‘October Surprise’: Trump Incapacitated from Electioneering

“October surprises” are a common occurrence in the electoral politics of the US when elections are only weeks away in November and canvassing of electorate by political contenders reaches a crescendo. But never in the entire political history of the US an “October surprise” has downright incapacitated a presidential contender running for re-election from electioneering for make-or-break two weeks.

President Trump announced the shocking news of having contracted COVID-19 infection on Friday at his official Twitter timeline: “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”

Half an hour later, First Lady Melania Trump confirmed the news and said they will be quarantining for two weeks at the White House: “As too many Americans have done this year, @potus & I are quarantining at home after testing positive for COVID-19. We are feeling good & I have postponed all upcoming engagements. Please be sure you are staying safe & we will all get through this together.”

Couple of hours before the momentous announcement, Trump had named the suspect who had likely transmitted the virus to the president and the first lady: “Hope Hicks, who has been working so hard without even taking a small break, has just tested positive for Covid 19. Terrible! The First Lady and I are waiting for our test results. In the meantime, we will begin our quarantine process!”

30-year-old femme fatale, Hope Hicks, is a political advisor serving as a senior counselor to President Trump since March. Hicks previously served as White House communications director from August 2017 until March 29, 2018. From January to September 2017, she was White House director of strategic communications.

But her official designations don’t do justice to her immense clout in the White House and the Trump family. Maggie Haberman wrote an informative biographical account [1] of Hope Hicks in a February 2018 article for the New York Times:

“Ms. Hicks, 29, a former model who joined Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign without any experience in politics, became known as one of the few aides who understood Mr. Trump’s personality and style and could challenge the president to change his views.

“Her title belied the extent of her power within the West Wing — after John F. Kelly was appointed White House chief of staff, she had more access to the Oval Office than almost any other staff member. Her own office, which she inherited after the departure of another Trump confidant, Keith Schiller, was just next door.

“Most significantly, Mr. Trump felt a more personal comfort with Ms. Hicks than he has established with almost any of his other, newer advisers since coming to Washington. And for a politician who relies so heavily on what is familiar to him, her absence could be jarring …”

What Haberman was insinuating to was the fact that Hope Hicks relationship with President Trump had not entirely been professional. She had occupied a special place in Trump’s heart with her attractive looks, professional charisma and an intimate understanding of Trump’s psychological attitudes and mindset.

This fact also elucidates visibly tense moments Trump and Melania have had in their matrimonial life when Hope Hicks served as White House communications director until March 2018 when she had to quit the Trump administration because she spilled the beans on Trump’s 2016 election campaign when she was summoned by the House Intelligence Committee in February 2018.

Haberman adds in the report: “Ms. Hicks resignation came a day after she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee, telling the panel that in her job, she had occasionally been required to tell white lies but had never lied about anything connected to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election …

“Ms. Hicks’s first association with the Trump family was working with Mr. Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka, on her personal apparel and licensing brand about six years ago. When Mr. Trump was planning his campaign in spring 2015, he told Ms. Hicks he was pulling her from Ms. Trump’s team to put her on his small political staff despite her lack of experience.

“In recent weeks, her personal life drew unwanted attention when it was reported that she had dated Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary who resigned under pressure over allegations that he had abused his two former wives.”

It’s pertinent to mention that Hope Hicks broke up with Rob Porter in December 2018. For two years between her resignation from the Trump administration in March 2018 to March 2020, she worked for Fox Corporation as its chief communications officer and executive vice president, drawing a million-dollar salary.

She was reappointed senior counselor to President Trump in March, but it’s quite likely that she turned rogue and her loyalty to the Trump family was compromised during the intervening two years, and she colluded with Trump’s adversaries in the deep state and the rival political organization to thwart Trump’s re-election bid.

In fact, the family of Hope Hicks has a political background. Her mother, Caye Ann (Cavender) Hicks, was an administrative aide to Ed Jones, a Democratic congressman from Tennessee.

Here, allow me to clarify that COVID-19 is a pandemic that could randomly infect anybody, but more than 90% fatalities in the US have occurred in people who are more than 55 years old. Younger people typically have robust natural immunity against the contagion, whereas Trump is 74 years old and is at high risk both because of his age and because he is considered overweight.

Maggie Haberman further notes in the New York Times article: “Ms. Hicks also had the ability to stop Mr. Trump from focusing on an issue he was angry about, and sometimes shield other members of the staff from Mr. Trump’s anger.

“While Ms. Hicks and Mr. John Kelly developed a functional, respectful relationship, he considered her access to the president to be a challenge to the command-and-control system he tried to enforce, according to several White House aides.

“Even those in the West Wing who did not like her approach feared her power, and worried about crossing her. Before leaving the White House in March 2018, she told colleagues that she had accomplished what she felt she could with a job that made her one of the most powerful people in Washington.”

Finally, though the mainstream media is cheering it as poetic justice that befell Trump for flouting safety precautions against the outbreak, it’s not simply about health risks posed to Trump and Melania due to contracting the infection. Hopefully, they would recover within weeks. But the diagnosis has disrupted the entire electoral campaign of the Republican Party at a critical juncture weeks before the presidential elections.

Rumors are already swirling if Trump would be able to perform his functions as the president or whether he would delegate official duties to Vice President Mike Pence. Even if re-elected, if his health condition deteriorates and he is incapacitated from running the office of the president, then who would be appointed president?

All such perplexing and dispiriting speculations would obviously have a demoralizing effect on the electorate and the Republican voter turnout is expected to be low, and undecided voters might even vote for definitive choice, Joe Biden, instead of doubtful option, Donald Trump, in the upcoming presidential elections slated for November 3.

Citations:

[1] Hope Hicks to Leave Post as White House Communications Director:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/us/politics/hope-hicks-resign-communications-director.html 

Will Trump be Assassinated Like the Kennedy Brothers?

During Donald Trump’s tenure, the White House’s security has been breached several times, and alarms were raised in the media. Most notably, however, a Canadian woman has been charged on September 22 in the US federal court for allegedly posting a letter with deadly ricin poison to President Trump.

Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, 53, is a computer programmer who is originally from France, but became a Canadian citizen in 2015, according to Canadian media. Sources tell BBC [1] she retains dual French-Canadian citizenship. She was living in the Canadian province of Quebec.

In March 2019, she was arrested in Texas for unlawfully carrying a weapon and using a fake driver's license, according to jail records. She was deported to Canada after officials found she had overstayed her visa and committed a crime while in the US, according to the New York Times.

The letter she allegedly sent last week was discovered before it reached the White House. In it, she called on Trump to drop out of the US presidential race. The envelope contained ricin, a poison found naturally in castor beans, but can kill within days if processed to weapon grade.

"I found a new name for you: 'The Ugly Tyrant Clown'," she wrote in the letter to Trump, according to FBI charging documents filed ahead of her first court appearance in New York on Tuesday.

"I hope you like it. You ruin USA and lead them to disaster. I have US cousins, then I don't want the next four years with you as president. Give up and remove your application for this election."

The letter, which the FBI says had her fingerprints on it, referred to the poisoned note as "a special gift," adding: "If it doesn't work, I'll find better recipe for another poison, or I might use my gun when I'll be able to come."

The suspect may have also sent ricin to five addresses in Texas, including a jail and a sheriff's office, according to the court documents.

Senior US Customs and Border Protection official Mark Morgan on Tuesday said that Ms. Ferrier had told border officers "she was wanted by the FBI for mailing envelopes with ricin to the White House and other locations" when she approached the checkpoint on Sunday. Officers found a gun, knife and ammunition in her car at the time of her arrest.

Sending suspected packages containing poison or explosives has become a common occurrence in the run-up to the US elections. Her case closely resembles the parcel bombs sent to the residences of George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, several other leading Democratic Congressmen and The New York Times New York office by Cesar Sayoc in October, 2018, in the run-up to the midterm elections in November.

Although the suspect turned out to be a mentally ill Trump supporter, he was likely instigated by shady hands in the American deep state, which is wary of the anti-establishment rhetoric and non-interventionist tendencies of the so-called “alt-right” administration.

The prank of sending explosive packages to Democratic Congressmen causing no harm lasted from October 22, 2018, to November 1, right on the eve of the elections, clearly impacted the outcome of the midterm elections on November 6, as the Democrats got the sympathy vote following the news of suspicious packages sent to prominent Democrats made headlines.

Even though the Republicans retained their 51-seat majority in the Senate, the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives following midterms by gaining 39 additional seats and brought impeachment charges against Donald Trump, though he was acquitted by the Republican majority in the Senate in February.

That the accused had a history of mental illness [2], childhood sexual abuse, substance abuse, including anabolic steroids, cognitive difficulties, including dyslexia, and was apprehended by police several times for grand theft auto and shoplifting doesn’t come as a surprise because it’s always easy to manipulate and trap such gullible patsies into perpetrating heinous crimes.

In fact, the case of Cesar Sayoc can be compared to another iconic “patsy” in the American political history, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy, who was picked up as a scapegoat because he had visited Russia and Cuba before the hit-job in order to put the blame for the high-profile political assassination on the communists.

Not surprisingly, he was silenced by Jack Ruby before he could open his mouth and prove innocence in the courts of law. The cold-blooded murder of the only other non-interventionist president in American history besides Trump was obviously perpetrated by a professional sniper on the payroll of the deep state.

It was not a coincidence that Kennedy was killed in November 1963, and months later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorized Lyndon B. Johnson to directly engage in the Vietnam conflict in August 1964 on the basis of a false flag naval engagement.

It’s obvious that the American deep state was the only beneficiary of the assassination of Kennedy. Most likely, the deep state turned against Kennedy after the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis and Kennedy’s pacifist rhetoric and conciliatory approach toward Washington’s arch-rival, the former Soviet Union, in the backdrop of the Cold War.

Similarly, JFK’s brother Robert was a leading Democratic candidate for presidency when he was shot by a Palestinian Christian Sirhan Sirhan in 1968. Being a pacifist himself, Bobby Kennedy opposed the US involvement in the Vietnam War and wrote a book on the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 in which he credited his brother JFK for showing restraint and amicably resolving the crisis.

As the former attorney general of JFK, Bobby probably had good leads on the masterminds of the JFK assassination, and wanted to avenge his brother’s shocking murder after being elected president. This was the only reason he was also silenced by the deep state.

Though serving a life sentence at a California penitentiary, Bobby Kennedy’s murderer Sirhan, now 76 years old, is a suspicious and deranged character, who frequently backtracked on his testimonies and confession during and after the trial, had no recollection of the murder and subsequent events, and his defense team had pleaded for a retrial several times but the request was summarily denied.

Shortly before the murder of Bobby Kennedy, Sirhan joined the occult organization Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, commonly known as the Rosicrucians in 1966. In fact, Sirhan’s esoteric faith closely resembles a medieval cult “Hashishin,” from which the English word “assassin” has been derived.

The Order of the Assassins was a Nizari Isma'ili sect which lived in the mountains of Persia and Syria between 1090 A.D. and 1275. During that time, they founded a clandestine organization that orchestrated the assassinations of leading figures in the Middle East that were considered enemies of their state.

The Nizari Isma'ili State was ruled by Hassan as-Sabbah from 1090 A.D. until his death in 1124. The Western world was introduced to the assassins by the works of Marco Polo who understood the name as deriving from the eponymous narcotic hashish, which indeed was used to put the assassins under a spell for political assassinations.

The more recent examples of such murderous cults are the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a cultist political organization founded by the Rajavis of Iran that relocated first to Iraq and then to Albania, or the Fidayeen or suicide bombers of Islamic jihadist organizations who are promised paradise in return for mounting terrorist attacks against political adversaries.

Citations:

[1] Pascale Ferrier: White House ricin package suspect in court:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54255727

[2] The curious case of Cesar Sayoc:

https://www.washingtonian.com/2020/08/13/inside-the-mind-of-the-maga-bomber-the-trump-superfan-who-tried-to-wreak-havoc-on-the-last-national-election/ 

Rise of Trumpism and Geoeconomic Pivot to China

Though lacking intellect and often ridiculed for frequent spelling errors on Twitter timeline, such as “unpresidented” and “covfefe,” implying he gets his news feed from television talk shows and rarely reads book and articles, Donald Trump is street smart and his anti-globalization agenda and down-to-earth attitude appeals to the American working classes.

In order to understand the real and perceived grievances of Donald Trump’s alt-right electoral base, we need to understand the prevailing global economic order and its prognosis. What the pragmatic economists predicted about free market capitalism has turned out to be true, whether the leftists like it or not. A kind of global economic entropy has set into motion, and money is flowing from the area of high monetary density to the area of low monetary density.

The rise of BRICS countries in the 21^st century is the proof of this tendency. BRICS are growing economically because the labor in developing economies is cheap; labor laws and rights are virtually nonexistent; expenses on creating a safe and healthy work environment are minimal; regulatory framework is lax; expenses on environmental protection are negligible; taxes are low; and, in the nutshell, windfalls for multinational corporations are massive.

Thus, BRICS are threatening the global economic monopoly of the Western capitalist bloc: North America and Western Europe. Here we need to understand the difference between manufacturing sector and services sector. Manufacturing sector is the backbone of economy; one cannot create a manufacturing base overnight.

It is based on hard assets: the national economies need raw materials; production equipment; transport and power infrastructure; and, last but not the least, a technically educated labor force. It takes decades to build and sustain a manufacturing base. But the services sector, like the Western financial institutions, can be built and dismantled in a relatively short period of time.

If we take a cursory look at the economy of the Western capitalist bloc, it has still retained some of its high-tech manufacturing base, but it is losing fast to the cheaper and equally robust manufacturing base of the developing BRICS nations. Everything is made in China these days, except for high-tech microprocessors, software, several internet giants, some pharmaceutical products, the Big Oil and the military hardware and defense production industry.

Apart from that, the entire economy of the Western capitalist bloc is based on financial institutions: the behemoth investment banks that dominate and control the global economy, like JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs in the US; BNP Paribas and Axa Group in France; Deutsche Bank and Allianz Group in Germany; and Barclays and HSBC in the UK.

After establishing the fact that the Western economy is mostly based on its financial services sector, we need to understand its implications. Like I have contended earlier that it takes time to build a manufacturing base, but it is relatively easy to build and dismantle an economy based on financial services.

Moreover, the manufacturing sector is labor-intensive whereas the financial services sector is capital-intensive, therefore the latter does not create as much job opportunities to keep the workforce of a nation gainfully employed and sufficiently remunerated as the industrial sector does.

Although the bankers and corporate executives of the Western economies are the beneficiaries of such exploitative practices, the middle and working classes are suffering. Besides the Trump supporters in the United States, the far-right populist leaders in Europe are also exploiting popular resentment against free trade and globalization.

The Brexiteers in the United Kingdom, the Yellow Vest protesters in France and the far-right movements in Germany and across Europe are a manifestation of a paradigm shift in the global economic order in which nationalist, isolationist and protectionist slogans have replaced the free trade and globalization mantra of the nineties.

Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from multilateral treaties, restructuring trade agreements and initiating a trade war against China are meant to redress, at least cosmetically, the legitimate grievances of the American working classes against the wealth disparity created by laissez-faire capitalism and market fundamentalism.

From the end of the Second World War to the beginning of the 21^st century, the neocolonial powers brazenly exploited the resources and labor of the post-colonial world. But after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, a paradigm shift occurred in the global economic order.

Behind the “Iron Curtain” of international isolation, China successfully built its manufacturing base by imparting vocational training and technical education to its disciplined workforce, and by building an industrial and transport infrastructure.

It didn’t allow any imports until 2001, but after joining the WTO, it opened up its import-export policy on a reciprocal basis, and since the labor is much cheaper in China than in the Western countries, therefore it now has a comparative advantage over the Western capitalist bloc which China has exploited in its national interest.

These prudent trade and economic policies, along with visionary leadership of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and China’s vanguard socialist party, collectively, have placed China on the path to progress and prosperity in the 21^st century.

Regarding the issue of immigration to the developed world, there are two contrasting styles of debating a subject: those who prefer normative arguments, and those who choose descriptive line of reasoning. Most intellectuals nowadays adopt the former approach, but the truth unfortunately is generally bitter.

Let me admit that I do understand race relations is a sensitive subject in the modern world, particularly when millions of skilled and unskilled immigrants from the impoverished developing world have migrated to the economically prosperous developed countries to find a better future for themselves and their families.

However, instead of bending over backwards and demanding from the natives of their host countries to be more accommodating and totally non-communal, the immigrants need to understand that migration is not the natural order of societies.

In order to elaborate this paradox by way of an analogy, when we uproot a flowering plant from a garden and try to make it grow in a different environment, sometimes the plant flourishes in the new environment, but at other times it doesn’t, depending on the adaptability of the plant and the compatibility of the environment. If we want to change the whole environment to suit the needs of that particular uprooted plant, such an unrealistic approach may not be conducive to native flora and fauna of those habitats.

The prudent way to tackle the immigration problem is to discourage it by reducing the incentive for prospective immigrants to permanently abandon their homes, families and communities to find a better job in a foreign country and a radically different culture, where they might be materially better off but could find themselves socially isolated and emotionally desolate.

In order to minimize the incentive for immigration, we need to revamp the global economic order. Once the relative imbalance of wealth distribution between the developed and the developing world is narrowed down, then there will be no need for the people of one region and culture to relocate to another, except on a temporary basis for education, traveling and cultural exchange.

Humanism only implies that we should be just and fair in our approach. The human mindsets, attitudes and behaviors are structured and conditioned by their respective cultures and environments. A person born and bred in Pakistan or India generally has more in common with the people of the subcontinent.

For instance, when the first generation Indo-Pakistani immigrants relocate to foreign countries, they find it hard to adjust in a radically different culture initially. It would be unwise to generalize, however, because it depends upon the disposition and inclination of immigrants, their level of education and the value system which they have internalized during their formative years.

There are many sub-cultures within cultures and numerous family cultures within those sub-cultures. Educated Indo-Pakistani liberals generally integrate well into the Western societies, but many conservative Pakistani and Indian immigrants, particularly from backward rural areas, find it hard to adjust in a radically different Western culture. On the other hand, such immigrants from underprivileged backgrounds find the conservative societies of the Gulf countries more conducive to their social integration and individual well-being.

In any case, the second generation immigrants, who are born and bred in the Western culture, seamlessly blend into their host environments, and they are likely to have more in common with the people and cultures where they have been brought up. Thus, a first generation Pakistani-American is predominantly a Pakistani, while a second generation Pakistani-American is predominantly an American, albeit with an exotic-sounding name and a naturally tanned complexion.

Why Trump Copped out of Ordering Bashar al-Assad Hit-job?

Donald Trump disclosed [1] in the morning show Fox and Friends yesterday that he contemplated assassinating Syrian President Bashar al-Assad following an alleged chemical weapons attack in April 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, a strategic town in northwest Idlib province that has recently been liberated by the Syrian army, but then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis opposed the idea.

"I would have rather taken him out. I had him all set," Trump said. "Mattis didn't want to do it. Mattis was a highly overrated general, and I let him go."

Since then-President Obama’s warning in 2013 that the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” for him, several false flag sarin attacks have been staged by terrorists themselves to enforce a US-led no-fly zone, a la Libya, over Syria, too.

After the purported chemical weapons strike in April 2017, a “visibly moved and tearful” Donald Trump appeared on television to make a momentous announcement, saying, “the attack has crossed a lot lines for me.” While making the statement, however, he was standing next to King Abdullah of Jordan who was instrumental for the devastation in Syria that has claimed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and displaced more than half of Syria’s population.

According to an informative December 2013 report [2] from a newspaper affiliated with the UAE government which takes the side of Syrian opposition against the Syrian government, it is clearly spelled out that Syrian militants got arms and training through a secret command center based in the intelligence headquarters’ building in Amman, Jordan that was staffed by high-ranking military officials from 14 countries, including the US, European nations, Israel and the Gulf Arab States to wage a covert war against the government in Syria.

Following the alleged chemical weapons attack in Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017, the US launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat airfield in Homs governorate from where the Syrian plane allegedly took off to the chemical weapons strike site in northwest Idlib province.

An year later on April 7, 2018, another false flag chemical weapons attack was staged in Douma. Couple of days later, on April 11, Trump tweeted: “Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”

After Trump’s advisers drew his attention to the fact that he might have telegraphed his intentions of bombing Syria to the Russians, one of the “smartest” American presidents ever came up with an even more puerile tweet the next day, saying: “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! In any event, the United States, under my Administration, has done a great job of ridding the region of ISIS. Where is our Thank you America?”

The fact was that during the week before the alleged chemical weapons strike, Donald Trump was so distracted by the FBI’s raid on the office of his attorney Michael Cohen and the release of former FBI director James Comey’s tell-all book that he had paid scant attention to what had happened in Syria. He kept fulminating about those two issues throughout the week before the strike on his Twitter timeline and mentioned the alleged Douma chemical weapons attack in Syria on April 7, 2018, only in the passing.

Even though Trump’s former babysitter Jim Mattis, then the Secretary of Defense, admitted on the record that though he was sure chlorine was used in the attack in Douma, he was not sure who carried out the attack and whether any other toxic chemical agent, particularly sarin, was used in the attack.

In fact, a subsequent OPCW report in July 2018 clarified that no nerve agents were used in the attack. If chlorine can be classified as a chemical weapon, then how is one supposed to categorize white phosphorous which was used by the US military in large quantities in its battle against the Islamic State in Raqqa?

Despite scant evidence as to the use of chemical weapons or the party responsible for it, Donald Trump ordered another cruise-missile strike in Syria a week after the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma in collaboration with then-Theresa May government in the UK and the Emmanuel Macron administration in France.

In the cruise-missile strikes on April 14, 2018, against a scientific research facility in the Barzeh district of Damascus and two alleged chemical weapons storage facilities in Homs, 105 total cruise missiles were deployed, 85 were launched by the US, 12 by France and 8 by the UK aircraft.

It bears mentioning that the American air and missile strikes in Syria are not only illegal under the international law but are also unlawful according to the American laws. While striking the Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, Washington availed itself of the war on terror provisions in the US laws, known as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), but those laws do not give the president the power to order strikes against the Syrian government targets without prior approval of the US Congress which has the sole authority to declare war.

The Intercept reported last year [3] that the Trump administration had derived the authority to strike the Syrian government targets based on a “top secret” memorandum of the Office of Legal Counsel that even the US Congress couldn’t see. Complying with the norms of transparency and the rule of law were never the strong points of the American democracy but the Trump administration has done away with even the pretense of accountability and checks and balances in the conduct of international relations.

In conclusion, the only reason the Pentagon advised the “toddler-in-chief” against committing the folly of ordering the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was that American forces were waging a military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in 2017.

Although the Syrian government has tolerated against its wishes the presence of US troops in eastern Syria fighting alongside Kurds, had Trump ordered the assassination of the Syrian president, it would have amounted to a declaration of an all-out war, making it impossible to maintain the presence of US forces not only in Syria but also in Iraq.

It’s worth pointing out here that although Trump did order the assassination of revered Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, by the time the US had already wrapped up anti-ISIS campaigns in Raqqa and Mosul. Whereas in 2017, the Pentagon had deployed tens of thousands of American troops across vast swathes of Syria and Iraq, ensuring their safety could have become an impossible task had Trump ordered the assassination of Bashar al-Assad.

Citations:

[1] Syria calls US a 'rogue state' over Trump's kill al-Assad plan:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/syria-calls-rogue-state-trump-kill-al-assad-plan-200916185541951.html

[2] Syrian rebels get arms and advice through secret command center in Amman:

http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/syrian-rebels-get-arms-and-advice-through-secret-command-centre-in-amman

[3] Donald Trump ordered Syria strike based on a secret legal justification even Congress can’t see:

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/14/donald-trump-ordered-syria-strike-based-on-a-secret-legal-justification-even-congress-cant-see/ 

Hunter Biden’s Murky Dealings in Ukraine and Trump’s Show Trial

Despite Hunter Biden’s publicly acknowledged despicable vices, including substance abuse, extramarital affairs and financial corruption, the mainstream media seems to be giving credit to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for helping his son get through rough phases of life. Had Eric or Donald Trump Jr. been in his place, would the media still have been as sparing and sympathetic or would it have crucified Donald Trump for being a bad influence over his children?

An excerpt from the New Yorker’s detailed biographical account [1] of Hunter Biden in July last year serves as an indictment of his moral depravity: “Hunter Biden has struggled for decades with alcohol addiction and drug abuse; he went through an acrimonious divorce from his first wife, Kathleen Buhle Biden; and he had a subsequent relationship with Beau’s widow, Hallie. He was recently sued for child support by an Arkansas woman, Lunden Alexis Roberts, who claims that he is the father of her child.”

An August 21 article [2] from the Business Insider further illustrates how former Vice President Joe Biden used his official appointment and political influence to shield his son from indefensible allegations of financial corruption:

“As his father found his place at the top of Washington, Hunter Biden launched several new business efforts that raised eyebrows. In September 2008, Hunter Biden launched a consulting firm, Seneca Global Advisors, and in June 2009, Hunter cofounded the private-equity firm Rosemont Seneca Partners. The aforementioned New Yorker report described that through his companies and his partners, Hunter Biden established various business connections to figures in China and Russia.

“Hunter Biden's tumultuous personal life became tabloid fodder during and after his father's time with the administration. He sparked confusion when he, then 44 years old, enlisted in the Navy Reserves in 2012, less than two years before reports broke that the Reserve discharged him in 2014 after he tested positive for cocaine.

“Within one month of his term on the board of Burisma Holdings of Ukraine expiring, a bombshell New York Times story published on May 1, 2019, detailed Joe and Hunter Biden's ties to Ukraine and said the former vice president had successfully gotten a Ukrainian prosecutor removed from office.

“The move raised questions about a possible conflict of interest and if Joe Biden was trying to shield his son from an investigation into the company, whose founder faced multiple investigations into allegations of tax evasion and money laundering. Joe Biden has since publicly detailed his threat to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees from the country if the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma Holdings money-laundering and corrupt practices wasn't fired.”

The May 2019 New York Times report [3] was far from a “bombshell,” as alluded to in the aforementioned excerpts, nevertheless it set in motion a series of events that eventually culminated in the initiation of impeachment proceedings against President Trump in September last year:

“In 2014, Mr. Archer, the Kerry family friend, and Hunter Biden were part of a wave of Americans who would come from across the Atlantic to help Burisma both with its substantive legal issues and its image. Their support allowed Burisma to create the perception that it was backed by powerful Americans at a time when Ukraine was especially dependent on aid and strategic backing from the United States and its allies, according to people who worked in Ukraine at the time.

“Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine appears to have been well compensated. Burisma paid $3.4 million to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC from mid-April 2014, when Hunter Biden and Mr. Archer joined the board, to late 2015, according to the financial data provided by the Ukrainian deputy prosecutor. The payments continued after that, according to people familiar with the arrangement.

“Rosemont Seneca Bohai was controlled by Mr. Archer, who left Burisma’s board after he was charged in connection with a scheme to defraud pension funds and an Indian tribe of tens of millions of dollars. Bank records submitted in that case — which resulted in a conviction for Mr. Archer that was overturned in November — show that Rosemont Seneca Bohai made regular payments to Mr. Biden that totaled as much as $50,000 in some months.”

After reading between the lines, it becomes abundantly clear that the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump were nothing more than a show trial. The Democrats initiated the impeachment inquiry against Trump in September 2019 as a diversionary tactic to cover up the sleazy dealings of Hunter Biden with Burisma Holdings of Ukraine, and consequent discrediting of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Although the Democrats had the requisite majority in the House of Representatives to impeach Donald Trump, the Senate was controlled by the Republicans. Besides, convicting a president of impeachment requires two-third majority in the Senate that the Democrats never had. Then what was the purpose of initiating the proceedings if not to distract attention from the media trial of Hunter Biden, which was bringing damning press coverage not only to the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden but to the Democratic Party as a whole?

Leaving partisan interpretations of the US Constitution aside, an accused is presumed innocent until proved guilty, according to a fundamental axiom of modern jurisprudence. Then how can it be said that Trump is an “impeached president”? By such paradoxical legal interpretations, if a mala fide litigator maliciously accuses an innocent person of murder, could it be said that the person is a murderer simply because he was indicted of the offense but was never convicted of having committed a murder?

Lastly, Donald Trump’s unorthodox approach to the conduct of diplomatic relations has been a persistent thorn in the side of America’s national security establishment for the last four years, and mainstream shills often wonder why Washington’s relations with traditional allies, including Britain, France, Germany and Canada, have soured during the tenure of the Trump administration.

The fact is that like a typical American, Trump regards America’s allies, such as Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau, as subordinates beholden to him personally; whereas he treats adversaries, such as Russian President Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, as independent leaders deserving equal treatment and respect. Nevertheless, it’s an inconsequential matter of interpersonal attitude and etiquette than anything having diplomatic repercussions.

The conspiracy theories perpetuated by the establishment-controlled media that Trump is Putin’s “useful idiot” and alleged Russian interference in America’s domestic politics are sheer fabrications reminiscent of the McCarthyism of the fifties.

Russian netizens indeed lent moral support to the Trump campaign in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential race but simply because they despised Hillary Clinton, who the Russians regarded as an interventionist hawk responsible for initiating proxy wars in Libya and Syria in 2011 as Obama’s secretary of state, and also because she was the wife of former Democratic President Bill Clinton who was responsible for the break-up of former Yugoslavia in the nineties.

Despite the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary by a margin of 2.87 million votes. Had it not been for the archaic electoral college system and James Comey, then the director of FBI, opening last-minute investigation into Hillary Clinton using personal computers for official communications, she was the favorite to win the elections.

According to Washington’s own intelligence estimates, three powers are currently vying for interference in upcoming presidential elections slated for November 3. Two of those, China and Iran, favor Joe Biden because Trump initiated trade war with China and unilaterally annulled Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, whereas Russia allegedly supports Trump because Putin apparently has an unmistakable crush on Slovenian beauty pageant Melania.

Trump is reputed to be a staunch conservative, and it’s a known empirical observation that conservatives typically are considerably more patriotic than liberals. Collaborating with foreign powers to undermine one’s national interest doesn’t appeal to the conservative mindset.

Throughout its four-year tenure, the Trump administration has continued with the policy of its predecessors. If anything, diplomatic relations between Washington and Moscow have significantly worsened during Trump’s tumultuous four-year tenure and a New Cold War has begun between the arch-rivals.

Notes:

[1] Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/08/will-hunter-biden-jeopardize-his-fathers-campaign

[2] Meet Hunter Biden, the often scandal-plagued middle child of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden:

https://www.businessinsider.com/hunter-biden-life-scandals-ukraine-involvement-with-trump-giuliani-2019-9

[3] Joe Biden faces conflict of interest questions:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html 

Khashoggi Murder and the Killing of Al-Baghdadi

In his newly released book “Rage,” American journalist Bob Woodward has corroborated what was long known to be an open secret: the existence of a Faustian pact between Donald Trump and President Erdogan of Turkey in which the latter agreed to cover up the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 and also let Washington hunt down Islamic State’s chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in Syria’s Idlib, bordering Turkey, in October last year in return for Ankara mounting Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria with Trump’s permission in October 2019.

In an informal conversation with Woodward, Donald Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. "I saved his ass," Trump said in 2018, according to the book [1]. "I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop."

When Woodward pressed Trump if he believed the Saudi crown prince ordered the assassination himself, Trump responded: "He says very strongly that he didn't do it. Bob, they spent $400 billion over a fairly short period of time," Trump said.

"And you know, they're in the Middle East. You know, they're big. Because of their religious monuments, you know, they have the real power. They have the oil, but they also have the great monuments for religion. You know that, right? For that religion," the president noted. "They wouldn't last a week if we're not there, and they know it," he added.

Regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, the Erdogan administration released American pastor Andrew Brunson on October 12, 2018, which had been a longstanding demand of the Trump administration, and also decided not to make public the audio recordings of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in the assassination.

In return, the Trump administration promised to comply with Turkish President Erdogan’s longstanding demand to evacuate American forces from the Kurdish-held areas in northeast Syria, and the withdrawal was eventually effected an year later in October last year.

In the Operation Peace Spring in October 2019, the Turkish armed forces and their Syrian proxies invaded and occupied 120 kilometers wide and 32 kilometers deep stretch of Syrian territory between the northeastern towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. It’s worth pointing out that although Turkish forces invaded northeast Syria in October last year, the negotiations were going on for almost an year since December 2018.

Trump immediately announced the withdrawal of American troops from Syria after losing the midterm elections in November 2018. But the Pentagon kept delaying the evacuation of American forces from northern Syria to appease Washington’s Kurdish allies. However, once Turkish armed forces and allied militant proxies invaded northeast Syria in October last year, the Pentagon was left with no other choice than to redeploy American forces to Kurdish-majority areas al-Hasakah and Qamishli in northeast Syria.

Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was reportedly made during a telephonic conversation with Turkish President Erdogan on December 14, 2018, before President Trump made the momentous announcement in a Tweet on December 19. The decision was so sudden that it prompted the resignation Jim Mattis, then the Secretary of Defense, according to a December 22, 2018, Associated Press report [2].

Another demand Ankara made to Washington was to pressure Saudi Arabia to lift the Saudi-UAE blockade imposed in June 2017 against Qatar, which is ideologically aligned with Turkish President Erdogan’s AKP party as both follow the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.

After the Khashoggi assassination and the international outrage it generated against the Saudi royal family, Riyadh tried to assuage Doha and invited Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to attend the Gulf Cooperation Council summit in Riyadh on December 10, 2018, though Doha snubbed the goodwill gesture by sending a low-ranking official to the meeting.

In return for the generous favors, Trump got the most coveted feather in his cap as Turkey let US Special Forces kill fugitive leader of the Islamic State weeks after the Turkish Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria in October last year.

It’s important to note in the news coverage of the killing of al-Baghdadi that although the mainstream media had been trumpeting for the last several years that the Islamic State’s fugitive chief had been hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in the northwestern Idlib governorate, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front, and was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Barisha village five kilometers from the border.

The morning after the night raid, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported [3] on Sunday, October 27, that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.

According to “official version” [4] of Washington’s story regarding the killing of al-Baghdadi, the choppers took off from an American airbase in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, flew hundreds of miles over the enemy territory in the airspace controlled by the Syrian and Russian air forces, killed the self-proclaimed “caliph” of the Islamic State in a Hollywood-style special-ops raid, and took the same route back to Erbil along with the dead body of the terrorist and his belongings.

Although Washington has conducted several airstrikes in Syria’s Idlib in the past, those were carried out by fixed-wing aircraft that fly at high altitudes, and the aircraft took off from American airbases in Turkey, which is just across the border from Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. Why would Washington take the risk of flying its troops at low altitudes in helicopters over the hostile territory controlled by myriads of Syria’s heavily armed militant outfits?

In fact, several Turkish journalists, including Rajip Soylu, the Turkey correspondent for the Middle East Eye, tweeted [5] on the night of the special-ops raid that the choppers took off from the American airbase in Turkey’s Incirlik. As for al-Baghdadi, who was "hiding" with the blessing of Turkey, it is now obvious that he was the bargaining chip in the negotiations between Trump and Erdogan, and the quid for the US president's agreeing to pull out of Syria was the pro quo that Erdogan would hand Baghdadi to him on a platter.

Citations:

[1] Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Crown Prince:

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-woodward-i-saved-his-ass-mbs-khashoggi-rage-2020-9

[2] Trump call with Turkish leader led to US pullout from Syria:

https://apnews.com/ec2ed217357048ff998225a31534df12

[3] Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-targeted-us-raid-officials

[4] Official story of the night raid killing al-Baghdadi:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/us/politics/baghdadi-isis-leader-trump.html

[5] Trump Confirms ISIS Leader Al-Baghdadi Killed In US Raid:

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/trump-make-statement-after-isis-chief-al-baghdadi-killed-turkish-border-while-fleeing 

Donald Trump: The Frenemy of the Islamic World

In the Republican primaries of the 2016 US presidential elections, Mitt Romney severely castigated Trump, calling him a phony and a fraud. When Trump was elected president, he dangled the carrot of the secretary of state appointment to Romney, invited him to a dinner in an upscale New York restaurant, made him eat his words and fawn all over Trump like a servile toady. But later, he gave the second most coveted appointment in the US bureaucratic hierarchy to oil executive Rex Tillerson.

Romney felt humiliated to the extent that in Trump’s vulnerable moment, when impeachment proceedings were initiated against him in the Senate in February, Romney became the only US senator in the American political history who voted against his own Republican Party president.

Trump is a typical Shylock of the Wall Street belonging to the American libertarian movement. Though his alt-right agenda has been scuttled by the deep state, his views regarding global politics and economics are markedly different from the establishment Democrats and Republicans pursuing neocolonial world order masqueraded as globalization and free trade.

Besides the admission that Trump knew coronavirus was deadly yet he deliberately downplayed the outbreak, Bob Woodward has made several other startling revelations [1] in his book “Rage” set to be released on September 15.

President Donald Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

"I saved his ass," Trump said in 2018, according to the book. "I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop."

When Woodward pressed Trump if he believed the Saudi crown prince ordered the assassination himself, Trump responded: "He says very strongly that he didn't do it. Bob, they spent $400 billion over a fairly short period of time," Trump said.

"And you know, they're in the Middle East. You know, they're big. Because of their religious monuments, you know, they have the real power. They have the oil, but they also have the great monuments for religion. You know that, right? For that religion," the president noted. "They wouldn't last a week if we're not there, and they know it," he added.

Despite the crass insensitivity, one must give credit to Trump for his fairly accurate interpretation of the Middle East’s politics and pragmatic relations of the business world. $400 billion he alluded to was likely the unprecedented arms package he availed for the US defense production industry during his maiden overseas visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017.

By virtue of their physical possession of the holy places of Islam – Mecca and Medina – the Saudi kings are the de facto caliphs of Muslims. The title of the Saudi king: “Khadim-ul-Haramain-al-Shareefain” (the servant of the house of God), makes him the vicegerent of God on Earth; and the title of the caliph of Muslims is not limited to a single nation state, the Saudi king wields enormous influence throughout the commonwealth of Islam, the Muslim Ummah.

The Shia Muslims have their Imams and Ayatollahs (religious authorities), but it is generally assumed about Sunni Islam that it discourages the authority of clergy. In this sense, Sunni Islam is closer to Protestantism, at least theoretically, because it prefers an individual and personalized interpretation of scriptures and religion. Although this perception might be true for educated Sunni Muslims, on the popular level of the masses of developing Islamic countries, the House of Saud plays the same role in Sunni Islam that the pope plays in Catholicism.

Left to their own resources, the Persian Gulf’s petro-monarchies lack the manpower, the military technology and the moral authority to rule over forcefully suppressed and disenfranchised Arab masses, not only the Arab masses but also the South Asian and North African immigrants of the Gulf states. One-third of the Saudi Arabian population is composed of immigrants. Similarly, more than 75% of UAE’s population is also comprised of expats from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka.

The rest of the Gulf States, including Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, also have a similar proportion of immigrant workers from the developing countries. Unlike the immigrants of the Western countries, however, who hold the citizenship status, the Gulf’s immigrants have lived there for decades and sometimes for generations, and they are still regarded as unentitled foreigners.

Seemingly, the Western powers support the Gulf’s autocrats because it has been a firm policy principle of the Western powers to promote “political stability” in the energy-rich Middle East instead of representative democracy. They are mindful of the ground reality that the mainstream Muslim sentiment is firmly against Western military presence and intervention in the Middle East region.

In addition, the Western policymakers also prefer to deal with small cliques of Middle Eastern strongmen rather than cultivating a complex and uncertain relationship on a popular level of the masses of the Middle East, certainly a myopic approach which is the hallmark of so-called pragmatic politicians and statesmen.

In this reciprocal relationship, the US provides security to the ruling families of the Gulf Arab States by providing weapons and troops; and in return, the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs contribute substantial investments to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars to the Western economies in the time of global recession when most manufacturing has outsourced to China.

All the recent wars and conflicts aside, the unholy alliance between the Western powers and the Wahhabi-Salafis of the Gulf petro-monarchies is much older. The British stirred up uprising in Arabia by instigating the Sharifs of Mecca to rebel against the Ottoman rule during the First World War.

After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the British Empire backed King Abdul Aziz (Ibn-e-Saud) in his struggle against the Sharif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali because he was demanding too much of a price for his loyalty, the unification of the whole of Arabia, including the Arabian peninsula, Levant, Iraq and the Gulf Emirates, under his suzerainty as a price for rebelling against the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.

As a consequence, Western powers dumped him, imposed Sykes-Picot Agreement dividing Arabs into small states at loggerheads with each other, and lent their support to nomadic Sauds of Najd. King Abdul Aziz defeated the Sharifs and united his dominions into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 with the support of the British. However, by then the tide of British Imperialism was subsiding and the Americans inherited the former possessions and the rights and liabilities of the British Empire.

At the end of the Second World War on 14 February 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt held a historic meeting with King Abdul Aziz at Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal onboard USS Quincy, and laid the foundations of an enduring alliance which persists to this day. During the course of that momentous Great Bitter Lake meeting, among other things, it was decided to set up the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) to Saudi Arabia to “train, advise and assist” the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces. 

Aside from USMTM, the US-based Vinnell Corporation, which is a private military company based in the US and a subsidiary of the Northrop Grumman, used over a thousand Vietnam War veterans to train and equip 125,000 strong Saudi Arabian National Guards (SANG) which is not under the authority of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and acts as the Praetorian Guards of the House of Saud.

In addition, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Force, whose strength is numbered in tens of thousands, is also being trained and equipped by the US to guard the critical Saudi oil infrastructure along its eastern Persian Gulf coast where 90% of 266 billion barrels Saudi oil reserves are located.

Furthermore, the US has deployed tens of thousands of American troops in aircraft carriers and numerous military bases in the Persian Gulf that include al-Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi, al-Udeid airbase in Qatar and a naval base in Bahrain where the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy is based.

Citations:

[1] Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Crown Prince:

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-woodward-i-saved-his-ass-mbs-khashoggi-rage-2020-9