Tag: Israel

Empire Tactics: 1780 Green Dragoons/Hessians to 2019 US Special Ops/Blackwater

The benefit of knowing history is knowing when you are about to be scammed. In the past week we have heard that President Trump suddenly, without the blessing of his neo-con staff personnel, decided to exit Syria in the near-term. What happened next was typical to this empire’s entertainment aspects, people that were against war at some point in their life all of a sudden WANT war in Syria. I mean it was normal to hear most of Congress (who have been lobbied by the Military Industrial Complex – $$$) get upset that we can’t keep our “covert” war there intact since we have invested 7 years there with various rebel groups including ISIS.

It is all indeed a show, and having watched Home Alone over the Christmas break seeing Donald Trump giving advice to Kevin, we can’t be surprised in 2019 to understand that Donald Trump is still acting. All empires need good actors when they approach end of life status, it keeps the masses entertained while what is happening behind the scenes gets more and more desperate.

During the Revolutionary War, the British Empire used 30,000 Hessian mercenaries (30% of the total British force in the American Colonies) towards their attempt to hang on to their empire. Also deployed was their Green Dragoon Legions and the tactics that had local innocent citizens and their property in the cross-hairs of these forces.

During the follow-up of the Iraq invasion in 2003, the US Empire also used mercenaries in their attempt to hang on to the territory in Iraq as part of the US Empire. By 2007 there had been a huge number of incidents where these mercenaries were guilt of massacres throughout Iraq. In fact, trials are still ongoing here in 2019!

A more in depth article is this one by Chuck Baldwin who has been following closely the Trump promises before his election compared to the Trump realities to date. One of the most startling statistics is in the quote that follows:

.. the first two years of Trump’s presidency was a flagrant disavowal of that campaign promise. Not only did Trump not disengage our forces from these illegal and immoral wars, but, as I have documented, he dramatically INCREASED America’s involvement in these wars. In fact, President Trump has dropped more bombs on more people in his first two years of office than President Obama did in his entire last term in office. Plus, he sent thousands of additional ground troops to Afghanistan and Syria and several other countries.

So that leads us to Trump’s latest claim, that the US is “leaving” Syria and also drawing down troops in Afghanistan. Well, it all depends on who is doing the counting and what is being counted. Knowing full well that none of these numbers include deep state CIA operatives throughout the region, if we are talking “official military” personnel in Syria, the US claims that only 2000 are there currently. I highly doubt that. But what is really going on? Chuck says:

This month, in the January/February print issue of the gun and hunting magazine “Recoil,” the former contractor security firm Blackwater USA published a full-page ad, in all black with a simple message: “We are coming.”

Is the war in Afghanistan — and possibly elsewhere ― about to be privatized?

If Blackwater returns, it would be the return of a private security contractor that was banned from Iraq, but re-branded and never really went away.

21st century Hessians! This Empire is outsourcing the dirty work left behind by the 17 year Afghanistan conflict and the 7 year illegal intrusion into the sovereign nation of Syria that Obama pulled the trigger on.

The legacy is trillions spent, that we have a debt for, just to _______? You fill in the blank, is this to keep military contractors employed? Is this to keep the petro-dollar in placed globally? Is this to help Israel out .. perpetually?

And what of the US Empire’s legacy?

Here’s the horrifying part: These “private contractors,” i.e., mercenaries, operate in a manner that is totally unaccountable to the rule of law. Totally! They operate outside the Constitution, outside the Rules of Engagement, outside the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), outside the Law of Nations, outside law period—and also outside public scrutiny. There is virtually no accountability for whatever murders, rapes, plunderings or criminalities of any sort that these mercenaries commit.

More terrorists are home-grown the more the empire’s atrocities are known. This is “job-security” as the US Empire’s last gasp around the globe. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In summary, Chuck Baldwin concludes:

Combining Special Forces units that are already plagued with rampant abuses of power with mercenaries who are virtually unaccountable to any human authority is a recipe for the worst kind of barbarity and atrocity. This is what the Roman Empire did during its last days of power and what Great Britain did in its failed war against the American colonies. And this is exactly what Donald Trump is preparing to do. In fact, Trump is already setting the table for an unaccountable military force by shutting down military watchdog groups, thus turning off the light of public knowledge and ensuring military unaccountability.

The “swamp” is still intact. The cynic in me points to the root of this nation’s poisonous government. Many, including Chuck claim that if we would just get back to the Constitution … yeah, it was never meant to be “got back to”. As Lysander Spooner said in the 19th century:

“But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”
― Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority

My thinking, thanks to Ben Stone’s efforts and his manual , has evolved to this:

When I first read this a year ago I just laughed. About six months ago I read this and still thought that maybe Thomas Jefferson was blindsided by this whole Constitution coup d’tat that happened while he was Ambassador to France. I understood that George Washington was a Federalist at heart and wanted a mini-British nation on this continent, and that Benjamin Franklin was getting old and nodded his consent. But the likes of George Mason and Patrick Henry saw through all this and rightfully noted the slippery slope that this document created a path for going forward.

I now think that Thomas Jefferson really thought that there would be another revolution inside a generation as what was created was just an “experiment”, a beta-test version 1.0 of a federated republic that would have checks and balances like nullification and secession options that could keep it grounded until another version could be tried.

I do think that the pioneer spirit of that founding generation did not even last a decade before this country fell back into its old ways. Before you know it you have George Washington taking thousands of troops into Pennsylvania to enforce a 25% Whiskey Tax to fund his government. You can not possibly make this stuff up!

Happy 2019 y’all .. I will try to stay more positive in my future posts this year, if the Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.

-SF1

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun – Ecclesiastes 1:9

Calm and Peace in Syria: No Thanks to the US Empire

Syrian/Russian controlled territory in Syria (pink) ISIS/Extremists/Turkish territory in Syria (green) Kurdish territory in Syria (yellow)

This is not a Russian spin zone, this is just the truth. There is calm and peace holding its own around Idlib where ISIS and other radical elements remain but are in the processes of moving out with the protection of the Turkey military presence. This arrangement was accomplished with Russian and Syrian efforts in building a buffer zone to diffuse conflicts between forces that have been at war with each other for over 7 years.

The Moon of Alabama article makes it clear that finally the Arab nations in the region that had supported these extremists have now given up on their plan to overthrow Assad.

The Gulf Arabs, except Qatar which is allied with Turkey, have given up on removing President Assad and are making nice:

“In one of the more surprising developments amid a flurry of diplomatic meetings surrounding the U.N. General Assembly, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmad al-Khalifa was seen greeting Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem with hugs and kisses at a pan-Arab meeting last week. Bahrain, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, has been a vocal critic of Assad and other regional allies of Iran, but the top diplomat said: “the Syrian government is the ruler in Syria and we work with countries even if we disagree with them.” Days later, Assad conducted his first interview with an Arabian Peninsula newspaper since 2011, telling Kuwait’s Al-Shahed that he had reached a “major understanding” with a number of Arab states and that “Western and Arab delegations have already begun to come to Syria to arrange their return, whether diplomatic, economic or industrial.”..”

Assad in Syria has been patient with the process and personally I think that the resignation of the US Empire’s UN Representative Haley is linked to to the closing of this front in the empire’s war on sovereign countries that desire to remain independent from the US. Eyes are now turning toward the Ukraine (which has been the plan B to bug the Russians) and the South China Sea.

Assad has certainly done his part to start the healing process in Syria:

The Syrian president Bashar al Assad just issued a decree that grants amnesty to those who deserted the army or ran away from serving their conscription time. If the deserters and draft dodgers turn themselves in within the next six month to fulfill their service they will escape all punishment.

I do hope that US/Israel/SaudiArabia/UK take the hint and know that they need to take their war making plans elsewhere. This region of the world has born the brunt of this criminal activity and need decades to recover.

The blowback to the US foreign policy I see is that now Russia has a trusted ally in the region and now has a Mediterranean Naval port to boot. The US can no longer do what it wants in Syria and get away with it.

It looks like Africa is now seeing an uptick in US armed forces and CIA/FBI activity as another place to “play” with people’s lives. It is sad that a majority of Americans who pay for all this global gallivanting are clueless to what its government is all about.

Dysfunctional empires will have sick agendas, this ain’t no exceptional nation no sir, no ma’am ..

-SF1

THIS is Research: Calling out the Lies on Both Sides (about Iran, not Kavanaugh)

 

While it could be tempting to wade into the whole Dr. Ford vs. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh circus, it is not worth it. Giving time to the biggest show that our government has produced this year only encourages them. Now I know what all my taxes are for. Entertainment:

There is no doubt that the Military Industrial Complex / Deep State are using this distraction to their own advantage somewhere on this globe, maybe even in Iran itself!

This post, however, is about the last accusations that Israel’s Netanyahu has made about the same old song sung for years about Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program. For well over three decades, Israel / US’ CIA / Mossad (yes, a lot of overlap there) has used this mantra as a way to threaten the sheep with lies so they would be more than happy to use military means towards “safety”:

The lies started shortly after Iran left the US Empire’s orbit in 1979 as shown by this quote in an article written five years ago:

The suggestion that Iran would soon be in possession of, or be in a position to quickly manufacture, nuclear weapons has been in constant circulation for nearly three decades. In 1984, Iran was reportedly moving “very quickly” towards a nuclear weapon and could have one as early as 1986. By the early 1990’s, the CIA predicted Iran was “making progress on a nuclear arms program and could develop a nuclear weapon by 2000,” later changing their estimate to 2003.

Israeli estimates have always been of an especially hysterical quality. In March 1992, The Jerusalem Report, noting that “Israel keeps a wary watch on Teheran’s march to the Bomb,” predicted that, “[b]y the year 2000, Iran will almost certainly have the Bomb.”

This lie has enabled sympathy on the part of many Christians in the US as well as the US government to directly support Israel economically and militarily over the years on an increasing basis and polarizing the world in the post Cold War 1.0 era.

For today’s post, I will just focus on the latest lie OR set of lies where real research sifts truth from. The Moon of Alabama article quoted below not only shows errors in Israel’s claim, but also errors in Iran’s counter-claim. So we have lies, half-truths and truth to sort through, hang on, this will require some critical thinking.

To kick of this adventure, here is what Israel’s leader said at the United Nations this last week:

Netanyahoo said:

“In May we exposed the site of Iran’s secret atomic archive. It’s right here in the Shuabad Distrcit of Tehran. Today I’m revealing the site of a second facility: Iran’s secret atomic warehouse. It’s right here, in the Turkuzahbad Distrcit of Tehran. Just three miles away. Let me show you exactly what the secret atomic warehouse looks like. Here it is. You see, like the atomic archive it’s another innocent-looking compound. Now for those of you at home using Google Earth, this no longer secret atomic warehouse. You have the coordinates, you can try to get there. And for those of you who try to get there: It’s 100 meters from the rug-cleaning operation By the way, i hear they do a fantastic job of cleaning rugs there. But by now they may be radioactive rags. This is the second secret site. Now countries with satellite capabilities may notice some increased activity on the alley in the days and weeks ahead.”

Netanyahoo added the obviously false claim that Iran removed radioactive material from the warehouse and spread it over Tehran.”

So how does Israel’s staunchest ally respond? Well, to it’s credit, it corrects some claims:

But just like back in May, when Netanyahoo presented old material that was long known to the IAEA and relevant governments, no one came out in support of his exaggerated claims. Yes, the ‘atomic warehouse’ in Tehran exists. But it is neither secret, nor does it hold anything radioactive or of current relevance:

“A US intelligence official has said that the speech delivered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday at the UN General Assembly about the existence of a second secret atomic facility in Iran was “somewhat misleading.”
…
According to the US intelligence official, knowledge of the facility is nothing new to the Americans.
“First, we have known about this facility for some time, and it’s full of file cabinets and paper, not aluminum tubes for centrifuges, and second, so far as anyone knows, there is nothing in it that would allow Iran to break out of the JCPOA any faster than it otherwise could,” the official said.

Another US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States is aware of the facility Netanyahu announced and described it as a “warehouse” used to store “records and archives” from Iran’s nuclear program.

I am told that the IAEA also knows of the archive and its harmless content.

If you are Iran, how do you respond? Well, in this case, Iran’s press responded rather poorly as Moon of Alabama demonstrates below in reference to this Twitter post:

The first picture in Meysam Yaghoubi’s tweet is indeed the gate to the compound Netanyahoo showed. The other pictures though, which show a carpet cleaning facility, were taken inside a compound on the other side of the street of the archive compound. They were not taken inside the compound that Netanyahoo pointed out. This can be easily discerned by comparing the second picture in the tweet above with a satellite view of the place…The notable gate structure of the archive compound visible at the upper left is not the gate of the compound where the picture was taken, but on the other side of the road.

When you are wading in a sea of lies, you have to be able to pick up on nuances. The Dilbert Test can sometimes help:

Guilty people almost always question the source of the information first.

Innocent people start with a clear denial, or sometimes confusion as to why the question is being asked.

Some guilty people will give you a straight denial if they know the question is coming and they prepared for it.

With state agencies, there is certainly a period of time one has to respond. One can reply in haste and come off as being in error or falling into a well laid trap OR one can use the opportunity to their advantage and again show which state is the “bigger person”.

I have seen Russia take a tactic that places itself above the US’s level of dishonesty by clearly stating the part of a US statement that is true as true but then countering with parts of the statement that are misleading. Such is the way in this world when so many half-truths and statements taken out of historical context are involved.

The tougher part, when considering the typical US citizen is, since they have almost zero historical context, how do you keep their attention long enough to paint the truth as it is? Basically, you cannot. Governments love an ignorant society, they can get away with murder!

However, many people abroad tend to think more critically, and measure what the state puppets across the globe say against their own instinct and research. With that in mind, Moon of Alabama concludes with a challenge:

This ISNA piece and the attached pictures unintentionally confirm exactly what Netanyahoo said about the location of the archive building: “It’s 100 meters from the rug-cleaning operation.”

Iran’s foreign ministry is also somewhat hapless when it describes Netanyahoo’s speech as “false, meaningless and unnecessary”. Why can’t Tehran simply say: “Decades old administrative records of our legitimate nuclear energy program are archived in a warehouse that is well known to all relevant entities. There is nothing secret nor nefarious about it.”

Hapless attempts to debunk Netanyahoo even where he is right will be used by his propagandists to claim that “Iran lies”. Tehran, and its news agencies, must up their game.

I do hope that people in Iran can access Moon of Alabama and challenge their journalists and state writers to “up their game”!

-SF1

How Geopolitics Spins the Facts: Always Has, Always Will

http://snafu-solomon.blogspot.fi/2013/09/med-fleet-deployment-graphic-via.html

From the American Revolution (and much before) through the War of 1812, the so-called “Civil War”, Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII all the way to the various wars the US Empire is supporting these days, what happens (fact) is usually spun by the world’s chess players for fiction, that helps the masses believe various narratives, so they keep their cool. As Bob Lee Swaggar was told in the movie “Shooter“:

In my previous post concerning the shooting of the Russian IL-20 with 15 Russian aviators lost, there is the story (as I told it) versus the story told by those who deep-dive into some real journalism / research.

From a Fort Russ article comes a play-by-play that deconstructs the events of 17SEP2018 (much like many researchers have done with 11SEP2001) and sorts out the facts to show what most likely happened and how the Russian leadership spun it towards their advantage, based on the following:

Using the same map I had posted the other day from the Russian MoD, guest author “FB” gets down into the rich details that standard media will never spend the time on, because there is less money in that:

It is IMPOSSIBLE for an S200 which flies at 2.5 kilometers per second and would cover 100 km in just 40 seconds… to have hit an airplane that continued flying for another ~5 minutes after that close call with the flight of Israeli F16s…

Math helps at this point, no Algebra or Calculus necessary. The sheer speed of a S200 missile does not allow for loitering around the skies like drones do. The missile is frickin’ fast compared to this turboprop recon aircraft:

As “FB” states:

The MoD map clearly shows that the Ilyushin flew north for 40 km after that ‘close encounter’ with the F16s, and then made another right 90 degree turn back toward the Syria coast on its final descent back into Hmeimim. Only after making that turn to final was the airplane hit.

You might think, so what? Well, the S200 operators would have to have launched the missile minutes AFTER the “radar” confusion directly targeting the Russian plane, and no Syrian unit under President Assad would do that, ever!

Much like the OFFICIAL story of 9/11 .. this one as well is IMPOSSIBLE. Basic physics does not discriminate.

So what IS in the realm of possibility?:

… The Russian MoD stated clearly two additional piece of information.

1…the French frigate Auvergne was nearby the Ilyushin flight, as depicted on the map, and was in fact recorded firing missiles…

2…British jets were also in the air, with their transponders turned on…making it possible to track them even with civilian ATC radar.

… At the same time, we also know that the US is flying the high altitude U2 spy plane out of Akrotiri.

French frigate Auvergne (D654)

The West has it resources in the area of the eastern Mediterranean and the Russians have their resources …:

.. we also know that a number of Russian ships were in that area at the time, and still are, and are in fact this entire week conducting live fire drills, more on that in a moment. Those ships also have sophisticated radar and also infrared sensors which picked up the missile firing from the French ship.

Besides that we have the Beriev A50U AWACS aircraft in Syria..and it is safe to assume that they would have been in the air at the time of the Ilyushin flight…

.. as well as the ill-fated IL-20, whose flight path flew a circuit over Idlib and then cruises for about 40 km off the coast of Syria, well outside the Syrian territorial airspace. With all the activity in the eastern Mediterranean it is expected that this plane would have been gathering Intel over Idlib as well as over the Med.

Back to the options at hand:

The French ship firing missiles [what kind of missiles surface to air…?…the frigate is equipped with very capable Aster SAMs.

And also the British aircraft in the air at the time and flying out of Akrotiri, there are 9 Eurofighter Typhoons there, equipped with long range air to air AIM120 radar guided missiles, and also 10 Tornados equipped with shorter range heat seeking AIM9x…

..[The Israeli jets could not have fired at the Ilyushin, since they were flying in the opposite direction at the time the airplane was hit…and it is impossible to aim a missile at a target behind your airplane.]

Physics point to the French or British, but with all the facts in hand (except for the black box from the IL-20) why would Putin suggest it was the Israeli military that is to blame for this incident? Well, “FB” lays out the obvious options that would be detrimental politically to Russia:

Now let us consider the question of why Putin is not saying anything about possible British or French involvement in the shooting down of the valuable Ilyushin electronic warfare aircraft.

First, what purpose would it serve to now come out and accuse two NATO countries of an act of war? Is not this kind of escalation exactly what NATO is looking to provoke in Syria? Is Putin supposed to now declare war on NATO?

The last thing Putin wants to do is fulfill the dreams of the Neo-Cons in Washington DC or in Tel Aviv .. or in Paris or London for that matter!

Or does it make more sense to blame Israel because Israel is the only party that can be proved to have been doing something illegal at the time, i.e bombing a sovereign country [an illegal act of aggression], and at the same time trampling all the protocol and agreements in place between Russia and Israel on the matter of Israeli operations against ‘Iranian’ forces in Syria?

I am not sure the West could have foreseen this play, OR it could be that the West “allowed” an out, as this is geo-politics on a global scale. “FB” goes on:

As things stand now, no one can defend Israel’s actions on that night. Israel realizes that Russia is very angry and Israel must now alter its behavior as to bombing Syria. Russia will also take steps to increase the security of all Russian assets in Syria. There will not be a repeat performance of this carefully planned ambush of the Ilyushin.

For Russia and Syria both, this is a win-win in the midst of a HUGE tragedy for the 15 man crew and their families. The Russian people are not happy as it seems that the West can launch missiles into Syria and render damage to Russian military as well as their resources WITHOUT retribution, but the wisdom of Sun Tze is worth repeating:

Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical.

No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.

If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are.

-SF1

Did Israel (France, UK, US) Just Overplay Their Hand in Syria?

17SEP2018 Russian MOD Map – Syrian coastline (Red) Russian IL-20 AWACS Surveillance Plane Route (Blue) Israeli F-16 and French naval ship actions

To understand the chess match (yes, leaders of the “free” world are sociopaths who love this “game” that involves other people’s lives) that is being played out on the world’s stage I will be drawing from various sources for this post:

  • Pat Buchanan’s article from Lew Rockwell
  • Moon of Alabama’s article
  • Robert Bridge article from Strategic Culture share on Lew Rockwell

[NOTE: A good researcher pulls from various sources and also thinks critically about the situation at hand before sharing their own thoughts]

From a high level view a few days later it becomes clear that Putin took a lot of heat from those in Syria as well in his own country in not retaliating against the actions of the west in the Mediterranean Sea near Syria this past week. I think of the mechanical operation of a ratchet, using rather small moves one can over time place a lot of torque on a situation IF one is patient and in the end have the upper hand.

Moon of Alabama, who follows the events in the Middle East so very well (I highly recommend a site visit there and IF you feel inclined, please do considering supporting that site) has a great overview of the political milestones that led up to this moment where a Russian propeller plane is accidentally shot down by a Syrian S-200 missile site that was focused on an Israeli F-16 that was shadowing the Russian IL-20 AWACS-like plane. Less than 24 hours prior to this setup:

Turkey and Russia agreed on a further de-escalation in Idelb province in Syria (see the update here). This agreement takes away the chance of an imminent wider war in which the U.S. and some of its allies would use a fake ‘chemical attack’ as a pretext to launch missiles against a large number of Syrian government targets and military positions.

.. peace was about to break out in Syria. However:

A peaceful solution of the Idleb situation is unsatisfying for Israel. The successful Syrian defeat of the Jihadi enemy inside the country would allow Syria and its allies to concentrate their forces against Israel. Israel wants the Syrian government destroyed and the country in chaos.

On Sunday September 16 Israel tried to hit an Iranian Boeing 747 freight plane at Damascus airport. The plane allegedly carried an Iranian copy of the Russian S-300 long range air defense System for the Syrian army.

Imagine any country in this world that can get away with attacking INSIDE another sovereign country and getting away with it. I can only think of two countries, Israel and the United States of America.

On Monday around 10:00pm local time 4 F-16 jets of the Israeli airforce, coming from the sea, launched missiles against at least three targets on Syria’s coast. The strike came only hours after Israel released satellite images of what it called “strategic targets” in Syria. The integrated Syrian and Russian air-defenses responded.

The Israeli air force had warned the Russian forces in Syria only one minute before the strike. A Russian IL-20 electronic warfare airplane (red line) was preparing to land at the Russian airport near Latakia just as the Israeli attack (blue) happened.

Israel chose to give a 60 second warning that could never be enough time for the IL-20 propeller plane to clear out of an area to a safer zone. Israel knew this but wanted to provoke the “Bear” so as not to loose even more strategic ground in the Middle East for their “defense”. Israel has chosen this path, and there will be blowback.

The IL-20 was hit 35 kilometers off the coast by a S-200 air-defense missile fired by the Syrian military towards the Israeli attack. There were 15 Russian soldiers on board of the plane which were likely all killed.

The Israeli attack came out of the same direction as the Russian IL-20. The large 4 propeller plane creates a much bigger radar reflection than the small F-16s fighter jets. The S-200 missiles have a semi-active radar homing seeker. These are passive detectors of a radar signal which is provided by an external source, in this case the Syrian and Russian radars on the ground. While the missile was aimed at the F-16 its seeker likely mistook the larger radar reflection of IL-20 for the intended target.

At the same time as the Israeli air force attacked, a Russian frigate (red) near the coast detected missile launches from the French Frigate Auvergne (blue) nearby. The French frigate carries air, ship and land attack missiles.

With so many Russian ships in the area plus Russian and Syrian radar sites on the mainland in Syria, there is plenty of evidence untainted by spin by Western powers to twist. Similar to Lincoln’s provocation at Ft. Sumter and FDR’s provocation of the Japanese before Pearl Harbor and even Bush I’s green light to Saddam in Kuwait at the start of Gulf War I, this was a blatant attempt at provoking conflict in the midst of the last two years of Russian accusations (election meddling) and US sanctions.

Sure the bully (Israel) “apologized” but said “it was not our missile”. Whatever. There is ZERO honor in that and there was no US response that indicated any kind of remorse at all.

The honor (again) came from “Cool Hand” Putin. As Robert Bridge points out:

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, took admirable efforts to prevent the blame game from reaching the boiling point, telling reporters that the downing of the Russian aircraft was the result of “a chain of tragic circumstances, because the Israeli plane didn’t shoot down our jet.”

Nevertheless, following this extremely tempered and reserved remark, Putin vowed that Russia would take extra precautions to protect its troops in Syria, saying these will be “the steps that everyone will notice.”

Now there is much consternation in Israel that the IDF will soon find its freedom to conduct operations against targets in Syria greatly impaired. That’s because Russia, having just suffered a ‘friendly-fire’ incident from its own antiquated S-200 system, may now be more open to the idea of providing Syria with the more advanced S-300 air-defense system.

.. or even the highly advanced S-400 systems:

The Israeli gamble did NOT pay off. Their reputation as a greedy neighbor who steals and maims others in the ‘hood all the while not adhering to international law that it demands others to follow. (While having 200+ nukes in their back pocket) The Russians know this and are being very patient in protecting a friend that asked for assistance back in 2015.

In summary, Pat Buchanan does a masterful job at giving a grand overview that spans decades of political ebb and flow on a global scale when he states:

By the end of his second term, President Ronald Reagan, who had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” was strolling through Red Square with Russians slapping him on the back.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. And how have we husbanded the fruits of our Cold War triumph?

This month, China’s leader-for-life Xi Jinping stood beside Vladimir Putin as 3,000 Chinese troops maneuvered with 300,000 Russians, 1,000 planes and 900 tanks in Moscow’s largest military exercise in 40 years.

An uncoded message to the West from the East. Richard Nixon’s great achievement in bringing Peking in from the cold, and Reagan’s great achievement of ending the Cold War, are history.

Squandered. The “shining city on a hill” and “American Exceptionalism” are but a myth. The real DNA of our government along with that of Israel and NATO aligned countries are bent on war. Pat continues:

.. Bolshevism may be dead, but Russian nationalism, awakened by NATO’s quick march to Russia’s ancient frontiers, is alive and well. Russia appears to have given up on the West and accepted that its hopes for better times with President Donald Trump are not to be.

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is berating Russia for secretly trading with North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions, saying, “Lying, cheating, and rogue behavior have become the new norm of the Russian culture.” Cold wars don’t get much colder than defaming another country’s culture as morally debased.

The U.S. has also signaled that it may start supplying naval and anti-aircraft weaponry to Ukraine, as Russia is being warned to cease its inspections of ships passing from the Black Sea through the Kerch Strait into the Sea of Azov. The three-mile-wide strait lies between Crimea and Kerch Peninsula. In Russia’s eyes, both banks of the strait are Russian national territory.

With U.S. backing, Ukraine has decided to build a naval base on the Sea of Azov to “create conditions for rebuffing the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation in this region.”

Kiev has several patrol boats in the Sea of Azov, with a few more to be transferred there in coming months. Russia’s navy could sink those boats and wipe out that base in minutes. Are we going to send our Navy across the Black Sea to protect Ukraine’s naval rights inside a sea that has been as historically Russian as the Chesapeake Bay is historically American? ..

This is the height of American Empire stupidity. It is what Thomas Jefferson feared centuries ago that the United States arrogance may lead to:

Trade is honorable. Political solutions that promote peace is honorable.

The American Empire is not (nor has it been since the end of WWII) honorable. You can’t fix this, you can’t drain the swamp enough BUT you can research for yourself the reality of today’s political world and it does impact you, indirectly maybe, but it will eventually touch you or your kid’s lives. Not unlike the Roman Empire, this empire is entering its last days and only God knows the months or years this will take.

Be prepared

-SF1