Destroy London

Delenda est Londinium

By Colin Liddell

Alternative Right, September 28, 2013: My dear old Dad – God bless him – was, by any definition, a bit of a character. He had seen the World at an early age, thanks to a government scheme for decreasing the shipping tonnage of an upstart Oriental empire.

His voyage aboard the submarine "mother ship" HMS Adamant brought him into contact with knife-wielding mobs (Port Said), naked savages with dark taboos (Tikopia), dead Americans (Guadalcanal), and finally the Japanese themselves, just after their surrender. As he liked to say, "I was in Hiroshima when the stowr was still coming down.”

After that formative experience, he worked in car and aero engineering, and was a trade union shop steward, before marrying late and taking us all out to South Africa as kids in the 1970s.

He had a variety of opinions, very few of which squared with the conventional pro and contra positions trotted out in the media, and he used to expound on them at great length, even when me and my brothers, due to the larger than normal generation gap, were not in the least interested in what he was saying. Possibly, I absorbed a lot of his views at some subliminal level, but most of what he said was lost on us. However, there was one theme he continually harped on about that stood out – the sheer and utter evilness of The City of London.

For someone who had been in a war fought essentially to protect the global business interests of London’s financial elite and who had then seen the way that same elite had corralled and corrupted British socialism (and therefore working-class democracy) while also sucking the lifeblood out of British industry, such an attitude was entirely natural and even predictable, but what struck me was the language and imagery that he used.

Taking his cue from the Roman republican statesman Cato the Elder, he thought that The City – and indeed the entire Home Counties "Stockbroker Belt" – should be levelled with the ground and ploughed with salt. Another reference point was Pol Pot. Come the revolution, the parasitical class, betrayed by its soft hands and cut glass accents, was to be marched out into the "Killing Fields" of Surrey and Kent.

His hatred of London was no doubt flavoured by the spirit of Calvinist apocalypticism and Scottish Anglophobia found in many a Scottish heart, but it also expressed an awareness of the mismatch that has always existed to varying degrees between London and the territories it has ruled. This is hardly a new problem. In the 18th century it was realised, with varying success, by both the Jacobites in Scotland and the colonists across the Atlantic.

In the 19th century, as Britain arose as the preeminent global empire, this mismatch became less obvious. The financial resources of The City, the industry of the North, and the markets and raw materials of the colonies created a positive win-win synergy, of which Scotland was very much a part. But, as the 20th century dawned, the mismatch between London and the rest of the UK became progressively greater as The City strove to continue its global hegemony "by other means."

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Black Mischief: Kenya Mall Shooting

The Kenya Westgate Mall shootings, an alleged Islamic terrorist attack, has many strange features suggesting a false flag atrocity conducted with immense incompetence to bring Kenya, and particularly Kenya's resources, under US control.

Among the more remarkable features of the event are:

The failure of the Kenyan authorities to head warnings about an impending terrorist attack.

The identification of at least two American citizensamong the supposedly Islamic terrorists.

The alleged presence among the terrorists of a white female directing the murderous terrorist gunfire, who has been identified as Samantha Lewthwaite, widow of alleged 7/7 London Tube Terror Bomber, Jermaine Lindsay.

The report that the leader of the terrorists received "specialist" training by the British military.

The slaughter by Kenya Defense Force soldiers of the commander of the police team that led the effort to rescue civilian hostages — a friendly fire incident, as with Pat Tillman.

And the failure of the Kenyan police, army and security service to capture a single terrorist, dead or alive.

See also:

Aangirfan: BRITISH INVOLVEMENT IN MALL ATTACK?

Aangirfan: FAKE PHOTO OF MALL SHOOTING; ISRAELIS IN MALL 

UPDATE:

Global Research: Was it a Psyop? Nairobi Mall Deceit Abets Israeli-Western Pipeline Wars to Oust Asian Rivals

Westgate Mall Owner also Co-owner of Word Trade Center Buildings 1 and 2

Daily Mail, September 28, 2013: Kenya holds suspect in Westgate Mall terrorist attack

A British man arrested as he tried to fly out of Kenya after the Westgate massacre was allegedly carrying maps of the shopping complex on his laptop. ...

His aunt... explained he was visiting his dying mother, Fatuma Abdirahman, in Nairobi. Abdirizak told detectives she was being treated for cancer in the Salama Hospital in Eastleigh, the mainly Somali residential suburb of the capital, and was unable to move or speak.

But enquiries by The Mail on Sunday revealed no one of his mother’s name had ever been admitted.

In fact, sources said yesterday that, along with other family members, she had been ‘picked up’ by police at an address in Eastleigh and was being questioned by detectives.

But not to worry. Despite being a total liar and a person with a suspicious interest in the Westgate Mall, we are pleased to announce that the suspect has now been released.

More from Aangirfan: MI6 Mall Suspect Released

And from a Nairobi newspaper:

The People, October 1, 2013: the Government has confirmed it is not holding any of the bodies of terrorists behind Westgate attack amid fears they might have escaped through an underground tunnel.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku said that it does not have custody of bodies of the five terrorists allegedly gunned down in the siege.

In other words, the Kenyan army, while managing to kill the of the commander of the police team that led the effort to rescue civilian hostages, failed to kill or capture a single terrorist.

Link via Aangirfan: Mall False Flag

Seymour Hersh: Obama's Bullshit Presidency: The Bin Laden Raid Was One Big Lie

In an interview with the Guardian, Seymour Hersh, the journalist who won a Pullitzer Prize for exposing the Vietnam War My Lai massacre, said:

of the alleged 2011 death of Osama bin Laden during the US Navy Seals raid on a compound in Abottabad, Pakistan:

... it's one big lie, not one word of it is true.

On the Obama administration:

It systematically lies

On the media coverage of Obama:

It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious

We, of course, have been saying that all along, as have many others bloggers. Still it's good to see the mainstream feels compelled to play catchup. Perhaps they'll get the idea that truth sells newspapers, in which case there could be life in the newspaper business yet. It could even attract real talent to replace the dumbass hacks who provide most media content now.

See also:

Unites States of Assassination: Can't Get bin Laden Kill Story Straight

How many SEALS died? Government by the Management of Perception

US Navy SEALs: Two Helicopters

Nairobi Mall Terror Attack: A US/UK Psyop?

Brits rescuing Brits from British/US terrorists in Kenya. Source

Responsibility for the attack on a Kenyan shopping center that resulted in at least 65 deaths has been claimed by a Somalia-based Islamist group, al-Shabab. ACcording to the BBC, however, the terrorists include three American citizens, and, so it is believed by Kenyan authorities, Samantha Lewthwaite, a British citizen and widow of 7 July suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay.

The Daily Telegraph reports Amina Mohamed, Kenya’s foreign minister stating that:

"From the information that we have, two or three Americans (were involved) and I think, so far, I have heard of one Brit... a woman ... and I think she has done this many times before," she told the US’s PBS NewsHour programme.

Still, as the Daily Telegraph reports, the Brits were heroes of the hour, as an off duty member of Britain's special forces personally saved dozens of lives by going "back and forth between the building and the outside world around 12 times, helping people escape from the complex."

In addition, a team of On-duty Special Air Service soldiers just happened to be at the scene last night, helping the Kenyan authorities in their final attempt to free the hostages.

Oh well, jolly good show. Obviously those Kenyans need to show their appreciation of Western aid in the war on terror. The Chinese, of course, were conspicuous by their absence. Kenyans should take note. China wants your oil but the heck with saving you from the ravages of Anglo/American terrorists.

Israeli forces are also said to be on the scene though they have not participated directly in attempts to rescue attempts.Israeli forces famously rescued hostages in the June 1976 highjacking of an airliner diverted to Kenya's Entebbe Airport by Palestinian terrorists. And there is evidence to suggest that Israel's Shin Bet security service collaborated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to hijack that June 1976 flight. So now the Kenyans have reason to be doubly grateful to Israel.

See also:

BBC: Westgate Mall Jewellery Store Looted

The Star: Kenya mall attack: 'White Widow' Samantha Lewthwaite sought as probe continues

The Star: National Intelligence Service of Kenya Gave Advance Warning of Mall Attack (via Aangirfan)

Kenyan security organs knew of attack in advance, claims Nairobi senator Mike Sonko (via Aangirfan)

LD: Kenyan Bloodbath: State-Sponsored Sophistication & Motivation

LD: Kenyan Bloodbath: Reaping the "Benefits" of US AFRICOM Collaboration

Libya 360: US, Al Qaeda & Al Shabaab

Aangirfan: SAS IN MALL WHEN ATTACK BEGAN

Thank God: A New Hitler to Combat the Threat of Peace

By Bill Kristol

The Weekly Standard, September 30, 2013: Syria has receded from the front pages. A long and winding road of failed diplomacy lies ahead, and who wants to bother covering that? Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad is more firmly in power than before, al Qaeda is stronger among the Syrian rebels, the United States has lost credibility, and Iran and Russia have gained in stature and influence. This is the product of an irresolute president—and of shortsighted behavior by representatives of both parties in Congress.

But Syria is merely Act One. Next week, Act Two opens at the United Nations. There, we’ll see a charm offensive worthy of Richard III by the new Iranian president and veteran deceiver of the West, Hassan Rouhani. In response, the Obama administration will move on from punting in Syria to appeasing Iran. The diplomatic dance with Iran will be long and complex. But who doubts that the couple will end up where Iran, the leading partner, wants to go?

Smaller retreats lead to larger ones. The West’s failure to resist Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935—and his troops’ use of poison gas—was merely a foretaste of the failure to resist Hitler when he took the Rhineland in March 1936. In his essay in the volume Present Dangers, the historian Donald Kagan tells the story. Hitler had expected Britain to slap down Mussolini. When Mussolini asked for the loan of ships for his Ethiopian adventure, Hitler had privately said:

Let the Italians have a hundred ships! We’ll go back, undamaged. They will go through the Suez Canal, but they will never go further. The British navy’s battleship Repulse will be waiting there and signaling: “Which way are you going?” “South,” the Italians will reply. “Oh no you’re not,” the Repulse will reply. “You’re going north!” and north they will go.

But there was no such reply by the Repulse. Hitler drew the lesson. The occupation of the Rhineland followed shortly.

There will be no Rhineland this time. Iran isn’t 1930s Germany, and the United States is more formidable than Britain. For now, Iran will have to achieve its goals by stealth and diplomacy, while Hitler achieved his by bravado and force. But the accommodation of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons lies ahead as surely as the accommodation of Nazi Germany’s expansionist dreams. Moreover, Rouhani knows what he is doing. He was Iran’s top nuclear negotiator for two critical years a decade ago and proved then his skill at duplicity in the furtherance of his regime’s nuclear ambitions.

And the Obama administration, too, will play its role, echoing the Baldwin government, which Winston Churchill in 1936 characterized as “decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.” Churchill continued, “So we go on preparing more months and years—precious, perhaps vital to the greatness of Britain—for the locusts to eat.”

As Iran moves closer to nuclear weapons, undeterred by the West’s leading power, a 21st-century tragedy threatens to unfold. Unless. Unless a dramatis persona who didn’t exist in 1936 intervenes: Israel. Ariel Sharon once famously said that Israel would not play the role of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. Nor will it play the role of Poland. Despite imprecations from the Obama administration, Israel will act. One prays it will not be too late.

It is a strange course of events, heavy with historical irony, that has made the prime minister of Israel for now the leader of the West. But irony is better than tragedy.

Meanwhile:

NaPo: Barack Obama welcomes Iran’s ‘moderate course,’ could meet with new Iranian president

Gas missiles 'were not sold to Syria'

By Robert Fisk

The Independent, September 22, 2013: While the Assad regime in Damascus has denied responsibility for the sarin gas missiles that killed around 1,400 Syrians in the suburb of Ghouta on 21 August, information is now circulating in the city that Russia's new "evidence" about the attack includes the dates of export of the specific rockets used and – more importantly – the countries to which they were originally sold. They were apparently manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1967 and sold by Moscow to three Arab countries, Yemen, Egypt and Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Libya. These details cannot be verified in documents, and Vladimir Putin has not revealed the reasons why he told Barack Obama that he knows Assad's army did not fire the sarin missiles; but if the information is correct – and it is believed to have come from Moscow – Russia did not sell this particular batch of chemical munitions to Syria.

Since Gaddafi's fall in 2011, vast quantities of his abandoned Soviet-made arms have fallen into the hands of rebel groups and al-Qa'ida-affiliated insurgents. Many were later found in Mali, some in Algeria and a vast amount in Sinai. The Syrians have long claimed that a substantial amount of Soviet-made weaponry has made its way from Libya into the hands of rebels in the country's civil war with the help of Qatar – which supported the Libyan rebels against Gaddafi and now pays for arms shipments to Syrian insurgents.

There is no doubt that Syria has a substantial chemical weapons armoury. Nor that Syrian stockpiles contain large amounts of sarin gas 122mm missiles. But if the Russians have indeed been able to identify the specific missile markings on fragments found in Ghouta – and if these are from munitions never exported to Syria – the Assad regime will boast its innocence has been proven.

In a country – indeed a world – where propaganda is more influential than truth, discovering the origin of the chemicals that suffocated so many Syrians a month ago is an investigation fraught with journalistic perils. Reporters sending dispatches from rebel-held parts of Syria are accused by the Assad regime of consorting with terrorists. Journalists reporting from the government side of Syria's front lines are regularly accused of mouthing the regime's propaganda. And even if the Assad regime was not responsible for the 21 August attacks, its forces have committed war crimes aplenty over the past two years. Torture, massacre, the bombardment of civilian targets have long been proved.

Nevertheless, it also has to be said that grave doubts are being expressed by the UN and other international organisations in Damascus that the sarin gas missiles were fired by Assad's army. While these international employees cannot be identified, some of them were in Damascus on 21 August and asked a series of questions to which no one has yet supplied an answer. Why, for example, would Syria wait until the UN inspectors were ensconced in Damascus on 18 August before using sarin gas little more than two days later – and only four miles from the hotel in which the UN had just checked in? Having thus presented the UN with evidence of the use of sarin – which the inspectors quickly acquired at the scene – the Assad regime, if guilty, would surely have realised that a military attack would be staged by Western nations.

As it is, Syria is now due to lose its entire strategic long-term chemical defences against a nuclear-armed Israel – because, if Western leaders are to be believed, it wanted to fire just seven missiles almost a half century old at a rebel suburb in which only 300 of the 1,400 victims (if the rebels themselves are to be believed) were fighters. As one Western NGO put it yesterday: "if Assad really wanted to use sarin gas, why for God's sake, did he wait for two years and then when the UN was actually on the ground to investigate?"

The Russians, of course, have made similar denials of Assad's responsibility for sarin attacks before. When at least 26 Syrians died of sarin poisoning in Khan al-Assal on 19 March – one of the reasons why the UN inspectors were dispatched to Syria last month – Moscow again accused the rebels of responsibility. The Russians later presented the UN with a 100-page report containing its "evidence". Like Putin's evidence about the 21 August attacks, however, it has not been revealed.

A witness who was with Syrian troops of the army's 4th Division on 21 August – a former Special Forces officer considered a reliable source – said he saw no evidence of gas shells being fired, even though he was in one of the suburbs, Moadamiya, which was a target for sarin. He does recall the soldiers expressing concern when they saw the first YouTube images of suffocating civilians – not out of sympathy, but because they feared they would have to fight amid clouds of poison.

"It would perhaps be going beyond conspiracy theories to say the government was not involved," one Syrian journalist said last week, "but we are sure the rebels have got sarin. They would need foreigners to teach them how to fire it. Or is there a 'third force' which we don't know about? If the West needed an excuse to attack Syria, they got it right on time, in the right place, and in front of the UN inspectors."

See also:

Global Research: How the Syrian Chemical Weapons Videos Were Staged

CanSpeccy: Arab league monitors find slaughter in Syria the work of foreign-backed subversives

IQism, Racism and the Decay of the Great American University

To many psychologists, genius is simply a number that falls a certain number of standard deviations to the right of the mean on a bell curve. One of the longest running experiments on intelligence, however, suggests that true giftedness may depend as much on other factors like creativity and motivation. Since 1921, psychologists have studied a group of approximately 1500 children with an average IQ score of about 150 that were originally selected by Lewis Terman. The members of this group, known as the Termites, all grew up to be highly successful and productive, but not one of them achieved genius-level contributions. Genius seems to elude the best efforts of psychologists to capture its essence in a standardized test.
A Case Study of Genius, Ryan McPherson

The joy of racism is the sense it provides of innate superiority and, like being born into the aristocracy or inheriting a fortune, it provides an elevated status requiring no effort to maintain.

But being white no longer provides that advantage. If you're black or Jewish, OK, enjoy the psychic benefits of racism if you wish, but today white is rubbish and targeted for elimination as the dominant group within a generation, not only in America as proclaimed to applause by US President Bill Clinton during his 1998 commencement address at Portland State University, but across Europe.

So what is the alternative for those of idle disposition in need of a prop to their self-esteem? The answer, today, is IQism. By definition, half of us can beat an average score, and with a bit of test sophistication almost anyone can be above average. And if test preparation is not enough, a spoonful of glutamate before the test may give you an extra five to 25 points.

The American school system has done much to promote IQism. If SAT scores are all that really matters, a teacher's life is greatly simplified: preparing a class of restive adolescents for an IQ test is easier than inspiring them to high attainment in Greek or analytical algebra. What's more, the tests are scored by machine, which sure beats reading a stack of hand-written essays.

With the rise of IQism in America, top universities now select applicants for admission chiefly not on what they know, or on how effectively they apply what they know, but on a machine-scored test of facility in certain mental operations that measures neither judgment, nor passion, nor imagination.

But who cares if students, all of them fully adult, entering America's elite institutions of higher learning know virtually nothing: they're all really, really bright. No wonder so many students at Harvard cheat. Why bother with the books? If you're too poor to follow Ted Kennedy's example and pay someone else to sit the exam, by all means cheat in any other way you can. As a person of high IQ, your superiority is assured: the sweat of hard work, intellectual or otherwise, is for the lower grades of mankind.

Bizarrely, the SAT test was promoted by James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard University, to reduce the number of rich kids privileged by attendance at expensive private prep schools from being privileged by attendance at Harvard, an expensive private school. But as Charles Murray relates here the SAT test fails to predict academic performance of university entrants from poor schools any better than traditional subject-based entrance tests and thus is an expensive waste of time.

Robert Gates on Syria: To blow [up] a bunch of stuff to underscore.a point is not a strategy

Global Research, September 19, 2013: The reckless character of the Obama administration’s war plans was underlined by the remarks yesterday of Robert Gates, former defence secretary to George W. Bush and Obama. Criticizing Obama’s Syria policy, Gates declared: “My bottom line is that I believe that to blow [up] a bunch of stuff over a couple of days, to underscore or validate a point or a principle, is not a strategy.”

Pointing to the highly volatile situation in the region, Gates declared that US missile strikes on Syria “would be throwing gasoline on a very complex fire in the Middle East… Haven’t Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya taught us something about the unintended consequences of military action once launched?”

Yet, the Obama administration has ultimately made the same strategic choice as the Bush administration before it—attempting to offset American imperialism’s historic decline through the aggressive use of military force. A decade after the invasion of Iraq, the US is preparing a criminal new war that threatens to trigger a devastating regional conflict, with the potential to drag in Iran, Russia and China.

Lindsey’s Scheme To Murder Iranians

By Patrick Buchanan

LewRockwell.com, September 17, 2013: This summer produced a triumph of American patriotism.

A grassroots coalition arose to demand Congress veto any war on Syria. Congress got the message and was ready to vote no to war, when President Obama seized upon Vladimir Putin’s offer to work together to disarm Syria of chemical weapons. The war America did not want—did not come.

Lindsey Graham is determined that this does not happen again.

The next war he and his collaborators are planning, the big one, the war on Iran, will not be blocked the same way.

How does Graham propose to do this?

He plans to introduce a use-of-force resolution, a peacetime declaration of war on Iran, to ensure Obama need not come back to Congress—and can attack Iran at will. Lindsay intends a preemptive surrender of Congress’ constitutional war-making power—to Obama.

He wants to give Obama a blank check for war on Iran, then stampede Obama into starting the war.

On Fox’s “Huckabee” Sunday, Lindsey laid out his scheme:

I’m going to get a bipartisan coalition together. We’re going to put together a use-of-force resolution, allowing our country to use military force … to stop the Iranian nuclear program. … I’m going to need your help, Mike, and the help of Americans and friends of Israel.

In July, Graham told a cheering conference of Christians United for Israel: “If nothing changes in Iran, come September, October, I will present a resolution that will authorize the use of military force to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.”

That Graham is braying that he intends to give Obama a blank check for war on Iran is not all bad news. For he thus concedes Obama does not now have the authority to attack Iran.

And by equating Iran’s “nuclear program” with a “nuclear bomb” program, Graham reveals that his bottom line is not Obama’s bottom line, but Benjamin Netanyahu’s.

Obama has said only that Iran must not be allowed to build a bomb. Bibi says Iran must not have a nuclear program.

Yet, make no mistake. The goal of Graham, the neocons, Israel and Saudi Arabia is not a negotiated solution permitting a peaceful nuclear program in Iran. The goal is a U.S. war to smash Iran.

On Nov. 10, 2010, Graham let it all out: “Instead of a surgical strike on their nuclear infrastructure, I think we’re to the point now that you have to really neuter the regime’s ability to wage war against us and our allies. … [We must] destroy the ability of the regime to strike back.”

Graham wants us to do to Iran what President Bush II did to Iraq.

But there are obstacles in our warlord’s path.

First, there is no conclusive proof Iran has decided to build a bomb.

Twice, the U.S. intelligence community, in 2007 and 2011, has asserted with high confidence that Iran has made no such decision.

Senators who do not seek a new war with Iran should call James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, to testify publicly as to whether Iran is “racing” toward a bomb. Or is this the usual War Party propaganda?

As of today, Iran has not tested a bomb and, to our knowledge, does not possess any uranium enriched to the 90 percent necessary to build a bomb. Indeed, Iran has just announced that half its supply of 20 percent-enriched uranium has been converted to fuel rods.

Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, was elected on a pledge to get U.S. sanctions lifted and to end Iran’s isolation. But to accomplish this, he must prove that Iran has no active bomb program and that he is willing to allowing intrusive inspections to prove it.

As a first step to negotiations, Rouhani just appointed the most pro-American foreign minister in four decades.

Moreover, Iran, victim of the worst poison gas attack since Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, launched by Saddam Hussein with U.S. knowledge, has condemned any Syrian use of chemical weapons and signed the agreement banning them as well the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Ayatollah has issued a fatwa against an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Often, the interests of adversaries coincide. In World War II, with Hitler as the enemy, the monster Stalin becomes an ally.

Putin wants no U.S. war on Syria or Iran. This requires no chemical weapons use in Syria and no nukes in Iran. This coincides with U.S. interests, if not Lindsey Graham’s.

The Russians, with ties to Tehran and Damascus we do not have, can be helpful in keeping us out of wars we do not want.

The true friends of America are those seeking to keep us out of wars, not those maneuvering us in.

That Vladimir Putin is going to Tehran, and Obama to the U.N. to meet Rouhani is good news.

Better news would be that Congressional anti-interventionists were meeting Graham’s war resolution with one of their own, reaffirming that, as of today, Obama has no authority to launch any preemptive or presidential war on Iran.

Palestine: Two State Illusion

By Ian S. Lustick

New York Times: September 14, 2013: THE last three decades are littered with the carcasses of failed negotiating projects billed as the last chance for peace in Israel. All sides have been wedded to the notion that there must be two states, one Palestinian and one Israeli. For more than 30 years, experts and politicians have warned of a “point of no return.” Secretary of State John Kerry is merely the latest in a long line of well-meaning American diplomats wedded to an idea whose time is now past.

True believers in the two-state solution see absolutely no hope elsewhere. With no alternative in mind, and unwilling or unable to rethink their basic assumptions, they are forced to defend a notion whose success they can no longer sincerely portray as plausible or even possible.

It’s like 1975 all over again, when the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco fell into a coma. The news media began a long death watch, announcing each night that Generalissimo Franco was still not dead. This desperate allegiance to the departed echoes in every speech, policy brief and op-ed about the two-state solution today.

True, some comas miraculously end. Great surprises sometimes happen. The problem is that the changes required to achieve the vision of robust Israeli and Palestinian states living side by side are now considerably less likely than other less familiar but more plausible outcomes that demand high-level attention but aren’t receiving it.

Strong Islamist trends make a fundamentalist Palestine more likely than a small state under a secular government. The disappearance of Israel as a Zionist project, through war, cultural exhaustion or demographic momentum, is at least as plausible as the evacuation of enough of the half-million Israelis living across the 1967 border, or Green Line, to allow a real Palestinian state to exist. While the vision of thriving Israeli and Palestinian states has slipped from the plausible to the barely possible, one mixed state emerging from prolonged and violent struggles over democratic rights is no longer inconceivable. Yet the fantasy that there is a two-state solution keeps everyone from taking action toward something that might work.

All sides have reasons to cling to this illusion. The Palestinian Authority needs its people to believe that progress is being made toward a two-state solution so it can continue to get the economic aid and diplomatic support that subsidize the lifestyles of its leaders, the jobs of tens of thousands of soldiers, spies, police officers and civil servants, and the authority’s prominence in a Palestinian society that views it as corrupt and incompetent.

Israeli governments cling to the two-state notion because it seems to reflect the sentiments of the Jewish Israeli majority and it shields the country from international opprobrium, even as it camouflages relentless efforts to expand Israel’s territory into the West Bank.

American politicians need the two-state slogan to show they are working toward a diplomatic solution, to keep the pro-Israel lobby from turning against them and to disguise their humiliating inability to allow any daylight between Washington and the Israeli government. Finally, the “peace process” industry — with its legions of consultants, pundits, academics and journalists — needs a steady supply of readers, listeners and funders who are either desperately worried that this latest round of talks will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, or that it will not.

Conceived as early as the 1930s, the idea of two states between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea all but disappeared from public consciousness between 1948 and 1967. Between 1967 and 1973 it re-emerged, advanced by a minority of “moderates” in each community. By the 1990s it was embraced by majorities on both sides as not only possible but, during the height of the Oslo peace process, probable. But failures of leadership in the face of tremendous pressures brought Oslo crashing down. These days no one suggests that a negotiated two-state “solution” is probable. The most optimistic insist that, for some brief period, it may still be conceivable.

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No More War for Israel? The People Against the 800 Pound Gorilla

by JEAN BRICMONT and DIANA JOHNSTONE

Counterpunch, September 13 2013: The past ten days have seen what could be the start of an historic turning point away from endless war in the Middle East. Public opinion in the United States, in harmony with the majority of people in the world, has clearly rejected U.S. military intervention in Syria.

But for this turn away from war to be complete and lasting, greater awareness is needed of the forces that have been pushing the United States into these wars, and will surely continue to do so until they are clearly and openly rejected.

An American friend who knows Washington well recently told us that “everybody” there knows that, as far as the drive to war with Syria is concerned, it is Israel that directs U.S. policy. Why then, we replied, don’t opponents of war say it out loud, since, if the American public knew that, support for the war would collapse? Of course, we knew the answer to that question. They are afraid to say all they know, because if you blame the pro-Israel lobby, you are branded an anti-Semite in the media and your career is destroyed.

One who had that experience is James Abourezk, former Senator from South Dakota, who has testified: “I can tell you from personal experience that, at least in the Congress, the support Israel has in that body is based completely on political fear – fear of defeat by anyone who does not do what Israel wants done. I can also tell you that very few members of Congress–at least when I served there – have any affection for Israel or for its lobby. What they have is contempt, but it is silenced by fear of being found out exactly how they feel. I’ve heard too many cloakroom conversations in which members of the Senate will voice their bitter feelings about how they’re pushed around by the lobby to think otherwise. In private one hears the dislike of Israel and the tactics of the lobby, but not one of them is willing to risk the lobby’s animosity by making their feelings public.”
Abourezk added : “The only exceptions to that rule are the feelings of Jewish members, who, I believe, are sincere in their efforts to keep U.S. money flowing to Israel. But that minority does not a U.S. imperial policy make.”[1]

Since we do not have to run for Congress, we feel free to take a close look at that highly delicate question. First, we’ll review the evidence for the crucial role of the pro-Israel lobby, then we’ll discuss some objections.

For evidence, it should be enough to quote some recent headlines from the American and Israeli press.

First, according to the Times of Israel (not exactly an anti-Zionist rag): “Israel intelligence seen as central to U.S. case against Syria.”[2] (Perhaps the fact that it is “central” also explains why it is so dubious[3].)

Then, in Haaretz[4]: “AIPAC to deploy hundreds of lobbyists to push for Syria action”. Or, in U.S. News and World Report[5]: “Pro-Israel lobby Seeks to Turn Tide on Syria Debate in Congress”. According to Bloomberg[6]: “Adelson New Obama Ally as Jewish Groups Back Syria Strike”. The worst enemies of Obama become his allies, provided he does what “Jewish groups” want. Even rabbis enter the dance: according to the Times of Israel[7], “U.S. rabbis urge Congress to back Obama on Syria”.

The New York Times explained some of the logic behind the pressure: “Administration officials said the influential pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC was already at work pressing for military action against the government of Mr. Assad, fearing that if Syria escapes American retribution for its use of chemical weapons, Iran might be emboldened in the future to attack Israel. … One administration official, who, like others, declined to be identified discussing White House strategy, called AIPAC ‘the 800-pound gorilla in the room,’ and said its allies in Congress had to be saying, ‘If the White House is not capable of enforcing this red line’ against the catastrophic use of chemical weapons, ‘we’re in trouble’.”

Even more interesting, this part of the story was deleted by the New York Times, according to M.J. Rosenberg[8], which is consistent with the fact that the lobby prefers to act discreetly.

Now, to the objections:

There are indeed forces other than the Israel lobby pushing for war. It is true that some neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia or Turkey also want to destroy Syria, for their own reasons. But they have nowhere near the political influence on the United States of the Israel lobby. If Saudi princes use their money to try to corrupt a few U.S. politicians, that can easily be denounced as interference by a foreign power in the internal affairs of the United States. But no similar charge can be raised against Israeli influence because of the golden gag rule: any mention of such influence can be immediately denounced as a typical anti-Semitic slur against a nonexistent “Jewish power”. Referring to the perfectly obvious, public activities of the Israel lobby may even be likened to peddling a “conspiracy theory”.

But many of our friends insist that every war is driven by economic interests. Isn’t this latest war to be waged because big bad capitalists want to exploit Syrian gas, or use Syrian territory for a gas pipeline, or open up the Syrian economy to foreign investments?

There is a widespread tendency, shared by much of the left, especially among people who think of themselves as Marxists (Marx himself was far more nuanced on this issue), to think that wars must be due to cynically rational calculations by capitalists. If this were so, these wars “for oil” might be seen as “in the national interest”. But this view sees “capitalism” as a unified actor issuing orders to obedient politicians on the basis of careful calculations. As Bertrand Russell put it, this putative rationality ignores “the ocean of human folly upon which the fragile barque of human reason insecurely floats”. Wars have been waged for all kinds of non-economic reasons, such as religion or revenge, or simply to display power.

Read more

What 9/11 Taught Americans: Their Government Is a Non-stop Lie Machine That Kills Its Own People

ReThink911 Billboard Towers Over Times Square

On 9/11 George Bush abdicated the US Presidency for the day while Dick Cheney murdered 3000 citizens, blaming Al Qaeda for the crime to justify wars of imperial conquest in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Trouble for the US Government is that a million bloggers exposed the crime.

Now the US public knows that their Government treats words as means, not of communication, but of control. With that realization, the Government's power over the people is largely confined to brute force, which is why US Homeland Security has five hollow-point bullets for every American citizen.

Meantime, the charade of democracy continues as Barak Obama strives futilely to persuade Americans they must go to war in collaboration with cannibals and  Al Qaeda terrorists  intent on slaughtering Christians to impose democracy on a far away country alleged to be killing its own people.

So what is the way forward for America? The elite view, obviously, is shoot the people down as necessary and replace them with more compliant Third-World immigrants without illusions about government being of, by and for the people?

Or reset the system?

What would a system reset mean?

At the very least a trial and execution of the leading war criminals, including various members of the Bush clan, possibly the Clintons, certainly Dick Cheney and Rummy. In addition, the deep state would have to go. NSA, CIA, Homeland Security and dozens of other snooping, lying and otherwise criminal government conspiracies against the people.

And then the military.

They'd have to be reorganized as a purely defensive force to secure American independence during the coming century in which the Asian giants assume the leading position in the World, economically, militarily and scientifically.

But none of this would be possible without exposure and limitation of the money power.

As now practiced in America, democracy means rule by the will of the people brainwashed by the money power, which owns the media, and finances the election of Congress and the President.

Money is power and must have a political outlet, but in a democracy it cannot have total power. To restore an acceptible balance of power between the money and the masses, the money power should be made responsible by being made public. To that end, the US Senate should be filled by the two citizens from each state paying the most tax during the previous four years. The Senate would thus become the House of Plutocrats, fulfilling the same role as Britain's House of Lords as originally constituted. Then the money power would at least have to speak for itself instead of through bought mouth-pieces. It might result in a more responsible elite.

At the same time, big money would have to be excluded from elections for President and the House of Representatives. In addition, the freedom of the press would have to be re-established. This would involve the breakup of the great media corporations reflecting the principle of "one owner one outlet," and guarantees would have to be instituted against corporate- or government-sponsored infiltration of political discourse on the Internet or elsewhere in the public domain.

See also:

Help Obama Kickstart WWIII


BBC 9/11 Bollocks Triumphs Over Honest Citizen

 Michel Chossudovsky: 9/11 Truth: Who Is Osama Bin Laden? (September 12, 2001)

Within hours of the attacks, Osama bin Laden was identified without evidence as the architect of 9/11. On the following day, the “global war on terrorism” had been launched. The media disinformation campaign went into full gear.

Also on September 12, less than 24 hours after the attacks, NATO invoked for the first time in its history “Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – its collective defense clause” declaring the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon “to be an attack against all NATO members.” Implied in this statement was that Afghanistan as a nation state had attacked the United States, a totally absurd proposition.

What happened subsequently, with the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya is already part of history.

Syria and Iran constitute the next phase of the US administration’s military road map.

Al Qaeda is a terrorist construct, and “intelligence asset” financed, trained and supported covertly by the CIA.

“Jihadist” mercenaries continue to be recruited by the US and its allies. Al Qaeda and its numerous affiliates –including Al Nusrah in Syria– are used as a means to destabilizing sovereign countries under the banner of the “Global War on Terrorism”.

9/11 propaganda prevails. The September 11, 2001 attacks continue to be used by the US administration as a pretext and a justification for waging a war without borders.

On this twelfth anniversary commemoration of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the central issue remains 9/11 Truth as a means to dismantling Washington’s global military agenda, upholding civil liberties and restoring World Peace.

Putin: The US Is Not Exceptional

The BBC announced the collapse of WTC7 in advance

Larry Silverstein acknowledges that World Trade Center Building 7 was "pulled."

9/11 and the Advent of Total Diplomacy: Strategic Communications as a Primary Weapon of War.

For Scotland Independence Is Not an Option

Next September the inhabitants of Scotland will be asked to vote for or against independence from the United Kingdom.

Whichever way they vote, independence will elude them.

Scotland will remain joined at the hip with England, which separates Scotland by four hundred miles from the European mainland.

England will remain Scotland's largest trading partner, the source of most of Scotland's tourists and the home of the majority of expatriate Scots and their descendants. All of which means that if, after voting for independence from the UK, Scots wish to set foot on English soil, whether traveling abroad, following what Samuel Johnson described as the only fine prospect in Scotland, namely, the broad high road to London, or just visiting with relatives in Britain, they will have to deal with the English not as fellow citizens but as a foreign nation with little time for Scotch defectors. That will most likely mean passports, visas, work permits, border searches, money changing and many other inconveniences, with no recourse through representation in Westminster.

And Scotland will remain a member of Nato, which means it will remain a base for vast military installations, mainly owned and operated by the English. Yet as one of the smallest of NATO's 28 member states, Scotland's decision making role in the councils of Nato would be negligible.

In addition, Scotland will remain a part of the EU. It will add one more to the list of small, far-away countries beginning with the letter S, Sweden, Slovakia, Slovenia, about which most citizens of Europe know nothing. Which means an independent Scotland, without a voice in Westminster, will be subordinate to an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels with minimal concern for Scottish interests.

Independence of Scotland from the UK, even if it means an extra fifty quid a week (so long as Scotland's oil reserves last) will thus diminish rather than enhance Scotland's power of self-determination.

Instead, once the referendum has been defeated, the Scots should turn to the transformation of the British Isles into a working Federation. That means devolving most powers to regional governments with boundaries rationally defined by geography and economics, rather than ancient national divisions.

Under such a Confederation, government in Scotland should be largely devolved to the provinces (states, compartments, whatever) of Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles, the Highlands, the Lowlands East, and the Lowlands West.

England would seem to divide logically more or less along the lines of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy: seven regions: left and right, upper, middle and lower, plus London. Wales might best be divided by three.

Northern Ireland would probably remain one, while there would be a standing invitation to the Republic of Ireland to join with as many provinces as they see fit.

The states or regions would rule in accordance with a constitution defining the limits of the Federal Government's powers, which would include the regulation of trade, foreign affairs, justice, migration, and defense. The Federal Government would be located in cyberspace, with its physical manifestations distributed among regions to minimize cost.

In foreign policy the constitutional objective would be to make the British Isles the Friend-Of-All-The-World, seeking mutually beneficial relations with all nations. At the same time, the Federation would retain missile systems and other defense forces and establish a Swiss-style citizen militia to deter foreign military interference.

As a self-governing state, the Federation would necessarily withdraw from Nato, the EU, the WTO and every other world governance entity. The constitution would define the British Isles as the homeland of the British peoples and would preclude future mass immigration, while encouraging, by lawful and humane means, ex-migration of the non-indigenous people who have, with the aid of treasonous governments, ethnically cleansed the indigenous people from many urban areas of the British Isles.

Consistent with the policy of preserving the Isles as the homeland of the indigenous peoples, who trace their descent to those who settled the islands in the immediate aftermath of the last ice age, the Federation would champion the preservation of human diversity, both cultural and racial, throughout the world.

See also:

CanSpeccy: A Final Solution to the Scotch Question: Genocide by Mass Immigration — A Project of the Scotch Pseudo-Nationalist Party

CanSpeccy: Population: Explosion and Implosion

Ronald Coase on the Nature of the Firm: Are economists clueless, or what?

Ronald Coase

Ronald H. Coase who died on September 3rd at the age of 102, won the Nobel Prize for economics partly in recognition of his 1937 paper, The Nature of the Firm. In that paper, Coase, in a series of long shapeless paragraphs, claims to answer the question why, in a market economy where the factors of production are supposed to be allocated between different uses by the price mechanism, are there firms within which the allocation of resources is determined by management fiat, something equivalent, in a limited sphere, to the central planning of which the Soviets made such a catastrophic disaster.

Specifically, Coase asks, why does a firm emerge at all in a market economy?

It's a good question to which there seems a rather simple answer, but the rather simple answer is not the one that Coase gives. 

So what is Coase's answer?

The main reason, he says, why it is profitable to establish a firm "would seem to be that there is a cost of using the price mechanism. The most obvious cost of of 'organising' production through the price mechanism is that of discovering what the relevant prices are. The cost of negotiating and concluding a separate contract for each exchange transaction which takes place on a market must also be taken into account."

But within a firm, says Coase: "A factor of production (or owner thereof) does not have to make a series of contracts with the factors with whom it is co-operating within the firm, as would be necessary, of course, if this co-operation were a direct result of the working of the price mechanism."

So there you have it: according to Coase, firms exist because they allow planned allocation of economic resources, which eliminates the transaction costs of the free market.

Coase wrote his paper on the nature of the firm in 1937 when many British intellectuals saw the Soviet system as the wave of the future, which raises the question whether Coase's ideas had a political coloring. But whether or not that is the case, a weakness of his theory is that it suggests no obvious reason for the failure of the Soviet planned economy, or the deadly consequences of Mao's experiments in top-down allocation of economic resources.

Before proceeding, we might therefore ask, why is it that firms or entrepreneurs are supposed to be able to organize economic resources successfully outside the market system, whereas states cannot? To which the answer is that, in fact, not all firms can, as the bankruptcy of many confirms. Moreover, it is incorrect to assume that states cannot, since that is what all states attempt with, at times, apparent success (consider state pension, unemployment, healthcare, and educational benefits, or the success of Russia's Soviet era space program).

So the question that Coase might have usefully considered is this: why are some firms and some states successful in organizing the factors of production, whereas others are not. And the answer to that can be stated without acres of turgid prose. To put it shortly, the answer is that it's a matter of knowledge intelligently applied. Some managers possess relevant knowledge, others do not. Some managers apply knowledge intelligently, others do not. And there's also luck. Thus, organization of economic resources without adequate information or sufficient intelligence generally means failure, whereas sound information intelligently applied often results in success.

Trouble is, the application of intelligence and information is not automatic, either within a firm or by a government. In a diversified economy without monopolies, failure of firms is not catastrophic since it clears the way for the greater success of firms that allocate resources effectively. But all states are monopolies. Therefore, state planning always runs the risk of state-wide economic failure as happened in Communist China and the Soviet Union.

Upon reflection, it will be seen that beyond the simplest tasks, little can be achieved without planning, which in turn requires the education of a workforce to perform the various aspects of the overall project. Such deployment of knowledge is not possible within a pure market system, where all work must be contracted to freelance individuals at liberty to pursue other opportunities at a moment's notice. This is made apparent by considering as a prototype of the firm, the artisan and his assistant:

The cobbler has more orders that he can fulfill. He can raise his prices, thus raising his profit while keeping demand in line with his unaided supply, but that would mean some citizens going bare-foot and it would earn him a reputation as a price gouger. He could contract out the work to an unskilled person ready to accept a low wage, but then the work would be poorly done if not totally botched. Or he could contract the work to the cobbler in a neighboring town, but then the extra supply would cost as much as he could reasonably sell it for, while adding considerably to the aggravation of his business.

But there is a third option, which is to hire an assistant and delegate to him some part of the work to be done under the cobbler's instruction and close supervision. In return for performing this lowly function, the assistant would receive benefits equal to less than the extra income the cobbler earns by virtue of the extra output made possible by the labor of his assistant. In time, the assistant may learn all parts of the cobbler's trade in which case he may become a full partner with the cobbler or set out on his own and in competition with his erstwhile employer. Until then, however, the cobbler earns a profit from the application of his knowledge to the close direction of the labor of another.

That, in essence, and ignoring the role of the firm in the deployment of capital, is why firms exist. Firms that embody valuable information deployed with genius, for example Apple under the direction of Steve Jobs, or Tesla with Elon Musk,* tend to generate large profits. When the genius that creates a successful firm quits, dies or loses their way, the firm fails and ceases to exist. Firms are thus a key feature of any market economy, and it is the market that establishes which firms live and which die.

Possibly, I have misrepresented Coase's theory of the firm, but if so, I have to say his manner of presentation is so obscure that the message is unintelligible to me even though, for more than 25 years I successfully managed a firm, the product formulas for which have now been acquired by other firms and continue, so it appears, to yield income.

There are two lessons to be learned from the theory that firms exists to allow the intelligent deployment of special information by talented entrepreneurs. First, that monopolism, whether state or private, risks failure of part or all of an economic system, from which it follows that the long-term viability of an economy depends on a competitive free market in which natural selection ensures the survival of only the more productive firms. Second, firms that are taken over by financiers and bean-counters are almost surely doomed as the absence of intelligence applied to the productive process will result in a failure to adapt in an evolving marketplace.

——
* With hindsight, the choice of Elon Musk and Tesla as an example of a potentially profitable firm may have been mistaken.

Obama's Syria War: a bad idea badly executed

UPDATE September 10, 2013

NYT: Assault on Christian Town in Syria Adds to Fears Over Rebels

U.S. Going to Kill Syrians to Show Syria that Killing Syrians is Wrong


It's all about regime change

Rebels oppose any deal that avoids US strike on Syria

Aangirfan: REBELS 'PLAN FALSE FLAG ATTACK ON ISRAEL'; McGOVERN ON EARLIER GAS ATTACK

Tony Cartalucci: Plot by Syria Terrorists to Carry out a “False Flag” Chemical Weapons Attack against Israel and Blame it on Bashar Al Assad, Says RT


UPDATE September 9, 2013

Putin: What if it's proved that US-backed rebels did the Syria gas attack? What will the US do then?

Kerry outlines ’unbelievably small’ strike on Syria

All we're gonna do is kill Assad's cat.

"If Americans Could Read Classified Documents They'd Be Even More Against Syrian War"

Assad Interview: Denies Role in Chemical Weapons Strike

Syria chemical weapons attack not ordered by Assad, says German press

How the United States views the future of Syria

Is the globalist war party about to get its come uppance? Aangirfan has an excellent post, rather obscurely headed Hollande Panics, that draws attention to straws in the wind suggesting that the US/Israeli war for global hegemony is running into serious resistance.

But such optimism may be premature. Over at the White House, what they're planning for Syria is not a punitive raid but the total destruction of Syria's entire military establishment.

Congress Members Who Have Seen Classified Evidence About Syria Say It Fails to Prove Anything Insane McCain: No one can touch the US of A,
we have a force field the Russians cannot penetrate.



Manufacturing Dissent: The truth about Syria



UPDATE September 7, 2013

Mish: End of U.S. Imperium—Finally!? Obama About to Suffer Glorious Defeat in Congress?

The Nation: Obama's Syria War Is Really About Iran and Israel

JePo: Polls: Israelis want US, Europe to attack Syria, but against IDF intervention

Atzmon: AIPAC Is A Grave Threat To World Peace

CounterPunch: No War for Bernard Henri Lévy

France Defects: Coalition of the Willing to Attack Syria Before the Facts Come Out Down to One

French fries off the menu again.

The Onion: Poll: Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To Syria

Mish: The Dick Cheney-Syria Oil Connection

Telegraph (August 21, 2013) US 'will not intervene in Syria as rebels don't support interests', says top general

NYTimes: Obama Stymied in Bid to Rally World Leaders on Syria Strike

The only countries that supported Mr. Obama’s plan, the Russian leader said, were Canada, France, Saudi Arabia and Turkey...

Oh, good. We in Canada are on the same side as those freedom loving Saudis and Turks.

I guess that's the price Harper's willing to pay for Obama's approval of the XL pipeline to carry tarsands oil to the US Gulf coast. But even for that, we won't actually participate in any military strike on Syria. No, we're just cheering the US on: Bam, O'Bomber, Bam.

Obama hints he may abandon Syria strike


Syrian Woman Rips Into Warmonger McCain

Source: Aangirfan

Canada has two NeoCon warmongering national newspapers, the Globe and Mail and the National Post, aka the Globule and the Pustule. Unlike the G and M, the NatPo has the merit of being hard-headed about the business of war as the following excerpts from articles by George Jonas and Marc Steyn make clear.

In brief, what they're saying is, if you're gonna make war, do it to win, not to impress the world with your superior moral standing. And what that means is to wage war like Ghengis Khan or Adolph Hitler, not like some limp-wristed advocate of political correctness.

Threaten Assad with the total annihilation of Damascus, the spot to be marked only by a mountain of skulls and he'll maybe show some deference to the wannabe global hegemon. But threaten to do no more than the international community including Russia and China will tolerate guarantees only failure.

Trouble is that doing what Russia and China will not tolerate could result in devastating consequences for the Neocon warmongers: US warships sent to the bottom by supersonic Russian or Chinese anti-ship missiles, for example, plus the downing of America's stupendously expensive warplanes by by Russian-supplied anti-aircraft missiles. And, as Putin is supposed to have threatened, a rain missiles on Saudi Arabia's oil terminals, which would put the hydraulics under the price of gasoline.

Vasily  Vereshchagin (1842-1904), Apotheosis of War, 1871.

So in fact the United States has no useful way forward in the war with Syria. Obama would have done better to nix US intervention in Syria than to pussyfoot around seeking a popular basis for what promises to be an ineffectual assault on a country that has done the United States no harm.

Marc Steyn: Obama the Timid Warmonger

What the British people are sick of, quite reasonably enough, is ineffectual warmongering, whether in the cause of Blairite liberal interventionism or of Bush’s big-power assertiveness. The problem with the American way of war is that, technologically, it can’t lose, but, in every other sense, it can’t win. No one in his right mind wants to get into a tank battle or a naval bombardment with the guys responsible for over 40% of the planet’s military expenditures. Which is why these days there aren’t a lot of tank battles. The consummate interventionist Robert Kagan wrote in his recent book that the American military “remains unmatched.” It’s unmatched in the sense that the only guy in town with a tennis racket isn’t going to be playing a lot of tennis matches. But the object of war, in Liddell Hart’s famous distillation, is not to destroy the enemy’s tanks (or Russian helicopters) but his will. And on that front America loses, always. The “unmatched” superpower cannot impose its will on Kabul kleptocrats, Pashtun goatherds, Egyptian generals, or Benghazi militia. There is no reason to believe Syria would be an exception to this rule. America’s inability to win ought to be a burning national question, but it’s not even being asked.

What do we want in Syria? Obama can’t say, other than for him to look muscular without being mocked

Let us stipulate that many of those war-weary masses are ignorant and myopic. But at a certain level they grasp something that their leaders don’t: For a quarter-century, from Kuwait to Kosovo to Kandahar, the civilized world has gone to war only in order to save or liberate Muslims. The Pentagon is little more than central dispatch for the U.S. military’s Muslim Fast Squad. And what do we have to show for it? Liberating Syria isn’t like liberating the Netherlands: In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy. Yes, those BBC images of schoolchildren with burning flesh are heart-rending. So we’ll get rid of Assad and install the local branch of al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or whatever plucky neophyte democrat makes it to the presidential palace first — and then, instead of napalmed schoolyards, there will be, as in Egypt, burning Christian churches and women raped for going uncovered.

So what do we want in Syria? Obama can’t say, other than for him to look muscular without being mocked, like a camp bodybuilder admiring himself in the gym mirror.

George Jonas: A Strange Time to Ask Permission

If the former constitutional scholar is right and congressional approval is unnecessary, the current Commander-in-Chief is grievously wrong. Delaying a necessary military response for an unnecessary legislative approval is an error of judgment bordering on incompetence. What if Congress refuses to consent to what the Commander-in-Chief thinks is necessary? Do what the House or Senate majority want rather than what he thinks is right? Boy, that’s not the way to an equestrian statue; it’s more like dereliction of duty leading to a court martial. Or will he ask the legislators’ advice only to reject it if it’s different from what he wants to hear?

This would be like asking a cop if you can cross a street without having to do so, and if he answers no, crossing it anyway. This would be a good way of turning a legal act of crossing a street into an illegal act of obstructing police. For Mr. Obama to seek congressional approval for something he believes (a) doesn’t require their blessing in the first place, and (b) is right and necessary, must in fact mean (c) that either (a) or (b) isn’t true.

See Also:
 
Jon Rappopport: War in Syria: Evidence? We don’t need no stinkin’ evidence

Tony Cartalucci: US Planned Syrian Civilian Catastrophe Since 2007

RT: No law will stop Obama’s democracy-bombs over Syria

Mish: Separating Politics and War From Oil and the Economy

Paul Craig Roberts: The US Government Stands Revealed to the World as a Collection of War Criminals and Liars

Steve Sailer: "Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective"

Russian investigation: Syria Rebels Responsible for Gas Attack

Putin: Kerry Is Cold-Blooded Liar

NYTimes: Brutality of the Syrian Rebels a PR Headache for Their American Backers

DC Clothesline: US Military Against Fighting for Al Qaeda in Syrian Civil War

WaPo: Kerry: Arab countries offered to pay for invasion

If the Arabs are that keen, why don't they do the fighting as well as pay for it?

Breitbart:Ted Cruz: US Is Not 'Al-Qaeda's Air Force'

The Economic Collapse Blog: Russia Has Equipped Syria With Their Most Advanced Anti-Ship Missiles

Mish: Warmongers Unite (As They Always Do)

A Century of American Lies: The Rationales for Engaging in Foreign Wars, A Century-old White House Tradition

Mondoweiss: AIPAC comes out for strike on Syria– and mentions Iran more often than Syria

Syria would strike back at Turkey, Deputy FM warns

Pravda: The Liars Case for War on Syria

Bloomberg: US Jews for War on Syria

Putin to Obama: War on Syria Without UN Approval Would Be (Criminal) Aggression

UN Secretary General: Any Attack on Syria, Unless Authorized by the UN Is War Crime

Telegraph: First Syria rebels armed and trained by CIA 'on way to battlefield'

Uh-uh. O'Bomber joins the NeoCon gang of War Criminals, along with Rummy, Condi, Bush, Brown and Blair.

RCP: Pelosi Uses Conversation with her 5-year-old Grandson to Push for Attack on Syria

She must think a five-year-old is the ideal subject to test out the latest warmongering line before taking it to the public at large.

Patrick Buchanan: Obama Is an Untutored Simpleton

General Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn't know WTF the US Wants in Syria

Forbes Mag: Obama's Battle Plan For Syria Could Backfire Badly

Meantime (The Independent Reports): America's last humanitarian intervention has left the beneficiary, Libya, a lawless ruin

CanSpeccy: Americans Neither Believe Their  Own Government Nor Support Its Violent Intentions (The Drudge Poll, as of September 4, is running 91% against US intervention in Syria)

Japan Finally Acts to Restrict Fukushima Ocean Pollution

More than a year ago, we argued that the Government of Japan should, without delay, begin construction of a barrier to prevent further leakage of radioactivity into the Pacific Ocean from the Tsunami-stricken Fukushima nuclear reactors. Specifically, we wrote:

When will Japan begin building a barrage around the Fukushima waterfront to contain leakage of radiation from the stricken plant, which threatens to poison the oceans and fisheries of the World?

At last the Government of Japan has decided to act. It will spend 47 billion yen (US$473 million) to create an ice dam around the Fukushima waterfront to prevent radioactive water continuing to leak into the ocean.

Late, is certainly better than never, although it is difficult to understand why it has taken more than two years to think up a simple temporary solution such as this when, to quote Dr Tatsujiro Suzuki, vice chairman of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission,

Source

the situation at the nuclear power plant is an "unprecedented crisis" and that it is "getting worse".

He said the plan to freeze the ground around the site was "challenging", and a permanent solution was needed.

I guess if it had just been just an ordinary crisis, in a more or less stable if critical state, we'd have been waiting another decade or two for any kind orf useful action, with a permanent solution indefinitely delayed.

UK Takes First Feeble, Steps to Eliminate Unemployment and Poverty in the Manner We Have Long Proposed

On various occasions we have pointed out the imbecility of welfare schemes that make idleness pay while offering no assistance to the working poor.

The solution to the problem of poverty among those able and willing to work is a free labor market and a publicly funded income supplement, thus ensuring that those unable to earn a living wage in the market economy do not starve.

As I have discussed previously, the idea has a number of variants, for example, a negative income tax, tradable wage subsidies, etc., and it remains to be seen which offers the most efficient means of achieving the intended objective.

Such ideas are, naturally, derided by the dupes and shills of the billionaire libertarians, but they offer the only practical solution to the problem of poverty due to mass unemployment in non-competitive regions of the West such Greece and Spain, Detroit and Glasgow, etc. — other than waiting for the billionaire libertarians to solve the problem through their own generous (not) charitable activities.

Western capitalists find it much cheaper to manufacture clothing for the home
market in collapsible factories such as this one in Bangladesh, than pay Western
workers real wages to work in factories at home that are subject to workplace
health and safety regulations and where minimum wage laws apply.. (Image source)

In addition, unemployment due to the lack of adjustment mechanisms, for example, between Greece and Germany in the EU or between Michigan and the Dakotas in the US, can be alleviated by across-the-board adjustments in wage rates based on national or regional unemployment rates.

Despite the venoumous ridicule of such ideas from the Libertarians intent on destroying the welfare state while intending to do nothing, other than bleat about morals and charity, to deal with the resultant social catastrophe, the British Government, at least, is taking steps precisely in accord with the policies we have advocated.

Thus, for example, the UK Government is now contemplating government subsidies to wages for low paid workers administered through the tax system. At the same time, the UK Government has instituted variable pay scales for public servants such that those in poorer regions, i.e., those regions with generally high unemployment, will get lower pay.

Although these are only feeble, baby steps in the direction we have advocated, they may lead ultimately to a general solution to the problems of mass unemployment and poverty that have been created as a consequence of forcing Western worker, through the process of globalization, into direct competition with billions of Third-Worlders working for pennies an hour.

The cost of assembling an i-Phone at a Chinese sweatshop is said to be about
US$4.00. Nobody even thinks of trying to compete with that at European or
American minimum wage rates. (Image source)

For now, the measures adopted or proposed are no doubt seen as stopgap measures to be withdrawn when the economy improves. But when it becomes clear beyond doubt that when you off-shore the economy the only way you'll get it back is by lowering the cost of labor to match that of the Third World then serious thought will be given to how to achieve that without inducing mass starvation among the working poor who have to face a far higher  cost of living than those Bangladeshi garment factory workers or those Chinese assembly line workers who assemble i-phones and just about any other consumer good available in the West.

Naturally, we expect no credit for identifying the solution to the central economic problem of the times. But surely within a few years some Ivy League University economics professor will win a Nobel Prize for encapsulating these obvious ideas into a couple of mathematical equations that no one but a PhD economist can understand.

See also: How Globalization shrinks the economy