Category: Aggregated

According to Argentina’s Foreign Minister-designate, Susana Malcorra, there are “very important indications” from both the White House and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, that Barack Obama will visit Argentina next year. “The idea is for the two Presidents”—Obama and neo-liberal President-elect Mauricio Macri—”to meet as soon as possible,” Malcorra said. Macri has spoken with Obama by phone and is anxious to forge a close working relationship with him.

In an interview with the daily La Nación published Monday, Malcorra stressed that under Macri, Argentina will seek a “non-ideological and mature” relationship with the U.S., as opposed to that of outgoing President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which, Malcorra suggested, was immature because Fernández “politicized” everything. That is, she defied London and Wall Street’s policy dictates, and called things by their right name—never music to Obama’s large ears.

Echoing Obama’s own lies, Malcorra insisted that the vulture fund issue is not a political one, but purely economic and is being dealt with by the U.S. justice system. It has nothing to do with the U.S.-Argentine bilateral relationship, she added, insisting that Obama “doesn’t give orders” to Thomas Griesa, the New York Federal judge who has sided with the vulture funds against Argentina in every ruling for the past several years.

Vulture fund owners are beside themselves. “Finally, someone reasonable we can talk to!” commented one of the lawyers for NML, Ltd., the vulture fund owned by multibillionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Associates, which has waged financial warfare against Argentina for years. The daily Ambito Financiero reported Dec. 4 that, immediately after the first round of Presidential elections Oct. 25, Macri sent a team to New York to meet with Elliott’s lawyer Robert Cohen, and in three private meetings hammered out the guidelines for future negotiations. Among other things, Macri will recognize $15 billion the vultures say Argentina owes them, which Cristina Fernández refused to do.

In a slight nod to reality, Malcorra, who has worked as UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s chief of staff since 2012, did say that just because Argentina seeks closer ties with the U.S., this doesn’t mean it will break off ties with BRICS member China, with which Fernández de Kirchner has signed many economic development agreements. “It is not in Argentina’s interest to break ties with China,” she said, but added that she would be reviewing all of the allegedly “secret” agreements signed with China, to ensure there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

The Xinhua coverage of Xi Jinping’s historic Africa tour this month includes some things left out of the Western coverage — namely, that in addition to being grateful for China’s $60 billion investment pledge over the next three years, African leaders emphasized that China, unlike the Western colonizers, is not piling conditions and political restraints on African nations, but is sincerely aiming at nation building.

Xi said in his keynote speech at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in South Africa last week: “China strongly believes that Africa belongs to the African people and that African affairs should be decided by the African people.”

Adji Ayassor, minister of state in the Togolese Ministry of Economy, Finance and Development Planning, told Xinhua on Friday that the Chinese president’s keynote speech told “the truth about the cooperation between China and Africa.” Contrary to what some claim in the West, China “is not colonizing Africa,” he said. “We believe that is the best way to develop Africa. … It (China) is taking a real path of Africa’s development. It is a real cooperation.”

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who also holds the rotating African Union (AU)  chair, in his speech at the opening ceremony, thanked China for its “unconditional support” for Africa, and slammed actions by the West that have derailed progress there. “China has never been our colonizer, and while some detractors allege that our cooperation with Beijing is commercially driven, the reality on the ground does not conform to such a distorted view,” Mugabe said.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta told reporters Dec. 5 that “the perception that China is the new colonizer is a complete misrepresentation of Beijing’s activities here in Africa…. Achievement of mutual benefits is the basis of Sino-Africa cooperation. I don’t think that a partner who is helping us fight poverty and other development challenges can be called a colonizer.” Kenyatta said that what China is doing in Africa is what the colonialists failed to do in the past, namely help Africa out of poverty. “China is ready to help us develop and meet our socio-economic objectives without imposing its agenda on us. This is the outstanding aspect of our cooperation with China.”

A senior U.S. military source warned Monday that the Turkish deployment of a battalion of troops into the Mosul area of north Iraq, which the Iraq government has denounced as an invasion, is likely a prelude to a much larger invasion.  The source suggested that the battalion is the vanguard of a major Turkish military move, to backup allied Kurdish Peshmerga units that are anxious to launch an assault to take back the key city of Mosul. The source indicated that he expected Turkish Air Force support for such a Peshmerga action, that could also involve larger Turkish ground combat deployments as well.

Were such an action to be taken, independent of the Iraqi Army and the central government in Baghdad, it would be a clear step in the direction of the breakup of Iraq, with the Kurdish region becoming an independent entity—under Turkish tutelage.

The Turkish move into northern Iraq came just days after U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced the deployment of several hundred more U.S. forces from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).  Washington sources confirm that the JSOC deployment is a major break from the Obama Administration’s earlier “train, equip, and advise” mission.  The JSOC teams will function as hunter-killer teams, targeting Islamic State leaders and infrastructure, and will operate autonomously, with no coordination or intelligence sharing with the Iraq Army or the government in Baghdad.  These JSOC killer squads were used by Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, and they have been widely accused of indiscriminate killings, human rights violations and other actions that have actually further fueled recruitment by jihadists.

The Carter announcement has already triggered a backlash in Baghdad, where Shi’a members of the Iraq parliament have denounced the deployments and threatened to bring down the Abadi government if the Prime Minister does not order the U.S. to abandon the planned “ground invasion.”  Under pressure from within his own Dawa Party, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi did denounce the U.S. planned deployment late last week.  Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that he had briefed Abadi on the U.S. escalation plan, and that he was making statements aimed at satisfying domestic critics. Statements by Shi’a parliamentarians and militia spokesmen warned that the U.S. operations could trigger a civil war and would likely result in the fall of the Abadi government soon.

In short, the Turkish and American actions could blow up the entire Iraq situation, which conforms precisely to the British plan for permanent sectarian war throughout the Middle East region.

There are meanwhile, numerous articles and interviews in Germany on the Saudi role in Islamic terrorism, worth special mention are three statements from the Dec. 5-6: Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag that Saudi Arabia is “financing Wahhabite mosques everywhere in the world,” and that “many Islamic trouble-makers are coming from these communities in Germany.” To solve regional conflict in Middle East, Germany depends on Saudi cooperation, “but we must make clear to the Saudis at the same time, that the period of looking the other way is over…. We must use the same standards against the Salafists as against right-wing radical extremists,” Gabriel said.

Thomas Oppermann, chairman of the SPD Bundestag group, called for the Verfassungsschutz, which is responsible for Germany’s domestic security, to have tight supervision over mosque activities and their financing, saying that Wahhabism is also providing “the entire ideology for the IS terrorist group” in other countries. “We don’t need it and don’t want that in Germany.”

Islam expert Guido Steinberg of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, (the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, SWP) in Berlin also charged, in a radio interview with Deutschlandfunk (DLF), that “one of the origins of IS’ strength is that Saudi Arabia has been propagating this interpretation of Islam in the Arabic world, in the Islamic world, since the 1960s.” The core of Wahhabism and the core of the IS ideology are identical, Steinberg said, adding that “the Saudis don’t like that to be talked about.” What IS does in the areas it has under its control, is a “logical consequence of what the Saudi Arabian Wahhabites have preached for the past two-and-a-half centuries,” Steinberg said. The problem can only be solved by a roll-back against the Saudi religious influence in the Arab world and in Europe “with very drastic measures…. We should rethink our relations to Saudi Arabia somewhat. Our image of it is, in my view, so positive that it no longer fits with reality.”

So far so good: Just add the issue of the classified 28-page chapter of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and the longtime history of Empire dealings with the Saudis, which so far none of the critics of Saudi Arabia has done, despite the fact that we have supplied most of them with ample information.  But it may be hoped that the notorious “wendehals” phenomenon will compel some people sooner or later to also begin to mention the 28 pages.