Super-Swells Clump Together In Davos, Switzerland, For Annual Preening Ritual

The world's filthyist rich and various country bosses- presidents and prime ministers who are  invariably referred to as "world leaders" by propagandist stooges- are having their annual mega-ego bath at the pretentiously-named "World Economic Forum" in the extremely expensive town of Davos, Switzerland. (Valet parking for private jets. Just kidding. I think...)

The U.S. Fuher ("Leader"), Donald J. "Jackass" Trump, is in attendance.

This utterly pointless "conference" exists for the sole purpose of affirming the self-importance of these creeps. Nothing of substance is ever done at this annual advertisement for how special and great these megaparasites and their political enablers are. Speeches consisting of the most self-serving and empty rhetoric are delivered and instantly forgotten. The "world press" (capitalist propaganda organs) pretend something significant worthy of "coverage" is occurring, shining a flattering spotlight on the hyper-rich and the country bosses as they genuflect to their masters.

All in all, a disgusting spectacle of self-regard putting super-parasites and certified scumbags on a pedestal.

 

 A Forum Fit For An Emperor!

 

Pompeo's Hitlerian Demands On Iran

In the wake of the brazen U.S. assassination of Iran's leading general, Qassem Soleimani, a hero of the Iraq-Iran war and head of the so-called Qods Force, by a missile strike from a drone attack on an international airport located in a sovereign nation and putative U.S. ally (the client state of Iraq, conquered and subjugated on the orders of U.S. emperor George W. Bush in 2003), now is a good time to review the outstanding U.S. demands against Iran. [U.S. media are spelling it Qassem, the BBC and Wikipedia, have Qasem.]

Trump's handpicked Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has a list of 12 outstanding demands against Iran. These are preconditions to the U.S. deigning to even TALK to Iran about the U.S. ceasing its relentless economic warfare against that country. This warfare is euphemistically called "economic sanctions." In fact they are total warfare, barring Iran from the international banking system (a system controlled by the U.S.- with the rest of the world's nations supinely acceding to this financial hegemony by the U.S.), and including the publicly stated goal of preventing Iran from selling ANY oil whatsoever outside its borders. Again, the other 200 or so allegedly sovereign nations of the world, including large, powerful ones like China, have all knuckled under to U.S. diktat and ceased buying oil from Iran, at least openly. If this isn't global domination, I don't know what is.

Under the "principle" that it is criminal to go against U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. government ordered Canada to arrest a top executive of China's premiere high tech company, Huawei, for violating U.S. anti-Iran sanctions- i.e. not participating in the U.S. economic war on Iran.  Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and the daughter of the company boss, was tracked by the U.S. global secret police surveillance system as she flew to Canada, where she was held at the airport, her luggage "searched" for 3 hours without explanation, and then was arrested on a U.S. extradition "request." (Really an order. Canada is a virtual satrapy of the U.S.) Her alleged "crime" is violating U.S. sanctions against Iran. You see, if the U.S. decides to wage economic warfare against another country, it demands that all the other nations in the world participate in that war. In other words, the U.S. dictates foreign policy for all other nations. And lacking political or moral integrity, those nations make themselves U.S. lackeys and obey. Because they refuse to resist U.S. power, even though collectively they obviously could do so. (Even in some cases individually, as China could.)

Oh, and the U.S. applies its laws not just within its own borders, but over the entire planet earth. That's how Meng Wanzhou could be "guilty" of breaking U.S. law while OUTSIDE the U.S.

Meng has been held in Canada for over a year as Canada is the rope in a tug of war between China and the U.S. Canada allowed her out of jail but confined to Canada after China retaliated against Canada by jailing a couple of Canadian citizens. (Labeled "hostages" by the U.S. propaganda system.)

I should mention so as not to be misunderstood: I am NOT a supporter of the Iranian theocracy. As a lifelong atheist, democrat, and pro-human rights person, I have no truck with that regime. But contrary to its self-deluding propaganda, the U.S. is the opposite of a paragon of virtue. It is one of history's most aggressive empires which has committed innumerable atrocities and crimes against humanity through its history, starting with its foundational principles, genocide and slavery.  Moreover this is not about taking sides. As always, I strive for the objectivity that is sorely lacking in most public commentary, most people's minds, and certainly in propaganda.

I call these demands "Hitlerian" because of their extremism, and because the target of the demands would find them virtually impossible to accept. Hitler made such demands with a deliberate goal of having an excuse for war when his demands were rejected. Trump claims not to want war with Iran, but he has surrounded himself with a coterie of imperialist fanatics who DO want war with Iran, such as the recently-cashiered John Bolton. It's been reported that Trump ordered the assassination of Soleimani

Here now are the Trump-Pompeo Demands On Iran. To call them "sweeping" is a gross understatement. Notice that eleven of the twelve begin with the words "Iran must." "Must" is a demand word.

In perpetuity! I guess that means until the end of time.

I'll just note in passing that the U.S. has thousands of nuclear weapons, and Israel has hundreds. Also even the CIA concluded that Iran was NOT trying to build nuclear weapons. However I believe they wanted to have the option to create them if they felt it necessary at some future point. Otherwise it makes no sense to incur the huge expense of money and energy to building underground facilities deep under mountains to prevent Israel from blowing them up (as Israel blew up atomic reactors in Iraq and Syria) with thousands of centrifuges, just to enrich uranium which it could easily purchase from Russia, for example.

By the way, Iran only ever enriched to 20%. allowed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). For bomb-making purposes, uranium has to be enriched to 90% or more. Under the agreement Iran on one side and the Obama regime, Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and China on the other, Iran turned over virtually all its enriched uranium, mothballed its centrifuges used for enrichment, and agreed to intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Trump tore up the agreement and reimposed sanctions, with the avowed aimed of strangling the Iranian economy to force Iran to make a new deal with Trump. (Imperialist thugs like John Bolton and perhaps Michael Pompeo also wanted the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the regime in response to this foreign attack on their country and their lives. It's a strategy the U.S. is also using against Venezuela, making people's lives miserable to destabilize an unwanted government, has used against Cuba since 1959, that Nixon used against Chile from 1970-73 when he ordered CIA director Richard Helms to "make the economy scream," and in other places at other times.)

Even though Iran is entitled under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation 

                                       Treaty to enrich uranium to the 20% level, as I mentioned.

Meaning U.S. spies will gain access to every single military base, command and control center, etc. 

Just as they did during the UN inspection regime inside Iraq after the first Gulf War of 1991. 

We know this from a leading member of that team, former U.S. Marine Major Scott Ritter.

Iran isn't allowed to have missiles. Just its enemies can: Israel, Saudi Arabia, 

and the U.S.A. That's reasonable. Why wouldn't Iran agree to THAT?

Including all enemy spies. Because some of those prisoners certainly are. Meanwhile the U.S. will continue to imprison

 Iranians for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran, "espionage," and whatever, and keep those now in prison locked up.

Because anyone who resists Israeli oppression is a "terrorist." Iran must surrender the region to Israeli hegemony. And of course the U.S. is free to continue aiding Israel in every possible way, as an accomplice to the oppression of the Palestinians and the periodic destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure. And the U.S. can support any actual terrorists it likes, such as the anti-Iranian MEK. And Israel can keep assassinating Iran's nuclear scientists, if it so chooses.

That actually would be a good thing. Those militias have in the past few months slaughtered hundreds of protesters against the corrupt and venal Iraqi "government," and wounded thousands. They have also "disappeared" some, U.S.-death-squad style.

Now if only the U.S. would respect Iraq's sovereignty. After murdering Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and eight others right in the Baghdad, Iraq, airport, the Iraqi legislature voted to kick out the thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq, and Trump himself responded with contempt. There's also a couple of hundred other nations whose sovereignty the U.S. regularly tramples.

The Houthi tribesmen overthrew the very weak "government" of Yemen starting in 2014. The Saudis decided this internal Yemeni power struggle was their business, and picked the overthrown president as their choice to rule Yemen. So for years, to place their chosen puppet back in his seat,w the U.S. and Saudi Arabia (and the UAE until very recently) have waged a relentless war against Yemen, committing war crimes on a daily basis, bombing mosques, hospitals, schools, apartment blocks, and so on, instituting a naval blockade, causing a massive cholera epidemic, and a famine. The Obama regime participated in this criminal enterprise, not only selling all the bombs and missiles used to attack Yemen- the Saudis and Emiratis already owned the U.S.-made warplanes they needed, and the U.S. trains their pilots- but even providing targeting information and having U.S. Air Force aerial tankers refuel the Saudis planes on their attack missions. Obama sold tens of billions of arms to the Saudis, and Trump tried to outdo Obama in evil with more arms sales. "Great" Britain, with a hunger for blood money, has also sold significant quantities of weapons to the Saudi "royals" for their war on Yemen.

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world. Thus we see the ubiquitous pattern of the U.S. waging class warfare on a global scale against the world's poor.

 Yemeni enemy of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia gets what he has coming.

The UN has determined that a Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from hunger or disease 

caused by the Saudi-U.S.-UK-UAE war on Yemen. They probably deserve it.
They might grow up to be "terrorists."

By bombing this schoolbus, the valiant Saudi allies of the U.S. took out 40 terrorist school children, along with eleven adults (who by definition were terrorists because U.S. bombs killed them). The Saudis couldn't have done it without the U.S. Thank you, Obama Trump U.S. Congress!

Multiply this by one million or so, and you have the history of the U.S. Now do you understand why it is undeniable that the U.S. Government is a criminal enterprise? It is only because your mind is marinated in a sea of propaganda that you don't see it, feel it, know it.

Now let's return to those oh-so-reasonable and justified demands that Pompeo-Trump have pending against Iran:

This demand is actually morally sound. Iran is helping the vile Assad dictatorship crush the rebellion of the Syrian people by wholesale slaughter, systematic bombing of medical facilities, torture and atrocities on a massive scale. Of course it isn't morality that motivates this demand, nor concern for the Syrian people, but motives needn't be pure for an action or demand to be a good thing.

This one sure is ironic. When the Taliban fanatics ruled Afghanistan, they murdered a group of Iranian diplomats. The Taliban were only in power at all thanks to the U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi buildup of the most medieval, reactionary forces in Afghanistan to bleed the Soviets. The Soviets were lured into invading by President Jimmy Carter's sinister righthand man, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Pole with a tremendous lifelong hatred of Russians. Years later Brzezinski made a slip and boasted to a French newspaper about how he suckered the Soviets into invading. Just a few months before the 1979 invasion, Brzezinski, the head of the U.S. National Security Council, which coordinates the operations of the U.S. military, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the CIA and other "intelligence agencies," had nothing more important to do than to fly into Afghanistan, a desolate backwater. Hmmm!  [1]

When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Iran actually helped the U.S. cause. Then emperor George W. Bush fabricated an "Axis of Evil" in an infamous speech, pretending that Iran, Iraq (then still ruled by Saddam Hussein, who invaded Iran with U.S. connivance, used chemical weapons against Iranian troops, caused hundreds of thousands of Iranian casualties and war invalids, and hated by Iran), and North Korea (sic!) were in a World War II-style alliance like the fascist Axis powers Nazi Germany, Italy, and Imperial Japan. Crude and mendacious propaganda, it put Iran on notice that it was an Official Enemy of the U.S.

Now that the U.S. has embedded itself in Afghanistan, and wages constant attacks on Iran, it wouldn't surprise me if Iran's attitude towards the Taliban has changed. But if the U.S. wants to look for nations to blame for propping up the Taliban, I'd suggest they start with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

But the U.S., under whatever president, is apparently too dishonest, too greedy, and  too morally cowardly, to do that.

 Presumably including domestic ops inside Iran. Hey, I have a suggestion: end the operations of U.S. "Special Forces" inside the scores of countries they currently operate in!

This one reeks to high heaven with the stench of hypocrisy. 

Israel regularly bombs Iranian targets inside Syria with impunity. It has assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists inside Iran. Saudi Arabia treats Iran as the Devil Incarnate. The U.S. of course has been effectively at war with Iran since the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-imposed dictator the "Shah" (King). The Iranian "threat" consists of its growing influence in the region, which the U.S. and its partners find objectionable.

It's interesting that the demand here is for Iran to end its "threats" against shipping, NOT attacks against shipping. Previously the U.S. made a big stink about the simultaneous attacks on both a Norwegian and a Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, which the U.S. government and corporate media parrots shrilly blamed on Iran. It has been definitively proven that Iran DIDN'T commit those attacks, which were probably U.S. operations. [2]
Finally cyber attacks. I have no idea what specifically Pompeo is referring to, if anything.  He and Trump- indeed U.S. apparatchiks and politicians generally- often spout baseless rhetoric. Certainly Iran's cyber capabilities are a tiny fraction of the U.S.' And it must be exasperatingly galling for the U.S. to make such a charge, given the relentless U.S. cyber attacks on Iran, including the unleashing of the Stuxnet malware (and others) which targeted Iran's nuclear centrifuges for destruction. (Obama was really proud of that one.)

Again, as usual in the demented world of U.S. political ideology, reality is stood on its head. This is not a defense of Iran. It is looking at the objective facts, nothing more.

Pompeo is a political creation of the greedy, thieving, reactionary billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David. (One of them just died. Hopefully the other one will follow him to the grave soon.) They got Pompeo elected to the U.S. Congress from Kansas, the Kochs' base. Pompeo is a former army officer and rabid, violent imperialist who went on television to call for the execution of Edward Snowden, whose "crime" was revealing the fact that the NSA conducts a program of total surveillance over the entire U.S. population. See "Pompeo wants to execute Snowden." 

1]  For Brzezinski's malign role in creating today's Afghanistan, see "The Brzezinski Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (1998)," in which he incriminates himself, English translation on the website of the University of Arizona. For the full article from which it was drawn from International Politics, see "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect." Also see "Brzezinski Vision to Lure Soviets into ‘Afghan Trap’ Is Orlando’s Nightmare," June 17, 2016.

Ice water ran in the veins of the late "Dr." Brzezinski. He sneers that the fate of the Afghan people has no more weight than the death of a fly compared to the great benefit of weakening the Soviet Union. Of course the Afghans didn't get a vote on that. So much for U.S. devotion to "democracy" and "human rights."

2]  See "Dishonest U.S. Media Lying U.S. Into Another War of Aggression" for the proof.  

Graphics used in this essay by RT network.

Pavlovian Dog Stock Speculators Push Stocks Higher Every Time Trump Lies About Rosy Outlook In His Trade War With China

It happened again today. Just how stupid ARE these people? It ALWAYS turns out to be false when Trump makes a positive assertion about the fraught trade negotiations (more accurately trade conflict).

This idiotic gullibility should put paid to the egotistical conceit that rich people are smarter than anyone else.

My bullshit is PERFECT for fooling rich ninnies!

Latest Whopping Trump-Level Lie by Joe Biden

Biden says the reason Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama hasn't endorsed him for president is because Biden himself asked him not to.

Now, why the hell would anyone NOT want the endorsement of a popular former president of his own party?

Who knows? Biden didn't explain. He just did his usual thing of spewing out a bunch of words devoid of real meaning. Rather like Trump does so often.

But that's okay. Because he's obviously lying.

He also repeated another ridiculous lie he's been making repeatedly of late: that he never ever discussed the business dealings of his black sheep son Hunter with Hunter. This despite the fact that he flew Hunter on his official government jet, Air Force Two, to China with him when he was vice president, and on that trip Hunter finagled a bunch of sweetheart deals from entities connected to the Chinese government. And when Biden was in charge of U.S. dealings with Ukraine, Hunter just coincidentally was appointed to the board of Ukrainian gas company Burisma, with pay of $50,000 a month, a position he held for five years until resigning this past July, obviously because his father was starting his latest run for president. Hunter was paid a total of $3,000,000 for holding a title. He has zero experience in the gas industry or in Ukraine, at least when he was rewarded with this plum position.

Biden made his absurd statements, reminiscent of many of Trump's preposterous lies, in an interview on 60 Minutes, a TV 'newsmagazine" program on CBS, aired Sunday October 27, 2019.

If Biden manages to snag the Democratic Party's nomination for president for 2020, Americans will get a choice between two of the most mendacious men on the political scene.

Joseph R. Biden and son Hunter. Talking business? They're barely on speaking terms, 

don't you know!

Erstwhile Goldwater Girl Hillary Clinton Returns To Her Roots as a Far Right-Winger

Hillary Clinton, a twice-loser for president of the U.S., has savagely smeared Democratic Party Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, claiming the Kremlin was "grooming" the military veteran "to be the third party candidate," presumably to "steal" as the Democrats like to say, votes from themselves. In other words, Gabbard is sort of a Manchurian candidate, a Kremlin "asset" in the current race for president. The corporate propaganda system (aka "the media") responded quizzically to this, rather than with the outraged denunciation it deserves (and which they regularly dump on Trump's head, so we know it isn't "objectivity" that prevents them from doing so).

Now as I said, Gabbard is a Democrat, and has never indicated she might run outside that party. That part of the smear was almost as baseless as the slander that Moscow was pulling her strings.

Gabbard responded to Clinton with a withering Tweet that hit the mark, because unlike Clinton's slanderous attack, it was true: "You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain."

Adopting the vicious, slanderous, redbaiting-style tactics of the 1940's Richard Nixon and 1950's Republicans, the demented Queen Bitch of the "Democratic" Party is dropping the disciplined mask she has long worn to fool the public. Her actions over the decades have put the lie to her pose as a faux feminist and ersatz progressive. Her dream of being president irrevocably shattered at last, she has become terminally embittered and feels she has nothing to lose by letting her true attitudes leach out into the public domain.

Far from being a feminist, she has only ever harmed women: millions of Iraqi women by her support of the war against them, millions of Honduran women by her promotion of the military coup there. (She even boasted in one of her awful, disingenuous, and self-serving books that she quashed a feeble effort by European nations to condemn the coup.) Before she was murdered in her own home, Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres held Clinton directly responsible for the military coup. [1]


Clinton has always been an accomplice in her husband's repressive and murderous policies. Together they demonized blacks as "superpredators" and created policies to imprison over time millions of African-Americans. The Clintons economically devastated the black community by limiting so-called welfare to a lifetime limit of five years, and need be damned, ramping up the "war on drugs," an unleashing  the greedy and venal economic predators of finance capitalism to prey on African-American homeowners. As a U.S. Senator she compiled a record of reaction. (Some examples: her consistent support for the police state PATRIOT ACT, for the invasion of Iraq, for gigantic military budgets, for funding the secret police at ever increasing levels.)

Hillary Clinton started political life as a far rightwing Republican, a Goldwater Girl in college. That was at a time when Goldwater implacably opposed civil rights legislation to ease the incredible racist repression of African-Americans. The Goldwater who seemingly favored nuclear war. One of the most extreme reactionaries in the U.S. Senate (and that's really saying something). Now she has come full circle and returned to her political roots as a quasi-fascist.

Her whopping lies are THIS BIG!

 

1]  See for example,"Before Her Assassination, Berta Cáceres Singled Out Hillary Clinton for Backing Honduran Coup," Democracy Now!, March 11, 2016; "Honduran soldier says activist Berta Cáceres was killed by U.S.-backed coup regime," Salon, June 23, 2016; “Hillary Clinton Killed Berta!," Institute for Public Accuracy, May 6, 2016; and "Slain Activist Berta Cáceres’ Daughter: US Military Aid Has Fueled Repression & Violence in Honduras." Democracy Now!, March 18, 2016, among others.

Trump Hails Ethnic Cleansing of Kurds

Under withering criticism from all sides of the U.S. political elite, including politicians of the party he commandeered, the Republican Party, U.S. president Donald J. "Jackass" Trump sent two of his top lackeys, vice president Michael "Holier Than Thou" Pence and Secretary of State Michael "Brought To You By The Koch Brothers" Pence, to Turkey to try to wheedle Turkish autocrao Recep Tayyip Erdogan into dialing back his military attack on the Kurds in Syria which Trump gave the green light to just days earlier.

The fact that Erdogan had enough leverage to force the U.S. to send two top level officials in person to plead with him is a symptom of the depreciation of U.S. sway under the mismanagement of the inept and blustering and totally unqualified Trump.

The dynamic duo managed to finagle a "ceasefire" (misrepresented as a truce) which Trump hailed as the Greatest Deal. Of course, Trump hails everything involving himself as the "greatest," "tremendous," etc. etc.

Under the five day "ceasefire" deal Erdogan expects the Kurds to completely clear out of the region of Syria bordering Turkey- or else. In other words, the Kurds are expected to ethnically cleanse themselves. Erdogan calls the Kurdish-majority areas bordering Turkey "a terrorist corridor." if they fail to do so, the violence resumes.

Although the violence hasn't actually ceased, but merely diminished. The Turkish military and the puppet militias of Islamofascist cutthroats accompanying the Turkish invasion are still bombing and shelling and mortaring. More civilians and Kurdish fighters have been killed.



An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people have been driven from their homes by the Turkish attack.

Erdogan's stated plan, after all Kurds have been eliminated from the region, is to repopulate it with refugees from Syrian cities who fled previously into Turkey. As the area in question is farmland, apparently these city folk will quickly have to learn how to subsist as farmers.

While his V.I.P. errand boys were in Ankara jawboning Erdogan, Trump undercut them with more threats to devastate the Turkish economy, and sent Erdogan an insulting letter of juvenile insults, which, it is reported, Erdogan filed in the circular file. (That means he threw it in the trash.)

The emptiness of Trump's bluster have been thoroughly exposed by the effeteness of actual U.S. actions.

Over the years, Trump has branded himself (with the invaluable assistance of U.S. corporate media and book publishers) as a master negotiator. ("The Art of the Deal" was one of the self-serving books he paid someone to write while pretending he wrote it.) This master negotiator apparently doesn't realize that he was revealing himself to the world as a hollow bluffer.

Not a good thing when dealing with foreign heads of state.

    In his imagination, he's The Greatest President Ever.

                     Also see "U.S. Stabs the Kurds In The Back Yet Again," Oct. 7, 2019.

 

Trump Calls The Kurds On the Carpet For Going AWOL In World War II

In his latest starring performance as the President of the United States playing in the Theatre of the Absurd, Donald J. "Jackass" Trump is justifying his abrupt betrayal of the Kurds by pointing out how feckless they were for not being part of the Normandy Invasion of France ("D-Day") in June of 1944: "They didn't help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us in Normandy,"  and they were absent from "other battles." If that wasn't bad enough, "in addition we've spent a TREMENDOUS amount of money," apparently the Kurds' fault. Trump cited "a very very powerful article" in substantiation of his lunatic statement. [1]

See? The U.S. doesn't owe the Kurds anything! They should have had the foresight to declare war on Nazi Germany. (A stateless people can't declare war? No Kurds were in any war zone? Excuse me, excuse me, Donald Trump is a very stable genius. He has the best brain, the most fantastic brain you're ever gonna see. Believe me. The Kurds should've helped out if they wanted us to help them.)

Is Trump justified in badmouthing the Kurds for not helping the U.S. Fight World War 2?


Actually Trump went very easy on the Kurds. He did mention "other battles" they were AWOL from. He could have noted that they were no help at all in helping the U.S. destroy Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And where were they during the Korean War? Sure could have used a hand against those hordes of Chinese troops that came pouring in after Truman ignored Zhou EnLai's warning that if the U.S. advanced up the peninsula, China would intervene. (Luckily the U.S. Air Force and Marine Aviation was able to bomb North Korea into rubble.)

And it wasn't just during World War II that the Kurds just sat on the sidelines. Why weren't they fighting on the U.S. side in World War I? They were no help then. (Oh, and did you notice? they did help the other side, participating in the Ottoman Empire's extermination of the Armenians and Greeks.)

How about the Spanish-American war? The U.S. had to seize all Spain's colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific by itself. No help from the Kurds at all!

Where were Kurds when the U.S. invaded Mexico in 1846? The Kurds sat that one out too. All the U.S. got out of it was half of Mexico's territory.

The U.S. sure could have used the Kurds' help in the War of 1812, when the U.S. was looking to rip off a chunk of Canada. Didn't get one square inch! Thanks a million, Kurds!

Need I mention that they were no-shows in the War of Independence that created the U.S.? True to form, they didn't lift a finger to come to the aid of the American rebels! Just sat on their hands, as usual!

Oh sure, the Kurds sacrificed over ten thousand lives fighting ISIS for the U.S. But really, bottom line?

The Kurds are fair weather friends.

"Let's Be Honest; the Kurds are Turds."

1]  While noting the Kurds' abysmal, cowardly failure to hit the beaches on D-Day, Trump tossed out the disingenuous line "We like the Kurds," in a transparent attempt to deflect the near-universal criticism from establishment media and politicians of both parties. (But not from "peace activists," whose moral compasses are apparently permanently broken by their knee-jerk anti-Americanism and Manichean world view in which all the world's ills are the fault of the U.S. and the only thing in the way of universal peace is U.S. militarism.)

Trump's Betrayal of the Kurds, and The Limits of Lying

Trump is a sleazy carnival barker style huckster and con man. He's gone through life trafficking in outrageous bluster and preposterous lies, and getting away with it.

While that works well in the realms of real estate, or junk television, or fake "universities," that existential modus operandi is a poor fit for the milieu of chief executive officer of U.S. imperialism. (The fact that a narcissistic racist blowhard like Trump was made into a figure of admiration in the U.S. speaks volumes about the tawdry nature of U.S. culture and society.)

Perhaps Trump was understandably misled by the fact that for decades he never had a real problem politically on the levels of New York City or New York State, or the media which always fawned over him. Why should anything be different in Washington, D.C.? Why should the media suddenly be against him?

Now, however, with his placing the Kurds in extreme danger at the hands of their mortal enemies, the Turks, lying isn't cutting it. We should note that he's doing nothing different from what Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford did to the Kurds in 1975, as my previous essay explains.

Trump has ludicrously boasted that the U.S. has eliminated ISIS. But with establishment media, the imperialist state structures, and even Republican senators demurring, this doesn't fly.

For decades, Trump used to be able to make any absurd boast he wanted and "the" media would credulously report them without contradiction. No longer.


The Kurds are holding about 10,000 ISIS terrorists prisoner. When the Turks launch their latest exterminationist offensive against the Kurds, the Kurds will have their hands full trying to survive. What will happen with those ISIS terrorists?

Well Trump doesn't want them. He says Europe should take some of them.

While he was running for president, Trump bellowed that he was going to "fill up" the illegitimate naval base cum prison on Cuban soil, Guantanamo Bay, with "a lot of bad dudes." Guess that was just more bluster and bluff and bullshit.

Oh, to be young again, when my lies were never contradicted.

 

U.S. Stabs the Kurds In The Back Yet Again

For the third or fourth time, the U.S. has double-crossed the Kurdish people.

For almost two decades now, the U.S. has used Kurdish militias as their proxy forces in Iraq and Syria, to fight groups the U.S. regards as terrorist, such as Al-Qaeda and especially ISIS. These Kurdish forces have frequently been referred to by U.S. elites as the U.S.' "boots on the ground."

Now the U.S. has suddenly pulled the rug out from under the Kurds, removing U.S. forces embedded with the Kurds in Syria in the dead of night. This frees Turkey to launch a long-threatened military offensive against the Kurdish fighters in Syria, whom Turkey brands "terrorists." Turkey is eager to wipe out the Kurds' militias.

The Kurds had cleared ISIS from Turkey's border. ISIS had laumched lethal rocket attacks into Turkish villages.

So much for gratitude.

Some background is necessary here. The Kurds in Turkey inhabit the eastern portion of Turkey. For many years they have been subjected to cultural genocide by Turkey, which banned their language, symbols, etc, among other repression. This prompted some Kurds to launch a guerrilla movement.

Turkey responded in the way that regimes virtually always do when faced with popular armed resistance movements, with repeated gross atrocities against defenseless civilians. Tens of thousands of Kurds died at Turkish hands.

Then a truce was reached, and the repression of Kurds was eased.

However after the current Turkish strongman, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came to power, he apparently was unhappy with the new arrangement, and reverting to the old policy of trying to force Kurds to be "Turkish." Once again Turkey instituted harsh repression and military attacks on the Kurds.

Erdogan has been chomping at the bit for several years to wipe out the Kurdish militias in Syria. Now that the protective U.S. umbrella has been removed, he's getting his chance.

This is the second time in recent years the U.S. has betrayed the Kurds, and there
were other times in the past. A few years ago, the Kurds of northern Iraq held a referendum and voted in favor of autonomy for themselves. The Iraqi regime responded with a military attack, driving the Kurds out of territory they had recently fought to take back from ISIS. The U.S. didn't back the Kurds at all.



The current betrayal has an awful antecedent which occurred in the 1970's. The Shah of Iran, at the time the world's worst dictator and who was installed as ruler of that nation by the CIA in 1953 in a coup that destroyed democracy in that country, had a spat with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The Shah used the Kurds of Iraq as a proxy force to fight the Iraqi regime. The Shah enlisted the help of president Richard Nixon and Nixon's evil henchman Henry Kissinger to supply arms to those Kurds. Israel also supplied weapons.

Then in 1975 the Shah cut a deal with Saddam Hussein, and the Kurds became expendable. President Gerald Ford, Nixon's successor, and Kissinger (now working for Ford) allowed the massacre of Kurds by Saddam Hussein to proceed, coldly brushing aside pleas for help by remarking  that “One should not confuse undercover action with social work.” [1]

There have been other U.S. backstabbings of the Kurds, which I am not going into now because I want to get this out in a timely fashion.

The Kurds are an oppressed minority in all the countries they inhabit. They are spread out among Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, none of which will ever cede an inch of territory to a Kurdish state, nor treat Kurds as equal citizens. Unsurprisingly, the Kurds have long desired their own nation. But what's good enough for Jews isn't good enough for Kurds, it seems. The U.S. has long strung them along, using them as cannon fodder, while the Kurds hope that eventually the U.S. will enable them to achieve statehood.

But the U.S. has never intended any such thing, no more than it intends to force Israel to grant the Palestinian peoople statehood.

Being against a people's self-determination is the same as being against democracy. The most fundamentally democratic thing is self-determination.

The Kurds have been fighting the U.S.' wars in Iraq and Syria. Today Trump stood reality on its head, cynically saying he doesn't want America fighting other people's wars. But it has been the Kurds fighting America's wars. The U.S. screeches a lot about "terrorism," but won't shed its own blood to fight the terrorists. It gets others to fight and die for it, them abandons them, leaving them in the lurch.

And every day brags about how it's The Greatest Country On Earth, the most moral, the most humane, the freest, the blah blah blahest.

If the U.S. really believed in the values it professes ad nauseam, the Kurds would be its most cherished allies in that region. They are democratic, and so non-sexist that Kurdish women form all-female combat units that fight ISIS.

But the U.S. is much tighter with the likes of Saudi Arabia instead.

By your friends shall ye be known.

Herr Doktor Heinz "Henry" Kissinger of Death.

 1]  See "Kissinger and the Kurds," Kurdistan Commentary, Feb. 4, 2010, and "Telling It Like It Is: Kissinger and the Kurds," Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 18, 1996.