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North Korea Responds to Unacceptable Sanctions
Stephen Lendman
The right of self-defense is sacrosanct. International law affirms it, including in the UN Charter.
North Korea is threatened by possible US aggression. Without powerful deterrent weapons, it’s defenseless, an unacceptable situation no responsible leadership would permit.
That’s why it continues developing its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities - for defense, not offense. Pyongyang never preemptively attacked another country in its entire history. It threatens none now despite phony US accusations otherwise. Washington needs to claim the fiction of a North Korean threat to maintain its northeast Asia military presence. The DPRK is a convenient punching bag, China and Russia the real targets.
If North Korea didn’t exist, it would have to be invented. Creating nonexistent threats is how America justifies its menacing military presence worldwide - the US, NATO, Israel and their rogue allies the only legitimate threats to humanity.
On Friday, Pyongyang conducted its latest ballistic missile test, a clear response to new Security Council sanctions it rejects.
Another Killer Cop Exonerated
Stephen Lendman
Wearing a badge in America provides a virtual license to kill with impunity. Incidents happen nationwide with disturbing regularity.
Driving, walking, shopping, and engaging in other entirely legal activities publicly or privately at home while Black is hazardous to their life and welfare.
Anthony Lamar Smith, aged 24, was one of many victims - in December 2011 lethally shot seven times at point-blank range in his car, murdered by former killer cop Jason Stockley after a three-minute high-speed chase.
While ongoing, Stockley was recorded saying: “Gonna kill this (expletive), don’t you know it.” After stopping Smith’s car, Stockley ordered him to open the door, according to witnesses and dashcam footage.
Before he had a chance to comply, Smith was murdered in cold blood. Cell phone video then showed Stockley planting a gun in his car taken from the police vehicle, a common stunt to justify cop killings, unjustifiably claiming self-defense.
The Politics of Military Ascendancy
James Petras
Introduction
Clearly the US has escalated the pivotal role of the military in the making of foreign and, by extension, domestic policy. The rise of ‘the Generals’ to strategic positions in the Trump regime is evident, deepening its role as a highly autonomous force determining US strategic policy agendas.
In this paper we will discuss the advantages that the military elite accumulate from the war agenda and the reasons why ‘the Generals’ have been able to impose their definition of international realities. We will discuss the military’s ascendancy over Trump’s civilian regime as a result of the relentless degradation of his presidency by his political opposition.
The Prelude to Militarization: Obama’s Multi-War Strategy and Its Aftermath
The central role of the military in deciding US foreign policy has its roots in the strategic decisions taken during the Obama-Clinton Presidency. Several policies were decisive in the rise of unprecedented military-political power.
Julian Assange Offers U.S. Gov’t. Proof Russia Wasn’t Source of Democratic Party Leaks, Says WSJ
Eric Zuesse
According to the Wall Street Journal, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California spoke by phone on September 13th with U.S. President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, General John Kelly, aiming to transmit to President Trump, from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, a trade of ‘proof’ of Russian non-involvement in the transmission to the public of internal Democratic Party information during the 2016 Presidential contest with Hillary Clinton, in return for the U.S. Government’s stopping its efforts to prosecute Mr. Assange. Assange wanted finally to become freed from his years-long virtual house-arrest inside Ecuador’s London Embassy, by the United States Government efforts to force him to be tried in U.S. courts. So, he wants to offer this trade in which Assange would provide to the White House physical ‘proof’ that Russia had nothing to do with the Democratic Party leaks from (or what Russia’s enemies call ‘hacks’ into) Democratic Party computers, which produced the revelations which Hillary Clinton says cost her the 2016 election.
According to the WSJ report, General Kelly refused to inform President Trump of the offer.
Scores of Bomb Threats in Russia
Stephen Lendman
On Wednesday, around 190 sites were evacuated in Moscow and 16 other Russian cities following bomb threats.
Emergency services remain on alert in schools and universities, shopping malls, railway stations, airports, hotels, cinemas and other locations.
Moscow’s emergency services received over 100 bomb threats. Sniffer dogs and bomb disposal teams searched numerous sites.
Over 50,000 people were evacuated from threatened facilities. Earlier cordoned off areas were later normalized.
Muscovite residents reacted calmly. No terrorist incidents or disturbances occurred. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “this is a matter for the security services to address.”
Victory Achieved in Syria?
Stephen Lendman
Yogi Berra was right, saying “(i)t ain’t over till it’s over.” Things are heading in the right direction in Syria, miles yet to go to liberate the country from the scourge of America’s presence and terrorist groups it supports.
Each day brings more good news than bad. On Tuesday, Russian armed forces chief of staff in Syria General Alexander Lapin said:
“At present, 85 percent of the Syrian territory has been liberated from the militants of illegal armed formations.”
“About 27 square kilometers (10,424 square miles]) of Syrian territory remain to be liberated until the complete annihilation of” US-supported ISIS.
Defeating US-supported al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria) remains a formidable task to achieve. Encouraging news reported by AMN News said “(a)t least five Syrian rebel groups associated with the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) organization, a coalition of Syrian rebels closely linked to Al-Qaeda, have announced their defection, marking another episode in a recent string of defections affecting HTS.”
Bill in Congress to Fund CIA and NSA Outlaws Wikileaks
Eric Zuesse
The bill in Congress to fund U.S. intelligence services includes a provision, Sec. 623, which states:
SEC. 623. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON WIKILEAKS.
It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.
In other words: if this bill passes, Wikileaks will be categorized by U.S. Intelligence in the same way as will the intelligence services of Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other countries that the U.S. Government wants to conquer. (Whereas the Cold War ended in 1991 on the Russian side, it secretly has continued on the American side.) Cooperation with Wikileaks would then be treated by the U.S. Government as treachery, the same as cooperation with Soviet intelligence was treated when the Republican Joseph R. McCarthy (backed by the Democratic Party’s Kennedy family) held sway over the U.S. Senate, from 9 February 1950 to 9 March 1954. Though this was the situation during the Cold War (prior to its having been ended by Russia in 1991), the time when there existed an authentic ideological reason for the U.S. Establishment’s opposition to the Soviet Union’s ruling Establishment (and when there existed not only the ongoing thirst for conquest of the entire world by the U.S. aristocracy), America’s Establishment (the aristocracy and its agents) is trying to restore that hostility now, 26 years after 1991, which was the year when the Soviet Union broke up, and after which, only Russia remained, and when communism had ended, and when the Soviet Union’s military alliance with the Soviet Union’s surrounding nations, the Warsaw Pact (mirroring America’s NATO), also ended — all of that happening in 1991.
Former Georgian Despot a Man Without a Country
Stephen Lendman
In 2003, Washington’s color revolution elevated him to power illegitimately.
Familiar tactics included election rigging, organized street protests, and major media disinformation. Once empowered, neoliberal harshness followed.
State enterprises were privatized. Georgia’s civil service was gutted. Business-friendly tax cuts were enacted. Widespread corruption gamed the system for personal advantage. Georgia became a ruthless police state. Heavy-handed repression replaced rule of law principles. Legitimate opposition was crushed.
Saakashvili’s tenure included suspicious deaths, disappearances, mass arrests, detentions, torture, loss of civil liberties, mass media control, and allying with Washington’s imperial agenda.
Triumph in Deir Ezzor, Syria
Stephen Lendman
Syrian and allied forces, greatly aided by Russian aerial operations, broke ISIS’ three-year siege of Deir Ezzor governorate, an important achievement toward liberating the area entirely.
Russian warplanes killed ISIS’ emir and minister of war in the city with powerful bunker busting bombs.
ISIS’ siege of Deir Ezzor’s military airport was broken, located two km east of the city. Western Deir Ezzor’s Panorama area was liberated, ISIS’ front lines overrun.
Syrian forces regained full control over the strategic Sukhnah-Deir Ezzor highway, opening another route to the governorate’s capital. The area’s Teym oilfield was retaken. So were Tal Rubiyat and Khim Defaa, high ground on Deir Ezzor’s outskirts.
Government and allied forces continue advancing toward routing ISIS’ last stronghold in the country decisively.
Russia Responds to Closure of Its Diplomatic Properties in America
Stephen Lendman
US closure, seizure and searches of Russia’s diplomatic properties in San Francisco, Washington and New York were flagrant Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations violations.
They represented unacceptable US hostility toward a sovereign nation threatening no one, reflecting the dismal state of bilateral relations, worsening, not improving, moving things closer to direct confrontation.
That’s where this is heading if a way isn’t found to stop things from lurching toward war between the world’s dominant nuclear powers, a possible doomsday scenario if launched.
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