Hilarious! – Fired by Twitter.
Apparently, that’s how Rex Tillerson learned about his dismissal, while he was talking to Chinese diplomats about a possible rapprochement between Pyongyang and Washington. Frankly, Tillerson is no loss to humanity. The only point in his favor is that he disagreed with Trump on the Iran Nuclear Deal. Trump wants to abolish it (following like a poodle Netanyahu’s orders), but Tillerson doesn’t. As former Exxon CEO and oil mogul, he may have personal and corporate interests in Iran, and especially in not destroying Iran. But these have nothing to do with a human approach; this is sheer interest proper, egocentricity – as it is a staunch western characteristic. The “Me” and Lie society syndrome through and through.
Plus, somebody who smiles and expresses satisfaction when told how North Koreans are suffering and possibly dying in the thousands from famine, thanks to US imposed sanctions – does not even deserve to be called human.
Of course, he is not alone. The current Trump Administration is full of either halfwits or criminals. Take Mike Pompeo, the up-to-now CIA Director; he is an ultra-conservative southern Tea Party member, many of whom are still segregationists (wanting to separate the US south from the north) – racists, sexists – and yes, they hate everything that comes from the east, especially from Russia or is Russian. The latter applies to Pompeo for sure.
So, we can expect more Russophobia, more (totally worthless, sheer propaganda) sanctions, and more belligerent saber-rattling towards the east, mostly Russia, then China. Pompeo is also a loyal buddy of Trump’s, a yes-man, something apparently Tillerson never was, but Trump seems to need. So – why did Trump hire Tillerson in the first place? – It was an odd appointment from the get-go. Tillerson felt lost in his role as a ‘diplomate’ – instead he was an aggressive wolf in sheep skin.
Let’s not be fooled. Much of the chaos being played out for more than a year now in the White House – and an end is not in sight – is, of course, a planned strategy – a strategy to confuse. It makes straight thinking difficult. That’s the plan anyway. Trump looks like a loose cannon, maybe he is, but he plays his role well. Take the new tariffs on steel and aluminum – for starters.
Everyone screams and hollers – China, the EU, Japan, Canada, South Korea, even Africa. Yet in the end Trump will prevail in one way or another. There are already a number of fallback positions in case these neoliberal ‘partners’ go to complain to WTO, the mother of neoliberal globalization. Alternatives include import quotas, or even higher tariffs for some countries and exemptions for others.
The point is “Make America Great Again” – meaning bring back jobs and a real hard-core industrial growth element into the US faltering economy. Trump, in fact, is applying what everyone around the globe should apply – a sort of ‘resistance economy’ – de-globalization, working for the national economy, not for transnational, mostly US globalized corporations – which is the case today (see this).
The trade fiasco may be just another one of the typical deviation maneuvers, so people will not look what’s going on in the back, namely in the more compelling course of foreign US policy. The Deep State pulling the strings on Trump wants blood, Russian blood – and then Chinese blood – and they also want to dominate the Middle East – Full Spectrum Dominance – i.e. bombing Damascus into rubble and abrogating Iran’s Nuclear Deal – and provoking a pretext to start a war with Iran – the one Netanyahu is lusting for. But all of this has to be softened with some trade chaos. And it seems to work.
Let’s see what next month’s Trump-Kim – or shall I say, Kim-Trump? Summit will bring, if it will indeed take place. Someone, for some reason must have convinced Trump that for now an “arrangement” with Pyongyang is better than a potential all destructive nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. That ‘someone’ – shall we call it again ‘Deep State’ – has a more vital interest in the full dominance of the Middle East. So, Iran, Syria and Russia beware. The new Axis of Evil. It keeps shifting according to Washington’s priorities.
President Kim Jong-un’s Administration, or those who worked already under Kim’s father, Kim Jong-Il, may remember the 1994 ‘Framework Agreement’, initiated by President Clinton, under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its embryonic nuclear program at Yongbyon and in return would receive economic aid and diplomatic concessions from Washington. The thawing of relations between Pyongyang and Washington prospered until 2000, shortly before President Bush took over.
With his hawkish, neocon entourage, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton, exerting pressure, Bush declined to reaffirm the backbone of the Agreed Framework, “no-hostile-intent”, and he pulled out of the Clinton made deal. Not unlike Trump, who wants to pull out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. Shortly after reneging on the Agreed Framework, Bush invaded Iraq under false pretenses and declared Iraq-Iran-North Korea the axis of evil; launching the endless war on terror. Kim Jong knows that Washington cannot be trusted.
Why would Washington be trustworthy now? – Of course, it is not. Pompeo, the new hawkish chief diplomate, is certainly not a friend of Kim Jong’s, or of communist DPRK. For now, he has to go along with the propaganda summit next month. But once that’s over, however it may play out – anything is possible, he may default on the deal, just like Bush did in 2000, on a peace-favorable agreement and return to square one. By then DPRK may have denuclearized again.
And who will succeed Pompeo at the CIA? – Gina Haspel, the first women ever to head the CIA, a perfect candidate for this criminal agency. Haspel herself earned the not-so-cute nickname “Godmother of Torture”, as she directed and oversaw a secret US torture prison in Thailand. Her appointment bodes well for what’s to come – more aggression, more torture around the globe. The typical last-ditch tools of a faltering empire. Haspel belongs before a Nuremberg-type tribunal – not to be seen again forever.
But that won’t happen, as all the beautiful people of the exceptional nation get away with murder. Literally. Most of them with mass murder, some even with genocide. And zilch happens. Again, the world just gawks and says nothing, accepting crime in biblical dimensions has become the western new normal.
What a world we are living in: White collar criminals with blood stains all over their elite-white shirts. And the western masses just stare and say nothing – but they become warriors, as the presstitute tells them lies after bloody lies; they become complicit in the war machine that is killing millions of people on behalf of their silence.
Fortunately, there is Russia coming to the rescue. Despite the rambling bulldozer of western lie-propaganda, Russian voices, especially Mr. Putin’s voice and that of his Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov – are increasingly heard and listened to. But the western propaganda machine, knowing of its crumbling Master-empire, knows no limits of sowing Russophobia.
Take the latest case of senseless Russia bashing – the case of Russian double agent Skripal and his daughter’s nerve gas poisoning on a London park bench. Theresa May, receiving orders from Washington, is accusing Russia of the crime – why would Russia be so stupid and commit such a crime on a spy who has been released from a Russian prison years ago – and that in a prisoner swap with the US? – And why just before Russian elections? – Not one single proof is presented. Yet, the accusations are loud – and ludicrous.
Does anybody still have just a few neurons in their shrinking brains left? Threatening Russia with more sanctions for a crime most likely committed by the British MI6, MI5 or even Mossad, at Washington’s behest, and so that the entire western world could slam down on Putin and Russia again – is sheer insanity. This lunacy is topped off by a Joint Statement, by Trump, May, Macron and Merkel blaming Russia for the poisoning. Such strong lie publicity is certainly taking hold in the western brainwashed armchair population.
Is anybody asking cui bono? Who benefits? And to make the Zion-UK-Washington argument even stronger – UK PM May expulses 23 Russian diplomats. Is Russia going to be responding in a tit-for-tat manner? – Or will Russia just lay back, enjoying the fake news and insane, hysterical behavior of the West?
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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog; and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
