no honest and independent media. Therefore, in America there is no accountability of government.
“The deplorables” are faced with a dilemma. The president they elected has been overcome by the establishment and cannot represent them. Instead, Trump gives his supporters warmonger John Bolton as National Security Advisor and warmonger Pompeo as US Secretary of State. He might as well have appointed Adolf Hitler. In fact, Hitler was a more reasonable person.
So again, America is having an election in which nothing of any importance is discussed.
Unless the American people rise up in armed rebellion, they are finished as a free people, and, of course, they cannot rise up in armed rebellion. Not so much because the police and every agency of the government has been militarized as because Jewish cultural Marxism and the Democratic Party’s Identity Policics have the American people disorganized and at one another’s throats. Cultural Marxism and Identity Politics have divided the American population into victims and victimizers. The true victimizers and true victims are not part of the picture, which is a construction that serves ideological agendas. It is not the oligarchy that is the victimizer, but the Trump-voting white male. It is not the multi-billionaires, but the marginalized former manufacturing and industrial work force that is the source of oppression. This former work force is black and white, but the Democratic Party’s Identity Politics has blacks and whites at each other’s throats.
My conclusion is that America is doomed. The people, with few exceptions, are not smart enough to continue to exist. Perhaps the outcome of the elections tomorrow will change my mind. If the vote goes to the Establishment, all is lost.
http://theduran.com/paul-craig-roberts-what-this-election-is-really-about/

Saudi Regime Survives but Enters the Time of Troubles



Saudi Regime Survives but Enters the Time of Troubles

Saudi Regime Survives but Enters the Time of Troubles


In a sensational disclosure quoting “intelligence sources”, former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer wrote in the Financial Review newspaper on Sunday that the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi who was murdered on October 2 in Turkey was far from a “bleeding heart liberal” but was a seasoned intelligence agent and a sympathizer of the Muslim Brotherhood working on regime change in his country.
Downer wrote: “To add to the complexity of the story, the Brotherhood is supported by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Qataris… So Jamal Khashoggi – a former Saudi intelligence agent, a man who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood and a sworn opponent of (Saudi Crown Prince) MBS' reform program – was in the process of setting up a centre to promote the ideology of the MB. He was setting it up in Turkey with Qatari money. The Saudis wanted to stop him. In September they offered him $9 million to return to Saudi Arabia and to live there unhindered. They wanted him out of play. Khashoggi refused and the rest you know. The Saudis killed him.”
What has been so far in the realm of intuitive deduction now becomes actual fact. Downer’s disclosure completely transforms the narrative about Khashoggi’s death and it is bound to be hugely consequential.
Assuming that Downer’s “intelligence sources” were Australian, it must be factored in that Australia is a member of the highly privileged 5-nation intelligence alliance, Five Eyes, alongside the US, Canada, UK and New Zealand. The Five Eyes agencies are obliged to share by default all intelligence, including raw intelligence (and even techniques related to the acquisition of such intelligence.)
Suffice to say, it’s out of the question that the intelligence on the Muslim Brotherhood project for regime change in Saudi Arabia involving Khashoggi, Turkey and Qatar was not available with the CIA and MI6 as well. Saudi Arabia is a key ally of the US and yet, are we to believe that the CIA and the MI6 simply sat on such sensitive intelligence?
That is to say, a tantalizing proposition pops up: The CIA and MI6 were covertly backing Khashoggi’s project to change the regime in Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, it is obvious that the American media commentators who are known to have close links with the US intelligence establishment went ballistic no sooner that it transpired by the evening of October 2 that Khashoggi who walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier in the day had failed to come out of the compound.
The hysteria whipped up over the incident right from Day 1 in such a sustained fashion is unprecedented. The Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal – son of a former king and cousin of the crown prince, a former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to both the US and Britain, as well as a once-close associate of Khashoggi’s – asked recently with indignation why there should have been such brouhaha at all.
Turki said with biting sarcasm that “people in glass houses should not cast stones. Countries that have tortured and incarcerated innocent people” and “launched a war that killed many thousands . . . based on fabricated information, should be humble in their regard to others,” he said, in a clear reference to US counterterrorism policy and the invasion of Iraq.
The bottom line is that the explosive anger and fury of the “Deep State” in America over the death of Khashoggi can only be understood with Downer’s intelligence input – namely, that Khashoggi was a priceless “asset” of the US intelligence establishment and the Saudis simply eliminated him.
Now, if the “Deep State” was promoting Khashoggi, President Donald Trump was either unaware of it or was deliberately kept in the dark. The point is, Trump seems to be in splendid isolation even today in his aversion to punishing the Saudi regime for Khashoggi’s murder.
Trump is openly evasive although Turkish President Erdogan even penned an op-Ed in the Washington Post newspaper in the weekend alleging that Saudi leadership “at the highest levels” was involved in Khashoggi’s murder.  
Of course, this is not the first time in US political history that the “Deep State” would have acted behind the back of an incumbent president. But then, Trump is different from Dwight Eisenhower or John Kennedy. And he staunchly believes that nothing should be done to destabilize Saudi Arabia.
Under the circumstances, Downer’s intelligence input will work just fine for Trump if he wants to shake off the pressure from the “Deep State” which has been attempting to force his hands against the Saudi regime.
Coupled with the fact that Israeli lobby has also waded into the Khashoggi affair arguing against any US moves against the Israel-friendly Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the odds are heavily favoring Trump’s policy of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” against the Saudi regime.
However, the US intelligence establishment is smarting from the humiliation meted out by the Saudi regime and is unlikely to retreat in embarrassment. The high probability is that it will wage war by other means – until Islamic democracy prevails in Saudi Arbia.
Bruce Riedel, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, who served for three decades in the CIA, told the New Yorker magazine last week: “There is no political way out (over Khashoggi affair), except through violence.” It is an ominous remark by an ace intelligence operative of yesteryears who knows Saudi Arabia like the back of his hand.
The New Yorker report by Dexter Filkins, a Pulitzer Prize winner and acclaimed author with long experience in reporting from the frontlines of Middle Eastern hotspots, concludes: “Even if—especially if—M.B.S. hangs on to his position, it seems likely that the Saudi royal family, and Saudi Arabia more generally, are entering a dangerous period.”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/11/06/saudi-regime-survives-but-enters-time-troubles.html

US-Zwischenwahlen: Hohe Wahlbeteiligung und Rekordsummen an Wahlkampfspenden

US-Zwischenwahlen: Hohe Wahlbeteiligung und Rekordsummen an Wahlkampfspenden
Die Zwischenwahlen in den USA sind vorbei, die Resultate werden ausgewertet. Nicht nur eine hohe Wahlbeteiligung wurde verzeichnet. Die Höhe der gespendeten Gelder für beide Lager ist ebenfalls bemerkenswert. Auch deutsche Firmen waren nicht kleinlich.
Rund 113 Millionen Menschen sollen Medienberichten zufolge ihre Stimme bei den Zwischenwahlen in den USA abgegeben haben. Das entspreche einer Quote von rund 48 Prozent, berichtete der amerikanische Sender CNN am Mittwoch. Vor vier Jahren waren es nur rund 83 Millionen US-Bürger, die ihre Stimme abgegeben hatten, was einer Beteiligung von knapp 37 Prozent entsprach.
Die Republikanische Partei des US-Präsidenten Donald Trump verlor am Dienstag die Mehrheit im Repräsentantenhaus, konnten aber die im Senat verteidigen. Die scheinbar komplett zerstrittenen politischen Lager konnten viele Wähler mobilisieren. Durch das radikalisierte politische Umfeld und ein sehr spannendes Rennen flossen laut der Nachrichtenseite Axios.com auch Rekordsummen an Spendengeldern an beide Lager.
US-Präsident Donald Trump während einer Rede in der Großen Halle des Volkes in Peking, China, 9. November 2017
Demokraten profitierten von Spenderinnen und Kleinspendern 
Nicht nur die Republikaner konnte sich über hohen Summen an gespendetem Geld freuen, sondern vor allem die Demokraten. Einem Bericht der auf Wahlkampffinanzierung spezialisierten Organisation Center for Responsive Politics zufolge hätten sie vor allem vom Enthusiasmus vieler Spenderinnen profitiert. Auch bei Kleinspendern hätten sie die Nase vorn. 
Bei der Zwischenwahl sollen für den Wahlkampf insgesamt 5,2 Milliarden Dollar (rund 4,6 Milliarden Euro) ausgegeben worden sein. Im Vergleich zur Abstimmung von vor vier Jahren sei das ein Anstieg um 35 Prozent. Beim Rennen um die Sitze im Abgeordnetenhaus, einer der beiden Kammern im US-Kongress, hätten die Demokraten mit Wahlkampfspenden in Höhe von 951 Millionen Dollar die Republikaner mit 637 Millionen Dollar hinter sich gelassen, heißt es. Auch bei Spenden für den Senat lägen die Demokraten vorn. 
Deutsche Bank eher für Republikaner, SAP hingegen für Demokraten 
Auch führende deutsche Unternehmen waren nicht kleinlich. Ãœber ihre US-Tochterunternehmen haben sie laut einem Medienbericht großzügige Geldsummen an Wahlkämpfer verteilt. Nach Berechnungen der Tageszeitung Die Welt spendeten 17 deutsche Firmen mindestens 2,63 Millionen Dollar. 
Die größte Summe kam laut Bericht aus dem Chemiekonzern BASF. Das Unternehmen war mit 632.000 Dollar der drittgrößte ausländische Firmenspender. Dahinter folgten die Deutsche Telekom (604.000 Dollar), Fresenius Medical Care (296.000 Dollar), Bayer (264.000 Dollar) und Siemens (168.000 Dollar).
Die deutschen Firmen unterstützten laut Bericht vor allem das Lager der Republikaner. So soll die Deutschen Bankrund 70 Prozent ihrer Zuwendungen den Konservativen gegeben haben. Der IT-Konzern SAP bevorzugte aber eher die Demokraten.
https://deutsch.rt.com/wirtschaft/78924-usa-zwischenwahlen-wahlbeteiligung-und-wahlkapmfspenden/