TRUMP TREASON REVEALED!!!

And it wasn't the Mueller investigation that revealed it; it was the Entous investigation.

Adam Entous, formerly of the Washington Post and the WSJ, has a fifteen page expose in the June 18 issue of The New Yorker detailing the Trump team's collusion with several foreign powers. Seems that Mueller's been looking at the wrong foreign power. His year and a half investigation has thus far served up some woefully thin gruel from which to make a case for Russian meddling in America's sacred democracy.

Instead of Russia, it seems he should have focused on Saudi Arabia, UAE, and, especially, Israel. Entous' investigation reveals collusion between agents of those foreign powers and the Trump team virtually 24/7 throughout the lead-up to the 2016 election. This collusion occurred at the highest levels, including between the future President and the heads of state of these foreign entities.

Entous' story has been out for well over a month now, so I'm surprised there's been no outrage in our major media about this foreign meddling. Surely somebody's going to be calling for sanctions on these rogue states any day now!

Hark, the war drums beckon!

Big Steve and a gaggle of like-minded neocon has-beens wasted no time offering Mafia Don props on a job well done.

Trump abrogates the Iran deal on Tuesday and Harper & Company have their rancid diatribe in the New York Times the very next day!

Only the greatest leader since Moses was quicker off the mark than this sorry lot; he managed to launch a major missile attack on Syria even before Harper et al launched their bought and paid for op-ed!

And who can blame him? After Trump's announcement of the US embassy move, after Trump delivers the imbecile MBS to the Israeli camp, after Trump unilaterally dumps the JCPOA agreement, Bibi obviously sees green lights all over the place.

No wonder they love Trump in Israel!

Harper is concerned that Iran "oppresses its people" and "commits violence against the people of Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon..."

Hmm... does Iran oppress its people more than, say, Saudi Arabia?

Is the war on Yemen not a Saudi project?

Has not the US committed far greater violence against the people of Iraq than has Iran?

And no one has inflicted more death and destruction on Lebanon than our good friends, the Israelis.

Even though fifteen of nineteen 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, and none were Iranian, Saudi Arabia is our ally, and Iran is the enemy?

But forget all these trifles! The free world must come together as one and teach those uppity Persians a lesson they won't soon forget.


I'll bet old Eric Arthur Blair is enjoying the greatest stiffy of his life, even though he's been in the grave nearly seventy years!

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!

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!

We'll see $150 oil overnight if the Iran-Saudi spat becomes a shooting war

Both countries have the capacity to cripple each other's oil infrastructure. Ponder that for awhile when you contemplate the potential ramifications of the scary headlines you're seeing today.

Outrage over Saudi's execution of a prominent Shia cleric has got the entire neighbourhood on a keener edge than ever before. This is a story that has numerous backstories. There's an ongoing power-struggle going on in Saudi Arabia that is both internecine and inter-generational, and all bets are off on who might prevail.

Then you've got your outside interests, primarily the US, Israel, and Russia. The American's have been making nice with Iran, at least at the official level. However, there is a huge cadre of neocons in the beltway who have seen these efforts to normalize US-Iran relations as a stab in the back to our Israeli allies. And of course that's how it's perceived among some elements of the Saudi elite as well.

Meanwhile, there's also been a steady back and forth between Moscow and Riyadh in diplomatic traffic. At least some elements in the Saudi ruling clique recognize that the current "make up for price by selling more volume" strategy is, in the long run, economic suicide for Saudi Arabia. If it goes on long enough, it will cripple the Russian economy as well.

That's a lot of very unpredictable balls in the air.

The prudent investor might want to consider bulking up on crude futures. WTI has gained a couple of percentage points today, but that's nothing compared to what will happen when the Strait of Hormuz is shut down.

And that is a very real and very imminent possibility.

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?

Pot-addled hillbilly beats media big boys to Saudi-war-on-fracking story by months

My Globe and Mail has a multi-page feature about Saudi-Arabia's war on fracking in today's paper. In fact, the story seems to be everywhere these days, especially since the November 27 OPEC meeting in Vienna.

The think tank here at Falling Downs read the tea leaves eight weeks before the OPEC meeting.

By golly, that Puslinch Primo that's been going around here is better than a crystal ball!

Canada FM Baird "deeply horrified"

Those of you who are habitual readers of the press releases emanating from Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, Gay Rights, Mining Rights, and Corporate Rights, will be well acquainted with bullshittin' Baird's tendency to fling dung in the direction of enemies of Empire.

He is often appalled, occasionally outraged, but rarely if ever has he been deeply horrified.

But he is today...

Canada Condemns ISIL’s Massacre of Sunni Opponents

October 30, 2014 - Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird today released the following statement:

“I am deeply horrified by reports that mass graves have been uncovered in the Iraqi province of Anbar, allegedly containing the bodies of hundreds of members of the Sunni Albu Nimr tribe, which is opposed to the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL].

“These acts are a clear reminder of ISIL’s total disregard for human life and that they will kill anyone who does not adhere to their brutal ideology and distorted version of Islam, be they Shia, Sunni or members of other religious communities.

“Canada condemns ISIL’s brutality and calls upon the diverse population of Iraq to face the terrorist threat as one and bring those responsible to justice.

“We send our heartfelt condolences to the families and friends of the victims.”

Canada has officially listed ISIL as a terrorist entity under Canada’s Criminal Code.

***

Oh ya!

Those ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State baddies have killed hundreds of their opponents.

This leaves the Canadian Foreign Minister "deeply horrified."

Oddly enough, when Israel was killing a few hundred of its opponents last summer, along with many more hundreds of innocent civilians, Baird was rendered speechless.

"Speechless" as in he had not one critical word to say about Israel.

And that second paragraph is a doozy, is it not? Let's give it just a subtle tweak;

These acts are a clear reminder of USA's total disregard for human life and that they will kill anyone who does not adhere to their brutal ideology and distorted version of democracy, be they Shia, Sunni or members of other religious communities.

Just last week Baird was in Saudi Arabia, a country whose non-elected government has been beheading it's opponents for years, talking nice and being anything but "deeply horrified," because after all, the Saudis are buying lots and lots of military stuff from Canada.

You can't be going off all horrified when there's a dollar to be turned!

Fact is, the US and her allies in the region have taken exponentially more lives, innocent or otherwise, than the upstart Islamic State, and never has there been so much as a "somewhat concerned," let alone a "deeply horrified," from Mr. Baird.

Saudi Arabia saves Ukraine from Putin - Conrad Black

That astonishing revelation comes from no less an armchair general than disgraced peer, convicted fraudster, and failed media magnate Conrad Black.

As Conrad sees it, Putin's order to have Russian troops pull back from the Ukraine border last week was not a goodwill gesture in the ongoing dialogue with Ukraine PM Poroshenko, but the result of pressure put on Russia by Saudi Arabia!

Conrad's musings in the National Post are a toxic stew of Islamophobia, Putin-bashing and wishful thinking.

• ISIS is fading and will be beaten by the Kurds
• Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel will join forces to liberate Iran
• more bombing will bring peace and democracy to Iraq and Syria
• Iran is the main cause of conflict in the region... and so on.

In fact, Mr. Black pretty much gives you the standard PNAC/Likud boilerplate in one condensed easy-to-read article... I didn't have to run for the dictionary once!

And that doesn't happen very often when I'm reading anything by CB.

Mr. Black, in spite of the many set-backs he has suffered over the past two decades, remains an entertaining spokesman for the smug and self-righteous Western elites. 

Too bad he gets so much so wrong!

Ten years ago, with oil under $50, western companies were pouring billions into the Russian oil fields because it was profitable for them to do so at that price. Now that the infrastructure is in place Russia isn't going to be crippled by a price of $70, but the fracking industry behind America's petrol-renaissance will be.

There goes America's so-called economic recovery. 

"Demented theocrats" in Tehran aren't the biggest obstacle to peace in the region; that would be the demented theocrats in Washington who truly believe, in their hearts, in America's God-given exceptionalism.

The Arab people have been mis-governed for the past 65 years because American power has propped up corrupt and repressive governments, and forced repeated wars on the region to affect regime change whenever the vassals strayed too far from their script.

ISIS rapidly gaining mainstream support throughout Arab world

This story about football fans chanting their support for Islamic State at a match in Morocco should give us pause.

But it won't.

Instead, today we are treated to yet another press release from Canada's know-nothing Foreign Minister, Baird the Bombastic. ISIL is just a gang of terrorists, don't you know, who are bent on raping and pillaging and slaughtering anyone who stands in their way as they seek to spread their hateful ideology throughout Iraq and Syria... which apparently reinforces our moral duty to stop their murderous rampage, which we will do in concert with "our allies."

That would be these folks:



Sorry Mr. Baird, your claim to the moral high ground rings a little hollow. We may have forgotten Abu Ghraib here in the Nations of Virtue, but you can bet they haven't in Iraq.

The reason Islamic State finds a receptive audience is because at long last the Arab street has a champion that promises to put the last hundred years of humiliation behind them.

In other developments, Baird also announced today that he is jetting to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to discuss our "strong and growing relationships" with the ruling elites of those flourishing democracies.

Is Saudi Arabia preparing to collapse the global petroleum market?

It is widely acknowledged that the US economic recovery post 2008, such as it is, has largely been driven by the boom in shale oil exploration and production.

A variety of analysts from across the political spectrum have speculated that shale oil can break America's dependence on her sketchy allies in the Middle East. If we no longer are dependent on ME oil, the thinking goes, we will be free of the political influence of the Saudis and the GCC.

Under normal conditions, Saudi Arabia in its role as the world's leading oil producer, actively intervenes in the market to keep prices high, to maximize its income. Ironically, it has been sustained high prices that have made the Bakken boom and other shale oil plays possible.

There are indications that the Saudis are prepared to see a significant decrease in their oil revenues in the short to medium term. They can afford to pump oil out of Ghawar almost indefinitely at a price well below the break-even of any shale oil produced in America. That would destroy America's shale oil boom in a matter of months, and do untold damage to an already struggling economy.

Even if the Saudis eventually allow prices to float up again after that mission is accomplished, the infrastructure of the shale boom could not be re-activated overnight. Furthermore, a substantial shut-down of shale production would allow the opponents of fracking to regroup and consolidate their efforts.

The political reality of shale production is that it becomes more of a wedge issue as time goes on. Most Americans aren't prepared to sacrifice the drinking water of future generations to a short-lived shale bonanza, and on this issue time is on the side of anti-fracking activists, not the industry.

All of America's allies in the Arab world are fundamentally anti-democratic and depend on American support to cling to power. The prospect of being cut loose by an energy self-sufficient US is their worst nightmare. They have a vested interest in America's continued dependence on their oil and the vast market they provide for America's only viable export product; weapons.

Seen in the context of other developments unfolding in the region at this time, oil could be another weapon, alongside ISIS, that America's Arab allies could use to manipulate American policy in their favor.

The politics of beheading; Saudi Arabia lops off 19 heads in three weeks but we're going to war with ISIS after they lop off one?

But hey, they were marijuana dealers or something...

So that's OK.

Beheading marijuana dealers is just part of the war on drugs, which is, these days, just the poor cousin of the war on terror.

But the CIA-sponsored Islamic Republic beheads a guy, and we're to drop everything and rush to a new war in the Middle East?

That just doesn't add up.

How to tell who's who among America's Middle East allies

Ain't that a brain teaser?

First question is, what allies do we have in the Middle East?

Well, one of course. Our best friends in the Holy Land.

Then there's our besties in Saudi Arabia.

Any others? Well, there's all those Gulf statelets. They don't really count as independent countries. They are essentially Saudi protectorates.

Egypt? Guess that went down the drain with Mubarak.

Jordan? Hmm... maybe. But their poor King is busy trying to be friends to everybody all the time, and when push comes to shove he's not going to be a very reliable ally. Besides, what does Jordan bring to the table besides a vote at the UN?

So America has two allies in the Middle East.

Israel and Saudi Arabia. The only democracy and the biggest oil exporter.

The only democracy costs America an arm and a leg and a prothesis every year just to keep them on the friend side of the ledger. They cost the US a lot of money.

We need them to keep an eye on our only other ally, the House of Saud. We love the Saudis. They rob us blind with their over-priced oil but at least they're decent enough to buy a lot of weapons from us, and that's one of our few viable exports.

If America could break its addiction to Middle East oil we could unfriend both of them.

And America would be a better, richer, safer place.

War on Shia Islam makes strange bedfellows

Holy jumpin' Jehova, does it ever!

This brouhaha in Syria has got Likud Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut singing from the same page in the hymnal as Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. Who can even imagine such a thing?

"It's time to help the brave Syrian freedom fighters" Lieberman declared today on CNN.

"Amen", declared Ayman. In fact al-Zawahiri has got his boys in country already. Seems Bashir al-Assad isn't kidding when he says he's fighting Al Qaeda. The smart money says the suicide bombs in Aelpo the other day were Al Qaeda handiwork.

But wait a minute here... Assad is fighting Al Qaeda, we're fighting Al Qaeda, but we're going to support Al Qaeda in their fight against Assad? Does this mean that al-Assad is a greater evil than Al Qaeda?

Not at all. What it means is that yet again contradictory streams in American foreign policy are rising up to bite us on the ass.

As everyone knows, except apparently the toadying Canadian Foreign Minister who last week made an embarrasing attempt to upstage the toadying US congress on his bag-licking mission to the Holy Land, Israel has no greater friend than the US.

We tolerate Assad because he does a pretty good job of keeping things cool on Syria's border with Israel, in spite of the ongoing open sore that is the Golan heights. Do we care about "unarmed protesters" being slaughtered in their thousands? Of course not.

What we care about is that the last couple of generations of stability on that border might be threatened. If Assad goes, we want to have a hand in deciding who is going to replace him.

To that end, the US has been busy busy busy coordinating the "Free Syrian Army" from an American base in Turkey. This is not a secret and has been written up extensively in major media outside the US. Only in America is it deemed un-newsworthy.

Oddly enough, al-Zawahiri and Al Qaeda have precisely the same motivations as we do. If Assad is doomed, they and their Saudi paymasters want to have a say in what happens next.

Which brings us to the real reason we're so concerned about those "unarmed protesters" in Syria; Iran.

The ill-fated debacle of the US invasion of Iraq didn't just destroy that country, it greatly enhanced Iran's influence within it. Have you noticed that the Shia-dominated government in Iraq is not participating in the embargoes on either Syria or Iran?

The war cheer-leaders in Congress and beyond want to make sure that whatever we do in Syria, it doesn't ultimately enhance Iran's influence in the region even more.

Syria is just another front in our war on Iran.

And if that means we have to arm Al Qaeda fighters, we're willing to do it.

Could Iran attack come from Saudi Arabia?

In the endless chatter about "all options" being on the table, amid all the saber-rattling and veiled threats, one possibility has received little attention.

What if an attack on Iran originates not in Israel or America, but in Saudi Arabia?

The war-mongers generally acknowledge that even if the US does not initiate an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, it will be drawn in if the Israelis proceed with a unilateral action.

But what if the Saudi's launch the attack, thereby drawing in both Israel and the US?

The Saudi's have just signed off on a 30 billion dollar fighter plane deal with the US. They are, if anything, more dependent on US support than the Israelis are.

This strategy also has the benefit of being deniable. If things go seriously south, we'll just stand back and wash our hands of the whole thing.

Saudi researchers discover women drivers are sluts

In a finding that is bound to entrench the Saudi Kingdom's prohibitions against female drivers, a research team headed by Professor Kamal Al-Subhi at King Fahd University has discovered that women who drive have sex.

Flying in the face of conventional Western wisdom, which holds that women may be lousy drivers but that a driver's licence is independent of one's slut factor, the report is the result of many years of investigative work by highly trained research teams. The social scientists employed thousands of operatives to track the movements of women in Saudi Arabia who drive cars.

Since only 47 women in the Kingdom have ever driven a car, the research is considered definitive in its conclusions. "All of the women had sex" Professor Al-Subhi informed an academic gathering at his university, "including the three in our sample who were unmarried. Therefore the conclusion is irrefutable: the Kingdom must preserve the prohibitions against female driving or all our women will be fallen women."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, currently touring Myanmar to promote human rights, has not commented on the report, but analysts note that since we send the Saudis well over one hundred million dollars every day for their oil, anything they do is just fine with us.