Chinese Coup Watching

Source: Foreign Policy

Last week, controversial politician Bo Xilai, whose relatively open campaigning for a seat on China's top ruling council shocked China watchers (and possibly his elite peers, as well), was removed from his post as Chongqing's party secretary. He hasn't been seen since. Rumors of a coup, possibly coordinated by Bo's apparent ally Zhou Yongkang, are in the air. 

Western media has extensively covered the political turmoil: Bloomberg reported on how coup rumors helped spark a jump in credit-default swaps for Chinese government bonds; the Wall Street Journal opinion page called Chinese leadership transitions an "invitation, sooner or later, for tanks in the streets." The Financial Times saw the removal of Bo, combined with Premier Wen Jiabao's strident remarks at a press conference hours before Bo's removal as a sign the party was moving to liberalize its stance on the Tiananmen square protests of 1989. That Bo staged a coup is extremely unlikely, but until more information comes to light, we can only speculate on what happened. 

Reading official Chinese media response about Bo makes it easy to forget how much Chinese care about politics. The one sentence mention in Xinhua, China's official news agency, merely says that Bo is gone and another official, Zhang Dejiang, is replacing him.  But the Chinese-language Internet is aflame with debate over what happened to Bo and what it means for Chinese political stability. 

Mainland media sites have begun to strongly censor discussion of Bo Xilai and entirely unsubstantiated rumors of gunfire in downtown Beijing (an extremely rare occurance in Beijing). Chinese websites hosted overseas, free from censorship, offer a host of unsupported, un-provable commentary on what might have happened in the halls of power. Bannedbook.org, which provides free downloads of "illegal" Chinese books, posted a long explanation of tremors in the palace of Zhongnanhai, sourced to a "person with access to high level information in Beijing," of a power struggle between President Hu Jintao, who controls the military, and Zhou, who controls China's formidable domestic security apparatus. The Epoch Times, a news site affiliated with the Falun Gong spiritual movement (which banned in China), has published extensively in English and Chinese about the coup. 

Troops March on White House for Ron Paul

Source: Promethean Post
Michael Anthony

Today thousands of active duty troops, veterans and their families marched on the White House to show their support for Presidential candidate Ron Paul who continues to dominate all other candidates in military donations, including President Obama. With an “about face,” veterans and active duty service members turned their backs to the White House and sent a message to the President: Ron Paul is the choice of the troops.

Source: Selected Presidential Reports for 2011 Oct Quarterly 

BREAKING NEWS: Putin accuses America of attempts to "Dominate the World"

Source: Itar Tas

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States of attempts to dominate the world and challenging internal political procedures in other countries as a tool for achieving that goal.

He spoke about foreign policy at the end of his meeting with Tomsk students that lasted about 3.5 hours on Wednesday, January 25. One of them asked Putin what could be the reasons for the negative Western reaction to the parliamentary elections in Kazakhstan.

“The reason is the U.S. foreign policy doctrine. They want to control everything...sometimes I have the impression that the United States does not need allies, that it needs vassals,” the prime minister said.

“They are not prepared to cooperate on real terms either with Europe or us. Cooperation on equal terms means determining threats together and working out a system of response to them together. They reject that flatly,” he said, referring to the missile defence system the U.S. is building in Europe.

According to Putin, one of the American ways to influence other countries is to “doubt everything and say that you do not meet certain standards” but “they work out these standards themselves”.

The Russian authorities are ready to cooperate with public organisations in the country but will not allow them to turn into a tool for external influence, Putin said.

“An attempt to use our non-governmental organisations by foreign states in their own interests for securing their own foreign policy goals with regard to our country must entail rejection. This must not be allowed to happen,” he said.

“The authorities must respond and listen, no matter what they say and how abuse their language may be. It’s indecent, but all the same [we] must listen to them,” Putin said. “The only thing we must not allow is allowing anyone to use anything inside the country for achieving their own foreign policy goals with regard to our country.”

Speaking of the elections in Kazakhstan, he recalled that the number of parties represented in the national parliament has increased from one to three. “That’s a step forward. That’s good,” he said.

False Flag: Mossad Posed as US Spies To Recruit Terrorists to Fight Covert Iran War

Source: Foreign Policy
Mark Perry
 

A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran.

Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation. 

The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children. 

But while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel's Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel's recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel's ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials. 

The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad's efforts. 

"It's amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with," the intelligence officer said. "Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn't give a damn what we thought."