The Situation in Syria is Very, Very Dangerous

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In case you haven’t been paying attention, the recent Syria ceasefire lasted barely a week. While all sides engaged in the conflict were accusing the other of violating the agreement from the beginning, it really unraveled when U.S. forces bombed Syrian government forces, killing at least 62.

As CNN reported at the time:

Hours after US-led coalition airstrikes reportedly killed dozens of Syrian troops, the US and Russian ambassadors to the United Nations chastised each other outside an emergency Security Council meeting.

The strike occurred Saturday in an eastern part of Syria that is not a part of a delicate and nearly week-old ceasefire. The US military said it was targeting ISIS militants and if it hit Syrian troops, it was an accident. 

Russia and Syria said the strikes prove Washington and its allies are sympathetic to ISIS. 

The Russian military said 62 Syrian soldiers were killed near Deir Ezzor Airport, according to state media. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 83 and said at least 120 soldiers were wounded.

A fews day after this, Syrian forces launched an attack on the city of Aleppo, and we now find ourselves in an extraordinarily dangerous situation.

Reuters reports:

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Did Trump Support the Iraq War or Not?

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The way Lester Holt “corrected” Donald Trump at Monday’s debate (as he was clearly instructed to do) regarding the Iraq War, you’d think the answer to whether he supported it or not was clear-cut. The truth is, it may not be that simple.

Joe Concha (who has been doing some great work by the way), just wrote an excellent article at The Hill exploring the topic in detail. Here’s what he found:

Question: Did Donald Trump oppose or support the Iraq War?

Before answering, a quick note on why providing clarity around a relatively simple question: It’s rare that cooler heads can prevail in this media world we live in. Lines in the sand have never been drawn between blue and red media as vividly as they are now. And as a result, simple logic and lucidity is supplied less and less to drawing a verdict on whether a story is true or not.

Exhibit A today is the aforementioned question: Did Trump — as he insists — oppose the Iraq War?

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More Troubling Evidence That Hillary Clinton Will Start WW3 – Part 2

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Back in June, I published a piece titled, More Troubling Evidence That Hillary Clinton Will Start WW3. In it, we learned the following:

Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official whom Defense One calls “the woman expected to run the Pentagon under Hillary Clinton,” this week advocated for “sending more American troops into combat against ISIS and the Assad regime than the Obama administration has been willing to commit.” In an interview with that outlet, Flournoy “said she would direct U.S. troops to push President Bashar al-Assad’s forces out of southern Syria and would send more American boots to fight the Islamic State in the region.” She had previously “condemned the Obama administration’s ISIS policy as ineffectual,” denouncing it as “under-resourced.”

This week, Flournoy specifically advocated what she called “limited military coercion” to oust Assad. In August 2014, Obama announced what he called “limited airstrikes in Iraq” — and they’re still continuing almost two years later. Also note the clinical euphemism Flournoy created — “military coercion” — for creating a “no-bomb zone” that would entail “a declaratory policy backed up by the threat of force. ‘If you bomb the folks we support, we will retaliate using standoff means to destroy [Russian] proxy forces, or, in this case, Syrian assets,’” she said. Despite D.C. conventional wisdom that Obama is guilty of “inaction” in Syria, he has sent substantial aid, weapons, and training to Syrian rebels while repeatedly bombing ISIS targets in Syria.

Even U.S. military officials have said that these sorts of no-fly or no-bomb guarantees Flournoy is promising — which Hillary Clinton herself has previously advocated — would risk a military confrontation with RussiaObama’s defense secretary, Ash Carter, told a Senate hearing last December that the policy Clinton advocates “would require ‘substantial’ ground forces and would put the U.S. military at risk of a direct confrontation with the Syrian regime and Russian forces.” Nonetheless, the Pentagon official highly likely to be Clinton’s defense secretary is clearly signaling their intention to proceed with escalated military action. The carnage in Syria is horrifying, but no rational person should think that U.S. military action will be designed to “help Syrians.”

While that post focused on a likely massive escalation of U.S. militarism in the Middle East under a President Clinton, most Americans remain dangerously unaware of the extreme bad blood between her and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

For some insight on the topic, let’s examine a few excerpts from an article published earlier today at Reuters:

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This is What Hillary Clinton’s Advisors Really Think of the American Public

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Back in 2014, we received confirmation of what politicians and their “very smart” advisers think of the American public. Namely, that we’re a bunch of stupid slobs who need to be tricked into agreeing to elitists legislation that always ends up working against us. I’m specifically referring to comments from Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber exposed in the post, Video of the Day – Obamacare Architect Credits “Lack of Transparency” and “Stupidity of the American People” for Passage of Healthcare Law. Here’s some of what we learned:

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More Troubling Evidence That Hillary Clinton Will Start WW3

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Yesterday, I published a post warning readers about the increasingly dangerous situation on the ground in Syria, and detailed why a Hillary Clinton presidency will quickly usher in World War 3. Here it is in case you missed it: Is the Syrian War About to Experience a Major Escalation?

Meanwhile, the always excellent Glenn Greenwald published a piece at the Intercept which further proves the point. What follows are a few disturbing excerpts from his article, Hillary Clinton’s Likely Pentagon Chief Already Advocating for More Bombing and Intervention:

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Is the Syrian War About to Experience a Major Escalation?

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We’re going to war — either hybrid in nature to break the Russian state back to its 1990s subordination, or a hot war (which will destroy our country). Our citizens should know this, but they don’t because our media is dumbed down in its “Pravda”-like support for our “respectable,” highly aggressive government. We are being led, as C. Wright Mills said in the 1950s, by a government full of “crackpot realists: in the name of realism they’ve constructed a paranoid reality all their own.” Our media has credited Hillary Clinton with wonderful foreign policy experience, unlike Trump, without really noting the results of her power-mongering. She’s comparable to Bill Clinton’s choice of Cold War crackpot Madeleine Albright as one of the worst Secretary of States we’ve had since … Condi Rice? Albright boasted, “If we have to use force it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.”

Hillary’s record includes supporting the barbaric “contras” against the Nicaraguan people in the 1980s, supporting the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, supporting the ongoing Bush-Iraq War, the ongoing Afghan mess, and as Secretary of State the destruction of the secular state of Libya, the military coup in Honduras, and the present attempt at “regime change” in Syria. Every one of these situations has resulted in more extremism, more chaos in the world, and more danger to our country. Next will be the borders of Russia, China, and Iran. Look at the viciousness of her recent AIPAC speech (don’t say you haven’t been warned). Can we really bear to watch as Clinton “takes our alliance [with Israel] to the next level”? Where is our sense of proportion? Cannot the media, at the least, call her out on this extremism? The problem, I think, is this political miasma of “correctness” that dominates American thinking (i.e. Trump is extreme, therefore Hillary is not).

– From the post: “We’re Going to War” – Oliver Stone Opines on the Dangerous Extremism of Neocon Hillary Clinton

The risk of a very serious escalation to the hostilities in Syria has increased materially in recent days. A huge concern to all Americans should be the insane cable in which 51 State Department war hawks recently urged President Obama to bomb government forces of Bashar al-Assad.

In case you aren’t aware of this disturbing recent development, the Wall Street Journal reported:

BEIRUT—Dozens of State Department officials this week protested against U.S. policy in Syria, signing an internal document that calls for targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat Islamic State.

The “dissent channel cable” was signed by 51 State Department officers involved with advising on Syria policy in various capacities, according to an official familiar with the document. The Wall Street Journal reviewed a copy of the cable, which repeatedly calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian government in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year.

Obama administration officials have expressed concern that attacking the Assad regime could lead to a direct conflict with Russia and Iran.

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Cornel West – “The Neo-Liberal Sleepwalking in Black America is Coming to an End”

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“I think, my dear brother, the chickens are coming home to roost,” West told Smiley. “We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”

“I think we have to be very honest, let us not be deceived: Nixon, Bush, Obama, they’re war criminals,” West said. “They have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they’re suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals. The law is suspended for them, but the law applies for the rest of us. You and I, brother Tavis, if we kill an innocent person we go to jail, and we’re going to be in there forever.” 

– From the 2013 post: Cornel West: Obama is a “War Criminal”

Cornel West is an articulate and astute cultural and political observer who’s never afraid to go against the grain and challenge the entrenched and monumentally corrupt status quo. As such, I always try to make a point of hearing what he has to say. His latest interview is no exception.

The following chat with George Souvlis was published yesterday at Open Democracy, and is replete with some unforgettable quotes.

Enjoy.

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Neocon Hillary Clinton Launches “Republicans Against Trump”

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I want to conclude with the most important reason of all not to vote for Hillary Clinton come November. If you do, you will be rubber-stamping everything the Democratic Party and the mainstream media has done during this election cycle. Voting for Hillary Clinton will send a message to the Democratic Party that change is unnecessary. That the status quo can kick you, spit on you and laugh in your face for months straight and get away with it.

Donald Trump is not your problem. Of course, Sanders supporters cannot actually consider voting for the man, but don’t let anyone tell you a vote for a third-party candidate or no vote at all is a “vote for Donald Trump.” The fault is not yours if Trump gets elected. The fault lies with the DNC and the media.

Most importantly, all Sanders supporters need to understand that if you sacrifice your principles and shift to Clinton just to defeat Trump, you have psychologically taken yourself out of the real fight to come. By supporting her to defeat someone who you think is worse you are harming yourself and your ability to think clearly and engage in activism going forward. The best advice I can give anyone is to vote third party or sit this charade out. As such you’ll remain engaged in the real fight, and fully prepared to act as much needed resistance to whichever authoritarian is elected, Trump or Clinton.

– From yesterday’s post: Journalistic Malpractice – How Hillary Clinton “Clinched” the Nomination on a Day Nobody Voted

Donald Trump may have won the Republican nomination, but the neocons still got one of their own in the Presidential contest.

Politico reports:

Hillary Clinton is wasting no time trying to woo Republicans turned off by Donald Trump now that she’s the presumptive Democratic nominee, as her campaign has launched a new website aimed at courting disaffected GOP voters.

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Jeffrey Sachs Destroys Hillary Clinton’s Foreign Policy Speech

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Hillary’s record includes supporting the barbaric “contras” against the Nicaraguan people in the 1980s, supporting the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, supporting the ongoing Bush-Iraq War, the ongoing Afghan mess, and as Secretary of State the destruction of the secular state of Libya, the military coup in Honduras, and the present attempt at “regime change” in Syria. Every one of these situations has resulted in more extremism, more chaos in the world, and more danger to our country. Next will be the borders of Russia, China, and Iran. Look at the viciousness of her recent AIPAC speech (don’t say you haven’t been warned). Can we really bear to watch as Clinton “takes our alliance [with Israel] to the next level”? Where is our sense of proportion? Cannot the media, at the least, call her out on this extremism? The problem, I think, is this political miasma of “correctness” that dominates American thinking (i.e. Trump is extreme, therefore Hillary is not).

– From the post: “We’re Going to War” – Oliver Stone Opines on the Dangerous Extremism of Neocon Hillary Clinton

Jeffrey Sachs has been on a roll lately. His latest might be his best one yet.

Published at the Huffington PostClinton’s Speech Shows That Only Sanders Is Fit for the Presidency, is an absolute must read. Here it goes:

Hillary Clinton’s recent foreign policy speech was an attack on Donald Trump but was also a reminder that Clinton is a deeply flawed and worrisome candidate. Her record as Secretary of State was one of the worst in modern U.S. history; her policies have enmeshed America in new Middle East wars, rising terrorism and even a new Cold War with Russia. Of the three leading candidates, only Bernie Sanders has the sound judgment to avoid further war and to cooperate with the rest of the world. 

Clinton is intoxicated with American power. She has favored one war of choice after the next: bombing Belgrade (1999); invading Iraq (2003); toppling Qaddafi (2011); funding Jihadists in Syria (2011 till now). The result has been one bloodbath after another, with open wounds until today fostering ISIS, terrorism, and mass refugee flows. 

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Shaun King of The Daily News – “Why I’m Leaving the Democratic Party”

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In a February post titled, It’s Not Just the GOP – The Democratic Party is Also Imploding, I noted the following: 

Yes, of course, Trump winning the GOP nomination marks the end of the party as we know it. After all, some neocons are already publicly and actively throwing their support behind Hillary. While this undoubtably represents a major turning point in U.S. political history, many pundits have yet to appreciate that the exact same thing is happening within the Democratic Party. It’s just not completely obvious yet.

While it might sound strange, a coronation of Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary will mark the end of the party as we know it. There’s been a lot written about the “Sanders surge,” with much of it revolving around Hillary Clinton’s extreme personal weakness as a candidate. While this is indisputable, it’s also a convenient way for the status quo to exempt itself from fault and discount genuine grassroots anger. I’m of the view that Sanders’ support is more about people liking him than them disliking Hillary, particularly when it comes to registered Democrats. He’s not merely seen as the “least bad choice.” People really do like him.

The Sanders appeal is twofold. He is seen as unusually honest and consistent for someone who’s held elected office for much of his life, plus he advocates a refreshingly anti-establishment view on core issues that matter to an increasing number of Americans. These include militarism, Wall Street bailouts, a two-tiered justice system, the prohibitive cost of college education, healthcare insecurity and a “rigged economy.” While Hillary is being forced to pay lip service to these issues, everybody knows she doesn’t mean a word of it. She means it less than Obama meant it in 2008, and Obama really didn’t mean it.

Hillary is the embodiment of a sick and detested status quo. She stands for nothing, is nothing, and a vote for her all but guarantees both murder abroad and oligarchy at home. I think a large number of Bernie Sanders supporters understand this and won’t be going off silently into that quiet voting booth to commit ethical self-sacrifice despite the terrifying prospects of a Trump presidency. I think they’ll stay home, but they won’t sit there passively. They’ll be seething inside, and many will renounce the Democratic party forever. Many rank and file Republicans already came to such a conclusion years ago, which is precisely why the nomination was wide open for a man like Trump to capture. Democrats will do the same, and before you know it, political pundits will be tripping over each other to write about the death of the Democratic Party.

Fast forward three months, and the evidence of this reality is starting to flood in. As I’ve maintained for what seems like forever, a very significant percentage of Bernie Sanders supporters will not go quietly into that corrupt, neocon Hillary Clinton night. People have seen enough. They’ve had enough.

The latest proof come to us via New York Daily News columnist Shaun King. What he writes isn’t particularly earth-shattering or novel, but it carries weight for me due to Mr. King’s political history. As he shares with readers in his latest post, Here’s Why I’m Leaving the Democratic Party After This Presidential Election and You Should Too:

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