Daily Archives: December 5, 2015
Putin’s “War on Terror” Could Backfire
By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media
There can be no doubt that the Russians are winning the Middle East propaganda war. But it’s not just the Marxist far-left that is willing to believe whatever Vladimir Putin and his mouthpiece Russia Today (RT) are saying. Some conservatives and self-described Tea Party leaders have also accepted the disinformation the Russians are putting out, even to the extent of affirming the Russian president as a Christian statesman leading the global war on terror.
Consider Chuck Baldwin’s piece, “Rootin’ for Putin,” which insists that “Russia’s Vladimir Putin is the only one fighting a Just War in the Middle East right now.” Baldwin, a Christian pastor “dedicated to preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded,” was the presidential candidate in 2008 of the Constitution Party, a group associated with the late conservative icon Howard Phillips.
It is simply amazing that any conservative would insist that Putin, who, despite dropping the communist label is still allied with Iran, Communist China, North Korea and Cuba, is somehow doing the right thing in Syria, a long-time Soviet/Russian client state. What Putin is doing is entirely consistent with what the Soviets always did. They are trying to save a client state from what started out as a popular rebellion.
In his column, Baldwin went on to label Barack Obama, David Cameron of Britain, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey as “international gangsters.”
It is true that Obama, through a few of America’s Arab “allies,” has been supporting the cause of some jihadists and terrorists in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been implicated in these dangerous schemes, one of which culminated in the Benghazi massacre of four Americans in Libya. That was a treasonous action that should sink Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and could have justified impeachment charges against Obama himself. Mrs. Clinton was Obama’s Secretary of State at the time.
These operations in the Middle East have been characterized by former CIA officer Clare Lopez of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi as “switching sides in the War on Terror.”
But the idea that Putin has clean hands in the Middle East is absolutely ridiculous. Considering that he was a Soviet KGB spy and actually headed one of the KGB’s successor agencies, the idea that Putin has suddenly had a Damascus Road conversion to Christianity is simply ludicrous. His foreign policy is very similar to that of the old Soviet Union.
Since the foreign policy has mostly remained the same, Soviet financing and sponsorship of international terrorist networks, many of them linked to Arab and Muslim groups, also have to be taken into consideration here. It is reasonable to assume that the Russians have maintained at least parts of these networks for a purpose that we see in the backing of Bashar Assad in Syria. Indeed, writer and researcher Christian Gomez has traced the roots of ISIS to the Islamic Revival Party, created by the KGB, during the final days of the old Soviet Union. U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, has noted that the Russians are doing little in Syria to fight ISIS terrorists and that “Everything they [the Russians] are doing is to support Assad, to keep Assad in power.” In other words, Putin is continuing a clever Soviet-style strategy that seeks to maintain Assad in power while using ISIS for his own purposes. One of those purposes, as reflected in RT propaganda, is to make Putin look like a terrorist fighter.
Baldwin isn’t the only personality on the right duped by Putin and his propaganda machine. The CEO of a group calling itself simply the Tea Party has distributed an article claiming that Russia has produced “stunning photographic evidence” that ISIS oil was being smuggled into Turkey on an industrial scale.
The “stunning photographic evidence” shows nothing of the sort. Natasha Bertrand of Business Insider examined the Russian maps and found that the three main routes the Russians claim ISIS had allegedly been using to transport illicit oil into Turkey are not primarily controlled by the Islamic State. Turkish President Erdogan has countered: “Who is buying oil (from ISIS)? Let me say it. George Haswani, holder of a Russian passport and a Syrian national, is one of the biggest merchants in this business.” He noted that the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Haswani, who was also placed on an EU sanctions list, “for serving as middleman for oil purchases by the Syrian regime from the ISIS group.”
If you haven’t heard about the sanctions on the individuals and networks providing support to Syria and facilitating Syrian oil purchases from ISIS, you are a victim of the slick propaganda that is being spread around the world by such outlets as RT. It is a fact that the Russian claims against Turkey are taking precedence, even in the Western media, over the facts on the ground, as determined not only by the U.S. Treasury but the U.S. Army. Colonel Warren said, “We flatly reject any notion that the Turks are somehow working with ISIL,” he said. “That is preposterous.”
The “Tea Party” article about the Russian claims was lifted directly from the Infowars.com site of Russian apologist Alex Jones, who just scored a major interview with GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. No respectable Tea Party group should have anything to do with Alex Jones, who defended the Russian invasion of its former republic Georgia in 2008. Trump’s decision toappear on his show was extremely foolish. He apparently was not aware that Jones promotes claims that actual terrorist attacks, such as the Boston Marathon bombings carried out by two Muslims from Russia, were “false flags” perpetrated by U.S. police and law enforcement agencies. His website ran a “Voice of Russia”story claiming the dead and wounded were actors plastered with fake blood.
Rather than treat Putin as a good guy or ally, GOP presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (FL) argues that Turkey is a member of NATO and an ally that “deserves the full backing of the United States.” He noted that the Russians were “targeting Turkmen-populated pockets of northern Syria rather than territory controlled by ISIS” and that “Most Russian military strikes since the end of September have been non-ISIS targets, including many civilian areas, revealing that Russia does not share our interest in confronting and defeating ISIS but instead is intent on propping up the Assad regime.”
Before he assumed the role as a leader of the Sunnis in the Middle East, mobilizing forces against Shite Iran and Syria, Erdogan was known for his anti-Soviet views. Indeed, he was an anti-communist in his youth. As a result of Russia’s increased military involvement in Syria, he seems to have awakened to the fact that Putin has returned to his Soviet roots and that Turkey’s future lies with NATO and the West. Turkey joined NATO, originally conceived as an anti-Soviet military alliance, in 1952.
Assuming Erdogan is an Islamist of some kind, as some conservatives contend, it might make strategic sense for the West to back him for that reason alone in his battle with Russia. After all, most of Russia’s 14 million Muslims are Sunnis. RT itself recently highlighted how thousands of Muslims had gathered in central Moscow “to witness the opening of one of the biggest mosques in Europe.” The ceremony was attended by Putin and Erdogan, who had been considered to be on friendly terms.
Their relationship turned sour after Turkey shot down the Russian war plane, and it seems to be deteriorating further.
As noted by Ilya Arkhipov of Bloomberg Business, Putin used his annual state-of-the-nation address to attack Turkey and Erdogan in very personal and religious terms. Putin said, “Only Allah knows why they did this. And it seems that Allah decided to punish the ruling gang in Turkey by stripping it of common sense and reason.” Analyst Timothy Ash told Bloomberg that “The religious angle being used by Putin is unlikely to go down well in the region, where Erdogan is still seen as a defender of the Sunni faith.”
One observer has noted, in regard to Russian involvement in Arab/Muslim terrorism and now ISIS, that the monster that the USSR created may have grown too big, and that it may eventually attack its creator. In the case of Turkey, Putin is facing a Muslim problem of his own making.
The Council Has Spoken!! Our Watcher’s Council Results – 12/05/15
The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.
Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years. – Carl Sanberg
GRAPESHOT, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the demands of American Socialism. – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
Oh, dear G-d. Can’t this town go one day without a riot? – Diamond Joe Quimby, Mayor of Springfield, The Simpson’s home town.
This week’s winning essay is The Noisy Room’s – Chicago’s Communists Lead Anti-Cop Protests Over McDonald Shooting, in which she provides us with an inside look at who’s leading the Chicago protests over the shooting of one Lauchan McDonald by the police. Here’s a slice:
Guess who’s behind the protests in Chicago? Old, white communists from the ’60s – again. These agitators helped organize and coordinate last week’s protests in Chicago over the shooting death of Laquan McDonald. He was a 17 year-old black thug. A dashcam video shows him being shot 16 times by a white police officer. Cue the riots led by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
These communists belong to the Revolutionary Communist Party. They are a far-left Maoist group who is all for violent revolution.The festivities began at about 4 pm last Wednesday, downtown on the corner of Jackson and State Streets. The night before, these same communists enthusiastically handed out fliers stating their intention to be the driving force in the protest movement there. Retirement is so boring.
It didn’t start out as much of a protest evidently, but that changed as they made their way to downtown Chicago. Hundreds gathered to follow the radicals. The communists worked diligently together carrying a bullhorn, a connected loud speaker and a carefully crafted sign from an October protest in New York City. The primary agitator at the protest screaming nonstop into the bullhorn with a barrage of chants was longtime communist Chicago activist Grant Newburger.
Newburger claimed to be the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade when he was in his 40’s. Now he’s 57 and still at it. During Wednesday’s protest, he kept shouting to the crowd political stances pushing his communist agenda. Newburger and other communists urged people to show up for the protest on Black Friday, so they could shut down the “Magnificent Mile.” Newburger led moronic chants like, “16 shots!” Another shout-back recital was: “CPD. KKK. How many kids did you kill today?”
Here is Newburger in 2007 at his apartment in the now-demolished Cabrini–Green public housing project. (Note the prominent poster of Chairman Mao on the wall.)
Enter another commie, Lou Downey. He’s also a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party. “Send the killer cops to jail,” Downey urged protesters to chant. He was followed by yet another middle-aged white communist woman yelling into the bullhorn.
The meandering crowd was halted by police around 6 pm on Wednesday before they could get to Lake Shore Drive, which is a bustling thoroughfare. So, they turned around and headed south. They eventually made their way to the Trump International Hotel & Tower blocking traffic as they went. “We are the people! The mighty mighty, mighty people,” was a communist agitator-led chant. Also: “Whose streets? OUR STREETS!” These people need to get some seriously new chants going. It’s trite. In front of Trump’s place, protesters yelled “hands up, don’t shoot” at an assembled throng of police officers. What an insult and a lie to boot.
“How many bullets in the clip?” an enraged white protester shouted at the cops while marching. “Fuck y’all.” “We are not products! We cannot be bought or sold!” was another Mensa moment. Next in line were the offices of ESPN radio and the local ABC affiliate.
By 9 pm, the white-communist-led protesters had made their way to the south Loop chanting “fuck the police.” Also: “We’re black. We’re strong. We’re marchin’ all night long.” If they weren’t so violent and dangerous, I’d compare them to four year-olds who are colorblind. For kicks, when they got to Millennium Park, they ripped the lights from the City of Chicago Christmas tree. If there’s one thing commies hate more than cops, it’s Christians.
From the beginning of the protests across the nation, including the Occupy movement and now Black Lives Matter, I have said that you would find communists behind the radicals. The Revolutionary Communist Party is a big player in all this, with their aging hippie Marxists who feel this is their last chance to cause upheaval in the nation. They have always hated the police and now they have a vehicle to work on that hatred. Charlie Manson would be proud.
You saw these same people in Ferguson, Missouri. They paid protesters and were behind the movements there. Now they are in Chicago. But trust me, wherever you see racial division and violent chaos in the streets, the communists are not far behind. And not all of them are old… there are a lot of young ones joining the ranks these days.
“We are revolutionaries,” Downey, the well-traveled communist agitator, told The Kansas City Star in August 2014. “We’re working to do this in a way that puts an end to the system that for generations has criminalized youth, especially black youth.”
More at the link.
In our non-Council category, the winner was Matthew Bracken with an interesting piece, Tet, Take Two – Islam’s 2016 European Offensive, submitted by The Noisy Room. In it, Mr. Bracken discusses his views on Islam and makes some interesting predictions on what he feels is in store for Europe. Strictly speaking for myself, I think he’s mostly right on but misses some important factors, something I plan to comment on over at my place shortly. Definitely a must read.
Here are this week’s full results. Only The Independent Sentinel was unable to vote, but was unaffected by the usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting:
Council Winners:
- *First place with 2 and 2/3 votes! – The Noisy Room – Chicago’s Communists Lead Anti-Cop Protests Over McDonald Shooting
- Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – Bookworm Room – Some of us (i.e., me) predicted Ted Cruz’s rise in the polls months ago
- Second place *t* with 2 1/3 votes – The Right Planet – The Censors at Facebook
- Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit – The EU’s Israel ‘Labeling’ Farce – Cutting Your Nose To Spite Your Face
- Fourth place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Nice Deb – Everything Bad Skyrockets Under Obama, Part II
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – VA Right! – Why I Am Supporting Donald Trump
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Maggie’s Notebook – Texas Ranchers Blamed for Illegals Dying in the Brush on their Land
- Fifth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Fausta’s Blog – Venezuela issuing passports, voter registrations, to Hezbollah & Syrians
- Sixth place with 1/3 votes – Puma By Design – Rahm Emanuel Terminates Chicago Police Chief
Non-Council Winners:
- *First place with 2 votes! – Matthew Bracken – Tet, Take Two – Islam’s 2016 European Offensive submitted by The Noisy Room
- Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Zero Hedge – Top U.S. Air Defense Commander: Turkey’s Shootdown of Russian Jet “Had to Be PRE-PLANNED” submitted by The Glittering Eye
- Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – David Harsanyi/The Federalist – Why Can’t We Talk About Islam Honestly? submitted by Joshuapundit
- Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Andrew McCarthy/NRO – The Controversy over Syrian Refugees Misses the Question We Should Be Asking submitted by Nice Deb
- Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – David Goldman/PJ Media – Top 10 Reasons to Vote For Ted Cruz submitted by Bookworm Room
- Third place with 1 vote – Daniel Greenfield/FrontPage – Rename the Racist Democratic Party submitted by The Right Planet
- Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes – John Hawkins/Townhall – The Conservative Case For Ted Cruz submitted by Maggie’s Notebook
- Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Jane’s.com – Chinese Bombers Affirm ADIZ Claims in East China Sea submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
- Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes – Ben Domenech/The Federalist – Stop Blaming Pro-Lifers For The Colorado Springs Shooting submitted by Puma By Design
- Fourth place *t* with 2/3 votes – The Other McCain – Crazy People Are Dangerous submitted by The Watcher
- Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Gavin McInnes/Taki’s Magazine – Give Hate A Chance submitted by The Razor
- Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Liberty Unyielding – What really happened in the Colorado Springs shooting? submitted by Fausta’s Blog
- Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – News.Com AU – Behind the ‘white student unions’ springing up at Australian universities submitted by VA Right!
See you next week!
Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week!
And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.
It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.
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USA Transnational Report Saturday 12-05-2015
The USA Transnational Report is the smartest round-table radio show you will find anywhere!
Our panelists deliver compelling conversation about the issues which most immediately effect our nation’s security, preservation of our Constitutional republic, and national defense against the most urgent threat, Islamic terrorism.
This week’s guest is counterterrorism expert Henry Morgenstern.
Heat the show LIVE Saturdays at 8:05 am ET at www.jjmccartney.com or RedStateTalkRadio Studio A.
THERE IT IS: Democrat Party Organ The New York Times Calls for Forcible Gun Confiscation
The press release outlet best known for its fanatical dedication to the socialist agenda — you may know it as The New York Times — has finally issued the Democrats’ long sought-after call for government confiscation of America’s guns.
It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.
Of course, the Times fails to note that the recent Paris terror attacks (and many other examples of mass shootings in Europe) occurred under strict gun control regimes. They refuse to describe how disarming law-abiding citizens might prevent killings by Jihadists and the criminally insane (but I repeat myself).
Oh, and box-cutters were used to kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11. A home-made IED killed and crippled more than 100 people at the Boston Marathon. Knives and automobiles are the weapons of choice these days for slaughtering Israeli Jews.
The enemies of mankind will always find ways to kill en masse. Disarming Americans is not only unlawful and functionally impossible, it is a predicate for more terror and tyranny. But The New Democrat Times knows that, of course.
These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing.
Guns are tools of a free people, and are used hundreds of thousands of times a year — by the federal government’s own measures — to protect life and property. In fact, statistics indicate that crime would increase if gun ownership were to be further restricted.
As the Left likes to lecture us: the science is settled. Over the past several decades, concealed carry laws have propagated like weeds and invariably violent crime rates decrease as a result.
Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.
There it is: a call for gun confiscation. In the words of one of Obama’s favorite apparatchiks, Rahm Emanuel, never let a crisis go to waste.
Guns in the hands of America’s law-abiding citizens are the problem.
Not failing to name the enemy of Western civilization that has carried out more than 27,000 deadly terror attacks since 9/11.
Not failing to crush the cockroaches that take credit for religiously inspired attacks around the world.
Not refusing to profile and track the organizations than inspire, fund and facilitate an ideology of hatred, terror and world domination.
No, the criminally insane editors of the Times want Americans helpless and more Jihadists imported into the U.S.
I would bet that there was an editorial like this in Germany during the rise of Hitler, Red China during the era of Mao, and Cambodia amidst the ascent of Pol Pot.
The Democrat Party and The New York Times are enemies of freedom and allies of Jihad.
Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News.