Twitter and Facebook incite hatred

Will Smith’s slap heard round the world was more than a gift to racist stereotypes.

The fact that after his physical assault on a person who used hurtful words, he was applauded by the elite of American popular culture, has more sinister implications.

Smith has a lot of support in some circles. Facebook and Twitter are waiving their hate speech policies and allowing rampant hate mongering against other comedians who have offended those same circles.

Tweaking algorithms in such a way as to incite hatred is not a new development. Twitter sidelined its hate-speech policies to allow anti-Russia hate to blossom.

It’s not just social media, it’s news as well. Just a few weeks ago the nabobs at CBC were determined to find connections between the truckers’ protest and far-right extremism. Now the same “journalists” are working even harder trying not to see fascists in Ukraine. After all, they are fighting Russians, and every decent person of sound mind must surely hate Putin and Russia by now, and if Nazis are fighting Russia, we need to support them.

I tune in Al Jazeera a couple of times a day. You can’t watch half an hour of their Ukraine coverage without multiple anti-Russian slurs; “Russians are animals,” for example.

The Al Thani clan, Qatar’s “royal family,” fund Al Jazeera. They play a tidy double game. On the one hand they host US military bases and provide a steady stream of anti-Russian propaganda. Their correspondent Assed Baig is particularly fun to watch.

On the other, they are relentlessly pro-Palestinian, and declined participation in the Judas Accords. Nor are they in any rush to join in those Russia sanctions Uncle Sam is demanding, because they continue to maintain cordial relations, not only with Russia, but with Iran as well.

Like many of America’s supposed allies, the Qatari’s remain on the fence, waiting to see which way the winds of change are blowing.

When the time comes, they may have to change the target of their hate-mongering.

And that’s when we’ll have to reap what we’ve sown.

What up in the Kingdom?

Doug Saunders, Canada's answer to Thomas Friedman, laid a bit of an egg with his opinion piece in the Globe yesterday, if you want to know my six dollars and thirty cents worth. I mean, what was that other than another not-so-thinly veiled plug for his book?

Ya Doug, we know! You've got a book coming out. Maximum Canada... I hope a hundred million Canadians get to read it someday. Now try to write your column without mentioning that you've a book coming out.

By the way, I'm guessing you've noticed by now you miss-spelled the name of Canada's Immigration Minister. Five times in one editorial. Come on, Doug, pull up your socks! I pay $6.30 every Saturday to read this shit.

But anyway, what's afoot in The Kingdom? Looks to me like the boss princeling is working overtime putting his stamp on things. Let's see... so far, he's engineered the Yemen war.

Epic fail.

The collapse of global oil prices.

Epic fail. As far as I can see, that ambitious strike against Russia and Iran turned out to be a near-mortal self-inflicted wound more than anything.

Let's not forget the brouhaha with Qatar. The only question about that fail is how epic it'll turn out to be in the final analysis.

And now, the putsch. The "night of the long knives" as some are calling it. The KSA hasn't seen this much intrigue since Bandar Bush went AWOL for a spell a few years ago! The Hariri angle is the icing on the cake.

Netanyahu went overboard trying to make hay out of that one. Hmm... maybe Hariri knows something? Maybe he knows that the immediate future of his country is looking rather bleak, and he'd rather spend the next few weeks in Riyadh than in Beirut?

But back to the putsch. One thing I'm wondering; was this a preemptive strike? Did Crown Prince MBS get wind of something and decide he'd rather be the hammer than the nail? In any event, looks like there could be a rush of "high net worth" Saudi refugees looking for a roof soon.

Or a luxury suite. Or a few floors of a five star hotel. Luckily, Canada has the infrastructure in place to accommodate this imminent refugee flow.

The Lebanese won't be a problem either, once the fireworks start. I mean, half those folks already hold Canadian passports. They won't even be refugees... they'll just be coming home!

Hezbollah today, here tomorrow! That's OK too. At least it'll get easier to find a decent tabbouleh. And that divine Bekaa Valley Blonde those people are renowned for.

I wouldn't worry about the Israelis either. Most of those people already hold US or German passports, so let them go there. The rest we can take in as refugees. That would make up for the shame of the MS St. Louis debacle back in '39.

So between a half million Israelis, six million Lebanese, and whoever can escape the clutches of the Insane Clown Prince, I figure we could be welcoming a good ten million refugees in the next few months.

Looks like we'll be well on our way to Maximum Canada!

How to fight terrorism while sponsoring terrorists

This Mohammad bin Salman dude who is now boss of Saudi Arabia has quite a track record for such a youthful world leader.

He's the architect of the collapse in world oil prices, a strategy that has been an epic fail. It has hurt Saudi Arabia more than any of the intended targets.

He's also the architect of the Yemen war, which is an unmitigated disaster and also an epic fail.

And as of this week, he's also the heir apparent to the leadership of the sclerotic state of Saudi Arabia.

Ya, Saudi Arabia is fucked.

Oddly enough, President Trump wasted no time offering congrats to this incorrigible youngster. He sees an eager vassal keen to do the bidding of Uncle Sam, and that's true to a point.

There are any number of policy initiatives taken by this imbecile that threaten catastrophic blow-back not only to Saudi Arabia but to the Middle East in general.

Sucking up to Israel will never fly in the Arab street. Perhaps it's a valid concept among the princelings in the Kingdom, but it will never find favour among the masses.

The Trump initiated quarantine of Qatar is another goose on its way to being cooked. If you've read this far you already know the hilarious demands that MBS and his Arab acolytes (all US vassal states, by the way) have made of Qatar.

Shut down Al Jazeera. Theoretically this should raise the hackles of freedom of speech advocates worldwide, but thus far the condemnation of this initiative has been muted.

Break commercial ties with Iran. After all, as Trump and the entire upper echelon of US power-brokers never tire of reminding us, Iran is the mother ship of terror networks world-wide.

Stop supporting terrorism. There's no question that Qatar has supported terrorism... in Syria. A far bigger sponsor of terrorism has been the very state that MBS is now the putative and temporary head of. The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and Hezbollah are only "terror" entities in countries where Israeli lobbying has succeeded in rendering them as such.

How many 9/11 terrorists hailed from Qatar?

How many from Saudi Arabia?

Kick Turkey out of their base in Qatar. This could get interesting. The US has a far larger base in Qatar. The US and Turkey are NATO allies. Turkey is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood hood. That won't change anytime soon. Read up on Erdogan's approval ratings. He's doing much better than Trump.

Interesting times indeed!

Most explosive story in the world ignored by US media

Hot on the heels of Erdogan's announcement that Turkey is sending 5,000 troops to Qatar, comes news that Pakistan is sending a further 20,000.

Ostensibly they will be there to discourage any untoward moves by Qatar's suddenly hostile neighbours. In reality, who knows?

Maybe they're just there to ensure first dibs on the looting of Qatar as soon as they get the green light from DC? After all, if you think Donny J is unpredictable, try following Pak or Turk politics for fifteen minutes.

This is the most important story in the world at this moment. Our GCC allies are turning on one another with a vengeance, but you don't see much about it in American media because everyone is obsessed with the Comey non-story unfolding in Washington.

The wily Erdogan outflanks team Trump in Qatar

For the first couple of days after Saudi Arabia announced the excommunication of Qatar from the community of US vassal states in the Gulf, the punditocracy was unanimous that Qatar's goose was cooked. They'd have no choice but to deep-six their civil relationship with Iran. They'd have no choice but to drastically rein in their pain-in-the-ass Al Jazeera network. In fact, there was widespread talk that regime change wouldn't be long in coming.

What's coming instead is the Turkish military, and they're not coming to expedite the removal of the Emir. Quite to the contrary. Qatar and Turkey are two of the main sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood. Thanks mainly to Israeli lobbying efforts, the MB have long been a listed terrorist outfit in much of the West, and also in Saudi Arabia. I would hazard a guess that if and when push comes to shove, an Erdogan-led Turkey would have more loyalty to the MB than to NATO.

Israel's main problem with the MB is that it's the backbone of the democratically elected government in Gaza. There was a time when Israel happily nurtured the fledgling Hamas to undercut the PLO. Those days are long gone. Today, the PLO/PA are generally seen as Israel's bum-boys, while Hamas are considered Palestinian patriots.

This unfolding shitstorm was unleashed by Trump's bombastic rhetoric on the occasion of his visit to Riyadh last week, when he demanded that his audience stand with America in the war to exterminate "terrorism" once and for all. Even in mainstream American media it's widely acknowledged that it's the Saudis who are the primary enablers of this thing we call terrorism.

Not that the Qatari's have clean hands, but after the putative leader of the free world put things so baldly, it was just a matter of time before the finger-pointing got serious.

So here we are. The Saudis are doing way more to keep the order books of Lockheed and Raytheon and Boeing plumped up than Qatar is, which is why they've got more cred in the West, at least for now. But with Erdogan throwing this spanner into the works and Washington in chaos, it's impossible to predict what's next.

Interesting times indeed!

Qatar get's voted off Trump's "Arab NATO" island

Trump made a lot of noise in his speech in Riyadh a week ago about Iran's supposed underwriting of terrorism. No doubt more than a few of the assembled Sheikhs felt the sweat beading up under their Keffiyas; after all, no one knows better than they who's really been behind the financing of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, ISIS, and sundry other chapters of Head-choppers Inc.

Not that it's much of a secret. Those e-mails Putin stole off Hillary's computer last year revealed that she's been aware of the game for years and obviously was wholly untroubled by the fact.

It's certainly not something you read about in American media of course. We prefer to hew to the Israeli line that Iran is the troublemaker in the neighbourhood. But with Trump shining the presidential spotlight on the matter, something was bound to give.

And today, Trump's "Arab NATO" chums discovered the traitor in their midst; Qatar. Yup, one of the Sunni Kingdoms has indeed been sponsoring ISIS et al. And not only that, they've been way too chummy with Israel's number one existential threat for quite some time.

Looks like we're seeing a new power bloc stepping out of the shadows; a US/Saudi/Egypt/Israel combine. Forget democracy, forget human rights, and above all, forget the Palestinians.

If you think we live in interesting times, you ain't seen nothing yet!

More meddling in Syria required to solve tragedy caused by our meddling in Syria - Toronto Star

Yup, everything is Assad's fault.

Nothing that's happened in Syria in the past four years can be blamed on Qatar or Saudi Arabia or Turkey, all of whom have connived to flood Syria with well-armed foreign jihadis, none of whom would lift a finger to so much as pick their nose without a green light from Washington.

Toronto Star veteran Mitch Potter offers this "news" story which informs the reader that a "no-fly" zone will keep Syrian toddlers safe from the evil Assad, who is responsible for them drowning in the Mediterranean etc.

Sorry Mitch; last time the Nations of Virtue played that card was in Libya.

How has that worked out for Libyans?

America-bashers at al-Jazeera now peddling Heritage Foundation propaganda

There was a time not long ago that the al-Jazeera network was deemed such a threat to US interests that George W. Bush considered bombing their offices.

W can rest easy. AJE has an opinion piece on view today straight from the Heritage Foundation's "Margaret Thatcher Fellow" Luke Coffey; It's time to arm Ukraine.

Leaving aside Mr. Coffey's extravagantly padded bio at the Heritage Foundation, (he "helped shape British Defence policy" while still a wet-behind-the-ears whipper-snapper in his 20's), reading his article clarifies that he owes his post at HF not to his keen insights or rigorous analyses, but to his ability to hew to a particular ideological program in the face of all evidence against it.

We start with the usual PNAC bromides, apparently none the less appealing for having lead to unmitigated disaster for America over the past 15 years; the unspoken and unquestioned assumption of American exceptionalism and the inference that anyone who disagrees with America's right to intervene in the internal matters of sovereign states at will is ethically and intellectually challenged.

As we all know, Russia is the aggressor and Obama is dithering. We expect nothing else and nothing less from the thinkers at this think tank.

Having set the stage, Coffey delivers his one-two punch of reasons the US needs to arm Ukraine now;

First, the people of Ukraine have demonstrated, whether on the streets of the Maidan or through the ballot box, that they see their future in the West and not under Russian domination.
There was a time not too long ago that closer ties with the West were discouraged by Ukraine's leaders. In fact, until a few months ago there was even a law that prohibited Ukraine from ever joining NATO. Since the disposal of the Russian backed former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich this has all changed.
Second, the security situation has stabilised when compared to several months ago. When Russia first started backing the separatists the situation on the ground was chaotic. Nobody knew how far the separatists would go and where they would be stopped. The Ukrainian military was in disarray.
Now the situation is different. There is a front-line and a traditional linear battlefield. The Ukrainian military has consolidated. Although it has a long way to go, recruitment and training is taking place. Also, there is a less of a chance that western weapons will end up in the hands of the separatists.

That's quite a batch of half-truths, non-sequitors, distortions, and out-right fabrications to serve up in two short paragraphs! The security situation has stabilised? The Ukrainian military has consolidated?...

So why does al-Jazeera, a network birthed to provide an alternative to the dominant Atlanticist world news industry, publish such obvious claptrap from such an obnoxious source? That's easy; on the matter of demonizing Putin, the PNAC freedom-fighters at the Heritage Foundation and the anti-democratic nutters of Qatar's royal family are on the same page.

Qatar climb-down signals imminent release of Jazeera journos

In the front office and on the front page, the Emirs of Qatar have officially turned their backs on the MB. That means those three Jazeera journalists who have been cooling their heels in a Cairo prison for the past year will be coming home soon.

Meanwhile, who knows what's going on in the back rooms? Just because Qatar has left the MB to hang, does that mean their support for the far more radical IS types in Iraq and Syria is over?

And would somebody, anybody, please make sure those three guys are released very soon, otherwise the ever-unctuous Canadian FM will take credit for their release!

Al Jazeera's relentless anti-Putin fear-mongering

I like Al Jazeera because it's a reliable if somewhat slanted news source. Once you can reliably discern the slant you know what to look for and what to discard.

The Qatar-funded news platform certainly has a degree of anti-American and anti-Israel cred. Otherwise you wouldn't see Israel's inveterate hate-monger FM Lieberman lobbying to have them kicked out of Israel. After all, they are among the prime proliferationists in that proliferation of "telegenic" dead baby pictures coming out of Gaza.

Nor would you have seen "the Shrub" plot to bomb them ten years ago.

While their anti-Israel and anti-USA bona fides may have a wiff of legitimacy, the guy they really hate is Russia's Putin.

Witness this spot of anti-Putin fear-mongering; Moldova, under the influence.

Yup, Moldova could be next... could be over-run in a matter of hours...

Well, it could be, just like Canada could be over-run by the US in a matter of hours, or Monaco could be over-run by France in a few hours, or Liechtenstein could be over-run by Austria in a matter of hours...

But there is utterly no reason to expect that such a thing would happen. These stories are fabrications of NATO PR hacks who constantly need to find more imaginary threats to justify the continued existence of a bureaucratic behemoth that has long outlived its mandate.

Washington consolidates control over global jihad

The Muslim Brotherhood is officially on the shit list.

We know that because Saudi Arabia has officially declared them a terrorist group. These notions don't spontaneously pop into King Abdullah's head out of nowhere.

The Brotherhood has in fact been nothing like a terror group. What the Saudi move means is that there is a bit of rebranding going on in the world 'o jihad. The al-Nusra Front and al-Qaeda have also been placed on Riyadh's Washington dictated verboten list.

This move is part and parcel of the news two days ago that most of the GCC were recalling their ambassadors from Qatar. Qatar has become the rogue state sponsoring not only the Brotherhood, but various other free-lance conglomerations of jihadis who operate outside of official US-Saudi oversight.

There was a time when Saudi money flowed freely to the many iterations of jihad terror around the Middle East and beyond. Saudi Arabia was the primariy financier of al-Qaeda for years. Bin Laden himself was financed out of Saudi Arabia.

Those days are now officially over. What brought about this U-turn?

The free-for-all in Syria. When Assad failed to follow the Washington script for regime change, random jihadi groups were given a green light to join the fray. Those myriad free-booters have proved to be well beyond the control of their financial backers, and as a result international jihad has a PR problem and their backers are pissed off.

Hence the current crack-down and consolidation.

Does the fact that Saudi Arabia has condemned al-Nusra and al-Qaeda mean we have won the war on terror?

Not at all. It means that terror groups have to buck up and do the bidding of their financial backers. No more of this random free-lance stuff where kids from Minneapolis and Winnipeg morph into "al Qaeda leaders" within six months of leaving Minneapolis and Winnipeg.

Where does that leave the Brotherhood?

The MB has been stomped on, persecuted, prosecuted, and driven underground for years. Its rise to legitimacy in Egypt and Turkey was never more than tenuous, as Morsi has found out and Erdogan will soon. It will continue as an underground organization.

Does this mean the end of al Qaeda and radical Islam? Hell no! This isn't about ending radical Islamist terror; it's about getting it under control.

Wahhabi zealots who once worked under the al-Qaeda or al-Nusra banners are simply being rebranded. Those who don't play ball and accept the US-Saudi directorship can count on a) being left out of the money & materiels supply chain, and b) finding themselves running zig-zag patterns in the desert as they try to avoid the drones with their names programmed into the guidance systems.

Once firmly under control, the jihadi hordes will be reliable allies. We'll finally be able to give them the kind of support we've been giving them all along, but now we'll be able to do it in the open.

They are an invaluable resource in the tool kit of Empire.

Professor distinguishes himself with lame analysis of Syrian civil war

Maybe Mark Levine is pulling his punches because he's writing at Al Jazeera and one of the Emir's relatives is looking over his shoulder.

That is one ultra-wordy exercise in hand-wringing about whether the Syrian opposition was too hasty in making their peaceful protest into an armed uprising. That transition to violence was measured in hours rather than months or years.

Levine speculates that unnamed states in the region might have made promises of external support to the opposition which they have since reneged on. Those unnamed states are of course named as Saudi Arabia and Qatar everywhere else, so why the reticence? Could it be because he's ever so obliquely accusing the backers of Al Jazeera of perfidy?

And nowhere in all those words does he mention that fighters and arms and money continue to pour into Syria from Turkey. Maybe part of his reluctance to speak boldly stems from his reliance on professional democracy activists, a species that invariably have their bills paid by Washington and work their magic in countries that Washington doesn't like.

Like the "senior non-violence trainer" he refers to in his postscript. What the hell is a non-violence trainer anyway?

If the architects of the Syrian crisis had wanted non-violence, all they had to do was stay home, mind their own business, and let Syrians chart their own course to democracy.

Instead, they lit this conflagration which has now gotten completely out of their control as Syria becomes a magnet for wannabe jihadists across the Islamic world.

Are the Syrian people better off than they were before all this started?