Notes on a unsettled world...

The Saudis and the spies. As quite a few writers and investigators have pointed out, the Saudis were instrumental in creating ISIS -- and, before that, Al Qaeda. And yet, as Glenn Greenwald points out in his latest (written with Murtaza Hussain), the NSA has now partnered up with the torture-happy Saudi secret police.

The move is part of the Obama Administration’s increasingly close ties with the Saudi regime; beyond the new cooperation with the MOI, the memo describes “a period of rejuvenation” for the NSA’s relationship with the Saudi Ministry of Defense.

But from the end of the 1991 Gulf War until recently, the memo says, the NSA had a “very limited” relationship with the Saudi kingdom. In December 2012, the U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, authorized the agency to expand its “third party” relationship with Saudi Arabia to include the sharing of signals intelligence, or “SIGINT,” capability with the MOD’s Technical Affairs Directorate (TAD).

MOD = the Saudi Ministry of Defense. And how will our friends use this information?

Over the past year, the Saudi government has escalated its crackdown on activists, dissidents, and critics of the government. Earlier this month, Saudi human rights lawyer and activist Waleed Abu al-Khair was sentenced to 15 years in prison by a so-called “terrorist court” on charges of undermining the state and insulting the judiciary. In May, a liberal blogger, Raif Badawi, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes; in June, human rights activist Mukhlif Shammari was sentenced to five years in prison for writing about the mistreatment of Saudi women.

Your tax dollars at work, folks.

Bullshit smothered in bullshit sauce, with extra bullshit on the side. The Telegraph reports that Hamas has entered into a secret deal to buy missiles from North Korea. The source: An unnamed "Security official" speaking to the notorious Con Coughlin.

If you don't know about Coughlin, he's a well-known neocon mouthpiece in the press. When the neocons were ginning up a war with Iraq in 2002, Coughlin complied by writing Saddam: King of Terror. A few years later, he wrote American Ally, a sympathetic volume about Tony Blair's partnership with George W. Bush. Coughlin has been linked to MI6, and has even been called "the SIS/FCO man on the Daily Telegraph." (SIS = MI6; FCO = the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.)

In his latest piece, Coughlin cites an unnamed "security" source. This is telling. As noted in an earlier Cannonfire piece, Coughlin was used by MI6 to plant a false story about the late Colonel Gaddafi. On that occasion, the spooks used the "double-bubble" ploy on Coughlin -- showing him documentary "evidence" without letting him copy it (or verify it). That's a common tactic, especially in the U.K.

I suspect that a similar recipe was used to create this latest serving of Bullshit On a Plate.

Ukraine. The propagandists have worked extra diligently to demonize Putin, making it seem as though he personally ordered the destruction of MH17, even though he had nothing to do with that tragedy. (The missile which downed that airliner almost certainly came from Ukrainian stores, and the separatists were perfectly capable of firing the thing on their own.)

Alas, things are coming apart, as we knew would happen. Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Fearless Leader chosen by Victoria Nuland to rule Nulandistan, has quit, and so has his cabinet. It's an IMF thing. The country desperately needs money, but no credit will be extended until Ukraine plays by the IMF's draconian rules.

When Yats tendered his resignation, he said the following:

"The fact is that today you failed to vote for the laws, and I have nothing (with which) to pay wages of policemen, doctors, teachers; nothing to buy a rifle with, nothing to fuel an armored personnel carrier with. Today you failed to take a decision to fill the gas storages to allow us to live through the winter, to at last free ourselves from dependence on Russian gas."

What to do? It appears that the Ukrainians are pinning their hopes on the United States. Specifically, they hope that we will pass Senate Bill 2277, which will grant Ukraine "informal" membership in NATO. If this passes, America will be officially designated an ally of Ukraine -- which may obligate us to bail out the Ukrainians.

It may also obligate us to go to war with Russia.

And the Pentagon is already preparing for that war.

Hours after the U.S. State Department on Thursday claimed (though failed to describe) new evidence that Russia's military was both increasing the flow of arms to rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine and firing artillery at Ukrainian Army positions across its border, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey elevated the rhetoric against Russian President Vladimir Putin and directly invoked the idea that a new Cold War-like posture is now being taken by the U.S. military.

Speaking from the Aspen Security Forum, a defense industry conference in Colorado, Dempsey said Pentagon planners are now looking at military options “we haven’t had to look at for 20 years" and warned that Putin—whom he characterized as escalating the crisis inside Ukraine—“may actually light a fire” he cannot control. And not just in Ukraine or eastern Europe, Dempsey said, but globally.

Here's the grimly hilarious part:

In a separate caustic charge, Dempsey blamed the "rising tide of nationalism" in parts of Europe on "Russian activities” in Ukraine — a strange accusation given that the key Ukrainian nationalist parties are represented in the new Ukrainian government that is opposed by Moscow, but backed by the U.S. government and many in the European Union.

In fact, neo-Nazi Oleh Tyahnybok seems likely to replace Yats as the new head of Ukraine -- and if Tyahnybok isn't the choice, then he will certainly be one of the lead choosers. Thus, America will be the ally of a fascist state in an attack on Russia.

Boy, this is Pat Buchanan's wet dream come to life, isn't it?