Is It All about the Oil?

“It’s all about the oil” has been a persistent refrain in response to US Middle East policy for as long as one can remember. Certainly there is much truth in this statement. Since the energy transition from coal to oil and its derivatives, leading imperialist powers have sought to dominate or control global oil resources. And the center of global oil extraction, especially for the US and other powerful capitalist countries, has remained in the Middle East and its periphery. 

When the navy of the then-dominant British Empire shifted from coal-fired, steam-driven warships to dependence on oil, the Middle East became the strategic service station for imperial reach. Accordingly, the status and fate of people, nations, and states in the Middle East became inextricably bound to the interests and the will of the greatest imperial powers. 

After World War I, the British and French hacked and hewed the Middle East into “protectorates” beneficial to their own economic interests. The US, self-sufficient in oil resources, was pushed to the margin-- left to explore the vast underpopulated deserts of the Arabian peninsula. 

Of course the vast expanses of the Arabian peninsula turned out to be the source of vast and cheap oil and natural gas. The Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO) proved providential when US domestic energy reserves began to decline.

As the dominant imperialist power after World War II, the constabulary for the capitalist world, the US took on the task of guaranteeing that oil would be safe and within reach throughout the capitalist world and outside the reach of its Cold War foes and their allies. This necessitated a powerful and agile military. Since oil and gas are transported by sea and pipeline, the US military was ensconced in bases globally, and the US enlisted heavily armed deputies at key positions in the midst of energy-rich areas (pre-revolutionary Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc.). 

The US (and its closest, most trusted NATO allies) did not serve as a global gendarmerie for free; rather, they extracted a tribute from the oil-producing countries and their peoples. With colonial fetters rapidly breaking after World War II, imperialism established new modes of dominance over the world’s raw materials, including energy resources. Neo-colonial relations replaced total dominance with economic dominance. Despite nominal political self-rule, resource-rich “independent” countries were still the captive of US corporations and their European counterparts. US and European corporations “participated” in the development and ownership of gas and oil resources.  

Because oil and gas are so central to modern economies, imperialist powers display a keen interest in ensuring low, stable prices. Thus, the US and other imperialist countries have invested heavily in oil and gas extraction throughout the world, while installing, when necessary, friendly governments in resource-rich countries. 

Of course even the most empire-friendly governments have sought more of the fruits of resource extraction from their lands. Saudi potentates, among others, have restructured deals, formed production alliances (e.g., OPEC), and exerted their power over global supplies for political purposes. Notably, OPEC producers punished Western countries for their support of Israel with an oil embargo in 1973. 

The 1973 oil embargo proved to be a turning point for imperialism’s relations with the oil-producing states of the Middle East. Differences within imperialism restrained the considered US use of military power to “...forcibly seize Middle Eastern oilfields in late 1973.” Taking advantage of these differences, the Saudis and other countries were emboldened to nationalize their industries and command a measure of independence from Western imperialism. In some cases, the dramatic increase in oil dollars flowing into the oil-producing states’ coffers led to equally dramatic improvements in the lives of citizens (Libya, for example). In other cases, oil dollars only enriched the elites. And, in the case of the Saudis, the enormous bounty of oil-revenue went to promote Wahhabism and an ultra-conservative sectarianism against progressive and radical secular movements in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The US and Israel were successful in channeling Saudi money and resources in support of their own foreign policy objectives, notably by marginalizing, even combatting non-sectarian Arab nationalism, socialism, and anti-imperialism in Palestine, Afghanistan, and many other states. From the rise of Nasserism until today, imperialism and the most reactionary Islamic conservatism have used sectarianism to counter, even destroy, progressive movements. Oil money has subsidized that effort. 

Since the victory over imperialism and sectarianism in Syria, we are beginning to see the encouraging rise of class-oriented, non-sectarian struggles in other countries like Sudan, Lebanon, and Iraq. The setbacks to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies in Yemen have also paved the way for a higher, more advanced level of struggle with less of the pernicious confusion of tribal and sectarian division. While there is always a danger of imperialism using the new militancy for its own purposes, it is operating from a weakened position.

US Oil Imperialism Today

“I always said, if you are going in, keep the oil.” -- Donald Trump

Commentators were abashed by Trump’s audacity when he linked involvement in Syria with expropriating Syrian oil. Most were embarrassed that Trump publicly exposed that oil thievery so easily ties in with US foreign policy goals. They preferred to mask US objectives behind an almost comical alarm that ISIS would rise again without US presence. This thin excuse stood in sharp contrast to the fact that the entire US military engagement combating ISIS was through air power.

So, is the US meddling in Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and other countries to steal, secure, or expropriate energy sources? Are these instances of the century-old imperialist plunder of global energy sources?

Certainly US imperialism and its allies continue to serve monopoly capitalist concerns in their quest to exploit global resources. But that is not the entire story today. 

Thanks to the fracking, shale oil revolution, the US is also an intense competitor with global energy producers. This is a new twist that is now shaping US imperialist policy, moving it in other directions. With the US today exceeding the oil and gas production of all other countries, it is less committed to securing, commandeering, protecting, or exploiting global energy resources and more directed toward garnering a greater market share of worldwide sales. 

The war-- and it is war-- for more markets for US energy supplies favors the US when other suppliers are threatened, made less reliable, or more costly by wars, political upheavals, or other causes of chaos. Where US post-war, Cold War oil politics were directed toward stability, low, constant prices, and secure transit, the US benefits today from global instability, volatile prices, dangerous sea routes, and thwarting pipeline infrastructure.

The endless US wars, the stirring of big-power hostility, saber-rattling in sea lanes, blatant military action against stable energy-producing states, and inflated threats of terrorism and banditry all contribute to favoring energy supplies from a politically and economically stable state with the most powerful and far-reaching military in history-- the US.

It is important to place US-induced chaos in the perspective of no real, existing imminent threat from any major power or from so-called “terrorism.” Nearly all of the global chaos is simply manufactured and sustained by imperialism.

US determination to reign over energy markets was decisive in warding off the Saudi price attack of 2014. With production costs half or less of those for US shale, the Saudis, through both calculated collective inaction and overproduction, drove the price of oil down from historic highs, hoping to cripple the vastly expanding US shale market. Saddled with debt piled up from exploration and the high initial costs of rigs, the emerging US shale industry struggled in the face of collapsing prices. But Wall Street came smartly and decisively to the rescue; the loans are only beginning to be called in today. 

With oil-producing Libya a failed state, with oil-producing Iran expelled from commerce, with the Persian Gulf becoming a war zone, with oil-producing Venezuela sanctioned from markets, with Boko Haram disrupting Nigerian oil production, with giant oil-producing Russia forced into a new Cold War, with the Saudis about to sell chunks of ARAMCO to US and other capitalist investors, and now with Donald Trump keeping Syrian oil out of global markets, the US is busy hustling its oil as the most reliable and readily available. 

The same could be said for the US efforts to expand its markets for liquified natural gas. The manic desire to depict Russia as an existential threat looming on the borders of Eastern and Central Europe is meant to stigmatize Russia as a dangerous partner and undermine its standing as the chief supplier of inexpensive, pipeline-supplied natural gas to Europe. Accordingly, the US hopes to kick open the door to that market by establishing LNG terminals in the most anti-Russian states. Similarly, the chaos in the Straits of Hormuz and Iran-bashing have cast a shadow over the reliability of the US’s biggest LNG competitors: the vast Iranian and Qatar gas fields.

In this competition for global energy markets, the US relies upon economic sanctions as its weapon of choice, especially shutting down trade activity of its energy rivals.

Where imposing stability on a capitalist world dependent upon energy imports was the former goal of US imperialism, overproduction of energy from revolutionary technologies has set new goals. Because the US lusts after the traditional markets for oil and natural gas, US imperialism is content to live with, to even foster global instability. It is no accident that endless destructive wars, global hotspots, threats, and hostilities are features of the twenty-first century. 

Bolstering energy exports and arms sales makes the US the biggest troublemaker in a volatile, ultra-competitive capitalist world. 

US energy imperialism makes an already unstable world even more dangerous.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

TelephoneGate and its Discontents

Only a person who embraces her or his historical short-sightedness could be aghast at Trump’s self-serving phone call to the president of Ukraine. Actually, it is not  the people in the US who are shocked and appalled by Trump’s heavy-handed, supposedly “unprecedented” attempt to undermine a political rival; it is the cable TV chatterboxes, the Democratic Party hitmen, and their addicted acolytes who self-righteously recoil from Trump’s brazen, ham-fisted corruption. 

How soon they forget Nixon’s sabotage of the Vietnam peace talks in order to hurt his Presidential rival, Hubert Humphrey. Or Reagan’s deal with the Iranians to hold the hostages and deny James Carter in the 1980 election.

Even more recently, our news media shrugged its collective shoulders at the audacious and successful effort of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to derail Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary run. And, of course, the Fusion GPS “research” organization contracted by the Clinton team and targeting Trump drew not only foreign operatives into the effort, but the corrupted leadership of the intelligence agencies.

Trump brought his customary vulgar directness and child-like simplicity to the phone conversation (“...very bad people…). Lacking any finesse, he directly asks President Zelensky to investigate the role of Biden and his son in Ukrainian affairs, offering the sleazy Rudolph Giuliani as an enabler. For his part, Zelensky shows himself to be the fawning puppet of the US: “We are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country…You are a great teacher for us.…”

Sharing the spirit of political retribution with Trump, Zelensky asks “the great teacher” to punish the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich: “Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the former president and she was on his side.” Tit for tat! Biden for Yovanovich! 

And don’t forget we need more sanctions and Javelin missiles to combat the evil Russians!

It’s more than curious that the purveyors of fast-food news do not identify Zelensky as an Eastern European Trump wannabe. Their dishonest portrayal of Ukraine as a bastion of democracy will not permit them to read the phone-call transcript as revelatory of the legacy of corruption and US intervention in Ukrainian affairs. Zelensky, like his predecessor, owes his position to a US-engineered coup that brought Ukraine firmly into the US sphere of influence. As adamantly as the media wants to portray Zelensky as “Mr. Smith Goes to Kiev,” the transcript suggests a different interpretation.

Lost in the impeachment flurry is the unsightly, corrupt role of presidential aspirant, Joe Biden. Biden has postured as a modest friend of the working man and woman, a commoner drawn to public service. In fact, Biden is a corporate Democrat through and through, with a nasty history of opposing affirmative action and supporting the militarization of the police and the growth of the incarceration industry. His foreign policy views are taken from the chicken hawks and the generals.

Along with Victoria Nuland, Biden was the leading figure in conducting US intervention in Ukrainian affairs during the Obama administration. His fingerprints are on the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. 

And then a curious thing happened. Two months later, Hunter Biden-- Joe’s ne’er-do-well son-- was appointed to the board of directors of Ukraine’s largest energy company, Burisma Holdings, at a reported $50,000 per month. The head of Burisma had apparently been impressed with Hunter Biden’s deep experience in business, especially the oil and gas business.

But Hunter had no experience in business, any business. He was fresh from expulsion for cocaine use from a very brief and privileged entry into the Naval Reserve, hardly a sterling qualification for a big-time job on the Burisma board.

Could it have been that Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, saw Biden as a free pass for his being on the wrong side of US-written history? Was Hunter Biden’s appointment a down payment on forgiveness for Zlochevsky’s support of the deposed Yanukovych, given Vice President Joe Biden’s key role in shaping US policy toward its client state? 

Certainly those possibilities never occurred to our then apparently somnambulant media. No one saw a hint of impropriety, a scent of influence peddling, or the stench of corruption in the halcyon days of 2014. 

With one exception: James Risen, writing in The Intercept, claims that he, in fact, anticipated the dust-up about Joe and Hunter way back in 2015 when Risen was a writer for the august New York Times. Risen assures us, however, that Joe Biden’s intervention in Ukraine affairs had nothing but the most noble motives, an assertion that proves that some NYT writers actually found the paper’s editorial line to be credible. 

Astonishing: Risen and others can actually defend Biden’s role in Ukraine without acknowledging that he and other US officials were actively and effectively interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign country, a despicable sin that has singularly, but one-dimensionally occupied the US media obsessively for the last two years. Interference is only interference when it is alleged against the US or by a self-perceived foe of the US. That's the kind of twisted logic employed by a government intoxicated with its own sense of moral infallibility and sold by a compliant media.

“Still,” Risen assures us, “when Joe Biden went to Ukraine, he was not trying to protect his son — quite the reverse.” Why would anyone think differently? Tell that to the insightful David Rovics: A Biden Ballad.

Would it come as a surprise if the “whistleblower” in this sordid affair turned out to be-- not a disgruntled intelligence officer afraid of retribution-- but the highest echelon of the intelligence apparatus bent on keeping Zelensky securely under its thumb and on board with its anti-Russia program?

Whistleblower protection was supposedly meant to protect the employees, not the employers! It is undoubtedly abused in this case.

An examination of the nine-page “whistleblower” letter and appendix directed to the Senate and the House intelligence committee chairpersons reveals a remarkable access to numerous high-level “officials,” a wealth of intelligence information, and impressive analytical and research resources. The brief would constitute a difficult, herculean task for any low- or mid-level intelligence officer following the lead of hearsay or water-cooler gossip. Likely, the secret service leadership has contrived a composite “whistleblower” to exploit the anonymity guaranteed by existing legislation.

Unlike the Watergate “deep throat” leaker whose identity obsessed the media for decades, news people have a puzzling lack of interest in uncovering the anonymous “whistleblower.” Maybe they know there really isn’t one?

The “whistleblower” document is a point-by-point response to any counter-narrative that some, including many skeptics on the left, might construct to the bi-partisan, “color” revolution, regime-change program of US imperialism. It is, in essence, an expression of US unilateralism and the US’s attempts to isolate its rivals. Trump is the target of the exercise only because his own narrowly focused, personal objectives clash with the ruling class’s perception of its own interests and the calculated mythology of US moral authority; his MAGA vision is at odds with the global vision embraced by most of the ruling class establishment.

For the “news”/entertainment industry, an impeachment process is Christmas come early. The corporate moguls well know the jacked-up ratings that have followed past presidential impeachment hearings and the high drama of political maneuvers that ensue. They have stoked the fires of outrage to pressure a Democratic Party leadership reluctant to follow the impeachment path. 

Like RussiaGate, TelephoneGate is a two-edged sword aimed at the populace. On one edge, it attempts to conjure Trump criminality without suggesting that his behavior represents the general lawlessness of the capitalist class. And on the other edge, it promises to distract US voters from the real crisis facing  most citizens. With impeachment unfolding over the next year, TelephoneGate will accomplish that task.

Even a cursory examination behind the media curtain demonstrates that the sordid affair tarnishes all who have participated: Trump, his team, Biden and his DNC promoters, Biden, the younger, the intelligence establishment, the political cabal, the monopoly media, and the rest of that for which the disingenuous Trump and his junior partner Zelensky use the nonetheless useful term, “the swamp.” For well over a decade, confidence in the swamp and the institutions populated by the swamp rats has sunk in every opinion poll. 

Over the next months, we will be asked to pick sides in a contest with charlatans and scoundrels dominating both sides. There will be no winners beyond the charlatans and the scoundrels. 

If, paraphrasing the oft-quoted Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire, the Nixon impeachment was a tragedy and the Clinton impeachment was a farce, what is the Trump impeachment?

Greg Godels 

zzsblogml@gmail.com 

Coarse Politics

How can it happen that an unpopular right wing US President can, in effect, call to end seven years of an undeclared war against the government of Syria, a UN member nation, inducing most of the liberal establishment to recoil and challenge the prospect of peace?

 

How is it that a Marine General who earned the sobriquets “Mad Dog” and “the butcher of Fallujah” can be canonized by large sectors of the left as a role model for reasoned sobriety and judgement?

How can US left icon, Noam Chomsky, often an outspoken opponent of US aggression, oppose the removal of US troops from Syria when the troops have no legitimate role in that country?

Surely, these sensible questions signal that some political thinkers have lost their way, that widely accepted, firmly planted political alignments have become unmoored.

On the surface, the Trump presidency and the intense, sharply divided response to it have forced all events or actions-- from the most innocuous to the most menacing-- into ill-fitting, pro- or anti-Trump boxes.

For example, the recent deaths of two young migrants in Federal custody have been laid at the doorstep of Donald Trump with his loud, vulgar, and racist anti-immigrant banter. While no tears should be shed for Trump, singling Trump out exculpates the bi-partisan, near-universal support for creating the draconian ICE in 2002. Further, it neglects the prior documented questionable deaths at the hands of ICE (107 deaths from 2003 to 2007, for example). Nor do the self-righteous Trump foes acknowledge the long enduring corruption and no-bid contracts plaguing ICE. Much of the anti-Trump crowd were silent during the Obama years when 2.4 million immigrants were deported by the “Deporter-in-Chief.” Of those deported in 2015, around 40% had no criminal convictions. Apparently, the plight of immigrants is only of interest to “resistance” liberals and their media cheerleaders when it can be used against Trump and his gang.

The current government shutdown-- snagged on Trump’s insistence of funding for an anti-immigrant wall-- has generated howls of indignation from the Democratic Party’s “resistance” fighters and the cable television warriors. They rightly see the Trump wall as a draconian affront to the dignity of immigrants and an hysterical response to exaggerated fears. And yet these same human rights indignados fail to acknowledge the infamous wall constructed by the Israelis to deny access to their Palestinian neighbors, stripping them of their dignity and their well-being. The parallel escapes them, achieving no traction in the corporate media.

Similarly, the brutal killing of Khashoggi, the Washington Post writer, at the hands of Saudi officials has become-- thanks to Trump’s clumsy, outrageous defense of the Saudi Crown Prince-- a stick to beat Trump.

Trump’s pathetic defense of Saudi criminality coincided-- a remarkable coincidence-- with the release of a study by a CIA-linked organization that announced that 85,000 children had been killed by the Saudi military and its allies in Yemen’s civil war. The shock wave rolling through the corporate media was worthy of Claude Rain’s wry movie discovery of gambling in Casablanca’s Rick’s Cafe.

Never mind that independent, but marginalized media has been chronicling Saudi atrocities in Yemen for the war’s nearly four-year duration. Never mind that US support for Saudi intervention, as well as actual clandestine US intervention, pre-date the Trump administration.

And there is the big lie of RussiaGate: unsubstantiated charges of interference in US domestic affairs lodged by the same US intelligence agencies and their cohorts that have mounted large-scale subversion, influence-peddling, corruption, and even military intervention in the affairs of uncounted governments for decade after decade.

The interminable Mueller investigation still gives hope to the liberals that Trump can be linked to the evil Russians as well.

It is easy to dismiss the inconsistencies, the selective blindness of US liberals as mere hypocrisy. Undoubtedly, it is that. But something deeper is behind the hypocrisy that commits liberals to side with the neo-conservatives, the FBI, the CIA and the other intelligence agencies that spy on our citizens, the war-mongering generals, and the monopoly media that gave us “weapons of mass destruction” and fairly elected Venezuelan “dictators.”

The hypocrisy emerges from the deeply embedded bi-polarity of the US political system and its ill-fit with the political realities of today. The two bourgeois parties that define US politics constitute a narrow continuum that can neither confine nor give coherent meaning to the ongoing crisis of decadent US capitalism. And two-party thinking casts little light on the crisis.

In today’s terms, the permitted political norms fail to explain and address Trumpism without resorting to conspiracy theories and bizarre alignments. Trump’s rise requires a wholesale examination and possible exposure of the profound corruption and dysfunctionality of the two-party system and its monopoly capitalist base. To explore Trump’s meaning (beyond his raging ego, his country club bigotry, and his unbounded ignorance) and delve into his administration's restore-the-empire nationalism, its faux populism, and its inconsistent foreign policy requires a commitment to candor that the political leadership and the corporate media are not prepared to make.

The dramatic loss of legitimacy by the media, the two parties, the judicial system, the Congress, the banks, and other institutions over the last decade is a well-established fact substantiated by numerous polls. Yet poll respondents still show confidence in the military and the intelligence services. It is no wonder that political leaders and the corporate media cling to these institutions like long lost lovers. It is no wonder that politicians seek out veterans for office, wave flags at every opportunity, and promote unceasing militarism. It is no wonder that the media rely on stables of ex-generals and retired intelligence operatives. Rather than address the collapse of legitimacy, US rulers choose the road of sleazy opportunism.

The once widely touted and grudgingly accepted post-Cold War US global dominance is now challenged on many fronts. PRChina and Russia and other countries and blocs defy US demands and policies and assert their own interests. It’s a different world-- less compliant than the world that GHW Bush found in rallying allies to the first war with Iraq. The ever-increasing number of international sanctions attest to the desperate attempts by the US to stem the tide of defiance. US elites in both parties and in the media refuse to recognize a world without US hegemony. Instead of striving for global parity, US elites resort to contriving aggressive, irredeemably evil villains.

Neither the political parties nor the corporate news/entertainment complex acknowledge the devastation wrought by the long continuing march of economic inequality and the catastrophic destruction rendered by the 2007-2008 crash upon the security and well-being of working people in the US. Blinded by stock market euphoria and class arrogance, elites in both parties neglected the interests of millions of voters who proved pivotal in the 2016 election. They prefer to dismiss grievances and lecture the working class on accommodating the stark, new realities of market morality.

Shrewdly, Trumpism advances its dishonest, unrealistic promises to the forgotten, its pledge to restore the US to greatness, its demand of global leadership, and its caricaturized scorn of real political cynicism and media shallowness. It appeals to a constituency unrecognized and unrecognizable by the liberal elites who have reduced political discourse to a very narrow conversation uncritically friendly to both monopoly capitalism and its institutions.

In the political void left by Democratic Party barrenness, the Trump circus thrives. With a Democratic Party beholden only to corporate interests. along with the issues troubling the bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie, the attack upon the Trump malignancy takes the absurd forms that we witness daily.

While another election may send Trump packing, it will not magically reverse the many decades of bankrupt and decadent politics that opened the door to Trumpism. It is foolish to count on a corrupted Democratic Party leadership to pave a new course different from the tragic road travelled by both parties from Reagan to Trump.

Recall that many in Europe longed for a time when the embarrassing absurdity of Silvio Berlusconi would vacate the electoral scene. But without an authentic and committed movement against monopoly capital, Italy is today saddled with the equally ugly and perhaps even more dysfunctional Lega and Five Star Movement.

The lesson should not be lost on the US liberals who are prepared to sell their integrity to the enemy to secure the exit of Donald Trump.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Blood and Oil

The Washington Post, the New York Times, and Reuters report that their sources have revealed the CIA is concluding (with its surely-by-now suspect “high confidence”) that the highest echelon of the Saudi Arabian government, including the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi embassy has occupied US headlines for the last six weeks. While it appears to be a particularly gruesome and brazen act, one cannot but recoil from the callous selectivity of the US media, a media that heretofore ignored or minimized the horrors inflicted upon tens of thousands of Yemeni people by the same Saudi government and its coalition allies.

As though choreographed for the moment, a study suddenly appeared last week proclaiming Saudi savagery (Aid Group Says 85,000 Children May Have Died of Hunger in Yemen) and capturing the attention of The New York Times, Washington Post,Time,The Independent, Voice of America, etc. Overnight, the US media discovered atrocities already well documented over the last three years by the UN and foreign and alternative media. Suspiciously, the aid group releasing the study was thrown out of Pakistan in 2015 charged with covering a bogus CIA vaccination program.
 
One might be led to believe that the violently imposed social, cultural, and political backwardness of the Saudi family regime and its bloody actions was unknown until the Khoshoggi affair. However, it is only politically expedient to recognize it now with a rift in the ruling class.

But what is one to make of this leak from anonymous CIA sources to the media?

Like so much of the unattributed information and misinformation driving the US entertainment-oriented media, the leaks stir the political pot without adding certainty or clarity.

Apart from information tantalizingly dangled by Turkish authorities, the CIA leakers additionally claim a phone intercept between the Crown Prince’s brother in Washington, DC and Khashoggi, assuring his safety for a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The CIA sources assert that the call was made at the behest of the Crown Prince. Therefore, they conclude that bin Salman’s motive for the call was to set up the Khashoggi murder.

The corporate media have taken the matter as proven despite no official confirmation from top CIA officials or other government agencies. For the entertainment-industrial complex, the Khashoggi affair is just another opportunity to bait President Trump-- a firm supporter of the newly installed Crown Prince--  into another episode of prevarication, bluster, and outrageousness. And the simultaneous “discovery” of Saudi Arabia's bloody massacre of Yemen only adds to the case against Trump.

In the meantime, President Trump squirms before the broad national and international revulsion over the killing.

Is the revulsion over the Khashoggi killing sufficient for the US and the NATO allies to kick Saudi Arabia to the curb? Will they jettison their long reliable “policeman” over the Islamic world and their intermediary in imperial domination?

Soaked with self-righteousness, US and European leaders act as if they had forgotten the dirty work that the Arabian head choppers did for them, for example, in Afghanistan, in the former Yugoslavia, in supporting Israel, in Libya, and, of course, in Syria.

Like the US media, Erdogan’s Turkey stoked the assassination into a major crisis. They willingly exposed their illegal wiretap in order to discredit Saudi Arabia and drive a wedge between the Saudis and the US. They have also sided with Qatar in its defiance of the other Arabian monarchies.

Qatar, in turn, has conveniently befriended Iran with whom it shares an enormous natural gas field. Iran, like Turkey, has engaged in an off-again, on-again friendship with Russia. In the case of Turkey, Erdogan plays the US against Russia over arms sales. Round one went to Russia with its sale of its sophisticated ground-to-air defense system, annoying the US to no end. Though the US cancelled its offer of the defense industry’s crown jewel, the F-35, the Turkish leaders know that the US desperately needs to sell the fighter to rationalize the development costs. Erdogan would like to trade closer relations with the US (and not Russia), arms sales, and a muting of the Khashoggi affair to get their hands on Fethullah Gülen, the alleged coup plotter living in the US.

Alongside the gore of assassination and weapons sales haunting the Middle East, there is, as there always is, the specter of oil (energy). Saudi Arabia has sought to reset its role in the energy nexus. New leadership hopes to shed its image of unreconstructed tribalism, it attempts to diversify its vast wealth, and it looks to jump-start its capitalist normalization by making ARAMCO, the Saudi energy firm, a publicly traded corporation.

But the emergence of its long-time energy partner, the US, as an energy rival has deflected those goals. First, the Saudis tried to discipline the US energy industry by driving prices below cost of production, bullying the revived US fracking industry and taming its growth. With billions of investor funds propping up the US industry, the plan failed.

Saddled with enormous and growing expenses from the Yemeni war, the Saudis reverted to their traditional role as ‘CEO’ of OPEC, guiding the oil producers toward a stable mix of sustainable and profitable prices.

But their close friends in the Trump Administration overturned that effort. Taking the Trump sanctions against Iran at face value, the Saudis and the other oil producers ramped up production to fill the void. However, the Administration negotiated large exceptions to the sanctions, turning the increase into an overproduction glut and collapsing prices.

Sensing a betrayal of the alliance, the Saudis are embarking on an independent policy of drastically reducing production and urging others to do so as well. The oil wars are escalating.

With the Saudi-US alliance frayed, Putin has made nice to the Saudis in recent months.

If the Middle East seems a cauldron of chaos, drama, and frictions, it is only one of several centers of growing tension and conflict. Southeast Asia is becoming the scene of US-PRC rivalry, with different countries taking different sides, with influence peddling through loans and projects, and with threats and counter-threats.

Further, the European Union continues to barely hang together, wracked by ever more powerful centrifugal political forces. And South America continues to suffer sharp political and economic instability.

To those still viewing the world through the prism of the Cold War or the brief period of global US hegemony, today’s world appears as a great mystery-- a moment of intense drama and inexplicable chaos. The Cold War-- for all of its dangers-- operated under a fairly strict set of unspoken rules, even when reckless leaders like Ronald Reagan were in power. During the post-Soviet, short-lived US global regnum, all but a few countries accepted some US governance.

But today, states are in intense competition for economic advantage as Lenin's Imperialism foresaw. Capitalist countries are replaying the intense competition typical of human interactions under capitalism, but on the regional and international level. Alliances are formed and broken; contradictory new ones are formed in the blink of an eye. International rules and regulations are under siege as countries seek to gain an economic edge. Cooperation, always a tenuous global achievement, has dissolved to reveal a feral pursuit of national self-interest. A ruthless zero-sum logic replaces the heralded “win-win” attitude of global players during more stable economic times.  

The more powerful economies are attempting to construct hegemonic blocs to bring rivals to bay. Lesser powers are seeking regional hegemony or the most advantageous place in a larger constellation. The anarchy of unrestrained market competition has finally and decisively penetrated international relations. And there is no going back to a non-existent “golden era.”

But we have seen this before.

Today’s aggressive rivalries resemble only too well those smoldering before World War One. Like the pre-WWI period, big and small powers vie for economic advantage, taking every opportunity to expand the exploitative tentacles of their capitalist enterprises. As Lenin foresaw over a hundred years ago, the voracious hunger for new markets, for new sources of exploitation, and new resources inevitably leads to war.
That is where the toxic combination of economic decline and intensifying inter-state rivalries is taking us. As the danger of a spark igniting a disastrous regional or global war grows, too many good people are engaged in the machinations and maneuvers of bourgeois politics to now recognize the looming catastrophe.

Now, more than ever, we need a powerful movement for peace. Nothing could be more urgent.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Distractions

For many in the US and Europe, a cynical call for violence posturing as the wrath of the righteous will readily produce a distraction from the urgent issues of our time. Judging by the initial protests of last Friday’s Trump/May/Macron aggression against Syria, far too many have fallen for this hypocritical, dishonest maneuver.

For Theresa May, Conservative UK prime minister, an attack on Syria promises to add to her effort to claw back from the disastrous Brexit vote that wounded her party. Anti-Russia hysteria, unprincipled charges of anti-Semitism lodged against Labour opponent Jeremy Corbyn, and now a missile-administered scolding of Syria’s president, Assad, help her in the polls or, at least, that’s her calculation.

Early in March, Emmanuel Macron’s poll numbers sank to the lowest level since his election. His ongoing attack on French workers and his enthusiasm for bombing Syria are meant to bolster his “tough guy” image. Like May, Macron has little else but austerity to offer workers; hence, manufacturing threats promises to distract.

Trump’s approval rate has taken a nose dive in recent weeks as well. Battered from all sides, Trump needed some love from the war hawks populating both parties. A muscular move against Assad would also signal Trump’s defiance of Putin, the alleged “devil’s handmaiden.”

Of course that didn’t win over the MSNBC/NPR/CNN crowd, the Democrats’ über alles. Schumer and Pelosi saw the trap: the choice between praising Trump for his attack on Syria or rejecting aggression. They, along with most other elected Democrats, performed an exercise of Clintonian triangulation: ‘we want to hit Assad more than anyone, but Trump should have allowed us to call for military action.’

For MSNBC’s Trump-reviling star, Rachel Maddow, Trump bombed Syria for the wrong reasons-- a case of “wagging the dog”-- hoping to distract critics from his domestic problems. She badgers her war-hawk guests to agree that Trump’s war on Assad was not authentic. Implicit is the notion that Trump could have established more credibility by raining greater death and destruction and further baiting the Russian bear.

Easy distraction has led apparently sober, morally-grounded people to overlook the telling coincidence of an alleged outrageous gas attack with the imminent defeat of the so-called rebels in Douma. They see no suspicious connection between Trump’s surprising announcement of US troop withdrawals and a provocation to revoke that decision. And they see no distraction from the contemporaneous cross-border slaughter of unarmed Palestinians by the Israeli military.

They see no calculation in scheduling the bombardment of Syria on Friday, the day before the arrival of the investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) who might bring some light to the charges of chemical weapons’ use. And they are too distracted to be puzzled by the US military plan to destroy the facilities alleged to contain deadly gases and consequently risk harming innocent Syrian civilians.

Never mind that the US and its allies could rely upon no more than cell phone pictures and telephone interviews (so called “public source” information) to evidence the claims of a gas attack. It’s an astonishing fact that even though the “rebels” are supposedly democratically-minded allies who welcome CIA aid, no Western news service dares to actively cover their side by employing reporters on the ground. This has been the case with the US’s Islamic fundamentalist allies since CBS’s Dan Rather faked a visit to Afghanistan decades ago. The commitment of “freedom fighters” to “freedom of the press” seems to be wanting.

Oddly enough, the “authoritarian” Assad government welcomes Western journalists, though they-- excepting a CBS news reporter-- prefer the friendly confines of hotels in Beirut, Ankara, and Amman where they have easy access to press releases from the US embassy.

An affinity for distraction leads very many major media corporations to place complete, unthinking trust in UK-based reportage from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It goes unnoted that the Observatory is a one-man show performed by an Assad-hating shopkeeper in Coventry who refuses to share his methodology, but admits to relying on his friends and acquaintances in Syria. Amnesty International, with its usual smug casuistry, judges the Observatory to be reliable, though it bases its evaluation on the same indirect, patchy evidence.

Anywhere but in Syria, these claims, based on second- and third-hand reports, anecdotes, and social media, would fail any and all journalistic smell tests. Imagine NBC News basing coverage of violence in Chicago on the network of contacts of an amateur sleuth in San Francisco.

Film critic Louis Proyect interjects, in an oddly timed article on Counterpunch, that a website dubbed Bellingcat “is perhaps the only place where you can find fact-based reporting on chemical attacks in Syria.” A quick look at the website will reveal some more UK-based amateur sleuths assembling second- and third-hand accounts and social media reports.

True to his film critic credentials, he likens the Syrian “rebels” to “the Arab version of John Steinbeck’s Joad family,” a bizarre innocuousness for the Douma-based, brutal Jaysh al-Islam that former Secretary of State John Kerry once characterized as a sub-group of ISIL. Promptly, the Obama administration was forced to “correct” Kerry, who was ignorant of the head-choppers’ rehabilitation.

Proyect chose the exact moment-- when the honest left was scrambling to mount some public opposition to war on Syria-- to attack the left for its skepticism of the official account, an historically justifiable skepticism given such devastatingly consequential deceptions as the Tonkin Gulf resolution and the 2003 weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco. The military and the security services lie. Skepticism is the only antidote to gullibility.

The one NGO that actually claims direct reportage in Syria, the opposition-based Violations Documentation Center in Syria (VDC) has had its Douma office attacked numerous times by Jaysh al-Islam, forcing its active reporters out of the area.

Unmentioned by the tunnel-vision media, strong circumstantial evidence, Red Crescent confirmation, Kurdish accusations, and a near self-confession has pointed to Jaysh al-Islam employing chlorine gas in April of 2016.

In our era of Entertainment-Tonight-style distractions, of Trump’s sex life, of twitter-duels, of anonymous sources and calculated leaks, a principled, wise statement is a rare and welcome event. Tulsi Gabbard, the Representative from Hawaii addressed Trump with the following:

The people of Syria want peace more than anything else in the world. Attacking Syria will not bring their war-torn country any closer to peace. U.S. military action against Syria will simply escalate and prolong the war, resulting in more senseless death, destruction, and suffering...

If you are truly concerned about the suffering of the Syrian people, then you must do all you can to bring about peace. A US military attack against Syria will expand and escalate this war, increasing their suffering and causing more death, more refugees, and fewer resources to invest in rebuilding our own communities right here at home…

I call upon you to resist the loud calls of war and instead wield the power of the Presidency to help bring peace to the people of Syria, their devastated country, and the region.

Gabbard’s appeal is a stroke of sanity and maturity in a frightening rush to war lubricated by an unprecedented campaign of mass distraction, by the marketing of a Marvel-comic foreign policy.

Greg Godels 
zzsblogml@gmail.com