1/1/20, Mayor Pete Buttigieg says: “America’s leaders can no longer watch in silence as Assad and Russia attack innocent Idlib civilians. Inaction is a stain on our collective conscience. The international community must use all available tools at its disposal to stop this massacre and provide humanitarian aid.” Pete Buttigieg twitter…[First of all Pete, America has no “leaders.” Second, your information is grossly inaccurate. Third, regarding Syria, your first concern should be immediately ending the "stain" of US illegal occupation of one third of Syria.]
Map, US illegally occupies one third of Syria, in this map the yellow area attributed to “Kurds” as well as smaller, scattered US “no go” areas.
Mayor Pete knows it’s common knowledge that “Idlib province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9-11," here stated by Brett McGurk, July 2017…It’s also common knowledge that Idlib headslicers are holding many innocent Syrians hostage: “At least 1.5 million jihadists and their families have amassed there [in Idlib], and hold hostage about an equal number of Syrians.” Instead of offering to help Syria remove headslicers from Idlib as Syria’s humanitarian neighbor and friend Russia has been doing as authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 2254, item 8, Pete wants to preserve and protect a permanent "safe haven" for headslicers in Idlib province on land stolen from Syria. Sorry, Pete, but the UN disagrees with you about “terrorist safe havens in Syria.” Pete wants the world to preserve the terrorist “safe haven” in Idlib, but UN 2254 says “to eradicate the safe haven they [terrorists] have established over significant parts of Syria.” How can Pete ignore the criminal humanitarian crisis of “millions of civilian hostages and human shields who have suffered in Idlib since the terrorist occupation began in 2013? What about the men prevented from leaving, where residents were threatened with death if they didn’t stay to defend Idlib from the final battle?…What about the women used as slaves by the terrorists and foreign interlopers? What about the children prevented from accessing a normal education, and forced into servitude by the terrorists?"
UN Security Council “Resolution 2254,” Dec. 2015
“8. Reiterates its call in resolution 2249 (2015) for Member States to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), Al-Nusra Front (ANF), and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda or ISIL, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the Security Council, and as may further be agreed by the ISSG and determined by the Security Council, pursuant to the Statement of the ISSG of 14 November 2015, and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Syria, and notes that the aforementioned ceasefire will not apply to offensive or defensive actions against these individuals, groups, undertakings and entities, as set forth in the 14 November 2015 ISSG Statement.”
UN Security Council “Resolution 2254,” 12/23/2015, regarding removing terrorists from Libya, states that UN member states should, if asked, help other member states to defeat terrorist groups. This is exemplified by Syria asking neighbor and friend Russia to help it remove terrorists, and Russia agreeing to do so:
“12. Urges Member States to swiftly assist the Government of National Accord in responding to threats to Libyan security and to actively support the new government in defeating ISIL, groups that have pledged allegiance to ISIL, Ansar Al Sharia, and all other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with Al-Qaida operating in Libya, upon its request;”…
Further, does “humanitarian” Mayor Pete demand that the US immediately end its illegal occupation of one third of Syria, and call on the “international community” to use its “tools” to end this humanitarian crisis and unprovoked, criminal aggression against a sovereign nation and its citizens? Does Pete agree that Syria would be perfectly justified in seizing one third of the US in return? PS. Pete, your heart clearly belongs to the "international community," which is fine for you but not for us. We need someone whose heart belongs to us. “The biggest lie in the US foreign policy–officially fighting terrorism while secretly supporting it.”
Image, 1/1/20, Jarrett Blanc twitter
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“Mayor Pete has effectively positioned himself as a Trojan Horse for the establishment, offering “generational change” that doesn’t challenge existing power structures in any concrete way.“…“The incredible power of the military-intelligence agencies over the entire government is an expression of the breakdown of American democracy.”
12/30/19, “The spooks’ choice: Coup plotters and CIA agents fill Pete Buttigieg’s list of national security endorsers," The GrayZone, Samuel D. Finkelstein
“Why are so many intelligence veterans throwing their weight behind a young Indiana mayor with such a thin foreign policy resume?”
“These questions continue to loom large over the 2020 Democratic primary field: Who is Pete Buttigieg? And what is he doing here?
Seemingly overnight, the once obscure mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city was vaulted to national prominence, with his campaign coffers stuffed with big checks from billionaire benefactors.
The publication of a list of 218 endorsements from “foreign policy and national security professionals” by Buttigieg’s campaign deepened the mystery of the mayor’s rise.
Some observers have raised questions about Pete Buttigieg’s intimate relationship with the national security state, after it was revealed that his campaign had paid nearly $600,000 for “security” to a Blackwater-style military contractor.
Buttigieg’s new roster of endorsements from former high-ranking CIA officials, regime-change architects, and global financiers should raise more questions about the real forces propelling his campaign.
Pete’s $179,617.04 payment to Patriot Group is by far the largest single security payment made by any Presidential campaign, for 2016 or 2020. This is odd, because he’s the Mayor of Indiana’s 4th largest city. Not exactly a big target. And because they’re military contractors.
Patriot Group is currently under contract w/the US military. They provide “contractor-owned, contractor-operated intelligence, surveillance & reconnaissance aerial detection and monitoring support...inside & outside the U.S.”
Buttigieg’s lack of core principles are what might make him so attractive to military contractors and financial institutions, two of the status quo’s biggest beneficiaries.
Mayor Pete has effectively positioned himself as a Trojan Horse for the establishment, offering “generational change” that doesn’t challenge existing power structures in any concrete way.
Eye-popping payments to a Blackwater-style mercenary firm A review of Pete for America’s FEC disclosures found that the campaign had paid $561,416.82 for “security” to a company called Patriot Group International (PGI), from June 4 to September 9, 2019.
Buttigieg’s August 29, 2019 payment of $179,617.04 to PGI represents the single largest security expenditure ever made by a presidential candidate, according to the FEC.
While the exorbitant amount of money raises questions, it is PGI’s status as a Blackwater-style mercenary firm that makes Buttigieg’s contract so remarkable.
PGI bills itself as a “global mission support provider with expeditionary capabilities, providing services to select clients within the intelligence, defense, and private sector.” According to the company’s website, it offers services like counter-terrorism, counter-weapons of mass destruction, and drone surveillance.
PGI is currently under a $26.5 million contract with the Department of Defense to provide “contractor-owned, contractor-operated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aerial detection and monitoring support … inside and outside the U.S.” It is a far cry from securing campaign events held in New Hampshire community centers….
FEC Spending receipts from Pete’s campaign
Besides contracting with Buttigieg, PGI’s only other record of political work was with Newt Gingrich’s 2012 presidential campaign. In a 2016 Inc. Magazine profile, PGI founder Greg Craddock said his company stopped doing political work altogether, following a 2012 incident in which a PGI employee on Gingrich’s security detail allegedly assaulted an overzealous Ron Paul supporter.
Why the mercenary firm chose to re-enter politics for the mayor of South Bend, Indiana remains an open question.
Whatever the reason, Buttigieg’s willingness to line the pockets of military contractors as a candidate might offer further insight into why so many in the national security state are lining up behind him.
The CIA hearts Mayor Pete
Buttigieg’s lengthy roster of endorsements is loaded with former intelligence operatives, national security hardliners, regime-change specialists, and vulture capitalists.
Among Buttigieg’s most notable endorsers is David S. Cohen, the deputy director of the CIA from 2015 to 2017, and a former Treasury official under George W. Bush.
Cohen is regarded as a “chief architect” of the crippling sanctions that the Obama administration imposed on Iran, Russia, and North Korea — earning him the ignominious nickname the “sanctions guru.”
[Image] Pete Buttigieg backer and former CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen Since leaving government, Cohen has made various think tank appearances to advocate for continued use of sanctions in the aforementioned countries, as well as Venezuela.
The impact of sanctions imposed under Cohen’s watch has been equated to “collective punishment,” resulting in economic crises, food and medicine shortages, and tens of thousands of preventable deaths.
In his tenure at the Treasury Department, Cohen was also instrumental in drafting the Patriot Act, which restricted civil liberties and vastly increased the government’s surveillance powers in response to 9/11.
Cohen has yet to speak publicly as to why he endorsed Buttigieg.
Buttigieg was likewise endorsed by Charlie Gilbert, former deputy director of the National Clandestine Service, a top-ten leadership position at the CIA. Gilbert’s role was to “conceive, plan, and execute complex intelligence operations” against “hostile target [countries].”
Another Buttigieg endorser, John Bair, is the former chief of staff for the CIA’s Middle East Task Force.
Dennis Bowden, a 26-year CIA veteran, with much of that time spent in unspecified “executive leadership positions,” is also backing Mayor Pete.
The Buttigieg campaign has cited the support of former CIA senior analyst Sue Terry, who made a “record number of contributions to the President’s Daily Brief,” during her tenure from 2001 to 2008.
Two more CIA endorsements came from former senior intelligence officer Martijn Rasser, and former senior analyst Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who was also an officer at the National Intelligence Council.
If you’re thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of CIA endorsements for a relatively unknown, small-town mayor,” you’re right – and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
More Buttigieg backers include Ned Price, the career CIA analyst who resigned publicly in a February 2017 protest against “the way [Trump] has treated the intelligence community.” (Price was also a major Clinton donor, but insisted his resignation was non-partisan).
Another CIA Buttigieg endorser is Jeffrey Edmunds, who moonlighted as a National Security Council member under Presidents Obama and Trump.
Buttigieg was also endorsed by Chris Barton, the CIA’s assistant general counsel during the Clinton administration, and Anthony Lake, whom Clinton nominated unsuccessfully to serve as CIA director in 1996.
Mayor Pete’s list of spook supporters similarly includes non-CIA intelligence community professionals like Robert Stasio, the former chief of operations at the NSA Cyber Center, and William Wechsler, former deputy assistant secretary for Special Ops at the Department of Defense.
Buttigieg also named Robin Walker, a former deputy intelligence officer for the Director of National Intelligence, as a supporter. Walker now works for corporate weapons contractor Lockheed Martin.
Regime change hit-men and debt colonists jump on the bandwagon
Yet some of Mayor Pete’s most troubling endorsements come from outside of the military-intelligence apparatus.
Buttigieg, for example, lists Fernando Cutz as an endorser. For the first 16 months of the Trump administration, Cutz was the national security council director for South America, where he led US policy on Venezuela and was credited with outlining regime-change plans for the president.
Since leaving government, Cutz has continued to support the Trump administration’s regime-change efforts against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
As Max Blumenthal reported for The Grayzone, Cutz attended a secret meeting at the DC think tank CSIS dedicated to exploring US military intervention in Venezuela….
Another Buttigieg endorser is Jessica Reitz-Curtin, who spent several years in leadership at USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), working alongside Buttigieg’s close friend, Nathaniel Myers.
OTI is the de-facto tip of the spear for USAID’s regime change efforts. In the case of Venezuela, OTI has bankrolled violent, right-wing opposition forces for decades.
There is also plenty of excitement for Buttigieg at the commanding heights of international finance. Matt Kaczmarek, vice president of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, controlling nearly $7 trillion in assets, is listed as an endorser of the South Bend mayor.
Kaczmarek previously served as the NSC’s director of Brazil and Southern Cone affairs in the Obama administration, when the US backed a right-wing parliamentary coup against President Dilma Roussef.
[Image] Pete Buttigieg endorser Matt Kaczmarek, a former US National Security Council official and now vice president of BlackRock.
BlackRock has massive holdings in Brazilian agribusiness, and is a major factor in the environmental degradation of the Amazon region. BlackRock’s practices have been so destructive to the region that AmazonWatch named the financial behemoth the “world’s largest investor in deforestation.”
Kaczmarek is a perfect embodiment of the revolving door through which high-ranking government employees enter the private sector and reap the rewards of policies they previously helped implement. In 2013, while Kaczmarek was crafting US economic policy towards Brazil, then-Vice President Joseph Biden was urging the country to open its economy further to foreign capital.
From 2014 to the present, BlackRock has substantially increased its investment in Brazil, according to the AmazonWatch report. Now at the helm of the company, Kaczmarek stands to profit handsomely from the same economic liberalization policies that Brazil was goaded into adopting at his direction.
Buttigieg’s list of endorsers likewise includes Karen Mathiasen, former acting executive US director at the World Bank; as well as Julie T. Katzman, COO of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Both organizations have long histories of using debt to impose the will of US policymakers onto poor countries.
Mathiasen, who previously served as deputy assistant secretary for debt and development policy at the Treasury Department, was intimately involved in the administration of what has been dubbed “debt colonialism.” Under this cynical practice, unsustainable levels of debt are used as a pretext to demand that debtor nations privatize government functions, impose austerity, and allow greater exploitation by global capital.
The IDB where Katzman worked plays a similar role in enforcing the Washington Consensus across the Western hemisphere. Wielding debt as its weapon, IDB policies maintain “[Latin America’s] subordinated place in the global economy,” argues Professor Victor Sepúlveda, author of Industrial Colonialism in Latin America: The Third Stage.
Empire’s empty vessel
Obscure presidential candidates don’t typically garner hundreds of elite national security endorsements before a single vote is cast. So what do these spooks and vulture capitalists see in Mayor Pete?
It can’t be Buttigieg’s foreign policy resume, because he doesn’t have one. He hasn’t proposed any notable policies to distinguish himself from the other corporate-friendly candidates, so that can’t be it either. Some have posited that Mayor Pete may be a CIA asset himself, but the supporting evidence is circumstantial at best.
Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion is that they see Buttigieg as an empty vessel. Opportunistic and unmoored by ideology or political goals beyond his advancing his career, Buttigieg is the ideal candidate for those who seek to maintain existing hierarchies. Indeed, his national security endorsement list is filled with people who keep America’s imperial machine humming along smoothly.
What is the thread that connects the CIA, USAID, and the World Bank? All three institution exist to prop up a grossly unequal global order in which a tiny sliver of the population hordes unimaginable wealth, while the mass of people get by on next to nothing.
At a time when that order looks increasingly untenable, with anti-austerity protests breaking out from Chile, to France, to Lebanon, Mayor Pete makes perfect sense.”
“Sam Finkelstein is a political activist, writer, and student at Seton Hall Law School. Follow him on Twitter at @Cancel_Sam.”
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Added:
“The biggest lie in the US foreign policy–officially fighting terrorism while secretly supporting it.”…Trump knows it’s common knowledge that “Idlib province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9-11,“ here stated by Brett McGurk, July 2017. It’s also common knowledge that Trump protects Al Qaeda and its various affiliates in Syria, just as Obama did. Despite ample evidence, 3 examples follow, Trump still publicly denies it. In Sept. 2018, instead of offering to help Syria remove headslicers, Trump threatened a “massive attack” on Syria if its government merely tried to rescue its own citizens and land in Idlib....In June 2019, Trump was again a massive human shield for terrorists, ordered Syria and its neighbor Russia to “stop” trying to remove terrorists from Idlib. In a new low, instead of offering to help Syria remove terrorists, Trump accused Syria and its humanitarian neighbor Russia of “indiscriminately killing many innocent civilians.“ Full text, Trump, 6/2/19: “Hearing word that Russia, Syria and, to a lesser extent, Iran, are bombing the hell out of Idlib Province in Syria, and indiscriminately killing many innocent civilians. The World is watching this butchery. What is the purpose, what will it get you? STOP!” Trump wrote in a Twitter post.”…Third example, Dec, 2019, Trump again “warned” the Syrian government and Russia to halt its attempt to remove terrorists from Syria’s Idlib province.]
Added:
“The biggest lie in the US foreign policy–officially fighting terrorism while secretly supporting it.”…Trump knows it’s common knowledge that “Idlib province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9-11,“ here stated by Brett McGurk, July 2017. It’s also common knowledge that Trump protects Al Qaeda and its various affiliates in Syria, just as Obama did. Despite ample evidence, 3 examples follow, Trump still publicly denies it. In Sept. 2018, instead of offering to help Syria remove headslicers, Trump threatened a “massive attack” on Syria if its government merely tried to rescue its own citizens and land in Idlib....In June 2019, Trump was again a massive human shield for terrorists, ordered Syria and its neighbor Russia to “stop” trying to remove terrorists from Idlib. In a new low, instead of offering to help Syria remove terrorists, Trump accused Syria and its humanitarian neighbor Russia of “indiscriminately killing many innocent civilians.“ Full text, Trump, 6/2/19: “Hearing word that Russia, Syria and, to a lesser extent, Iran, are bombing the hell out of Idlib Province in Syria, and indiscriminately killing many innocent civilians. The World is watching this butchery. What is the purpose, what will it get you? STOP!” Trump wrote in a Twitter post.”…Third example, Dec, 2019, Trump again “warned” the Syrian government and Russia to halt its attempt to remove terrorists from Syria’s Idlib province.]
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