Most billionaires spend their money on mansions, yachts, airplanes and much younger wives. But not so casino mogul Sheldon Adelson who died in Las Vegas on January 11th, aged 87.

Adelson rose from humble origins. He used his $33 billion plus gambling fortune to buy governments in order to fulfill his passion for Zionism. He became one of the single most important private political influences in both the United States and Israel.

Through his political action committees and charities, Adelson focused the huge power of his money on expanding Israel’s borders, squeezing Palestinians into ever smaller ghettos, and ensuring that the Jewish state received almost unlimited American military, financial and political support.

Over recent years, Adelson gave at least $150 million to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. That’s a lot of money for nickel and dime politicians. Adelson also financed a host of political action committees, mostly with tax deductible funds. Some sources even spoke of $11 billion worth of political donations. Those few legislators who did not kowtow to Adelson or the idea of a greater Israel were quickly subjects of his wrath and sharp political attacks. US senators Newt Gingrich and Marco Rubio became major recipient of donations from kingmaker Adelson. However, the most important recipient was Donald Trump.

An important part of Trump’s political funding came from Adelson’s casinos and a coterie of ardently pro-Israel billionaires. Many were linked to Israel’s rightwing Likud Party. In fact, one of Trump’s prime political goals was aiding Israel’s hard expansionist government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Critics accused Trump of being a Trojan Horse for Israel’s far right. The US State Department was gutted by Trump and his hatchet-man Mike Pompeo, allegedly for harboring too many ‘old Mideast’ hands who were insufficiently submissive to Israel’s demands. Other government agencies were similarly purged, including CIA and Voice of America. Media commentators who did not toe the pro-Likud line were consigned to obscurity.

In Israel, Adelson was even more direct. He created a free newspaper, ‘Israel Today,’ to support policies of Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party. Adelson played an important role in crushing Israel’s peace parties that opposed Netanyahu.

After years of lavish spending, Adelson ended up giving marching orders to both Trump and Netanyahu. As a Parthian shaft, the departing Trump muscled the Arab states of the United Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, and Morocco to come out of the closet to recognize Israel and ditch the Palestinians. Orders from Washington could not be ignored by these monarchies and autocracies.

Trump’s other pillar of support was America’s Christian fundamentalists. As author Upton Sinclair wrote before WWII, ‘when fascism comes to America, it will be under the sign of the cross.’ The mob of pro-Trump thugs that stormed the US Congress was seen waving ‘Jesus saves’ banners – but these were quickly deleted from later TV news reports. Still, extreme Christian rightists remain a powerful force in American life and seemingly limitless support for Israel. They are also the key power bloc in the Republican party.

As I wrote three years ago, the Republican Party has become a religious cult. It has nothing at all in common with the old, moderate party of Lincoln or Eisenhower. The new Republicans are found it the southern and Midwest Bible Belt that brought the US Prohibition and racial politics. This reborn Bible belt was anti-intellectual, xenophobic, anti-education and steeped in primitive theology.

Donald Trump was clever enough to gain control of America’s hillbilly right by setting himself up as a quasi-religious Biblical figure. Many of his apparently bizarre actions were political theater designed to play to religious fundamentalists or to the type of primitives who stormed the US Capitol.

In spite of this monstrous political crime, the Republicans remain firmly under Trump’s thumb and almost in power. The next mid-term elections might well bring them back to power. Trump and his rightwing Israeli allies are counting the days.

ericmargolis.com

At Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, bombshell allegations involving US private citizen Sheldon Adelson are being made in conjunction with activities of US intelligence agencies.

Plans to poison or kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy were discussed between sources in US intelligence and a private security firm that spied extensively on the WikiLeaks co-founder, a court has been told, reports the Guardian. The plan to poison Assange was to sicken him so bad that he would have to leave the embassy and seek hospital treatment.

Details of the alleged spying operation against Assange and anyone who visited him at the embassy were laid out on Wednesday at his extradition case, in evidence by a former employee of a Spanish security company, UC Global.

Microphones were concealed to monitor Assange’s meetings with lawyers, his fingerprint was obtained from a glass and there was even a plot to obtain a nappy from a baby who had been brought on regular visits to the embassy, according to the witness, whose evidence took the form of a written statement.

One of the witnesses said that UC Global started off with small contracts that had been signed in October 2015 with the government of Ecuador in order to provide security for the daughters of the country’s president and its embassy in London.

However, they said this changed when the founder and director of UC Global, David Morales attended a security sector trade fair in Las Vegas, where he obtained a contract with Las Vegas Sands, a company owned by the US billionaire Adelson.

Morales was said to have returned to the company’s offices in Jerez in the south of Spain and announced: “We will be playing in the big league.” The witness added that Morales said the company had switched over to what the latter described as “the dark side”. This allegedly involved cooperating with the US authorities, who Morales said would ensure that they obtained contracts all over the world.

An increasingly sophisticated operation to monitor Assange was launched and would accelerate after Trump assumed office in 2017, the witness said, adding that Morales would make frequent trips to the US with recorded data.

“He [Morales] showed at times a real obsession in relation to monitoring the lawyers because our American friends were requesting it,” added the witness, who held a stake in UC Global for a period of time.

The role played by, Trump supporter, Adelson suggests an attempt by US authorities to use him to circumvent US law.

So much for any chance Trump is going to pardon Assange.

The focus by US intelligence agencies to get Assange, who for all practical purposes was a new media journalist, is stunning.

targetliberty.com

In 1916, as World War I raged on, a British diplomat, Mark Sykes, met with his French counterpart from the Quai d’Orsay, Monsieur Picot, and signed an agreement to partition the Ottoman Empire once victory was achieved.

The heart of the Mideast – Palestine, Syria and Iraq – was divided between Britain and France. Italy and Russia were offered other Ottoman lands: southern Turkey was promised to Italy and Constantinople to Russia. All this was top secret but was later revealed by the Bolsheviks after their 1917 revolution.

We have not seen such an example of breathtaking cynicism and perfidy until this week when President Donald Trump unveiled his so-called ‘Deal of the Century’ as his final solution to the fate of the long-suffering Palestinians.

Standing next to Trump was Israel’s beaming Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who just got more land than his far-right, expansionist coalition had even dreamed of. It was not a coincidence that Trump had recently been accused of high crimes by the US House, while his buddy ‘Bibi’ had just been indicted for low crimes by Israel’s attorney general.

However, the real godfather in this historic theft was sitting almost unnoticed by media next to the presidential podium, looking very much the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary. Billionaire gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife beamed as their ‘boys’, Trump and Bibi, proclaimed their newly configured Mideast.

Close by was Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a friend of the Netanyahu clan. Kushner’s father, Charles, served 14 months in federal prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. Such is the milieu from which real estate developer Trump emerged.

Under Trump’s ‘deal,’ Israel is to formally annex about 30% of the West Bank, the Arab area it conquered in the 1967 war. This will include all Jerusalem and an archipelago of Jewish settlements on the West Bank that were implanted to thwart any possible creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Israel will control all borders of the resulting Palestinian entity, a patchwork of feeble, isolated South-African apartheid Bantustans with no airports, no control over its airspace or maritime borders – and no interest in its increasingly important offshore energy resources. Israel gets most of the West Bank’s useful farmland and water resources. Palestinians are left with scrub, sand and some goats.

Palestinian’s claim of a right of return for their 5 million refugees scattered around Israel’s borders will be forever rejected. Israel’s right wing says there is no room for any Palestinians, though room was found in previous years for one million Russians, Jews and non-Jews. More are hoped for if Vladimir Putin gives the green light. All attempts by Palestine to seek remedies from the International Court of Justice will be quashed.

The rich oil Arabs of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia will be asked to buy off Palestinian refugees. They have stabbed the Palestinians in the back. Deeply fearful of Iran, these kleptomaniac Arab monarchies have thrown themselves at Trump’s feet and are kowtowing to Israel’s far right. Israel has achieved a brilliant victory by enlisting the oil Arabs on its side and presiding over the deep split in Palestinian ranks between the PLO and Hamas.

The Greater Israel crowd in the US has almost total control of America’s Senate. This is mainly thanks to Adelson’s donations of over $100 million to the Republicans and relentless support from pro-Israel media like Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, NBC and Hollywood.

Add to this the unquestioning support of 80% of Evangelicals who make up a quarter of Republican voters. This cult believes that Christ will return once modern Israel attains its Biblical borders, and then Earth can be destroyed by fire and brimstone. Israel has cleverly exploited these credulous rustics who form Trump’s key electoral base. Trump is increasingly being compared to the Bible’s King David of Israel. That’s a long way from Queens, New York.

As they ask in my native New York City, “Is it good for the Jews?”, the answer is a resounding no! The Trump-Bibi theft of ancestral Arab lands condemns Arabs and Jews to another five decades of violence and hatred. The Promised Land was not supposed to be like this.

ericmargolis.com

Trump took Kim at his word who said after talks broke down thanks to Bolton and Pompeo in Hanoi that no dialogue would be possible if Bolton was involved.

So, Trump sent Bolton to Mongolia. Then he went to Korea and did the one thing he had to do to begin unraveling the mess he’d gotten himself into.

Last week I asked where does Trump go after his confrontation with Iran? Trump answered that question in dramatic fashion. And he deserves a lot of credit for it.

But what does this mean in the wider context? It’s a good first step but we’ve seen this game from him before, making bold moves only to be reined in by his staff.

I would say that the optics of sending Bolton to Mongolia are pretty clear. Bolton’s time in the White House is nearly over. This is also a strong signal to Iran that Trump trying to back down without actually saying that.

The drone incident was intended to box Trump into a path to war with Iran after the tanker attack in the Gulf of Oman two weeks prior. That was likely not the Iranians but the Saudis and/or MEK, again trying to get Trump to fly off the handle, since he’s easily manipulated into emotional acts.

But he was talked out of it at the last minute, presumably by Tucker Carlson, who was with him on Air Force One when Trump went to meet Kim.

Has Trump finally woken up to the reality that he can’t appease these neocons anymore? That their lust for power can only be sated by perpetual war? That he has to lead and be President? Asking for advice from your cabinet is one thing, being led by your nose to foregone conclusions which are anathema to what put you in the White House in the first place is another.

He hasn’t drained one ounce of The Swamp because he wasn’t strong enough to do it.

His instincts are correct. His desire for denuclearization is sincere. Like Trump or not, he’s a patriot. What he does he does out of this sense of patriotism. It’s laudable but it also makes him vulnerable to bad advice and his own personality defects.

And those things nearly got the world into a war where no one wins.

So, with all that said, now what?

A lot has changed in the past four months since the end of the Mueller investigation. And the signs are all there that Trump is feeling a lot more secure both politically and financially that would allow him to not only make bold first moves but follow through on them.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed down on border wall funding. She’s ruled out impeachment as a bad political tactic. And she’s under fire from the hard-core Progressives in the party. This makes them weak.

So, from a re-election standpoint Trump looks very secure, especially after the “I’m more woke than you” fest that was the first debate among DNC candidates.

We’re looking at a mirror of 2016 with the Republicans that Trump beat. A wide and shallow pool of less than capable candidates who will all eat each other alive while he rides to re-election.

The difference is that these weren’t hand-selected to be pushovers to coronate Hillary Clinton. This is just the best the Democrats have to offer. And, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, that’s not saying much.

From a re-election perspective Trump has to shore up his foreign policy position and admit that whatever he’s tried to do to this point hasn’t worked. In fact, it has done nothing but weaken him and is adding to an already messy economic landscape worldwide, as I’ve pointed out in the past.

This turn by him is more than a small blip, in my mind. It is Trump backing away from the abyss created for him by his neocon handlers, who all hate him anyway.

Bolton was pushed on him by major Republican donor and Israeli Firster, Sheldon Adelson. And Adelson is the real issue here. So much of Trump’s foreign policy has centered around the wishes of this odious man.

With RussiaGate behind him and leading Democrats refusing to let it lie down as they try to obfuscate the obvious trail which leads back to them Trump looks a lot more secure. He’s looking at the fundraising numbers, the crowds he’s drawing at rallies more than a year out from the election, a stock market at all-time highs and he’s thinking he doesn’t really need Adelson’s money network anymore.

And if that is the case, then we may finally see the Donald Trump that he sold us during the campaign. I’m not holding high hopes for this, but I would be remiss in not pointing out his incentives.

It’s becoming obvious to everyone that the Deal of the Century for Israel and Palestine is a dead letter. So many of Trump’s mistakes have been in service of this deal which they can’t even bring to the table.

The last piece of this puzzle is whatever happened at the G-20 between Trump, Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping. Trump folded on the worst of his trade war with China. His uber-hawks wanted Huawei destroyed for not giving the US backdoor access to spy on the world, everything is just noise.

He did this agreeing to more soybean imports from China. This was a cop to the farmers he needs to keep onside if he’s going to win in 2020.

But the most important part of this are the signals by Russia and China that they would assist Iran in getting its oil to market. The Chinese will buy it and the Russians will clear the trades through their electronic payment system analogous to the US-dominated SWIFT.

Since any further action by the US to stop Iranian oil exports involve physical confrontation and interdiction that threat is now off the table after Trump nixed bombing Iran. No one will be happy with an order by Trump to detain Iran’s oil tankers, except the people who have been playing games with him, the Israelis and the Saudis.

But even then, Putin surely held the Saudis feet to his fire in agreeing to extend the oil production cuts into next year. A little leverage on the over-levered can be very effective. From the looks of things, post G-20, Trump assessed the landscape and began pulling back.

Bullying can only take you so far. Pressure applied too forcefully can always be turned against you. And in politics overplaying your hand will bust you. Next move, Mr. President?

On March 14, Russia’s National Security Council, headed by President Putin, officially raised its perception of American intentions toward Russia from “military dangers” (opasnosti) to direct “military threats” (ugrozy). In short, the Kremlin is preparing for war, however defensive its intention.

Why? Why would Putin do that? ‘Trump doesn’t want more wars … He has consistently called for good relations with Moscow. And now that Mueller has come up with zero …’.

This is the familiar refrain that suggests that a confrontation with Russia simply cannot happen: “It wouldn’t make any sense: it would not be rational”. Well, maybe Russia is reading the ‘tea-leaves’ differently, and maybe they simply understand that when it comes to wars, it is often the non-rational that trumps the rational.

As Russia might view things, the precursors for a conflict in the Middle East are fast falling into place. On the one hand, we have a very hawkish Israel, ‘pie-eyed’ from large draughts of team Trump’s ‘Greater Israel’ cool-aid; then we have Bolton prosecuting his ancient hatred for Iran – trying to corner the Republic, and to implode it.

These represent major clashes of tectonic plates, especially as the northern tier of the region (including Turkey) is now with Iran (to one, or other extent). Moscow will be aware that colliding tectonic plates release hot plasma, which all too easily can spread to scald Russia.

And then, we have other shifts in the tectonic plates: Turkey is inching toward Russia and China, and so – it seems –might be Egypt (after Sisi’s recent altercation in Washington). Translated – this all says that the US is fast losing its hold over the Middle East. And Russia, whether intentionally, or not (more ‘not’, than actively ‘sought’), is increasing its’ reach.

Usually, such occurrences are met with Washington decreeing a hard slap over the head for Moscow’s Promethean ‘impudence’. But … actually, America is almost out of substantive allies in the Middle East – except ‘the one’.

Yes, indeed – up to this point, we are dealing with the rational chessboard. So, what about the ‘non-rational’?

Let us go first, to basics: 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, and his popularity amongst them remains high – in the 70s percent. Whilst other white voters may have become disheartened by Trump’s foreign policy (the Saudi embrace), white evangelicals have become his last, solid bastion. They are not insignificant either: they form some 25% of all Americans.

Professor of Religious Studies, Andrew Chesnut tells us that Christian Zionism has become the “majority theology” among white US Evangelicals. In a 2015 poll, 73% of evangelical Christians said events in Israel are prophesied in the Book of Revelation. For Christian Zionists, achieving a ‘Greater Israel’ is one of the key preconditions for ‘Rapture’. It is a belief, known as pre-millennial dispensationalism or Christian Zionism, Chesnut says.

“Trump himself embodies the very opposite of a pious Christian ideal. Trump is not a churchgoer. He is profane, twice divorced, who has boasted of sexually assaulting women. But white evangelicals have embraced him, writes Julian Borger.

“Some leading evangelicals see Trump as a latter-day King Cyrus, the sixth-century BC Persian emperor who liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity. The comparison is made explicitly in The Trump Prophecy, a religious film screened in 1,200 cinemas [last year], depicting a retired firefighter who claims to have heard God’s voice, saying: “I’ve chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this …

“Cyrus is the model for a nonbeliever, being appointed by God as a vessel for the purposes of the faithful,” said Katherine Stewart, who writes extensively about the Christian right. She added that they welcome [Trump’s] readiness to break democratic norms, to combat perceived threats to their values and way of life. 

Mike Pompeo and Vice-President Pence are strongly of this Evangelical orientation. It is something that has real import for foreign policy: During his tenure as CIA director, and before that as a member of the House of Representatives, Pompeo has consistently used language that casts the war on terrorism as a cosmic, divine battle of good and evil. He has referred to Islamic terrorists as destined to “continue to press against us until we make sure that we pray, and stand and fight, and make sure that we know that Jesus Christ is our savior, and is truly the only solution for our world”.

The proscription of Iran’s IRGC, by Pompeo was couched in exactly this language of terrorism, with the clear connotation that Iran is the cosmic ‘evil’. This style of Apocalyptic or Rapture language has been adopted wholesale by Trump, and his Administration. “To worship our Lord and celebrate our nation at the same place, is not only our right,” Pompeo told attendees at a Kansas rally in 2015: “It is our duty.” He added, “We will continue to fight these battles,” the then Congressman said at a church in Wichita. “It is a never-ending struggle … until the Rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight!”

Pompeo’s reference to Rapture is important: The Rapture, Tara Burton notes, “is a distinctively American theology that says Christians will be taken up, or “raptured,” into heaven, at the onset of the End Times … and a number of GOP politicians allow their belief in Rapture theology to influence their political worldview. Because the Rapture is ultimately desirable — it marks the return of Jesus Christ — anything that hastens it, is desirable too. For many evangelicals, apocalyptic “good versus evil” battles, particularly centred over the “Holy Land” of the Middle East, are signs that the longed-for end may be at hand”.

So, how does all this balance out? Well, the pivot is the Las Vegas Casino billionaire, Sheldon Adelson. He donated $82 million to Trump and other Republican candidates during the 2016 election. Trump has consciously courted the moneyed Jewish diaspora Right, but Adelson’s significance lies more with his passionate commitment to Netanyahu’s “Greater Israel” political agenda, and to strengthening ties between the Republicans’ evangelical base and Israel.

And just to be clear, the ‘Greater Israel’ mission is similarly rooted in ‘End of Time’ biblical theology. David Ben-Gurion, the “father of the nation”, was a firm believer in the ‘mission’, declaring: “I believe in our moral and intellectual superiority; and in our capacity to serve as a model for the redemption of the human race”. At the 2003‘Jerusalem Summit’, whose participants comprised three acting Israeli ministers (and included Netanyahu, and Richard Perle from the USG), the group solemnly professed: “We believe that one of the objectives of Israel’s divinely-inspired rebirth, is to make it the center of the new unity of the nations, which will lead to an era of peace and prosperity, as foretold by the Prophets”.

As Larent Guyénot observes, Zionism, in fact, has always been about a New World Order, under the mask of ‘nationalism’. It is with the Adelson lynchpin too, that John Bolton fits in. Bolton is no evangelical. He says that to call him a neoconservative “is clearly not accurate”, by which he explicitly means that he never shared the desire to ‘spread democracy’ as other mainstream neoconservatives did. He does however, hold to the belief that America (and Israel) are ‘chosen’ to lead and shape the global order. This may not be strictly a ‘religious’ expression, but it is a prime example of a millenarian ‘project’ that emphatically denies religion, yet is in fact a vehicle for religious myth – Judeo-Christian myth.

Bolton says it explicitly: “I would describe myself as pro-American. The greatest hope for freedom for mankind in history is the United States, and therefore protecting American national interest is the single best strategy for the world.”

The American millenarian ‘myth’, then and now, was (and is), similarly rooted in a messianic belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States: ‘the New Jerusalem’ that would represent humanity’s best hope for a utopian future. This belief in a special destiny (being ‘chosen’) is reflected in a conviction that the United States must lead – or more properly, has the duty to coerce – mankind towards its universalist destiny.

Adelson’s role then – using his own money – has been to resurface neoconservative policies: Policies that had been discredited after the US invasion of Iraq, and to reconnect these policies to the Israeli Right (as they were, before the war on Iraq). This whole is underpinned through the extensive Evangelical base that forms Trump’s key constituency. Both Pompeo and Bolton are reportedly Adelson’s protégés, whom Adelson pushed into their key positions in the White House, as a part of his political architecture.

And with the resurfacing of neoconservative policies, comes, inevitably, their ancient attitude towards Russia as an existential struggle that can have only one outcome – Russia’s collapse, leading to regime change – either via war or means short of war. All elements of western policy are geared to that one inalterable objective.

Former US diplomat, James Jatras, remarks [that these American millenarians] “hate Russia not for what it does, but for what it is: an obstacle to absolute global domination by a US-led [New World Order]. Russia’s deployment of the most powerful weapons imaginable – perhaps can limit the military aspect of that agenda, but it cannot reverse it. Quite to the contrary, such actions, like Moscow’s defensive moves after the 2014 regime change in Ukraine; or Russia’s 2015 deployment in Syria; or current presence in Venezuela, are held up as further “proof” of Russians’ “typically, almost genetically driven” aggressiveness, in the words of former CIA Director James Clapper.”

“With Robert Mueller’s pointless investigation concluded, nothing has improved, nor can there be much expectation that it will”. Jatras quotes [Gilbert] Doctorow:

“… the step by step dismantling of the channels of communication, of the symbolic projects for cooperation across a wide array of domains, and now dismantling of all the arms limitation agreements that took decades to negotiate and ratify, plus the incoming new weapons systems that leave both sides with under 10 minutes to decide how to respond to alarms of incoming missiles – all of this prepares the way for the Accident to end all Accidents. Such false alarms occurred in the Cold War; but some slight measure of mutual trust prompted restraint. That is all gone now, and if something goes awry, we are all dead ducks”.”

One might perceive that this broad ‘dismantling’ of channels, agreements and commitments came about as some unexplained, extraneous ‘happenstance’. If so, it would be wrong: No, it represents signature Bolton thinking. He says:

“America has slowly constrained its range of action, through foolhardy entanglements with international institutions such as the United Nations, and naive bilateral agreements that promised too much to America’s enemies, in exchange for too little. [Bolton] saw bad deals all around: The INF Treaty … was one. The Iran nuclear agreement, which Bolton has laboured tirelessly to scrap, was another.”

So, why should Trump acquiesce in this road to calamity?

Trump was raised as a Presbyterian, but leaned increasingly towards Evangelical preachers as he began contemplating a run for the presidency, Katherine Stewart observes. Trump’s choice of Pence as a running mate was a gesture of his commitment.

But, having lost control of the House of Representatives in November, and under ever closer scrutiny for his campaign’s links to the Kremlin, Trump’s instinct has been to cleave ever closer to his most loyal supporters. Almost alone among major demographic groups, white evangelicals are overwhelmingly in favour of Trump’s border wall, which some preachers equate with fortifications in the Bible, Stewart suggests.

In brief, this is what Trump has – this is what ‘has his back’ politically. Bolton gives him some cover from the US Deep State; the Evangelicals and the deplorables represent a base which sustains the President from the plots to remove him from office. A core base, which simply ignores the denigrations thrown out at President Trump, daily.

But here is the point: There lurks a major danger in to this ideologically ‘non-rational’ set-up. One that threatens us all – and may explain the Russian raising of their ‘threat status’. Trump’s instincts still remain that a channel with Mr Putin is essential. But the demonization of Russia will not be stilled with the publication of the Mueller investigation. It will just swap to a new narrative.

The pressures on Trump from his Bolton-Evangelical team, to hasten End Time with an Apocalyptic good-v-evil struggle, possibly linked the Christian Zionists’ Greater Israel ambition, inexorably will mount (precisely in response to US weakness and crisis). Will Trump hold the line? Might he offer up Iran, towards advancing Rapture, (and pleasing his base)?

The major danger is that Trump is not fearful of nuclear war – at least not in the way earlier generations of US leaders were. For Trump has manifested (admittedly before assuming the Presidency) a strange and worrying fatalism about nuclear conflict. Will Bolton manoeuvre to exploit this quirk?

We know that Trump regards himself as ‘an expert’ on nuclear conflict: In a 1984 interview with the Washington Post, Trump said that he hoped one day to become the United States’ chief negotiator with the Soviet Union for nuclear weapons. Trump claimed that he could negotiate a great nuclear arms deal with Moscow. Comparing crafting an arms accord with cooking up a real estate deal, Trump insisted he had innate talent for this mission.

In a 1990 interview with Playboy, Trump said, “I think of the future, but I refuse to paint it. Anything can happen. But I often think of nuclear war.” He explained: “I’ve always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it’s a very important element in my thought process. It’s the ultimate, the ultimate catastrophe, the biggest problem this world has, and nobody’s focusing on the nuts and bolts of it.”

Five years on, Trump was asked  where he would be in five years. “Who knows?” he replied. “Maybe the bombs drop from heaven, who knows? This is a sick world. We’re dealing here with lots of sickos. And you have the nuclear and you have the this, and you have the that.” Trump continued expressing the notion that nuclear annihilation could be on the horizon: “Oh absolutely. I mean, I think it’s sick human nature. If Hitler had the bomb, you don’t think he would have used it? He would have put it in the middle of Fifth Avenue. He would have used Trump Tower, 57th and Fifth … Boom”.

In another Playboy interview —this one in 2004—Trump once more conveyed his nuclear despondency. He was asked, “Do you think Trump Tower and your other buildings will bear your name a hundred years from now?” Trump responded, “I don’t think any building will be here—and unless we have some very smart people ruling it, the world will not be the same place in a hundred years. The weapons are too powerful, too strong.”

During the Presidential election debate, Candidate Trump said in December: “The biggest problem this world has today is not President Obama with global warming … The biggest problem we have is nuclear – nuclear proliferation – and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now … I think – I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation, is very important to me.”

“So for decades, it seems” David Corn has written in Mother Jones, “Trump has been haunted by the feeling that nuclear war may be inescapable. Now he is in a position to do something about the matter”. And, as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper remarked, “[If] in a fit of pique he [Trump] decides to do something about Kim Jong Un, there’s actually very little to stop him”. “The whole [nuclear weapons] system is built to ensure rapid response if necessary. So there’s very little in the way of controls over exercising a nuclear option, which is pretty damn scary.”

In short, should a fatalistically inclined US President, order a nuclear tactical weapons strike (and America currently is taking delivery of tactical weapons, and exercising with allies, the air delivery of them) – possibly believing recourse to tactical nuclear weapons is somehow inevitable, and egged on by his messianic team – there is almost nothing to stop him.

In publicly recorded donations, as of 25 December 2018, Adelson and his wife donated $82,522,800 to Republican candidates in 2016, and this amount doesn’t include any of the secret money. Of that sum, it’s virtually impossible to find out how much went specifically to Trump’s campaign for President, but, as of 9 May 2017, the Adelsons were publicly recorded as having donated $20.4 million to Trump’s campaign. Their impact on the Presidential contest was actually much bigger than that, however, because even the Adelsons’ non-Trump-campaign donations went to the Republican Party, and the rest went to Republican pro-Trump candidates, and the rest went to Republican PACS — and, so, a large percentage (if not all) of that approximately $60 million non-Trump-campaign political expenditure by the Adelsons was boosting Trump’s Presidential vote.

The second-largest Republican donor in 2016 was the hedge fund manager Paul Singer, at $26,114,653. It was less than a third, 31.6%, as large as the Adelsons’ contribution. Singer is the libertarian who proudly invests in weak entities that have been sucked dry by the aristocracy and who almost always extracts thereby, in the courts, far larger returns-on-investment than do other investors, who have simply settled to take a haircut on their failing high-interest-rate loans to that given weak entity. Singer hires the rest of his family to run his asset-stripping firm, which is named after his own middle name, “Elliott Advisors,” and he despises any wealthy person who won’t (like he does) fight tooth-and-nail to extract, from any weak entity, everything that can possibly be stripped from it. His Elliott Advisors is called a “vulture fund,” but that’s an insult to vultures, who instead eat corpses. They don’t actually attack and rip apart vulnerable struggling animals, like Singer’s operation does.

So, that’s the top two, on the Republican Party side.

On the Democratic Party side, the largest 2016 donor was the largest of all political donors in 2016, the hedge fund manager Thomas Steyer, $91,069,795. The second-largest was hedge fund manager Donald S. Sussman, $41,841,000. Both of them supported Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders, and then against Donald Trump.

As of 23 January 2019, the record shows that Trump received $46,873,083 in donations larger than $200, and $86,749,927 in donations smaller than $200. Plus, he got $144,764 in PAC contributions. Hillary Clinton received $300,111,643 in over-$200 donations, and $105,552,584 in under-$200 donations. Plus, she got $1,785,190 in PAC donations. She received 6.4 times as much in $200+ donations as Trump did. She received 1.2 times as much in under-$200 donations as he did. Clearly, billionaires strongly preferred Hillary. So, it’s understandable why not only America’s Democratic Party billionaires but also many of America’s Republican Party billionaires want President Trump to become replaced ASAP by his V.P., President Pence, who has a solid record of doing only whatever his big donors want him to do. For them, the wet dream would be a 2020 contest between Mike Pence or a clone, versus Hillary Clinton or a clone (such as Joe Biden or Beto O’Rourke). That would be their standard fixed game, America’s heads-I-win-tails-you-lose ‘democracy’.

On 18 January 2018 was reported that, “Trump pulled in $107 million in individual contributions, nearly doubling President Barack Obama’s 2009 record of $53 million.” However, in both of those cases, the figures which were being compared were actually donations to fund the inaugural festivities, not the actual campaigns. But Adelson led there, too: “Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson was [the] most generous [donor], giving $5 million to the inaugural committee.” The second-biggest donor to that was Hushang Ansary of Stewart & Stevenson, at $2 million. He had previously been the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company until the CIA-appointed dictator, the brutal and widely hated Shah, was overthrown in 1979 and replaced by Iran’s now theocratically overseen limited democracy. The US aristocracy, whose CIA had overthrown Iran's popular and democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953, installed the Shah to replace that elected head-of-state, and they then denationalized and privatized Iran’s oil company, so as to cut America’s aristocrats in on Iran’s oil. Basically, America’s aristocracy stole Iran in 1953, and Iranians grabbed their country back in 1979, and USbillionaires have been trying to get it back ever since. Ansary’s net worth is estimated at “over $2 billion,” and, “By the 1970s, the CIA considered Ansary to be one of seventeen members of ‘the Shah’s Inner Circle’ and he was one of the Shah’s top two choices to succeed Amir Abbas Hoveyda as Prime Minister.” But, that just happened to be the time when the Shah became replaced in an authentic revolution against America’s dictatorship. Iran’s revolution produced the country’s current partially democratic Government. So, this would-be US stooge Ansary fled to America, which had been Iran’s master during 1953-79, and he was welcomed with open arms by Amerca’s and allied aristocracies.

Other than the Adelsons, the chief proponents of regime-change in Iran since 1979 are the US-billionaires-controlled CIA, and ‘news’-media, and Government, and the Shah’s family, and the Saud family, and Israel’s apartheid regime headed by the Adelsons’ protégé in Israel, Netanyahu. America’s billionaires want Iran back, and the CIA represents them (the Deep State) — not the American public — precisely as it did in 1953, when the CIA seized Iran for America’s billionaires.

In the current election-cycle, 2018, the Adelsons have thus far invested $123,208,200, all in Republicans, and this tops the entire field. The second-largest political investor, for this cycle, is the former Republican Mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg, at $90,282,515, all to Democrats. Is he a Republican, or is he a Democrat? Does it actually make any difference? He is consistently a promoter of Wall Street. The third-largest donor now is Tom Steyer, at $70,743,864, all to Democrats. The fourth-largest is a Wisconsin libertarian-conservative billionaire, Richard Uihlein, at $39,756,996. Back on 19 March 2018, Politico reported that “Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, are currently the biggest Republican donors of the 2018 midterm elections, having given $21 million to candidates for federal office and super PACs that will support them. And that doesn’t include their funding of state candidates.” On 1 October 2016, International Business Times had listed the top ten donors to each of the two Parties, and the Uihleins at that time were #4 on the Republican side, at $21.5 million.

Of course, all of the top donors are among the 585 US billionaires, and therefore they can afford to spend lots on the Republican and/or Democratic nominees. Open Secrets reported on 31 March 2017 that “Of the world’s 100 richest billionaires, 36 are US citizens and thus eligible to donate to candidates and other political committees here. OpenSecrets Blog found that 30 of those [36] [or five sixths of the total 36 wealthiest Americans] actually did so, contributing a total of $184.4 million — with 58 percent [of their money] going to Republican efforts.” Democratic Party nominees thus got 42%; and, though it’s not as much as Republican ones get, it’s usually enough so that if a Democrat becomes elected, that person too will be controlled by billionaires.

For example, in the West Virginia Democratic Presidential primary in 2016, Bernie Sanders won all 55 counties in the state but that state’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention handed 19 of the state’s 37 votes at the Convention to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, who got more money from billionaires than all other US Presidential candidates combined. The millions of Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton were voting for the billionaires’ favorite, and she and her DNC stole the Party’s nomination from Sanders, who was the nation’s most-preferred Presidential candidate in 2016; and, yet, most of those voters still happily voted, yet again, for her, in the general election — as if she hadn’t practically destroyed the Party by prostituting it to its billionaires even more than Obama had already done. Of course, she ran against Trump, and, for once, the billionaires were shocked to find that their enormous investment in a candidate had been for naught. That’s how incompetent she was. But they still kept control over both of the political Parties, and the Sanders choice to head the DNC (the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Party itself) lost out to the Obama-Clinton choice, so that today’s Democratic Party is still the same: winning is less important to them than serving their top donors is.

This means that America’s winners of federal elections represent almost entirely America’s 585 billionaires, and not the 328,335,647Americans (as of noon on 23 January 2019). Of course, there is a slight crossover of interests between those two economic classes, since 0.000002 of those 328,335,647, or 0.0002% of them, are billionaires. However, if 0.0002% of federal office-holders represent the public, and the remaining 99.9998% represent the billionaires, then is that actually a bipartisan Government? If instead 99.9998% represented 328,335,062 Americans, and 0.0002% represented the 585 billionaires; then, that, too, wouldn’t be bipartisan, but would it be a democratic (small “d”) government? So, America is not a democracy (regardless of whether it’s bipartisan); it is instead an aristocracy, just like ancient France was, and the British empire, etc. The rest of America's population (the 328,335,062 other Americans) are mere subjects, though we are officially called ‘citizens’, of this actual aristocracy.

The same is true in Israel, the land that the Adelsons (the individuals who largely control America) are so especially devoted to. On 8 November 2016, Israel’s pro-Hillary-Clinton and anti-Netanyahu Ha’aretz newspaper headlined "The Collapsing Political Triangle Linking Adelson, Netanyahu and Trump”, and reported that Ha’aretz’s bane and top competitor was the freely distributed daily Israeli newspaper, Israel Hayom, and:

Israel Hayom was founded by Adelson nine years ago, in order to give Netanyahu – who has been rather harshly treated by the Israeli media throughout his political career – a friendly newspaper. Under Israeli law, the total sum an individual can donate to a politician or party is very limited, and corporate donations are not allowed. Israel Hayom has been a convenient loophole, allowing Adelson to invest the sort of money he normally gives American politicians on Netanyahu’s behalf. It has no business model and carries far fewer ads than most daily newspapers. While the privately owned company does not publish financial reports, industry insiders estimate that Adelson must spend around $50 million annually on the large team of journalists and the printing and distribution operations.

Distributed for free, in hundreds of thousands of copies the length and breadth of the country, Israel Hayom … clings slavishly to the line from Netanyahu’s office – praising him and his family to the heavens while smearing his political rivals, both on the left and the right.

A billionaire can afford to use his or her ‘news’-media in lieu of political campaign donations. Lots of billionaires do that. They don’t need to make direct political donations. And ‘making money’ by owning a ‘news’-medium can even be irrelevant, for them. Instead, owning an important ’news’-medium can be, for them, just another way, or sometimes their only way, to buy control over the government. It certainly works. It’s very effective in Israel.

Adelson is #14 on the 2018 Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans, all having net worths of $2.1 billion or more, his being $38.4 billion, just one-third as large as that of Jeff Bezos. Bezos is the owner of around 15% of Amazon Corporation, whose profits are derived almost entirely from the Amazon Web Services that are supplied to the US Pentagon, NSA, and CIA. So, he’s basically a ‘defense’ contractor. Bezos’s directly owned Washington Post is one of America’s leading neoconservative and neoliberal, or pro-invasion and pro-Democratic Party, media; and, so, his personal ownership of that newspaper is much like his owning a one-person national political PAC to promote whatever national policies will increase his fortune. The more that goes to the military and the less that goes to everything else, the wealthier he will become. His newspaper pumps the ‘national security threats’ to America.

Adelson controls Israel’s Government. Whereas he might be a major force in America’s Government, that’s actually much more controlled by the world’s wealthiest person, the only trillionaire, the King of Saudi Arabia. He has enough wealth so that he can buy almost anybody he wants — and he does, through his numerous agents. But, of course, both Israel’s Government and Saudi Arabia’s Government hate Iran’s Government at least as much as America’s Government does. In fact, if Russia’s Government weren’t likely to defend Iran’s Government from an invasion, then probably Iran would already have been invaded. Supporters of America’s Government are supporters of a world government by America’s billionaires, because that’s what the US Government, in all of its international functions (military, diplomatic, etc.) actually represents: it’s America’s global dictatorship. They throw crumbs to America’s poor so as to make it a ‘two-party’ and not merely a ‘one-party’ government and so that one of the Parties can call itself ‘the Democratic Party’, but America’s is actually a one-party government, and it represents only the very wealthiest, in both Parties. The aristocracy’s two separate party-organizations compete against each other. But their real audience is the aristocracy’s dollars, not the public’s voters. This “two-Party” dictatorship (by the aristocracy) is a different governing model than in China and some other countries.

The great investigative journalist Wayne Madsen headlined on January 24th “Trump Recognition of Rival Venezuelan Government Will Set Off a Diplomatic Avalanche” and he reported the possibility of a war developing between the US and Russia over America’s aggression against Venezuela. US media even have pretended that the US Government isn’t the one that customarily perpetrates coups in Latin America, and pretended that Russia’s and Cuba’s Governments are simply blocking ‘democracy’ from blossoming in Venezuela. On January 24th, Middle East Eye reported that Morgan Stanley’s CEO James Gorman had just told the World Economic Forum, in Davos, that the torture-murder of Saudi Crown Prince Salman’s critic and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was “unacceptable,” “But what do you do? What part do you play in the process of economic and social change?” and the report continued: “Gorman said he did not judge any country’s attempts to root out corruption,” and Gorman and a French tycoon joined in throwing their “weight behind Riyadh’s economic and social direction, by saying, ‘it is quite difficult and brave what the kingdom is doing’,” by its ‘reforms’. It was all being done to ‘root out corruption, and to spread democracy’. Sure. There’s “a sucker born every minute,” except now it’s every second. That seems to be the main way to win votes.

On January 26^th, Trump appointed the fascist Elliott Abrams to lead this ‘democratization of Venezuela’, by overthrowing and replacing the elected President by the second-in-line-of succession (comparable in Venezuela to removing Trump and skipping over the Vice President and appointing Nancy Pelosi as America’s President, and also violating the Venezuelan Constitution's requirement that the Supreme Judicial Trbunal must first approve before there can be ANY change of the President without an election by the voters). It’s clearly another US coup that is being attempted here. Trump, by international dictat, says that this Venezuelan traitor whom the US claims to be installing is now officially recognized by the US Government to be the President of Venezuela. Bloomberg News reported that Abrams would join Trump’s neocon Secretary of State on January 26^th at the UN to lobby there for the UN to authorize Trump’s intended Venezuelan coup. The EU seemed strongly inclined to follow America’s lead. On the decisive UN body, the Permanent Security Council, of China, France, Russia, UK, and US, the US position was backed by three: US, France, and UK. Russia and China were opposed. In the EU, only France, Germany, Spain, and UK, came out immediately backing the US position. On January 25^th, Russia’s Tass news agency was the first to report on the delicate strategic situation inside Venezuela. It sounded like the buildup to Obama’s successful coup in Ukraine in February 2014, but in Venezuela and under Trump. In fact, at least two commentaors other than I have noted the apparent similarities: Whitney Webb at “Washington Follows Ukraine, Syria Roadmap in Push for Venezuela Regime Change” and RT at “‘Venezuela gets its Maidan’: Ukrainian minister makes connection between regime change ops”.

Abrams’s career has been devoted to “regime-change,” and is as unapologetic about it as is John Bolton. Also like Bolton, he’s an impassioned supporter of Jewish apartheid. He wrote in his 1997 book Faith or Fear, that “Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nation in which they live. It is the very nature of being Jewish to be apart — except in Israel — from the rest of the population.” Israel is, in this and the view of many billionaires, the whole world’s ghetto, and ‘real’ Jews don’t belong anywhere else than there. And, according to that, nobody else does belong there, except people who accept being ruled by Jewish Law — the Torah. So, on 25 June 2001, George W. Bush, as the main representative of America’s billionaires, made Abrams the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations at the National Security Council. Of course, Abrams was gung-ho for Americans to conquer Iraq, because Iraqis didn’t like Israel. And the current US President hires that same agent of Israel, Abrams, now to sell internationally America’s current coup to grab Venezuela for America’s billionaires. Abrams, for years, had been courting Trump’s favor by having declined to include himself among the many Republican neoconservatives, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. He thereby has now won his new job, on the real-world sequel to The Apprentice, which is known as President Trump’s Administration. Another such winner, of course, is John Bolton, who likewise had declined to endorse Hillary.

Perhaps the US regime thinks that testing the resolve of Russia’s Government, regarding Venezuela, would be less dangerous than testing it over the issue of Iran. But Big Brother says that this imposition of America’s corruption is instead merely a part of rooting out corruption and spreading democracy and human rights, throughout the world.

The US has managed to get Venezuela in play, to control again. Some American billionaires think it’s a big prize, which must be retaken. The largest oil-and-gas producers — and with the highest reserves of oil-and-gas in the ground — right now, happen to be Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Russia, Venezuela, and US So, for example, Venezuela is a much bigger prize than Brazil.

All of those countries have an interest in denying the existence of human-produced global warming, and in selling as much of their product as quickly as possible before the world turns away from fossil fuels altogether. High-tech doesn’t drive today’s big-power competition nearly so much as does the fossil-fuels competition — to sell as much of it as they can, as fast as they can. The result of this competition could turn out to be a nuclear winter that produces a lifeless planet and thus prevents the planet from becoming lifeless more slowly from global burnout — the alternative outcome, which would be produced by the burnt fossil fuels themselves. Either way, the future looks bleak, no matter what high-tech produces (unless high-tech produces quickly a total replacement of fossil fuels, and, in the process, bankrupts many of the billionaires who are so active in the current desperate and psychopathic global competition).

This is what happens when wealth worldwide is so unequally distributed that the “World’s Richest 0.7% Own 13.67 Times as Much as World’s Poorest 68.7%”. According to economic theory (which has always been written by agents for the aristocracy), the distribution of wealth is irrelevant. This belief was formalized by a key founder of today’s mathematized economic theory, Vilfredo Pareto, who, for example, in his main work, the 1912 Trattato di Sociologia Generale, wrote (# 2135), that, though “the lover of equality will assign a high coefficient to the utility of the lower classes and get a point of equilibrium very close to the equalitarian condition, there is no criterion save sentiment for choosing between the one [such equality of wealth] and the other [a single person — whom he called “superman” — owning everything].” The article on Pareto in the CIA’s Wikipedia doesn’t even so much as mention this central feature of Pareto’s thinking, the feature that’s foundational in all of the theory of “welfare” in economics. Pareto was also the main theoretician of fascism, and the teacher of Mussolini. This belief is at the foundation of capitalism as we know it, and as it has been in economic theory ever since, actually, the 1760s. Pareto didn’t invent it; he merely mathematized it.

So, we’ve long been in 1984, or at least building toward it. But US-allied billionaires wrote this particular version of it; George Orwell didn’t. And it’s not a novel. It’s the real thing. And it is now becoming increasingly desperate.

If, in recognizing this, you feel like a hog on a factory-farm, then you’ve got the general idea of this reality. It’s the problem that the public faces. But the publics in the US and its allied regimes are far less miserable than the publics in the countries that the US and its allied regimes are trying to take over — the targeted countries (such as Syria). To describe any realistic solution to this systematic global exploitation would require an entire book, at the very least — no mere article, such as here. The aristocracy anywhere wouldn’t publish such a book. Nobody would likely derive any significant income from writing it. That’s part of the reality, which such a book would be describing.

However, a key part of this reality is that for the billionaires — the people who control international corporations or corporations that even are aspiring to grow beyond their national market — their nation’s international policies are even more important to them than its domestic affairs (such as the toxic water in Flint, Michigan; or single-payer health insurance — matters that are relatively unimportant to billionaires), and, therefore, the most-censored and least-honestly reported realities on the part of the aristocracy’s ‘news’-media are the international ones. And, so, this is the field where there is the most lying, such as about “Saddam’s WMD,” and about all foreign countries. However, when a person is in an aristocracy’s military, deception of that person is even more essential, especially in the lower ranks, the troops, because killing and dying for one’s aristocracy is far less attractive than killing or dying in order honestly to serve and protect an authentic democracy. Propagandizing for the myth that the nation is a democracy is therefore extremely important in any aristocracy. Perhaps this is the reason why, in the United States, the military is consistently the institution that leads above all others in the public’s respect. It’s especially necessary to do that, in the nation that President Barack Obama repeatedly said is “the one indispensable nation”. This, of course, means that every other nation is “dispensable.” Any imperial nation, at least since ancient Rome, claimed the same thing, and invaded more nations than any other in the world when it was the leading imperial nation, because this is what it means to be an empire, or even to aspire to being one: imposing that given nation’s will upon other nations — colonies, vassal states, or whatever they are called. When soldiers know that they are the invaders, not the actual defenders, their motivation to kill and die is enormously reduced. This is the main reason why the ‘news’-media in an imperial nation need to lie constantly to their public. If a news-reporting organization doesn’t do that, no aristocrat will even buy it. And virtually none will advertise in it or otherwise donate to it. It will be doomed to remain very small and unprofitable in every way (because the “World’s Richest 0.7% Own 13.67 Times as Much as World’s Poorest 68.7%”). Billionaires donate to ‘news’-organizations that might report accurately about domestic US problems, but not to ones that report accurately about international affairs, especially about important international affairs. Even liberal ‘news’-media are neoconservative, or favorable toward American invasions and coups. In order to be a significant player in the ‘news’-business in the United States, one has to be.

So: this is how America’s dictatorship works. This is not America’s exceptionalism: it is America’s ordinariness. America’s Founders had wanted to produce something not just exceptional but unique in its time: a democratic republic. But what now exists here is instead a dictatorial global empire, and it constitutes the biggest threat to the very existence of the United Nations ever since that body’s founding in 1945. If that body accepts as constituting the leader of Venezuela the person that America’s President declares to be Venezuela’s leader, then the UN is effectively dead. This would be an immense breakthrough for all of the US regime’s billionaires, both domestically and throughout its allied countries (such as in France, Germany, Spain, and UK). It would be historic, if they win. It would be extremely grim, and then the UN would immediately need to be replaced. The US and its allies would refuse to join the replacement organization. That organization would then authorize economic sanctions against the US and its allies. These will be reciprocated. The world would break clearly into two trading-blocs. In a sense, the UN’s capitulation to the US on this matter would create another world war, WW III. It would be even worse than when Neville Chamberlain accepted Hitler’s offer regarding the Sudetenland. We’d be back to the start of WW II, with no lessons learned since then. And with nuclear weapons.

Photo: Flickr

Adelson’s recent successes in translating his political donations into policy favorable to Israel have included shifting the US Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting aid to Palestinians, ending the Iranian nuclear monitoring agreement and closing the Palestine Liberation Organization’s diplomatic office in Washington. All those Trump Administration measures were reportedly worked out privately by Adelson speaking directly with the president.

Adelson’s activities in buying politicians reflect what he believes, he reportedly having said that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.” Nor does his world view include much concern for the country that has sheltered him and made him wealthy. He served in the US Army in World War 2 and has said that he regrets having done so, as he would rather have worn an Israeli army uniform. He also expressed his desire that his son might become an Israeli Army sniper.

Adelson benefits from his exceptional access to the White House to the detriment of actual American interests. A New York Times article “Sheldon Adelson Sees a Lot to Like in Trump’s Washington,” states that he “enjoys a direct line to the president” and meets the president monthly “in private in-person meetings and phone conversations.” He has been delighted with the openly expressed threats emanating from the Administration’s key foreign and national security policy spokesmen regarding Iran. He would like to see the United States go to war with the Iranians to destroy their government and bring about some kind of regime change, and, judging from recent developments, he just might get what he seeks, which could easily have catastrophic consequences for the entire region and beyond.

Adelson is somewhat unhinged on the issue of Iran and has even called for dropping a nuclear bomb on a desert region of the country as a negotiating tactic to show “we mean business” so Washington could then “impose its demands [on Iran] from a position of strength.” If Iran continued to resist, Adelson would to drop the next one on Tehran. If Tehran were to be nuked millions of Iranians would die, which doesn’t bother Adelson one bit. Such a development would, in Adelson’s opinion, be good for Israel, which is his primary concern.

Adelson’s power over policy makers is also evident in what the White House does not do. Israeli snipers have shot dead at least 143 unarmed Arab demonstrators in Gaza without so much as a word of condemnation coming out of Washington. Indeed, the Donald Trump Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has gone out of his way to defend the killings and also to support the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

Adelson is also widely believed to have had a hand in personnel changes in the White House. He has used his money and influence to advance the careers of United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo while also arranging the removal of H.R. McMaster and Rex Tillerson for “being anti-Israeli” and not sufficiently willing to go to war with Iran. Defense Secretary James Mattis, the only actual adult remaining in the room when foreign policy is discussed, is believed to be the next target for removal.

How does Adelson do it? Money talks. He is worth an estimated $35 billion. His fortune came from casinos both in the US and in China, which some might consider to be promotion of vice. To buy and maintain the Republican support for right wing Zionist policies he has donated what is for him pocket change, $55 million so far this year in support of GOP candidates in the Midterm elections. In 2016, he gave large sums to the Trump campaign and to other Republicans, donating $35 million to the former and $55 million to two top Republican PACs — the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Senate Leadership Fund.

In America’s corrupt political culture, a monster like Sheldon Adelson can buy both a White House and Congress on behalf of a foreign government for a paltry $150 million or so. It is a reasonable investment for him given his views, as through him Israel is able to control a large slice of American foreign policy while also receiving billions of dollars each year from the US Treasury. And for those who think it would be different if the Democrats were in charge, think again. The Democrats have their own Adelson. His name is Haim Saban, an Israeli-American media magnate who has said he is a “one issue guy and my issue is Israel.” He is also the largest individual contributor to the Democratic Party.

Photo: Flickr

The only country that stands to benefit from this disjointed and hypocritical U.S. nuclear proliferation policy is Israel. It was the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, aided and abetted by Israel’s wealthy American Jewish billionaire troika of political influence peddlers – Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer, and Bernard Marcus – who, in the end, convinced Trump to trash the JCPOA. Trump’s two new additions to his national security and foreign policy team, Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton, have long advocated blowing up the JCPOA, charging that Iran has been violating the deal. Nothing is further from the truth, as demonstrated by conclusive reports on Iran’s nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Israel’s own Mossad intelligence service, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Israel has been itching for a military showdown with Iran, something which has commenced in Syria, where Iranian paramilitary units and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies have been hit with Israeli missile strikes. Standing not so quietly behind the Israelis in trying to provoke Iran are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. In fact, Bahrain, which plays host to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet and has overseen a bloody repression of its Shi’a majority, outwardly backed Israel in its showdown with Iran in the Golan region of Syria.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa tweeted, “As long as Iran changes the current situation in the area and exploits other countries by using its power and missiles, then every country in this region – including Israel – has a right to defend itself by destroying the source of danger.” Bahrain and its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) allies, except for Oman, has not shown as much sympathy for Yemeni civilians that have been massacred in a genocide engineered by the Saudis and Emiratis, with the backing of the Israelis and Americans.

Trump’s turning back the clock on Western relations with Iran plays directly into the hands of the Israelis. While Israel’s agents-of-influence in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) drew up primary and secondary sanctions lists against Iran, in violation of the JCPOA and, in the case of Iran’s other trading partners, the World Trade Organization, Israel continues to secretly import Iranian oil via Turkey and the Netherlands. These covert transactions are handled by the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co (EAPC) and Trans-Asiatic Oil, Ltd., which have been buying oil from Iran since the days of the Shah. Iranian oil, refined at Israeli facilities in Haifa and Ashdod, makes its way into the vehicles driven by everyday Israelis. The Israelis hide their transactions with the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company via a series of shell corporations, including Eilat Corporation, based in Panama; a holding company called APC Holdings, based in Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Fimarco Anstal, an Iranian front company based in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. In a rather typical case of “do as we say and not as we do,” the Israeli government wants sanctions on Iran to apply to every country but Israel.

Not only does Israel financially benefit politically and economically from re-imposed sanctions on Iran, but it will stand to greatly collect dividends from an opening of U.S. relations with North Korea. While the Trump administration wants to impose sanctions on Iran, which abandoned its nuclear program in concert with the JCPOA and was never even close to possessing nuclear weapons, it is willing to sink billions into North Korea’s economic development if it gives up its nuclear weapons program, including its arsenal of nuclear warheads. Pompeo, after meeting with North Korean officials in Pyongyang and securing the release of three U.S. captives in North Korea in preparation for a June summit in Singapore between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said, “If North Korea takes bold action to quickly denuclearize, the United States is prepared to work with North Korea to achieve prosperity on the par with our South Korean friends.” If Pompeo is serious, the United States could invest billions in the North Korean economy to bring it up to par with that of South Korea.

It will not be the United States that benefits from a mixed market-socialist economy in North Korea, but another country and faux U.S. “friend” that has engaged in a covert relationship with North Korea over many decades – Israel. No longer constrained by international sanctions imposed on North Korea, it will be Israelis and Israeli companies, which already have contacts in the North Korean government, that will have the financial upper hand in North Korea.

Israel’s clandestine links with North Korea date back to the operations of the Israel Corporation, which controlled Israel Aircraft Industries and Zim Israel Navigation Shipping Company. Eisenberg was the first Israeli to establish trading links with the People’s Republic of China, which eventually extended to North Korea and Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia. Eisenberg’s chief exports to China and North Korea were weapons. In the latter part of his life, Eisenberg was found more often in Beijing, where he died in 1997, than in Tel Aviv. As with Israel’s covert oil business with Iran, Eisenberg’s weapons sales to China and North Korea were handled by a shell corporation in Panama called United Development, Inc.

On December 5, 2007, the Japanese paper “Yomiuri Shimbun” reported that Israel was conducting secret operations with North Korea in the early 1990s that involved proposed Israeli investments in a North Korean gold mine. The paper also reported, "a senior official of the Israeli Foreign Ministry received a phone call at home from a senior North Korean official, and was asked, 'Would you like to hold talks with the husband of Kim Il-sung's daughter, Kim Kyong-hui, as he is in charge of missile development?’" The son-in-law of North Korean founding father Kim Il-sung was Chang Song-taek, the first vice director of the Organization and Guidance Department of the governing Korean Worker's Party.

It was reported in 2004 by the New Zealand media that Mossad agent Zev William Barkan, alias Lev Bruckenstein, wanted by New Zealand for illegally attempting to obtain New Zealand passports, turned up in Pyongyang as a security adviser for the North Korean government. Barkan and other Mossad agents were in Pyongyang to negotiate a deal to build a West Bank-style security wall along the border with China, which was to be outfitted with Israeli-manufactured motion detectors and night vision equipment. The North Korean people, isolated for so long from other nations, are naturally suspicious of foreigners. For that reason, Mossad chose to rely on South Korean evangelical Christian agents working in the North, individuals who were better able to blend into North Korean society.

Several Israeli interlocutors in Pyongyang reportedly managed to convince Kim Jong-un’s government that Koreans, as a “Turkic people,” are one of the lost tribes of Israel. The North Korean self-sufficiency concept of "Juche" melded nicely with Israel's policy of "kibbutzism," which also stresses self-sustenance. In reality, the Israelis were trying to position themselves as middlemen between North Korea and countries enacting direct trade sanctions against Pyongyang, just as the Israelis have done with Iran in respect to everything from secret oil deals to buying pistachios, caviar, and Persian carpets through middlemen in Turkey. Israel buys $26 million worth of Iranian pistachios annually, turning their noses up at the pistachio industry in California. Marc Rich, the sanction-busting American-Israeli-Belgian-Spaniard-Bolivian, was a significant Mossad asset because of his ability to skirt United Nations and United States sanctions against certain pariah regimes, including post-revolutionary Iran, something that enriched not only Rich, but several Israeli businessmen.

By scrapping America’s commitment to the JCPOA and announcing that he is willing to invest billions in North Korea’s economy, Mr. Trump, the self-professed master of the “art of the deal,” has proven to be nothing more than a schlump of Netanyahu, Israeli sanction-busting oligarchs in Israel, and pro-Israeli political funders like Adelson, Singer, and Marcus.

In an event reminiscent of the neocon and Israeli proffering of forged Niger government documents concerning Iraq’s acquisition of yellowcake uranium from the West African nation – an event that helped lead the U.S. into a disastrous military invasion and occupation of Iraq – Israel claimed to have stolen Iran’s entire nuclear weapons archive from a warehouse near Tehran. Israeli Mossad agents were said to have broken into the warehouse and transported 100,000 documents on Iran’s so-called “Amad Project” to the Azerbaijani border, where other Mossad agents took possession of the archive and transported it to Israel.

The Amad Project was represented by Israel as Iran’s continuing nuclear weapons program, a notion that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors consider to be a fantasy of the Israelis. A spokesman for the Azerbaijani foreign ministry told the Azertag news agency, “We are absolutely convinced that this piece of information [the Project Amad archives] has nothing to do with the truth and is a complete fake.” Similarly, the Niger government called the fake uranium documents fakes, but to no avail. The neocons managed to insert the false Niger-Iraq uranium claims into his January 2003 State of the Union speech. There is now a strong suspicion that Israel convinced Trump that the Amad forgeries were real, which led him to his pullout from the JCPOA.

In recent weeks, forces of the United Arab Emirates invaded and occupied Socotra, a pristine group of islands that are claimed by Yemen and sit in the middle of the strategic Arabian Sea. Socotra’s airport and seaport are important for Israeli forces as an intermediate staging area for a military attack on Iran. It is believed that, along with a UAE force of armed military personnel, tanks, and armored troop carriers that seized the airport, seaport, and government buildings on April 30, were foreign mercenary forces of the private firm Reflex Reponses Management Consultancy LLC (R2), run by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, a political associate of Trump and brother of U.S, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. R2 is based at a military base called Zayed Military City, located outside of Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital. UAE military and R2 forces also reportedly occupied Abd al Kuri, an island that lies off Socotra.

The UAE military occupation of Socotra coincides with the creation of the U.S. Special Operations Command (Forward) Yemen within the “Yemen Area of Responsibility.” Prince’s R2 personnel have been identified mingling with U.S. military personnel in Aden in South Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somaliland, and Seychelles.

The UAE’s Joint Aviation Command is led by former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Toumajan, promoted to the rank of major general in the UAE armed forces. Known as “General Steve,” Toumajan has been involved with Prince’s R2 in supporting UAE military operations in Yemen on behalf of the Saudi-led coalition and in Libya in support of the U.S.-supported forces of longtime Central Intelligence Agency asset, General Khalifa Haftar. Prince and Toumajan serve their master, UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahayan. Like his Saudi counterpart, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud, Zayed has forged an alliance with Israel in pressing severe sanctions against Qatar, which is seen as too friendly with Iran, and cooperating in ratcheting up tensions against Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

With the connivance of Mossad, which specializes in forgeries and fake news stories, as seen with the “Amad Project” and Niger yellowcake uranium sales to Iraq, Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) tried to destabilize Qatar by concocting a false story and planting it on the web site of the Qatar News Agency (QNA). The false story claimed that Qatar's emir was consorting with Iran against Saudi Arabia. The bogus news story was reportedly the brain child of Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States. Otaiba enjoys warm relations with the Israeli Mossad, as well as with Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner.

The ultimate aim of the axis of Trump, Netanyahu, MBS of Saudi Arabia, and MBZ of the UAE is to coordinate a military strike against Iran with the goal of “regime change.”

UAE occupation of Socotra, in preparation for war with Iran, has been a gradual process. It began with a UAE assistance program for the island that included a new UAE city on the island, known as "Zayed Residential City 1."

The UAE invaders met with Yemeni Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr, who was visiting Socotra at the time of the invasion. Not satisfied with the official reason given for the UAE invasion, bin Daghr took to Facebook to state, “On [April 30]… the first Emirati military aircraft arrived carrying two armoured vehicles and more than 50 Emirati soldiers, followed immediately by two other aircraft carrying tanks and armoured vehicles and soldiers… This raised a number of questions, and [I] left the island in a state of anxiety.”

Prince has been involved in a number of operations involving the UAE military, including its support for the re-declaration of independence by South Yemen from Yemen; its cooperation with Saudi Arabia in the genocidal civil war in Yemen, which mostly targets the Houthi-led rebel government in North Yemen; and the acquisition of naval base rights in the port of Berbera, in the self-proclaimed Republic of Somaliland. In October 2015, UAE forces, with the reported support of Prince’s R2, took control of the Yemeni island of Perim in the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. The island had been under the control of Yemeni Houthi rebel forces battling the Saudi-supported Yemeni puppet government for control of Yemen.

There is informed speculation that the UAE is planning to annex Socotra to the UAE. The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the UAE, Anwar Gargash, tipped his hand as to such a possibility in a Twitter message that referred to the UAE’s “family and historic relations” with Socotra and its people. Gargash was likely referring to the fact that Socotra was once part of the Mahra Sultanate of Qishn in Hadhramaut. If the UAE plans to annex Socotra, it might include inviting a restored Sultan of the Mahra Sultanate of Qishn and Socotra to join the UAE as the eighth member of the federation. The Mahra Sultanate would have to change to an emirate or the UAE would have to alter its name to the “United Arab Emirates and Sultanates,” especially if a restored Qua'iti State of Hadhramaut, Kathiri State of Seiyun, and Sultanate of Lahej also join the UAE or “UAES” as members, thus expanding the UAE to include what is now South Yemen. If that were to occur, the Sultanate of Oman, which would lie between the bifurcated federation, would feel threatened.

Before it can expand to the south by annexing South Yemen and Socotra, the UAE had to deal with potential internal trouble at home. Sheikha Latifa, the daughter of UAE Vice President and Emir of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, was recently kidnapped from a yacht off the Indian state of Goa. Latifa has been a constant critic of her father’s rule and she has called for democratic reforms within the UAE. Since the age of 18, Latifa has reportedly been refused permission to leave the UAE. In February, Latifa tried to make a run for it. Sneaking into Oman, Latifa and a Finnish friend used jet skis to reach the yacht, The Nostromo, anchored in international waters and captained by Hervé Jaubert, a U.S. citizen and former French intelligence officer. Naval vessels of the UAE and India, as well as helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft of both nations, reportedly intercepted the yacht and special forces of India and the UAE – possibly including Prince’s R2 mercenaries and “General Steve’s” aircraft – forcibly removed Latifa and her Finnish companion and repatriated them back to Dubai.

The kidnapping at sea scenario is similar to MBS’s purge of senior members of the House of Saud and prominent Saudi ministers and businessmen after Kushner shared with the crown prince transcripts of U.S. National Security Agency intercepts of the Saudis’ communications. Those who expressed opposition to MBS were detained and some were tortured. Some of those tortured reportedly died of heart attacks under the stress.

The axis of evil of the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE is about to embark on a destabilizing war against Iran. The mess created by these same parties in Iraq will be magnified to an even greater scale in Iran. The world can hardly stand by and allow such a calamity to occur.

Iran and the Iranian people will lose because their suffering economy will not now benefit from the lifting of sanctions and other economic inducements that convinced it to sign the agreement in the first place. And yes, even the United States and Israel will lose because an agreement that would have pushed back by ten or fifteen years Iran’s timetable if it were to choose to develop a weapon will now be reduced to a year or less. And the United States will in particular lose because the entire world will understand that the word of an American president when entering into an international agreement cannot be trusted.

The only winners from the withdrawal are President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will enjoy the plaudits of their hardline supporters. But their victory will be illusory as the hard reality of what they have accomplished becomes clear.

Failure of JCPOA definitely means that war is the only likely outcome if Tel Aviv and Washington continue in their absurd insistence that the Iranians constitute a major threat both to the region and the world. A war that might possibly involve both the United States and Russia as well as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel would devastate the region and might easily have potential to escalate into something like a global conflict.

The decision to end the agreement is based on American domestic political considerations rather than any real analysis of what the intelligence community has been reporting. Deep-pocketed Iran-hating billionaires named Sheldon Adelson, Rebekah Mercer and Paul Singer are now prepared to throw tens of millions of dollars at Trump’s Republican Party to help it win in November’s midterm elections.

Those possessed of just a tad more foresight, to include the Pentagon and America’s European allies, have strongly urged that JCPOA be continued, particularly as the Iranians have been fully in compliance, but there is a new team in Washington. America’s just-confirmed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did not exactly endorse the ludicrous Israeli claim made by Benjamin Netanyahu two weeks ago that Iran has a secret weapons of mass destruction program currently in place, but he did come down hard against the JCPOA, echoing Trump in calling it a terrible agreement that will guarantee an Iranian nuclear weapon. The reality is quite different, with the pact basically eliminating a possible Iranian nuke for the foreseeable future through degradation of the country’s nuclear research, reduction of its existing nuclear stocks and repeated intrusive inspections.

The failure of the JCPOA is not about the agreement at all, which is both sound and workable. There is unfortunately an Israeli-White House construct which assumes that Iran is both out to destroy Israel, for which no evidence has been revealed, as well as being singularly untrustworthy, an odd assertion coming from either Washington or Tel Aviv. It also basically rejects any kind of agreement with the Iranian government on principle so there is nowhere to go to “fix” what has already transpired.

The United States has changed in the past seventeen years. The promotion of policies that were at least tenuously based on genuine national interests is no longer embraced by either political party. A fearful public has allowed a national security state to replace a constitutional republic with endless war as the inevitable result. Presidents once constitutionally constrained by legislative and judicial balance of power have successfully asserted executive privilege to become like third world dictators, able to make war without any restraint on their ability to do so. If America survives, historians will no doubt see the destruction of the JCPOA as the beginning of something new and horrible, where the government of these United States deliberately made a decision to abandon a beneficial foreign treaty to instead opt for a path that can only lead to war.

Photo: The Daily Signal