Jonathan Azaziah: The Obama Legacy: Genocide, Destruction, Chaos, Color Revolutions and Subservience to World Zionism

ED Noor: Once again, Jonathan Azaziah nails it. No more need be said on that matter. However, as an extra treat to go with his words, I have included Russian cartoons, (from an Eirtraean publication) with translations, regarding the legacy of this creature who has torn up the world so happily for his Zionist masters.

What will Obama do after office? Make pizza? Be a gangster? A poker star? A farmer?

"I told you I would be back."

"I remove my Nobel Prize to hit you with."

By Jonathan Azaziah

As of this moment, from the gentrified hipster hellholes in Brooklyn to the pedophile-infested devil-den of Hollywood to Satan-occupied Washington DC, liberals nationwide are wailing, howling, shrieking and blubbering over Barack Obama getting out of the White House. Their tears are gushing like rushing rivers breaking through weak dams in pusillanimous sadness, their little Judaized hearts are breaking into pieces of Gefilte fish because an end has come to the presidency of this man they repetitiously and affectionately refer to as “American’s First ‘Black’ President” who brought “hope and change” not only to the USA but the world at large. But who exactly are they weeping for? Who is this harbinger of butterflies, rainbows, unicorns and cookie-delivering fairies that made God’s Green Earth such a better place? 

Who?! This man is a fantasy. A morbid, monstrous delusion that exists nowhere but the warped minds of snowflakes, teacups and muffintops everywhere. 

 
The real Obama is:

~ a deviant degenerate who frequented the back-alley bathhouses of Chicago’s South Side; (Why Obama is Subject to Blackmail);

~ a Manchurian candidate like no other, groomed for power by the likes of the Crowns, the Pritzkers, Rabbi Arnold Wolf and adoringly referred to as the “first Jewish president” of the US by Chicago Jewish News; 

~ the son of an archaic, globe-holding British bloodline through his malevolent mother, an Anglo CIA operative who made her career in the “regime change” cog known as the Ford Foundation; 

~ the bloodthirsty, astute student of Operation Cyclone father Zbigniew Brzezinski; 

~ the servant of International Jewish Finance who bailed out the big banks; 

~ the vassal of Monsanto; 

        ~ the paid puppy from purgatory of Big Pharma; 

~ the enemy of the poor. 

The only “messiah” Obama is comparable to is the false one spoken of in Islamic and Christian eschatology. Indeed, at every turn, with every move and from every angle, Obama furthered the agenda of Dajjal.

 

Mr. “Hope and Change” kicked off his Tuesday mornings by looking over his Kill List and deciding who he was going to slaughter with flying death machines. And speaking of drones, not to mention JSOC death squad special ops, Mr. “Audacity of Hope” upped the ante in both Pakistan and Somalia. 

~ Thanks to his Zionist Jew “expert” Bruce Reidel, Mr. Nobel “Peace” Prize went haywire in occupied Afghanistan, butchering tens of thousands with his night raids, air raids, drone raids and other forms of mayhem, all for the sake of protecting the Empire’s interests in natural gas, heroin, lithium and other minerals. 

~ Mr. “Presidential Swag” sold foreign regimes $278 billion worth of weaponry, $115 billion of which went to the backwards, hateful, repressive, misogynistic, murderous, demonic, tyrannical regime of Saudi Arabia. The winged robots of bloodshed really were the pride-and-joys of Mr. “Community Organizer”, as he launched more than 10 times the amount of drone strikes the Bush regime did. “First Jewish President” indeed, as the predator drone, Obama’s baby, is the invention of Jewish-Zionist terrorist Abraham Karem.

~ It’s in the new wars and the color revolution coups, though, where President Kill List really shines. Mr. “I Know Beyonce and Jay-Z So You Should Love Me Hard Goyim” kicked off his presidency in ’09 by launching the Green Revolution against the Islamic Republic of Iran and toppling the government of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. 

~ In ’10, Mr. “Katy Perry’s One Of My Favorite People” granted cover to the illegitimate ‘Israeli’ regime’s bloody assault on the Freedom Flotilla in which an American citizen, Furkan Dogan, among 8 other unarmed activists, was murdered. 

~ Obama also kicked off the “Arab Spring” by manipulating popular dissent and taking down Ben Ali in Tunisia. 

~ The removal of Mubarak in Egypt followed and then NATO’s annihilation of Libya along with the assassination of Muammar Qadhafi. 

~ A campaign of fourth generation warfare utilizing Takfiri terrorists from over 100 countries around the globe was launched against the Syrian Arab Republic ~ an iniquitous and insidious aggression that has left hundreds of thousands of Syrians dead. 

~ A genuine rebellion was demolished in Bahrain. US-backed air strikes slammed the Ivory Coast. 

~ Fernando Lugo was overthrown in Paraguay. 

~ A genocidal war on Gaza was unleashed with the outgoing US president’s support in November ’12. 

~ He joined the Zionist scheme to crack Sudan in half. 

~ A second coup unfolded in Egypt, toppling Mursi and the “Muslim” Brotherhood and replacing them with Zionist collaborationist Sisi. 

~ In Mali, a criminal intervention was orchestrated to loot the ancient North African nation of its gold and keep it destabilized with terrorism.

~ More carnage popped off in ’14 with the US-led creation of ISIS in Iraq, 

~ a coup in Ukraine aimed at undermining Russia followed by a subsequent genocide against Russian civilians in the Donbass and 

~ another slaughterous ‘Israeli’ assault on Gaza that left over 2,200 innocents martyred, including 500+ Palestinian children. 

~ And perhaps in his worst, most nightmarish and most sickening atrocity of all, Mr. “Huffington Post Says My Swag Is Untouchable” greenlit Saudi Arabia’s massacre in Yemen and provided the Kingdom of Darkness with all-out cover. Over 12,000 Yemeni men, women and children have been killed thus far. Millions of Yemenis are starving thanks to the siege being upheld by the Saudi regime with British, ‘Israeli’ and yes, Obama’s approval.

~ Obama also declared economic war on Lebanon with a sanctions regime targeting Lebanese banks as a means of turning the population against Hizbullah, 

~ Ousted Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, 

~ Meddled in the elections of Haiti, Argentina and Chile, 

~ Backed Buddhist extremist death squads in the Rakhine State of Myanmar, 

~ Gave the nod to the horror inflicted on Sheikh Zakzaky and Nigeria’s Shi’a and 

~ Tried but failed to implement “regime change” in Turkey, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.

Again, I say “First Jewish President” indeed because the “Arab Spring” blueprint was laid out by Jewish neocon Joshua Muravchik in his disturbing volume “The Next Founders” and the phrase “Arab Spring” itself was coined by Jewish neocon “Charles Krauthammer”. And again, a legacy of “hope and change” is cruel, CRUEL comedy  when it is understood that the record reflects Obama bringing war, death, famine, chaos, mass murder, scorched earth and bloodshed wherever he stuck his Zionized hands. Some criminals have rap sheets a mile long… Obama’s rap sheet is a planet long, with offenses committed in every hemisphere.

And for the grand slam, the biggest supporters of Mr. “I Knew Edward Said Back In The Day”, i.e. Latinos and Black Folk, got shafted royally in too many ways to enumerate but still inexplicably think of him with fondness. Latinos voted for Obama over McCain in the 2008 election by a margin of more than two-to-one but Obama deported some 2.5 million “illegal” immigrants from mostly Latin American nations, making him the Deporter-In-Chief who threw out more people from the US than any other president in history put together. Black Folk voted for Obama in near totality and yet Mr. “I Invited Kendrick Lamar To The White House” didn’t do a damn thing for African-Americans but expand the police-surveillance state, fatten up the Prison Industrial Complex (aka the New Jim Crow), protect killer cops and put an actual multi-million-dollar bounty on the head of legendary Black heroine Assata Shakur. 

Obama didn’t close Gitmo. He didn’t free Mumia and Peltier. He cracked down on the indigenous people of Standing Rock. 

He gave ‘Israel’ the biggest military aid package ever at $38 billion over 10 years. 



He declared war on raw milk and other miraculous organic foods. 

Obama was not FOR the people in any way, shape or form. He was (and still is) against us in every capacity, soup to nuts.

With the Obama legacy now carved into burnt flesh, etched into destroyed ancient architecture and woven into the tapestry of the history of the world’s oppressed people forever, the questions do not, contrary to popular opinion, revolve around what Donald Trump may or may not do. 

What should really be asked is where in the name of all that is good and holy in this life have all the aforementioned snowflakes, teacups and muffintops been the last 8 years as Barack Obama turned the planet into his very own personal stomping ground? 



The real lesson to be learned here from all these liberal hypocrite maggots is that coups, drone strikes, kill lists, prosecuting whistleblowers, love for Saudi Arabia, unwavering support for the cancerous tumor ‘Israel’ and various other “lovelies” are all perfectly fine and even laudable so long as you know rappers, singers, actors and do your dirt with “swag”.

The irony of it all? 

Despite his Anglo upbringing and overall rejection of his African/Muslim roots, the very Zionist Jews who have controlled him hideously refer to him as “nigger”, “schvartze” and “kushi” to this day, testaments to how deeply ingrained Anti-Blackness is within Jewish culture and how far Obama has sunk as a person, serving a supremacist entity and a global power matrix which hate him entirely for the color of his skin and background but have used him and his manufactured story anyway to play the masses like drums in a garage band. 



Such a spineless, utterly yellowbelly coward this man is. Trust, a special place in the hellfire awaits this mass-murdering war criminal who is so addicted to conflict that he had to order just one more war, the new crisis in The Gambia, before he departed his post. Man oh man, what a psychopathic barbarian. This wolf in sheep’s clothing. This death-dealer in savior’s garb. And there’s more than a few seats waiting for all his moronic cheerleaders too. Let’s see how much they give a damn about “swag” when they’re roasting in The Crusher for eternity. Good riddance, Baruch (which is what he should be called because he served Organized Jewish Interests so loyally). May ALLAH (SWT) never forgive you for the immeasurable agony you’ve wrought on humanity.

Mark Dankof: The Brexit Vote of June 23rd, 2016: A Temporary Setback for the New World Order or the Beginning of Its Unraveling?

ED Noor: As always, the eloquent Pastor has much to say about Brexit, all of it insightful.

[This represents the total content of Mark Dankof’s responses on the Brexit vote of June 23rd for Jonas E. Alexis and Veterans Today, which will be posted at that site  as individual responses to Mr. Alexis’ compelling questions and observations on the Brexit vote of June 23rd, 2016 and its possible implications for the future struggle against the New World Order.] 

The Brexit vote in the UK on June 23, 2016 is the most promising beginning of a revolt against the New World Order and its Globalist Elite in my lifetime.

Two things should be noted by all: 

First, the Globalist Media Consortiums were proven wrong about Brexit and voter support for it in Britain.

The second point to be absolutely reiterated is the Elite’s panic over the developments of June 23rd. The UK Express Story of June 27th is but the latest example of their ruthless counter reactions to come.  They will stop at nothing to destroy this nationalist uprising in both Europe and the United States. 

This includes the deliberate manipulations of markets, money supply, exchange rates, and food supplies to convince the public to Return to Their Masters. 

It also means more False Flag operations to artificially stimulate fear accompanied by the concurrent Globalist Media Consortium and Hysterical Public demands for new Domestic Police State measures with the installation of more profiling and electronic surveillance without court warrants of peaceful populist, anti-globalist, anti-Zionist activists, parties, and movements.

It also means renewed resolve on the part of the New World Order elite for a global war after the American Presidential Election in November. This will be accompanied by a declaration of martial law in the United States if this war transpires, the disarmament of the American public, and the suspension of Constitutional liberties and the Bill of Rights for those who exercise their lawful First Amendment right to protest and resist the Beast.

The Brexit vote is only a beginning. In the United States, whose Political Elite comprises the backbone of the Beast’s Advancing System in America and its accompanying exportation of New World Order “Democracy“ abroad, the Brexit vote in the UK must be followed by the ultimate achievement of the following goals of the American Populist Movement and the Real Right in this country. These include:

~ the termination of the Federal Reserve Board and a return of monetary policy to the Congress of the United States; 

~ and the termination of American involvement in NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, the Import-Export Bank, NAFTA, GATT, the FTAA, the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and any future Globalist Trade Treaties designed to facilitate World Government. Control of American borders and the rejection of the agenda of the disastrous Immigration Reform Act of 1965 have to be included in this package.

 

The recovery of American national sovereignty over its economy and the rejection of the targeted destruction of a once vibrant American Middle Class must be accompanied by the achievement of three (3) additional essential elements in restoring the Old American Republic:

First 1): The blatantly un-Constitutional Domestic Police State advancements of the New World Order must be repealed. These include:

~ the USA Patriot Acts; the Military Commissions Act of 2006; 

~ the warrantless surveillance and data mining programs of the National Security Agency (NSA); 

~ and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). 

~ The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) needs to be terminated;

~ along with the involvement of Israeli affiliated companies and individuals in both this agency, and every other agency of the American National Security Nexus. 

~ The use of Israeli training seminars for domestic American police departments must end;

~ along with the known direct involvement of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith (ADL) in working with Federal Law Enforcement and State Law Enforcement in profiling American citizens whose sole offense consists of lawfully opposing the hijacking of the country by our Globalist Masters.

~ Establishment of the Constitutional understanding of the lines of delineation between Federal and State Law Enforcement is an imperative in this context, as is the reinforcement of adherence to Posse Comitatus laws proscribing American military involvement in Domestic Law Enforcement. In this last regard, this priority should be especially obvious with the burgeoning Drone Strike technologies and what The Empire has already done with these technologies in the backyards of other people.

The Samson Option: The New World Order’s Endgame for the Middle East and the World? 

Second 2): The recovery of the Old Republic also involves the repudiation of the employment of the American Military as a Janissary Force for Israel, the Central Bankers, and the Multinational Corporate Elite.

~ I have already mentioned the need for the United States to withdraw from NATO.

~ This must be accompanied by the cessation of the obvious attempts to militarize Eastern Europe and the southern underbelly of Putin’s Russia.  

~ The illegitimate involvement of the United States in supporting the illegal coup d’etat in the Ukraine in February of 2014 and the Wahhabic Sunni terrorists in Libya and Syria must end, 

~ as must the pursuit of the Zionist threat to Iran, and all of the American military and intelligence operations in the Middle East designed to enforce the Sykes-Picot Treaty, the Balfour Declaration, and Bretton Woods. This includes most of what has been supported by the United States in the Middle East since 1948, including the acceleration of all of this since 9-11. 

~ In this regard, bringing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) under the strictures of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, ending the role of Dual Citizens and Israeli linked companies in every branch of the American government, and repudiating the insane campaign finance policies of the Citizens United v FEC and McCutcheon v FEC decisions are critically important in regaining control of our own house. 

~ You may add to this the application of antitrust legislation to regulate the activities of Corporate Media Conglomerates where legitimate, and the termination of the activities of the New World Order agenda in NGOs like that of the Open Society Foundation of George Soros and his ideological ilk.

The Zionist/NWO Alliance with the Frankfurt School and the LGBT Agenda: Destroying the Christian West, Russia, and the Islamic World With Cancer.

Third 3): American Old Right Populists must regain the initiative in the Culture Wars catastrophically lost in the last half century.

 

It is essential to understand that a true rejection of the economic and political agenda of the minions of the New World Order must be accompanied by a rejection of the agenda of Cultural Subversion deployed by these people to deliberately target and destroy the moral and spiritual fiber of those who would otherwise constitute the constituency of Massive Resistance to their Game Plan for both the United States and the world at large. 

I am referring here to the Freudian Psychotherapeutic Minions of the Frankfurt School’s Institute for Social Research, and their targeted sexual defoliation of this country by Hollywood, the Will and Grace and Oprah Winfrey crowd in the American television industry, the Helen Gurley Browns of the Women’s Magazine industry, the pornographers in the image of Al Goldstein and his Screw magazine empire of a generation ago, the LGBT hijacking of American culture which culminated in the Obergefell v Hodges Supreme Court decision of a year ago, and the insidious advancements of the abortion industry via the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision of January of 1973. 

In regard to a total macrocosmic evaluation of these matters, it is legitimate to see the advancement of the Culture of Death as more than the mere pacification and disarmament of those who otherwise would resist the New World Order. Along with the Empire’s global military expeditions, this domestic agenda for the Cultural Subversion of formerly sovereign nation-states is designed to subvert, divert, destroy, and kill millions physically, even as it destroys the religious, moral, and spiritual resistance and autonomy of those who should be resisting the arrival of the most evil World System ever seen in world history.

The understanding of the tragedy of what has happened in the United States is understood by President Putin of Russia and the present leadership of Iran. The recovering of understanding in the United States and Western Europe is the only hope the West has. It may be too late. Time and history will tell.

Vladimir Putin of Russia:  Can He Defend His Nation Against The New World Order’s Toxic Brew of External NATO Military Threats and Economic/Cultural Subversion From Within?

Time and history will reveal whether the Brexit vote of June 23rd will reveal a longer term string of victories for the recovery of Western Civilization or only a mere tactical gain by those who resist the Beast in a just and righteous cause already lost in the United States and Western Europe.  My own evaluation of the prospect of the recovery of Western Civilization in the 21st Century is decidedly pessimistic. I pray I’m proven wrong. 

In any event, I maintain my internal peace by my faith in the love, grace, and sovereign control of time and history by the Biblical God who has revealed Himself and his future Kingdom in His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. This Kingdom is eternal and supplants all earthly kingdoms and empires. John’s Apocalypse written on Patmos during his exile tells us this. Hence we await whatever comes in our lives with confidence in God’s deliverance in a time of His choosing. 

For the Christian informed by Biblical Eschatology, the roadmap is one of absolutely evil political, social, economic, military, and spiritual developments between now and the Second Coming of Christ.  For those living in a post-Christian West, it may well be the case that the Confessing Church of Christ will be comprised of a persecuted, marginalized remnant operating underground as a believing community encouraging the Lord’s people in the midst of deception, persecution, economic catastrophes, and global conflict (Matthew 24).  Only God absolutely knows if we are living in the final days of this present cosmos.  But the signs seem suggestive.

John on Patmos Pens The Apocalypse: Exiled Because of Resistance to the Emperor Worship Cultus of Domitian Between 81-96 B. C.

The Slow Death of the Syria Cease-Fire Brings a Hybrid War with Russia Closer

ED Noor: Author Crooke takes an interesting approach to this disastrous situation, although there is so much more to it that his relative over-simplification of things. Syria is much more about the Greater Israel Project than it is about the current American elections and various international strategies being devised to highlight the presidential runners. 

Crooke makes not a single mention of neocon involvement or a single thing Jewish, but then, you all, Dear Readers, are fully cognizant of the inherent tribal meddling to bring about their JWO/NWO endgame.  These Anglo-Zionist traitors to humanity are the ones creating these international tensions, as they admittedly said, have so many times in the past, in order to bring about international collapse; America is behaving as the golem it was shaped into for the benefit of International Communism which is, basically, just what all of this is about. 

After all, Israeli leaders have publicly stated that they prefer to keep ISIS around rather than deal with Iran, hence the attacks on Russia in Syria by Israel itself. 

They are, once again, playing the goy like a Stradivarius in the hands of a Maestro. These are the same people who created and systematically, with the help of their shabboz goy, brought about every war of the past few centuries.  

Now, to bring about their Jewish Utopia they play dangerous games with Mr. Putin and his allies. He is not a man to back down but these people do not care about that. As with Israel’s criminal behaviours in the Palestine territories, they will not stop until someone MAKES them stop. They will keep pushing until they are basically allowed to go no further and then, folks, all hell could break loose.

As if there weren’t enough crises to worry about in the world already, from shooting rampages to accelerating species loss, the US and NATO continue to ‘poke the bear’ and risk an outbreak of war with Russia.

I wish this were idle speculation. But if you haven’t been paying close attention, you'll probably be shocked at just how much direct military and diplomatic provocation has been going on between NATO/US and Russia over the past several years ~ and in recent weeks, in particular.

Even more shocking is that no one in power can provide us with a compelling reason for exactly why these tensions are flaring. It seems that Russia’s main sin is in not entirely, completely and immediately giving the US/NATO anything and everything they request.

In other words, it is imperial hubris and petulance that seems to be driving the ship of state. Always a dangerous thing. All of this is truly not much more ~ or less ~ than to be expected in a world that is in the hands of maniacs.

 .

By Alastair Crooke, Beirut

Information Clearing House

June 21, 2016

Gradually the mist of ambiguity and confusion hanging over Syria is lifting a little. The landscape is sharpening into focus. With this improved visibility, we can view a little more clearly the course of action being prepared by Iran, Russia and the Syrian government.

Russia is emerging from an internal debate over whether the U.S. is truly interested in an entente or only in bloodying Russia’s nose. And what do we see? Skepticism. Russia is skeptical that NATO’s new missile shield in Poland and Romania, plus military exercises right up near its border, are purely defensive actions.

Iran, meanwhile, is studying the entrails of the nuclear agreement. As one well-informed commentator put it to me, Iran is “coldly lethal” at the gloating in the U.S. at having “put one over” Iran. Because, while Iran has duly taken actions that preclude it from weaponizing its nuclear program, it will not now gain the financial normalization that it had expected under the agreement. 

It’s not a question of slow implementation ~ I’ve heard directly from banks in Europe that they’ve been visited by U.S. Treasury officials and warned in clear terms that any substantive trade cooperation with Iran is closed off. Iran is not being integrated into the financial system. U.S. sanctions remain in place, the Europeans have been told, and the U.S. will implement fines against those who contravene these sanctions. Financial institutions are fearful, particularly given the size of the fines that have been imposed ~ almost $9 billion for the French bank BNP a year ago.

In principle, sanctions have been lifted. But in practice, even though its sales of crude are reaching pre-sanctions levels, Iran has found that, financially, it remains substantially hobbled. 

America apparently achieved a double success: It circumscribed Iran’s nuclear program, and the U.S. Treasury has hollowed out the nuclear agreement’s financial quid pro quo, thus limiting Iran’s potential financial empowerment, which America’s Gulf allies so feared.

Some Iranian leaders feel cheated; some are livid. Others simply opine that the U.S. should never have been trusted in the first place.

And Damascus? It never believed that the recent cease-fire would be a genuine cessation of hostilities, and many ordinary Syrians now concur with their government, seeing it as just another American ruse. They are urging their government to get on with it ~ to liberate Aleppo. “Just do it” is the message for the Syrian government that I’ve heard on the streets. A sense of the West being deceitful is exacerbated by reports of American, German, French and possibly Belgian Special Forces establishing themselves in northern Syria.

All this infringement of Syrian sovereignty does not really seem temporary but rather the opposite: there are shades of Afghanistan, with all the “temporary” NATO bases. In any case, it is no exaggeration to say that skepticism about Western motives is in the air ~ especially after Ashton Carter, the U.S. defense secretary, raised the possibility of NATO entering the fray.

As Pat Lang, a former U.S. defense intelligence officer, wrote last week:

The Russians evidently thought they could make an honest deal with [U.S. Secretary of State John] Kerry [and President] Obama. Well, they were wrong. The U.S. supported jihadis associated with [Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s Syria wing] ... merely ‘pocketed’ the truce as an opportunity to re-fit, re-supply and re-position forces. The U.S. must have been complicit in this ruse. Perhaps the Russians have learned from this experience.

Lang goes on to note that:

during the “truce,” “the Turks, presumably with the agreement of the U.S., brought 6,000 men north out of [Syria via the] Turkish border ... They trucked them around, and brought them through Hatay Province in Turkey to be sent back into Aleppo Province and to the city of Aleppo itself.”

Reports in Russian media indicate that Nusra jihadists, who have continued to shell Syrian government forces during the “truce,” are being commanded directly by Turkish military advisers. And meanwhile, the U.S. supplied the opposition with about 3,000 tons of weapons during the cease-fire, according to I.H.S. Jane’s, a security research firm. 

In brief, the cease-fire has failed. It was not observed. The U.S. made no real effort to separate the moderates from Nusra around Aleppo (as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has affirmed). Instead, the U.S. reportedly sought Nusra’s exemption from any Russian or Syrian attack. It reminds one of that old joke: “Oh Lord, preserve me from sin ~ but not just yet!” Or in other words,

“Preserve us from these dreadful jihadist terrorists, but not just yet, for Nusra is too useful a tool to lose.”

The cease-fire did not hasten any political solution, and Russia’s allies ~ Iran and Hezbollah ~ have already paid and will continue to pay a heavy price in terms of casualties for halting their momentum toward Aleppo. The opposition now has renewed vigor ~ and weapons.
 .

ED Noor: Members of one of Israel's most infamous bogeymen, Hezbollah warriors honour their fallen. 
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It is hard to see the cease-fire holding value for Moscow much longer. The original Russian intention was to try to compel American cooperation, firstly in the war against jihadism and, more generally, to compel the U.S. and Europe to acknowledge that their own security interests intersect directly with those of Moscow and that this intersection plainly calls for partnership rather than confrontation.

The present situation in Syria neither facilitates this bigger objective nor the secondary one of defeating radical jihadism. Rather, it has led to calls in Russia for a less conciliatory approach to the U.S. and for the Kremlin to acknowledge that far from preparing for partnership, NATO is gearing up for a hybrid war against Russia.

It is also hard to see the cease-fire holding any continuing value for Tehran either. While the Iran nuclear agreement seemed to hold out the promise of bringing Iran back into the global financial system, such expectations seem now to be withering on the vine. As a result, Iran is likely to feel released from self-imposed limitations of their engagement in Syria and in other parts of the Middle East. Damascus, meanwhile, only very reluctantly agreed to leave its citizens in Aleppo in some semi-frozen limbo. Iran and Hezbollah were equally dubious.

All this suggests renewed military escalation this summer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will probably not wish to act before the European summit at the end of June.

Neither would he wish Russia to figure largely as an issue in the U.S. presidential election. Yet he cannot ignore the pressures from those within Russia who insist that America is planning a hybrid war for which Russia is unprepared.

The Russia commentator Eric Zuesse encapsulated some of these concerns, writing that “actions speak louder than words.” Earlier this month, he notes, the U.S. refused to discuss with Russia its missile defense program:

Russia’s concern is that, if the ‘Ballistic Missile Defense’ or ‘Anti Ballistic Missile’ system, that the U.S. is now just starting to install on and near Russia’s borders, works, then the U.S. will be able to launch a surprise nuclear attack against Russia, and this system, which has been in development for decades and is technically called the ‘Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System,’ will annihilate the missiles that Russia launches in retaliation, which will then leave the Russian population with no retaliation at all.

Zuesse goes on to argue that the U.S. seems to be pursuing a new nuclear strategy, one that was put forward in 2006 in a Foreign Affairs article headlined “The Rise of Nuclear Primacy,” and scrapping the earlier policy of “mutually assured destruction.” The new strategy, Zuesse writes, argues

“for a much bolder U.S. strategic policy against Russia, based upon what it argued was America’s technological superiority against Russia’s weaponry ~ and a possibly limited time-window in which to take advantage of it ~ before Russia catches up and the opportunity to do so is gone.”

So, what is going on here? Does the U.S. administration not see that pulling Russia into a debilitating Syrian quagmire by playing clever with a cease-fire that allows the insurgency to get the wind back in its sails is almost certain to lead to Russia and Iran increasing their military engagement?

There is talk both in Russia and Iran of the need for a military surge to try to break the back of the conflict.

Does the U.S. see that ultimately such a strategy might further entangle it ~ just as much as Russia and Iran ~ in the conflict?

Does it understand Saudi Arabia’s intent to double down in Syria and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political interest in continuing the Syrian crisis?

Does it judge these very real dangers accurately?

No, I think not: the political calculus is different. More likely, the explanation relates to the presidential election campaign in the U.S. The Democratic Party, in brief, is striving to steal the Republican Party’s clothes. The latter holds the mantle of being credited as the safer pair of hands of the two, as far as America’s security is concerned. This has been a longstanding potential weakness for the Democrats, only too readily exploited by its electoral opponents. Now, perhaps the opportunity is there to steal this mantle from the Republicans.

All this hawkishness:

~ the American shrug of the shoulders at making Iran feel cheated over the nuclear agreement;

~ at Russia, Iran and Damascus seething that the Syria cease-fire was no more than a clever trap to halt their military momentum;

~ at the psychological impact of NATO exercising on Russia’s borders;

~ at the possible consequences to Obama’s refusal to discuss the ballistic defense system;

~ all this is more likely about showing Democrat toughness and savvy in contrast to Donald Trump.

In short, the Democrats see the opportunity to cast themselves as tough and reliable and to transform foreign policy into an asset rather than their Achilles’ heel.

But if all this bullheadedness is nothing more than the Democratic Party espying an apparent weakness in the Trump campaign, is this foreign policy posturing meaningful? 

The answer is that it is not meaningless; it carries grave risks. Ostensibly this posture may appear clever in a domestic campaigning context, where Russia is widely viewed in a negative light. But externally, if the Syrian cease-fire comes to be viewed as nothing more than a cynical ploy by the U.S. to drag Russia deeper into the Syrian quagmire in order to cut Putin down to size, then what will likely follow is escalation. Hot months ahead in Syria. Russia will gradually re-enter the conflict, and Iran and Iraq will likely increase their involvement as well.

There are those in the U.S., Turkey and the Gulf who would welcome such a heightened crisis, hoping that it would become so compellingly serious that no incoming U.S. president, of either hue, could avoid the call to do something upon taking office. In this way, the U.S. could find itself dragged into the maw of another unwinnable Middle Eastern war.

We should try to understand the wider dangers better, too. Baiting Russia, under the problematic rubric of countering Russian “aggression,” is very much in fashion now.

But in Russia, there is an influential and substantial faction that has come to believe that the West is planning a devastating hybrid military and economic war against it.

If this is not so, why is the West so intent on pushing Russia tight up into a corner? Simply to teach it deference? 

ED Noor: Let me put forth the suggestion that the rush for war is because Trump and Putin have both indicated that they might actually be able to "broker deals" together and AVOID further conflict.

Psychologists warn us against such strategies, and Russia finally is reconfiguring its army (and more hesitantly, its economy) precisely to fight for its corner.

As another noted Russia commentator, John Helmer, noted on his blog on May 30, the new NATO missile installations in Eastern Europe “are hostile acts, just short of casus belli ~ a cause of war.” According to Reuters, Putin warned that Romania might soon “be in the cross hairs” ~ the new NATO missile installations there will force Russia “to carry out certain measures to ensure our security.” 

“It will be the same case with Poland,” Putin added.

Did you hear that sound?

That was the ratchet of war,

 which has just clicked up a slot ~ or two.