Climate Exchange PLC was founded by a former Goldman Sachs banker and Al Gore. Its statutes were written by then unknown lawyer Barack Obama. In short, fear of global warming allows a few powerful people to get rich-Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire

“Goldman Sachs owns 19% of the CCX’s parent, Climate Exchange Plc (CLE: London)."..6/16/2009
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10/30/2019, “Peace or the Fight Against CO2: You Have to Choose your Priority,” Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire 

“The Climate Exchange Plc proposed a system to charge CO2 emitters. It would thus be a question of fighting global warming, although CO2 is one of the gases among others that can have an impact on the climate. Climate exchanges were opened in Chicago, then London, Montreal, Tianjin and Sydney. As it happens, Climate Exchange Plc was founded by a former director of Goldman Sachs Bank and US Vice President Albert Gore. Its statutes were drafted by a then unknown lawyer, the future president of the United States, Barack Obama [8]. In short, the fear of global warming allows a few powerful people and they alone to get rich.… 

The effects of CO2 on the climate are hypothetical and in any case marginal…. 

Before entering politics, Barack Obama drafted the statutes of the Climate Exchange Plc. Arriving 9 years later at the White House, he continued George Bush’s destruction in the broader Middle East and ordered the destruction of Libya. He is a fervent “defender of the climate” and a supporter of Emmanuel Macron during his election in France…. 

[In 1980 President Jimmy Carter] declared that the US economy’s energy supply required that access to Middle Eastern oil be qualified as a “national security issue”. His successor, President Ronald Reagan, created CentCom, the US military command in the central region, as if the Middle East were suddenly becoming a province of the US Empire. 

For 21 years, world politics has been organized around this incredible claim by Washington. The area covered by CentCom has changed several times. It initially included the Horn of Africa to Egypt, the Levant except Israel and sometimes Jordan and Lebanon, the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia. All the wars from 1980 to 2001 were primarily energy resource conflicts (except those in the Balkans, which were the “laboratory” for what was to follow)…. 

The US army no longer defended the interests of the US population, but of globalized multinationals.”… 

“[1] “President Donald J. Trump Is Ending the War on American Energy and Delivering a New Era of Energy Dominance”, Voltaire Network, 23 October 2019. 
[2] “Jimmy Carter televised speech on “crisis of confidence””, by Jimmy Carter, Voltaire Network, 15 July 1979.

[3] “State of the Union Address 1980”, by Jimmy Carter, Voltaire Network, 23 January 1980.
[4] Edward Luttwak publia Coup d’Etat: A Practical Handbook (Harvard University Press, 1968). Ce livre, qui conseille de ne pas rendre public un coup d’Etat afin de ne pas susciter d’opposition, devint la Bible des comploteurs du 11-Septembre. C’est lui qui publia dans Harper’s de mars 1975 “Seizing Arab Oil” (sous le pseudonyme de Miles Ignotus.
[5] Lee Hamilton présida la Commission parlementaire qui publia, le 21 août 1975, Oil fields as military objectives. A feasibiliy study. Mais c’est aussi lui qui présida la commission présidentielle sur les attentats du 11-Septembre et publia le 9/11 Commission Report.
[6] Sur le rôle d’Henry Kissinger dans la crise pétrolière de 1974, voir les travaux de William Engdahl. Après avoir quitté ses fonctions officielles, le «cher Henry» créa Kissinger associates, dont Paul Bremer était le directeur exécutif, avant de devenir celui de l’Autorité provisoire de la Coalition. Celle-ci était une société privée, voir : “Who Rules Iraq? ”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 13 May 2004.
[7] “The geopolitics of oil in the Trump era”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 9 April 2019.
[8] “1997-2010: Financial Ecology”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Оdnako (Russia) , Voltaire Network, 7 December 2015.”
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Added: 

April 5, 2010, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” “From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression–and they’re about to do it again,” Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi… 

“Bubble 6: Global Warming” 

“The new carbon credit market is a virtual repeat of the commodities-market casino that’s been kind to Goldman, except it has one delicious new wrinkle: If the plan goes forward as expected, the rise in prices will be government-mandated. Goldman won’t even have to rig the game. It will be rigged in advance.”…





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OPCW falsely claimed a “chemical” attack took place in Douma on April 7, 2018 to boost Islamic terrorists and force US taxpayers to fund bombing of innocent Syrians. Without evidence, Trump had immediately sided with terrorists: “Trump calls out ‘Animal Assad’ for attack, criticizes Putin”

“Trump calls out ‘Animal Assad’ for attack, criticizes Putin,” 4/8/2018

Page 3: “6. Exclusion of inspectors and attempts to obfuscate: Contrary to what has been publicly stated by the Director General of the OPCW it was evident to the panel that many of the inspectors in the Douma investigation were not involved or consulted in the post-deployment phase or had any contribution to, or knowledge of the content of the final report until it was made public. The panel is particularly troubled by organisational efforts to obfuscate and prevent inspectors from raising legitimate concerns about possible malpractices surrounding the Douma investigation.”…Date of imaginary Douma incident, April 7th, 2018.

10/29/19, “Wikileaks Reveals OPCW Falsified Reports to Blame Syrian Government Instead of Western Backed-Jihadis!" Federico Pieraccini 

“The revelations – studiously ignored by the mainstream media – shed a light on the tangled web weaved by the complicit media and the West’s shameless hypocrisy, involving the OPCW, Wikileaks and Julian Assange’s illegal detention. 

A whistleblower from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) delivered to Wikileaks authentic documents to do with investigations into the Douma bombing in Syria in 2018. 

These documents confirmed what many had been writing about for months, namely, that the OPCW’s investigations and conclusions were manufactured to reach a premeditated result that was unfavorable to the Syrian Arab Army and in line with the foreign-policy objectives of Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Paris, Ankara, Doha and London. 

The US has previously used just this same formula, under the pretext of R2P (Responsibility to Protect), to justify the bombing of a country.

[Image: AP from so-called White Helmets, is staged, fake.…4/8/2018, “Trump calls out ‘Animal Assad’ for attack, criticizes Putin,” AP via Military Times, Jonathan Lemire. Pictures like this caused “heartbroken” Ivanka to urge her father to bomb Syria in 2017....Trump even funnels millions of US taxpayer dollars to glamorous jihadist group White Helmets.….More on White Helmets] 

A chemical attack to be blamed on the Syrian army seemed like the most straightforward means to trigger R2P and achieve the desired foreign-policy objectives. However, what we now know from the documents published by Wikileaks is that the international organization supposed to ensure impartiality and objectivity falsified reports and procedures. 

In the words of José Bustani, the first director-general of the OPCW and Brazil’s former ambassador to the United Kingdom and France: 

“The convincing evidence of irregular behaviour in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had. I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. 

The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing” “I have always expected the OPCW to be a true paradigm of multilateralism. My hope is that the concerns expressed publicly by the Panel, in its joint consensus statement, will catalyse a process by which the Organisation can be resurrected to become the independent and non-discriminatory body it used to be.” 

The body that was supposed to guarantee impartiality connived to frame Damascus for a crime it did not commit, just so that [innocent US taxpayers] the West had its excuse to conduct a bombing campaign against [innocent] Syria. 

In this perverse mechanism, any off-script testimony from Syrians on the ground, independent foreign journalists, or any other unapproved sources were summarily dismissed by the European and American press as biased and unreliable. 

These Wikileaks revelations are a rare opportunity to look behind the curtain and understand the mechanisms that lead to millions of deaths, to countries being destroyed, and to generations being lost. We have already seen in the past how a hegemonic power like the United States acts, fabricating pretexts like “weapons of mass destruction”, is willing to try and maintain its position of dominance by hook or by crook in a strategic region like the Middle East. 

We can discern in the Douma chemical attack a false-flag attack perpetrated by al-Qaeda militants (portrayed by the West as moderate rebels valiantly fighting against Assad), the OPCW presenting itself as the impartial arbitrator, and the mainstream media amplifying the lies produced by this supposedly impartial body, conditioning public opinion in the process to accept the use of force [to be paid for by innocent US taxpayers] to put an end to the suffering in Syria allegedly perpetrated by Assad’s forces.
 
The legitimacy extended to al-Qaeda and its affiliates allowed for terrorists to carry out civilian attacks in Syria using chemical weapons for the purposes of blaming government troops, thereby justifying overt international support [ie, bombing] by the likes of the US, the UK and France. To guarantee the success of this conspiracy, the fraudulent reports of the OPCW were to provide the humanitarian justification for international intervention. 

This whole matter is all the more disturbing when we consider the question of journalistic ethics. Journalists could very well have properly done their jobs and investigated the Douma chemical attack, collecting testimonies from civilian witnesses and recording footage. Instead, the media parroted Western propaganda, amplifying the compromised information of the OPCW. 

It was left to Wikileaks to exercise proper journalism, publishing the verified information of the OPCW whistleblower, and in the process blowing the lid on a huge scandal that undermines the credibility of the West’s high-sounding proclamations. 

This is the reason why Assange is behind bars while mainstream-media anchors earn millions of dollars conveying the officially approved propaganda to the public. Wikileaks tells the truth with its work, revealing how the [US] Western powers are willing to do everything in their power to start new [US taxpayer funded] wars and pursue their imperialistic agenda. 

We see in this Wikileaks revelation what has driven the current world order to be so unstable and the source of so much war and misery. The Western propaganda machine managed to compromise a body otherwise respected for probity for the purposes of inflicting the maximum possible damage to Syria. 

This scandal is the latest example of how Western politicians, the mainstream media and international organizations are merely imperialistic tools employed to strike against geopolitical opponents.”
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Added: From panel report, page 3 

6. Exclusion of inspectors and attempts to obfuscate 

Contrary to what has been publicly stated by the Director General of the OPCW it was evident to the panel that many of the inspectors in the Douma investigation were not involved or consulted in the post-deployment phase or had any contribution to, or knowledge of the content of the final report until it was made public. The panel is particularly troubled by organisational efforts to obfuscate and prevent inspectors from raising legitimate concerns about possible malpractices surrounding the Douma investigation.”
………………………………… 

Added: Wikileaks statement: 

10/23/19, “OPCW Whistleblower Panel on the Douma attack of April 2018,“ wikileaks.org

“Today WikiLeaks publishes a statement made by a panel that listened to testimony and reviewed evidence from a whistleblower from the OPCW (Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) last week.  To accompany this statement, Wikileaks is also publishing a previously leaked engineering assessment of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria on April 7th last year [2018]. This assessment was omitted in the final report by the OPCW, which does not support its findings. 

WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson took part in the panel to review the testimony and documents from the OPCW whistleblower. He says: “The panel was presented with evidence that casts doubt on the integrity of the OPCW. Although the whistleblower was not ready to step forward and/or present documents to the public, WikiLeaks believes it is now of utmost interest for the public to see everything that was collected by the Fact Finding Mission on Douma and all scientific reports written in relation to the investigation. 

We call out to people within the OPCW to leak these documents securely to us via wikileaks.org/#submit.” One of the panel members was Dr José Bustani, the first Director-General of the OPCW, who concluded that: “The convincing evidence of irregular behaviour in the OPCW investigation of the alleged Douma chemical attack confirms doubts and suspicions I already had. I could make no sense of what I was reading in the international press. Even official reports of investigations seemed incoherent at best. The picture is certainly clearer now, although very disturbing” 

In support of the OPCW’s original objectives, the panel called upon the organisation to re-establish its credibility and legitimacy by allowing ‘all inspectors who took part in the Douma investigation to come forward and report their differing observations in an appropriate forum of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention’.”





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US taxpayers are funding US smuggling of tens of millions of dollars in Syrian oil in violation of “sanctions.” Russian satellite images recorded US theft in 2019 as they did Turkey’s theft in prior years. When Erdogan denied it, Russia showed images at 2015 press conference

Two articles: First article about Turkey theft, second article about US theft reported by Russian Defense Ministry, satellite images included…Source: https://ria.ru/20191026/1560247607.html…translation below 

“It was only in November 2015, during the G20 summit in Antalya, that Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of violating the UN resolution and selling Daesh’s [ISIS] oil. When President Erdoğan denied it, the head of operations for the Russian army, General Serguei Rudskoy, presented satellite images at a public Press conference, showing 8,500 tanker trucks crossing the Turkish border.” 

8/2/2019, “Daesh [ISIS] realises the dream of the Muslim Brotherhood – the Caliphate,” by Thierry Meyssan 

“Daesh [ISIS] exploited Iraqi and Syrian oil [3]. Crude oil was transported either via the pipe-line controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, or by tank trucks owned by the Turkish companies Serii and SAM Otomotiv, via the border posts of Karkamış, Akçakale, Cilvegözü and Öncüpınar. A part of the crude oil was refined for Turkish use by Turkish Petroleum Refineries Co. (Tüpraş) in the city of Batman. It was then shipped to Ceyhan, Mersin and Dortyol on ships of the Palmali Shipping & Agency JSC, the company of Turko-Azeri billionaire Mubariz Gurbanoğlu. Most of the crude oil was transported to Israel, where it received false certificates of origin, thence to Europe (including France, at Fos-sur-Mer, where it was refined). The rest was sent directly to Ukraine.


This system was perfectly well known to industry insiders, and was mentioned at the World Petroleum Council (15 to 19 June in Moscow). The speakers assured that Aramco (USA/Saudi Arabia) organised the distribution of Daesh’s oil in Europe, while Exxon-Mobil (the Rockefeller company that rules Qatar) sold the oil stolen by al-Nusra [4]. A few months later, during a hearing of the European Parliament, the representative for the European Union in Iraq, ambassador Jana Hybaskova, would confirm that the member states of the EU were sponsoring [ISIS] Daesh by buying their oil. 

At first, the UN Security Council was incapable of denouncing this traffic – at best, its President noted that trading with terrorist organisations was forbidden. We had to wait until February 2015 for the vote on resolution 2199. Mubariz Gurbanoğlu then retired, selling several of his ships (Mecid Aslanov, Begim Aslanova, Poet Qabil, Armada Breeze and Shovket Alekperova) to BMZ Group Denizcilik ve İnşaat A.Ş., the maritime company belonging to Bilal Erdoğan, son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Bilal continued the traffic. 

It was only in November 2015, during the G20 summit in Antalya, that Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of violating the UN resolution and selling Daesh’s oil. When President Erdoğan denied it, the head of operations for the Russian army, General Serguei Rudskoy, presented satellite images at a public Press conference, showing 8,500 tanker trucks crossing the Turkish border. The Russian air force immediately destroyed the trucks present in Syria, but the greater part of the traffic continued via Iraqi Kurdistan, under the responsibility of its President Massoud Barzani. Work was then begun on expanding the oil terminal “Yumurtalık” (linked to the Turko-Iraqi Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline), boosting its storage capacity up to 1.7 million tons. 

These tank trucks all belonged to Powertans, a company which had obtained the monopoly for the transport of oil on Turkish territory, without it being put out for competitive bids. It was owned by the very mysterious Grand Fortune Ventures, based first in Singapore, then transferred to the Cayman Islands. Behind this financial set-up was Çalık Holding, the company belonging to Berat Albayrak, President Erdoğan’s son-in law and his Minister for Energy [5]. 

The oil which travelled via the Kurdish pipeline was also sold in the same way. However, when the Iraqi government denounced the Barzani clan’s complicity with Daesh, and the theft of Iraqi public property which they had organised together, Ankara feigned surprise.Erdoğan blocked the income of the Iraqi Kurds in a Turkish bank account, while waiting for Erbil (the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan) and Baghdad to clarify their positions.

Although this money was supposedly blocked, income was generated by investing it, which was not declared to the Turkish Budget, but paid to Erdoğan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party).”….[Above map of zone invaded by ISIS]
…………………………………………… 

Added: “”Neither in international law, nor in American legislation itself – there is not and cannot be a single legal task for the American troops to protect and defend the hydrocarbon deposits of Syria from Syria itself and its own people,” the representative of the Defense Ministry concluded.” 

10/27/19, “Russian Defense Ministry publishes evidence of US oil smuggling from Syria,” The Saker blog 

Translated by Leo, bold and italics added for emphasis. Source: https://ria.ru/20191026/1560247607.html
 

...
MOSCOW, October 26, 2019 – RIA Novosti – “The Russian Ministry of Defense has published satellite intelligence images, showing American oil smuggling from Syria. 

According to the ministry, the photos confirm that “Syrian oil, both before and after the routing defeat of the Islamic State terrorists in land beyond the Euphrates river, under the reliable protection by US military servicemen, oil was actively being extracted and then the fuel trucks were massively being sent for processing outside of Syria.”
...... 

......

Here, in a picture of the Daman oil gathering station (42 kilometers east of the Deir-ez-Zor province), taken on August 23, a large amount of trucks were spotted. “There were 90 automotive vehicles, including 23 fuel trucks,” the caption to the image said. 

In addition, on September 5, there were 25 vehicles in the Al-Hasakah province, including 22 fuel trucks. Three days later, on September 8, in the vicinity of Der Ez-Zor, 36 more vehicles were recorded (32 of them were fuel trucks). On the same day, 41 vehicles, including 34 fuel trucks, were in the Mayadin onshore area.

........ 

.......

As the official representative of the Defense Ministry Igor Konashenkov noted, the Americans are extracting oil in Syria with the help of equipment, bypassing their own sanctions. 

Igor Konashenkov: “Under the protection of American military servicemen and employees of American PMCs, fuel trucks from the oil fields of Eastern Syria are smuggling to other states. In the event of any attack on such a caravan, special operations forces and US military aircraft are immediately called in to protect it,” he said. 

According to Konashenkov, the US-controlled company Sadcab, established under the so-called Autonomous Administration of Eastern Syria, is engaged in the export of oil, and the income of smuggling goes to the personal accounts of US PMCs and special forces. 

The Major General added that as of right now, a barrel of smuggled Syrian oil is valued at $38, therefore the monthly revenue of US governmental agencies exceeds $30 million.

... 

.....

“For such a continuous financial flow, free from control and taxes of the American government, the leadership of the Pentagon and Langley will be ready to guard and defend oil fields in Syria from the mythical ‘hidden IS cells’ endlessly,” he said. 

According to Konashenkov, Washington, by holding oil fields in eastern Syria, is engaged in international state banditry. 

The reason for this activity, he believes, “lies far from the ideals of freedom proclaimed by Washington and their slogans on the fight against terrorism.””

.....

......

Igor Konashenkov: “Neither in international law, nor in American legislation itself – there is not and cannot be a single legal task for the American troops to protect and defend the hydrocarbon deposits of Syria from Syria itself and its own people,” the representative of the Defense Ministry concluded. 

A day earlier, the Pentagon’s head, Mark Esper declared that the United States is studying the situation in the Deir ez-Zor region and intends to strengthen its positions there in the near future “to ensure the safety of oil fields.””





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Al-Baghdadi was funded and supervised jointly by US, French, and Saudi officers. In mid 2014 Al-Baghdadi received new weapons from Ukraine where Saudis have a weapons factory, Turkey has a special rail line to supply ISIS-Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire, 6/11/2014

6/11/2014, “Iraq under attack by US, France, Saudi Arabia,” Thierry Meyssan 

“The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on behalf of Prince Abdul Rahman al-Faisal, the brother of the current Saudi Foreign Minister and of the Saudi ambassador in Washington. He is funded and supervised jointly by U.S., French and Saudi officers. Over the past month [May-June 2014], he has received new weapons from Ukraine, where Saudi Arabia has acquired a weapons factory, and via Turkey, which has created a special rail line adjacent to a military airport to supply the ISIL [ISIS]. 

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is an Iraqi who joined Al-Qaeda to fight against President Saddam Hussein. During the U.S. invasion, he distinguished himself by engaging in several actions against Shiites and Christians (including the taking of the Baghdad Cathedral) and by ushering in an Islamist reign of terror (he presided over an Islamic court which sentenced many Iraqis to be slaughtered in public). After the departure of Paul Bremer III, al-Baghdadi was arrested and incarcerated at Camp Bucca from 2005 to 2009. This period saw the dissolution of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, whose fighters merged into a group of tribal resistance, the Islamic State of Iraq. 

On 16 May 2010, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was named emir of the ISI, which was in the process of disintegration. After the departure of U.S. troops, he staged operations against the government al-Maliki, accused of being at the service of Iran. In 2013, after vowing allegiance to Al-Qaeda, he took off with his group to continue the jihad in Syria, rebaptizing it Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. In doing so, he challenged the privileges that Ayman al-Zawahiri had previously granted, on behalf of Al-Qaeda, to the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, which was originally nothing more than an extension of the ISI. 

The ISIL [ISIS] is based in Syria, where it lays siege to the city of Raqqa, the only city whose population was unable to participate in the June 3rd presidential election (together with the Syrians residing in France and Germany).”




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Trump has proved to be merely a figurehead of the permanent state, a continuation of 3 decades of failed US policy, the opposite of candidate Trump’s America First agenda. Dragging Julian Assange to US in chains will be last breath of MAGA's brief life-Strategic Culture, James George Jatras, 12/1/2018

“There can be no better illustration of the weakness of Trump’s position than his inability to engage in even a semblance of statesmanship with respect to the leader of the one power on the planet [Putin] with which the US absolutely must have some minimal working relationship.” 

12/1/2018, “Sayonara, ‘America First’! We Hardly Knew Ye!“ Strategic Culture, James George Jatras 

“President Donald Trump’s cancellation of his planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Buenos Aires G20 is another sign of the now almost certain demise of his declared “America First” agenda – and perhaps of his presidency. 

Supposedly decided in response to a Ukraine-Russia naval incident in the Kerch Strait, dumping the meeting is universally and correctly seen as a response to the guilty plea of his former lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, to lying to Congress (notice that James Clapper isn’t forced to plead to his perjury before the Senate) and Cohen’s disclosure of Trump’s fruitless business dealings in Russia. 

Keep in mind that this comes at a time when grand inquisitor Robert Mueller is on thin ice-or would be, if Trump and his team had a clue. Consider: in just the past few days Jerome Corsi, Roger Stone, and belatedly perhaps even Paul Manafort have delivered what amounts to a case against Mueller’s underlings, including subornation of testimony they knew to be false – a felony punishable by five years in the slammer (18 US Code § 1622 – Subornation of perjury). Is Trump or any of his lawyers thinking of having the victims swear out a complaint and instructing the Justice Department actually to prosecute these miscreants? No, of course not, even though at least Corsi appears to be willing. 

Likewise Trump threatens to declassify “a wide swath of ‘devastating’ documents related to the Mueller probe, which he had initially planned to do in September before changing his mind” on the beseeching of British Prime Minister Theresa May. Britain’s worst prime minister ever is desperate to hide the fact that at its root there’s nothing Russian about “Russiagate” but there’s lots and lots of British MI6, GCHQ, and other Five Eyes skullduggery aimed at subverting the 2016 US election and preventing any possible rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. With respect to both goals this massive PSYOP and political warfare campaign by the US-UK Deep State has been a smashing success. 

Trump has the goods on them but just sits on his hands and threatens. (He should heed that great philosopher Tuco from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: “When you have to shoot, shoot – don’t talk.”) For those patiently waiting for Trump’s “4D chess” game to unleash QAon’s “Storm,” here’s a news flash: the cavalry is not coming to the rescue. The following are just a few names that will never be brought to justice: Rod Rosenstein, Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Lisa Page, Andrew Weissmann, Stefan Halper, Christopher Steele, Joseph Mifsud, Richard Dearlove, Andrew Wood, Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin, Samantha Power, Sally Yates, Jeannie Rhee, Eric Holder, James Clapper, John Brennan, and Barack Hussein Obama. Oh, and Hillary Clinton of course (while the whistleblower on her corrupt activities gets raided by the FBI). 

These august personages are not subject to the laws binding on ordinary mortals like thee and me. These scoundrels will skate. All of them. That’s why a smug, world-class criminal like Brennan can mock Trump's complaints as similar to how “corrupt authoritarian leaders abroad behaved before they were deposed.” He already anticipates dancing on Trump’s (probably figurative) grave. 

Back to the Cohen plea, it’s entirely likely it was timed to have precisely the result of scuttling the Trump-Putin meeting. There can be no better illustration of the weakness of Trump’s position than his inability to engage in even a semblance of statesmanship with respect to the leader of the one power on the planet with which the US absolutely must have some minimal working relationship. 

With the Democrats set to take over in the House of Representatives in just over a month, we’ll soon see intensified investigations coordinated with Mueller to find any possible pretext for impeachment in Trump’s business or private life. It’s conventional wisdom that even if the Democrat-controlled House can find something to support articles of impeachment the GOP-held Senate will be Trump’s firewall. Bunk. Democrats rallied around their president Bill Clinton but it was Republicans who threw Richard Nixon to the wolves. Are there a dozen or so Republican Senators who would be ready to dump Trump and install Mike Pence in the Oval Office? You betcha. Start with Mitt Romney. 

As the noose around Trump’s neck continues to tighten, his response will be to keep on carping about how unfair it all is, that there was no collusion with Russia, that it’s a “total witch hunt” that should be ended. All true, all meaningless. He has the weapons to fight back but lacks the knowledge or personnel to use them. So he complains. He tweets. Meanwhile, on substance he’s jumping up and down like a monkey on a string. 

Which leaves us asking: Why? 

One of the burdens carried by those of us Deplorables who early in 2016 declared our support for the then-improbable candidacy of Donald Trump has been the taunts of those who “knew better.” Trump was a fraud, they said, “just a BS-ing con man who would say anything to get elected.” He was a stalking horse to help usher in President Hillary (what other Republican could she possibly beat?). He was crude, impulsive, irritable, egotistical, dyslexic, and incapable of and uninterested in learning anything he doesn’t already know. He was a flimflam artist who had cheated everyone he’d ever done business with or been married to and would abuse his lumpen Murican political supporters in Flyover Country accordingly. He was just another globalist neocon flunky of the Israelis, the Saudis, and the Deep State who was only mouthing populist rhetoric to get elected. He was a shyster on the make whose only goal was to enhance his “brand” to get even richer. He was a huckster with big assets in Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and other nasty, nasty places, who just wanted to make a killing on his investments. And so on… 

Those of us who supported Trump (and who still struggle to support him) point to his repeated use of America First and national interest language even when it was politically counterproductive and only served to subject him to vilification by Democrats and establishment Republicans alike. Ditto his repeated appeals for better relations with Russia, even at the cost of being accused of treason by the same antagonists and their media shills. Ditto the claim from a hostile source like Bob Woodward that behind doors Trump repeatedly tries to do the right thing, like get the US out of Afghanistan and Syria, but then is overruled by “experts” who are his nominal subordinates. Ditto his seeming “art of the deal” transformation of his bluster and threat competition with “Little Rocket Man” into the best chance for peace on the Korean peninsula in seven decades. From his unscripted comments and tweets, there always seems to be a little 2016 Candidate Trump fighting to get out of President Trump but never quite succeeding… 

But how then to explain his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad national security team? His beeline to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and NATO headquarters in his maiden foreign policy trip to reaffirm mindless hostility to Iran and America’s suicide pact with useless so-called “allies” in Europe? His authorization of lethal weapons to Ukraine? His two cruise missile strikes on Syria on transparently bogus claims of chemical weapons use? His ever-tightening of sanctions on Russia and nonstop expansion of NATO? His continued naval provocations against China? 

To characterize as “low” expectations of any Trump-Putin sidebar meeting that might have happened at the G20 is putting it extremely mildly. (Who knows, maybe they’ll still manage to steal a few sweet moments for a quick tête-à-tête, like a secret tryst of illicit lovers. Maybe Strzok and Page can provide some pointers.) Even laying aside the endless navel-gazing about what President Trump really wants, and why his administration’s foreign policy bears almost no resemblance to his 2016 America First platform, it’s pretty clear that in practice the US course will remain essentially a continuation of the failed policies of the past three decades: a futile attempt to maintain US global hegemony indefinitely at any cost. That can have only one hideous outcome. 

With regard to Russia, the Kerch Strait incident will serve as another pretext for sanctions that will soon be added with the predictability that night follows day. The ongoing trade war with China (on purely economic grounds not wrong in itself) serves as a backdrop for continued dragon-baiting in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and Xinjiang, all places where the US has no actual interests. Even Trump’s minimal potential as a wrecking ball to disrupt the dysfunctional commitments he inherited doesn’t seem to be working out. The Swamp-critters to whom he’s entrusted his administration dance along their merry way as though Mitt Romney or ¡Jeb! Bush were president, with little or no interference from their nominal boss. 

On top of hastening the bankruptcy of the US, the danger of war with Russia, or China, or both will continue to increase. Neither Russian President Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping can still have any illusions about that and are planning accordingly. No one knows exactly when or where we will reach the point of no return. 

Russian and Chinese officials have warned the US about their preparedness for war in so many words. No one in Washington is listening, except to the extent that the new report of a Congressionally mandated commission has concluded that despite spending on our military ten times what Russia does and three times China’s outlays, we still might lose a war to either of those powers. 

So what do the Swamp-critters draw from that? We need to spend even more! And Trump will accommodate them. 

The one bright spot so far has been on the Korean peninsula – for which Trump deserves great credit, though his minions are working overtime to avert the horrid prospect that peace might break out and we’d no longer have an excuse to keep troops in South Korea. On everything else, even where developments favor disengagement from involvements not conducive to American interests, Trump’s administration insists on digging back in. 

For example, France’s “Little Macro” wants a European army. It’s a ridiculous pipe dream, especially since Europe faces no external threat except migration, against which a conventional force is mostly useless. But Trump should be thrilled to take him up on the offer and turn European security over to Europeans. Instead he’s trying to sink the idea. 

Likewise, in the Syrian conflict it’s clear that with Russian and Iranian help President Bashar al-Assad’s government has beaten the jihadists sicced on that unfortunate land by the US and our so-called allies, but Washington won’t admit it and still hopes to leverage Assad’s departure. Why, because of ISIS, which Trump said was the sole reason we have thousands of US troops (illegally) in that country? No, but because of the need to oppose Iran and impose regime change in Tehran, as well as denying Moscow a “win.” 

Iran (an Israeli obsession having no bearing on US security) is also the reason Trump declined to take the exit ramp the Khashoggi murder offered from our unnecessary commitment to the despicable Wahhabist regime in Riyadh. Instead he has doubled down on US support for Mohammed bin Salman while absurd plans for an “Arab NATO” proceed, as though one NATO weren’t already bad enough. 

None of this is America First. In a sane policymaking world, Trump should be looking to cut a spheres of influence deal with Putin (and with Xi and maybe with India’s Narendra Modi). Maybe that’s what Trump really wants, maybe it isn’t. Or maybe someone just gave him The Talk: “Do what you’re told, Mr. President, or you and maybe your kid will end up like Jack Kennedy.” 

In the final analysis, it doesn’t seem to matter much what Trump wants. It would be only a small exaggeration to say that with respect to foreign and security policy Trump is now a mere figurehead of the permanent state. Even if Trump and Putin do happen to meet again, what can the latter expect the former to say that would make any difference? 

As a signal of the approaching end of the short-lived hope of America First, cancellation of Trump-Putin is the penultimate act but not yet the final one. The fat lady’s aria will be when Julian Assange is dragged to Washington in chains, like some barbarian chieftain paraded in a Roman triumph. 

Ultimately, as Anne Coulter writes (with respect to the Mexican border crisis, where Trump is at least doing slightly better than in foreign affairs but not by much), Trump might “only be remembered as a small cartoon figure who briefly inflamed and amused the rabble.” If so, his failure will have frittered away the only peaceful chance to avert the looming death of our nation at the hands of the Cultural Marxist duopoly as well as to turn aside from the real prospect of a world war – one from which America cannot emerge undamaged as we did from the first two. 

P.S. I would be genuinely thrilled to be wrong about all of the foregoing.”





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