Hillary Wins

Any doubt should be put to rest this morning about Stathis Kouvelakis' statement mentioned a couple weeks back, that with the erosion of support for major parties throughout the West the corporate media has filled the void to prevent a more precipitous collapse of the status quo. On the eve of the final day of primary voting, the Associated Press preordained the outcome and announced that the Democratic nominee would be Hillary Clinton (Amy Chozick and Patrick Healy, "Hillary Clinton Has Clinched Democratic Nomination, Survey Reports").

Based on the polling, it did not appear as if Hillary was in any serious danger of losing California to Bernie Sanders, particularly given the fact that last week she received the endorsement of longtime California Governor Jerry Brown. So this AP "rush to judgment," as the Sanders campaign is calling it, seems like paranoid overkill. Possibly the intent is to create a situation in the six states voting today where Hillary will walk away with enough pledged delegates (the AP report had to do with superdelegates) to prevent Bernie from contesting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Sanders has predicted that Hillary will not have enough pledged delegates after today's vote, and that, on this basis, he will march his children's crusade to Philly.

One thing is certain, to me at least. This primary campaign has illuminated the extent to which U.S. society is a closed one. It took a billionaire schooled for decades in the most brutal, omniscient media market on the planet to break through. But, if last week is any indication, Trump will be sliced and diced before August is over.

Hillary, competing in her fourth presidential campaign, did several things well, given how tarnished a candidate she is. Though her Super Tuesday "Southern strategy" did not work exactly as planned, because it was designed to knock Bernie out of the race, it will likely end up providing her the margin of victory she needs in pledged delegates; also, it cemented the narrative that black voters overwhelming favor her. Most importantly, Hillary proved an adroit manager of Democratic Party machinery, including the big international unions, and the corporate media monopoly.

Spy vs. Spy: The Kunduz Doctors Without Borders Hospital Info War

One week ago AP reporter Ken Dilanian broke a story, "US analysts knew Afghan site was hospital," which argued that the lethal attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz was premeditated, not an accident, and that its purpose was to kill a Pakistani agent from the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The ISI operative was purportedly directing the Taliban assault on Kunduz from the Doctors Without Border hospital.

Dilanian has been busted in the past for being a spook conduit. So we have to interpret his "ISI agent using the Kunduz hospital as a command and control outpost" story as a "limited hangout."

The "newspaper of record" has studiously avoided the Dilanian story. Yesterday it published what is known in the propaganda industry as a  "modified limited hangout."

Eric Schmitt and Matthew Rosenberg never refer directly to Dilanian in "Hospital Attack Fueled by Units New to Kunduz." Instead they proffer the position that the hospital attack was due to the inexperience of Fort Lewis Special Forces troops who were new to the theater, as were their Afghan counterparts. In other words, the destruction of the hospital and the murder of civilians was all just a regrettable accident, just another sorrowful tale chalked up to the fog of war.

Towards the end of the Schmitt-Rosenberg piece the reader receives a dismissal of the Dilanian hypothesis:

Since the strike, a number of Afghan officials, including Masoom Stanekzai, the acting defense minister, have publicly claimed that the Taliban were fighting from the hospital, and that the insurgents were storing heavy weapons there. There has also been talk of operatives from Pakistan’s main spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, using the hospital as a base from which to help direct Taliban fighters in Kunduz.

But the Aghan security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid directly contradicting other officials, dismissed all those claims as “unfounded — there is no hard evidence.” 

The hospital had treated many wounded Taliban fighters over the years, and some may have been there at the time of the strike. But “they were not fighting right then,” the official said.

Eric Schmitt is the Gray Lady's numero uno conduit for spookery. So what we have here is spy vs. spy. Schmitt vs. Dilanian. The overall purposes is to sow confusion, to go from limited hangout to modified limited hangout in an attempt to obscure a shocking U.S. war crime.

Default Does Not Equal a Grexit: Get Ready for Additional Acts in the Greek Debt Drama

It appears to me, and what I have said on this page in the past, is that there is no alternative to a Greek default on its debt obligation to the troika -- International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and the European Commission; either that or a complete about-face by the troika, capitulating on its demands to cut pensions and loosen labor laws. Germany's strict allegiance to austerity, as well as antipathy towards Greece shared by eurozone states Finland, Spain, et al makes a troika capitulation a long shot.

Several stories this morning (James Kanter and Niki Kitsantonis, "Tsipras Attacks Greece’s Creditors as Pressure Grows on Debts"; Peter Eavis, "Greek Exit Would Shake, but Most Likely Not Shatter, Eurozone") sound the alarm on the coming Greek default. The one story that caught my eye though was an AP piece ("Will Greece Leave the Euro? A Look at Its Options") that problematizes the notion of any clear resolution of the Greek debt drama once the country defaults at the end of this month:

Here are some questions and answers on Greece's future. They could come in handy during Thursday's meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Luxembourg.

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HOW DOES A COUNTRY LEAVE THE EURO? 

Technically, it can't. These are uncharted waters. European Union treaties legally allow members to leave the 28-nation EU, but no mechanism was foreseen to let countries leave the euro. Theoretically, if all 19 nations agree that it's time for Greece to go then a "Grexit" could be negotiated. Some argue the country might have to leave the EU altogether to leave the single currency. 

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WHEN IS THE POINT OF NO RETURN? 

That would be when the European Central Bank decides to cut off emergency credit to Greece's banks, according to Zsolt Darvas, senior fellow at the Breugel think-tank in Brussels. 

That could happen if there is a run on Greek banks — in which case the ECB might not want to risk its money supporting them. Concerns over a run on banks could grow if it becomes clear that Greece will default on its next debt repayment, due June 30.
The ECB could also cut Greek banks loose if the country defaults on debt repayments due to the ECB in July and August. 

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WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN? 

Banks would probably have to close for a while and when they reopen, the government would likely put limits on how much money depositors can take out. "People would try to take their money out of the banks. The banks would not be able to pay," Darvas says. "People would try to store their euros at home, not pay taxes, and the whole financial system would come to a halt." 

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HOW CAN GREECE AVOID SUCH A DISASTER? 

Apart from pay its debts on time, some experts believe Greece could limit the damage by engineering its departure in secret. A small group of officials could make the exit preparations and then act on them almost immediately. They would inform their eurozone partners just hours before Greece walks out the door, according Roger Bootle, who heads the research analysis group Capital Economics. The public would be the last to know.

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WHAT MONEY WOULD GREECE USE? 

Greece could go back to using the drachma or introduce a new currency. Either way, volume is essential, and that implies serious challenges. Iraq faced similar issues when it introduced a new dinar in just three months following the U.S.-led invasion. "You would need a huge volume, very quickly. There's also the transportation that is a very big challenge. A lot of police, troops would be required to attend to the cash needs of a country the size of Greek. Logistically it would be a huge challenge," Darvas says. 

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WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO ITS DEBT? 

Greece's bills won't go away, and the jury is out on whether they could be converted to a new currency, although Greece would probably try to redenominate and renegotiate the debt. The one advantage in this for Athens is that all kinds of loans would probably be written down by its creditors. But Darvas says that "all of these technical issues can be resolved. The economic costs of a euro exit — GDP fall and the rise in unemployment — will be far higher."

If you are burnt out on following the debt-negotiating drama don't expect any relief come end of the month. I don't think Greece has any intention of exiting the eurozone; if it had, if preparations were being made to issue drachmas, there would be leaks by now. Once Greece defaults, that is when another round of negotiations will get going. The ECB could force Greek banks to collapse by freezing Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA). But by making such a move, the troika would lose the political battle; Syriza would be vindicated.

The Battle for Ramadi: Iraq's War of Liberation, U.S. Double Game Exposed

The story this morning is that a convoy of Iraqi Army troops and Shiite militia on their way to take part in the counteroffensive to retake Ramadi was hit by Islamic State suicide bombers, killing 55. That is at least how the Qatar-based Al Jazeera puts it in "ISIL suicide attacks target Iraq military convoys":

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has reportedly carried out a series of suicide attacks on military convoys northeast and southeast of the city of Fallujah, killing at least 55 people, Al Jazeera has learnt.

Three blasts on Tuesday struck army convoys travelling in Anbar province to take part in a planned offensive aimed at retaking the provincial city of Ramadi from ISIL, Al Jazeera's Imran Khan, reporting from Baghdad, said.

He said that the attacks were a "very big blow" to the military.

ISIL has routinely used car bomb attacks to a "devastating effect" against Iraqi forces, he added.

"Car bombs have proven to be a very big problem for the Iraqi security forces," he said, noting that the tactic played a major part in the capture of Ramadi.

Brigadier General Saad Maan Ibrahim, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, gave a lower death toll. He told The Associated Press that 17 troops were killed in the attacks.

The bombings came as Iraqi forces prepare for a massive bid to retake the capital of mainly Sunni Muslim province.

Thousands of troops and allied Shia militiamen have been deployed to the area to retake territory seized by ISIL since last year.

But if one consults the AP story where Brigadier General Saad Maan Inbrahim is quoted, "Multiple IS Suicide Attacks in Iraq's Anbar Kill 17 Troops," it is not even clear that the troops killed by the suicide bombers were on their way to Ramadi; rather, they were part of a back-and-forth effort to secure a vital section of canal outside Fallujah:

Islamic State extremists unleashed a wave of suicide attacks targeting the Iraqi army in western Anbar province, killing at least 17 troops in a major blow to government efforts to dislodge the militants from the sprawling Sunni heartland, an Iraqi military spokesman said Wednesday. 

The attacks came just hours after the Iraqi government on Tuesday announced the start of a wide-scale operation to recapture areas under the control of the IS group in Anbar. 

Brig. Gen Saad Maan Ibrahim, the spokesman for the Joint Military Command, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the attacks took place outside the Islamic State-held city of Fallujah late the previous night. 

The militants struck near a water control station and a lock system on a canal between Lake Tharthar and the Euphrates River where army forces have been deployed for the Anbar offensive, he said. 

Ibrahim added that the Islamic State extremists used a sandstorm that engulfed most of Iraq on Tuesday night to launch the deadly wave of bombings. He said it was not clear how many suicide attackers were involved in the bombings but they hit the military from multiple directions. 

Last month, the water station near Fallujah fell into the hands of IS militants — following attacks that also included multiple suicide bombings and that killed a general commanding the 1st Division and a dozen other officers and soldiers. 

Iraqi government forces recaptured the station a few days later. Fallujah lies to the east of the Anbar provincial capital of Ramadi, which was captured by the IS militants nearly two weeks ago in what was a major, humiliating defeat for Iraqi troops at the hands of the extremists. 

The Iraqi operation to retake Anbar, which is said to be backed by Shiite militias and Sunni pro-government fighters, is deemed critical in regaining momentum in the fight against the Islamic State. 

The IS group captured Ramadi in Iraq and the Syrian ancient town of Palmyra earlier this month, showing that it is able to advance in both countries despite months of U.S.-led airstrikes.

I wonder where  Al Jazeera got its 55 fatalities. No source is quoted.

What we are witnessing is a U.S. "double game" in Iraq and Syria under increasing pressure of exposure. This double game is a classic Ring of Gyges scenario where the U.S. portrays itself as pure and just and resolute in doing battle with the "evil incarnate" caliphate of Islamic State while surreptitiously doing what it can to make sure that ISIS continues to gain and hold territory at the expense of Iraq and Syria.

Why is the U.S. doing this? Because Iraq and Syria are allies of Iran, an arch foe of Uncle Sam and his corrupt despotic allies in the Gulf.

I am not a great student of the history of military campaigns, but I can't think of another example of a great power waging a public war against an enemy at the same time it seeks to bolster it.

A principal means by which the U.S. is waging its "double game" in Iraq and Syria is through information war and thought control in the media. The meme repeated in almost every story about ISIS in Iraq for the last several months is that Iraqi Shiite Popular Mobilization Forces must not take a major role in the fighting for fear that they will spread sectarian war to the Sunni-majority areas of the country. This argument is dutifully repeated time after time as if it were ancient wisdom without once mentioning the obvious: Why banish proven fighters from the battlefield for the alleged crime of sectarian hatred when practitioners of a Sunni extremist sect continue to murder and plunder and add territory to their caliphate?

This makes absolutely no sense. Nonetheless the argument is never challenged and always repeated. This is how the "big lie" works. Even a good reporter like Tim Arango, whose stories are usually reliable and illuminating, must repeat the U.S.-purveyed nonsense without question, as he does in his latest dispatch from Iraq, "Iraqi Army and Shiite Militias Begin Push to Take Ramadi From ISIS":

The United States has been training Iraqi Army recruits since December, though none of the soldiers trained so far have entered the battle. American officials have also pushed Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to increase aid to the Sunni tribes who were fighting the militants in Anbar and to avoid sending Shiite militiamen into that fight, fearing that it could intensify sectarian hostilities.

The U.S. wants the Iraqi parliament to rebuild the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni Awakening movement that is accepted to have played a role in beating back Al Qaeda in Iraq, the ISIS precursor, during the U.S. occupation. But parliament has been reticent to do so because of very legitimate fears that any money or weaponry will just end up in the hands of ISIS fighters. The war is now and you stick with forces who have been currently effective on the battlefield. And this is the Popular Mobilization Forces.

The stakes are high in the battle to retake Ramadi. The U.S. is going to do what it can to make sure the Iraqi Shiite militias aren't effective. I interpret SecDef Ashton Carter's bizarre public rebuke of the Iraqi forces for losing Ramadi as laying the foundation for an eventual U.S. ultimatum to Iraqi prime minister Abadi: either you let us manage the ground troops, or we withhold our air power. This would guarantee the kind of lengthy siege and stalemate that is a hallmark of the war in Syria.

The silver lining in recent U.S. maneuvers is that its double game has been broadly exposed. Abadi can longer be a player in the U.S.-led ruse to aid ISIS without being ousted by his Dawa Party. Even liberal outlets in the U.S. are beginning to point out how the Western media supports the caliphate.

U.S. Case Against Russia in Downing of MH17 Collapses

I think the biggest story pertaining to the Ukraine yesterday did not come from Kiev or Donetsk but Washington D.C. and Brussels. First, in the U.S., unnamed intelligence officials provided a briefing to reporters where they basically walked back all the strident accusations by the Obama administration blaming Russia for the destruction of Malaysia Airlines MH17. Ken Dilanian of the Associated Press reports in "US: No link to Russian gov't in plane downing" that

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that Russia was responsible for "creating the conditions" that led to the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, but they offered no evidence of direct Russian government involvement.

The intelligence officials were cautious in their assessment, noting that while the Russians have been arming separatists in eastern Ukraine, the U.S. had no direct evidence that the missile used to shoot down the passenger jet came from Russia. 

The officials briefed reporters Tuesday under ground rules that their names not be used in discussing intelligence related to last week's air disaster, which killed 298 people. 

The plane was likely shot down by an SA-11 surface-to-air missile fired by Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, the intelligence officials said, citing intercepts, satellite photos and social media postings by separatists, some of which have been authenticated by U.S. experts. 

But the officials said they did not know who fired the missile or whether any Russian operatives were present at the missile launch. They were not certain that the missile crew was trained in Russia, although they described a stepped-up campaign in recent weeks by Russia to arm and train the rebels, which they say has continued even after the downing of the commercial jetliner.

Robert Parry posted yesterday in "The Mystery of a Ukrainian Army ‘Defector’" that his Sunday bombshell, that a source within the intelligence community told him that U.S. satellite imagery exists showing Ukrainian troops operating a missile battery at the time that MH17 went down, was obliquely addressed during the briefing when officials opined that the SA-11 could have been operated by a defector:

After last Thursday’s shoot-down, I was told that U.S. intelligence analysts were examining satellite imagery that showed the crew manning the suspected missile battery wearing what looked like Ukrainian army uniforms, but my source said the analysts were still struggling with whether that essentially destroyed the U.S. government’s case blaming the rebels. 

The Los Angeles Times article on Tuesday’s briefing seemed to address the same information this way: “U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 [anti-aircraft missile] was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems.” 

That statement about a possible “defector” might explain why some analysts thought they saw soldiers in Ukrainian army uniforms tending to the missile battery in eastern Ukraine. But there is another obvious explanation that the U.S. intelligence community seems unwilling to accept: that the missile may have been launched by someone working for the Ukrainian military. 

In other words, we may be seeing another case of the U.S. government “fixing the intelligence” around a desired policy outcome, as occurred in the run-up to war with Iraq.

Then there was the decision in Brussels at a meeting of European foreign ministers to draw up a new list of sanctions without actually imposing any. Thomas Erdbrink reports in "Despite Anger Over Downed Jetliner, Europe Shies Away From Sanctions on Russia" that

At Tuesday’s meeting, the foreign ministers agreed to draw up a new, broader list of targets for sanctions, including Russian individuals and entities, said Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief. 

But no new additional measures were imposed, reflecting fears among some Europeans that tougher sanctions would invite reprisals by Russia against countries dependent on its energy supplies, harming the Continent’s economic growth.

With the exception of ghoulish updates, seemingly every 45 minutes, on the location of the MH17 passenger corpses as they are returned to Holland, the U.S. sponsored information war that began last Thursday when the Boeing 777 was shot down over Donbass has fizzled.

David Herszenhorn's "Ukrainians, Awaiting International Action After Crash, Fear Complacency" gives vent to the junta's anger that its attempt to pin the blame on Russia and Novorossiya have so far fallen flat:

Even President Petro O. Poroshenko, reluctant to offend allies in the West, has subtly expressed growing exasperation in recent days. He has urged the United States Congress to designate the main separatist groups in eastern Ukraine as terrorist groups, a step he took without first seeking approval from the White House. 

And after a call on Tuesday with the prime minister of Finland, Alexander Stubb, Mr. Poroshenko urged an additional international response. “The Ukrainian president emphasizes that further efforts must be focused on preventing Russia from supporting terrorists,” Mr. Poroshenko’s office said in a statement, adding that he “hopes for international contribution.”

The junta's petulance is nearly identical to the reaction displayed by the Syrian National Coalition when Obama decided at the last moment not to bomb Damascus, choosing instead to go with the Russian-brokered deal to rid Syria of her chemical weapons in the wake of the Ghouta sarin attack.

Then, the Ghouta sarin attack was almost certainly orchestrated by jihadis operating with the support of foreign governments with the intention of blaming the Syrian government and thereby justifying direct Western military intervention. Now, with the destruction of MH17, a similar attempt is being made. The junta has orchestrated an atrocity that it is attempting to blame on Russia in order to elicit greater Western intervention. And the junta is failing.

The Pro Bowl

I begin work each day the same way. I stow my shoulder bag under the desk, take off my coat and then head into the break room to get a cup of water from the cooler and scan the headlines of the Seattle Times that's usually on one of the lunch tables. Today top of the fold there was a color photo of Russell Wilson and a few words announcing his standout performance in yesterday's Pro Bowl. Intrigued I skipped to C section and read the first several paragraphs of Oskar Garcia's AP story. Wilson was 8 of 10 passing for 98 yards and three touchdowns. But what caught my eye was the following quote: "Whether the NFL's all-star game will return next season is a something the league will ponder the next few months after the NFC's 62-35 blowout of the AFC on Sunday." I folded the Sports section back into the center of the paper and returned to my desk.

Walking up to the Douglass Truth Library at lunch I thought about the last Pro Bowl that I remember watching, and that was the 1985 Pro Bowl. And the only reason I remember it is because Mark Gastineau delivered a cheap, vicious hit to Joe Montana and it pissed me off. I and my ex-wife, who was my live-in girlfriend at the time, had returned from the grocery store. It was a beautiful, sunny late January day in Berkeley, and I think I had just turned on the TV when Gastineau, no doubt with cocaine and steroids coursing through his veins, blindsided Montana. And I remember that Montana didn't appreciate it.

On leaving work this evening I stopped off in the break room and grabbed the Sports page and put it in my bag to read when I got home. I wanted to finish the story to see if it was in fact a possibility that the Pro Bowl will be eliminated. Upon arriving home after a brief stop at the Capitol Hill library this is what I found out from Oskar Garcia: "Roger Goodell has said the Pro Bowl won't be played again if play didn't improve this year. Last year, fans in Hawaii booed as linemen were clearly not trying."

Don't worry. The Pro Bowl will be around for a long time.

The question that I have is what happened to the old telecasts of the East versus West AFL All-Star Game? The last one was played in January of 1970, prior to the merger with the NFL, in the Astrodome. Were recordings of these games made? Were they saved? Are they accessible? The NFL probably has them under lock and key (like everything else). Last year I was able to stream old episodes of NFL Game of Week on hulu. Now, no more.