I/II. [Donald Trump sets off on Friday to create the fantasy of an Arab Nato. There will be dictators aplenty to greet him in Riyadh, corrupt autocrats and thugs and torturers and head choppers. There will be at least one zombie president – the comatose, undead Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria who neither speaks nor, apparently, hears any more – and, of course, one totally insane president, Donald Trump. The aim, however, is simple: to prepare the Sunni Muslims of the Middle East for war against the Shia Muslims. With help from Israel, of course. ... That only leaves one nation out of the loop of this glorious charivari: Russia. But be sure Vladimir Putin comprehends all too well what is going on in Riyadh. He will watch the Arab Nato fall apart. His foreign minister Lavrov understands Syria and Iran better than the feckless Tillerson. And his security officers are deep inside Syria. Besides, if he needs any more intelligence information, he has only to ask Trump.]
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/43659-the-real-aim-of-trumps-trip-to-saudi-arabia The Real Aim of Trump's Trip to Saudi Arabia By Robert Fisk, The Independent 19 May 17 *The Sunni Saudis and the Gulf kings possess immense wealth, the only religion that Trump really respects, and they want to destroy Shia Iran, Syria, the Hezbollah and the Houthis – which is a simple ‘anti-terrorist’ story for the Americans* ***Donald Trump sets off on Friday to create the fantasy of an Arab Nato. There will be dictators aplenty to greet him in Riyadh, corrupt autocrats and thugs and torturers and head choppers. There will be at least one zombie president – the comatose, undead Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria who neither speaks nor, apparently, hears any more – and, of course, one totally insane president, Donald Trump. The aim, however, is simple: to prepare the Sunni Muslims of the Middle East for war against the Shia Muslims. With help from Israel, of course.*** [Emphasis added.] Even for those used to the insanity of Arab leadership – not to mention those Westerners who have still to grasp that the US President is himself completely off his rocker – the Arab-Muslim (Sunni) summit in Saudi Arabia is almost beyond comprehension. From Pakistan and Jordan and Turkey and Egypt and Morocco and 42 other minareted capitals, they are to come so that the effete and ambitious Saudis can lead their Islamic crusade against “terrorism” and Shiism. The fact that most of the Middle East’s “terrorism” – Isis and al-Qaeda, aka the Nusrah Front – have their fountainhead in the very nation to which Trump is travelling, must and will be ignored. Never before in Middle Eastern history has such a “kumidia alakhta” – quite literally “comedy of errors” in Arabic – been staged. On top of all this, they have to listen to Trump’s ravings on peace and Islamic “extremism”, surely the most preposterous speech to be uttered by a US president since he is going to have to pretend that Iran is extremist – when it is Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Isis clones who are destroying Islam’s reputation throughout the world. All this while he is fostering war. For Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (henceforth MbS) wants to lead his Sunni tribes – plus Iraq if possible, which is why Shia Prime Minister Abadi has been invited from Baghdad – against the serpent of “terrorist” Shia Iran, the dark (Shia) “terrorist” Alawite regime of Bashar al-Assad, the “terrorist” Shia Lebanese Hezbollah and the aggressive “terrorist” Shia Houthis of Yemen. As for the Gulf states’ own Shia minorities and other recalcitrants, well, off with their heads. After all, that’s what the Saudis did to the prominent Saudi Shia leader Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr last year: they cut his head from his body, Isis-style, in a classic bit of Wahhabi decapitation, along with 47 other “terrorists”. And any powerful Shias in neighbouring Gulf countries will be cut down, too – which is what happened to Bahrain’s Shia majority when the Saudi army moved in to occupy the island in 2011 at the “request” of its Sunni ruler. And you can see why America’s disgraceful President, a man who truly falls into the regional pantheon of raving loonies – he surely ranks among the Gaddafis and Ahmadinejads of the Middle East – goes along with this. The fact that Isis – Trump’s mortal enemy and the strategic adversary of his defence chiefs – is a creature of the same Salafist cult as Saudi Arabia, is neither here nor there. The Sunni Saudis and the Gulf kings and princes possess immense wealth, the only religion that Trump really respects, and they want to destroy Shia Iran and Syria and the Hezbollah and the Houthis – which is a simple “anti-terrorist” story for the Americans – and this means that Trump can give MbS and his chums $100bn (£77bn) of US missiles, planes, ships and ammo for the war-to-come. America will be happy. And Israel will be happy. I guess Crown Prince Jared Kushner thinks he can handle this end of the Arab-Nato alliance, though the Israelis themselves will be perfectly happy to watch the Sunnis and Shia fight each other, just as they did during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war when the US supported Sunni Saddam – albeit that his army was mostly Shia – and the Israelis furnished US missiles to the Shia Iranians. Already, the Israelis have distinguished themselves by bombing the Syrian army, the Hezbollah and the Iranians in the Syrian war – while leaving Isis untouched and giving medical assistance to al-Qaeda (Nusrah) on Golan. Much has been made (rightly) of MbS’s threat to ensure that the battle is “in Iran and not in Saudi Arabia”. But, typically, few bothered to listen to Iran’s ferocious reply to the Saudi threat. It came promptly from the Iranian defence minister, Hossein Dehghan. “We warn them [the Saudis] against doing anything ignorant,” he said, “but if they do something ignorant, we will leave nowhere untouched apart from Mecca and Medina.” In other words, it’s time to start building air raid shelters in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dhahran, Aramco headquarters and all those other locations dear to American hearts. Indeed, it’s difficult not to recall an almost identical Sunni hubris – almost four decades ago – to that of MbS today. The latter boasts of his country’s wealth and his intention to diversify, enrich and broaden its economic base. In 1980, Saddam was determined to do the same. He used Iraq’s oil wealth to cover the country in super-highways, modern technology, state-of-the-art healthcare and hospitals and modern communications. Then he kicked off his “lightning war” with Iran. It impoverished his oil-rich nation, humiliated him in the eyes of his fellow Arabs – who had to cough up the cash for his disastrous eight-year adventure – led to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, sanctions and the ultimate Anglo-US invasion of 2003 and, for Saddam, the hangman’s noose. Yet this leaves out the Syrian dimension. Sharmine Narwani, a former senior associate of St Antony’s College – and an antidote for all those sickened by the mountebank think-tank “experts” of Washington – pointed out this week that US support for Kurdish forces fighting under the dishonest label of “Syrian Democratic Forces” are, by advancing on Raqqa, helping to cut Syria off from Iraq. And that Kurdish forces are now reported as “retaking” Christian or Muslim Arab towns in the Nineveh province of Iraq, which were never Kurdish in the first place. Kurds now regard Qamishleh, and Hassakeh province in Syria as part of “Kurdistan”, although they represent a minority in many of these areas. Thus US support for these Kurdish groups – to the fury of Sultan Erdogan and the few Turkish generals still loyal to him – is helping to both divide Syria and divide Iraq. This cannot and will not last. Not just because the Kurds are born to be betrayed – and will be betrayed by the Americans even if the present maniac-in-charge is impeached, just as they were betrayed to Saddam in the days of Kissinger – but because Turkey’s importance (with or without its own demented leader) will always outweigh Kurdish claims to statehood. Both are Sunnis, and therefore “safe” allies until one of them – inevitably the Kurds – must be abandoned. Meanwhile, you can forget justice, civil rights, sickness and death. Cholera has quite a grip on Yemen now, courtesy of the criminal bombing attacks of the Saudis – ably assisted by their American allies long before Trump took over – and scarcely any of the Muslim leaders whom Trump meets in Riyadh do not have torturers at work back home to ensure that some of their citizens wish they had never been born. It will be a relief for the fruitcake president to leave Israel for the Vatican, albeit given only a brief visitation to – and short shrift by – a real peacemaker. ***That only leaves one nation out of the loop of this glorious charivari: Russia. But be sure Vladimir Putin comprehends all too well what is going on in Riyadh. He will watch the Arab Nato fall apart. His foreign minister Lavrov understands Syria and Iran better than the feckless Tillerson. And his security officers are deep inside Syria. Besides, if he needs any more intelligence information, he has only to ask Trump.*** [Emphasis added.] II. [Whether Russians have infiltrated and engineered a Kremlin takeover or makeover of the White House (as a Time magazine cover colourfully illustrates this week), the primacy of the “American values” (universal values that are widely admired even if the US itself comes up short) and the supremacy of the US economy actually remain unquestioned. Russia (population 144 million and largely stagnant) is a depleted state, and reports of its resurgence based on military exertions (at least as an economic force) are vastly overstated. ... The real danger to American primacy comes from within, and it comes without Russian help – from those wanting to “make America great again” while undermining ideas that made it great in the first place. Becoming greater, a legitimate quest, requires going on the same steady path that has served the country so well in the decades since the Cold War ended.] http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ruminations/russian-bear-american-fare-whether-or-not-moscow-has-infiltrated-washington-bigger-danger-to-it-comes-from-misguided-policies-within/ Russian bear, American fare: Whether or not Moscow has infiltrated Washington, bigger danger to it comes from misguided policies within May 22, 2017, 2:00 AM IST Chidanand Rajghatta in Ruminations | Edit Page, World | TOI Television serial junkies in the United States have been savouring a period drama called The Americans – that could well have been called The Russians – for the past four years. Set in the early 1980s during the Cold War the award-winning drama serial, now in its fifth season, centres on two KGB spies living as a married American couple in a greater Washington DC suburb. Burrowed deep in American society, with two US-born children (who are only now becoming aware of their parents’ shenanigans), the story of their workaday life running a travel agency for undercover espionage is based partly on a real-life case of Russian intelligence infiltration into America. But the critically acclaimed drama has barely made a ripple in official circles in the US, although things may change given the level of infiltration now being spoken of. Illustration: Uday Deb Broadcast nearly three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, The Americans humanises Russians by often presenting the story from the Soviet perspective amid the humdrum of suburban family life outside Washington. In this reading, Ronald Reagan was not exactly a heroic figure and the Soviet Union is not always the Evil Empire. In part, such a script is possible because Americans born after the fall of the wall experienced no institutional or academic rancour towards Russia. Ideological victory was sweet – and graceful. There were no buried pathologies, at least in millennial America. Russians bought into Manhattan and the American Dream, and joined Indians and Chinese in the lines for US visas and American universities. In the world of strategic studies, depleting ranks of Sovietologists were replaced by Sinologists and Islamologists, in keeping with new threat perceptions. It may have been this waning of Russo-phobia that, to some extent, emboldened presidential candidate Donald Trump (and briefly, even his rival Hillary Clinton) to publicly assert a new paradigm of friendship with Moscow, regardless of whatever ulterior motive he may or may not have. Apparently, it was too much, too soon. Blowback has been swift. Trump now stands accused of being a Russian stooge, of selling out the US to Russia. ***Whether Russians have infiltrated and engineered a Kremlin takeover or makeover of the White House (as a Time magazine cover colourfully illustrates this week), the primacy of the “American values” (universal values that are widely admired even if the US itself comes up short) and the supremacy of the US economy actually remain unquestioned. Russia (population 144 million and largely stagnant) is a depleted state, and reports of its resurgence based on military exertions (at least as an economic force) are vastly overstated.*** [Emphasis added.] Neither the rouble – nor the renminbi for that matter – is about to replace the dollar anytime soon. While the Russian military may still stand up to US firepower with (arguably) better planes and tanks, the real battle for butter was waged and lost away from the battlefield, in the social and cultural arena. Russia may have crept back into Crimea and reasserted itself in its traditional spheres of influence, but it has neither Disney nor Apple; not Microsoft nor Google; not Amazon nor Facebook. Such American fare is more potent than anything the Russian bear can produce. For all the talk of its decline as a military superpower (despite spending more on “defence” than the next 10 countries put together), American dominance and excellence in most spheres of human endeavour remains unchallenged, thanks in part to its immigration policies now being undermined by Trumpistas. That includes advances in the space and automobile industry. Ask Elon Musk, who recently engineered a reusable rocket, or check out 3-D printing, currently revolutionising manufacture. For that matter, simply look around your home and tick off where each technology originated and continues to come from. ***The real danger to American primacy comes from within, and it comes without Russian help – from those wanting to “make America great again” while undermining ideas that made it great in the first place. Becoming greater, a legitimate quest, requires going on the same steady path that has served the country so well in the decades since the Cold War ended.*** [Emphasis added.] The crises-by-the-hour and everyday meltdown in Washington may be an entertaining spectacle for the rest of the world – and increasingly embarrassing for America – but a United States which folds into a deep domestic loss of confidence will have severe consequences for the rest of the world. It is already starting to show in the stock market and in the uncertainty it has wrought in the strategic and geo-political sphere. Long standing allies in Europe and Latin America are gnashing their teeth at the cavalier statements from Washington, and new found friends such as India, barely trustful of US at the best of times, and whose prime minister is chalking up a White House visit next month, have every reason to be worried. The crisis of confidence is not just domestic but international. A long-drawn denouement of the Trump crisis will be detrimental for America and rest of the world. For that reason alone this tragi-comedy – entertaining and enervating in turns – needs a quick resolution. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
