The Timing Behind the Atttack on Salman Rushdie

Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Ms. Cat’s Chronicles.

The Timing Behind the Atttack on Salman Rushdie

Pollard is a professional liar. Pollard’s article is full of lies, but even liars have a way of telling the truth in spite of themselves. Thanks to Pollard’s article we now know that the real point of the attack on Rushdie is the looming revival of the nuclear agreement with Iran. Pollard sets the stage for this revelation by creating a chronology of events:

On Monday, the EU put forward what it described as the “final” proposed text of a revived nuclear deal with Iran, a deal which has been under negotiation in Vienna since the arrival of Joe Biden in the Oval Office. On Friday morning, the Iranian state news agency reported that the EU’s proposed text “can be acceptable if it provides assurances” to Tehran over its key demands, quoting a senior Iranian diplomat.

Then he makes this remarkable statement:

“The timing could hardly have been more instructive. Within hours of that report, Sir Salman Rushdie had been brutally attacked by a knife-wielding assailant.”

Pollard’s statement is capable of being interpreted in two ways: one obvious, the other absurd. If he is telling us that the Iranians deliberately sabotaged their own nuclear agreement, the idea is absurd. If he is telling us that he has insider knowledge of Israeli intelligence, that is completely plausible, which means it is also plausible to claim that the Israelis played a role in when the attack happened, as one more attempt at sabotaging peace with Iran. This is precisely what Mohammad Morandi, one of the Iranian officials negotiating the new version of the JCPOA claimed when he reacted to the news of the attack on Rushdie. “I won’t be shedding tears for a writer who spouts endless hatred & contempt for Muslims & Islam. A pawn of empire who poses as a Postcolonial novelist,” Marandi tweeted. “But, isn’t it odd that as we near a potential nuclear deal, the US makes claims about a hit on Bolton… and then this happens?,” he added. Timing played a crucial role in Fahkrizadeh’s assassination as well. According to Robert Malley, who served as an advisor to President Barack Obama on Iran, the assassination of Mohsen Fahkrizadeh “was deliberately timed in order to make Biden’s attempts to negotiate with Iran more difficult.”

Exclusive: The Fugitive Who Tried to Spark a US-China War

Exclusive: The Fugitive Who Tried to Spark a US-China War

Guo’s intelligence handlers, Ma and Zhou, were allies of Ling Jihua, who was former President Hu Jintao’s chief of staff. The crucial link between Ma and Ling was provided by Sun Zhengcai, the former party secretary of Chongqing, also a Politburo member.

As we’ve seen, Zhou, Ling, and Sun all ended up in jail – targets of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. But, remarkably, not Guo – who according to former Chinese government officials was Ma’s MSS agent in charge of special ops overseas.

Guo’s job in 2012 was to sabotage the ascension of Xi by spreading an array of fake news in China and among the Chinese diaspora. That failed.

Nonetheless, Guo remained at work as an MSS agent until at least October 2021, according to well-placed Chinese sources. Considering his recent activities and the fact he was lavishly embraced by prominent US China hawks, it appears that his assignment was to cause maximum damage to US-China relations, arguably derailing them to a point of no return.

Steve Bannon & Guo Wengui.

Links behind paywalls (all but a few that I weren’t archived):

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Stephen Kinzer: Neutralism returns — and gets more powerful

Stephen Kinzer: Neutralism returns — and gets more powerful

Many countries recoil from us-versus-them confrontations like the one Biden is now promoting. They prefer to resolve disputes through compromise and to maintain good ties even with countries they fear or dislike. Besides, Biden’s insistence that he is leading a global war against autocracy is hard to take seriously as he kowtows to Saudi Arabia, where dissent is punished by beheading or dismemberment.

A second reason more countries are drifting away from the United States is that to many of them, we seem unreliable. In recent years our foreign policies have zigzagged wildly. Written accords with other countries appear and disappear according to election results. Add our acute domestic problems to this mix, and it’s easy to understand why some countries feel reluctant to hitch their wagon to our

One recent American step has especially spooked several large countries. As soon as war broke out in Ukraine, we and our allies froze billions of dollars that Russia keeps in Western banks. Other countries fear they might suffer the same fate if they one day fall afoul of the United States. To prevent that, they are looking for other places to park their money and imagining banking networks outside of Washington’s control. Saudi Arabia is negotiating with China to price its oil in yuan as well as dollars. Iran’s stock market opened a legal exchange this month for trading the Iranian and Russian currencies.

China getting rid of US debt holdings amid Washington DC’s escalatory actions and overall US decline

This year marks exactly 50 years since the establishment of ties between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. US President Richard Nixon visited China in 1972 and initiated an unprecedented thaw in relations, the first ever between a Communist power and a leading capitalist one. It was a very unusual occurrence, especially as the (First) Cold War was reaching its zenith precisely at that time. Although Mao Zedong himself and Nixon paved the way for the establishment of this relationship, it was only after Deng Xiaoping took power that the modern Sino-American relationship grew and in many ways shaped the economic and geopolitical realities of our time.

China getting rid of US debt holdings amid Washington DC’s escalatory actions and overall US decline

Related:

US debt held by China drops to lowest in 12 years

Speaking at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged that the recent battle with inflation could tip the country into another recession.

Poland: Civil Unrest As Fuel Prices Soar High After Russia Bans Key Polish Pipelines

Poland: Civil Unrest As Fuel Prices Soar High After Russia Bans Key Polish Pipelines

Poland urged EU to impose ‘punitive sanctions’ on Russian oil

Related:

Polish motorists block petrol station in protest of high fuel prices

These [fuel] prices have already caused some unrest. In the town of Bielsko-Biała on Sunday, several drivers who pretended their cars had broken down blocked a petrol station of the partially state-owned PKN Orlen fuel company, local media reported.

Massive “failure” in Orlen. The cars blocked the entrance to the petrol station

The price of the euro is falling. The dollar is falling. The zloty is getting stronger and the fuel is going up. I don’t think it is sticky. Economically, no one can explain why – says Szymon Twardak , one of the participants of the action at the Orlen station.

The drivers have blocked the petrol station again. This time, not one

Poland Suggests Expanding EU’s Seventh Tranche Of Sanctions Against Russia

[4.24.2022] US sanctions against Russia are illegal and only make things worse

4.24.2022 – Perpetually new sanctions against Russia, actively imposed by the United States and its European allies, are formally unilateral measures that have neither a legal basis nor UN approval, writes the Global Times.

Notably, Washington is imposing severe sanctions on those economic sectors where US firms are Russia’s main competitors – ignoring industries where US dependence on Russian supplies is evident, such as titanium, which Americans use to make their aircraft and need rocket engines. According to Deputy Secretary of the Russian Security Council Mikhail Popov, the United States has also allowed its companies to import chemical fertilizers from Russia while imposing a ban on other states, writes the Global Times.

In addition, the US itself has felt the negative impact of the sanctions more than expected, the article said. Gita Gopinath, first deputy executive director of the International Monetary Fund, has already warned that financial restrictions on Russia threaten to gradually weaken US dollar hegemony and lead to even greater fragmentation of the international monetary system. And according to Andrew Milligan, a former UK Treasury official, the sanctions could also cause US corporate profits to fall, the Global Times reports.

US sanctions against Russia are illegal and only make things worse

Related:

UN Security Council Sanctions (<—No UN sanctions on Russia)