Tag Archives: Helsinki summit

Neocons Panic As Trump-Putin Meeting Could Mark Close Of Syrian Proxy War, by Tyler Durden

Posted on July 14, 2018 | Leave a comment

The last thing right-thinking people everywhere want is an end to the Syria war. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

When multiple op-ed pieces appear in the pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, and the CFR-owned Foreign Affairs authored by neocons simultaneously pleading with Trump Don’t Get Out of Syria(!) all within the same week, this is typically an indicator that the president is about to do something good. 

Trump is set to meet with Putin one-on-one this coming Monday in Helsinki after a contentious NATO summit and a sufficiently awkward visit with Theresa May, and mainstream pundits’ heads are exploding.

The Post’s Josh Rogin warns, Trump and Putin may be about to make a terrible deal on Syria, and Susan Rice suddenly emerges from obscurity and irrelevance to say in the Times that Trump Must Not Capitulate to Putin while urging the administration not to “prematurely withdraw United States forces [from Syria], thus thus ceding total victory to Russia, Mr. Assad and Iran.” From North Korea to Afghanistan to Syria to Ukraine, Rice advises the typical regime change script of “harsh additional sanctions” anywhere the dictates of Washington are not strictly adhered to.

Similarly, Eli Lake links together the main regime change wars begun under Obama while lamenting their potential winding down as a result of Putin and Trump meeting as indicative of living in “some alternate universe”. “The price of Russian cooperation in Syria cannot be U.S. capitulation on Crimea,” Lake writes, and further calls such a possibility “the most dangerous possible outcome.”

The Kagan-led neocon think tank ISW, meanwhile, is outraged(!) the administration appears to lack “the will to use” America’s military might to counter Assad, Iran, and Russia, saying “the United States should invest now in building leverage for future decisive action.”

And then there’s Senator Lindsey Graham’s meltdown on Twitter this week in reaction to both the Syrian Army victoriously raising the national flag over Daraa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling President Vladimir Putin during a summit that Israel has no problem with Assad staying, so long as Israel can preserve “freedom of action” if attacked.

In a significant change of posture toward Damascus, Netanyahu told reporters in Moscow, “We haven’t had a problem with the Assad regime, for 40 years not a single bullet was fired on the Golan Heights.”

This was enough to send Graham’s head spinning: “Radical Sunni groups will say – correctly – that Assad is a proxy of Iran and the Ayatollah. It means the Syrian war never ends and ISIS comes back,” he said in a strange twist of logic that gives credence to the arguments of terror groups.

To continue reading: Neocons Panic As Trump-Putin Meeting Could Mark Close Of Syrian Proxy War

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The Globalist Elite Fears Peace, Wants War, by Federicco Pieraccini

Posted on July 14, 2018 | Leave a comment

There’s one outcome from Helsinki that Deep States, Establishments, and Globalists are rooting against: any step towards peace. From Federicco Pieraccini at strategic-culture.org:

The announced meeting between Trump and Putin has already produced a good result by revealing the hypocrisy of the media and politicians. The meeting has been branded as the greatest danger to humanity, according to the Western globalist elite, because of the danger that “peace could break out between Russia and the United States”.

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. The following so stretches credulity that sources will have to be cited and an exact quotations given to be believed.

A case in point is the following title: “Fears growing over the prospect of Trump ‘peace deal’ with Putin”. The Times does not here fear a military escalation in Ukraine, an armed clash in Syria, a false-flag poisoning in England, or a new Cold War. The Times does not fear a nuclear apocalypse, the end of humanity, the suffering of hundreds of millions of people. No, one of the most authoritative and respected broadsheets in the world is fearful of the prospect of peace! The Times is afraid that the heads of two nuclear-armed superpowers are able to talk to each other. The Times fears that Putin and Trump will be able to come to some kind of agreement that can help avert the danger of a global catastrophe. These are the times in which we live. And this is the type of media we deal with. The problem with The Times is that it forms public opinion in the worst possible way, confusing, deceiving, and disorienting its readers. It is not by accident the world in which we live is increasingly divorced from logic and rationality.

Even if the outcome of this meeting does not see any substantial progress, the most important thing to be achieved will be the dialogue between the two leaders and the opening of negotiation channels for both sides.

In The Times article, it is assumed that Trump and Putin want to reach an agreement regarding Europe. The insinuation is that Putin is manipulating Trump in order to destabilize Europe. For years now we have been inundated with such fabrications by the media on behalf of their editors and shareholders, all part of the deep state conglomerate. Facts have in fact proven that Putin has always desired a strong and united Europe, looking to integrate Europe into the Eurasian dream. Putin and Xi Jinping would like to see a European Union more resistant to American pressure and able to gain greater independence. The combination of mass migration and sanctions against Russia and Iran, which end up hurting Europeans, opens the way for alternative parties that are not necessarily willing to Washington’s marching orders.

To continue reading: The Globalist Elite Fears Peace, Wants War

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Deep State Sideswipes Helsinki Summit with Mueller Indictments, by Tom Luongo

Posted on July 14, 2018 | Leave a comment

Twelve unreachable Russians are indicted a few days before Trump’s summit with Putin. Undoubtedly a coincidence. (SLL does not use what’s become the common internet convention of telling readers when we’re engaging in sarcasm. SLL readers can figure it out themselves, or they shouldn’t be on this site.) From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me.

So, imagine my shock, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted twelve Russian intelligence officers on the eve of a summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Despite his oh-so-earnest protestations to the contrary, Rod Rosenstein, of all people, knows there are no coincidences in politics.

Trump is on a search and destroy mission all across Europe right now attacking the pillars of the post-WWII institutional order.

While in Washington, Congress devolved into an episode of Jerry Springer during the Peter Strzok hearings yesterday.  Both Strzok and Rosenstein have literally destroyed their credibility by stonewalling Congress over the investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email server, which, conveniently Mueller now has enough information to take to the Grand Jury.

In my mind, this is a level of panic and desperation unseen in the annals of Washington D.C. coverups. Both Strzok and Rosenstein know that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is completely compromised and can do nothing to stop them from obstructing investigations and turning our justice system into something worse than farce.

And why do I think this is a desperate move by Mueller?  Because the indictments go out of their way to preclude any Americans having any involvement in these ‘hacking events’ at all.

So, this does nothing at all to strengthen Mueller’s investigation of Trump himself.  It actually weakens his mandate as Special Counsel.

On the other hand, it does a bang-up job of shifting the news cycle away from Trump’s heavy-handed but effective steam-rolling Germany and the UK over NATO spending, energy policy and Brexit.

Trump continues, in his circuitous way, to stick a fork in the eye of the globalists whose water politicians like Angela Merkel and Theresa May have carried for years.

Now with Trump prepared to sit down with Putin and potentially hammer out a major agreement on many outstanding issues like Syria, arms control, NATO’s purpose, energy policy and terrorism the Deep State/Globalist/Davos Crowd needed something to saddle him with to prevent this from happening.

The reasoning will be (if not already out there as I write this) that Trump would be a traitor for sitting down with Putin after these indictments.

To continue reading: Deep State Sideswipes Helsinki Summit with Mueller Indictments

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For Peace With Putin, End America’s Pointless Wars, by George D. O’Neill, Jr.

Posted on July 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

At his summit with Vladimir Puting, President Trump has a big opportunity to advance the cause of peace. From George D. O’Neill, Jr. at americanconservative.com:

Ignore the establishment: Trump has a huge opportunity at his upcoming summit.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump meet at the 2017 G-20 Hamburg Summit. Credit: Creative Commons/www.kremlin.ru.

The upcoming summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is an overdue opportunity for the American president’s next bold peace initiative. It is time for the U.S. to stop its wasteful wars, and Russia can be a constructive partner to this end.

The mainstream press on both sides of the Atlantic will howl against any agreement between Trump and Putin—no matter what’s in it. So why not take steps that the American public will instinctively understand and that will provide the support for Trump to end America’s failed interventions? Besides what are his opponents going to do? Vilify him for seeking peace and starting the process of healing the many wounds of the wars? The American people are not fooled by false claims that Trump is soft on terrorism; they are aware that U.S. military interventions oftentimes can—and do—fuel terrorism.

President Trump should propose a drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan in exchange for a drawdown of Russian troops in Syria (along with a pledge that America has no interest in reengaging in the Syrian Civil War). This would be consistent with Trump’s oft-stated observation that America’s wars (declared and undeclared) in the Middle East have been a waste.

Trump need not “recognize” the Russian annexation of Crimea but he should assert that a resolution to the situation on the ground in Ukraine is a European matter—to be settled by bilateral negotiations between Russia and Europe.

Understanding of this magnitude would obviate the main pretext for the senseless escalation of pecuniary diplomatic sanctions—the defenestration of embassy and consulate staff—on the parts of both Russia and the United States. The return of the possibility of civilian travel between the two nations would do wonders to lower tensions. (Remember, even at the height of the Cold War, President Eisenhower argued that populations denied contact with each other would tend to be suspicious of each other—and prone to minor conflicts that could escalate into larger wars.)

To continue reading; For Peace With Putin, End America’s Pointless Wars

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From Singapore to Helsinki: The Case for Peace, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on July 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

The same usual suspects have lined up against Trump and Kim Jong Un’s negotiations and the Helsinki summit. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:

North Korea’s opacity is a boon to the War Party: they can seize on any glitch in the ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration as “proof” that Kim Jong-un “will never give up his nuclear weapons,” as former anti-interventionist Daniel Larison tweets 24 hours a day. The contention is that Pyongyang has a different definition of “denuclearization” than the rest of the world: it means US withdrawal from South Korea, we are told. Yet Kim has reportedly agreed to not dispute the presence of US troops in the south, and this is clearly a distortion of what’s really going on.

So what’s the real story?

We don’t know: all the “news” stories about this matter pretend to be omniscient, as if reporters were flies on the wall listening in to the negotiators. This is obviously not the case, and it is especially true in this case: North Korea is a closed society, and access is granted only rarely. This has led to the improbable impression that it is a monolith, that there are no factions or political struggles. This is a) impossible, and b) disproved by history. Indeed, the history of the ruling Korean Workers Party is one of continuous power struggles followed by ruthless purges: there are even reports of actual fighting between rival units of the military.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s most recent trip to Pyongyang is being depicted in the media as a rebuke and a major setback for the peace talks, the major point being that he did not meet with Kim and was treated rather shabbily. Yet we don’t know the reason for this, although the “experts” and the media pretend to know. Of course, I don’t know, either, and yet my own theory is a lot more credible, given the historical context, than the “we got suckered” dogma that the phony “experts” – Trump-haters all – are circulating.

Kim is not just looking for a peace treaty and the elimination of hostilities: as I’ve written previously, he has launched a radical new turn toward the West. Today he rules over a ramshackle country that cannot feed its own people: the “Juche” system of absolute autarchy isn’t working because it cannot work. This failure undermines Kim’s legitimacy, and he is determined to correct it not with piddling little reforms but by transforming his country in much the same way as Mikhail Gorbachev transformed the Soviet Union and put the country on a path to complete de-Sovietization. In short, Kim wants Pyongyang to resemble Singapore rather than Senegal.

To continue reading: From Singapore to Helsinki: The Case for Peace

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US establishment in hysterics that Trump-Putin summit might succeed, by Jim Jatras

Posted on July 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

Of course, no matter what emerges from the Trump-Putin summit, the US establishment will label it a failure. From Jim Jatras at rt.com:

There are many reasons the bipartisan US establishment hates Trump. His heresies from neoliberal orthodoxies on immigration and trade are prominent. But top among them is his oft-stated intention to improve relations with Russia.

That’s fighting words for the Deep State and its mainstream media arm, for which demonizing Russia and its president Vladimir Putin is an obsession.

The fact that Donald Trump made his intention to get along with Moscow a priority during his 2016 campaign, both against his Republican primary rivals and Hillary Clinton (who has compared Putin to Hitler) was cause for alarm. This is because far more than even the frightening prospect that the 70-year state of war on the Korean Peninsula might end, US reconciliation with Russia would yank the rug out from under the phony justifications for spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to counter a “threat” that ceased to exist over a quarter century ago. Absent hostility to Russia that money has no reason to keep sustaining the power, privilege, and prosperity of a horde of moochers and profiteers, both at home and abroad.

That’s why when it was reported soon after his January 2017 inauguration that Trump was seeking to open dialogue with the Kremlin and set an early summit with Putin there was a hysterical counteraction. As described just over a year ago by conservative columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan:

“Trump planned a swift lifting of sanctions on Russia after inauguration and a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin to prevent a second Cold War. The State Department was tasked with working out the details. Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received ‘panicky’ calls of ‘Please, my God, can you stop this?’. Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded. “It would have been a win-win for Moscow,” said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own.

To continue reading: US establishment in hysterics that Trump-Putin summit might succeed

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As Trump ‘Goes Nuclear’ Against Iran and China, What’s Next? by Alastair Crooke

Posted on July 4, 2018 | 1 comment

Is Trump against globalism but not against using globalist methods and strategies? From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

At least it is clear; it’s explicit. The “We’re America, Bitch” formulation by an American official strips away the humbug of soft power. It’s not about ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’: the global universal order never was. And, President Trump, to his credit, makes no bones about it: Why apologise over American power? It’s use it, or lose it – and America is still strong enough to get its way: to remain the Dominant One, he asserts.

China begs to differ. It has already surpassed the US in 2013 in purchasing power parity GDP terms, and now feels history on the move: China is about to resume its former ‘self’, and standing as the primordial Culture (as it believes it always was), occupying the very middle of the world. The material articulation now, of this rediscovered ‘self’, being the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), encompassing a ‘community of shared destiny’. But the latter’s external political expression is reflected more by the (originally) Russian formulation of ‘Eurasianism’ and multipolarity, which dates back to the 1920s.

Plainly, multipolarity stands in direct opposition to western universalism, and to ‘end of history’. It is not anti-western per se, but it is directly opposed to the western utopian projects that have attempted to slice all that is human down to a ‘single size fits all’, model society. The Russian Eurasian notion is of different cultures, autonomous, and sovereign, that precisely denies universality and hegemony, in principle. The idea rather, is of a grouping of ‘nations’, each reaching back to its primordial cultures and identities – i.e. Russia being ‘Russian’ in its own ‘Russian cultural way’ – and not being coerced into mimicking the westernisation impulse. What makes such a wider grouping feasible is that cultural identities are complex and storied; it escapes the prevailing obsession to reduce every nation to singularity in value, and to a single ‘meaning’. The ground for collaboration and conversation thus widens beyond ‘the either-or’.

President Trump ostensibly should be perceived to be in the basket supporting Italy and Europe’s cultural re-sovereigntisation – at least this is what Steve Bannon suggested after a recent visit to Italy, where he soughtto present the new Lega/M5S Italian government as the embryo of a nascent pan-European uprising, against the liberal-progressive (globalist) Establishment. Bannon characterised this ‘embryo’ as a “pivot to Trump”. A Russian thinker and author, however, also visiting Italy at the same moment, saw Italy’s new orientation quite differently – as the seeds of this multipolar, Eurasian ‘idea’ emerging in Europe.

To continue reading: As Trump ‘Goes Nuclear’ Against Iran and China, What’s Next?

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America First, Helsinki and Trump’s Existential Threat to the Empire, by David Stockman

Posted on July 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

This long article is well worth the read. David Stockman nails it. From Stockman at antiwar.com:

The major – perhaps only – redeeming virtue of the Donald’s ersatz campaign platform was his clear intent to seek a rapprochement with Russia, revamp America’s commitments to NATO and other cold war relics and to discard “Regime Change” as the core tenant of foreign policy. In essence, “America First” was to become the new route to domestic security and safety.

Those eminently sensible notions struck the Deep State’s raison d’etre to the quick during the campaign; and by hook or crook, the Donald’s rapid fire actions toward these objectives since April have induced a palpable shock in the Imperial City.

Clearly he means to withdraw America’s 29,000 military hostages now stationed in South Korea in return for some sort of peace treaty, economic normalization and denuclearization arrangement with Kim Jong-un.

Likewise, he has sensibly suggested that demonizing Russia and Putin has accomplished nothing, and that they should be invited back into the G-8. And as soon as Robert Mueller finishes his RussiaGate farce, Trump can get rid of the present asinine sanctions on various Russian officials and Putin cronies, too.

We also now know – owing to the sullen reporting of the Washington Post – that Trump has been hounding the national security bureaucracy about another utterly ridiculous artifact of the Empire. Namely, the fact that 73 years after Hitler descended into Hades from his bunker and 27 years after the Soviet Union slithered off the pages of history, there are still 35,000 US troops in Germany:

The Pentagon is analyzing the cost and impact of a large-scale withdrawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany, amid growing tensions between President Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to people familiar with the work.

“The effort follows Trump’s expression of interest in removing the troops, made during a meeting earlier this year with White House and military aides, U.S. officials said. Trump was said to have been taken aback by the size of the US presence, which includes about 35,000 active-duty troops, and complained that other countries were not contributing fairly to joint security or paying enough to NATO.

“Word of the assessment has alarmed European officials, who are scrambling …”

Scrambling?

We doubt whether real Europeans are scrambling at all – the Post is surely just quoting from the NATO echo chamber.

Then again, the latter is absolutely the most useless, obsolete, wasteful and dangerous multilateral institution in the present world. But like the proverbial clothes-less emperor, NATO doesn’t dare risk having the purportedly “uninformed” amateur in the Oval Office pointing out its buck naked behind.

To continue reading: America First, Helsinki and Trump’s Existential Threat to the Empire

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