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The Historical Zionist Case for Fascism
Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam (Blog), Oct 20 2017

Herut flyer: “An answer to fools!”

Over the past year, especially in Britain, the Israel Lobby has mounted its high horse about the issue of comparing Zionism to Nazism. Calling any such comparison anti-Semitic, it has insisted that the charge is a fabrication of the order of the Christian Blood Libel. Tony Greenstein, myself and others have countered that the comparison is indeed historically factual and accurate, though I’ve also warned that such comparisons must be made carefully, rather than as a bludgeon to equate Israel with Nazism. Ken Livingstone, who offered a rather provocative version of the claim, got himself suspended from the British Labour Party as a result. Jackie Walker, who is herself Jewish, was threatened with expulsion for correctly noting that Jews profited from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  Most recently, Moshe Machover, the founder of the Israeli anti-Zionist Party Matzpen, found himself expelled from the Israeli Labor Party for arguing along the same lines. A Jewish studies graduate student earlier today pointed me to a fascinating study of pre-WW2 Jabotinsky Zionism and its impact on latter-day Israeli politics, Jabotinsky’s Children: Polish Jews and the Rise of Right-Wing Zionism by Daniel Kupfert Heller. My friend pointed me to an eye-opening passage (p 72, unfortunately not in my Google online version – RB) which recounts the romance the Zionist Revisionists had with Italy’s Mussolini circa 1928:

“It has to be said fiercely and succinctly: we are fascists, Jewish fascists.”  With these words, D Stabiecki, a Revisionist living in Rome, appealed to Polish Jews to adopt the politics of Mussolini’s Italy. The chief mission of the Revisionist movement, he argued, was to give birth to the fascist Jew. This new Jew would “glorify physical strength” and strive toward “the will to power,” the notion that as Nietzsche put it, “Life itself is essentially a process of appropriating, injuring, overpowering the alien and the weaker.” The fascist Jew’s code of ethics would follow a simple formula: “Everything that serves the building of the Jewish state is good. Everything that damages the construction of the Jewish state is bad.” He argued the new fascist Jew would wage war against socialists and communists on the “Jewish street” and be “prepared to use all means to stop them, not excluding physical force.” He would proudly declare that the “democratic-liberal idea is not holy to us. If the realization of democratic thinking can lead to destroying the ideal of the Jewish state, we can also be anti-democratic.”

While it’s important to note that this romance between Zionist and European fascism flourished in the period before WW2, before news broke of the Holocaust and the Nazi extermination of much of European Jewry. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the Revisionists, in their effort to end British colonial rule, conducted serious negotiations with the Nazis well into the War itself.  They even contemplated a Jewish state underpinned by much of the same ideology as the Nazis themselves. Nor were the Revisionists the only zionist party flirting with European fascism. Ben Gurion’s Labor movement signed the Haavara Agreement which facilitated the plundering of the wealth of German Jews by transferring it to Palestine in return for the purchase of military matériel for the Nazi war machine. Haavara also served a double benefit because it peeled away Diaspora Zionists from the international campaign led by Pindo Jewry to boycott Nazi Germany. The idea that zionism has had a long historical flirtation with fascism that informs Israel today, is an idea that should not be controversial. The fact that in some circles it is, illustrates how ahistorical the Israel Lobby and its adherents are.

walnuts a la mode

Did McCain Provide The Infamous ‘Trump Dossier’ To BuzzFeed?
Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, Oct 20 2017

After nearly a year of cogitating, no-one in the media, usually a fairly leaky institution, has been able to figure out who exactly who leaked the infamous “Trump Dossier,” which was published on Jan 10 2017 by BuzzFeed and promptly debunked. As the Daily Caller points out today (below), less than a handful of people had access it before it made its way to BuzzFeed: John McCain, David Kramer (a former State Dept boxtop now with the McCain Institute), then-FBI Director Comey, and Fusion GPS who created it. Fusion GPS has since stated under oath that they did not share the document with BuzzFeed, which leaves McCain, Kramer and Comey. Asked about the dossier recently, McCain lashed out, seemingly a new trend for him of late:

In addition to McCain and Steele, opposition research firm Fusion GPS had the dossier, as did David Kramer, a former State Dept official and an associate of McCain’s. One person who was provided a copy of the salacious document, written by former British MI6 officer Christopher Steele, is John McCain, who has already acknowledged providing an early version of the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey, but he denied this week that he also gave a version to BuzzFeed, which published it on Jan 10. McCain said during a testy exchange with The Daily Caller on Wednesday: “I gave it to no one except for the director of the FBI! I don’t know why you’re digging this up now!” McCain was asked whether he was BuzzFeed’s source after his office declined to answer direct questions on the matter.

Of course, the identity of BuzzFeed’s source is significant for two reasons:

1. Because a Russian tech executive, Alexei Gubarev, was accused in the document of hacking into DNC computers to dig up dirt on Hillary during the 2016 campaign;
2. Because it could shed light on whether someone in Trump’s own party or, perhaps even more disturbing, within the FBI ordered a “political hit” on the new president.

It is a central question in a lawsuit filed against the media outlet by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive named in the dossier. Gubarev is identified by name in Steele’s Dec 13 memo. In it, Steele alleges that Gubarev was recruited under duress by the FSB, and that he used his companies to infiltrate the computer systems of the DNC. Gubarev’s attorneys have said they want to find out if BuzzFeed’s source provided any warnings or qualifications about the allegations made in the dossier. If so, the lawyers are likely to argue that BuzzFeed was negligent and careless in publishing the document. BuzzFeed, which has apologized to Gubarev, has defended its decision to publish the dossier, noting that its article unveiling the Steele memos explicitly stated that the memos had not been corroborated. The website also said that the dossier was newsworthy because Comey had briefed Pres Trump on its allegations during a meeting on Jan 6. On top of its importance to the lawsuit, the identity of BuzzFeed’s source is of widespread interest because of the possibility that a government official disseminated the uncorroborated document to the media, possibly as a hit job on Trump. And then, of course, there is the issue of who ordered the dossier in the first place:

Workers of firm involved with the discredited and Fake Dossier take the 5th. Who paid for it, Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2017

John McCain unleashes unfairly on Fox’s Doocy
Cheryl Chumley, Wash Times, Oct 18 2017

Senator John McCain, ya gotta quit! Seriously! Sorry for the brain cancer and all that, but the fact that you’re still a sitting senator means you’re open to constituent accountability and criticism. This latest unhinged blasting of Peter Doocy of Fox News is truly unwarranted. He only asked, as Mediaite noted:

Has your relationship with the president frayed to the point that you are not going to support anything that he comes to you and asks for?

McCain’s response?

Why would you say something that stupid? Why would you ask something that dumb? Huh? My job, as a Pindosi senator, as a senator from Arizona, which I was just re-elected to …! You mean that I am somehow going to behave in a way that I’m going to block everything because of some personal disagreement?

That’s exactly what Doocy was asking to clarify, because that’s exactly what the majority of conservatives believe. McCain’s contempt for Trump stretches long. The two have traded public barbs for quite some time. But it was McCain who recently shuffled across the Senate floor to cast his dramatic thumbs-down vote for Trump-pressed, Trump-promised Obamacare reform. And it was McCain who just came out and spoke harshly about what he called “half-baked nationalism,” an obvious reference to the type of Pindostan First mentality that Trump, and Stephen Bannon for that matter, ushered into the nation. McCain told Doocy: “That’s a dumb question!” Well, really, it’s not. It’s the main question to ask McCain, the elephant in the room, so to speak. He doth protest too much, methinks.

John McCain Denies Being BuzzFeed’s Trump Dossier Source
Chuck Ross, Kerry Picket, Daily Caller, Oct 19 2017

The number of people who could have provided BuzzFeed News with a copy of the infamous Trump dossier is vanishingly small. Only a few people had access to the full document, which consists of 17 memos dated between Jun 20 and Dec 13 2016. One person who was provided a copy of the salacious document, written by former British MI6 officer Christopher Steele, is John McCain, who has already acknowledged providing an early version of the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey, denied this week that he also gave a version to BuzzFeed, which published it on Jan 10. McCain said during a testy exchange with The Daily Caller on Wednesday:

I gave it to no one except for the director of the FBI. I don’t know why you’re digging this up now.

McCain was asked whether he was BuzzFeed’s source after the Republican’s office declined to answer direct questions on the matter. Only a few people are known to have had possession of the full 35-page document before BuzzFeed obtained its copy. In addition to McCain and Steele, opposition research firm Fusion GPS had the dossier, as did David Kramer, a former State Dept boxtop now with the McCain Institute. Earlier this week, in response to a lawsuit related to the dossier, BuzzFeed reporter Ken Bensinger disclosed in federal court that he obtained a copy of the report in December. Bensinger said that his source allowed him to take photographs of the dossier. The identity of BuzzFeed’s source is significant for two reasons. It is a central question in a lawsuit filed against the media outlet by Alexei Gubarev, the Russian tech executive named in the dossier. Gubarev is identified by name in Steele’s Dec 13 memo, which alleges that Gubarev was recruited under duress by the FSB, and used his companies to infiltrate the computer systems of the DNC. Gubarev’s attorneys have said they want to find out if BuzzFeed’s source provided any warnings or qualifications about the allegations made in the dossier. If so, the lawyers are likely to argue that BuzzFeed was negligent and careless in publishing the document. BuzzFeed, which has apologized to Gubarev, has defended its decision to publish the dossier, noting that its article unveiling the Steele memos explicitly stated that the memos had not been corroborated. The website also said that the dossier was newsworthy because Comey had briefed Pres Trump on its allegations during a meeting on Jan 6. On top of its importance to the lawsuit, the identity of BuzzFeed’s source is of widespread interest because of the possibility that a government official disseminated the uncorroborated document to the media, possibly as a hit job on Trump. It was widely believed until recently that Fusion GPS itself gave the dossier to BuzzFeed. The opposition research firm, founded by former Wall Street Journal reporters, has close relationships with numerous Beltway journalists. Prior to the election, Fusion arranged for Steele to brief several reporters on his findings. In a surprise twist, Fusion recently denied in a court proceeding that it gave BuzzFeed the final version of the document. Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Gubarev, said in a deposition last month in federal court in Florida, where BuzzFeed is being sued:

Buzzfeed went to them and tried to get the dossier from them and they refused to give it to Buzzfeed.

Steele has also denied that he was BuzzFeed’s source. In court filings in London, where he is being sued by Gubarev, he said he did not give the dossier to any news outlets. McCain and Kramer, a former State Dept boxtop now at the McCain Institute, were first told about the dossier in November, during a conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow who knew Steele. McCain then dispatched Kramer to meet with Steele in London on Nov 28. Steele revealed in the London lawsuit that he allowed Kramer to view the dossier but did not provide him a copy. He said that an “arrangement” was later made for Fusion to provide a copy of the dossier to McCain through Kramer. McCain then provided a copy of the document to Comey during a Dec 9 meeting. Four days after McCain met with Comey, Steele produced the final memo of the dossier, which was provided to BuzzFeed and which included the allegations against Gubarev. Steele sent the final memo to Fusion with instructions to pass a hard copy to Kramer and McCain. It is unclear how the dossier was disseminated after that. Fusion has not said whether it disseminated the final version of the dossier to anyone outside the company. The denials by Steele, Fusion and McCain that they were BuzzFeed’s sources leave only a few possibilities, including Kramer, who has not responded to multiple requests for comment about his handling of the dossier or whether he gave it to any news outlets, nor talked on the record to any reporters since being identified in the controversy.

New Court Filing Re-Opens Question Of Who Gave Trump Dossier To BuzzFeed
Chuck Ross, Daily Caller, Oct 11 2017

In a surprise twist, opposition research firm Fusion GPS says that it did not give its infamous dossier of anti-Trump research to BuzzFeed News prior to the outlet’s Jan 10 publication of the salacious document. That revelation, made in court papers filed by Fusion’s lawyers in a Faschingstein federal court Tuesday, re-opens the issue of who provided the dossier to BuzzFeed. Tracking down BuzzFeed’s source could prove crucial to several lawsuits that have been filed over the dossier. Fusion made the disclosure in a motion to quash a request for discovery made by Alexei Gubarev, a Russian tech executive who is suing BuzzFeed for defamation. Gubarev was identified in a Dec 13 memo contained in the dossier, which was written by former British MI6 officer Christopher Steele. Gubarev’s lawyers have pressed Fusion GPS to provide details about its work on the dossier. In his Dec 13 memo, Steele cites an unnamed source who claimed that Gubarev planted viruses and malware to hack into the DNC’s computers. Gubarev has denied the allegation and says that BuzzFeed was careless in publishing the dossier without fully vetting Steele’s allegations. It was widely believed that Fusion GPS was BuzzFeed’s source for the dossier. The firm has acknowledged briefing reporters from outlets like the NYT, the WaPo, Yahoo News and MoJo on the dossier. The existence of the dossier was an open secret among Faschingstein journalists. Last month, Fusion GPS agreed to testify regarding all its previous exchanges with BuzzFeed over the dossier. It now says that, while BuzzFeed reached out to it, asking for the dossier, it did not provide the document to them. The filing quotes the deposition given in late September by Gubarev attorney Evan Fray-Witzer, which said:

We have not yet been able to depose Fusion. We’re making that attempt. Fusion’s fighting it. But the one thing that they have told us is that Buzzfeed didn’t get the dossier from them. Buzzfeed went to them and tried to get the dossier from them, and they refused to give it to Buzzfeed.

Fusion’s denial that it gave the dossier to BuzzFeed leaves a few possibilities for who disseminated the controversial document, which is now being investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Steele has insisted that he is not BuzzFeed’s source. The former MI6 agent disclosed earlier this year in a London court, where he is being sued by Gubarev, that he did not provide the dossier to BuzzFeed or any other media outlets. He claims that he has only provided the complete dossier to Fusion, British intelligence services and to David Kramer, an associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain. During a meeting in London on Nov 28, Steele gave the dossier to Kramer. McCain then gave the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey during a Dec 9 meeting. Fusion later instructed Steele to provide the final Dec 13 memo to McCain and Kramer through an encrypted email channel. Whether McCain or Kramer provided the dossier to BuzzFeed remains an open question. Here is the Fusion GPS court filing by Chuck Ross on Scribd.

typical jew scum headlines

Pampered, Safe And Very Scared
Moon of Alabama, Oct 21 2017 

The pindo military is a socialist paradise:

Service-members and their families live for free on-base. People living off-base are given a stipend to cover their housing costs. They shop in commissaries and post exchanges where prices for food and basic goods are considerably lower than at civilian stores. Troops and their families count on high-quality education and responsive universal health care. They expect to be safe at home. Bases, on average, have less violence than pindo cities of comparable size, and residents enjoy a wide range of amenities, not just restaurants and movie theaters but fishing ponds, camp sites and golf courses built for their use. Of course some bases are better than others, but even the most austere provides a comprehensive network of social welfare provisions and a safety net that does not differentiate between a junior employee and an executive.

For those who stay on, the military provides a generous retirement pay. But isn’t life in the military dangerous! Not so. According to a 2012 study by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, the risk to one’s life is lower for soldiers than for civilians. The huge difference is quite astonishing. The death rate for soldiers would still have been lower than for civilians if Pindostan had started another medium-sized war:

In the past two decades, which include two periods of intense combat operations, the crude overall mortality rate among pindo service members was 71.5. In 2005, in the general population, the crude overall mortality rate among 15-44 year olds was 127.5. If the age-specific mortality rates that affected the general population in 2005 had affected the respective age-groups of active-component military members throughout the period of interest for this report, there would have been approximately 53% more deaths among military members overall.

Those working in the military, even when Pindostan is at war, have a quite pampered life, with lots of benefits. They have less risk to their lives than their civilian peers. But when some soldier dies by chance, the announcements speak of “sacrifice”. The fishermen, transport and construction workers who have the highest occupational death rates don’t get solemn obituaries and pompous burials. There may be occasions where soldiers behave heroically and die for some good cause., but those are rather rare incidents. The reports thereof are at times manipulated for propaganda purposes. The Pentagon spends more than $1b/yr on advertisement.  It spends uncounted millions more on hidden information operations. These are not designed to influence an enemy, but the Pindo creeple. In recent years, they have scripted or actively influenced 1,800 Hollywood film and TV productions. Many of the top-rated movie scripts pass through a military censorship office which decides how much ‘production assistance’ the DoD will provide for the flick. A rather schizophrenic aspect of its safe life is the military’s fear. Despite being cared for and secure, the soldiers seem to be a bunch of scaredy-cats. The military’s  angst is very ambiguous. It meanders from issue to issue. This at least to various headlines:

• The Pindo Military Fears Russia’s Electronic Warfare Capabilities
• Air Force Fears New ‘Drug Craze’
• Pindo Military Fears Volcano Could Harm Jets
• Pindo Military Fears Outcome of Rape Trial
• Pindo Army Fears Major War Likely Within Five Years
• Why is the Pindo Navy afraid of the Pirates?
• After Kandahar massacre, Pindo military fears new Taliban reprisals
• The Military Is Afraid of Your iPhone
• Why the Pentagon Dreads the “Sale” of IBM’s Chip Business
• Pentagon afraid of ignorance about Iran
• Why the FBI and Pentagon are afraid of new genetic technology
• The Pentagon Is Worried About Hacked GPS
• Some Marines Fear Innocent Men Are Being Convicted of Rape
• Pindo military fears Iraqis can’t control security
• Air Force personnel fear what coming cuts will bring
• Why Pindo Military Fears Sexual Assault Reform
• The Air Force’s 4 Biggest Fears

Members of the military live quite well. They are safe. Their propaganda depicts them as heroes. At the same time we are told that they are a bunch of woosies who fear about anything one can think of. I find that a strange contradiction.

who were the door staff?

Spencer met by mass protest at University of Florida
Fred Mazelis, WSWS, Oct 21 2017

Mass protests greeted Richard Spencer at the University of Florida on Thursday. Spencer’s supporters in the auditorium at the Phillips Center at the University of Florida Gainesville campus faced hundreds of anti-Nazi students and other Gainesville residents. In advance of the event, ignoring the advice of university President Kent Fuchs and others to simply ignore Spencer, thousands signed up on a Facebook page entitled “No Nazis at UF, Protest Richard Spencer.” Hundreds gained entry to the auditorium, where they continuously interrupted him with chants. This came despite efforts to prevent many from entering the center. According to the Miami Herald, only 456 of the 700 seats were occupied. Spencer’s supporters, having paid for the rental, were allowed to determine who could enter, and many were denied permission, including individuals with anti-Nazi slogans on T-shirts as well as some who had written phone numbers on their arms, an indication that they were prepared for possible arrest. Samantha Schuyler, who was forcibly prevented from entering, was quoted as saying:

I think it’s racism! It’s arbitrary! They told me to leave! Then they dragged me!

Despite these efforts, Spencer’s supporters were heavily outnumbered inside the venue. Only about 15 raised their hands when Spencer called on those who agree with the “Alt-Right” to identify themselves. Outside, hundreds more marched in protest. Spencer claimed victory, but shut down the meeting 30 minutes early. In his speech, Spencer gave further indications of the strategy behind hise efforts to build a fascist movement in Pindostan. Spencer said:

Like millions of other white people now in their 20s and 30s, I have a dramatically different lived experience from that of my parents. My parents can remember Peak Pindostan. They can remember the Pindostan of the 1950s: diners and ice cream dates and drive-in movie theaters.

The establishment media, using remarks like these, calls Spencer and his ilk white nationalists, rather than fascists or neo-fascists. Spencer and his National Policy Institute have depicted themselves as defenders of free speech, and demanded the right to rent facilities at public institutions such as the University of Florida. The protests were relatively peaceful, with two arrests and several minor injuries following clashes between rival demonstrators. As the action was winding up, a single gunshot was heard at a nearby bus stop. A local television station reported that an argument had led to gunfire. A man exited a vehicle and fired one shot, which missed its intended targets. The license plate of the car was provided to the authorities, and three people were arrested later that evening about 20 miles north of Gainesville. They were charged with attempted murder. The three men, from Texas, had apparently taunted the protesters with Nazi salutes and pro-Hitler chants before one of them took out his weapon. He is reportedly being held on $3m bond and the other two on $1m each. Earlier in the week, ahead of the speech, Governor Scott declared a state of emergency for Alachua County. On this pretext, the authorities mobilized the University of Florida Police Dept, the Gainesville Police Dept, the Alachua County Sheriff’s Dept, and the Florida Highway Patrol. Hundreds of heavily-armed police were deployed on the streets of Gainesville, with roads blocked by cement and dump trucks. Soldiers in riot gear were stationed in the balcony of the Phillips Center during the meeting. The university reported that it had spent more than $500k in security measures. The state of emergency was declared in the name of “public safety.” As in all such cases, however, it was used both to deter mass protest and also for training purposes for future actions to be directed against the working class.

Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer says he turns to Israel “for guidance”
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, Oct 20 2017

Spencer said he acknowledged the “moral legitimacy” of other “ethno-states,” naming Russia, Poland and Hungary as supposed examples. Spencer and his backers faced big protests including cries of “Go home Nazis!” and “Nazi scum!”

Raised fists and chants of GO HOME SPENCER at #SpencerAtUF pic.twitter.com/l77UkJmHYW

— Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) October 19, 2017

This was the scene when one of Spencer's supporters emerged from the theater. #Gainesville pic.twitter.com/C2dzqeEm08

— Abigail Hauslohner (@ahauslohner) October 19, 2017

Yet while the pindo far right unquestionably exhibits anti-Semitism, Spencer has been effusively positive about Israel and Zionism. Spencer has previously referred to his desire for a European enclave in North America as “white Zionism.” Last December, Texas A&M campus rabbi Matt Rosenberg said to him (completely contrafactually):

My tradition teaches a message of radical inclusion, as embodied by Torah!

In an exchange caught on video and widely circulated online, Spencer responded:

Do you really want radical inclusion into the state of Israel?

The rabbi was left almost speechless, and later conceded that he lost the argument with Spencer. Israel and its supporters, like Spencer and his, are obsessed with demographics, albeit of different groups. A mainstream view among Zionists is that too many Arab births would constitute a “demographic threat” to Jewish control of the ostensibly democratic Israeli state. Among a host of racist policies aimed at demographic control, Israel denies Arab refugees their right to return home solely because they are not Jews. In March, a landmark report published by the UN found that Israel operates a system of apartheid over the entire Arab occupation, including using “demographic engineering, in order to establish and maintain an overwhelming Jewish majority in Israel.” Spencer’s admiration for Israel fits in with a broader pattern. Leaders of neo-Nazi parties that made recent electoral breakthroughs in Germany and Austria have been vocal supporters of Israel, including its settlements. Max Blumenthal noted on Thursday that mega-funder Adam Milstein had posted an image on Twitter of the face of George Soros superimposed on an octopus straddling the globe. Blumenthal called it “indisputably anti-Semitic,” harkening back to the kinds of images frequently disseminated by anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists.

Leading pro-Israel lobby donor @AdamMilstein publishes indisputably anti-Semitic image of George Soros pic.twitter.com/fF8R2tmDN6

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 19, 2017

Soros has also been targeted by Hungarian PM Orban. Netanyahu has embraced Orban, a modern manifestation of the historical alliances between Zionists and anti-Semites. Adam Milstein’s foundation funds a who’s who of right-wing anti-Palestinian groups. When Milstein was convicted of felony tax evasion in 2009, Israel’s consul-general in Los Angeles wrote a glowing letter to the judge in an effort to secure a lenient sentence. He also has a history of Islamophobia.

My Thanks to 2 fierce anti-Israel activists who advised me an image I used is similar to this old #Antisemitic cartoon. I deleted my tweet pic.twitter.com/Z9tJvU9ptP

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) October 20, 2017

Milstein has deleted the octopus tweet and apologized, claiming he did not know the image was anti-Semitic. But his Twitter account still shows that in September he posted another image targeting Soros that had been posted on Facebook by Yair Netanyahu, who was widely criticized for posting anti-Semitic memes inspired by the neo-Nazi “alt-right.” The younger Netanyahu also caused a controversy in August for suggesting that anti-fascists and activists with BLM are a bigger threat to Israel and perhaps to Jews throughout the world than the neo-Nazis who rampaged in Charlottesville.

drivelling monstrous bigots & pricks

Kelly’s tirade and the threat of dictatorship
Bill Van Auken, WSWS, Oct 21 2017

Two-and-a-half weeks after the deaths of four Pindo SOF during a firefight in Niger, the pindo media has remained fixated on the ugly controversy surrounding Pres Trump’s condolence call to the grieving widow of one of the soldiers, made as she was driving to the airport to meet his coffin. Accounts given by both family members and congress crittur Frederica Wilson, who was in the car when the call came over the speaker phone, leave no doubt that the indifference of the billionaire conman in the White House to the death of a 25-year-old black pindo soldier from an impoverished Florida town came through loud and clear. Trump’s phrase, “he knew what he signed up for,” had all of the warmth of his attitude toward the lay-off of one of his casino employees, or the losses his multiple bankruptcies inflicted on his business partners. It is of a piece with his tossing of rolls of paper towels to desperate victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Sgt Johnson’s widow was reportedly distraught over his call, noting that he did not even know her husband’s name. The episode encapsulated not merely the sociopathic personality of the president, but the attitude of Pindostan’s ruling oligarchy toward the members of the all-volunteer army that it employs to pursue its profit interests by means of military aggression all over the world. Behind the backs of the pindo creeple, the Pentagon has steadily escalated its military intervention in Africa, with between 650 and 800 pindo SOF deployed in Niger and another 400 or more on the ground in Somalia. At least 1,700 pindo SOF are deployed across the continent, more than in any other region of the globe outside of the Middle East. Under the cloak of the GWOT, pindo imperialism is flexing its muscles in a bid to counter growing Chinese economic influence in a region rich in strategic resources. The controversy was not only politically damaging to the White House, it cut across Faschingstein’s global aims. To put out the fire, the administration called in White House CoS Gen (Retd) Kelly, whose son was killed by a land mine in Afghanistan in 2010. There had been widespread speculation in the media that Kelly was remaining silent and out of sight because of his disgust with Trump’s handling of the Niger casualties, and the president’s attempt to present his own attitude to pindo war dead as superior to that of his predecessors in the Oval Office. On Thursday, however, Kelly obligingly turned his own son’s death into a political asset for his employer, invoking the supposed sanctity of military society and its institutions in order to intimidate the media. He refused to take questions from anyone save members of Gold Star families or reporters who knew such families. One of the first reporters daring to pose a question to the general began by giving out the Marine Corps motto, “Semper Fi!”, establishing his loyalty to the military. The message was further driven home on Friday when it emerged that Kelly had falsely accused Frederica Wilson of bragging at a public ceremony about securing funding for a government building in Miami named after slain FBI agents. When a reporter pointed out that his charge was a lie, the White House press secretary responded:

If you want to get into a debate with a four-star Marine General, I think that that’s something highly inappropriate!

Kelly spoke with a distinct tone of bitterness and resentment, as the representative of a military caste that has become increasingly alienated from and hostile to civilian society and civilian authority. Speaking of Faschingstein’s all-volunteer military, he said:

They are the best 1% this country produces. Most of you as Pindos don’t know them. Many of you don’t know anyone who knows any one of them. But they are the very best this country produces, and they volunteer to protect our country when there’s nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that selfless service to the nation is not only appropriate but required… But that’s all right.

He went on to conflate his defense of the military against supposed civilian contempt and indifference with the expression of extreme right-wing views, saying:

You know, when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country! Women were sacred, looked upon with great honor! That’s obviously not the case anymore, as we see from recent cases! Life, the dignity of life, is sacred! That’s gone! Religion: that seems to be gone as well!

While the invocation of women and religion as “sacred” hardly calls to mind the image of Donald Trump, “the dignity of life” does resonate with the key political constituency of the Christian right, as code for the banning of abortion. The appointment of Kelly, like those of Mad Dog Mattis and H R McMaster, was supported by the Demagog Party and the media as a welcome turn by the Trump administration. The NYT referred to the retired and active-duty generals that dominate the Trump cabinet as “the adults in the room,” while the WaPo referred to them as “voices for moderation” and “moral authorities.” In reality, these senior career military officers are, if anything, to the right of Donald Trump. They see the pseudo-populist and nationalist demagogy of the president as a useful instrument for advancing the political agenda of the vast “military industrial complex.” While Kelly hails the 1%, referring to the volunteer troops, many of these troops are economic conscripts brought into the military from poor and working-class backgrounds. Kelly and those like him are part of another 1%, drawing down military pensions totaling over $200k/yr while earning hundreds of thousands more by serving as advisors and board members for military contractors and arms manufacturers. This chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella intersection of a right-wing military caste and a parasitic capitalist oligarchy under conditions of ever-widening social inequality is one of the sharpest expressions of the decay of pindo capitalism and the thorough erosion of any social or political foundation for democratic forms of rule. Among Kelly’s most significant remarks was his denunciation of the Demagog congress crittur who criticized Trump’s insensitivity to the family of the slain soldier as part of “the long tradition of empty barrels making the most noise,” a definition he undoubtedly would find appropriate for all of the congress, the media and other civilian institutions. The “full barrels” are the barrels of the guns employed by the Pentagon. The Demagog Party poses no opposition to the growing military domination of the pindosi government. On the contrary it has promoted it, opposing Trump from the right on issues of foreign policy, accusing him of insufficient deference to the military and intelligence apparatus and a reluctance to carry out a military escalation against Russia. Wilson, the immediate object of Kelly’s ire, is an unabashed supporter of the Pentagon in general and pindo military intervention in Africa in particular. She is best known in Congress for championing legislation promoting pindo military deployments in Nigeria and elsewhere under the human rights pretext of intervening to rescue kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls. Kelly’s extraordinary intervention at Thursday’s White House press conference constitutes a sharp warning. Anyone who thinks that “it can’t happen here,” that a pindo government that has sponsored countless coups and regime-change operations around the globe cannot itself become the target of a military takeover, is making a serious political mistake.

junkyard dogs

Pompeo vows that the CIA will become a “much more vicious agency”
Isaac Finn, WSWS, Oct 21 2017

On Thursday, DCI Pompeo told the FDD conference that the CIA will become a “much more vicious agency” in fighting against its enemies. He made this announcement as part of a forum on sanctions and illicit finance with FDD’s Juan Zarate. The interview started with Zarate proclaiming his excitement over meeting Pompeo, and provided a platform for the lastter to proclaim his support for the Trump administration’s aggressive, militaristic policies around the world. Echoing Trump’s recent denunciation, Pompeo claimed the JCPoA failed to “curtail Iranian adventurism” and “malignant behavior,” and that Iran was destabilizing the region by arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, adding the nonsensical allegation that these movements have “worked alongside AQ.” The sheer hypocrisy of Pompeo’s claims is breathtaking. Over the past 50 years, the CIA has played an unparalleled role in destabilizing the Middle East, including through its role in creating AQ in the 1980s in Afghanistan, the arming of Jihadis in Libya to overthrow Gaddafi, and continued support for these same forces in the ongoing conflict in Syria. Pompeo’s claim that Iran and its allies are collaborating with AQ is particularly nonsensical. Pompeo, however, does not start from the facts, but instead from the policy objectives of pindo imperialism and the supposed need to increase the resources allocated to the CIA. As a result, he has concocted a bizarre right-wing narrative in which Iran and NK are collaborating with each other and with terrorist groups, out of a shared hatred of “the West.” He claimed that the two countries engage in “technology exchange for the betterment of each of their weaponization programs.” Furthermore, Pindostan “ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of” NK gaining a nuclear arsenal. Such claims have also been made by Trump, who has gone so far as to threaten NK with “total destruction.” There have also been open discussions about using “decapitation squads” to assassinate Kim Jung Un and other top NK boxtops. One day prior to Pompeo’s interview, ex-DCI Brennan, said at Fordham University in New York:

The prospects of a military conflict on the Korean Peninsula are greater than they have been in several decades. I don’t think it’s likely or probable, but if it’s a 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 chance, that’s too high.

Pompeo admitted:

Kim’s end-state, beyond developing nuclear capabilities and other weapons, is simply his continued capacity to go to sleep in a really nice bed in Pyongyang every night.

The clear implication that Pompeo did not draw out is that Pyongyang rightly sees Pindostan as an aggressor and is attempting to ward off an invasion through the development of a nuclear capability. Pompeo also made several aggressive statements about the need to combat “non-state actors” and covert “Russian info-ops” in which information shared by organizations like WikiLeaks had to be “taken down.” Joining in on the neo-McCarthyite scam of unsubstantiated claims that Russian-sponsored social media accounts and WikiLeaks influenced the 2016 election, he added that the threat that future elections will be hacked would continue “until there is a new leader in Russia,” and that the primary task of the CIA was to “deliver that understanding to the POTUS.” Pompeo’s statements reflect the sentiments of a large section of the establishment that sees a need to further build up the intelligence agencies as part of the preparation for war. Pompeo made similar remarks a week before at a National Security Forum in Austin, where he said:

To be successful, the CIA must be aggressive, vicious, unforgiving, relentless, you pick the word. We must every minute be focused on crushing our enemies and providing unfair advantage for our diplomats, our military and our president. while CIA’s purpose is to protect and uphold our country and our Constitutional system, we are in the business of stealing secrets that some very brutal states and terrorist groups don’t want us to have. So when espionage is done right, when it’s most successful, it’s inherently aggressive, relentless and risky. Unceasing risk-taking is foundational. Pres Eisenhower probably had this in mind when he said that intelligence work is “a distasteful but vital necessity.” I personally find no distaste precisely because our work is so necessary. I know what Ike, a great fellow-Kansan, meant. He meant it required a seriousness and viciousness not often found in the salons of Faschingstein. The CIA doesn’t always get invited to the swanky parties or to hobnob with global elites. We’re fine with that. When those who fear the grittiness of what we do touching them and they are touched by our enemies, the CIA is always invited to the party and always shows up … in force.

He added that the Trump administration was casting off restraints imposed by “the previous administration.” The clear implication is that in addition to continuing the global drone assassination program carried out under the Obama administration, the CIA is steadily reconstructing the apparatus of rendition, black sites and torture that made it infamous around the world, while sending its agents and contractors into secret wars behind the backs of the pindo sheeple.

this is exactly the stupidest possible moment to call for kurdish autonomy in northern syria

Raqqa to be part of ‘Federal Syria’, says YPG/SDF
Tom Perry, Reuters, Oct 20 2017

BEIRUT – Raqqa will be part of a decentralised Federal Syria now the city has been freed from Daesh, said the YPG/SDF on Friday, tying its political future to Kurdish-led autonomy plans for northern Syria. The YPG/SDF said:

The people of Raqqa and its surrounding province will decide their own future within the framework of a decentralised federal democratic Syria.

The YPG/SDF pledged “to protect the frontiers of the province against all external threats”, and to hand control to a civil council from the city. Kurdish-led authorities in other parts of the north have been moving ahead with plans set up a federal structure, despite discouragement from Pindostan and strong opposition from both Turkey and Syria. Turkey said on Friday that a huge banner of Abdullah Ocalan unfurled in central Raqqa by the Kurds was proof that Faschingstein had been working with terrorists. The Kurdish-led autonomy plans in Syria have advanced, as diplomacy has failed to make any progress towards a political solution to the six-year-long war. Assad, who is fast regaining territory in Syria’s most populous eastern regions with Iranian and Russian military support, has repeatedly said the state will recover all Syria. Asked about the YPG/SDF statement, Syrian national reconciliation minister Ali Haidar said Raqqa’s future could only be discussed “as part of the final political structure of the Syrian state.” The YPG/SDF has established control over swathes of northern Syria in operations backed by Pindostan against Daesh, mostly avoiding conflict with the SAA. Spox Talal Silo reaffirmed the YPG/SDF’s plan to hand control of Raqqa to a civil council formed of people from the city, and to hand over internal security to a police force drawn from local recruits. He called Raqqa’s liberation “the final chapter” of a struggle that began against Daesh from the town of Kobani some three years ago, though the YPG/SDF is still fighting Daesh in Deir ez-Zor province. Pindostan has said it will take the lead in helping to clear rubble and restore basic services to the city. Russia said on Thursday the fight with Daesh would soon be over. Pres Putin expressed hope a new peace conference could be convened, though the Kremlin said on Friday it was too early to discuss the timing or venue for the proposed “congress of the peoples of Syria.”

you can’t believe any of this stuff, but it’s all good material

Iranian commander issued stark warning to Iraqi Kurds over Kirkuk
Michael Georgy, Ahmed Rashid, Reuters, Oct 20 2017

SULAIMANIA/BAGHDAD – A senior Iranian military commander repeatedly warned Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq to withdraw from the oil city of Kirkuk or face an onslaught by Iraqi forces and allied Iranian-backed fighters, Kurdish officials briefed on the meetings said. Maj-Gen Qassem Soleimani, commander of the IRGC Quds Force, travelled to Iraq’s Kurdistan region to meet Kurdish leaders at least three times this month before the Baghdad government’s lightning campaign to recapture territory across the north. Soleimani met with PUK boxtops in the city of Sulaimania the day before Iraqi PM Abadi ordered his forces to advance on Kirkuk, according to a PUK boxtop briefed on the meeting. His message was clear: withdraw or risk losing Tehran as a strategic ally. The source said:

Soleimani’s visit was to give a last-minute chance for the decision makers not to commit a fatal mistake. He told them: “Abadi has all the regional powers and the West behind him, and nothing will stop him from forcing you to return back to the mountains if he decides so.”

Commanders of the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga have accused Iran of orchestrating Baghdad’s push into areas under their control, a charge senior Iranian officials have denied. But Iran has made no secret of its presence in Iraq. A boxtop close to Pres Rouhani said:

Tehran’s military help is not a secret anymore. You can find Gen Soleimani’s pictures in Iraq everywhere. Besides political issues, Kirkuk’s oil is a very key element for Iran, which is an OPEC member. Control of those oil fields by Iran’s enemies would be disastrous for us. Why should we let them enter the oil market?

Kirkuk fell to Iraqi government forces on Monday. Their offensive followed a referendum last month in which the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region voted to secede from Iraq against Baghdad’s wishes. Iraq’s two main Kurdish parties have been at odds over both the referendum and the approach to the crisis in Kirkuk, which the Kurds consider to be the heart of their homeland. The PUK, a close ally of Iran, accused its rival the KDP of putting the Kurds at risk of military intervention and isolation by pushing hard for the vote, which won wide approval for independence. Soleimani has been allied to the PUK for years, but the referendum has drawn him even closer to Kurdish politics and expanded Iran’s reach in Iraq beyond the Baghdad government. Before the referendum, Soleimani suggested to Kurdish leaders that holding a vote on secession would be risky. One prominent Iraqi Kurdish politician who met Soleimani ahead of the Sep 25 referendum:

The Iranians were very clear. They have been very clear that there will be conflict, that these territories will be lost.

On Oct 6, barely a week after the vote, Soleimani attended the funeral of PUK leader Jalal Talabani. He wanted to make sure even his closest Kurdish allies understood the dangers of not withdrawing from Kirkuk, said boxtops. A senior Iranian diplomat in Iraq and an Iranian close to Ayatollah Khamenei’s office said Soleimani met with Kurdish leaders after Talibani’s funeral and urged them to withdraw from Kirkukm saying that in exchange Tehran would protect their interests. One of the PUK boxtops said:

Soleimani met with Falafel Talabani, one of Talabani’s sons, a few days after his father was buried. Soleimani said Abadi should be taken very seriously. You should understand this.

An Iranian source in Iraq said Soleimani was in Kirkuk two nights before the Iraqi government offensive for “a couple of hours to give military guidance.” Iraqi intelligence sources said Tehran sent a clear signal to the PUK. One Iraqi intelligence official told Reuters:

We understand from our sources on the ground that neighbouring Iran played a decisive role in making the PUK chose the right course with Baghdad.

Tensions over the referendum and Kirkuk have deepened divisions between the two main political parties in northern Iraq. The KDP accused the PUK of betraying the Kurdish cause by capitulating to Iran and striking a deal to withdraw. A source close to KRG Pres Massoud Barzani said:

The Talabani clan were behind the offensive on Kirkuk. They asked Qassem for help and his troops were there on the ground. It is becoming clear that Iran is directing the operations to destroy the KDP.

The PUK strongly denies this. Talabani’s son Falafel accused the KDP of missing a zero-hour chance to avoid losing Kirkuk by failing to reach a deal over a military base which Iraqi government forces had demanded to take back. Falafel told Reuters:

Unfortunately we reacted too slowly and we find ourselves where we are today.

Two other Kurdish political sources gave a similar account. Iran and Soleimani offered early assistance to northern Iraq’s Kurds in the fight against Daesh, a rallying point for the Kurdish community, but after the devastating loss of Kirkuk, Iraqi Kurds have been left disillusioned. Pensioner Abdullah Ahmed in Sulaimania said:

They just make decisions on their own and play with people’s lives. In the end, we pay the price. This is a disaster for everyone. Everyone was united against Daesh. Now they are back just looking out for themselves.

why niger?

What Are Pindo Forces Doing in Niger Anyway?
Jason Ditz, AmConMag, Oct 20 2017

On Oct 4, four Green Berets and five Nigeriens were killed in ambush by heavily-armed Daesh-affiliated fighters near the Mali border in Niger. While the press has been obsessed with how Pres Trump has handled it politically back home, it’s important to note that this event not only marked the first pindo combat deaths in Niger, but the first public revelation that the Pentagon was carrying out anything close to combat operations there at all. That isn’t to say that we didn’t know that Pindostan had SOF in Niger. In Feb 2015, AFRICOM announced a deployment of troops for a small training operation but it wasn’t meant to be permanent. It was never widely conveyed, at least publicly, that SOF would be engaging in joint military patrols on the Mali border, a known stamping-ground for multiple Islamist factions. This, according to reports, is what the Green Berets were doing when they were ambushed. In that incident, twelve of them were reportedly leaving a meeting with local leaders and were walking back to unarmored vehicles when they came under fire from fifty Islamists with small arms, machine guns and RPGs. Though outgunned, the Green Berets engaged in a firefight lasting about 30 minutes before the French military came to the rescue with fighter jets, eventually scaring the Daesh-affiliated fighters away (they reportedly did not have authority to shoot). The French forces then came in with helicopters to fly out the dead and wounded. Three soldiers were reported killed and two wounded that day, and two days later it was announced a fourth was found dead after a lengthy recovery operation. Mad Dog Mattis told reporters last week:

This was a hard fight! This was a very tough fight!

Why were they outgunned? It could be that the mission had been set up as low-risk when team leaders got the go-ahead on the patrols in the first place, according to sources quoted by the NYT. This is clearly troubling, when one considers the Mali-Niger border region is known to be teeming with multiple Islamist factions. That appears to be why Pindostan is there, though there has been no real conversation in Faschingstein, much less in the public forum, about its role there. It turns out that for five years Niger has been a toe in the expanding pindo footprint in Africa, and it has become a hub of pindo military activity. About 800 soldiers are serving as advisors and training local forces there now. According to Nick Turse, Niger is the location of a brand new $100m drone base. Meanwhile, the region has become a crossroads of Islamist activity, from Boko Haram to AQIM and apparently now Daesh. While some reporters have sought to find scandal in Pres Trump’s reaction to the troop deaths, there’s been little to no concern about Pindostan getting into combat situations in Niger in the first place, ostensibly to “train and advise,” and then keeping them largely out of the press. Niger is far from the exception. In Mar 2012, the Pentagon confirmed that pindo SOF were attacked in the southern Yemeni city of Aden, and that a CIA officer was killed. That was the first time boxtops confirmed that Pindostan was operating on the ground inside Yemen at all. The revelation is even more stunning when one recalls that the White House had publicly ruled out boots on the ground in Yemen several times in the years leading up to this admission. During his Aug 21 speech on Afghanistan, Pres Trump cautioned:

Pindostan’s enemies must never know our plans.

This was presented at the time as a reason for not giving any specifics about how the Afghan war’s escalation was to proceed, but it also appears to be a driving policy goal for the administration, likely at the behest of the Pentagon: secrecy at all cost. Given the Pentagon’s long history of being less than candid with the pindo sheeple, making secrecy a government-wide goal suggests what happened in Niger was not an oversight, nor likely to be a unique situation for the world’s largest military, which has troops in myriad countries, at last count 138, often doing God knows what. Even in obvious, known war zones like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, the Pentagon often plays semantic games with its missions, regularly defining troops in the middle of firefights as “advisors” or “trainers.” It’s rare indeed for the Pentagon to acknowledge that any of its troops are in “combat” anywhere. Nothing ensures limited coverage of a pindo war like rebranding it a training operation, and apart from the casualties that inevitably follow, there’s little to suggest to the casual observer that Pindostan is actually engaged in combat there. This is doubly true in places like Niger, where the original reports of deployments were so deceptively downplayed by the Pentagon that few media outlets bothered to cover them. The presence of pindo troops was, if not a secret, not exactly a widely-known fact. With troop numbers and operational details kept from the public, Pindostan can be and in fact is engaged in secret wars without any public oversight. Keeping the “enemy” from knowing our plans has become so vague, with so many deployments around that world, that who the enemy even is has to remain unspoken, so it can change on a whim, or as pindo patrols happen to stumble into new fights. And when they do, the 2002 AUMF serves as the blanket authority to engage in combat. Niger provides a terrifying reminder of how far we are from being an informed pindo creeple that serves as a check and balance on what our military is doing in our name. We can’t have a debate on pindo intervention overseas if we don’t even know where are our forces are, let alone to what end.

jewish operatives take note

Future of JCPoA In Hands of GOP Indebted To Billionaire Iran Hawks
Eli Clifton, LobeLog, Oct 19 2017

Pres Trump’s decision to decertify the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA), appears to have fallen in line with the views espoused by several of his top donors. These funders believe that Iran poses an apocalyptic threat only addressable through military action, including the use of nuclear weapons. Two years ago, every Thug in Congress opposed the JCPoA. With the future of the agreement now in the hands of a GOP-controlled House and Senate, those same billionaire Iran hawks may hold a powerful influence over any Thug congress crittur contemplating voting against legislation designed to harm the JCPoA. Indeed, the influence of these key donors, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, and Paul Singer, over foreign policy, particularly with regards to Iran, doesn’t stop at the White House, where combined they contributed over $40m to various pro-Trump political groups and causes. Those three donors also contributed $65m at the congressional level. That represents nearly half of the individual contributions made to the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) and Congressional Leadership Fund(CLF), Super-PACs dedicated to maintaining Thug majorities in the House and Senate. Those contributions provide a considerable incentive for Hill Thugs to stake out a hawkish position on the JCPoA. Trump’s decision to punt the decision to Congress about whether to reimpose sanctions or attempt to unilaterally rewrite the JCPoA, a multilateral agreement, threatens to unravel the nuclear deal and/or put Pindostan into non-compliance with the accord.

Thugs in Congress owe a great deal to the SLF and the CLF. In the 2016 election cycle the two Thug Super-PACs were some of the biggest sources of independent expenditures in House and Senate races. The SLF was the biggest spender in the 2016 election cycle after Priorities USA Action (a Clinton-supporting Super-PAC) and Right to Rise USA (a Bush-supporting Super-PAC). The CLF raised $50m in individual contributions and the SLF raised $90m in individual contributions in the past election cycle. That is in no small part thanks to Adelson, Marcus and Singer, three of the Thug Party’s biggest donors. They also provide millions in funding to hawkish think-tanks like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which regularly promotes military intervention against Iran. Adelson and Marcus, in particular, have been outspoken in their opposition to the JCPoA and expressing their extreme hostility toward Iran. Adelson, who actually suggested firing a nuclear weapon at Iran as a negotiating tactic, alongside his wife, Miriam, are the biggest overall donors to both the CLF and SLF as well as Trump’s largest campaign donor. They contributed $20m to the CLF and $35m to the SLF. Adelson, via Bonkers Bolton, may have helped inject language into Trump’s speech last week decertifying the JCPoA. Politico reported:

The line was added to Trump’s speech after Bolton, despite Kelly’s recent edict, reached the president by phone on Thursday afternoon from Las Vegas, where Bolton was visiting with Thug megadonor Sheldon Adelson. Bolton urged Trump to include a line in his remarks noting that he reserved the right to scrap the agreement entirely, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. Trump wound up saying that the agreement “is under continuous review, and our participation can be canceled by me as president at any time.” Bolton declined to comment on any conversation with the president.

Singer, who was the second largest source of funds supporting Tom Cotton’s campaign, contributed $1.9m to the CLF and $6m to the SLF. Cotton, an outspoken critic of the Iran deal and proponent of pursuing a regime-change strategy in Iran, reportedly advised the White House on decertifying the agreement. He is the co-sponsor of legislation that would institute automatic reinstatement of sanctions if Iran comes within a year of a nuclear weapons capability and eliminates the JCPoA’s sunset clauses, effectively rewriting the agreement and potentially putting Pindostan in violation of the accord. Marcus contributed $500k to the CLF and $2m to the SLF. He is Trump’s second biggest campaign donor after the Adelsons and contributes tens of millions of dollars to FDD and other groups opposing the JCPoA. In a 2015 Fox Business interview, he said we mustn’t “do business with the devil,” and in case he wasn’t clear about who “the devil” was in his metaphor, he clarified: “I think Iran is the devil.” The combined contributions of Adelson, Singer and Marcus account for 44% of individual contributions received by the CLF and 47% of those received by the SLF. Marcus and Singer are already spending on the SLF for the 2018 cycle. Singer contributed $1m and Marcus contributed $2m, providing over a quarter of the $11.13m the Super-PAC has raised for the coming election.