The Terrifying Rise of the Zombie State Narrative

January 6th, 2020 by Craig Murray

The ruling Establishment has learnt a profound lesson from the debacle over Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. The lesson they have learnt is not that it is wrong to attack and destroy an entire country on the basis of lies. They have not learnt that lesson despite the fact the western powers are now busily attacking the Iraqi Shia majority government they themselves installed, for the crime of being a Shia majority government.

No, the lesson they have learnt is never to admit they lied, never to admit they were wrong. They see the ghost-like waxen visage of Tony Blair wandering around, stinking rich but less popular than an Epstein birthday party, and realise that being widely recognised as a lying mass murderer is not a good career choice. They have learnt that the mistake is for the Establishment ever to admit the lies.

The Establishment had to do a certain amount of collective self-flagellation over the non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, over which they precipitated the death and maiming of millions of people. Only a very few outliers, like the strange Melanie Phillips, still claimed the WMD really did exist, and her motive was so obviously that she supported any excuse to kill Muslims that nobody paid any attention. Her permanent pass to appear on the BBC was upgraded. But by and large everyone accepted the Iraqi WMD had been a fiction. The mainstream media Blair/Bush acolytes like Cohen, Kamm and Aaronovitch switched to arguing that even if WMD did not exist, Iraq was in any case better off for having so many people killed and its infrastructure destroyed.

These situations are now avoided by the realisation of the security services that in future they just have to brazen it out. The simple truth of the matter – and it is a truth – is this. If the Iraq WMD situation occurred today, and the security services decided to brazen it out and claim that WMD had indeed been found, there is not a mainstream media outlet that would contradict them.

The security services outlet Bellingcat would publish some photos of big missiles planted in the sand. The Washington Post, Guardian, New York Times, BBC and CNN would republish and amplify these pictures and copy and paste the official statements from government spokesmen. Robert Fisk would get to the scene and interview a few eye witnesses who saw the missiles being planted, and he would be derided as a senile old has-been. Seymour Hersh and Peter Hitchens would interview whistleblowers and be shunned by their colleagues and left off the airwaves. Bloggers like myself would be derided as mad conspiracy theorists or paid Russian agents if we cast any doubt on the Bellingcat “evidence”. Wikipedia would ruthlessly expunge any alternative narrative as being from unreliable sources. The Integrity Initiative, 77th Brigade, GCHQ and their US equivalents would be pumping out the “Iraqi WMD found” narrative all over social media. Mad Ben Nimmo of the Atlantic Council would be banning dissenting accounts all over the place in his role as Facebook Witchfinder-General.

Does anybody seriously wish to dispute this is how the absence of Iraqi WMD would be handled today, 16 years on?

If you do wish to doubt this could happen, look at the obviously fake narrative of the Syrian government chemical weapons attacks on Douma. The pictures published on Bellingcat of improvised chlorine gas missiles were always obviously fake. Remember this missile was supposed to have smashed through ten inches of solid, steel rebar reinforced concrete.

As I reported back in May last year, that the expert engineers sent to investigate by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) did not buy into this is hardly surprising.

That their findings were deliberately omitted from the OPCW report is very worrying indeed. What became still more worrying was the undeniable evidence that started to emerge from whistleblowers in the OPCW that the toxicology experts had unanimously agreed that those killed had not died from chlorine gas attack. The minutes of the OPCW toxicology meeting really do need to be read in full.

actual_toxicology_meeting_redacted

The highlights are:

“No nerve agents had been detected in environmental or bio samples”
“The experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure”

I really do urge you to click on the above link and read the entire minute. In particular, it is impossible to read that minute and not understand that the toxicology experts believed that the corpses had been brought and placed in position.

“The experts were also of the opinion that the victims were highly unlikely to have gathered in piles at the centre of the respective apartments, at such a short distance from an escape from any toxic chlorine gas to much cleaner air”.

So the toxicology experts plainly believed the corpse piles had been staged, and the engineering experts plainly believed the cylinder bombs had been staged. Yet, against the direct evidence of its own experts, the OPCW published a report managing to convey the opposite impression – or at least capable of being portrayed by the media as giving the opposite impression.

How then did the OPCW come to do this? Rather unusually for an international organisation, the OPCW Secretariat is firmly captured by the Western states, largely because it covers an area of activity which is not of enormous interest to the political elites of developing world states, and many positions require a high level of technical qualification. It was also undergoing a change of Director General at the time of the Douma investigation, with the firmly Francoist Spanish diplomat Fernando Arias taking over as Director General and the French diplomat Sebastian Braha effectively running the operation as the Director-General’s chef de cabinet, working in close conjunction with the US security services. Braha simply ordered the excision of the expert opinions on engineering and toxicology, and his high-handedness worked, at least until whistleblowers started to reveal the truth about Braha as a slimy, corrupt, lying war hawk.

FFM here stands for Fact Finding Mission and ODG for Office of the Director General. After a great deal of personal experience dealing with French diplomats, I would say that the obnoxious arrogance revealed in Braha’s instructions here is precisely what you would expect. French diplomats as a class are a remarkably horrible and entitled bunch. Braha has no compunction about simply throwing around the weight of the Office of the Director General and attempting to browbeat Henderson.

We see now how the OPCW managed to produce a report which was the opposite of the truth. Ian Henderson, the OPCW engineer who had visited the site and concluded that the “cylinder bombs” were fakes, had suddenly become excluded from the “fact finding mission” when it had been whittled down to a “core group” – excluding any engineers (and presumably toxicologists) who would seek to insert inconvenient facts into the report.

France of course participated, alongside the US and UK, in missile strikes against Syrian government positions in response to the non-existent chlorine gas attacks on Douma. I was amongst those who had argued from day one that the western Douma narrative was inherently improbable. The Douma enclave held by extreme jihadist, western and Saudi backed forces allied to ISIL, was about to fall anyway. The Syrian government had no possible military advantage to gain by attacking it with two small improvised chemical weapons, and a great deal to lose in terms of provoking international retaliation.

That the consequences of the fake Douma incident were much less far-reaching than they might have been, is entirely due (and I am sorry if you dislike this but it is true) to the good sense of Donald Trump. Trump is inclined to isolationism and the fake “Russiagate” narrative promoted by senior echelons of his security services had led him to be heavily sceptical of them. He therefore refused, against the united persuasion of the hawks, to respond to the Douma “attack” by more than quick and limited missile strikes. I have no doubt that the object of the false flag was to push the US into a full regime change operation, by falsifying a demonstration that a declared red line on chemical weapon use had been crossed.

There is no doubt that Douma was a false flag. The documentary and whistleblower evidence from the OPCW is overwhelming and irrefutable. In addition to the two whistleblowers reported extensively by Wikileaks and the Courage Foundation, the redoubtable Peter Hitchens has his own whistleblowers inside OPCW who may well be different persons. It is also great entertainment as well as enlightening to read Hitchens’ takedown of Bellingcat on the issue.

But there are much deeper questions about the Douma false flag. Did the jihadists themselves kill the “chlorine victims” for display or were these just bodies from the general fighting? The White Helmets were co-located with the jihadist headquarters in Douma, and involved in producing and spreading the fake evidence. How far were the UK and US governments, instrumental in preparing the false flag? That western governments, including through the White Helmets and their men at the OPCW, were plainly seeking to propagate this false flag, to massively publicise and to and make war capital out of it, is beyond dispute. But were they involved in the actual creation of the fake scene? Did MI6 or the CIA initiate this false flag through the White Helmets or the Saudi backed jihadists? That is unproven but seems to me very probable. It is also worth noting the coincidence in time of the revelation of the proof of the Douma false flag and the death of James Le Mesurier.

Now let me return to where I started. None of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC, the Guardian nor CNN – all of which reported the Douma chemical attack very extensively as a real Syrian government atrocity, and used it to editorialise for western military intervention in Syria – none of them has admitted they were wrong. None has issued any substantive retraction or correction. None has reported in detail and without bias on the overwhelming evidence of foul play within the OPCW.

Those sources who do publish the truth – including the few outliers in mainstream media such as Peter Hitchens and Robert Fisk – continue to be further marginalised, attacked as at best eccentric and at worse Russian agents. Others like Wikileaks and myself are pariahs excluded from any mainstream exposure. The official UK, US, French and Spanish government line, and the line of the billionaire and state owned media, continues to be that Douma was a Syrian government chemical weapons attack on civilians. They intend, aided and abetted by their vast online propaganda operations, to brazen out the lie.

What we are seeing is the terrifying rise of the zombie state narrative in Western culture. It does not matter how definitively we can prove that something is a lie, the full spectrum dominance of the Establishment in media resources is such that the lie is impossible to kill off, and the state manages to implant that lie as the truth in the minds of a sufficient majority of the populace to ride roughshod over objective truth with great success. It follows in the state narrative that anybody who challenges the state’s version of truth is themselves dishonest or mad, and the state manages also to implant that notion into a sufficient majority of the populace.

These are truly chilling times.

In the next instalment I shall consider how the Establishment is brazening out similar lies on the Russophobe agenda, and sticking to factually debunked narratives on the DNC and Podesta emails, on the Steele Dossier and on the Skripals.

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Tens of Thousands Rally Against War with Iran in over 70 Cities Across US

January 6th, 2020 by Emma Fiala

People from across the United States heeded calls from the ANSWER Coalition and CODEPINK on Saturday, resulting in protests against a possible U.S. war on Iran in more than 70 cities across 38 U.S. states.

The protests, demanding for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq and ending sanctions on Iran, were called for earlier this week in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ordering of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East in response to protests following U.S. air strikes. Tensions quickly increased as the U.S. ordered the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the popular leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, and, as a result, the protests quickly morphed into an emergency mobilization aimed at stopping what some fear could become World War III.

Tensions between Iran and the United States are nothing new, but have been steadily increasing ever since Trump formally reneged on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—also known as the Iran nuclear deal—in May of 2018.

Protesters across the country joined together to demand an end to U.S. presence in Iraq and the Middle East and to no new war with Iran. During the past nearly 30 years, more than one million Iraqis have died as a direct result of U.S. occupation, sanctions, and bombing, with the U.S. government having spent trillions of dollars.

Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail and after taking office that he would put “America first” and would bring our troops home. Instead, he repeatedly and recklessly brings the U.S. on the brink of war with various nations time and time again. But this far, many believe, he went too far.

Americans are fed up with endless wars, concerned about the future for their children, are appalled at the cost of war while the funding of services at home continually falls short, and deeply concerned about the wellbeing of innocent lives in the Middle East, and more. And so they joined together with one voice on January 4 to tell the Trump administration: “No War With Iran!”

Alabama

Birmingham:

Alaska

Fayetteville:

Arizona

Phoenix:

Tucson:

Arkansas

Little Rock:

California

Fresno:

Los Angeles:

Sacramento:

San Diego:

San Francisco:

Check the rest of the demonstrations here.

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On Canadian Diplomatic Complicity with the Assassination of Qasem Soleimani

January 6th, 2020 by Stefan Christoff

Canada’s official government response to the U.S. military airstrike on Iraq, that killed powerful Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani on January 3rd, basically says nothing, but also says a great deal.

“We call on all sides to exercise restraint and pursue de-escalation. Our goal is and remains a united and stable Iraq,” outlines a Global Affairs Canada statement, quoting François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, as also saying, “Canada has long been concerned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Qods Force, led by Qasem Soleimani, whose aggressive actions have had a destabilizing effect in the region and beyond.”

Let us consider, in regards to Canada’s official statement today, the lack of any real detail. Soleimani was “destabilizing” according to who? Soleimani carried out “aggressive actions” according to who?

Certainly the Canadian government press release fits into the political framework expressed by the Trump administration, who carried out the extrajudicial killing at the Baghdad International Airport.

Why is Canada’s Liberal government simply parroting U.S. talking points? This is not independent foreign policy. Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister is repeating the rhetoric of Trump administration officials, like U.S. Secretary of State, Michael Pompeo, who is expressing support for and direct political links with President Trump’s decision to carry out the extrajudicial killing of Soleimani.

Yesterday, The New Yorker magazine published an interview with Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a senior adviser to the State Department during the Obama Administration, that outlines clearly some of the influence of Soleimani politically and some of the context in relation to internal Iranian political structures. Additionally this feature article, also in The New Yorker, gives some background context on Soleimani.

Within these texts and beyond we clearly see the reasons why Canada’s official response to the Trump administration’s assassination of Soleimani can’t simply be a quarter page press release repeating the talking points of U.S. officials.

Canada’s selective expression of righteous indignation, in regards to human rights and international law, under the Trudeau government, is not limited to Iran, or the Middle East region. Under the Liberals we see a policy approach of hypocrisy, clearly outlined in this CBC opinion article, in regards to human rights, that also reaches across Latin America. For example, until now, the Canadian government has largely been reserved in criticizing systemic human rights abuses against indigenous people in Bolivia, documented by Human Rights Watch, that have taken place since the U.S. supported “transitional” government seized in La Paz, after the ouster of Bolivia’s first indigenous president Evo Morales in October.

On Iraq, in this very brief official statement yesterday, Canada works to normalizes an extrajudicial assassination by the U.S. military under Trump, as the air strike is a clear violation of Iraq sovereignty and of international law. Amnesty International writesclearly on this type of killing, “extrajudicial executions are not only acts of extreme cruelty, violating the laws of the countries where they are perpetrated; they also violate international standards on human rights.”

In 2018, at the United Nations Nelson Mandela Peace Summit, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that “Canada will always stand tall for democracy, the rule of law and human rights at home and abroad.” On Iran, the Liberal government illustrates, that in regards to the extrajudicial assassination of Soleimani’s in Baghdad yesterday, that “standing tall” for the rule of law, as Trudeau described it, is only selectively and hypocritically applied by the Liberal government.

Beyond the specific bombing at Baghdad’s airport, this assassination of Soleimani speaks in significant ways to the moves by the Trump administration in D.C., to push a chaotic, but also culturally imperialistic, strike first and plan later foreign policy approach. This policy orientation, that the Trump administration is pushing now, in regards to Iran and the wider region, is a framework mirrored in past U.S. administrations, particularly the George W. Bush administration in the years after 9/11.

Connecting current events to 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spoke out clearly against the air strike on Iraq. A statement that contrasts in extreme ways to Canadian politicians, including the NDP, who have failed until now to say anything meaningful on the assassination of Soleimani.

Vermont Senator Sanders stated on Friday, that Soleimani’s assassination “is a dangerous escalation that brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East, which could cost countless lives, and trillions more dollars and lead to even more death, more conflict, more displacement in that already highly volatile region of the world.”

In this meaningful statement by Sanders, there is a link made between Soleimani’s assassination in 2020 and the 2002 / 2003 lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, this is an important connection.

Sanders stated, “it gives me no pleasure to tell you that at this moment we face a similar crossroads, fraught with danger. Once again we must worry about unintended consequences and the impact of unilateral decision making,” stated Sanders, who went on to point to the impacts of U.S. wars on working people, in saying, “I know that it is rarely the children of the billionaire class who face the agony of reckless foreign policy, it is the children of working families.”

Importantly, Sanders links the current Trump administration to the military actions of past Republican administration under George W. Bush, in outlining that “unfortunately Trump ignored the advice of his own security officials and listened to right wing extremists, some of whom were exactly the same people who got us into the war on Iraq in the first place. As we all remember Trump promised to end endless wars, tragically his actions now put us on the path to another war, potentially one that could be even worse than before.”

This statement by Sanders, that links the U.S. assassination of Soleimani with the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, is important for Canadian politics for many reasons, first, because a fully fledged U.S. war with Iran would deeply impact the entire planet, including Canada, but also because of the political narrative on Canada’s decision to not join fully the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq has played in Canadian political identity over the last fifteen years.

In contrast to Canada’s decision, under Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, to not fully support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, today, the Canadian government is silent, with no serious response to a series of military offensive actions by U.S. military power in the Middle East, which could all lead toward a serious military conflict between nation states, a war that most certainly wouldn’t be isolated to one particular country, due to the complex array of political power alliances across regional borders, for both Iran and the U.S.

In referencing the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, let us also remember that the decision taken by the then Liberal government under Prime Minister Chrétien, to not fully join the U.S. invasion of Iraq, took place within the context of some of the largest anti-war demonstrations in the history of Montreal, with hundreds-of-thousands of people taking the streets in the winter of 2003 in Montreal on multiple occasions, with significant protests in other cities as well, including Toronto and Vancouver.

Today, the Trudeau administration consistently claims to support international institutions, the rule of international laws, the United Nations, but this open political complicity with the Trump administration on the assassination of Soleimani, shows that the Liberals simply aren’t stand up when it really matters, such as this critical turning point in the Middle East region.

The importance of speaking out politically and diplomatically against the assassination of Soleimani today is firmly rooted in protesting military policy that could lead to all out war, but also, critically, opposing the killing of Soleimani is also important as a protest against the continued normalization of U.S. extrajudicial assassinations around the world. U.S. drone strikes work in fundamental ways to undercut international law and the possibilities for a global “rules based” judicial framework, of interconnected legal accountability across borderlines, a framework that ironically the Trudeau government has spoken of generally supporting at the United Nations and beyond, as articulated many times by Liberal Minister Chrystia Freeland.

The lack of meaningful Canadian government response to the assassination of Soleimani, simply illustrates the profound hypocrisy of the Liberal government, documented extensively in the recent book The Trudeau Formula by journalist Martin Lukacs.

In failing to identify the U.S. airstrike on Iraq and the killing of Soleimani as a breach of international law, Canada supports, by default, the Trump administration’s efforts to break international law and any possibility for preventing conflict with international regulation, paving the way for future war crimes and acts of genocide to take place with impunity.

A wake up call for anti-war activists in Canada 

Importantly the air strike in Baghdad also serves as a wake-up alarm for activists around the world, as this points to a serious escalation toward a major global military conflict involving the U.S., Iran and many other powers.

In Montreal, the major anti-war mobilization in 2003 that targeted the Canadian government, demanding that Canada to not officially support the U.S. unilateral military invasion of Iraq, successfully blocked the Canadian government’s moves to engage in a major way with the U.S. war on Iraq. Although it is important to note clearly that some selective Canadian military units were on the ground in Iraq and Canadian arms companies and manufactures certainly did profit off the Iraq war, including SNC-Lavalin, all well documented by The Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade in Ottawa.

In the face of Soleimani’s killing, let us speak out against Canada’s official silence on this assassination and protest any complicity of the Canadian Liberal government in supporting the current Trump administration’s moves toward full-on military conflict with Iran and beyond.

Protests played a major role in ensuring Canada didn’t join the U.S. invasion in 2003 and activism can again play a role in blocking Canadian complicity in war policies by the Trump administration in 2019.

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Stefan Christoff is a musician, community organizer and media maker in Montreal, you can find Stefan @spirodon

An Eyewitness to the Horrors of the US ‘Forever Wars’ Speaks Out

January 6th, 2020 by Kathy Kelly

The 2003 “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq had finally stopped. From the balcony of my room in Baghdad’s Al Fanar Hotel, I watched U.S. Marines moving between their jeeps, armored personnel carriers, and Humvees. They had occupied the street immediately in front of the small, family-owned hotel where our Iraq Peace Team had been living for the past six months. Looking upward, a U.S. Marine could see enlarged vinyl photos of beautiful Iraqi children strung across balconies of our fifth-floor rooms. We silently stood on those balconies when the U.S. Marines arrived in Baghdad, holding signs that said “War = Terror” and “Courage for Peace, Not for War.” When she first saw the Marine’s faces, Cynthia Banas commented on how young and tired they seemed. Wearing her “War Is Not the Answer” T-shirt, she headed down the stairs to offer them bottled water.

From my balcony, I saw Cathy Breen, also a member of the Iraq Peace Team, kneeling on a large canvas artwork entrusted to us by friends from South Korea. It depicts people suffering from war. Above the people, like a sinister cloud, is a massive heap of weapons. We unrolled it the day the Marines arrived and began to “occupy” this space. Marines carefully avoided driving vehicles over it. Sometimes they would converse with us. Below, Cathy read from a small booklet of daily Scripture passages. A U.S. Marine approached her, knelt down, and apparently asked to pray with her. He placed his hands in hers.

April Hurley, of our team, is a doctor. She was greatly needed in the emergency room of a nearby hospital during the bombing. Drivers would only take her there if she was accompanied by someone they had known for a long time, and so I generally accompanied her. I’d often sit on a bench outside the emergency room while traumatized civilians rushed in with wounded and maimed survivors of the terrifying U.S. aerial bombings. When possible, Cathy Breen and I would take notes at the bedsides of patients, including children, whose bodies had been ripped apart by U.S. bombs.

The ER scenes were gruesome, bloody and utterly tragic. Yet no less unbearable and incomprehensible were the eerily quiet wards we had visited during trips to Iraq from 1996 to 2003, when Voices in the Wilderness had organized 70 delegations to defy the economic sanctions by bringing medicines and medical relief supplies to hospitals in Iraq. Across the country, Iraqi doctors told us the economic war was far worse than even the 1991 Desert Storm bombing.

In pediatrics wards, we saw infants and toddlers whose bodies were wasted from gastrointestinal diseases, cancers, respiratory infections and starvation. Limp, miserable, sometimes gasping for breath, they lay in the arms of their sorrowful mothers, and seemingly no one could stop the U.S. from punishing them to death. “Why?” mothers murmured. Sanctions forbade Iraq to sell its oil. Without oil revenues, how could they purchase desperately needed goods? Iraq’s infrastructure continued to crumble; hospitals became surreal symbols of cruelty where doctors and nurses, bereft of medicines and supplies, couldn’t heal their patients or ease their agonies.

In 1995, UN officials estimated that economic sanctions had directly contributed to the deaths of at least a half-million Iraqi children, under age 5.

The economic war continued for nearly 13 harsh and horrible years.

Kathy Kelly with children in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 2016 (Provided photo)

Shortly after the Marines arrived outside of our hotel, we began hearing ominous reports of potential humanitarian crises developing in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities. A woman who had been in charge of food distribution for her neighborhood, under the “Oil for Food” program, showed us her carefully maintained ledger books and angrily asked how all who had depended on the monthly food basket would now feed their families. Along with food shortages, we heard alarming reports about contaminated water and a possible outbreak of cholera in Basra and Hilla. For weeks, there had been no trash removal. Bombed electrical plants and sanitation facilities had yet to be restored. Iraqis who could help restore the broken infrastructure couldn’t make it through multiple check points to reach their offices; with communication centers bombed, they couldn’t contact colleagues. If the U.S. military hadn’t yet devised a plan for emergency relief, why not temporarily entrust projects to U.N. agencies with long experience of organizing food distribution and health care delivery?

Cathy, who is a nurse, Dr. April Hurley, and Ramzi Kysia, also a member of our group, arranged a meeting with the civil and military operations center, located in the Palestine Hotel, across the street from us. An official there dismissed them as people who didn’t belong there. Before telling them to leave, he did accept a list of our concerns, written on Voices in the Wilderness stationery.

The logo for our stationery reappeared a few hours later, at the entrance to the Palestine Hotel. It was taped to the flap of a cardboard box. Surrounding the logo were seven silver bullets. Written in ball-point pen on the cardboard was a message: “Keep Out.”

In response, Ramzi Kysia wrote a press release headlined: “Heavy-handed & Hopeless, The U.S. Military Doesn’t Know What It’s Doing In Iraq.”

Image on the right: Kathy Kelly holds Shoba at the Chamin-E-Babrak refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, in January 2014, a few days after the child had been saved from a burning tent, during a fire that destroyed much of the camp. (Abdulhai Darya)

In 2008, our group, renamed Voices for Creative Nonviolence, was beginning a walk from Chicago to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. We asked Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid to speak at a “send-off” event. He encouraged and blessed our “Witness Against War” walk  but then surprised us by saying he had never heard us mention the war in Afghanistan, even though people there suffered terribly from aerial bombings, drone attacks, targeted assassinations, night raids and imprisonments. Returning from our walk, we began researching drone warfare, and then created an “Afghan Atrocities List,” on our website, carefully updating it each week with verifiable reports of U.S. attacks against Afghan civilians.

The following year, Joshua Brollier and I headed to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. In Kabul, Afghanistan, we were guests of a deeply respected non-governmental organization Emergency, which has a Surgical Centre for War Victims there.

Filippo, a sturdy young nurse from Italy who was close to completing three terms of service with Emergency, welcomed us. As he filled a huge backpack with medicines and supplies, he described how the hospital personnel managed to reach people in remote villages who have no access to clinics or hospitals. The trip was relatively safe since no one had ever attacked a vehicle marked with the Emergency logo. A driver would take him to one of Emergency’s 41 remote first aid clinics. From there, he would hike further up a mountainside and meet villagers awaiting him and the precious medicines he carried. In a previous visit, after he had completed a term in Afghanistan, he said people had walked four hours in the snow to come and say goodbye to him. “Yes,” he said, “I fell in love.”

How different Filippo’s report was from those compiled in our Afghan Atrocities List. The latter tells about U.S. special operations forces, some of the most highly trained warriors in the world, traveling to remote areas, bursting into homes in the middle of the night, and proceeding to lock the women in one room, handcuff or sometimes hogtie the men, rip apart closets, mattresses and furniture, and then take the men to prisons for interrogation. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch filed chilling reports about torture of Afghan prisoners held by the U.S.

In 2010, two U.S. Veterans for Peace, Ann Wright and Mike Ferner, joined me in Kabul. We visited one of the city’s largest refugee camps. People faced appalling conditions. Over a dozen, including infants, had frozen to death, their families unable to purchase fuel or adequate blankets. When the rain, sleet and snow came, the tents and huts become mired in mud. Earlier, I had met with a young girl there whose arm had been cut off, her uncle told me, by a U.S. drone attack. Her brother, whose spine was injured, huddled under a blanket, inside their tent, visibly shaking.

Opposite the sprawling refugee camp is a huge U.S. military base. Ann and Mike felt outraged over the terrible contrast between the Afghan refugee camp with a soaring population of people displaced by war, and the U.S. base housing military personnel who had ample supplies of food, water, and fuel.

Most of the funds earmarked by the U.S. for reconstruction in Afghanistan have been used to train and equip Afghan Defense and Security forces. My young friends in the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APV) were weary of war and didn’t want military training. Each of them had lost friends and family members because of the war.

In December 2015, I again visited Emergency’s Surgical Centre for War Victims in Kabul, joined by several Afghan Peace Volunteers. We donated blood and then visited with hospital personnel. “Are you still treating any victims of the U.S. bombing in Kunduz?” I asked Luca Radaelli, who coordinates Emergency’s Afghan facilities. He explained how their Kabul hospital was already full when 91 survivors of the U.S. attack on the Kunduz hospital operated by Médecins Sans Frontières were transported for five hours over rough roads to the closest place they could be treated, this surgical center. The Oct. 15 attack had killed at least 42 people, 14 of whom were hospital staff.

Kathy Kelly and Voices in the Wilderness delegation with Afghan Peace Volunteer friends in Bamyan, Afghanistan, in 2010 (Hakim Young)

Even though Kunduz hospital staff had immediately notified the U.S. military, the U.N., and the Afghan government that the U.S. was bombing their hospital, the warplane continued bombing the hospital’s ER and intensive care unit, in 15-minute intervals, for an hour and a half.

Luca introduced our small team to Khalid Ahmed, a former pharmacy student at the Kunduz hospital, who was still recovering. Khalid described the terrible night, his attempt to literally run for his life by sprinting toward the front gate, his agony when he was hit by shrapnel in his spine, and his efforts to reassemble his cell phone — guards had cautioned him to remove the batteries so that he wouldn’t be detected by aerial surveillance — so that he could give a last message to his family, as he began to lose consciousness. Fortunately, his call got through. His father’s relatives raced to the hospital’s front gate and found Khalid in a nearby ditch, unconscious but alive.

Telling his story, Khalid asked the Afghan Peace Volunteers about me. Learning I’m from the U.S., his eyes widened. “Why would your people want to do this to us?” he asks. “We were only trying to help people.”

Images of battered and destroyed hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of hospital personnel trying nevertheless to heal people and save lives, help me retain a basic truth about U.S. wars of choice: We don’t have to be this way.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to uproot entrenched systems, like the military-industrial-congressional-media-Washington, D.C., complex, which involves corporate profits and government jobs. Mainstream media seldom help us recognize ourselves as a menacing, warrior nation. Yet we must look in the mirror held up by historical circumstances if we’re ever to accomplish credible change.

The recently released “Afghanistan Papers” criticize U.S. military and elected officials for misleading the U.S. public by covering up disgraceful military failures in Afghanistan. Pentagon officials were quick to dismiss the critiques, assuring an easily distracted U.S. public that the documents won’t impact U.S. military and foreign policy. Two days later, UNICEF reported that more than 600 Afghan children had died in 2019, because of direct attacks in the war. From 2009 through 2018, almost 6,500 children lost their lives in this war.

Addressing the U.S. Senate and Congress during a visit to Washington, D.C., Pope Francis voiced a simple, conscientious question. “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?” Answering his own question, he said: “the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”

What are the lessons learned from the rampage, destruction and cruelty of U.S. wars? I believe the most important lessons are summed up in the quote on Cynthia Banas’s T-shirt as she delivered water to Marines in Baghdad, in April, 2003: “War Is Not the Answer”; and in an updated version of the headline Ramzi Kysia wrote that same month: “Heavy-handed & Hopeless, The U.S. Military Doesn’t Know What It’s Doing” -in Iraq, Afghanistan or any of its “forever wars.”

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Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. While in Kabul, she is a guest of the Afghan Peace Volunteers.

Featured image: Kathy Kelly and Maya Evans walk with children at the Chamin-E-Babrak refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, January 2014. (Abdulhai Darya)

Some Devastating Facts About the Australian Bushfires

January 6th, 2020 by True Publica

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Disruptive Assassinations: Killing Qassem Soleimani. Trump Promises “Bombing 52 Iranian Sites”

January 6th, 2020 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

On the surface, it made not one iota of sense.  The murder of a foreign military leader on his way from Baghdad airport, his diplomatic status assured by the local authorities, evidently deemed a target of irresistible richness.  “General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”  The words from the Pentagon seemed to resemble the resentment shown by the Romans to barbarian chiefs who dared resist them.  “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.  The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”

The killing of Major General Qassem Soleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Quds Force in a drone strike on January 3, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces, or Hash a-Shaabi and PMF Kata’ib Hezbollah, was packaged and ribboned as a matter of military necessity.  Soleimani had been, according to the Pentagon, “responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”  He was accused of being behind a series of attacks on coalition forces in Iraq over the last several months including attacks on the US embassy in Baghdad on December 31, 2019.

US President Donald J. Trump had thrown caution to the wind, suggesting in a briefing at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that an option on the table would be the killing of Soleimani.  The Iran hawks seemed to have his ear; others were caught off guard, preferring to keep matters more general.

A common thread running through the narrative was the certainty – unshakable, it would seem – that Soleimani was on the warpath against US interests.  The increased danger posed by the Quds Force commander were merely presumed, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was happy to do so despite not being able to “talk too much about the nature of the threats.  But the American people should know that the President’s decision to remove Soleimani from the battlefield saved American lives.”  (Pompeo goes on to insist that there was “active plotting” to “take big action” that would have endangered “hundreds of lives”.)  How broadly one defines the battlefield becomes relevant; the US imperium has decided that diplomatic niceties and sovereign protections for officials do not count.  The battlefield is everywhere.

Trump was far from convincing in reiterating the arguments, insisting that the general had been responsible for killing or badly wounding “thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill may more… but got caught!”  From his resort in Palm Beach, Florida, he claimed that the attack was executed “to stop a war.  We did not take action to start a war.”

Whatever the views of US officialdom, seismic shifts in the Middle East were being promised.  Iraq’s prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi demanded an emergency parliamentary session with the aim of taking “legislative steps and necessary provisions to safeguard Iraq’s dignity, security and sovereignty.”  On Sunday, the parliament did something which, ironically enough, has been a cornerstone of Iran’s policy in Iraq: the removal of US troops from Iraq.  While being a non-binding resolution, the parliament urged the prime minister to rescind the invitation extended to US forces when it was attacked by Islamic State forces in 2014.

Iranian Armed Forces’ spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi promised setting “up a plan, patiently, to respond to this terrorist act in a crushing and powerful manner”.  He also reiterated that it was the US, not Iran, who had “occupied Iraq in violation of all international rules and regulations without any coordination with the Iraqi government and without the Iraqi people’s demands.”

While the appeals to international law can seem feeble, the observation from the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnès Callamard was hard to impeach.  “The targeted killings of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Humandis are most [likely] unlawful and violate international human rights law: Outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal.”  To be deemed lawful, such targeting with lethal effect “can only be used where strictly necessary to protect against an imminent threat to life.”

The balance sheet for this action, then, is not a good one.  As US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson observed with crisp accuracy, the attack on Soleimani and his companions had little to do with “whether [he] was a ‘good man’ any more than it was about whether Saddam was a good man.  It’s about smart versus stupid use of military power.”

An intelligent use of military power is not in the offing, with Trump promising the targeting of 52 Iranian sites, each one representing an American hostage held in Iran at the US embassy in Tehran during November 1979.  But Twitter sprays and promises of this sort tend to lack substance and Trump is again proving to be the master of disruptive distraction rather than tangible action.

Even Israeli outlets such as Haaretz, while doffing the cap off to the idea of Soleimani as a shadowy, dangerous figure behind the slayings of Israelis “in terrorist attacks, and untold thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese and others dispatched by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Quds Force,” showed concern.  Daniel B. Shapiro even went so far as to express admiration for the operation, an “impressive” feat of logistics but found nothing of an evident strategy.  Trump’s own security advisers were caught off guard.  A certain bloodlust had taken hold.

Within Congress, the scent of a strategy did not seem to come through, despite some ghoulish cheers from the GOP.  Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and chairman of the House Intelligence panel, failed to notice “some broad strategy at work”.  Michigan Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin, previously acting assistant secretary of defence and CIA analyst, explained why neither Democratic or Republic presidents had ventured onto the treacherous terrain of targeting Soleimani.  “Was the strike worth the likely retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?”  The answer was always a resounding no.

By killing such a high ranking official of a sovereign power, the US has signalled a redrawing of accepted, and acceptable lines of engagement.  The justification was spurious, suggesting that assassination and killing in combat are not distinctions with any difference.  But perhaps most significantly of all, the killing of Soleimani will usher in the very same attacks that this decision was meant to avert even as it assists Iranian policy in expelling any vestige of US influence in Iraq and the broader Middle East.  It also signalled to Iran that abiding by agreements of any sort, including the international nuclear deal of 2015 which the US has repudiated, will be paper tigers worth shredding without sorrow.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Trump Tries Real Hard to Start a War for Israel. “He Should be Impeached Because He is a War Criminal”

January 6th, 2020 by Kurt Nimmo

In my last post, I said it was time to close down this blog, mostly due to its ineffectiveness, short reach, and choir preaching. I wrote that I might as well pound sand for all the good it did. 

A few days later, Trump killed a high level Iranian military leader and I have decided a post is in order, never mind that a round of tiddlywinks will have about the same influence as a post here. The wars just keep on coming, no matter what we do. 

Let’s turn to social media where dimwits, neocon partisans, and clueless Democrats are running wild after corporate Mafia boss and numero uno Israeli cheerleader Donald Trump ordered a hit on Gen. Qasem Soleimani and others near Baghdad’s international airport on Thursday. 

Let’s begin with this teleprompter reader and “presenter” from Al Jazeera:

It is interesting how the memory of such people only goes back to the election of Donald Trump. 

The US began targeting Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. This included “freezing”—polite-speak for theft—around $12 billion in Iranian assets, including gold, property, and bank holdings. After Obama agreed to return this filched property and money as part of the nuke deal (minus any real nukes), neocons said he gave away US taxpayer money to international terrorists. This warped lie became part of the narrative, yet another state-orchestrated fake news “alternative fact.” 

Here’s another idiot. He was the boss of the DNC for a while and unsuccessfully ran for president. 

Once again, history is lost in a tangle of lies and omission. Centuries before John Dean thought it might be a good idea to run for president, Persians and Shias in what is now Iraq and Iran were crossing the border—later drawn up by invading Brits and French—in pilgrimages to the shrines of Imam Husayn and Abbas in Karbala. We can’t expect an arrogant sociopath like Mr. Dean to know about Ashura, Shia pilgrimages, the Remembrance of Muharram, and events dating back to 680 AD. 

Shias from Iran pilgrimage to other Iraqi cities as well, including An-Najaf, Samarra, Mashhad, and Baghdad (although the latter is more important to Sunnis). 

Corporate fake news teleprompter reader Stephanopoulos said the Geneva Conventions (including United Nations Security Council Resolution 2347) outlaw the targeting of cultural sites, which Trump said he will bomb. 

Trump said there are 52 different sites; the number is not arbitrary, it is based on the 52 hostages, many of them CIA officers, taken hostage during Iran’s revolution against the US-installed Shah and his brutal secret police sadists. 

Pompeo said Trump won’t destroy Iran’s cultural and heritage sites. Pompeo, as a dedicated Zionist operative, knows damn well the US will destroy EVERYTHING of value in Iran, same as it did in Iraq and later Libya and Syria. This includes not only cultural sites, but civilian infrastructure—hospitals, schools, roads, bridges, and mosques. 

Although I believe Jill Stein is living in a Marxian fantasy world, I agree with her tweet in regard to the Zionist hit on Soleimani:

Trump should be impeached—tried and imprisoned—not in response to some dreamed-up and ludicrous Russian plot or even concern about the opportunist Hunter Biden using his father’s position to make millions in uber-corrupt Ukraine, but because he is a war criminal responsible for killing women and children. 

As for the planned forever military occupation of Iraq, USA Today reports:

Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi told lawmakers that a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, including U.S. ones, was required “for the sake of our national sovereignty.” About 5,000 American troops are in various parts of Iraq.  

No way in hell will Sec. State Pompeo and his Zionist neocon handlers allow this to happen without a fight. However, it shouldn’t be too difficult for the Iraqis to expel 5,000 brainwashed American soldiers from the country, bombed to smithereens almost twenty years ago by Bush the Neocon Idiot Savant. 

Never mind Schumer’s pretend concern about another war. This friend of Israel from New York didn’t go on national television and excoriate Obama and his cutthroat Sec. of State Hillary Clinton for killing 30,000 Libyans. 

Meanwhile, it looks like social media is burning the midnight oil in order to prevent their platforms being used to argue against Trump’s latest Zionist-directed insanity. 

More lies from The Washington Post, the CIA’s crown jewel of propaganda:

This is complete and utter bullshit, but I’m sure the American people will gobble it down without question. Trump’s advisers are neocons and they are seriously experienced in the art of promoting and engineering assassination, cyber-attacks, invasions, and mass murder. 

Newsmax scribbler John Cardillo thinks he has it all figure out. 

Imagine this, however improbable and ludicrous: Iran invades America and assassinates General Hyten or General McConville, both top members of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now imagine the response by the “exceptional nation.”

We can’t leave out the Christian Zionist from Indiana, Mike Pence. Mike wants you to believe Iran was responsible for 9/11, thus stirring up the appropriate animosity and consensus for mass murder. 

Finally, here is the crown jewel of propaganda—in part responsible for the death of well over a million Iraqis—The New York Times showing off its rampant hypocrisy. 

Never mind Judith Miller, the Queen of NYT pro-war propaganda back in the day, spreading neocon fabricated lies about Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction. America—or rather the United States (the government)—is addicted to quagmires and never-ending war. This is simply more anti-Trump bullshit by the NYT editorial board. The newspaper loves war waged in the name of Israel, but only if jumpstarted by Democrats. 

Trump the fool, the fact-free reality TV president will eventually unleash the dogs of war against Iran, much to the satisfaction of Israel, its racist Zionists, Israel-first neocons in America, and the chattering pro-war class of “journalists,” and “foreign policy experts” (most former Pentagon employees). 

Expect more nonsense like that dispensed by the robot Mike Pence, the former tank commander now serving as Sec. of State, and any number of neocon fellow travelers, many with coveted blue checkmarks on Twitter while the truth-tellers are expelled from the conversation and exiled to the political wilderness. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

Targeted Assassination, Will Iran Seek “Strategic Revenge”?

January 6th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

The US and Western partners are contemptuous of peace, stability, equity, justice, and the rule of law — waging war on humanity by hot and other means.

Where is the outrage in the West over the Trump regime’s assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi deputy PMU leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis?

Under international law, killing them was Trump regime aggression.

US Supreme Court Justice/Chief Nuremberg Prosector Robert Jackson called aggression “the supreme international crime against peace…the greatest menace of our times.”

Time and again, I called the preemptive attack by one nation on another the highest of high crimes. All other wrongdoing pales in comparison.

Is greater Middle East war coming after Trump regime assassinations? Is this what its hardliners want?

Is Trump on board for hot war on Iran? Rhetoric isn’t policy. So for now take his bombast with a grain of salt, tweeting:

“Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites…some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats.”

Surely Iran won’t let Soleimani’s assassination go unanswered. It’ll respond in its own way at times of its own choosing — likely asymmetrically.

Clearly Iran, Iraq, and their allies want greater regional war avoided, notably not Russia and China.

On Saturday, Sergey Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi discussed Middle East developments.

According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, they “particularly focused on the aftermath of the US air strike at a Baghdad airport that resulted in deaths, including the assassination of Qassem Soleimani,” adding:

They called it “unacceptable to use force in violation of the UN Charter and that all countries must respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states” — stressing that “unlawful (US) actions aggravated the situation in the region.”

They and their governments “will take joint steps (for) de-escalation.”

On the same day, Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif spoke by phone.

They called Soleimani’s assassination “a grave violation of the fundamental standards of international law and does not contribute to resolving the complicated issues in the Middle East. Instead, it will trigger a new round of escalation in the region.”

The question is how to prevent things from spinning out of control while making the US pay a price for its aggression.

Asymmetrical and diplomatic approaches on the world stage are wisest, Iran taking the high road in sharp contrast to US contempt for peace and the rule of law.

Over time, its hostile actions make more enemies than allies, weakening the country while others are rising.

Its endless wars of aggression and by other means hasten its decline.

Like all other empires in history, it’s self-destructing by its arrogance, high crimes on the world stage, and unwillingness to change.

Some of the latest regional developments are as follows:

Iranian IRGC General Hossein Salami issued a statement, saying “the assassination of martyred General Qassem Soleimani will be followed by a strategic revenge which will definitely put an end to the US presence in the region,” adding:

Iran’s response will come “in a vast geography throughout time and with determining impacts.”

On January 4, the Pentagon’s Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve reported that Iraq’s “international zone took indirect fire that landed outside of coalition facilities and potentially harmed Iraqi civilians.”

On the same day, Saudi Al-Arabiya television said mortar fire struck areas near the Iraqi security staff facility in Nineveh province.

Sources in Tehran said US warplanes terror-bombed Al-Bukamal, Syria in Deir Ezzor province where Iranian military advisors are located.

On Saturday, rockets struck close to the US Baghdad embassy in the heavily fortified Green Zone.

On the same day, other rockets struck near the Pentagon’s Balad airbase north of Baghdad.

Southfront reported that “Shia groups in Iraq may be on the verge of launching a new insurgency against US troops in response to” Pentagon attacks on the country.

Former CIA counterterrorism/intelligence officer Philip Giraldi called Soleimani’s assassination by the Trump regime “the long-awaited beginning of the end of America’s imperial ambitions.”

US war on Iran by other means turned hot. “(I)t will not end well” for the US, said Giraldi.

As of now, the region is more greatly destabilized by what happened in the past week.

Giraldi: “No American diplomat, soldier or even tourists in the region should consider him or herself to be safe, quite the contrary. It will be an ‘open season’ on Americans.”

Calling Soleimani’s assassination a “criminal” act of state terrorism by the US, “tantamount to…war,” Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said:

“There will be harsh revenge. Where? When? How? I do not know, but there definitely there will be some retaliation.”

Separately, a US surveillance drone was reportedly downed by Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units in Anbar province west of Baghdad.

Explosions were reported around Al-Kindi base in Mosul, Iraq where US forces are based. Iraqi Kata’ib Hezbollah warned its forces to stay clear of US bases.

Reuters reported one or more explosions heard in Baghdad. In Oom, Iran, a blood-red flag, symbolizing a call for avenging Soleimani’s assassination, was raised atop the Jamkaran mosque.

Other red flags were raised elsewhere in Iran. Mass outrage over aggressive US airstrikes continues as Iranians mourn the loss of redoubtable General Soleimani.

Will Trump’s aggression on Iraq and Iran ignite the Middle East powder keg more than already?

Near a boiling point, things could explode if US state terror on both countries escalates.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from American Herald Tribune

Trump’s Mass Deception on Iran

January 6th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Virtually all politicians lie, none in memory more repeatedly and egregiously than Trump.

It’s so excessively over the top it begs the question. Is he unable to distinguish between facts and fiction or is he inherently deceptive by nature?

His Big Lies fool no one informed on what’s going on at home and abroad.

The problem is they comprise a minority, not a majority of the public — and serial lying is a moral and ethical issue, not a criminal offense unless under oath.

Make no mistake. DJT’s ordered airstrikes in Iraq, killing around 30 paramilitary fighters connected to its military, followed by the assassinations of Iranian General Soleimani and Iraqi deputy PMU leader Muhandis were US acts of war on both countries.

According to US law, an act of war means any hostile act occurring in the course of:

1. a declared war;

2. an armed conflict, whether or not war has been declared, between two or more nations; or

3. an armed conflict between military forces of any origin.

Under international law it’s much the same, notably a preemptive attack by one nation on the territory of the other.

It’s strictly prohibited by the UN Charter except in self-defense if attacked, clearly not the case in all US wars post-WW II, waged preemptively on nonbelligerent states — unjustifiably justified by Big Lies and deception.

According to UN General Assembly Res. 3314, aggression is defined as “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations” — which prohibits a nation attacking another state preemptively.

Included in the UN definition is “(b)ombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another State.”

On Friday, Trump tweeted the following:

“General Qassem Soleimani has killed or badly wounded thousands of Americans over an extended period of time, and was plotting to kill many more…but got caught (sic)!”

“He was directly and indirectly responsible for the death of millions of people (sic).”

The above remarks apply to decades of US aggression — raping and destroying one country after another, polar opposite how Iran and its military operate.

Nearly the entire US political establishment and dominant media vilified Soleimani — most Dems criticizing Pentagon terror-bombing strikes on Iraq for political reasons, most Republicans expressing support.

Even anti-war presidential aspirant Tulsi Gabbard said there’s “no question about (Soleimani’s) evil” — while criticizing airstrikes on Iraqi territory, saying:

“This was very clearly an act of war by this president without any kind of authorization or declaration of war from Congress, clearly violating the Constitution.”

Elizabeth Warren tweeted:

“Soleimani was a murderer (sic), responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans (sic)” — while opposing involvement in “another costly war.”

She and Joe Biden said that “no American will mourn Soleimani’s death.”

They were wrong. By email Friday to an Iranian friend in Tehran, I said the following:

My deepest condolences to General Soleimani’s family, Iran, and the Iranian people

for the Trump regime’s state-sponsored terrorism.

The only thing positive about its high crimes is they hasten the US decline.

Today I mourn with the people of Iran for what happened.

Bernie Sanders said the following in response to Soleimani’s assassination:

“Trump’s dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars,” adding:

“Trump’s promised to end endless wars, but this action puts us on the path to another one.”

While steering clear of demonizing or otherwise criticizing Soleimani, last spring Sanders falsely accused Iran of “support(ing) terrorism (sic).”

He called “prevent(ing) Iran from getting a nuclear weapon…an absolute imperative” – ignoring the Islamic Republic’s abhorrence of these weapons, wanting them eliminated everywhere, while failing to condemn nuclear armed and dangerous Israel.

He opposes establishing diplomatic relations with Iran, showing hostility toward the region’s leading proponent of peace and stability.

From his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort Friday, Trump recited a litany of Big Lies about Soleimani’s assassination he authorized, saying:

“(M)y highest and most solemn duty is the defense of our nation and its citizens” — at a time when the only US foreign threats are invented. No real ones exist, he failed to explain.

He turned truth on its head, calling Soleimani “the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world (sic).”

As US commander-in-chief, the dubious distinction applies to him. His regime and congressional accomplices share blame for endless preemptive wars on nonthreatening nations — a flagrant UN Charter violation.

Iran hasn’t attacked another country in centuries! The Islamic Republic seeks regional peace and cooperation with other nations.

Trump: “Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel (sic), but we caught him in the act (sic) and terminated him.”

No evidence was cited because none exists, no “imminent…sinister attacks” on US civilian and military personnel planned. Trump lied claiming otherwise.

He falsely accused Iran’s IRGC and Quds Force Soleimani led of “target(ing), injur(ing), and murder(ing) hundreds of American civilians and servicemen.”

Nothing of the kind occurred by him or Iran in the Middle East or elsewhere — a US, NATO, Israeli specialty, not how the Islamic Republic operates.

Trump twisted reality, falsely claiming “Soleimani made the death of innocent people his sick passion, contributing to terrorist plots as far away as New Delhi and London” — again no evidence cited because none exists. Trump lied, adding:

“Soleimani has been perpetrating acts of terror to destabilize the Middle East for the last 20 years (sic).”

“What the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago. A lot of lives would have been saved (sic).”

Trump falsely claimed a US act of war as defined under international and US statute law was undertaken “to stop a war…not…start” one.

While assassinating Iranians and Iraqis, he falsely expressed support for their people the US  waged war on for decades — directly and by other means.

He falsely claimed credit for destroying “the ISIS…caliphate” the US created and supports — that Soleimani, Russian and Syrian forces smashed.

He turned truth on its head, claiming serial aggressor USA “seek(s) peace, harmony, and friendship with all of the nations of the world.”

His remarks came as the US war machine continues mass slaughter and destruction in multiple theaters — risking war with nonbelligerent Iran at the same time.

Baseball star Yogi Berra and movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn long ago commented on the hazards of making predictions — “especially about the future,” they said.

How the Trump regime intends dealing with Iran ahead is guesswork, war clearly an option — what hopefully cooler heads in Washington will prevent.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore

Upholding the History and Identity of Macedonia: Macedonian Politicians Don’t Even Know “How to Play the Game”

January 5th, 2020 by Bill Nicholov

Picture it. Macedonia. 1991-present. Macedonian politicians playing soccer against [insert any country here] and – not wanting to offend their opponent – spend the entire time playing defence. Whenever they make a save, they celebrate like they’re the best soccer team to have ever existed. When they inadvertently pass midfield, they immediately give up the ball and rush back to playing defence. They substitute different players, whose main goal is to get in the game but not to actually score. Instead of focusing on the game, they continue to scream and complain about how they should’ve been in the starting lineup. The fans are shouting “Go Macedonia! Shoot! At least TRY TO SCORE A GOAL!” and by sheer miracle, one player, actually listening to the fans, takes the ball, dekes out the other team, and scores! He is celebrated as the only Macedonian politician to ever put his team/country first but soon afterward, slinks away and completely hangs Macedonia and Macedonians out to dry.

And this is how Macedonian politicians, from both major parties, have always governed the Republic of Macedonia – with no balls. It’s painfully obvious that they should have never played the game. You can’t win by just playing defence – eventually the other team will score, and they will score a lot. And Macedonian politicians have played the game so poorly, they not only made their own team (the Republic of Macedonia) lose, they’ve taken all of Macedonia’s partitioned territory – and all Macedonians, past, present and future – down with them.

I’ve met with a lot of Macedonian leaders and politicians. They’re reading this – and they’re offended. I’m telling them here, and I’ve told them personally: Look in the mirror and see how your actions – and inaction – are taking down an entire ethnic group.

I’ve also told them that going on the offence is not offensive, especially when you have the truth on your side. (Should I apologize for my Canadian spelling of “offence” by the way? They would.) Instead of apologizing for existing, Macedonian politicians should be standing up for an entire nationality from relentless, public attacks by our oppressors – to admittedly redefine, and eradicate, what it ever meant to be a Macedonian. And this is the very raison d’etre of the Western-imposed, ironically-named “Prespa Agreement” – the illegal document that changes Macedonia’s name, and the identity and history of ALL Macedonians. By the way, Macedonian politicians would also apologize for my use of French – as that would anger their US overlords. Yes, the same ones who imposed the Prespa Disagreement.

So why would the US do such a thing? Imperialism. They want Macedonia in NATO, something that Greece (with Bulgaria hopping on board) had vowed to veto unless Macedonia gives up its name, identity and history and become “North Macedonians” from “North Macedonia” with a history beginning with the Republic of Macedonia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. The terms “Macedonia” and “Macedonian” were handed over to Greece and Bulgaria, depending on context – as explained in multiple Articles of the 19-page document telling me who I am and who my people ever were.

After Macedonia was partitioned in 1913 among Serbia (Yugoslavia), Bulgaria, Greece and later, Albania, each country brutally suppressed the name Macedonia and executed campaigns of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Macedonian populations. The Prespa Disagreement officially validates Greece and Bulgaria’s campaigns, as it explicitly denies the existence of Macedonians in these countries. Yes, the West wrote a handbook wiping out an entire people.

Additionally, and ironically, in 1988, Greece made a sudden, dramatic propaganda switch and began claiming that the Macedonian name belongs to them, but that Macedonian people still “don’t exist”. So then, who’s writing this op-ed…? Greece decided to go on the offence with blatant, racist lies, while Macedonian politicians cower in the corner with the truth.

Since Macedonia has been a toy thrown around by our various oppressors, let’s play a game too. It’s called “What Would You Do?” Pick your character first, you’re either a Macedonian politician or a normal person:

Question 1 – When an oppressor claims that your ancient history belongs to them, do you expose their attempts at wiping out your people? Not if you’re a Macedonian politician, you either give your history away or you do nothing to prevent it (depending on which political party you serve).

Question 2 – When a different oppressor claims that your modern history belongs to them, do you hand it over then engage in dialogue with them and try to find “common ground”?

A normal person would go on the offence and point out that these acts violate their most BASIC of human rights. They would point out the sheer hypocrisy that the West – which CLAIMS to support human rights, democracy and the rule of law – are the ones aiding our oppressors in our eradication by forcing the Prespa Disagreement on us. (The oppressor behind Door #1, by the way, is Greece, and Bulgaria is behind Door #2. Now this is a Let’s Make A Deal game that I would refuse to play).

And a normal person would say OUR NAME IS MACEDONIA and the case would be closed. I told Macedonian politicians the same, repeatedly. I also told them to not negotiate the un-negotiable. That we already have a name. That it’s not theirs to give away. And the only reason that the West was pushing for a name change was because they agreed to negotiate it.

I also tell them, repeatedly, that the forced name change can easily be reversed. An illegally-imposed law is not law. It’s that simple. The Prespa Disagreement was forced on Macedonia in violation of Macedonian and international law, in defiance of the Macedonian constitution and parliamentary rules, and by ignoring every human rights convention that guarantees the basic right of self-determination. I tell Macedonian politicians that their ridiculous claims that “reversing the name change would be difficult” only serves to prove that they’re either incompetent or complicit.

The irony is that Macedonia would have WON, if it not were for Macedonian politicians, who took it upon themselves to play games with – and lose – our name, identity and history. The vast majority of the world had recognized the Republic of Macedonia under its real name. The United Nations condemned Greece and Bulgaria for its persecution of Macedonians and demanded immediate recognition of their large Macedonian minorities. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in Macedonians’ favour in numerous cases against Greece and Bulgaria. This is what happens when you show self-respect, stand up for yourself and demand support – like the Macedonian minorities do throughout the Balkans. But what did politicians from the Republic of Macedonia do when they found themselves on a breakaway, and only needing one goal to finally put the anti-Macedonian “name dispute” to an end? Instead of scoring (ending the name negotiations that never should have begun), they turned around and scored an own goal.

This brings us back to the analogies. I don’t think there’s any confusion about them (save for, possibly, the Golden Girls reference at the beginning), but I’ll quote another old lady and explain them “just for case”. (My mother-in-law’s version of “just in case”). Gjorgi Ivanov, former president of the Republic of Macedonia, was the only player to have scored a goal – and he did so at the 2018 UN General Assembly when he decried the forced renaming of Macedonia and pointed out the sheer racism and hypocrisy of the West in imposing it. Self-determination was the key, and so is the fact that Macedonia and Macedonians have always existed as such. What did he do to follow up? Nothing. He had a multitude of options in preventing the illegally-imposed name change and he could’ve pardoned Macedonian political prisoners (those who dared to defy the West in opposing the name change) but he chose not to. He chose to obey the West instead, and he left the Macedonians who stood up for Western values (by defending their own human rights), to rot in prison.

The unathletic soccer players are Macedonian politicians from SDS and DPNE (“SDSM”, the biggest traitors in Macedonian history and the US puppets who executed the Prespa Disagreement and “VMRO-DPMNE”, the faux patriots who did nothing to stop the forced name change – so neither deserves the right to use the “M” for “Macedonia”. Macedonian politicians, are you offended again? Then WAKE UP and defend Macedonia). The substitutes are whichever party is in opposition at the time. And the Golden Girls reference is the beloved TV sitcom character Sophia Petrillo, who would tell delightfully, twisted stories from her childhood (“Picture it. Sicily. 1922…”) But, if the West’s anti-Macedonian actions were applied to her, all of her stories would be changed, along with her ethnicity, memories, and very being. She would be forced to say “Picture it. Washington D.C. 2020. The year everything I ever was, was erased…” Welcome to Macedonia’s world.

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Bill Nicholov is President of Macedonian Human Rights Movement International.

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Russia’s Unspoken Relationship With Israel and the Assassination of Maj. Gen. Soleimani

January 5th, 2020 by Andrew Korybko

The language employed by President Putin and his government in response to Major General Soleimani‘s assassination is unmistakably less emotional than the eulogies that he gave after the passing of Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, and Bush Sr., but this was to be expected since Iran isn’t Russia’ “close ally” like many have falsely claimed whereas the Russian leader has been consistently seeking closer relations with “Israel” and the US since the beginning of the century and thus has an interest in openly mourning the deaths of their former leaders whom he had earlier befriended on a very close personal level.

The world has been polarized over Major General Soleimani’s assassination, with Iran’s enemies spitting on his grave while its friends are mourning his murder. Russia, meanwhile, is characteristically “balancing” between both sides per its 21st-century grand strategy whereby it isn’t expressing any emotional reaction to his killing whatsoever. This surprised many in the Alt-Media Community who have been indoctrinated with the fake news narrative that Russia and Iran are “allies” after their shared struggles in jointly defeating Daesh in Syria, which is why they eagerly expected an emotional eulogy from either President Putin or his officials.

Instead, the Russian response has been strictly factual, much to their disappointment. There are obvious reasons for this, though they’ll be explained later on in this analysis. First, however, it’s important to draw attention to the lofty praise that President Putin sincerely expressed towards Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, and Bush Sr. after their passing as reported by the official Kremlin website, which was entirely voluntary on his part since they weren’t sitting heads of state when they met their demise but were treasured friends who he’ll fondly remember for the rest of his life, unlike Maj. Gen. Soleimani.

Tears For “Israel” and America

Here’s what President Putin said after Ariel Sharon’s demise:

“The President of Russia highly praised Ariel Sharon’s personal qualities, his activity to uphold the interests of Israel, noting the respect he enjoyed among his compatriots and internationally. Mr Putin stressed that Ariel Sharon will be remembered in Russia as a consistent supporter of friendly relations between Russia and Israel, who made a significant contribution to expanding mutually beneficial cooperation. Vladimir Putin conveyed his words of sympathy and support to Ariel Sharon’s family and the entire nation of Israel.”

Then he said this after Shimon Peres passed away:

“The message from the President of Russia says that Shimon Peres won broad respect in Israel and internationally for his many years of hard work as president and prime minister of Israel. Vladimir Putin praised Mr Peres’s personal contribution towards a peace settlement in the Middle East, which was duly appreciated by the international community as evidenced from the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him.

“I was extremely lucky to have met this extraordinary man many times. And every time I admired his courage, patriotism, wisdom, vision and ability to get down to the essence of the most difficult issues. Shimon Peres will be remembered in Russia as a consistent advocate of friendly relations between Russia and Israel and a man who greatly contributed to the strengthening of bilateral cooperation,” the President wrote.

Vladimir Putin conveyed his condolences and support to the family and friends of the deceased and also to the Government and people of Israel.”

And finally, he shared this emotional tribute with Bush Jr. after Bush Sr. died:

“Dear George,

Please accept my deepest condolences over the passing of your father, former US President, George Herbert Walker Bush. An outstanding politician, he devoted his entire life to serving his country, both as a serviceman during wartime and in high-ranking public posts in peacetime. As US President during one of the most important periods of world history, he showed political wisdom and foresight, and always sought balanced decisions even in the most difficult situations.

George Bush Sr. was well aware of the importance of a constructive dialogue between the two major nuclear powers and took great efforts to strengthen Russian-American relations and cooperation in international security. I had the good fortune to have met with him several times. I recall with particular warmth him organising our meeting at your wonderful summer home in Kennebunkport.

My fellow citizens and I will always cherish the memory of George Bush Sr. In this sad time, I would like to pass worlds of heartfelt sympathy and support to all members of your large family. May you have endurance during this time of grievous and tragic loss.

Vladimir Putin”

Saluting Soleimani

Compare all of the above with the only official report of President Putin’s reaction to Maj. Gen. Soleimani’s assassination, which he expressed while talking to French President Macron sometime on Friday:

“Both sides expressed concern over the death of Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, who was killed as a result of a US strike on Baghdad’s airport. It was stated that this attack could escalate tensions in the region.”

His officials were slightly more outspoken, however, with a Foreign Ministry source telling TASS the following on Friday morning:

“We consider Soleimani’s murder in a US missile strike at the suburbs of Baghdad an adventurous step that will lead to growing tensions throughout the region. Soleimani devotedly served the cause of protecting Iran’s national interests. We are offering our sincere condolences to the Iranian people.”

TASS then reported that Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova said that:

“It turns out that a missile strike was carried out first, an act that is out of sync with international law was committed. And only then did they [the Americans] requested [the assessment of the events] involving the [US] Embassy. This is probably the height of cynicism, you know…To condemn attacks on their embassies, states go to the UN Security Council submitting draft statements. Washington did not appeal to the Security Council, which means that it is not interested in the world’s response [and that it is] interested in changing the balance of power in the region…That will not result in anything but escalating tensions in the region, which will be sure to affect millions of people.”

After that, the Foreign Ministry published a statement on its website which reads as follows:

“We were concerned to learn of the death of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Commander Major General Qasem Soleimani in a US military strike on Baghdad airport. This step by Washington is fraught with grave consequences for the regional peace and stability. We firmly believe that such actions do not facilitate efforts to find solutions to the complicated problems that have built up in the Middle East. On the contrary, they lead to a new round of escalating tensions in the region.”

Then TASS reported on a statement by the Defense Ministry:

“Under the direct leadership of Qasem Soleimani, armed resistance against international terrorist groups ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, former name of the IS – TASS) and Al-Qaeda (outlawed in Russia) was organized in Syria and Iraq long before the so-called international coalition led by the US. His personal contribution to the fight against ISIL on the territory of Syria is undisputed. The short-sighted steps by the US, namely the killing of General Soleimani, will lead to a sharp escalation of military-political tensions in the Middle East region. It is fraught with serious negative consequences for the entire global security system.”

The outlet also said that “the statement adds that Soleimani was an experienced military commander who had significant authority and influence in the entire Middle East region.”

Afterwards, TASS reported that the Russian Foreign Ministry had this to say about Lavrov’s call with Pompeo about the matter:

“They [Lavrov and Pompeo] have discussed the situation related to the murder of Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani by the US military in an airstrike on the Baghdad airport. Lavrov stressed that the purposeful actions of a UN member state on eliminating officials of another UN member state, especially on the territory of a third sovereign state without giving it prior notice, blatantly violate the principles of international law and should be condemned.

The Russian minister has pointed out that this step by the US is fraught with serious consequences for peace and security in the region and that it does not aid the efforts on finding solutions to difficult issues accumulated in the Middle East. On the contrary, it leads to a new wave of escalation. Moscow urges Washington to abandon unlawful forceful tactics of achieving its goals on the international arena and to resolve any issues at the negotiating table.”

Explaining The Stark Contrast

From the above, it’s self-evident that Russia’s response to Maj. Gen. Soleimani’s assassination focuses on its political and legal consequences while eschewing any talk of the personal or emotional commentary which characterized President Putin’s eulogies of Sharon, Peres, and Bush Sr., and this is explained by more than just the different circumstances of their deaths. First of all, Maj. Gen. Soleimani wasn’t President Putin’s friend — in fact, the Russian leader’s spokesman flatly denied reports in December 2015 that the two secretly met earlier that month so it’s possible that they didn’t even know each other on a personal level, unlike his relationship with the three aforementioned leaders.

Speaking of which, Maj. Gen. Soleimani was purely a military leader and not a political one, meaning that he wasn’t President Putin’s counterpart, once again, unlike the three previously mentioned figures. That being the case, President Putin in principle doesn’t even feel obligated to eulogize him, but there are probably more reasons than just these “official” ones why neither he nor his representatives wanted to give the assassinated anti-terrorist mastermind an emotional Bush Sr.-like tribute. It’s taboo to talk about, but eulogizing Maj. Gen. Soleimani would reverse all of Russia’s hard-earned soft power and “deep state” inroads with “Israel” and the US in recent years which President Putin has worked tirelessly to achieve.

The Truth About Russia’s Relations With “Israel” & America

The Russian leader has consistently sought to strengthen relations with both of them since first entering the presidency slightly more than two decades ago, and he’s finally on the cusp of fulfilling what he’s set out to do on the foreign policy front for so long. “Israel” is one of Russia’s most strategic partners anywhere in the world, which the author extensively explained in his analysis from last year titled “Russia’s Middle East Strategy: ‘Balance’ vs. ‘Betrayal’“. That article cites official sources and references the author’s earlier work on the topic (one piece of which relies solely on the official Kremlin website) to prove that ties between the two are much closer than many in the Alt-Media Community feel comfortable publicly acknowledging for whatever reason.

As for the American angle to all of this, Russia is presently attempting to negotiate a “New Detente” with the US which includes potential quid pro quos (“pragmatic compromises”) between the two in Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere in pursuit of sanctions relief and a renewed global partnership based on mutual respect of one another and their core interests. It’s not been as successful as Russia’s fast-moving rapprochement with “Israel”, but it’s nevertheless still promising and not something that Moscow will risk endangering by eulogizing Maj. Gen. Soleimani in such a way that it “provokes” the Americans into seeing Russia as an “enemy” again. All of Russia’s incessant efforts to dispel that false narrative would be for naught if its officials praised Soleimani.

“Israel” > America (For Russia)

To explain, Russia is very well aware of how its “Israeli” and American partners view Maj. Gen. Soleimani, which is why its representatives took extreme care not to praise him on a personal level or to comment on his alleged activities in Iraq where Washington claims that he organized thousands of attacks against its forces. Tel Aviv views him as the mastermind behind the IRGC and its Hezbollah ally’s involvement in Syria at the request of that country’s democratically elected and legitimate government but which the self-professed “Jewish State” regards as an “existential threat” to its “security”. As such, he was one of “Israel’s” top enemies anywhere in the world, and among the main ones that it ever faced in history.

It’s worth noting that President Putin is scheduled to visit “Israel” later this month to commemorate victims of the Holocaust. His close friend Netanyahu believes that Iran is plotting to repeat that mass killing of Jews, which he literally expressed to Putin while attending Victory Day celebrations in May 2018 as his host’s guest of honor according to the official Kremlin website, and it’s obvious after putting two and two together that “Israel” believes that the IRGC would be the vanguard of that speculative campaign. Since Maj. Gen. Solemani was the head of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force which literally translates to “Jerusalem Force”, Putin simply can’t eulogize him even if he wanted to otherwise he risks ruining Russia’s excellent relations with “Israel”.

Explaining ≠ “Excusing”

This isn’t to give “credence” to “Israel’s” claims or to “justify” its stance towards Iran, the IRGC, Hezbollah, and anything or anyone else associated with the Islamic Republic, but just to explain the sensitive political reality as understood from the perspective of Russian policymakers and thus answer the question of why their response to Maj. Gen. Solemani’s assassination eschewed any of the personal or emotional commentary that characterized President Putin’s eulogies of Sharon, Peres, and Bush. Sr. It would be one thing to “tactically taunt” the US as “negotiating leverage” by eulogizing Maj. Gen. Solemani, but it’s another entirely to do the same with “Israel”, which is a red line that Russia isn’t expected to cross and thus far hasn’t for that reason.

Considering the very warm words that President Putin sincerely expressed about Sharon, Peres, and Bush Sr. despite them not being serving leaders at the time of their passing (though nevertheless still remaining his unforgettable friends even after they left office) while simply “expressing concern” over Maj. Gen. Solemani’s assassination, it can be said that he places a much higher importance on maintaining Russia’s relations with “Israel” and the US than with Iran, though it should be said that he and his representatives definitely didn’t “disrespect” the Islamic Republic even though they might have “disappointed” it. As if there needed to be even more evidence, this further proves that Russia and Iran aren’t “allies” like was falsely claimed by many.

Baumel vs. Soleimani

To hammer home this point, it’s worthwhile to look at what President Putin said to Netanyahu while handing over the remains of Zachary Baumel last April, which Russia located, dug up, and airlifted out of Syria after this “IDF” member had been missing in action there for decades. According to the official Kremlin website, the Russian leader eulogized Baumel in the following manner:

“We are glad that he will receive proper military honours in his homeland. Another, purely humanitarian aspect of this case is that Zachary’s family will be able to bring flowers to his grave…Please, convey my best regards to the sergeant’s family.”

By contrast, President Putin didn’t express any opinion about Maj. Gen. Solemani’s burial in his homeland and the fact that his family will not be able to bring flowers to his grave. Nor, for that matter, did he “convey his best regards” to the Maj. Gen.’s family. Russia’s response to his assassination was purely political and legal because reacting otherwise would have endangered its grand strategic interests with “Israel”.

Concluding Thoughts

Maj. Gen. Soleimani wasn’t a national political leader like Sharon, Peres, and Bush. Sr. were so comparing President Putin’s eulogies of each (or lack thereof in the former’s case) is like comparing apples and oranges. Still, it’s symbolic that he had warmer words to say about the former head of the CIA who presided over the US during the USSR’s dissolution (Bush Sr.) — which he himself once called “a major geopolitical disaster of the century” according to the official Kremlin website — than the man who fought together with his military to defeat terrorism in Syria.

The message being conveyed to all parties by President Putin’s indirectly reported “expression of concern” over Maj. Gen. Soleimani’s assassination and his government’s comparatively more detailed but nevertheless purely political-legal reaction to it is that Russia respects Iran, acknowledges the important role that its murdered hero played in advancing its national interests, and is therefore “offering its sincere condolences to the Iranian people” per a Foreign Ministry source, but that politics is politics and Russia will not jeopardize its hard-earned rapprochements with “Israel” and the US by “provoking” them with a eulogy for him, even a brief Baumel-like one.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Why Are Vaccine Adverse Events Not Acknowledged or Reported by Medical Professionals?

January 5th, 2020 by Bea

Legislators have the professional and moral obligation to protect children and support equality, but Senate Bill 2761 by Sen. Richard Pan, which would eliminate almost all vaccine medical exemptions, aims to segregate a minority of children from their right to an education. And even worse, for families who can’t afford homeschooling, SB 276 puts these vulnerable children at higher risk for repeat vaccine adverse events. 

As a pediatric intensive care nurse for 13 years, I believe in vaccinations and understand the desire for community immunity, but I have also observed many vaccine adverse events that shouldn’t be ignored any longer.

I administered vaccines without hesitation until a previously healthy teen came into our unit with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM)—brain swelling—after receiving the meningococcal vaccine earlier that week. The teen was paralyzed, in a coma, and had to be placed on a ventilator in the ICU for weeks. When I shared with the treating physician that ADEM was listed as a possible reaction to the meningococcal vaccine and asked whether we should report this to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), I was told a firm “NO” without further discussion. Three weeks later, the teen left our unit still unable to walk or talk, and there was no discussion of the possible cause or the recent vaccination.

After that, I began to notice that most doctors never asked if a new patient was recently vaccinated, despite the child’s diagnosis being listed as a possible adverse event on the vaccine insert. And if I informed the doctor that a parent mentioned their child was recently vaccinated, it was most often ignored. I have seen dozens of cases of seizures, SIDS, paralysis, diabetes, or immune system dysfunction following vaccination, yet I have only seen one report made to VAERS. It begs the question: why are these vaccine adverse events not being acknowledged or reported?

SB 2762 will herd children who were unlucky enough to suffer a vaccine reaction, but lucky enough to have a doctor acknowledge it, into a database where the state will be able to track them, freely violate their rights, and kick them out of school.

Medical professionals agree that all pharmaceuticals carry potential risks. Just as there is a small percentage of children who are allergic to penicillin, there is a percentage of children who have serious reactions after vaccination. SB 276 proponents claim only “1 in a million” reactions, but that’s referring to anaphylactic reactions, not reactions like seizures and paralysis.

Currently, in California, only less than one percent of children have vaccine medical exemptions because of a previous adverse event or family history which puts the child or sibling at risk. Under SB 276,1 as it’s currently written, there would be a narrow scope of “approved” reactions—anaphylaxis and encephalopathy—and even if a child experienced those, there is no clause for family history so siblings would have to be vaccinated as well. I can’t imagine the decision these parents will have to make, being coerced into risking repeat injury or death, just to keep their children in school.

Physicians are bound to their Hippocratic Oath to “First, do no harm,” but government officials do not carry any liability for injury or harm, nor do pharmaceutical companies since the 1986 National Childhood Vaccination Injury Act protects them. SB 2763 would be a liability-free, government-mandated system that harms these vulnerable children again.

As a nurse, I understand the desire to maintain community immunity. In 2018, the CDC reported that California has immunization rates above 96 percent for its school children, one of the highest rates in the nation. The California Department of Public Health reported 15 pediatric measles cases this year, not one related to school children with medical exemptions.

Yet SB 2764 would systematically discriminate against these children with special needs, their rights to privacy, and their free and equal education would be eliminated.

Is this discrimination of less than one percent of children with medical exemptions really a public health crisis and worth the $40 million it will cost taxpayers? The government should be focused on legitimate public health issues, like the Typhus, Typhoid Fever and TB outbreaks among our growing homeless population, rather than this minority of injured children.

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Bea s a pediatric intensive care nurse in Southern California.

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New York Times Reveals America’s Weapons-Makers’ Trump-Impeachment Drive

January 5th, 2020 by Eric Zuesse

A remarkably non-propagandistic news-report, in the New York Times, by Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti, included powerful evidence that the impeachment-effort against US President Donald Trump is motivated, in part if not totally, by a desire by US Senators and Representatives — as well as by career employees of the US Departments of Defense, State Department, and other agencies regarding national defense — to increase the sales-volumes of US-made weapons to foreign countries. Whereas almost all of the contents of that article merely repeat what has already been reported, this article in the Times states repeatedly that boosting corporations such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop-Grumman, has been a major — if not the very top — motivation driving US international relations, and that at least regarding Ukraine, Trump has not been supporting, but has instead been trying to block, those weapons-sales — and creating massive enemies in the US Government as a direct consequence.

The article, issued online on Sunday, December 29th, is titled “Behind the Ukraine Aid Freeze: 84 Days of Conflict and Confusion”, and it quotes many such individuals as saying that President Trump strongly opposed the sale of US weapons to Ukraine, and that,

In an Oval Office meeting on May 23, with Mr. Sondland, Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Blair in attendance, Mr. Trump batted away assurances that [Ukraine’s current President] Mr. Zelensky was committed to confronting corruption. “They are all corrupt, they are all terrible people,” Mr. Trump said, according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry.

In other words, Trump, allegedly, said that he didn’t want “terrible people” to be buying, and to receive, US-made weapons (especially not as US aid — free of charge, a gift from America’s taxpayers).

The article simply assumes that Trump was wrong that “they are all terrible people.”

Indeed, Trump himself has sold hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US-made weapons to the Royal Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and he refuses to back down about those sales on account of that family’s having been behind the widely-reported torture-murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and on account of their effort since 2015 to starve into submission — by bombing the food-supplies to — the Houthis in adjoining Yemen, and on account of their using US weapons in order to achieve that mass-murdering goal. Consequently, even if Trump is correct about Ukraine’s Government, he would still have a lot of explaining to do, in order to cancel congressionally authorized US weapons-sales to Ukraine but not to Saudi Arabia.

However, a very strong case can be made that he is correct about Ukraine — even if he is wrong about the Sauds. Clearly, the standard line in the US-and-allied media, that the February 2014 overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected Government was a ‘democratic revolution’, instead of a US coup, is based on blatant lies, and the US-imposed coup-regime there is still in force, and has been perpetrating an ethnic cleansing in order to be able to remain in power. In fact, the current Ukrainian President, Volodmyr Zelenskiy, is the self-described “business partner” of, and was brought to power by, the brutal Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who helped the ‘former’ “Social Nationalist’ (National Socialist or Nazi) Arsen Avakov, plan and execute on 2 May 2014 the burning-alive inside the Odessa Trade Unions Building, of dozens or perhaps over a hundred people who had been printing and distributing leaflets against the coup.

For the New York Times, in its ’news’-report — even this article that’s less prejudiced than most of mainstream US ’news’-reporting is — to simply presume that Trump had no valid reason for asserting what he did against Ukraine’s present (the Obama-installed) Government of Ukraine, constitutes merely anti-Trump (and pro-Obama) propaganda, on their part, and it would be more appropriate in an editorial or op-ed from them than in an alleged news-article, such as here. However, the actual news-value in that article is real. They quoted from “a piece in the conservative Washington Examiner saying that the Pentagon would pay for weapons and other military equipment for Ukraine, bringing American security aid to the country to $1.5 billion since 2014.” This was an anti-Democrat, pro-Republican, newspaper and article, saying:

Kurt Volker, the US special representative for Ukraine, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a Tuesday hearing. “I think it’s also important that Ukraine reciprocate with foreign military purchases from us as well, and I know that they intend to do so.” The assistance comes at a pivotal moment for Ukraine’s newly minted president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a popular comedian who won a landslide victory in April. Zelensky has made ending the Russian-backed insurrection in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region his top political priority.

The Times, in order to appear nonpartisan, was there citing, as authority, the anti-Trump appointee by Trump, Kurt Volker, who said “it’s also important that Ukraine reciprocate with foreign military purchases from us as well, and I know that they intend to do so.” In other words: Volker was saying that Ukraine’s Government would follow through with America’s war against Russia, next door to Ukraine, and that therefore, US taxpayers should pay for Ukraine’s purchases of US-made weapons, such as from Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. He was saying that milking US taxpayers to boost those US corporations’ profits is good, not bad. He was saying that Ukraine is on US taxpayers’ dole, as if the Obama-installed, rabidly anti-Russian, Ukrainian Government is a charity-case which is the US Government’s business (and not merely those private stockholders’ business), and that therefore, Trump should continue Obama’s policy toward Ukraine, of using Ukraine in order ultimately to place on Ukraine’s border with Russia, missiles against Moscow, right across that border. This is what the New York Times is presenting in a favorable light.

Then, the New York Times ‘news’-report said:

For a full month, the fact that Mr. Trump wanted to halt the aid remained confined primarily to a small group of officials.

That ended on July 18, when a group of top administration officials meeting on Ukraine policy — including some calling in from Kyiv — learned from a midlevel budget office official that the president had ordered the aid frozen.

“I and the others on the call sat in astonishment,” William B. Taylor Jr., the top United States diplomat in Ukraine, testified to House investigators. “In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened.”

In other words: the Times’s further attack against Trump’s intention not to provide this US taxpayer boondoggle to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, United Technologies, and other US weapons-making corporations — a boondoggle so as to continue free supply to the Obama-installed Ukrainian regime of US-made weapons against Russia — is that career US national-security personnel support and want to continue Obama’s war against Russia.

Then, the Times reported further:

“This is in America’s interest,” Mr. Bolton argued, according to one official briefed on the gathering.

“This defense relationship, we have gotten some really good benefits from it,” Mr. Esper added, noting that most of the money was being spent on military equipment made in the United States.

America’s war against Russia is designed to enrich investors in US ‘Defense’-contractors.

Isn’t it clear, then, what was actually behind 9/11, and behind America’s invasion of (instead of merely Special-Forces operation regarding) Afghanistan in 2001, and invasions of Iraq in 2003, and of Libya in 2011, and of Syria in 2012-now, etc., and coup against Ukraine in 2014?

The Times article closes with this impeach-Trump line:

But then, just as suddenly as the hold was imposed, it was lifted. Mr. Trump, apparently unwilling to wage a public battle, told Mr. Portman he would let the money go.

White House aides rushed to notify their counterparts at the Pentagon and elsewhere. The freeze had been lifted. The money could be spent. Get it out the door, they were told.

The debate would now begin as to why the hold was lifted, with Democrats confident they knew the answer.

“I have no doubt about why the president allowed the assistance to go forward,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “He got caught.”

In other words: Trump yielded to the threat of being impeached. Trump, the sales-person who had sold the Saud family hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US weaponry, recognized that unless Russia is going to be the main target of US weaponry, Trump’s own Presidency will be in jeopardy.

US foreign policies are a vast sales-promotion scheme, for America’s billionaires, who crave to control Russia, above all. Trump won’t buck them. Instead, he’s continuing Obama’s policy on Ukraine.

How Brexit Produced the Largest Conservative Majority Since Thatcher

January 5th, 2020 by Francisco Dominguez

The Conservatives managed a landslide in the general election in the UK on 12th December 2019 by obtaining 365 seats –more than an absolute majority- and inflicting a crushing defeat on the Labour Party –that got only 203 seats. The Scottish Nationalists got 48 seats (13 more than in 2017), the Liberal Democrats obtained 11 seats, with the smaller parties receiving the reminder 23 seats. The electoral outcome was so devastating that the Conservatives have an absolute majority even if all the other parties in Westminster were to vote together against them, they would still be short by 80 votes.

Johnson’s majority is smaller than Thatcher’s in 1983, when the Conservatives got 397 seats, an absolute majority of 144 seats against all other parties combined together; and still smaller than Thatcher’s victory in 1987 with 376 seats (102 seats more than all other parties combined). Thus when contextualised over a larger time span, Johnson’s victory does not look as formidable.

The result came as shocking surprise, especially considering that Labour’s politics were dominated by the phenomenon of Jeremy Corbyn, whose popularity among Labour supporters was very high. It led to a substantial strengthening of the party whose membership high-rocketed to over 800,000 but eventually settled around 480,000 (the largest social democratic party in Europe (the German SPD has 426,000), and almost as large as the combined membership of all the other British political parties (Conservatives – 180,000 -, Scottish Nationalists – 125,534-, Liberal Democrats – 115,000 –, Greens, – 48,500 – UKIP –29,000 –, and Welsh Nationalists – 10,000 –, who, together come to slightly over 500,000).[1]

Furthermore, most British trade unions are formally affiliated to the Labour Party, and most of them, with some substantial differences on some issues –notably the replacement of Trident -, were politically aligned with Jeremy Corbyn, who they have supported solidly since his election as Labour leader in September 2015 at every national conference, defeating attempts by Labour’s Blairite right wing to replace him.

The 2019 election results mean that when compared to the 2017 general election, the Tories got 48 extra seats, whilst Labour had a massive loss of 60. However, up to the 2019 election, Labour’s vote was going up, whilst that of the Tories was gong down:

As it can bee seen from Table 1 above, between 2015 and 2017 Labour was on what seemed a solid recovery by an increase of 30 MPs and 3 million more votes. Labour under Corbyn’s leadership had to wage an electoral campaign not only virtually against all other parties, but also against its own right wing that, commanded by Peter Mandelson, (with Blair pulling the strings from behind) dedicated itself to systematically sabotage and demonize its own party, even to the point of some of its representatives openly calling to vote against their own party. An insidious and aggressive campaign of demonization by the corporate media was conducted aimed discrediting Corbyn’s Labour, vigorously supplemented this.

Under Corbyn Labour’s vote increased by about 3 million in 2017, thus denying the Tories a parliamentary majority leading the government to bribe the Northern Irish right wing Democratic Unionist Party by increasing spending in that region by £1bn, which secured Theresa May a majority.[2]

The Establishment deemed the intense media hostility both against Corbyn and his radical policies, insufficient, and therefore, it mobilised NGOs, intellectuals, academics, artists and everything else they could among respectable society. At the time, polls gave Labour 32% (May 2015) and 25% in (March 2017). Throughout that period the media and spokespersons of this broad right wing anti-Corbyn coalition, pumped the message that Corbyn was unelectable, aimed at forcing his resignation from Labour’s leadership. Faced with such hostility, it was amazing that Labour increased its vote getting 30 more MPs.

Additionally, Theresa May’s Conservative government was saddled with the issue of Brexit, since it had to confront persistent parliamentary back stabbing from the anti-European wing of her own party, especially from Boris Johnson. May lost several parliamentary votes when trying to legislate the implementation of Brexit.

All of this was taking place against the background of the 2016 referendum on the UK’s European Union membership whose result shook all parties, particularly the Conservatives, to their foundations when it was learned that nearly 52% (17,410,742 votes) voted to leave with those in favour of staying obtaining 48% (16,141,241 votes). The turnout was 72%, higher than normal.

With the exception of UKIP, most parties formally campaigned to stay, including the Conservative PM, Theresa May, but also Labour under Corbyn, the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, and Greens. Both major parties, Labour and Conservatives however, contained active factions who vigorously championed Brexit. They were substantially stronger among Conservatives, were even ministers resigned in protest against the pro Remain position of Theresa May. They deployed the infamous NHS Busfalsely publicising that upon abandoning the EU Britain’s public health service would receive £350 million per week, amount they argued, Britain was sending in various payments to the EU. FullFact, a fact-checking charity, demonstrated the claim to be false and wrote

Mr Johnson’s most recent claim in the Telegraph is still inaccurate, despite his more careful wording: it doesn’t make sense to talk about taking back control over money that is never sent and never owed to anyone else.[3]

Johnson is not only a ruthless operator but also quite an unscrupulous politician. Throughout the Corbyn years, he would make outrageously inappropriate and unacceptable statements on race, women, the poor, the environment, and so forth and, was therefore, depicted as an insensitive upper-class clown. Johnson’s media appearances in TV interviews projected him as a mumbling trickster who would garble his way out of tough questions, or would just simply utter straight lies. What helped Johnson to get away with such crude lies was the relative gentility deployed by the media, that either engaged in amazing acrobatics or simply suppressed information about it, in sharp contrast with the antagonistic treatment meted out to Jeremy Corbyn and his policies.

This low-level intellectual quality and political shambles has characterised the leadership of the Conservative Party ever since John Major’s Premiership (1992-1997), who sought to salvage the nation from Thatcher’s wreckage by abolishing some of her worst and most unpopular policies such as the Poll Tax. Since then, low intellectual political level and lack of a UK economic strategy, has characterised this emerging, ever more dominant, extreme right wing, whose politics oozes racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

The Conservative politicians who today dominate the party, individuals such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Jacob Ress-Mogg, Liam Fox, and the like, are extreme pro-market libertarians, anti-statist, deeply opposed to the welfare state – which they seek to dismantle –, and almost irrationally anti EU. Some of them champion extreme ‘Christian’ values on sexual diversity, same-sex marriage and, of course, abortion. Their views have a strong resonance in the party since its membership is 71% male and 97% white.[4] Pretty much gone are the ‘one-nation’ Tories, who, broadly speaking, are pro Europe, favour industrial development instead of finance capital, believed in maintaining the bulk of the welfare state, and are modern on abortion, sexual orientation, race, and so forth.

Though, as can be gauged from the statistics discussed above, it has always been difficult for Labour to defeat the Tories’ formidable politico-electoral machinery, under Corbyn’s leadership Labour had developed not only a radical government programme of substantial structural anti-neoliberal reforms, but one that, as testified by many polls, hugely resonates with the electorate with some policies polling well above 70% support. Thus in the 2017 manifesto 79% supported that electricity and energy came from low-carbon or renewable sources, 74% were in favour of capping rent prices at the rate of inflation, 68% were in favour of increasing income tax for top 5% of earners, 63% agreed with requiring business to reserve a proportion of seats on their boards for their workers, 60% supported railways to be owned and run by the state, 57% agree with the utilities industries like energy and water companies being owned by the state, 55% supported free university tuition fees for all students, and 52% were against the UK taking part in military interventions in other countries.[5]

Corbyn added that all expansion of the health service that had taken place under Tony Blair, which allowed the private sector to run growing sections of the NHS, including full newly-built hospitals, would all, 100%, be fully nationalised. Policy that elicited enthusiastic support in British society as a whole, especially because Tory austerity had so underfunded the NHS to the point of creating a massive crisis in health provision well captured in video Corbyn issued:

In the face of all the evidence – patients being treated in hospital corridors, people dying in the back of ambulances, hospitals in dire need of repair- they are refusing to give our NHS the money it needs and needs now. The NHS will only survive if we fight for it. [6]

In fact, the impact of Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto was such that Bloomberg commented Corbyn’s Labour Party will offer voters one of the most radical economic agendas anywhere in the democratic world.[7] Another Bloomberg piece reported with alarm that not only Labour 2017 was endorsed but much more was added to this agenda at the September 2019 Labour conference held in Brighton:

  • The integration of private schools into the state system;
  • A Green New Deal that sets a target of 2030 for net zero carbon emissions. (A Labour government would nationalize the country’s big energy firms, ban fracking, and take public transport into state ownership);
  • The restoration of full trade union rights and workplace rights, rolling out collective wage bargaining;
  • A 10 pound ($12.36) hourly minimum wage;
  • A 50,000 pound lump-sum payment to veterans of British nuclear tests for help with medical problems;
  • A scrappage scheme for polluting vehicles and 2.5 million interest free loans for the purchase of electronic vehicles. The construction, with private investors, of three large battery gigafactories.[8]

The titles of the two Bloomberg pieces are telling: ‘Corbynomics’ Is More Popular Than You Thinkand, Jeremy Corbyn Is Planning a Revolution.

At media and parliamentary debates Corbyn’s performances against May and then Johnson were impressive primarily because he denounced the consequences of government austerity policies on people, society and economy. Furthermore, he toured the nation delivering rabble-rousing speeches about his progressive vision for the UK. A nationwide, strong grassroots movement developed and grew out of this. Johnson, on his part, monothematically stressed the need to ‘get Brexit done’. By the end of November, Johnson was actively shunning TV appearances, interviews and debates, and was reported in some of the media as “avoiding scrutiny”.

Politics Home revealed the mixed public sentiment by reporting on a snap poll taken after the 6th December 2019 TV debate: Corbyn had a 10 point lead on who came across as more trustworthy, and on the NHS, he won 55% to 38%, whilst Johnson won 62% to 29% on who performed best during the section of the debate around Brexit.[9] In other words, if the election were fought on Brexit, the Tories would have the edge, but if the focus was the NHS, austerity and the gross inequalities it had generated, then Labour was likely to carry the day.

Thus the British Establishment and the Tories deployed all their resources to exert pressure on Labour aimed at making Brexit the crucial issue of the coming election. The pressure was such that it affected even Corbyn’s inner circle. This served a double purpose: it distracted from Labour radical manifesto and exacerbated Labour’s internal divisions. Furthermore, by Labour adopting a pro Remain position, after the 2016 referendum, depicted Labour as disrespecting the democratic decision of the British people. The Tories’ calculation turned out to be correct: making Brexit the central election issue would give them a crucial edge. The crucial Establishment’s lever to pressurise Corbyn were the Labour MPs, who were overwhelmingly anti Corbyn.

From the moment Corbyn had been elected Labour MPs had sought to oust him, even going for a parliamentary coup by passing a no confidence resolution against the Labour leader in 2016, which involved even Labour’s Deputy Leader, Tom Watson. The coup involved mass resignations by Labour right-wingers from the broad-based Shadow Cabinet that Corbyn had established to include all shades of opinions in the party. They blamed Corbyn for the Brexit vote. Media reports at the time suggested that about 80% of the Labour MPs were in the plot. In fact, 172 MPs voted for a no-confidence motion against Corbyn, whilst only 40 supported him.[10] This not only triggered a leadership election with Labour’s right seeking to prevent Corbyn from being on the ballot by an unsuccessful High Court action. The ensuing leadership election saw a Corbyn victory with a larger majority.

This breed of Labour MPs was the result of 10 years of Blair leadership who not only shifted Labour drastically to the right (and to the extreme right on international issues as witnessed by the Iraq War) but who also implemented severe attacks on the party’s internal democracy, which included favouring Labour candidates of a right wing, Blairite, persuasion. Corbyn, therefore, had to contend with this toxic aspect of “Blair’s legacy.” A poignant manifestation of this ‘legacy’ was the attitude adopted by the majority Labour parliamentary party on the renewal of the Trident submarine nuclear military system. Labour’s formal position was in support but Corbyn sought a compromise of retaining submarines but without nuclear weapons. The outcome was 140 Labour MPs voted with the Conservative government to renew Trident, 47 joined Corbyn voting against, while 43 abstained. Thus, though Corbyn’s leadership had strong support within the party’s grassroots, the bourgeoisie, the Conservatives and the Establishment had in Labour MPs a formidable ally.

This pressure was not confined to statements alone but led 8 right wing Labour MPs, headed by Black MP, Chuka Umunna, to even break with the party, thus deliberately jeopardising Labour’s electoral chances. The bases of their defection was Corbyn’s supposed inability to stop Brexit and, for good measure, they threw in the well publicised media-led campaign of Labour being anti-Semitic with Corbyn being unable or unwilling to tackle it.[11] When the ‘rebels’ announced more mass defections to follow, this right wing pressure did the trick. They immediately got Tony Blair’s full endorsement.

Right wing Labour MPs were also able to mobilise progressive individuals in the parliamentary party, the unions, and among the Labour party membership, especially in the South East, to campaign for Labour to go for a second referendum. They eventually managed to saddle Corbyn with such a policy. Thus Corbyn went into the 2019 election with the formal position of a second referendum, which would ask the electorate whether to accept or reject the first referendum. On November 22nd, Corbyn announced:

This will be a trade deal with Europe or remaining in the EU – that will be the choice that will be put before the British people within 6 months. Any other option will require years of negotiations either with the EU or the USA.

Then, he added, “I will adopt, if I am Prime Minister at the time, a neutral stance so I can credibly carry out the result of that to bring our communities and country together rather than continuing endless debate about the EU and Brexit.” This happened on the Question Time national TV programme on 22nd November 2019, that is, days before the general election. The Tories, Johnson and the media quickly capitalised on it. With this statement, Corbyn unwittingly, made Brexit the central issue of the coming election. Thus paradoxically, in order to unite the party, he ended up alienating a crucial part of his electoral base. The media went into full anti-Corbyn gear, the ground for which had been well prepared.

Since his surprising election in 2016, Corbyn has faced a relentless, vicious and unscrupulous media campaign against him and his project. Anti-Corbyn media bias was such that led scholars in the LSE to conduct a study, which concluded

“… Jeremy Corbyn was represented unfairly by the British press through a process of vilification that went well beyond the normal limits of fair debate and disagreement in a democracy. Corbyn was often denied his own voice in the reporting on him and sources that were anti-Corbyn tended to outweigh those that support him and his positions. He was also systematically treated with scorn and ridicule in both the broadsheet and tabloid press in a way that no other political leader is or has been. Even more problematic, the British press has repeatedly associated Corbyn with terrorism and positioned him as a friend of the enemies of the UK. The result has been a failure to give the newspaper reading public a fair opportunity to form their own judgements about the leader of the country’s main opposition.”[12]

Prize winner, journalist Jonathan Cook, highlighted the specific role of the BBC in this bias by looking at the work of the Media Reform Coalition and Birbeck, University of London, whose study argued that “imbalanced reporting” has become so grave that it poses a serious threat to the democratic process.” Their study reveals that

“…the BBC is failing to make even the most minimal efforts at even-handedness. The issues it uses to frame its news coverage are nearly five times more likely to present Corbyn in a negative light. Even worse, BBC news headlines during the study period failed to frame any story in a positive light for Corbyn.”[13]

Remember that the BBC, unlike the press, is supposed to abide by strict rules of impartiality, and that its early evening news programme is probably the single most influential source of news for most Britons.”

Media bias against Corbyn never stopped and was relentless even up to election’s eve, when the charge of Labour being anti-Semitic was raised at the last minute by none other than the Archbishop of Canterbury, UK’s maximum religious authority, who on 26th November 2019, publicly endorsed and supported UK’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who had said that Jews were “gripped with anxiety” at the prospect of Corbyn becoming Prime Minister. The Archbishop, Justin Welby, said that Mirvis’ warning should ‘alert us to the deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews’. The charges that under Corbyn anti-Semitism had flourished had by then at least 2 years of longevity.

The Media Reform Group also conducted a study on how anti-Semitism was also used by the media to demonise Corbyn and the Labour programme associated with him. Their report, Labour, Antisemitism and the News. A disinformation paradigm, states

“The Media Reform Coalition has conducted in-depth research on the controversy surrounding antisemitism in the Labour Party, focusing on media coverage of the crisis during the summer of 2018. Following extensive case study research, we identified myriad inaccuracies and distortions in online and television news including marked skews in sourcing, omission of essential context or right of reply, misquotation, and false assertions made either by journalists themselves or sources whose contentious claims were neither challenged nor countered. Overall, our findings were consistent with a disinformation paradigm.”[14]

As it happened, in the 2019 election the Conservatives won 54 seats from Labour, but overall, Labour lost 60. It is very telling that only 8 out of those 60 constituencies had voted Remain, whilst the reminder 52 had voted Brexit in the 2016 referendum, with percentages going from 50.1% (Colne Valley) to 72.1% (Stoke-on-Trent North).[15]Labour lost seats that it had held since 1919, 1922, 1932, 1935, 1945 and 1970, so it would be wrong to draw the conclusion that all of the sudden, Labour working class bastions had converted to the brand of Conservatism espoused by Boris Johnson. The only explanation is that a substantial proportion of people in these bastions favoured Brexit and found Labour’s position of another referendum unacceptable since it made their vote for the first referendum worthless.

For many, poverty, destitution, unemployment, homelessness and other social ills in these Labour heartlands were closely associated to the policy of open immigration resulting from Britain’s membership of the European Union. This has been the persistent message to the nation from Conservative leaders, whether in or out of office, since Thatcher: unless immigration is severely curved, the UK and its citizens would continue to suffer these ills and, in the last years, they have made strenuous efforts to link immigration to terrorism. Besides, there is no doubt that the pro Brexit referendum campaign intensified racism, bigotry and xenophobia to high levels: according to official figures, recorded hate crime rose sharply by 57% between 2014-15 and 2016-17, with 87% motivated by racial hatred.[16]

Additionally, as can be seen from the table below, in the 2019 election Labour lost 2 million votes to pro-remain parties (Liberal Democrats, Scottish and Welsh Nationalists, Greens, and pro-remain in the North of Ireland):

So, what now? Which way forward for the Labour movement in the UK after the crashing defeat of Corbyn, the most radical and most progressive political leadership to emerge in the UK and Europe? Corbynism was political phenomenon that developed and was equipped with the formidable political armoury against neoliberalism, inequality and lack of opportunities, racism, xenophobia and war. Is it all over for Corbyn’s manifesto?

Conclusion

As part of the necessary process of reflection to explain and absorb the lessons emanating from the election defeat, two schools of thought are emerging: on the one hand, the broad anti-Corbyn front that goes from openly fascist currents, the Establishment, the Tories, UKIP, Liberal Democrats, Scottish Nationalists, most of the corporate media, Labour’s right wing and even minority sections of the so-called Labour left moderates, and on the other, the vigorous social and political movement labelled Corbynism which includes Labour’s grassroots, most of the trade unions and the working class it organises, women, the poor and the marginalised, pensioners, the disabled, ethnic communities, the LGBT community, and all those who were included in Corbyn’s oft-repeated message “for the many, not the few”.

Their concrete interests and aspirations were incorporated in Corbyn’s radical manifesto, a vision of a better country so as to build a better world for them, for their children and for their children’s children, programme that enjoys majority support in society.[17]

It is this that the reactionary anti-Corbyn front wishes to destroy. Within Labour’s Right, the key individual is Tony Blair, who has vigorously campaigned against Corbyn and his politics ever since the latter’s election to the party’s leadership in 2016. Blair did this also in 2019 when, at a well-publicised conference hosted by Reuters on 25th November, though he criticised the Tories, said “the Labour party has been taken over by left wing populism”, thus deliberately undermining the party’s leadership and its electoral chances.

No sooner had the elections results been known that media pundits, relishing in his defeat, built up pressure for Jeremy Corbyn to resign. One of the first to hit the waves unsurprisingly wasTony Blair who made an impassionate appeal to Labour to drastically change course and abandon its radical left wing ideology, and take the party to the “centre”. For Blair the central issue is not Brexit but the fact that “The far left that has taken over the Labour party [and] If they’re in charge of the Labour party going forward, then I think the Labour party is finished.”[18] Though he avoided attacking Corbyn personally, Blair savaged Corbynism:

“…politically people saw him as fundamentally opposing what Britain and Western countries stand for, he personified politically an idea, a brand of quasi revolutionary socialism, mixing far-left economic policy with deep hostility to Western foreign policy which never has appealed traditional Labour voters, never will appeal to them and represented for them a combination of misguided ideology and terminal ineptitude that they found insulting.”[19]

This was immediately supported by a declaration of war against Corbyn’s Labour from Blair’s Press Secretary, Alastair Campbell, the media mastermind of the strategy behind legitimising the war against Iraq, who fired from the hip against Corbynism, calling on disgruntled and disillusioned Labour supporters to re-join the party to drive out “the left wing factions” that currently had the party’s leadership. The Express’s headline is indeed eloquent of what this means: Labour civil war:Campbell leads charge of 100,000 moderates in bid to crush Team Corbyn.[20]

On the other hand, there is the overwhelming majority of Labour membership, even many of those who may have voted for Brexit, who are unlikely to support a shift to the right by Labour as advocated by Blair et al. The shadow Business Secretary and MP, 40 year-old Rebecca Long-Bailey, a strong and loyal Corbynista, is being tipped as a potential successor to Jeremy Corbyn. She, or any other left wing Labour candidate for the leadership, has the enormous advantage of the powerful grassroots progressive and radical movement Jeremy Corbyn created during his leadership.

This movement can gather strength from the substantial popularity of the policies contained in Labour’s Manifesto. In this regard, the stance the trade unions, especially UNITE (the largest and most left wing union in the UK), take with regards to who to support to succeed Corbyn will be crucial. Though it is too premature to say too much about the next Labour leadership, there are two certainties: Labour’s grassroots will not support a Blairite to replace Jeremy and, they will resist shifting the party to the right. Perhaps, the biggest threat may come from a soft-left candidate behind whom Labour’s right will unite.

Labour’s right key argument to shift the party to the “centre’ is predicated on the fallacious argument of the lack of “electability” of Corbyn type of policies. The fact that in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections, the Liberal Democrats, the “centrist” party par excellence, performed very poorly, confirms this is a fallacy. A positive sign that Labour can resist Blair’s push to the right is the fact that of the 25 newly elected Labour MPs, 20 are women, 16 are solidly left wing, and 12 are BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Labour), showing that despite the electoral defeat, Labour’s left has been strengthened at the level of the parliamentarians, thus weakening Labour’s right. Furthermore, “Labour now has a majority female parliamentary party.”[21]

The battle lines have been drawn and the defence of Corbyn’s legacy is not just a matter of romantic adherence to purist or radical principles, though principles are certainly involved. His policies will be the essential platform from which to organise the resistance against Johnson’s nasty and ominous neoliberal offensive. Shifting the Labour party to the right will substantially contribute to make its implementation easier. Johnson’s pronouncements to unite the nation and move forward, giving reassurances about economic regeneration and more funding for social services and the NHS are just fakery. He is representative a new breed of hard-right Conservative MPs that have much more in common with Donald Trump than with Thatcher thus, we must expect the worst.

A special report (byThe Guardian’s ‘Long Read’) shows the long-standing and strong connection between key ministers, Conservative politicians, including Johnson himself, and extreme US right wing thinktanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Heritage Foundation, all under the very powerful and highly influential Atlas Network umbrella. In fact, 14 of the 20+ Johnson’s July cabinet ministers were “alumni of IEA initiatives”, (including the ministers responsible for foreign affairs, interior, exchequer, trade, health and so forth). Not only these, and plenty of other thinktanks enjoying multimillionaire funding, played a crucial role in securing Brexit, but the report alleges that “The organisations involved in this collaboration between the US and UK radical right are partners in a global coalition of more than 450 thinktanks and campaign groups called the Atlas Network, which has its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.”[22] A post-Brexit Free Trade Agreement with the US, and “opening up the NHS to foreign competition” are their policy flagships. Furthermore, Johnson will slavishly support any US military adventure anywhere in the world. Thus, to expect moderation from the Johnson government would be seriously misguided.

Of all the UK political parties, only Labour has the strength, the social base, the links with social organizations of the people (trade unions and others) and, provided it maintains its adherence to the Manifesto policies, the capacity to build a formidable political and social coalition to mount meaningful resistance to Johnson’s hard neoliberal government programme. In fact, though discussing what went wrong in the election is important and necessary, a much more urgent task is to start laying the foundations for such a coalition, building on Corbyn’s political and moral legacy.

There are two promising signs that this is more than possible: (a) one week after the launch of Labour’s 2019 manifesto, polls showed majority support for all its key policies, except free broadband (47%) and a referendum of a Labour Brexit (42%); and (b) at the 2019 election Labour got the votes of 57% among those in the age of 18-24, 55% among the 25-34, and 45% among the 35-44. With the Tories having substantially lower percentages in those categories (19%, 23%, and 30%, respectively).[23] There is no question that the potential in society to oppose Tory austerity and Johnson’s intensification of it, is enormous, especially when considering that these percentages resulted from respondents during a skewed election on Brexit.

Finally, it would be seriously misconceived to believe that these developments are unique and due to British peculiarities. As discussed above, there is a powerful transatlantic juggernaut, endowed with almost infinite resources, equipped with self-contained dogmas, with a huge media-driven capacity to persuade and influence political leaders, intellectuals, academics and public opinion in general, that can be unleashed just about anywhere in the planet, and certainly anywhere in Europe. In more that one sense, the defense of Corbyn’s legacy is both a British and a pan-European task.

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Notes

[1] Data from the UK Parliament (https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN05125– visited 19th December 2019).

[2] BBC News, 26th June 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-44397110 (visited 23rd December 2019).

[3] FullFact, £350 million EU claim a clear misuse of official statistics – In brief, 19th Sept 2017 (https://fullfact.org/europe/350-million-week-boris-johnson-statistics-authority-misuse/– visited 20th December 2019).

[4] Anna Soubry, “The hard right has captured my old party – and Boris Johnson’s victory proves it“, The Guardian, 23rd July 2019 (Soubry was Tory MP for Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire).

[5] YouGov, Eurotrack: Corbyn’s policies popular in Europe and the UK, 9th January 2019 (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/01/09/eurotrack-corbyns-policies-popular-europe-and-uk– visited 20th December 2019).

[6] See details of the Tory, austerity-driven, crisis generated in the NHS in Steven Hopkins, “NHS March In London Sees Jeremy Corbyn Blame ‘Tories And Austerity For Crisis’”, The Huffington Post, 3, February 2018.

[7] Matthew Goodwin, “‘Corbynomics’ Is More Popular Than You Think”, Bloomberg, 2nd October 2019.

[8] Therese Raphael, “Jeremy Corbyn Is Planning a Revolution”, Bloomberg, 27 September 2019.

[9] Alain Tolhusrt, “Boris Johnson edges win in final TV debate but Jeremy Corbyn seen as most trustworthy, PoliticsHome, 6 December 2019 (https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-party/boris-johnson/news/108431/boris-johnson-edges-win-final– visited 20th December 2019)

[10] Labour MPs pass no-confidence motion in Jeremy Corbyn, BBC News, 28th June 2016, (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36647458- visited 21st December 2019).

[11] Three MPs also defected from the Conservative party on the issue of Brexit,, who, together with the 8 Labour MPs, set up an independent parliamentary group; Umunna joined the Liberal Democrats and became a candidate in the 2019 election; every one of these defectors lost their seats.

[12] Bart Cammaerts, Brooks DeCillia, João Magalhães and César Jimenez-Martínez, “Journalistic Representations of Jeremy Corbyn in the British press, From Watchdog to Attackdog”, LSE, 1st July 2016 (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67211/1/CAmmaerts_Journalistic%20representations%20of%20Jeremy%20Corbyn_Author_2016.pdf– visited 19th December 2019)

[13] Jonathan Cook, “Study exposes BBC’s deep anti-Corbyn bias”, Jonathan Cook Blog, 29th July 2016 (https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2016-07-29/study-exposes-bbcs-deep-anti-corbyn-bias/– visited 21st December 2019).

[14] Dr. Justin Schlosberg and Laura Laker, Labour, Antisemitism and the News. A disinformation paradigm, Media Reform Coalition, September 2018 (https://www.mediareform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Labour-anti-semitism-and-the-news-EXEC-SUM-FINAL-PROOFED.pdf– visited 21st December 2019).

[15] Elliot Chappell, “The 60 seats Labour lost in the 2019 general election”, Labour List, 13th December 2019 (https://labourlist.org/2019/12/the-60-seats-labour-lost-in-the-2019-general-election/– visited 21st December 2019).

[16] Greg Grebby, “Brexit and rising racism in Britain showed we must challenge misconceptions about Immigration and Multiculturalism”, The Huffington Post, 14th January 2019 (https://www.theredcard.org/blog/2019/1/14/brexit-and-rising-racism-in-britain-showed-we-must-challenge-misconceptions-about-immigration-and-multiculturalism– visited 21st December 2019).

[17] See 2019 Labour’s Manifesto It’s time for Real Change, https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/ (visited 22nd December 2019); Campbell was expelled from Labour in the May 2019 municipal elections for publicly calling to vote against his own party.

[18] Rajeev Syal,“Ditch Corbyn’s ‘misguided ideology’, Tony Blair urges Labour”, The Guardian, 18th December 2019, (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/18/tony-blair-urges-labour-to-ditch-jeremy-corbyn-misguided-ideology– visited 22nd December 2019).

[19] The Sun, 18th December 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqdaGBHlRE4 (visited 22nd December 2019)

[20] Express, 15th December 2019 (https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1217526/labour-party-Alastair-Campbell-election-result-jeremy-corbyn-left-wing-tony-blair?int_source=traffic.outbrain&int_medium=traffic.outbrain&int_term=traffic.outbrain&int_content=traffic.outbrain&int_campaign=traffic.outbrain– visited 22nd December 2019).

[21] Sienna Rodgers, “Labour gained just one seat – but many more fresh faces”, Labour List, 16th December 2019 (https://labourlist.org/2019/12/labour-gained-just-one-seat-but-many-more-fresh-faces/– visited 23rd December 2019).

[22] Felicity Lawrence et al, “How the right’s radical thinktanks reshaped the Conservative party”, The Guardian, 29th November 2019, (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/29/rightwing-thinktank-conservative-boris-johnson-brexit-atlas-network– visited 23rd December 2019); this report ought to be widely circulated and translated into every European language.

[23] Lord Ashcroft, “How Britain voted and why: My 2019 general election post-vote poll”, Lord Ashcroft Polls, 13th December 2019 (https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2019/12/how-britain-voted-and-why-my-2019-general-election-post-vote-poll/?fbclid=IwAR0ogQafdFbtoYB5BG7UdHZbq9FhSLPMTMsaF2h4fHsHZcVb1oTriG_vnck (visited 23rd December 2019).

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War Again on the Front Burner

January 5th, 2020 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The nonsensical statement below from the Pentagon announcing that the US government has committed an act of war against Iran should frighten everyone:

“At the direction of the president, the US military has taken decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.”

“The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”

Murdering a high-ranking official of a government is an act of war.  It is impossible for an act of war to protect US personnel abroad.

It is impossible for an act of war against Iran to deter future Iranian attack plans.  Where there was no Iranian attack plan, there now is in response to the murder of Soleimani.

Committing an act of war does not “protect our people and our interests.”  It jeopardizes them.

How is it possible for the Pentagon to issue such a nonsensical laughable justification for murdering a top official of another country?  If murdering Soleimani was a “decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad,” why were US citizens and embassy personnel told to depart the Middle East for their safety?

Where was Trump’s mind? Just as he is emerging from the impeachment hoax, why did he commit an impeachable act?  Trump attacked another country without Congressional authorization.  He thumbed his nose at Congress and the law.  It is the duty of the President to enforce the laws of the United States, not break them.  The Democrats now have a real impeachable offense to hang around Trump’s neck.

But they will not make us of it. Trump struck down Soleimani, because that is what Netanyahu wanted. The main leaders of the impeachment hoax are Jews, and they are not going to line up against Israel.  Adam Schiff, for example, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who is leading the impeachment, gave his approval to Soleimani’s murder when he tweeted that Suleimani “was responsible for unthinkable violence and world is better off without him.”

Israel is the main culprit in this crime. Trump is a secondary culprit. Soleimani himself bears responsibility.  He should have known that he was a target and not exposed himself so carelessly.  The Russian government also bears responsibility.  Russia, China and Iran should long ago have formed a highly visible alliance.  Such an alliance would have prevented the crazy and irresponsible act that Israel manuevered Trump into committing.  But Putin doesn’t want war, and apparently historians have convinced Putin that alliances are the cause of war. Thus Putin avoids alliances, taking his que instead from American libertarians who say that free trade is the basis of peace. Strength is the guarantor of peace, and strength rests in a powerful alliance against US/Israeli aggression.

Iran’s response was predictable and unfortunate.  Iran declared it will take revenge, and most likely will.  Iran’s revenge will give Israel the war it wants between the US and Iran.

Iran would have done better to take its revenge and deny responsibility.

Idiot American politicians, one of whom could end up as President, are furthering the cause of war by working up American patriotism with claims, false of course, that Iran is a “terrorist state” determined to harm America, that Iran is responsible for thousands of deaths, including hundreds of Americans, and so forth.

We have heard all of this before.  It is the US that is the terrorist state, having destroyed in whole or part seven Muslim countries in the 21st century, producing millions of deaths, injuries, and dispossessed and displaced peoples.  I knew it was going to get worse when the Russian government permitted Israel to continue attacking Syrian targets after Russia had rescued Syria from Washington’s proxy army.  

As long as Israel runs US foreign policy in Israel’s interest, and as long as “non-compliant” countries are content for Washington to knock them off one by one, war will continue to be our future.

Update:  Washington decided to further inflame the situation with another strike.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

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American Terrorism

January 5th, 2020 by Donald Monaco

The ‘war on terrorism’ is a fraud.  From its inception, America’s latest war was designed to replace the ‘war on communism’ as a pretext for global interventionism.  Furthermore, the ‘war on terrorism’ is a ‘war of terrorism’ being fought to dismember nation states and create ethnically, tribally, or religiously fragmented countries incapable of mounting sustained national resistance to imperialism.

In order to conduct a ‘war on terrorism’ the United States needs to deploy various terrorists.  The terror brigades consist of both proxy forces and direct military deployments.  In fact, the use of proxy forces justifies the intervention of conventional military troops.

To advance its hegemonic agenda, the United States has consistently resorted to terror operations against enemy states.  Two prominent examples are in order.  In 1979 the CIA launched  ‘Operation Cyclone’ to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan creating Al Qaeda as part of its proxy force.  In 2012 the CIA implemented  ‘Operation Timber Sycamore’ by using an offshoot of Al Qaeda to attack the Assad government in Syria.  That group of killers evolved from an organization known as Al Qaeda in Iraq to eventually become the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

To combat Al Qaeda and its step-child ISIS, the United States deployed its military forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to fight the very terrorists it had created.  To add to the deception, the United States has played a double game of attacking the terrorists in some places (Mosul, Iraq) while supporting them in other places (Idlib, Syria), all the while conveniently setting up permanent military bases in the Middle East and Central Asia to protect its empire, its access to oil and the apartheid State of Israel.

A relevant political axiom can be deduced from even a cursory study of this history, namely, that wherever there is oppression there will be resistance.  As a consequence of U.S. invasions of various countries, wars of resistance quickly developed that had to be neutralized by counter-insurgency programs.  Counter-insurgency operations are a form of covert warfare that involve the use of death squads, unlawful detentions, extraordinary renditions, torture, black sites, targeted assassinations and drone warfare.  Counter-insurgency operations are conducted by U.S. special forces under the direction of the United States Special Operations Command and the CIA.  These operations produce atrocities that, when revealed, create controversy by blatantly contradicting those principles of freedom, democracy and the rule of law that constitute the foundation of human rights.

The most recent controversy involves Navy Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher who commanded a group of Navy Seals in Iraq. In 2018, Gallagher stood accused by his own troops of committing war crimes.  In a New York Times documentary report  seven Navy Seals under Gallagher’s command described him as a “psychotic”, “freaking evil”, “toxic” and “perfectly capable of killing anybody who was moving.”  He was formally accused by the Navy of fatally stabbing a captive prisoner and then posing with fellow Seals for a photograph with the dead teenager as a trophy.  Additional accusations were leveled against Gallagher that documented his involvement in the shooting of Iraqi civilians including a young girl, an elderly man and four women.

He was tried by a military court and exonerated of all charges involving the killings of Iraqi civilians and of killing the detainee but convicted and sentenced to four months of detention for posing in a photograph with the dead prisoner. Not without precedent, Donald Trump acting as commander-and-chief, ordered the military to remove Gallagher from a Navy prison and place him in a less restrictive house detention at a Marine corps base.  Richard Nixon issued a similar order for Army lieutenant William Calley of My Lia massacre fame in 1971.

click image right to order Donald Monaco’s book

Gallagher was also stripped of his Trident Pin, a Navy Seal of Honor as an additional punishment only to have the honor re-instated by President Trump who hosted Gallagher and his wife at his Mar-a-Lago estate on December 23, 2019.  Furthermore, Secretary of Defense and former lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon, Mark Esper, demanded the resignation of Navy Secretary Richard Spence in November 2019 because the latter had the temerity to protest Trump’s intervention and reversal of the punishment, such that it was, meted out to Gallagher for his violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

The logic is clear.  The United States exonerates its war criminals but punishes those who reveal war crimes, like Chelsea Manning.  It protects torturers but imprisons those who oppose torture, like CIA case officer John Kiriakou. It promotes the lies of empire but persecutes those who expose those lies, like Julian Assange.  The logic reinforces a cult of military heroism.  The cult of the military hero is, in actuality, the cult of the American terrorist.

The cult is celebrated throughout American culture as evidenced by the Clint Eastwood movie ‘American Sniper’ that depicted Navy Seal Chris Kyle as a patriotic warrior who was supposedly distressed because of having killed an ‘enemy combatant’ who was a woman with a child.  The combatants were indistinguishable from Iraqi civilians.  Hence the moral dilemma.  Eastwood took dramatic license by promoting the myth of moral anguish as the real life sniper never admitted any guilt or regret for what he had done.  The 2014 film was wildly successful in the USA because it depicted the anguish of an American warrior placed in impossible circumstances confronting a nameless, faceless enemy.

The suffering of the Iraqi people who were subjected to horrific levels of violence including bombings, invasion, occupation, sectarian strife and a horrendous destruction of their country that reduced conditions of life to a pre-industrial age as the result of two sequential wars is of no consequence in the imperial heartland.

The film ignores the genuine moral and legal dilemmas created by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their neoconservative minions who engaged in deliberate deception to justify the invasion, occupation and destruction of Iraq thereby provoking a popular resistance or peoples war that could only be defeated by making war on the people, namely, by waging genocidal war as the United States had done in Vietnam.  Hence the deployment of snipers, torturers and death squads to murder insurgents and civilians alike in the ‘free fire zones’ that existed in both conflicts.

Violent repression always creates conditions that generate atrocities and the war planners in the Pentagon know this from their experience in Vietnam.  For the war planners, a peoples guerrilla war is a pernicious form of popular resistance that must be met by counter-insurgency.  Counter-insurgency is a sanitized term for genocidal war as exemplified by the CIA’s ‘Phoenix Program’.  If the combatants cannot be distinguished from an occupied people, or worse, if the combatants have the support of the people, then both must die.  And die they did when the United States unleased a vicious sectarian war in Iraq by implementation of the ‘Salvador Option’.

William Calley, Chris Kyle, Edward Gallagher and countless other frontline troops who fought beside them and killed with impunity for imperialism are mere cogs in the American war machine.  They follow the orders of generals who run the wars.  This fact does not relieve them of responsibility for their actions as articulated in the Nuremberg Principles. It extends responsibility up the chain of command.  Earle Wheeler, William Westmoreland, Creighton Abrams, Norman Schwarzkopf, Colin Powell, David Petraeus, Tommy Franks and James Mattis, to name but a few who directed wars in Vietnam and Iraq, are all celebrated as heroes in the American military pantheon but they are war criminals nonetheless because they conducted preemptive wars of aggression.

And it should never be forgotten that it was Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George Herbert Walker Bush, George W. Bush and their Secretaries of Defense including Robert McNamara, Melvin Laird, Richard Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld who gave the ultimate orders to fight in Vietnam and Iraq thereby bearing the ultimate responsibility for these wars.

All did so by deception.  Johnson and McNamara lied about the ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ incident to open the floodgates of the Vietnam war; Nixon promised to ‘bring peace with honor in Vietnam’ but acted to expand the war to Laos and Cambodia; Bush Sr. gave Saddam Hussein a green light to invade Kuwait only to concoct the fiction that Iraq intended to invade Saudi Arabia and, with the help of the Hill and Knowlton advertising agency, that Iraqi troops were ripping babies out of incubators in Kuwait, to bring the United States into Gulf War I; and Bush Jr., Cheney and Rumsfeld fabricated lies about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda to launch ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ and the 2003 Iraq war.

Presidents Clinton, Obama and Trump continued the prosecution of America’s wars using equally false pretexts in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and beyond.

These deceptions should be kept firmly in mind as Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo blame Iran for instigating protests at the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Baghdad, dispatch additional troops to the Middle East and order the drone assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani in Iraq thereby bringing the United States to the brink of a potentially catastrophic war with Iran.

The historical pattern is painfully evident for all who wish to see.  Permanent war continues to be waged by the American warfare state on behalf of the American plutocracy.

This is the face of American imperialism, American militarism and American war criminality.  It is the undisguised face of American terrorism wrapped within the flag of American patriotism, a flag that was tweeted without comment by Trump when he ordered the drone assassination of General Suleimani.  A picture, as is said, is worth a thousand words, and in this case, the words are obscene.

Here, it is instructive to remember the old adage that ‘patriotism is the first refuge of a fool and the last refuge of a scoundrel’ when challenging this country’s second most potent secular religion, the worship of mammon being its first.  It was, after all, Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain who craftly wrote that “we can just have our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones” to place upon the soil of the Philippines after the U.S. invasion in 1899, thereby identifying American piracy with a proper insignia.

Until, and unless, the cult of the American war hero and its militaristic ideology are confronted by an uncompromising anti-imperialist, anti-war movement , the American warfare state will continue to fight ‘wars of terror’ whose ultimate logic will be the destruction of the human species.

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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics ofTerrorism, and is available at amazon.com

The Coming Attack on Iran?

January 5th, 2020 by Prince Kapone

According to Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (N.P.T.), all signatory member nations possess the “inalienable right” to “develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”[1] As a signatory nation, the Islamic Republic of Iran is entitled to this most basic right, just like any other nation. However, the U.S. and its allies are seeking to infringe upon and limit Iran’s right to produce nuclear energy for civilian purposes, asserting that the Iranian government is using its civilian nuclear program as a smokescreen for an alleged covert nuclear weapons program.[2] These assertions are backed by no credible evidence, just the assurances of the U.S. and Israeli governments respectively. It is further insinuated that once Iran develops nuclear weapons, it will certainly use them to “wipe Israel off the map of nations,”[3] presenting an existential threat to the Jewish people.

Despite the belligerent public tone of the U.S. government, however, its intelligence community has consistently reported to Congress that Iran’s military strategy is strictly geared towards “deterrence, asymmetric retaliation, and attrition warfare” (emphasis mine).[4] Even the US National Intelligence Director, James Clapper, recently admitted to Congress that “we do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons” and implicitly confirmed that Iran is not presently seeking to do so because if it were, such activities would certainly be discovered by the “international community.”[5] In spite of all this, President Obama maintains that “all options are on the table” to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, with a military attack on Iran taking place as early as June 2013.[6]  As we shall see, the U.S. is merely using Iran’s nuclear program as a pretext to justify further military intervention in the region in a larger effort to redesign the landscape of the Middle East in order to secure the continued global hegemony of the U.S. empire.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. remained standing as the world’s lone superpower. In 1991, President Bush declared the establishment of a “New World Order,” that is, a unipolar global system completely subjected to the imperial dictates of the United States and it’s junior partners.[7] Foreign policy experts and government policy think tanks immediately began mapping out blueprints for a new century of what can be called trilateral imperialism (the U.S., Western Europe and Japan).[8]

To this end, the Bush I administration called for “the integration of the leading democracies into a U.S-led system of collective security, and the prospects of expanding that system, (to) significantly enhance our international position and provide a crucial legacy for future peace.”[9] Within this collective framework, the U.S. would act to “preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the United States and our allies.”[10] In other words, the first world should unite under the leadership of the United States to dominate and exploit the resources of the third world (cheap labor, oil, cobalt, etc.), while preventing any other power from emerging which could disrupt this neocolonial relationship.

At the time, Russia was deemed to be the only military power capable of potentially deterring U.S. imperialism. Thus, during the late 1990’s Council on Foreign Relations member and Clinton foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski advised that Russia “ought to be isolated and picked apart” in order to extend “America’s influence in the Caucasus region and Central Asia,” both formerly under Russian control.[11] In doing so, the U.S could secure it’s domination over Eurasia, long deemed to be the strategic “heartland” of global power.[12] The NATO-led “humanitarian intervention” in the former Yugoslavia during the late 1990’s must be understood in this light.

The Middle East has long been assigned a very narrow role within the imperialist world system, being seen as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”[13] This is of course only because of the regions’ massive natural gas and oil reserves, which the U.S. considers to be vital to its national interests. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East in the post-war period has been geared towards three main objectives: 1) securing and maintaining “an open door” for Western companies to the regions vast oil and gas reserves; 2) maintaining a “closed door” for potential rival powers (i.e., Russia and China) to Middle Eastern oil; and 3) preventing Middle Eastern “radical and nationalist regimes” from coming to power that might use their oil and gas resources for the “immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses” and development for domestic needs.[14]

In the bipolar world of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was able to counter U.S. ambitions in the Middle East, supporting various secular nationalist regimes relatively hostile towards U.S. imperialism. After the collapse of the USSR and the subsequent isolation of Russia however, the U.S. was in a position to fundamentally alter the political map of the Middle East so as to “ensure that the enormous profits of the energy system flow primarily to the United States, its British client, and their energy corporations, not to the people of the region” or potential rival powers.[15] It is in this light that we must view the recent wave of “humanitarian interventions” conducted by the U.S. and NATO in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the current confrontation with Iran.

In 2000, the Project for a New American Century published a report entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century,” which was extended and adopted as official national security policy in 2005. Drawing on the themes of the first Bush administration and Brzezinski, the report recommends that U.S. military forces become “strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.”[16] As noted above, there was nothing new in this goal of American hegemony per se, but what was new was the emphasis placed on “transforming” the political landscape of the Middle East. Due to the rise of Islamic terrorism and the stubborn existence of “rogue states,” the “stability” of the Middle East, North Africa, and their oil reserves were deemed to be essential objectives of U.S. national security and foreign policy.

Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a pretext for this grand imperial project, the Bush administration outlined a list of seven “rogue states” targeted for regime change in order to secure de facto U.S. control over global oil supplies. Those seven countries were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.[17] Of course, Iraq was invaded, occupied and democratized by the U.S. in 2003. The threat of Hezbollah in Lebanon has been satisfactorily neutralized as a result of Israel’s 2006 invasion, the Jamahariya government of Libya was utterly destroyed by NATO and Al Qaeda in 2011, the Assad regime of Syria is on the verge of collapse today as it is under attack from NATO and its Islamic mercenary forces, while there are ongoing covert military operations being conducted against Somalia and the Sudan. Only Iran remains intact as a nation-state out of the seven countries targeted by the U.S. for regime change.

The current U.S. propaganda campaign would have us believe that the U.S. is targeting Iran because it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons with which it will destroy Israel. As we have seen however, U.S. intelligence – that is, the agencies responsible for obtaining such information – does not have strong evidence to prove that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Further, in its assessment, Iran’s military strategy is not geared towards aggression or the offensive, but strictly deterrence and defense. Therefore, there must be some other reasons why the U.S. is gearing up for war against Iran.

In light of U.S. policy objectives to dominate global oil supplies and to subvert or overthrow “nationalist regimes” that seek to use their natural resources to benefit their domestic populations or to promote independent development, it should be fairly obvious that Iran is a target because its oil is nationalized and it pursues a program of independent development. Indeed, when Iran first nationalized its oil in 1953 under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, the CIA and British MI6 quickly organized a coup d’état to overthrow Mosaddegh and reprivatize Iranian oil.[18] The oil industry wasn’t nationalized again until the 1979 Islamic revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini, which quickly set Iran on a path of independent nationalist development.

Also of grave concern to the U.S is Iran’s growing commercial and economic relations with Russia and China. Iran exports 22% of its oil exports to China,[19] while it has cultivated a strong economic relationship with Russia on various fronts, especially in military equipment and nuclear infrastructure.[20] The Iranian regime’s independence from Washington has afforded Russia and China a foot in the door of the Middle East, which hinders the ability of the U.S. to completely dominate the region and prevent the rise of potential rival hegemons in the world system, perhaps the greatest threat posed by Iran.

Iran itself is deemed as a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East, as it is devoted to “countering U.S. influence” and becoming a regional hegemon.[21] To this end, Iran has been fostering political, economic and security ties with other actors in the region, appealing to Islamic solidarity and resistance to imperialism. Iran has become influential in both Iraq and Afghanistan, undermining U.S. objectives in those countries, and has maintained its support for the Assad regime in Syria, thwarting NATO’s efforts there.[22] All of these factors make Iran a formidable obstacle to U.S. objectives in the Middle East, halting Washington’s ability to totally redesign the political landscape of the region.

Iran also gives financial and military support to various politico-military organizations in the region. As the U.S. considers many of these organizations “terrorists”, Iran is then a “state sponsor of terrorism” for supporting them. Most of its support is channeled to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Both of these groups are opposed to the Zionist colonization of Palestine and to U.S. imperialism in the region more generally. Through Hezbollah and Hamas, Iran is able to exert its influence in the Middle East, creating political “destabilization” in Lebanon and Palestine.[23] The continued existence of such armed groups is considered a threat to U.S. objectives in the region and is another main reason why the U.S. is seeking to attack Iran.

When we place the current threats towards Iran in their proper geopolitical and historical context, it becomes clear that Iran’s nuclear program is not the real reason why the U.S. is gearing up to attack it. In fact, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the alleged threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program is merely a propaganda fabrication designed to garner popular support for the immanent invasion of Iran, similar to the lie that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. In truth, Iran was targeted for regime change at least ten years ago, but because of its resistance to the “Washington Consensus,” its economic nationalism, its growing commercial and economic ties to Russia and China, its potential to become a regional hegemon, and its support of politico-military organizations opposed to the U.S. and Israel, not because of its nuclear program.

The drums of war are now beating in America as Washington prepares to launch the final phase of its grand strategy to remake the Middle East. This plan is merely one component of a much larger plan to maintain the world system of trilateral imperialism. In order to maintain the global supremacy of the West, the U.S. and its junior partners are determined to prevent the rise of Russia and China to hegemonic status. Thus, an attack on Iran will surely be viewed as an indirect attack on both Russia and China. A war on Iran may very well quickly escalate into a global military conflagration, consuming other states in the region, as well as Russia and China. To prevent such a scenario from unfolding, revolutionaries must dispel the propaganda about Iran’s nuclear program and expose the imperialist ambitions behind the U.S. government’s agenda to the American people.

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This article was first published on Weaponized Information.

Sources

United Nations. “The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” http://www.un.org/en/conf/npt/2005/npttreaty.html. Retrieved 03/15/2013.

RT News. “UN, US ratchet up pressure over Iranian nuclear program,” http://rt.com/news/iran-un-parchin-kerry-782/. Retrieved 3/14/2013.

Norouzi, Arash. “Israel: ‘Wiped off The Map.’ The Rumor of the Century, Fabricated by the U.S. Media to Justify an All-out Attack on Iran,” http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-wiped-off-the-map-the-rumor-of-the-century-fabricated-by-the-us-media-to-justify-an-all-out-war-on-iran/21188. Retrieved 03/15/2013.

This is in reference to a statement by Iranian President Mahmoud Admadinejad that the “regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,” which was cynically mistranslated by the U.S. media to say “Israel must be wiped of the map.”

Notes

  1. US Department of Defense. “Annual Report on Military Power of Iran, April 2012,” www.fas.org/man/eprint/dod-iran.pdf. Retrieved 03/14/2013.
  2. RT News. “‘Iran can’t covertly produce an atomic bomb’ – US intelligence chief,” http://rt.com/news/iran-bomb-clapper-assessment-174/. Retrieved 03/13/2013.
  3. RT News. “Obama to threaten Iran with military strike in June, Israeli media reports,” http://rt.com/usa/obama-israel-military-june-503/. 03/14/2013.
  4. Speech given by President George H.W. Bush on March 6, 1991, http://www.al-bab.com/arab/docs/pal/pal10.htm. Retrieved 03/12/2013.
  5. This term is in reference to the Trilateral Commission, which is a government/business think-tank dedicated to the politico-economic integration of the U.S., Western Europe, and Japan. Adopted from Samir Amin’s term “imperialism of the Triad.”
  6. 9. Cheney, Dick. “Defense Strategy for the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy,” www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/naarpr_Defense.pdf. Retrieved 03/10/2013.
  1.  Ibid
  2.  Todd, Emmanuel. After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Empire, New York: Columbia University Press (2002), pp. 130-131.
  3.  Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Basic Book (1998), p. 6.
  4.  Chomsky, Noam. World Orders Old and New, New York: Columbia University Press (1994), p. 190.
  5.  Ibid, p. 121-123.
  6.  Ibid, p. 192.
  7.  Project for a New American Century. “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century,” www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf. Retrieved 03/11/2013.
  8.  Statement from retired General Wesley Clark, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RC1Mepk_Sw. Retrieved 03/13/2013.
  9.  Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance,” New York: Metropolitan Books (2003), pp. 161-162.
  10.  New York Times Online, “Iran’s Oil Exports,” www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/01/07/world/middleeast/07irangraphic3.html?ref=middleeast. Retrieved 03/11/2013.
  11.  The Economist Online, “Vladimir Putin and the Holy Land,” http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21573600-warmer-relations-israel-do-not-stop-russia-backing-syria-and-iran-vladimir-putin-and-holy. Retrieved 03/14/2013.
  12.  Department of Defense, p. 2.
  13.  Ibid, p. 2.
  14.  Ibid, p. 3.

The West Willfully Supports ISIS and Always Has

January 5th, 2020 by Mark Taliano

ISIS is not “blow back”. ISIS did not “fill a vacuum”. The West did not “give rise” to ISIS.

The West supports ISIS directly, sometimes covertly, sometimes overtly. The West is ISIS. It is not an accident. The West willfully supports ISIS and always did.

Sometimes the West’s support for ISIS is covert, with a view to perpetrating the doctrine of “plausible deniability”. Other times it is overt, such as the West’s intentional murder of over 100 Syria soldiers at Jabal al Tharda, on 17 September, 2016. (1)

Washington’s assassination of General Qassem Soleimani was overt support for ISIS/Daesh. ISIS/Daesh, like Washington, is benefitting from the assassination, for the moment, since Soleimani played a key role in destroying al Qaeda/ISIS terrorism in the Middle East.

“The death of General Soleimani,” writes Senator Richard Black, “is a great tragedy. We have killed one of two generals most responsible for defeating ISIS and al Qaeda.” (2)

So now there is a resurgence of US troops and a parallel resurgence of ISIS.(3) This is what Washington wants. The covert Permanent State controlling the Washington Military Dictatorship wants war, not peace.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Notes

  1. Prof. Tim Anderson, “Implausible Denials: The Crime at Jabal al Tharda. US-led Air Raid on Behalf of ISIS-Daesh Against Syrian Forces” Global Research, 17 December, 2017.
    (https://www.globalresearch.ca/implausible-denials-the-crime-at-jabal-al-tharda-us-led-air-raid-on-behalf-of-isis-daesh-against-syrian-forces/5623056) Accessed 4 January, 2020.
  2. Extract from “Statement of Senator Richard H. Black regarding the killing of General Soleimani. (revised 2:00 p.m. January 3, 2020.”
  3. Arabi Souri, “ISIS Re-Emerging in the Syrian Desert with the US Help” Syria News, 3 January, 2020.
    (https://www.syrianews.cc/isis-re-emerging-in-the-syrian-desert-with-the-us-help/?fbclid=IwAR1xv40DlzDHhZu2Sf3ZZLXn4cQkOm32e5TYaTFEX53SLAhKf1RPxQA8A-A ) Accessed 4 January, 2020.

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Black Alliance for Peace Declares: If You Believe in Peace, Commit to Defeating the Warmongers. No War on Iran!

January 5th, 2020 by Black Alliance for Peace

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) is clear: we will not fight for the rich. We understand our objective interests as an oppressed people and will not be moved by appeals to national chauvinism meant to galvanize the poor and working class to support wars of choice initiated by the white supremacist colonial/capitalist oligarchy.

BAP opposes war with Iran and is supporting the national mobilizations this weekend demanding No War on Iran and the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq.

But BAP also calls on all progressive forces to join us to fight the domestic military surge, to oppose the training of U.S. police forces by the Israeli state, to struggle to shut down AFRICOM, to demand the closing of the over 800 U.S. bases worldwide, to advocate against the normalization of nuclear war, and to expose the collaboration of  self-defined “progressive and radical” forces with the U.S. war-state.

The Trump Administration along with the democrats are united in their objective interests, despite the impeachment charade, to support white power in the form of their imperialist agenda. But they need us – the people – as the cannon fodder and the passive supporters.

They cannot have us. We will struggle against them, for ourselves and for humanity.

Dr. King warned about the spiritual death of the U.S. with its addiction to war and militarism, its materialism and extreme social alienation, but he was wrong.

The spiritual death of what became the United States occurred in 1619 when the settlers imported the first Africans and decided to expand beyond the coast of the country by force resulting in the monstrosity called the United States today.

We who believe in freedom – in the possibilities of real democracy, of people-centered human rights, of peace and a livable planet – cannot wait. We must understand that our aspirations must be translated into concrete struggle. We must be clear: we cannot win without a sharp understanding of the forces of oppression that must be defeated. For BAP, it is obvious when we look in the mirror “while driving as Black” that the enemy is not the Iraqis, Russians, Syrians or Venezuelans.

U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan

Oppose the Trump Domestic Surge Targeting Black People

Stop the Department of Defense 1033 Program that Militarizes Police Forces

Shut Down AFRICOM and ALL U.S. and NATO bases

Cut Obscene Military Budget by 50%

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Implications of the Trump Regime’s Assassination of Iran’s General Soleimani

January 5th, 2020 by Prof. Tim Anderson

The US assassinations of Iran’s General Soleimani and Iraqi General Muhandis will certainly undermine security in the Middle East. In the short term, it is certain to lead to an escalation of violence. Iran’s National Security Council met and announced that a harsh vengeance “in due time and right place” awaits “the criminals behind the assassination”. Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei has called for “severe revenge”. Iran has to retaliate to this cowardly attack, and all the key Iranian leaders have said that they will do so, at the right time. There are dozens of US targets in the region.

This escalation was unnecessary, Iran had signaled many times that there were diplomatic alternatives to confrontation, but the Trump regime has left them little choice. It seems that Israeli leaders are very happy with the assassination and the looming escalation. General Soleimani had helped the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance against zionist aggression and expansion, while leading the struggle against regional US-backed terrorism.

In the medium term, the assassination may help galvanize political will in Iraq to expel what has become an unrestrained US occupation. Iraqi MPs are currently preparing a law which would demand expulsion. Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi has condemned the assassinations as a breach of the agreement Iraq made with the US, when they returned to the country in 2014, under the guise of fighting DAESH. Muqtada al Sadr has joined with his former rivals to demand expulsion. If successful that would help stabilize both Iraq and the region. Gone from Iraq, US occupation forces in Syria would appear even more isolated.

Given the constant foreign aggression, a greater joining of hands between Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Syria, and eventually Lebanon and Palestine, is the only real way forward for security in the region.

The Trump regime’s cowardly assassinations are the exact opposite of fighting terrorism in the region. Starting with the recent murder of the 25 Iraqi PMU soldiers (allegedly in response to the killing of one civilian contractor in Kirkuk), Washington has targeted precisely the leading heroes of the struggle against DAESH. The US regime has effectively taken over the role of DAESH, by direct and open terrorism in Iraq, and against Iraqi national heroes. In the case of General Soleimani, the US criminals targeted the regional commander of resistance to zionist expansion, DAESH terrorism and imperialist intervention. Of course, Iran and Soleimani opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and then backed resistance forces, even though Saddam Hussein was their mortal enemy. That is why Washington carries out about Soleimani’s involvement in ‘killing Americans’.

China and Russia recently joined Iran in naval exercises to show that a US presence in the region is neither necessary nor wanted, to secure oil flows from the Persian Gulf. The only reason for the ongoing presence of US forces in the region is to persist with the losing gambit of creating a ‘New Middle East’: a region ruled by Washington and its sectarian proxies in Tel Aviv and Riyadh. At first, Trump himself did not seem fully integrated into this plan, although he always expressed irrational and childish hostility towards Iran. I believe, as a pragmatist, he did want to leave the losing war against Syria. However, he has now joined the ranks of Bush and Obama in initiating a new regional escalation. Most likely other ‘deep state’ figures have persuaded him that failure in Iraq and/or Syria means an end to the New Middle East project. Of course, that project has indeed failed, but through arrogance, the Washington regime seems unable to publicly acknowledge that fact. It cannot accept defeat and persists in acts to punish the people of the region. The necessary withdrawal of imperial troops from the region may now become a bloody retreat. Remember Beirut in 1983?

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Dr. Tim Anderson is Director of the Sydney-based Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. He has worked at Australian universities for more than 30 years, teaching, researching and publishing on development, human rights and self-determination in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. In 2014 he was awarded Cuba’s medal of friendship. He is Australia and Pacific representative for the Latin America based Network in Defence of Humanity. His most recent books are: Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (2015), The Dirty War on Syria (2016), Global Research, 2015, now published in ten languages; Countering War Propaganda of the Dirty War on Syria (2017) and Axis of Resistance: towards an independent Middle East (2019).

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Foul Murder of Another Nation’s Hero: An American Disgrace

January 5th, 2020 by Diana Johnstone

The criminal assassination of General Qassem Soleimani was not only an act of war, it was an act of low treachery and crass stupidity.  Among the self-justifying lies, leaders of the perpetual war regime in Washington claim that locating the targeted military leader was a brilliant accomplishment of U.S. intelligence.

Not at all! The Lebanese newspaper Al-Binaa reports that the Americans were routinely informed of Soleimani’s arrival in Baghdad simply because he was an official visitor, invited as military advisor to the Iraqi government. U.S. forces are responsible for Baghdad airport security. So they had to know since they were responsible… for the security of an official honored guest.

This should give all U.S. allies an uneasy feeling about the implications of American “protection” of their “security”.

Of course, leaders of the NATO satellites and their media propaganda machines largely pretend to believe Uncle Sam’s big lies: the General had to be killed to “save American lives”, the only lives that count, especially when they are in somebody else’s country killing people whom Israel doesn’t like.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the assassination in a telephone conversation.  We don’t know what they said, but it is reasonable to suppose that this can only hasten a shift in French foreign policy desired by many in the nation’s policy elite.  Fear of the monster creates a dilemma between submission and escape.

The United States has brazenly murdered the war hero of a sovereign nation whose military action has been devoted to defending his own nation (since the U.S.-instigated Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s) and his region from Saudi-backed Sunni fanatics, in the guise of Daech or al Qaeda.  Those fanatics have been openly instrumentalized by Israel to further the notorious Oded Yinon plan[1] to break up all Arab states into small units, the better to ensure Israel’s domination of the region.  It matters to non-Arab Shi’ite Iran because it incites armed Sunni fanatics to attack Shi’ites in Syria and other places.

Civilized peoples are capable of respect for their adversaries.  A noble warrior on one side can respect a noble warrior on the other side.  But there is no respect for anything human in a bunch of machines directed by morons.  When the U.S. murders a military strategist more successful than their own grotesquely over-armed losers, Pentagon apologists pretend that he (and not they) is the bloodthirsty killer spreading chaos throughout the Middle East.  If any honest history is written in the future, on the scale of barbarism versus civilization, contemporary U.S presidents will rank somewhere well below Attila the Hun, who at least faced his enemies in battle.

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Diana Johnstone is author of Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher, Clarity Press, January 2020.

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The Murder of General Suleimani. Trump Expected Public Applause. It Didn’t Happen…

January 5th, 2020 by Peter Koenig

Author’s note: This article is loosely based on an hour-long rolling coverage / Press TV Interview – 3 January 2020 – on the US assassination of General Qassem Suleimani

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Interestingly, after the US attack on Iraqi Militia fighters on 31 December 2020, and the assassination of General Qassem Suleimani, on 2 January, the first thing President Trump could come up with, was bragging that it was him who gave the order to murder the popular military leader. General Qassem Suleimani, was the commander of the Iranian special Quds Force. The Quds Force was created during the Iran–Iraq War as a special unit from the broader Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It has the mission of liberating Muslim land, especially al-Quds, from which it takes its name – “Jerusalem Force”, in English. 

General Suleimani was killed by a US drone. He was not only the most popular and prominent military officer in Iran, but he was also influential and respected throughout the Middle East. He was chief in training Iraqi forces who eventually defeated ISIS in Iraq within less than a year, when the US and NATO estimated it would take at least 3 years. General Suleimani, along with Russia was also instrumental in training the Syrian armed forces with the objective of defeating ISIS / IS / DEASH in Syria, and they succeeded. This US act of impunity, the General Suleimani killing, was unmistakenly targeted with precision and as such a clear declaration of war on Iran.

Trump expected applause from the public at large. Let’s not forget he is entering the year 2020 of his re-election… that’s what he wants. So, he needs increased popularity and approval ratings. To be reelected, he, like others before him, doesn’t shy away from committing murder or entering a new war, killing millions. That’s what American Presidents do to win elections. That’s what Obama has done. He entered the Presidency with two ongoing US wars – Afghanistan and Iraq – when he left office the US was engaged in seven wars around the globe, in Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq.

Plus, numerous proxy-conflicts, meaning, they are fought by mercenaries and / or US trained, funded and armed terrorists, i.e. ISIS / DAESH, Islamic State (IS) and whatever other names the empire gives its agents of terror to confuse the world. And let’s not forget, the algorithmically manipulated regime-change elections in Latin America and Europe, the steady NATO advances with new military bases encircling Russia and China, including the stationing of more than 50% of the US Naval force in the South China Sea.

Most of the US Presidents are elected on the basis of their aggression, planned or ongoing, on how much they are willing to kill around the world – and how well they are representing the interests of the US War Industry — and, of course, the Israeli AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). In other words, Americans who go to the polls, are duped into believing they are electing a president, when in reality their president had been pre-selected by a small group of elitists, representing the key US interests, the War Industry, Big Finance, Big Oil, Big Pharma – and who else, of course, the State of Israel.

The unarmed Iraqi protests and attack on 31 December on the US Embassy in Bagdad was a response to a US assault on Militia Iraqi forces on 29 December – leaving at least 25 dead and more than 50 wounded.

The US has absolutely no business in Iraq. Not now, not ever – nor in Syria, nor anywhere else in the Middle East – for that matter, outside the frontiers of the United States of America. Its as simple as that.

And the world, the UN the UN Security Council should act accordingly.

The boundless US aggression must be stopped.

The world has become used to it – and, for the most part, is just silent. The ABNORMAL has become normal. That must be reversed.

Yes, the Iranian Government warned of retaliation. Understandably. However, that is precisely what Washington and the Pentagon wants; that’s what they were provoking, with this assassination of General Suleiman, and earlier with confiscated oil tankers and tanker attacks in the Gulf. The US hawks are just waiting for Iraq to retaliate, so they can attack in full force – or ask Israel to attack in full force with US backing, of course.

Knowing how the US is acting around the world with impunity – and especially in the countries they want to dominate – Iran has to count with the worst. So far, Iran has been acting wisely with a lot of restraint, not to risk MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction, in other words, a World War scenario.

A retaliation must be well-thought out – and foremost not be obvious. It must be strategic with long-term impact not the short-term face-saving military act. In the long-term, non-aggression, non-confrontation – the contrary of what Washington is seeking – may prevail. Let the American war hawks continue shadow boxing.

What the Middle East and world is dealing with, is a dying beast – that’s what the US empire has become. The beast, in its last breath, is lashing out round itself no matter how many other countries it pulls with it into the abyss, no matter how many people are killed in the process.

What will be the world’s reaction to this open and flagrant murder? – Do not expect much from the US-submissive West, especially the Europeans.

However, Iran can certainly count on Russia and China and on a number of other allies. And in the UN on the more than 120 non-aligned countries, that also stand behind Venezuela and Cuba, and now behind Evo Morales.

This is important. These unaligned countries are now in the majority of the UN body of member states. They have to speak out in the Security Council, as well as in the General Assembly. This case of US impunity should be elevated to world attention. Therefore, Iran may want to call a special UN General Assembly Meeting to discuss the case. It would show where the UN stands – and would accordingly provide Iran with more leverage on their reaction.

Iran cannot elevate this case high enough on the world stage. So that each and every nation realizes that their own sovereignty is at risk – is every day at risk – of being annihilated by the wannabe World Hegemon – the self-declared Exceptional Nation, US of A.

Only united this monster can be beaten.

Washington is weak, knows no long-term thinking, no long-term strategy – lives off instant gratification. This works for a while, by sheer military force, but not forever.

Russia and China have now far advanced precision weaponry – and are allies of Iran, short-term thinking may be a suicide mission.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); 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. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

America Is Ruled by a Murderer

January 5th, 2020 by Peter Koenig

As most days, this morning I opened the Tao – DaoDeJing– at random, at Dao-42. In its conclusion it says “Those who are forceful and aggressive… die a painful death – This I use as the foundation of my teaching.”

And so it may be. The reaction of “painful death” may not be immediate. Time in the dimensions of Tao has a different perspective of what we humans, particularly those living in the west, are used to. The concept of instant gratification, instant reward, or instant revenge, does not exist in the Wisdom of the 5000-year-old Tao.

President Trump is a murderer. Already before the murder of the popular Iranian Quds Force Commander, General Quassem Soleimani, Trump had not only blood on his hands and feet and smeared all over his face. He is responsible for countless deaths going into the millions, stemming from regular wars with guns and bombs, and from his financial-economic wars – by “sanctioning” countries which are not willing to bend to the Washington dictate, i.e. preventing them from importing life-saving medication, medical equipment and food. In Venezuela alone, according to a recent study carried out by the renown Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), in Washington DC, at least 40,000 people have perished since the beginning of 2017 due to US (Trump) sanctions. This figure has since considerably increased.

Yes, there is no doubt, Trump is a murderer. And yes, he is not alone. He is joined at least by those dark elitists who put him on the throne, and who direct and monito his atrocities; and foremost, by Israeli’s PM Netanyahu. Trump and Netanyahu are walking hand-in-hand, and it is unclear who is wagging whose tail. Israel is running the western world’s financial system, i.e. Wall Street and by now most related and affiliated globalized international banks which are financing the deadly US war industry.

On the other hand, the US military – plus NATO, the composite of the US, Canada and the European puppets, also called the European Union – they are all defending Israel’s horrendous crimes on the Palestine people for the last seventy years. The Nazi Holocaust pales in the face of Israeli atrocities waged against a helpless Gaza-incarcerated people. All that would not have been possible without the full military support and funding of the US.

And nobody dares to speak out against these genocidal crimes. Because, everybody who does, will be punished by law. Yes, the US has passed legislation – and probably under pressure from Washington, other countries have adopted similar legislation, to criminalize telling the truth about Israelis heinous murders. All under the convenient but utterly fake pretext of “antisemitism”.

This absolutely aberrant and illegal pressure against the truth has also largely influenced the United Nations (UN) body, the very UN that was created to protect the poor, the discriminated against; created to defend justice, to arbitrate between adversaries – but NO, nothing of that is adhered to or even respected by the members of the UN. Hundreds, if not thousands of UN Resolutions against Israel, against Israel’s crimes against humanity, were ignored by Israel, and nobody – but NOBODY – dares stand up in front of this enormous Body of Justice, as it were, to insist that those who go against the UN Resolutions have to be prosecuted by international law. Period.

But then again, what is ‘international law’ in our times of US impunity and immunity that breaks every international law, even threatens the International Criminal Court (ICC) to destroy it, if it dares prosecuting the US or Israel for crimes against humanity?

Can you imagine? Yes, that’s the world we live in. People wake up! The imaginary clock is reaching High Noon.

Laws are to no avail. The US rules and kills with self-given immunity. The situation is getting worse. State assassinations ordered by Trump and Netanyahu continue lawlessly, unpunished. The world looks on as if it were a normality — bought propaganda and corrupted media keep indoctrinating the western public with the idea that that war is peace and right is wrong, and indeed – that war and killing is profitable (the WaPo on several occasions), implying, ‘making our economy strong’.

The latest Trump murder of the Iranian Commander, Soleimani, may have just crossed the legendary Rubicon – the line not to cross – because there is a limit to just about everything. And the arrogance of the United States has now passed that limit – actually bringing the world to the brink of WWIII, or a similar disaster that may have implications bringing down civilization as we know it – and with it the false-fake-lie-and-crime-spangled US of A – pretty much as Tao predicts. The western “allies” of such crimes, or “collaborators”, as they would have been called during the WWII Nazi period, are equally at fault, for tolerating during decades in silence these heinous acts of mass murder – and wars – wars, for power and resources and for world hegemony.

Now we are living in the west in another Nazi-Fascist Period – that could easily prompt WWIII. This time the world would be not just in shatters, but annihilated to rubble and cinder. Good riddens of humanity! Let Mother Earth regenerate itself and, perhaps be generous enough to one day give man another chance – in a timeframe that is not measured by human dimensions, maybe not even by Tao dimensions – but by dimensions that are regulating the universe in harmony.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); 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. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

MH17 Malaysian Airlines Documentary by Ukraine SBU Whistleblower: Review

January 5th, 2020 by Andrew Korybko

The latest MH17 documentary, “MH-17: In Search Of Truth” by Ukrainian SBU whistleblower Vasily Prozorov, shares some shocking truths about that tragedy which strongly make the case that the UK conspired with Kiev to take down that civilian aircraft as part of a preplanned Hybrid War plot against the Donbas rebels that was also intended to frame Russia as the West’s main geopolitical competitor.

Ukrainian SBU whistleblower Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Prozorov released a documentary about the MH17 tragedy late last month titled “MH-17: In Search Of Truth“, which true to its name shares some shocking truths about what transpired on that fateful summer day back on 17 July, 2014. His investigative work relies on his personal knowledge of the events surrounding that affair (including through his contacts at the time), classified documents, eyewitness reports, and logic to strongly make the case that the UK conspired with Kiev to take down that civilian aircraft as part of a preplanned Hybrid War plot against the Donbas rebels. The nearly 40-minute-long documentary is worth watching in full, but for those who aren’t able to at the moment yet are still interested in learning more about this cover-up, what follows is a brief summary of some of the most important points raised in his documentary.

 

Prozorov draws attention to how suspicious it was that supposedly leaked recordings from rebel leaders allegedly implicating them in the tragedy were shared on social media within hours of MH17 being shot down. Ukrainian law has very strict bureaucratic guidelines for declassifying wiretapped evidence which couldn’t have been followed in less than a few days’ time at the absolute earliest, strongly suggesting that the recordings were faked in advance by the country’s SBU security service after intercepting voice samples of the alleged suspects ahead of time. The purpose in doing so was to immediately take control of the narrative per the preplanned Hybrid War plot of delegitimizing the Donbas rebels’ cause by framing them as “terrorists” and thus preventing a possible Russian military intervention in their support like was widely speculated to be in the planning stages around that time, but that last-mentioned point will be returned to in a moment.

The next one that Prozorov talks about is how Kiev’s claims that its armed forces weren’t in the combat area during that time are unconvincing since he proves that the battle lines were actually very fluid. Not only are there eyewitness reports to this effect, but also evidence of their tire tracks going back and forth all throughout the area, as well as countless ration wrappers proving that presence of the armed forces and their allies there. This is very important since part of Kiev’s defense rests in its insistence that even if the BUKs under its control were deployed somewhere near the front lines (which will also be returned to later on in this analysis), they allegedly weren’t close enough to shoot down MH17. Prozorov, however, proved that this isn’t true since the Ukrainian Armed Forces freely moved all around the area and could easily have been within striking distance of the aircraft at the time of the tragedy.

One of the more interesting tidbits that Prozorov revealed in his documentary was his participation in a conference at the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine on 8 July, 2014, focusing on making amendments to the country’s so-called “anti-terrorist” legislation. He vividly recalls overhearing an exchange between Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Col. Gen. Mikhail Koval and an unknown Defense Ministry representative right after the event ended. Prozorov remembers how the representative expressed his fear (which was widespread at the time) that Russia was preparing a military intervention in support of the Donbas rebels which he was worried would crush Kiev’s forces in the region. Koval, however, reassured his interlocutor by telling him that he heard hints that something will soon happen which will pose a serious challenge to Russia’s alleged plans. Nine days later, MH17 was shot down.

In response to the obvious question about how that happened, Prozorov begins by explaining that Donbas’ airspace wasn’t forcibly closed by Kiev unlike what one would ordinarily expect a responsible state to do. This created ample opportunities for the organizers to prepare their provocation since international aircraft continued to transit over the conflict region for convenience’s sake. Facilitating their preplanned plot, Prozorov points out how a radiolocation station in Donbas’ Artemovsk was mysteriously disabled a month before MH17 was shot down. He notes that it could have pinpointed where the BUK missile came from had it been active at the time of the tragedy and wonders aloud why the Ukrainian media didn’t make a fuss out of blaming the rebels back then. His answer is that the third regiment of the Special Operation Forces of Ukraine were responsible, suggesting that these sabotage experts carried out their operation to cover Kiev’s future tracks.

Another relevant fact that Prozorov discusses in his documentary is that the US didn’t immediately release the satellite evidence that they claimed to have from the day of the tragedy. He believes that this was done in order to give the perpetrators enough time to finalize their “alternative facts” in the immediate aftermath of what happened and not accidentally screw everything up for them. In addition, he questions why the Joint Investigative Team (JIT) didn’t accept the evidence that was promptly provided by the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) from the crash site, as well as why it took the Dutch investigators months to show any real interest in the wreckage. These curious observations give credence to the claim that many of those tasked with investigating the incident weren’t impartial and instead wanted to push a very specific preplanned narrative. It’s also strange that the Malaysian authorities were initially marginalized by the intelligence-led investigative team.

Prozorov shared some very important information about the role that the 156th anti-aircraft regiment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces played in MH17’s downing, too. He spoke to two former conscripts who served with the unit during that time but have since defected to the rebels. They explained how their forces counted a BUK among their armaments and were deployed to the Donbas front lines prior to being mysteriously withdrawn from combat service despite the widespread fear that summer that Russia was about to militarily intervene in the conflict. Officers and contract soldiers then accompanied the BUK to a so-called “training range” while the conscripts were ordered to remain at base. It was only later that they learned from their colleagues who were physically there that the BUK was actually deployed to the combat area and had fired at least one missile right at the time that MH17 was shot down.

There’s some pretty intriguing evidence that Prozorov shared in his documentary about suspected British involvement in all of this as well. He relied on a document to prove that that chief of the counterintelligence department Major General Valery Kondratyuk accompanied two British secret service agents and others to the Donbas operational area on 22 June, 2014 for a one-day visit, after which all of the SBU representatives left except for Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Burba, who remained with Kiev’s British “guests”. Prozorov happens to know Burba since the latter replaced him and his colleagues there earlier that month, and he says that Burba participated in the MH17 plot together with the foreign agents. Afterwards, Kondratyuk and Burba’s careers “coincidentally” experienced meteoric success, with the former becoming the chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate before being replaced by the latter and then becoming the presidential deputy chief of staff.

Two other pieces of evidence also point to British involvement. The first is that Peter Kalver, the Australian intelligence agent tasked with leading his country’s investigative expert group in Donbas, used a British phone number. That would be strange in and of itself since he’s an Australian working in Ukraine, but when combined with what was previously revealed, it suggests that British secret involvement was even more far-reaching than initially suspected and raises questions about how many other less-important “investigative” figures might also have been connected to the UK. As for the second piece of evidence, Prozorov mentions that the UK-based “investigative journalism website” Bellingcat (funded in part by the Open Society Foundation and National Endowment For Democracy) was founded just days before the incident and then suddenly became the primary source of accusations against Moscow, making one wonder whether it’s actually an intelligence infowar front.

Wrapping everything up, Prozorov concludes his documentary by reviewing his main points, namely that MH17’s downing was a meticulously preplanned plot by the Ukrainian and British security agencies to pin the blame for this false flag attack on the Donbas rebels, all with the intent of portraying them as “terrorists” and thus also make it politically impossible for Russia to militarily intervene in their support like was widely suspected to be in the planning stages during that summer. There was also the grander intention of framing Russia as the West’s main geopolitical competitor. All of this is relevant to still keep in mind since the JIT’s judicial proceedings will begin in March 2020, thus returning the issue back to the international spotlight as the perpetrators attempt to absolve themselves by convincing the world that the innocent suspects are guilty. Altogether, Prozorov’s documentary is extremely insightful and worth watching in full if one finds the time.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Soleimani’s Assassination: An Act of Psychological Warfare

January 5th, 2020 by Douglas Valentine

Douglas Valentine is the author of “The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World.” His rare access to CIA officials has resulted in portions of his research materials being archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center and John Jay College.

He has written three books on CIA operations, including the Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam, which documented the CIA’s elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture, and assassination in Vietnam. His new book describes how many of these practices remain operational today. in an extensive interview with Parsi policy, Valentine explained that assassination of Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani is an act of psychological warfare.

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Mostafa Afzalzadeh: In many countries, it is the intelligence communities that actually run and control the governments. What is the role of the intelligence services, especially the CIA, in the United States?

Douglas Valentine: The US government officially spends $50 billion a year on intelligence. Much of that is on “foreign” intelligence but nowadays, it’s impossible to determine where foreign intelligence ends and domestic intelligence begins. Especially in regard to psychological warfare aimed at the American people by its own government. Psychological warfare – the shaping of beliefs, and thus political and social movements – is the most highly prized and effective of all intelligence operations.

The process of converting “intelligence” gained on foreign adversaries into policy relies on an impenetrable barrier of secrecy. As Guy Debord said, secrecy dominates this world, foremost as the secret of dominance. This highly restricted process of access to information allows politicians, intel bureaucrats and their corporate partners in the arms industry 1) to turn Lies into Truth and 2) gobble up the lion’s share of the US budget, at the expense of the general welfare of the citizens. This means the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the poor never have any idea what’s really happening.

For example, as we now know, the Iraq War was based on a Big Lie, and the War in Afghanistan has been based entirely on a Big Lie for 18 years. But no one bats an eye, and there’s no unified mass movement to make the government tell the truth, because the relentless psy-war that permeates public discourse creates a paranoid war culture where killing imaginary threats is venerated as the highest virtue. Americans believe America must always be the superior force, the dominator, and the intelligence agencies create the fictions that keep the “Dream Machine” churning.

We face the ultimate danger now. Trump, the abusive stud personified, with the help of Fox News and other right wing news outlets, has manipulated public distrust of “fake news” and a “deep state” to effect a Fascist coup. No one knows disinformation from misinformation anymore thanks to Trump.  Many people, as a result, even believe the inherently fascist CIA and military are opposing Trump. Whether you believe the Big Lies or manage to see through them, we’re all powerless prisoners within of the Spectacle – the contrived Great Delusion.

Trump has INCREASED the military budget, CIA operations are ever expanding. Trump has not impeded the military or intelligence establishments.

MA: At some point in the Syrian crisis, it was said that the CIA was planning to launch a fictitious attack together with white helmets to launch a chemical strike against the Syrian people so that get the Trump administration to start a war on Syrian government. To what extent can the CIA operate outside the command and supervision of the US President?

DV: You assume the Trump administration did not want to get involved. And that’s a mistake.  Like all administrations, the Trump admin has “stated” policies that satisfy its political base, and it has “unstated” policies that are necessary to satisfy the Establishment. The CIA conducts Trump’s “unstated” policies. Trump runs the CIA and it cannot defy him, even if he portrays it as a renegade. That’s Double Speak and it is part of the cover story.

The CIA and military have “long range” strategic plans in place.  For example, the military has 800 bases around the world to ensure that US corporations have access to foreign markets, and that the US military dominates the world. Trump will not close these military bases because they are in the economic and national security interests of the US and he wants the economy to do well. He closed one base in Syria to appease Turkey, but he kept the US military forces in Syria.

Trump has INCREASED the military budget – there are as many Navy warships patrolling the oceans, and as many warplanes flying over foreign nations, and as many nuclear weapons aimed at Russia and China as ever.  In fact, there are more. Same with intelligence operations. CIA operations are ever expanding. Trump has not impeded the military or intelligence establishments. He has merely made charges against individual members of the military, CIA and FBI to secure his control over the minds of American citizens. The Empire marches on.

MA: What was the reason for Trump’s clash with US security agencies, especially the CIA, and the lack of recognition of reports given to the president at the beginning of his presidency?

DV: As I said, it’s an illusion. He is the president, the Commander in Chief, he runs the security agencies. He tells them what to do and they salute and do it. Some members of the security agencies suspect Trump of being a wannabe dictator and a Russian agent. It’s also thought that he laundered money for the Jewish branch of the Russian mafia starting as early as the mid-1980s. And it’s possible he did, wittingly or unwittingly, as part of a long range CIA operation designed to install corrupt oligarchs in the USSR as part of a strategic plan to corrupt and subvert the USSR.

Trump is exactly the sort of greedy hustler the CIA would use in such an operation. If it is true, then Trump is a protected person who is blackmailing the CIA. The CIA can’t reveal that he worked for them in this illegal operation involving drug money. Nothing about his relationship with the CIA could ever be made public. Many CIA employees may object to a freak of nature like Trump lording it over their agency.  But no one who knows could ever tell.

MA: During the Obama administration, the CIA appears to have been more active in assassinating and sabotaging programs towards Iran than in the Trump administration, activities like the Stuxnet and assassinating Iranian scientists. The measures are said to have taken place with the participation of the Mossad intelligence agency. In your opinion these actions in the Trump administration has become less? If so, why?

DV: That appears to be true, in part. Iranian scientists were murdered. But Trump has not reduced economic warfare and psy-war operations against Iran. He sabotaged the nuclear agreement and isolated the nation. And I believe he has gotten the MOSSAD more deeply involved in US intelligence operations, domestically as well as overseas in Iran.  Witness his relationship with Netanyahu and his status as a hero in Israel, which considers Iran an existential threat.  I could elaborate, but it’s all speculation.

MA: Few years ago, various publications wrote about Michael D’Andrea, who was in charge of Iran in the CIA, please described how capable this person is and how capable he is to act out of the general structure of CIA against Iran?

DV: I cannot comment on D’Andrea. I do know the CIA hires psychopaths capable of committing any crimes, and then puts them in charge of operations like the ones D’Andrea ran and is currently running.

MA:  In the Obama administration, a person named David Cohen went to the CIA from the Treasury Department. To what extent can the CIA play a role in sanctions against Iran?

DV: It plays a defining role. As I mentioned, it conducts unstated policy. It has secure lines of communication with the Iranian government and can negotiate terms of any settlement without the media or other part of the government knowing.

It can secretly through agents inside the Iranian program and through electronic intercepts determine what Iran is doing, from Iran’s strategic plans to the details of its nuclear program. That’s intelligence. It can also disrupt whatever Iran is doing through a variety of methods.

MA: Why did Trump go against his previous practice and directly assassinate the Iranian authorities?

DV: I absolutely disagree that the assassination is a departure from Trump’s policy. I have no idea why you would say that. Trump is on record saying he believes in assassination, including killing the families of his targets. Plus which drone strikes, which are the primary instrument of CIA selective terror and assassination, have increased under Trump.

MA: What would be the consequences of such a decision for the US government?

DV: Trump’s assassination of a High Value target is an act of psychological warfare, in this case aimed primarily at the US public and Israeli publics. 1) It allowed Trump to deflect attention from the impeachment scandal. 2) It assured his American and Israeli followers that he is predatory, with the willingness to kill without remorse.

It is also an act of selective terror directed at Iran.  The assassination is meant to terrify the leaders in Iran and deter them from attacks against Americans and Israelis.

MA: Thanks for your time.

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This article was originally published on Parsi Policy

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Mostafa Afzalzadeh is a journalist and documentary filmmaker.

UN Secretary General Guterres Fails to Condemn US Assassinations in Iraq

January 5th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard slammed the Trump regime’s assassination of Iranian General Soleimani, Iraqi Deputy PMU leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and others with them, tweeting the following:

“The targeted killings of Qasem Soleiman and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis are most likely unlawful and violate international human rights law.”

“Outside the context of active hostilities, the use of drones or other means for targeted killing is almost never likely to be legal.”

“Another major problem with extra territorial targeted killings is the lack of oversight.”

“Executives decide who may be killed outside due process, when it acts in self-defense, against whom and how. Without approval of Parliaments.”

Pompeo commented on Soleimani’s assassination with a litany of Big Lies, saying:

The Trump regime “deci(ded) to eliminate Soleimani in response to imminent threats to American lives (sic).

“(O)ur commitment (is) to deescalation (sic).”

Assassinating Soleimani was a “defensive action (to counter)  aggressive threats posed by the Iranian Quds Force (sic).”

He “was actively plotting in the region to take actions…that would have put dozens if not hundreds of American lives at risk (sic).”

All of the above is pure rubbish, believed by no one understanding how the US operates — by its own rules extrajudicially in pursuit of its imperial aims.

Killing Soleimani, Muhandis, and others with them was US cold-blooded murder, an unjustifiable high crime.

The Pentagon unjustifiably justified its criminal act, saying the following:

“At the direction of (Trump), the US military has taken decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by (the) killing(s)” — a bald-faced Big Lie, followed by more lies, falsely claiming:

Soleimani “orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months (sic).”

“This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans (sic).”

“The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world (sic).”

Aggression by the Trump regime and his most recent predecessors transformed hundreds of millions of Muslims into US haters, along with countless others worldwide — making the US the world’s most reviled country.

Throughout Islamic Republic history since 1979, its ruling authorities and military leaders never ordered an attack on another nation or their officials.

Pompeo presented no evidence backing his preposterous accusations because none exists.

Whenever Guterres comments on incidents like Soleimani’s assassination and other hostile US, NATO, and Israeli actions, he always calls on all sides to show restraint — failing to lay blame where it belongs.

After saying nothing for hours after the Trump regime’s state-sponsored aggression against Soleimani and others with him, his spokesman issued his pre-scripted remark, saying:

“The secretary general has consistently advocated for de-escalation in the Gulf (sic). He is deeply concerned with the recent escalation (sic).”

“This is a moment in which leaders must exercise maximum restraint (sic). The world cannot afford another war in the Gulf (sic).”

“The world” needs a world body leader with cajones, not a weak-kneed pro-Western puppet — beholden to higher powers in Washington, Brussels and Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called for “(m)eting out just punishment (to Trump regime) criminal assassins,” adding:

It’s “the responsibility and task of all resistance fighters worldwide.”

“We who stayed by (Soleimani’s) side will follow in his footsteps and strive day and night to accomplish his goals.”

“We will carry a flag on all battlefields and all fronts, and we will step up the victories of the ‘axis of resistance’ with the blessing of his pure blood.”

Syria’s Foreign Ministry condemned US aggression and assassinations, calling its actions “a serious escalation…(a) cowardly (act) of aggression…strengthen(ing) determination to follow in the path of the resistance’s martyred leaders.”

On Friday, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to condemn the Trump regime.

Over the long-term, US policies are self-defeating, its extremism typical of a nation in decline.

The greater its hostile actions globally, the more enemies it makes.

Commenting on Soleimani’s assassination, Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova the following:

The Pentagon’s “missile strike (that killed Soleimani and others was) an act that is out of sync with international law…the height of cynicism” by a rogue state.

Washington’s aim is all about pursuing might over right, seeking to “chang(e) the balance of power in the region.”

“That will not result in anything but escalating tensions in the region, which will be sure to affect millions of people.”

The Trump regime’s action “will not bypass the United Nations,” the Security Council to address it — US/UK/French veto power preventing official condemnation.

Killing Soleimani, deputy head of Iraq’s PMU Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and others with them more greatly destabilized the region.

Their assassinations had nothing to do with protecting US lives, everything to do with advancing its imperium.

It was a foolhardy self-defeating act that backfired, accomplishing nothing but greater popular anger against the US.

It also pressures Iraqi MPs to pass legislation that orders US forces out of the country, what may be coming ahead.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Counterproductive US Imperial Policies. The Risks of Global Warfare?

January 5th, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

The US under both right wings of its war party excels at brute force, not long-range strategic thinking and planning.

Pentagon terror-bombing assassinations of Iranian IRGC Quds commander General Qassem Soleimani and deputy head of Iraq’s PMU Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an act of hot war against both countries, accomplished the following:

It martyred both men, united Iranians and Iraqis against Washington’s Middle East presence, advancing things closer to when they’ll no longer be tolerated one day.

Most important, what happened furthered US decline, an incremental process underway for decades, notably post-9/11.

Does Washington want hot war with Iran beyond waging it by other means since its 1979 revolution, greatly escalated by Trump regime economic terrorism?

Already bogged down in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen, three unwinnable quagmires, will it get itself into the mother of all 4th one by waging war on Iran?

The Islamic Republic is much stronger militarily than other countries the US is at war with, able to strike back hard against its regional interests and allies if attacked.

Chickenhawks Trump, Pompeo, other regime officials and their congressional partners know nothing about warmaking.

Pentagon commanders understand it well, knowing that war with Iran likely means large numbers of US casualties, strikes on its regional bases and vessels, Israel vulnerable to attack — even if ISIS and other jihadists are used as proxy forces on the ground.

US war on Iran will likely embroil the region more greatly than any time anywhere since WW II with no assurance of its outcome.

If Russia intervenes against US aggression at Tehran’s request, as it did in Syria, the risk of global war would be heightened, possible nuclear war if things go this far.

Russian Foreign Ministry official Zamir Kabulov earlier said that if Iran is attacked, it will not be alone.

Asked if Russia would provide material support, he said “specific actions are a question for the Russian president,” adding:

“But it’s not just Russia. Many other countries sympathize and empathize with Iran. Tehran won’t be alone if the US, God forbid, takes wild and irresponsible actions against it.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov affirmed Kremlin support for Iranian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Vladimir Putin earlier said US war on Iran “would be a catastrophe,” adding: It would have “sad consequences” for any country “attempt(ing) it.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry called Pentagon terror-bombing incidents in Iraq “unacceptable and counterproductive,” actions further “destabiliz(ing)” the region.

On Saturday according to Iran’s Press TV, Pentagon warplanes terror-bombed “a convoy belonging to Iraq’s anti-terror (Popular Mobilization Units) fighters north of” Baghdad.

The strike came 24 hours after Soleimani, Muhandis, and others with them were assassinated by the Trump regime, Iraqi television calling the latest incident a US strike — killing six, wounding others.

On Friday, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council vowed to retaliate against Soleimani’s assassination “in due time (in) the right place,” a statement further saying:

During an “extraordinary” Security Council session, “various aspects of (Soleimani’s assassination were) examined…appropriate decisions” made, adding:

The US is “responsible for all the consequences of this criminal adventurism…a strategic mistake.”

“America will not easily get away with the consequences of this miscalculation.”

US “blind and coward(ly) (actions) strengthen the Islamic Republic’s determination to keep up with its resistance policies.”

A separate Iranian Intelligence Ministry statement said the US criminal act will not go unanswered.

Iranian academic Mohammad Marandi called US assassinations of Soleimani and Muhandis “an act of war” against Iran and Iraq, adding:

The US “has been acting with impunity in Iraq from day one of its occupation.”

Its hardliners aim “to see (ISIS) regain (control of) the border between Iraq and Syria.”

“The Americans ignore the sovereignty of Iraq. They ignore (PM) Mahdi. They ignore the will of the Iraqi people.”

“They murder the heroes of the war against (ISIS), and they wonder why they are so widely despised across the region.”

Establishment media support US aggression, reporting official narrative propaganda, most Americans manipulated by repeated disinformation.

Gallup polls on US public sentiment toward Iran from 1989 to 2019 showed over 80% of respondents consistently view the country unfavorably — because of the power of media reported anti-Iran propaganda.

Time and again, Trump proves he’s a geopolitical know-nothing, on Friday saying:

Assassinating Soleimani was “to stop a war, not to start one (sic),” falsely accusing him of conducting a “reign of terror (sic),” killing “millions (sic)” — precisely what US aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere is all about.

Throughout its 40-year history, the Islamic Republic proved it’s a peacemaker, not a warmaker like the US, NATO, Israel and their imperial partners.

Separately according to US media, the Pentagon is deploying another 3,500 troops to the Middle East, likely to Iraq or nearby — adding to 60,000 or more already in the region.

Their presence has nothing to do with protecting US or regional security, everything to do with pursuing its destructive imperial interests —featuring endless wars of aggression and other hostile actions against nonthreatening sovereign states.

Assassinating Soleimani and Muhandis by the Trump regime, national heroes in their countries, redoubtable anti-terror fighters, opened the gates of hell against US personnel in the region.

Henceforth they’re more reviled, unwanted, and unsafe than earlier.

According to Reuters, Iraqi Shiite political officials called for US forces in the country to be expelled.

Iraqi PM Mahdi said the following:

“The targeted assassination of an Iraqi commander is a violation of the agreement. It can trigger a war in Iraq and the region,” adding:

“It is a clear violation of the conditions of the US presence in Iraq. I call on the parliament to take the necessary steps” — meaning legislation demanding US forces leave the country.

Last year, Soleimani challenged US hostile actions against Iran, saying:

The Islamic Republic has “power and capabilities in the region. (The US knows) how powerful we are in asymmetrical warfare. Come, we are waiting for you,” adding:

“You know that a war would mean the loss of all your capabilities. You may start the war, but we will be the ones to determine its end.”

Hostile Trump regime actions against Iran and Iraq virtually assure more to come, both countries to respond appropriately as they see fit.

Tinderbox Middle East conditions the Trump regime escalated could explode into an uncontrollable firestorm ahead.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Eureka Street

Trump vs. Iran: Has the US Crossed the Escalation to War Rubicon?

January 5th, 2020 by Dr. Jack Rasmus

Wars occur when ideologues and/or reckless leaders in position of power are willing to engage in high risk brinksmanship in foreign policy military adventures–often as a distraction from their growing domestic problems. Their megolomania often leads them to misread the potential response of their targeted adversary, setting off a process of unavoidable tit for tat escalation by both sides until war actually breaks out.

The historical examples are undeniable of the role of personality in the precipitation of War in the 20th-21st Century:

Germany’s Kaiser 1914 mobilization of allies in response to Serbian archduke’s assassination that set in motion quid pro quo escalations; Hitler’s assumption that Britain-France would do nothing in the case of Poland as they in Czechoslovakia; Japan Tojo’s belief that war with the USA would be short should the US navy’s pacific forces be decimated in Hawaii and driven from Philippines; South Korea president Syngman Rhee’s incursion into North Korea in 1950 that started the Korean war. LBJ’s Tonkin Gulf lie and subsequent military escalation in Vietnam to destroy the Vietcong, based on the assumption that North Vietnam forces would thereafter not join the conflict. Saddam Hussein’s miscalculation to invade Kuwait, based on (false) assurances from the US that the US would not respond. Osama bin Laden’s and Taliban’s assumption US would not mobilize and invade after 9-11. George W. Bush’s embracing of US neocons’ advice that military conquest of Iraq would mean the end of war there, not just the beginning. And now Trump’s provocation of war with Iran by assassinating its most senior military general. Miscalculations all, by reckless, high risk-taking political leaders, with little understanding of the dynamics that often lead up to war.

Three questions to consider in light of the recent US killing of Iran’s top general:

Does anyone doubt what would be the response of the USA if its top general and commander in Europe were assassinated by Iran–and Iran followed it up with a declaration that they did it and he deserved it?

Is it just coincidence that Trump’s ‘crossing the Rubicon latest escalation’ has nothing to do with the timing of impeachment proceedings in Congress? Or what appears to be an increasing probability of US economic recession in an election year.

Trump could not unilaterally go to war with Iran without US Congress approval beforehand, given the US War Powers Act. Were he to do so it would constitute yet another violation of the US Constitution. But he could provoke Iran to start one, attack US military forces, which under that same Act would allow him to respond militarily with as much force as he wanted. Is Trump trying to provoke Iran, in order to have it precipitate an equivalent response so that he, Trump, can bypass a Congressional vote to go to war he knows he won’t get?

Who’s Running the Trump Foreign Policy Show?

Trump has already fired or driven out all the military generals and advisers from his administration who might have cautioned him on his growing military brinksmanship. US foreign policy for months has now been the policy of US neocons now running his administration in State, Defense, and elsewhere. (And recall it was the Neocons back in 2002-03 that advised and drove Bush to attack Iraq).

In all the foregoing historical cases, wars are precipitated by radical ideologue and non-military intellectuals and bureaucrats who advise the high risk taking and brinksmanship action by political leaders willing to ‘roll the dice’ on military adventures. Politicians who are short sighted about the dynamics of how wars are started, and once started aren’t easily stopped (if at all). Politicians and intellectuals-advisers precipitate the conflict; but the conflict soon sets in motion forces of its own that are not controllable. The reckless, high risk politicians are then dragged along by the forces of war, controlled by it instead of controlling it.

Trump is dragging the US toward war, whether by choice (by creating a distraction from domestic troubles); or by advice (by intellectuals-advisers Neocons whose ideologies serve their fantasy imaginations of wielding power and advancing empire); or by the inevitable accident forthcoming once escalation passes a point of no return (as it always does if allowed to continue).

Know Them by the Company They Keep

Trump is now in infamous company: with the Kaiser, Tojo, Hitler, and all the others after who have always miscalculated and pushed their countries to the brink of war–and over.

All reckless, high risk taking, believers in their own egos, and over-estimators of their ability to judge their opponents, the course of events, and their outcomes.

The similarity in personalities–and the errors they typically make that lead to war and destruction–is not easily ignored.

You can know the person by the company they keep! And that goes for Trump

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Jack Rasmus.

Dr. Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January 2020, available on this blog, jackrasmus.com, at discount. He hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, and his twitter handle is @drjackrasmus.

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The Foremost State Sponsor of Terror, the United States of America: Assassination of Soleimani – What Next?

January 5th, 2020 by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

The foremost state sponsor of terror, the United States of America, carried out a brazen act of terrorism yesterday that took the life of a revered Iranian general – General Ghassem Soleimani.  A man, no, a legend, who led the resistance in confronting occupation, injustice, and terrorism.   The man lauded for defeating ISIS.

Heartbroken at the defeat of ISIS, the United States bombed the man who had led that defeat.    Trump bombed to kill Soleimani and to save ISIS, to expand its hegemony.  Trump failed. He obliterated any chance this world had for peace and he managed to plant the seed of revenge in every heart that beats for justice.  Iran does not mourn alone.  Make no mistake – it was not one man that was killed.  It was the fragile hope of peace, of our future and that of our world that was destroyed.   Trump was Iran’s 911.  He forced a fate akin to 911 but vastly different.

While 911 was an inside job to justify and launch America’s violent thrust into the unsuspecting world so that it could crown itself as the global hegemon,  Trump and his cadre of idiots gloated about the terror they had inflicted on the world.  Too stupid to grasp the significance and the consequences of their actions.  102 (January 02) will live in infamy. The bomb that killed Soleimani will spiral the world out of control; send America into a freefall.  January 02 will be remembered as the end of America’s hegemony – 102 will be inscribed on its tombstone.   Tombstone of a nation that could have been great, was capable of so much good, but was instead utterly destructive until it was destroyed by the enemies within.

The bombs took out Soleimani, but they raised millions like him.   Faced with the terror of one of the most popular men in Iran, and the wider Middle East, hero of men and women who sought justice, what choice is Iran left with?  Does the Trump team think that the millions who mourn the man and celebrate his martyrdom will go home and weep?  Cower? No.

It has already dawned on the Trump team that they have just jolted the world and they fear the shaky ground underneath them.  Already, Pompeo’s gloat has turned into a whimper.  Quick to contact the Russians, Iran’s allies, he told them that “the United States remains committed to de-escalation.”   What he is imploring is  for Russians  to plead with Iran to show restraint.   But no one can turn back this clock.

Team Trump has left only two choices for Iran:  For Iran to hit back hard.  Yes, a war with the United States will destroy Iran.   But Iran would take down much of the world with it, our global village would be destroyed.     Or, for Iran not to retaliate which would translate a self-destruct button by taking no action.  Unlikely.  No doubt, those carrying Solemani’s picture will have a say.

There is but one third way which requires the participation of all.  To remove and arrest Trump and his team for precipitating WW3 –  for actions that will inevitably usher in the death of millions if Americans don’t act.  But unlike Iran, America lacks heroes.  Trump has doomed us all.  It is a matter of time – and the clock is ticking.

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Censorship in Canada? Vanessa Beeley’s Talks on Syria

January 5th, 2020 by Prof. John Ryan

Vanessa Beeley is a British journalist who was invited to Canada in the fall of 2019 to present talks in seven cities on the conflict in Syria. The sponsors of her speaking tour were several anti-war groups, including the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War, and Peace Alliance in Winnipeg.

Beeley is an independent journalist and photographer who has worked extensively in the Middle East, including dangerous zones in Gaza, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen and Syria. In 2017 she was a finalist for the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. In 2018 the British National Council for the Training of Journalists named her as one of the 238 most respected journalists in the UK. In 2019 she was one of the recipients of the Serena Shim Award for uncompromising integrity in journalism.

Over a number of years, at considerable risk to her life, Beeley has travelled to Syria on several occasions to report on the conflict between the Syrian army and a variety of forces, largely foreign mercenaries, who are trying to overthrow the Syrian government. A United Nations report has stated that more than 40,000 foreign fighters from 110 countries may have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join terrorist groups.

In the course of her first-hand research on Syria, Beeley has also obtained information on the operations of the White Helmets, a supposedly “neutral, impartial and humanitarian” force dedicated to saving the lives of Syrian citizens in war zones.

In her various ensuing publications, with extensive documentation and photographic evidence, she has presented a compelling account of what is occurring in Syria. Fortunately, she is not alone in presenting such information. There are several other journalists who have done almost comparable first-hand accounts. These include Canada’s Eva Bartlett, and American journalists Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek and Anya Parampil.

Because the reports of these few investigative journalists vary dramatically from what is presented by the mainstream media in the United States, Canada and much of Europe, a malicious and concerted campaign has developed to malign and discredit these journalists, largely in the interests of US foreign policy regarding Syria. For so-called “experts” and journalists who provide media cover to Syria’s jihadist insurgency, the three American journalists had crossed a line. The ensuing character assassination campaign against the three American “rogue” journalists has been revealed in reportage by MintPress News.

These three journalists point out that a number of Western reporters have gone to Islamist-held regions in Syria and then presented views that the terrorists are justified in trying to overthrow the Syrian government. Because of this, Anya Parampil states that it is critically important to report on the life of ordinary Syrians not under terrorist control. According to Parampil:

This group of Syrians represents the vast majority of the country, despite the fact that we never hear from them in corporate media. It is my job, as a U.S. journalist with the privilege of working independently, to visit countries and speak to people impacted by the policies of Washington, particularly those who are excluded from the mainstream narrative. Unless we hear from these people, the U.S. public will be more willing to support military and economic war against the Syrian people. That is why CNN and other outlets act as though they’re invisible. The media has been weaponized against the Syrian people.

Max Blumenthal commented:

“My ability to convey this reality back to the U.S. public was apparently such a threat to an unusually vocal echo chamber of regime-change fanatics that I was branded a Nazi … Their attacks were part and parcel of the Western campaign to isolate Syrians from the rest of the world, and all because their government held off a multi-billion dollar proxy war that would have transformed their country into an even more harrowing version of Libya if it had succeeded.”

As for Beeley, as soon as her Canada speaking tour was announced, Huffington Post was alerted and in short order two highly defamatory articles on her appeared. The Post reporters, Emilie Clavel and Chris York, who have never been to Syria, present the standard mainstream media accusation that President Assad heads “the 21st century’s most murderous regime” and was basically responsible for the war and for the bulk of the casualties. To support their views, they rely on other writers who claim “Beeley was the Syrian conflict’s goddess of propaganda.”

Beeley was scheduled to speak at the University of Montreal; when some criticism was voiced, a University spokesperson stated that “a university is a place of debates and one of its cornerstones is academic freedom.” Yet, after the defamatory reports about Beeley came out, her talk was cancelled. The Post’s Chris York tweeted that “The University of Montreal has cancelled a planned talk by Vanessa Beeley after it was pointed out that she is a conspiracy theorist, not a journalist.” Strange that after a US publication’s blatant propaganda attack on an experienced war correspondent, the University of Montreal now appears not to be a place of “academic freedom.”

After Montreal, Beeley was scheduled to speak in Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, Mississauga, Regina and Winnipeg. Despite concerted de-platforming efforts in all these cities, she did manage to present her talks. It was only in Montreal, Hamilton and Winnipeg that it was necessary to secure alternate venues because of the pressure to block her presentations.

Beeley’s speaking tour ended in Winnipeg, and here she was denied a venue, at short notice, not only at the University of Winnipeg but also at the Winnipeg Millennium Library. On investigation, it turns out that the senior administration at the university had not been informed of Beeley’s talk, so the decision to deny a venue was made at some lower level, without proper authorization. As such, it would be unfair to blame the university for this matter.

In the case of the Millennium Library, a senior spokesperson stated that Beeley’s proposed talk “would not comply with [the library’s] guidelines.” When pressed on the matter, the spokesperson said that in his personal opinion the contents of the proposed talk could be construed as “hate speech” and as such Beeley would not be permitted to speak there.

Beeley was finally booked to give her talk on December 12, with practically no public notice, at the Winnipeg Chilean Association on Burrows Avenue.

I find it ironic that people writing in the comfort and safety at their desks in the US, UK and Canada about the war in Syria and the White Helmets are given more credence by officials in some public institutions than journalists such as Beeley and others who actually go to Syria to see the situation first-hand.

I attended Beeley’s highly informative session in Winnipeg and had a discussion with her before and after the talk. Her hour-long presentation was fully documented and supported by appropriate photographs. For anyone to criticize her presentation as “hate speech” is preposterous. It is a profound pity that Canadian university students and a wider section of the public were prevented from hearing her perspective.

I have always had a keen interest in foreign affairs and during my years of teaching at the University of Winnipeg, my courses often involved such matters. Since my retirement, I have had more time to devote to what is going on in the world. As such, during these years I have written and published a wide range of articles on a variety of issues, including matters involving Syria and the White Helmets.

In the case of the White Helmets, I immediately discovered that they operated only in areas held by Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra terrorist forces – and nowhere else in Syria. This being the case, how could they claim to be “neutral, impartial and humanitarian” when they were nowhere to be found in the rest of Syria?

The White Helmets organization was created and funded by US and British efforts back in March of 2013, with an initial input of $23 million by USAID (US Agency for International Development). Since then they’ve received over $100 million, including at least CDN$7.5 million. Max Blumenthal has explored in some detail the various funding resources and relationships that the White Helmets draw on, mostly in the US and Europe. Overall, the CIA has spent over $1 billion on arming and training the so-called Syrian “rebels” who in actuality constitute a variety of Al-Qaeda forces.

A disturbing aspect of the White Helmets is their close association with Al-Qaeda and Al-Nusra forces. In several cases their headquarters are in the same building with these terrorist groups. Videos are also available that show their gross disrespect for the dead bodies of Syrian soldiers (several White Helmets were filmed giving the victory sign while standing on a heap of dead Syrian soldiers on the way to being dumped in the trash).

If the White Helmets devoted their activities solely to save the lives of people caught up in war zones, that would be commendable and beyond reproach, but that is not the case. A major part of their activities is devoted to media reports and public relations, and it seems that this is what draws a significant portion of their funding while constituting the primary reason for their creation. In fact, it appears the White Helmets use search and rescue activities as a cover-up to demonize Syrian President Assad and help terrorists overthrow the Syrian government.

As renowned journalist John Pilger put it, the White Helmets are a “propaganda construct,” an Al-Qaeda support group, whose prime purpose is to try to put a veneer of respectability on the vile head-chopping terrorists in Syria.

Given all this, I was astounded to discover that in the late summer of 2016, the federal NDP had recommended to the federal government that Canada should nominate the White Helmets for the Nobel Peace Prize. In response to this I wrote an open letter to the NDP denouncing their ill-considered proposal. Fortunately, Stéphane Dion, our Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time, ignored their request. My open letter was posted by Canadian Dimension and it was later reposted on two other sites.

Then in the summer of 2018 Canada announced that it would take in a sizeable number of White Helmets just before the terrorist area in which they operated was recaptured by the Syrian army. I wrote an article denouncing this questionable course of action.

I discussed how Philip Giraldi, a former counter-terrorism specialist and a former member of the CIA, in a detailed article stated that at the present time there is no bigger fraud than the story of the White Helmets. The story that’s been put forth is that with the Syrian army closing in on the last White Helmet affiliates still fighting in the country, the Israeli government, aided by the US, “staged an emergency humanitarian evacuation” of 800 White Helmet members, including their families, to Israel and then on to Jordan. Pleas were then put forth to resettle them in the US, Britain, Germany and other countries.

Near the end of 2015 I wrote an article that presented the background on the various terrorist groups, going back to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. I will cite a concluding paragraph:

When ISIS beheaded two American journalists, there was outrage and denunciation throughout the West, but when the same ISIS beheaded hundreds of Syrian soldiers, and meticulously filmed these war crimes, this was hardly reported anywhere. In addition, almost from the very beginning of the Syrian tragedy, al-Qaeda groups have been killing and torturing not only soldiers but police, government workers and officials, journalists, Christian church people, aid workers, women and children, as well as suicide bombings in market places. All this was covered up in the mainstream media, and when the Syrian government correctly denounced this as terrorism, this was ignored or denounced as “Assad’s propaganda.”

Being aware of this background, nothing that Beeley stated in her talk surprised me. What she stated was just an update to what I had already known. What was new to me was her account of the recent death of James Le Mesurier, a former British military officer, who founded the White Helmets in 2014. He was found dead in Istanbul this past November 11 and it is still uncertain if he was murdered or if he committed suicide. Almost immediately afterwards, Beeley wrote a lengthy and well-researched article about his mysterious death. I would like to include a reference to this, especially as an example of the quality of Beeley’s research and writing style. And yet this is the person who is accused of presenting hate speech and not worthy of being heard.

The thought has occurred to me that since my views on Syria and the White Helmets are identical to those of Beeley, suppose I proposed to give a talk at a Canadian university or public library. Would I, as a retired professor and senior scholar, be blocked in the way that Beeley was? Given the precedent of what happened to her, why should I be treated any differently?

Frankly, I can hardly believe what has happened. To me it is outrageous that a person of Beeley’s credibility as an investigative journalist and the author of a wide range of superbly documented articles and books should be barred from presenting a talk on a critically important subject at a Canadian university or a public library. What has happened to our supposed “freedom of speech”?

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This article was originally published on Canadian Dimension.

John Ryan, Ph.D., is a retired professor of geography and a senior scholar at the University of Winnipeg.

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‘The Searching Life and Enigmatic Death of Albert Camus’

January 5th, 2020 by Edward Curtin

“Everyone wants the man who is still searching to have already reached his conclusions.  A thousand voices are already telling him what he has found, and yet he knows he hasn’t found anything. Should he search on and let them talk?  Of course.” – Albert Camus, “The Enigma” in Lyrical and Critical Essays

Albert Camus’ search ended sixty years ago on January 4, 1960, the day he died. Although he had already written The Stranger, The Rebel, The Plague, and The Fall, and had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he felt his true work had barely begun. Alongside the car in which he died, his briefcase lay in the mud.  In it was the uncompleted, hand-written manuscript of his final quest, The First Man, an autobiographical novel written in a raw emotional and lyrical style that was liberating him from the prison of a classical form he felt compelled to escape.  He was on his way to a new freedom, in writing and in life, when he was cut down.  The book was published posthumously in 1994 by his daughter and son.  It is a beautiful peek into a reserved man’s youthful inner development, the loneliness of a poor boy made fatherless by an absurd war, and the ways in which the boy “had to learn by himself, to grow alone, in fortitude, in strength, find his own morality and truth.”  It explains a lot about Camus’ later writing and why, at the end of his life, he was so isolated and criticized by the right, left, and center for his various political positions.

He could not be pigeonholed. This drove many crazy.  His allegiance was to truth, not ideologies.  He was not a partisan in the Cold War between the U.S./NATO and the U.S.S.R.  An artist compelled by conscience and history to enter the political arena, he spoke in defense of the poor, oppressed, and powerless.  Among his enemies were liberal imperialism and Soviet Marxism, abstract ideologies used to murder and enslave people around the world.  He opposed state murder, terrorism, and warfare from all quarters. He was an artistic anarchist with a passionate spiritual hunger and an austere and moral Don Juan.  He was a mystery to himself in many ways. He made mistakes. But he was honest and honorable.

He is the kind of thinker we need today.  But he is still easily used and abused by those with their own agendas, and in that way, he is emblematic of the ways the search for truth today can be manipulated.  It is a sly game, one that only can start to make sense when one puts concentrated effort into unraveling the endless propaganda that is the fabric of our lives today.

Anyone who has followed the evidence knows that Russia-gate, Ukraine-gate, the anti-Putin hysteria, and the new Cold War is a fabrication concocted by deep-state intelligence and political forces in the United States and the West.  Of course, many will deny these facts. Anti-Russia hysteria has filled the airwaves for years.  It is pure propaganda that is manna from heaven for liberals and conservatives wishing to maintain their religious belief in American holiness, even as the U.S./NATO has surrounded Russia with military forces.  Anything that can intensify this mania is used by the corporate media. It is a very dangerous game of nuclear brinkmanship.  For many people, studying such issues in depth is beside the point.  As Camus wrote in 1954, “Today one takes a side based on the reading of an article.” In 2020 it may be just a headline.

Here is a case in point. Perhaps minor, perhaps not.  A relative, knowing I had previously written about a book claiming that Camus’ death in a car was not an accident but an assassination carried out by the KGB, recently sent me a link to an article in The Guardian, the paper that published a tiny portion of the Edward Snowden documents after allowing the Intelligence authorities to censor them, then oversaw the destruction of all Snowden’s computer documents, and finally became a full-time mouthpiece for the security state.  The article was entitled: “New Book Claims Albert Camus Was Murdered by the KGB.”  The article was published on Dec 2, 2019 and my relative naturally assumed it was a new book.

So did I, but I didn’t know there was a new book.  A year ago I had written about a book, Camus deve morire (Camus Must Die), published only in Italian in 2013 by the Italian writer Giovanni Catelli, that claims that Camus was assassinated by the KGB.  So I read the article and was perplexed.

There is no new book; there are new translations into French and Spanish of the same book from 2013. The French edition has a forward by the American writer Paul Auster, who finds Catelli’s argument convincing.  More than a year ago Catelli had kindly sent me an English version of his book, which I had read before writing about it, and I assume I am the only person to have read the book in English.  I think it is persuasive, but not dispositive.

The recent Guardian article was picked up by various publications that repeated much of it, adding incorrectly that The Guardian interviewed Catelli, etc., implying that it was all new.  This was picked up by other publications that repeated this plus other erroneous claims, including one from a linked  New Yorker article from 2014 that says, as do many others, that Catelli’s claims of a KGB hit on Camus couldn’t be true because Camus had a train ticket in his pocket and only made a last minute decision to ride in the car back to Paris with his friend Michel Gallimard and his family.  This is false, but it fits into the attractive theme of “an absurd death.” The truth is Camus had written a letter on December 30 to Maria Casarès that he would be taking a car, not the train, adding – believe it or not – that he would be arriving on Tuesday, January 4, “taking into account surprises on the road.” Then on the night of January 2, he had a nightmare in which he was pursued by four faceless men on a country road where he got into a car to escape and another faceless man drove the car straight into the side of a house, as Camus awoke terrified.

As I said, it’s a sly game, this publication business where little things can mean a lot, or not.  Subtle points.  Many mistakes.  Some out of ignorance, others intentional.  Things repeated.  The timing often important to send implied messages.

This speculation about Camus’ death began in 2011 when the media were abuzz with a report out of Italy that, rather than an accident, Camus may have been assassinated by the Soviet KGB for his powerful criticism of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, their massacre of Hungarian freedom fighters, and for his defense and advocacy of Boris Pasternak and his novel, Doctor Zhivago, among other things. For those who study history, all these issues are complicated by CIA involvement, which is not to say that Soviet forces did not massacre Hungarian freedom fighters or that Pasternak should not have been defended and the massacres condemned. Those things are clear, while others are murky, as was then and is now the CIA’s intention in so many terrible events around the world.  This murkiness is created by the mass media that does the bidding of the intelligence agencies.

These reports of a KGB hit on Camus were based on an article in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, and came from the remarks of Catelli, an Italian academic, Slavic scholar, and poet. Catelli said that he had read in a diary, published as a book, Ceĺ́ýzͮivot, written by Jan Zábrana, a well-known poet and translator of Doctor Zhivago, the following:

I heard something very strange from the mouth of a man who knew lots of things and had very informed sources.  According to him, the accident that had cost Albert Camus his life in 1960 was organized by Soviet spies. They damaged the tyre on the car using a sophisticated piece of equipment that cut or made a hole at speed.

This claim was quickly and broadly rejected by Camus’ scholars and it just as quickly disappeared from view.

But in 2013 Catelli published Camus Must Die that suggests there may be more to it than those early dismissals of the Corriere della Sera report indicate. One has only to harken back to the 2013 mysterious death of journalist Michael Hastings in the United States when his car accelerated to over 100 miles per hour and exploded against a tree on a straight road in Los Angeles to make one think twice, maybe more. To question that death is of course to be accused of being a conspiracy theorist, a bit of mind control straight from the CIA’s playbook.

Camus and Hastings. Tree lined straight roads, no traffic, outspoken writers, anomalous crashes, different countries and eras – tales to make one wonder. And probe and research if one is so inclined.  Read more than one article.  Perhaps a book or two.

Whatever the cause of Albert Camus’ death, however, it is clear that we could use his voice today.  I believe we should honor and remember him on this day that he died, for as an artist of his time, an artist for our time and all time, he tried to serve both beauty and suffering, to defend the innocent in this murderous world. Quintessentially a man of his age, he was haunted by images that haunt us still, in particular those of being locked in an absurd prison threatened by madmen brandishing weapons small and large, ready to blow this beautiful world to smithereens with weapons conjured out of their hubristic, Promethean dreams of conquest and power.

For we live in plague time, and the plague lives in us.  Like the inhabitants of the rat-infested French-Algerian city of Oran in Camus’s The Plague, the United States is “peopled with sleep walkers,” pseudo-innocents, who are “chiefly aware of what ruffled the normal tenor of their lives or affected their interests.” That their own government, no matter what political party is in power (both working for deep-state, elite interests led by the organized criminals of the CIA), is the disseminator of a world-wide plague of virulent violence, must be denied and divorced from consensus reality. These plague-stricken deaths visited on millions around the world – by Clinton, the Bushes, Obama, Trump – must be denied by diverting attention to partisan politics that elicit outrage after outrage by the various factions and their minions.

The true plague, the bedrock of a nation continually waging wars against the world, is avoided. Presently, it is the liberals that are “shocked” that Trump is the President as he bombs Iraq and assassinates Iranian leaders. These are the same people who went silent for the last eight years as Obama ravaged the world and lied about his cruel policies. Their outrage over Trump’s victory reeked of bad faith, with most of them supporting Hillary Clinton, a neo-liberal war-monger par excellence. Further “shocks” will follow when Trump leaves office and the latest neo-liberal avatar succeeds him, whether that is this year or in 2024; conservatives will resume their harangues and protestations, just as they have done during Obama’s reign. The two war parties will exchange insults as their followers are outraged and the American Empire, built on the disease of violence, will roll along or perhaps disintegrate. No one knows. But the plague will rage on and the main stream corporate media will play along by sowing confusion and telling lies in big and little ways.

For “decent folks must be allowed to sleep at night,” says the character Tarrou sarcastically in The Plague; he is a man who has lost his ability to “sleep well” since he witnessed a man’s execution where the “bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist.”  He awakens to the realization that he “had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people.”  He loses any peace he had and vows to resist the plague in every way he can. “For many years I’ve been ashamed,” he says, “mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn.”

The rats are dying in the streets. They are our rats, diseased by us. They have emerged from the underworld of a nation plagued by its denial. Unconscious evil bubbles up.  We are an infected people. Worry and irritation – “these are not feelings with which to confront plague.” But we don’t seem ashamed of our complicity in our government’s crimes around the world. Camus knew better. He warned us,

It’s a wearying business being plague-stricken.  But it’s still more wearying to refuse to be it. That’s why everybody in the world looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness.

Yet the fight against the plague must go on; that was Camus’ message.  If not, you will be destroyed by your own complicity in evil.  You will be plagued by your own hand.

Were Camus alive today, he would no doubt be struck by the constant stream of news reports exemplifying the hubris of our technological rationality, a mode of thinking that has made a fetish out of technology, worships efficiency, and considers any critical protest as irrational.   For Camus was deeply influenced by ancient Greek philosophy. He wrote,

Greek thought was always based on the idea of limits.  Nothing was carried to extremes, neither religion nor reason, because Greek thought denied nothing, neither reason nor religion …. And, even though we do it in diverse ways, we extol one thing and one alone: a future world in which reason will reign supreme.

He would be appalled by the arrogance of a nation led by technocratic experts and politicians who have embraced the power of pure reason devoid of values.  Despite all rhetoric to the contrary, the embrace of technical reason, which is innately amoral, has caused many of the problems we seem unable to remedy.  These include environmental catastrophe, high-tech wars, GM foods, drone killings, drug addiction, and nuclear weapons, to name but a few.  For such problems created by technology, our esteemed leaders have technological answers. The high-priests of this technological complex – organization types all – use the technology and control the information which they then present as “facts” to justify their actions.  The absurdity of this vicious circle is lost on them.  Their unstated assumption: We have a prohibition to prohibit.  If it can be done, it will be done.  We have no limits.

Camus thought differently:

In our madness, we push back the eternal limits, and at once Furies swoop down upon us to destroy. Nemesis, the goddess of moderation, not of vengeance, is watching.  She chastises, ruthlessly, all those who go beyond the limit.

Camus reminds us that we must break free from the “mind-forged manacles” that render us prisoners of hopelessness. This world as a prison is a metaphor that has a long and popular tradition.  In the past hundred or more years, however, with the secularization of Western culture and the perceived withdrawal of God, the doors of this prison have shut upon the popular imagination, with growing numbers of people feeling trapped in an alien universe, no longer able to bridge the gulf between themselves and an absent God.  Death, once the open avenue to the free life of eternity, has for many become the symbol of the absurdity of existence and the futility of escape.  “There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man’s feeling that life here and now is the only life there is,” wrote George Orwell in 1944.

Camus was haunted by these images, intensified as they were by a life of personal isolation beginning with the death of his father in World War I when he was a year old and continuing throughout his upbringing by a half-deaf, emotionally sterile mother.  His entire life, including his tragic art, was an attempt to find a way out of this closed world.  This was his search.

That is why he continues to speak today to those who grapple with the same enigmas, those who strive to find hope and faith to defend the defenseless and revel in the glory of living simultaneously.  Not absurdly, he left clues to that quest in his briefcase on the road where he died – the unfinished manuscript to his beautiful Le Premier Homme(The First Man).  It was as if, whether he died in an accident or was murdered, the first man was going to have the last word.

In his last novel, The Fall, he left us Jean Baptiste Clamence, a nihilist worthy of our times, a lawyer dedicated to abstract justice, a phony actor who, in the name of absolute sincerity, lies in order to mask his destructive nihilism that knows no bounds. He reminds me of our power elites. His maxim cuts to the heart of our modern madness:

When one has no character, one has to apply a method.

Albert Camus had character.  Let us honor him.

I can imagine Camus saying with Hamlet:

Oh, I could tell you –

But let it be, Horatio, I am dead;

Thou livest; report to me and my cause aright

To the unsatisfied.

Let us do just that.

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit the author’s website here.

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Venezuela: Disturbing Echoes of History – A Presentation by Maria Páez Victor

January 5th, 2020 by Michael Welch

 “During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes have invariably meted out to them relentless persecution, and received their teachings with the most savage hostility, most furious hatred, and a ruthless campaign of lies and slanders.”[1]

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The U.S. and its allies have been at work undermining the sovereign Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for several years, through sanctions, at least one assassination attempt, and efforts to discredit Venezuela’s elections.

But it was in the early months of 2019 that America played the regime change card in this geostrategic poker game. While Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was being sworn in for a second term in high office, opposition forces were orchestrating an effective coup d’etat. A relatively unknown politician by the name of Juan Guaido proclaimed himself interim president with the backing of the U.S., Canada, the European Union and the countries and several Latin American nations.

When the military stayed loyal to the elected president, and the masses marched in under-reported parades of support for Hugo Chavez’s chosen successor, a second attempt was launched which involved a caravan of aid supplies being stopped at the Columbia-Venezuela border. The official line parroted by mainstream media outlets was that Maduro’s forces were destroying aid intended for the desperate Venezuelan citizens being victimized by a callous dictator. It would later be revealed however that the opposition forces were responsible for the burning of these vital supplies.[2]

In the weeks and months that would follow, more calamities would be visited on the Venezuelan people, such as the power failures in March. Nevertheless, as the year 2019 has come to an end, it would seem that these efforts to dislodge President Maduro from power have proven to be unsuccessful.

The Venezuelan situation was one of the highlights of the 2019 annual forum of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE). As detailed in the last episode, WAPE is an international academic organization dedicated to utilizing modern Marxist economics to analyze and study the world economy, reveal its laws of development, and offer policies to promote economic and social progress on the national and global levels. In her keynote address, Venezuelan-Canadian sociologist Maria Páez Victor elaborates on the dynamics affecting her countrymen, breaking down the social and economic factors in play, and places the crisis in a historical and geopolitical context.

The talk, entitled Venezuela: Disturbing Echoes of History builds her thesis around answering three basic questions – 1) What is really happening in Venezuela, 2) Why is it happening, and 3) What will happen next?

Audio of this talk was recorded by Paul Graham. The unabridged speech is embedded below.

Dr. Maria Páez Victor is a sociologist, born in Venezuela and educated in Caracas, New York, Mexico City, England and Canada. For several years she taught the sociology of health and medicine as well as health and environmental policies at the University of Toronto. Dr. Páez Victor has national and international experience in policy analysis and impact assessment, with expertise in the areas of health, environment, and energy. She is an active member of the Latin American community in Canada. She is also the author of “Liberty or Death! – the life and campaigns of Richard L. Vowell, British Legionnaire and Commander, hero and patriot of the Americas” (2013) (Tattered Flag, UK).

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Notes:

  1. V.I. Ulianov (Lenin), “The State and Revolution”
  2. nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/americas/venezuela-aid-fire-video.html

US Immigration (ICE) Accelerates Violent Arrests of (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) DACA Holders

January 4th, 2020 by Danica Jorden

“You are not from the castle. You are not from the village. You are nothing.” Franz Kafka, “The Castle”

“If there were right laws, if there were a pathway, we would stand in line…. Because this country has a broken, outdated immigration system, we cannot legalize ourselves. There is no pathway to citizenship for people like us,” Bambadjan Bamba, DACA-recipient and “Black Panther” actor, speaking in front of the Supreme Court, November 2019

Daniella Ramírez arrived at her hotel job in Los Angeles at 4:45 AM on December 20, 2019. Three white, unmarked vans were idling nearby, which seemed a little odd but she ignored them on her way to the entrance. As she turned to open the door, several men rushed, grabbed and handcuffed her. Eventually they informed her she was under arrest by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

She had only a short moment to phone a friend to say the men were being very rough with her before the line went dead. On Sunday, her family learned she was being held in Adelanto Detention Center, a GEO Corporation private immigration jail that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) itself qualified as having “serious health and safety issues” such as “nooses in detainee cells”.

Daniella is a 23 year old female with no criminal record. She has lived in the United States since she was brought there by her parents when she was 10 years old. DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) gave her, and about 700,000 other undocumented young people in the United States, a valid driver’s licence, a work permit, and a reprieve from deportation. She has been working at the hotel for the last two years, during which time her DACA permit expired. People were being arrested when they reapply, even if they were paying a lawyer. There was no right way, there still is no right way. She just had to keep going and hope for the best.

Warning on Immigration Equality’s website

Her arrest is but one of a number of actions that the federal government is taking as the country awaits the Supreme Court’s decision on ending DACA after justices met in early November.

According to immigration attorneys, ICE suddenly began reopening deportation cases against DACA-holders at the end of October in anticipation of what the current federal government would consider a favorable ruling. And now, ICE has made it official in an email to CNN:

“ICE confirmed to CNN that all DACA recipients whose deportation cases have been administratively closed can expect to see them reopened. In an email, the agency stated that ‘re-calendaring of administratively closed cases is occurring nationwide and not isolated to a particular state or region.’”

The move is particularly egregious in light of the strict requirements to obtain DACA status. Formulated to protect immigrants who had been brought to the United States as children and were never granted legal status, DACA has age, residency, educational and legal requirements, and carries hefty fees. Misdemeanors disqualify applicants.

Despite this, President Donald Trump’s insisted in a November 12 tweet that, “Many of the people in DACA, no longer very young, are far from ‘angels.’ Some are very tough, hardened criminals.” His contention is contradicted by the government’s own calculations that DACA-recipients have an exceptionally low arrest rate of 6.7% compared to 30% for the general population, according to the Cato Institute. PolitiFact and NBCMiami rated the tweet with a resounding “False”.

DACA is/was available to persons up to the age of 31 who had come to the United States when they were younger than 16. Some of them, as well as others who could not apply, already have children. The Comité Popular Somos Raleigh (We Are Raleigh Popular Committee) held a “posada” this season for children whose parents have been deported. The “posada” is a traditional Mexican celebration that recreates the Biblical story of Mary and Joseph’s search for a place to rest and give birth to the baby Jesus, and includes the famous breaking of the piñata, spilling treats for all the children.

Speaking to local newspaper Qué Pasa, committee organizer Griselda Alonzo said that her group organized the event in light of the marked increase in raids in the region and how acutely this is affecting the children left behind.

“The committee was formed to support these families because sometimes they call at midnight because there was a raid and somebody was detained. The committee works to help get people out of jail, raise bond money, or take the children to visit their relatives in jail,” Griselda explained. “Even though for some of them it’s been over a year, the pain is still there, and the holidays are very sad and become more a period of mourning than of celebration. That’s why we started to do [the posada].”

 

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Gene-Editing. New Genetic Engineering Techniques, Yes or No? “Who’s Thinking Outside the Box?”

January 4th, 2020 by Angela Lieber

The following article from the German weekly newspaper Der Freitag is a vanishingly rare example of both sides of the debate about new GM techniques getting coverage in the mainstream media.

All too often journalists allow GM promoters to determine the narrative on topics like gene editing while the concerns of critical scientists go unreported.

The problem with that, as Dr Michael Antoniou notes in the article, is that, “Those who work on the development of such plants seem to believe almost blindly in their own propaganda regarding the precision and predictability and thus in the safety of their products – without the necessary studies to prove their position.”

The author of the Der Freitag article, Angela Lieber, was awarded the Salus-Medienpreis (Salus Media Prize) 2019 for her work on this article.

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Who’s thinking outside the box?

by Angela Lieber
Der Frietag, 22 Nov 2019
English translation of German language article by Deepl/Google Translate/GMWatch

Gene editing: The ruling of the European Court of Justice divides the agricultural sector. What potential do new genetic engineering techniques hold for plant breeding?

Virus-resistant cucumbers, allergen-free peanuts, and maize that better withstands drought and heat: The list of current research projects is long, as are the advantages that breeders and seed companies around the world hope to see from the use of new biotechnological processes in agriculture. With the help of so-called “genome editing methods” such as the gene scissors CRISPR/Cas, the genome of useful plants can be changed precisely and in the shortest possible time. It’s not only in this country that farmers and consumers could benefit from such types of fruit and vegetables.

Globally, an important contribution to the nutrition of the growing world population would be made – according to the advocates of the new technologies. In addition, pesticide use could be reduced and food ingredients could be changed as needed. Holger Elfes, press spokesman for Bayer CropScience, summarizes the potential of the new technologies: “We expect a drastic acceleration in the breeding of new varieties that are less susceptible to diseases, pests or drought – and of course achieve a higher yield” – a process that in conventional breeding can take up to ten years or longer could be halved with the new methods. “This enables farmers to react more quickly to emerging plant diseases or changing climate cycles.”

From sick apples …

In view of these promising possibilities, even some representatives of the organic industry have recently raised the question of whether the use of the new methods should be rejected in principle – especially since their intervention in the genetic material is less serious than that in the context of classic genetic engineering. Because, in the latter case, DNA from bacteria or animals was sometimes introduced into the genome of maize, oilseed rape or soybean, foreign DNA is rarely used in the new technologies. Instead, you can change genes in a targeted manner or transfer genes from related species into the plant’s genetic makeup. Urs Niggli, Director of the Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (Fibl) in Switzerland, also recently spoke in favour of using the CRISPR/Cas gene scissors to make apples resistant to apple scab – one of the most important apple diseases worldwide. For this purpose, he suggested that the resistance gene of the Japanese crab apple (malus floribunda) be introduced into today’s cultivated apples. (Lebensmittelzeitung 06/2018).

For orchardist and apple grower Hans-Joachim Bannier from Bielefeld, looking at the history of modern apple cultivation, it would become clear that this idea – “to believe that a single gene can save a species that has long since developed in a risky direction” – is fundamentally wrong, says Bannier. He explains: “For around 80 years, almost only five apple varieties and their descendants have been grown worldwide: Golden Delicious, Cox Orange, Jonathan, McIntosh and Red Delicious. The reason these varieties are so popular is because they bloom more often and therefore deliver higher yields – but only if you spray them heavily. ”The apples are actually highly susceptible to disease. And only since the chemical industry began supplying the appropriate pesticides in 1930 did it suddenly become possible to grow them on a large scale.

“When the varieties were used in organic farming in the 1980s, it quickly became clear that they were infected by pathogens far too often,” Bannier continues. But instead of going back to the old, somewhat less productive, but much more robust apple varieties, [breeders] simply crossed the already known resistance gene of the Japanese crab apple in the classic way [by breeding] into the disease-prone cultivated apples. “It is exactly the same gene that now they want to transfer back into the genome – but using genetic engineering,” says Bannier, shaking his head. To start with, the tactic with the resistance gene worked, but today the apple scab is back in many places. “Once the fungus has eluded the gene by mutation, the immunity of the apples collapses – and also because their rest of the genome is so susceptible: not only to apple scab, but also to mildew and other diseases.”

Short-term “solutions”

Bannier is therefore very concerned about current developments in plant breeding. Even with other fruits and vegetables, the main focus today is on disease-prone varieties that are only successful with the continuous use of pesticides. “This is a conflagration! And now the genetic engineers want to go in there and clear it bit by bit, by putting individual genes in an otherwise sick and genetically impoverished strain!” Of course, you could always offer and sell ‘solutions’ in this way: “But such resistances don’t last long. They break through pests and pathogens pretty quickly.”

It is different with many traditional varieties that can still be found in orchards today. “With these varieties, several genes are almost always responsible for immunity, for example with the ‘Seestermüher lemon apple’. It is not only productive, but also multi-resistant to scab, powdery mildew and fruit tree cancer.”

For Bannier, the fact that these apples are hardly known to any breeder today is a real mistake:“ We have well-trained molecular geneticists, but they no longer know the old varieties,” he scolds. “You can no longer study them at a university or institution of applied sciences” – one of the many reasons why the apple grower fights against the disappearance and forgetting of the old varieties. He regularly takes visitors through his orchard, where more than 300 varieties, some of which have been forgotten, thrive – and all without pesticides. Bannier is convinced: “What we need today is a return to locally adapted and genetically diverse varieties. Clearly, this breeding path is tedious. But the supposedly faster genetic engineering will not be able to solve the problems of modern agriculture in the long term!”

Felix zu Löwenstein, organic farmer and chairman of the organic umbrella association for the organic food industry (BÖLW) also criticizes the “tunnel vision of the genome” – as he puts it. When he first heard about CRISPR, there was talk of trying to keep a banana virus at bay through genetic engineering. “At that time, no one asked how smart it is that we are traveling around the world with a single type of banana that is also grown in huge plantations – banana, banana, banana, banana,” said Löwenstein. “We have created incredibly unstable systems with industrial agriculture. And if we now save them a little bit more by tinkering with the genetics of plants, then we will ignore the real problem.”

For him, it is therefore not a question of whether genome editing is good or bad in principle. The question is rather whether a technology is suitable for creating ecologically stable systems. “Quite apart from the fact that there are also risks that have to be assessed with great caution.”

Genetic engineering – yes or no?

It was precisely those potential risks that caused the judges of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg at the end of July to rule that all genome editing processes must be subjected to European genetic engineering law and that all resulting products (plants and animals) must be regulated as genetically modified organisms (GMOs). For months there had been speculation about whether the new technologies would be classified as conventional breeding methods and would therefore be released without safety assessment and labelling. Martin Häusling, Member of the European Parliament and agricultural policy spokesman for the Greens/EFA Group, is pleased with the clear verdict: “Now all plants that are bred with the new methods must be checked for possible risks before they are approved.”

In addition, there is a labelling requirement, thus retaining the freedom of choice for consumers to buy such products or not. “I am relieved that the ECJ made a decision based on the precautionary principle and verifiability,” said Häusling. “Consumers can now no longer be sold hidden genetically modified products and breeders know what material they are dealing with.”

At the Federal Association of German Plant Breeders (BDP), on the other hand, enthusiasm is limited. “The judgment surprised us. We have always advocated a differentiated assessment of the new breeding methods, according to which genetically modified organisms arise in some cases, but not in others,” said association chairwoman Stephanie Franck. In the run-up to the ECJ ruling, there was a fierce discussion about whether there could be exceptions in the event of regulation. In some cases, genome editing only triggers point mutations – similar to a natural mutation (e.g. caused by UV light) or mutations in the context of traditional breeding methods. And as long as a genome-edited product cannot be distinguished from a product from traditional breeding, it does not have to be regulated separately, or so the proponents argued.

For Michael Antoniou from King’s College in London, this debate has worrying features: “Genome editing is always a laboratory-based, genetic modification process and therefore per se leads to a genetically modified organism,” says the scientist, who has worked in the field of genetic research for human medicine for more than 30 years. Claims that one only has to look at the result and not the process by which a product is created are anything but scientific and are potentially dangerous. The particular method is absolutely crucial in science. “If you move away from this principle, possible side-effects and their consequences will be completely ignored!” And the molecular geneticist is convinced that there can be such side-effects.

Lack of risk research

Regardless of whether ZFN, TALEN, ODM or CRISPR/Cas is used, all genome editing processes follow a similar principle. First, the site that is to be changed must be found in the massive genome of the plant. For this purpose, special “probes” are constructed in the laboratory, which search the genetic material in order to dock onto the target sequence identified. The DNA double strand is then cut open with the aid of an enzyme coupled to the probe (hence the term “gene scissors”). In response to the cut, the plant’s own cell repair mechanisms come into force to “patch” the DNA break again. And it is precisely this process that is now used to bring about the desired change – for example, a point mutation or the inhibition or activation of a specific gene.

But although most genome editing processes change the gene structure at a predetermined point and are therefore very precise and targeted, there are potential sources of error – as scientist Antoniou explains. In addition to cuts at unintentional locations in the genome, neighboring genes can also be disrupted in addition to the actual target site. In addition, even intended changes could lead to unforeseen biochemical reactions. “All of this can change the nutritional profile of a plant from scratch – up to possible toxin and allergen production.”

Christoph Then, Managing Director of Testbiotech, an institute in Munich that critically examines the new biotechnology processes, also fears potential risks: “Of course, it is theoretically possible that genome editing can also result in plants that do no harm.” However, what is decisive are the possibilities that the system offers. “You can also use it to switch off entire synthetic routes or delete entire gene families that previously were not accessible via breeding.” And he doesn’t find convincing the argument that classical mutagenesis (breeding techniques that work with chemicals or radiation) that has been permitted [in conventional breeding] since the 1970s would change the genetic code much more extensively: “[In classical mutagenesis] you still use the mechanisms that evolution has developed for mutations. With the new genetic engineering, on the other hand, we intervene directly at the level of the DNA – that is another level of intervention,” says Then, who criticizes the lack of risk research in Germany in particular: “There are currently almost no government research programs on this.”

This is a fact that molecular geneticist Antoniou also criticizes on an international level: “Those who work on the development of such plants seem to believe almost blindly in their own propaganda regarding the precision and predictability and thus in the safety of their products – without the necessary studies to prove their position.” From his point of view, the ECJ judgment is therefore clearly to be welcomed – especially for the consumer: “Because there is now an adequate regulation and safety assessment of these products.”

In the patent jungle

But what does the ECJ decision mean for small and medium-sized plant breeders in Europe? After all, many of them had high hopes for the new technologies – not least because they are much cheaper to use than the methods of classic genetic engineering. It suddenly seemed possible to keep up with the big seed companies. Accordingly, after the verdict was pronounced, the Bund Deutscher Plant Breeders were disappointed: “Now all plants that are developed with the help of the new breeding methods have to go through the time-consuming and financially complex approval process,” said association chairman Franck. Against this background, plant breeders see little prospect of using the methods in the development of new varieties.

“It’s true that EU approval for genetically modified plants costs time and money,” admits Christoph Then, “but I don’t think this is an absolute market obstacle for smaller companies if they calculate that they will have products afterwards that are actually in demand by farmers and consumers.” However, these small companies are not able to survive in the context of patents. In contrast to traditional breeding methods, all genome editing applications are in principle patentable. “And this is where the large corporations are currently massively laying down their claims: DowDuPont has already submitted around 50 international applications, ‘Baysanto’ around 30, and Calyxt, Syngenta and BASF are also actively involved.” Only a few patents have so far been registered by smaller breeders.

For Heike Moldenhauer, formerly Head of Genetic Engineering at the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND), this is a clear indication that deregulation of the new technologies would not have strengthened the competitiveness of small breeders – on the contrary: “The little ones could research and develop, but as soon as they brought a variety to the market and wanted to offer it commercially, they would have to deal with the patent question – and in the best case would have to pay license fees or in the worst case a patent infringement fee.” In general, the patent system, which involves expensive lawyers and litigation, could only be afforded by large corporations with the appropriate financial resources.

Christoph Then also believes this and refers to the example of the USA: “There, the patents in connection with classic genetic engineering have contributed to the fact that the medium-sized plant breeders have almost completely disappeared.” So whoever really wants the new gene-editing processes to be used by smaller breeders, must first abolish the patents. Heike Moldenhauer therefore advocates a corresponding amendment to the EU patent directive: “To do this, however, the EU Commission would have to take the initiative – but there is too little pressure from the member states. Or too much lobbying from those who profit from the status quo.”

Future challenges

So what’s going to happen in the future? Is gene editing, with its potential opportunities, but also risks, now being slowed down in Europe? Heike Moldenhauer is convinced that it will be more difficult for agricultural companies to sell gene-edited seeds in Europe. “Because they now have to be labelled as ‘genetically modified’ and marketed just like the plants and products that result from them.” A fact that will also have consequences for the import sector. In the USA, for example, a few genome-edited products have already been released without regulation and safety assessment. For a corresponding approval in Europe, their genetically engineered origin will now have to be communicated openly – including transparent detection procedures. “The ruling by the European Court of Justice obliges the EU Commission to enforce the laws applicable to Europe against our trading partners,” comments Moldenhauer. “Anything else would be a clear violation of the law.”

As far as plant growing itself is concerned, the new technologies can of course continue to be used for research and breeding – also in Europe. “The judges didn’t give an evaluation for or against gene editing. They only correctly stated that the processes and products fall under the currently applicable genetic engineering law,” explains Felix zu Löwenstein. And there are already a number of promising projects that point to the future potential of new technologies, for example in the area of ​​drought and heat tolerance of crops. For example, researchers in the United States have succeeded in increasing the tolerance of maize to water shortages, as well as that of soybeans. However, Heike Moldenhauer remains skeptical: “Not a single new crop with these properties is yet on the market.”

Tolerance features in particular are highly complex and are based on the interplay of numerous genetic factors. For this reason, conventional, holistic cross-breeding is more suited to achieving such traits. “The reality of the products developed so far with genome editing is a herbicide-resistant oilseed rape that increases the use of chemicals in the field, and a non-browning mushroom that you can no longer tell when it is old,” says Moldenhauer. Therefore she personally does not believe that the new genetic engineering can provide the solution to current and future challenges in agriculture – a view shared by molecular geneticist Antoniou: “Genetic engineering earns more because it is patented. However, it is not what we have been waiting for – not even with a view to the rest of the world population.” Especially in the poorer regions of Africa and Asia, genetic engineering leads above all to the certainty that the centuries-old knowledge of regional varieties would be wiped out and dependency of farmers on patents would further increase. This is different from ecological management methods, which do not require any patented technologies. Using such methods, the skills and knowledge of the local farmers are preserved. “And that is the real basis for global food security.”

Need for discussion

Heike Moldenhauer of BUND does not believe that the last word has been spoken with the judgment of the European Court of Justice: “For large companies, it is a billion dollar business. So I suspect that they will push to change the genetic engineering regulations to suit them and to introduce a new genetic engineering definition that excludes gene-edited plants. “Christoph Then from Testbiotech also remains thoughtful:” A large part of the population is still critical of genetic engineering, but so far we have had relatively little discussion about the new methods. It remains to be seen whether and how genetic engineering will prevail in Europe,” says Then – and adds:“ We are only at the beginning and not at the end of the necessary social debate!”

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Neoliberalism and the Killing for Profit in Iraq

January 4th, 2020 by Bulent Gokay

On January 2, 2020, a US airstrike killed a high-profile commander of Iran’s secretive Quds Force, Qassim Suleimani, a commander of Iran’s military forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. Another man, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy of the militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units and a close adviser to Suleimani, was also killed in the airstrike near Baghdad’s airport.

Al-Muhandis and Suleimani were killed when their vehicle was hit on the road to the airport.

The Popular Mobilization had been fighting Islamic State forces alongside Iraqi government forces for years, and had increasingly come under attack themselves, with dozens of their fighters losing their lives in Iraq every year. Three days before the assassination of Al-Muhandis and Suleimani, 25 Popular Mobilization fighters had been killed by a US airstrike in Western Anbar. Al-Baghdadiya reported the mass killing: see this.

The death toll from the American bombardment of Al-Hashd Camp increased to 25 dead and 51 wounded

2019-12-30

 The Popular Mobilization Directorate announced, on Monday, the outcome of the American bombing of the crowd camp, which rose to 25 dead and 51 wounded. “The death toll from the martyrs and the wounded as a result of the American aggression that targeted the locations of the Popular Mobilization Forces in western Anbar is 25 dead and 51 wounded,” Rabiawi said in a statement to the Popular Mobilization website. He added, “The number of martyrs can be increased due to the presence of wounded people in critical condition and severe injuries.”

Suleimani’s Quds Force was a division of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, widely believed to support many Iran-backed groups, such as Hezbollah. “This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans,” the Defense Department said in its statement. “The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world.”

What are those interests? And what has their protection meant for Iraqis?

After nearly two decades of war, Iraq has experienced its least violent year: 17 years after the invasion, during 2019 2,392 civilian deaths were recorded by Iraq Body Count. In its worst year, 2006, Iraq had witnessed the violent deaths of more than 29,500 civilians.

However, the monthly and yearly totals, assembled after the painstaking daily task of extracting the data from hundreds of reports, betray the true magnitude and impact of the war on Iraqi civilians.

During 2019 the death toll was lower than any other year, since the invasion. October witnessed the highest toll, with 361 killed; August the lowest, at 93. What demonstrates the nature of the security situation in the country though is that, yet again, the killings were almost daily.

Of the 2,392 civilians killed, 92 were children.

The greatest perpetrators of violence this year were government forces, which killed around 500 protesters during May, September, October and November. Another 25 protesters were massacred by a group of gunmen in Baghdad on December 6th.

Airstrikes that killed civilians were few, with 9 losing their lives in Turkish and US airstrikes:

  • January 25th, 4 were killed by Turkish strikes in Dohuk;
  • March 24th, 1 child was killed by US strikes in Oudan;
  • September 26th, 1 was killed when Turkish planes struck in Dohuk;
  • November 4th, 3 more civilians were killed in another Turkish airstrike in Sinjar.

Iraq is still unable or unwilling to provide security and protection to its population from threats –internal and external.

The vast majority of deaths recorded this year were, as every year, direct deaths from conflict violence, that is, deaths that resulted directly from the violent actions of participants to the conflict.

As in other countries of conflict, conflict parties were also involved in criminal activities that caused deaths, for example robberies, kidnappings for extortion, or trade in narcotics. The resulting deaths from those were also recorded, as the perpetrators were committing criminal acts and associated violence in order to finance or otherwise support their conflict activities. These criminal activities did not directly further military goals, nor were they political violence; however, they were committed in order to advance the conflict objectives of the perpetrators. Therefore, these activities were part of the conflict violence and evidence that the breakdown in security the conflict caused made those crimes not only possible, but tragically also very common.

Anti-government protests have erupted on a regular basis in Iraq since 2015. But the protests of September-December 2019 are the largest and bloodiest since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein 16 years ago.

For four months, protesters have taken to the streets in Baghdad and towns and cities across the south of the country to demand jobs, basic services and an end to corruption. Hundreds of young people have been killed and thousands of others wounded in clashes with security forces.

Many Iraqis are frustrated and desperate that they are without clean water and electricity, and there is widespread poverty and high levels of unemployment.  The young protesters, most of them 15-25 years old, have risen against government corruption, lack of opportunity and deprivation, all of which leave them with dismal prospects. Expression of a ‘Saddam nostalgia’ is even noticeable among the new generation, under 30 years old, who became young adults after the invasion.

The BBC explained the reasons for the protests as ‘a narrow elite has been able to keep a firm grip on power because of a quota system that allocates positions to political parties based on sectarian and ethnic identity, encouraging patronage and corruption’, and ‘the protesters also angry at Iran’ because … [Iran] ‘has close links to Shia politicians who are part of the ruling elite.’ Due to Iran’s influence over Iraqi politics, the ‘protesters accuse Iran of complicity in what they see as Iraq’s governance failure and corruption’, the BBC reported.   Similarly, the New York Times reported  that the Iraqi demonstrators ‘demand the ousting of the government, an end to corruption and a halt to the overweening influence of Iran….the protesters’ focus reflects their frustration with the government’s failure to foster economic opportunity or deal with entrenched corruption.’  The Guardian too emphasised the link with Tehran, describing the events as ‘the uprising against the Tehran-backed authorities’.

This is the line presented by the US officials too. The U.S. stressed its concerns over the deaths of protesters in Iraq on 10 November in a statement: ‘Iraqis won’t stand by as the Iranian regime drains their resources’. Washington blacklisted three Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary leaders over their alleged role in killings of anti-government protesters in Iraq and threatened future sanctions.  Senior U.S. Treasury officials said ‘Iraqis have a fundamental right to a political process that is free from foreign malign influence and the corruption that both comes with it and fuels it’, reported by the Reuters on 6 December 2019.

As many analysts have pointed out, the overwhelming motivations of the people who took to the streets in Iraq were the low standards of living, dismal economic and employment conditions, in particular high unemployment among the young people, inefficient welfare state and food shortages.  All these are similar to the conditions of those countries that witnessed serious protest movements in the early 2010s, the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ countries – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and others.

What has been less adequately reported is that all these countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) experienced an intense economic transformation, imposed by the IMF and the World Bank, during the previous couple of decades, away from the state-command economy model of ‘Arab Socialism’ of the 1960s and 70s, and towards market-dominated neoliberal capitalism in the 1980s and 90s.  Through the guidance and assistance of the IMF and the World Bank, the MENA region pursued neoliberal economic policies (entrepreneurial freedom, strong property rights, free markets, and free trade) which led to great income inequalities and a concentration of wealth among the small political elite and its cronies.

The ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings took place within the conditions of sharply increased poverty, very high youth unemployment and lack of opportunities for young people.  Youth unemployment was over 30 percent everywhere in the region, and in Syria and Jordan young people under the age of 30 constitute more than 70 percent of the unemployed workforce.

In the whole MENA region there was, and still is, a vivid mismatch between demography and economic structure: while demography is evolving, the economic structure is totally unresponsive to the needs of growing populations.  The harsh neoliberal policies of the 1990s and 2000s made the situation worse, much worse, rather than improve the economy and provide solutions.  The most obvious common feature of the principal storm centres – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria – was far-reaching program of neo-liberal restructuring, which was directed by the IMF and put into practice quickly by the regimes, with similar devastating results. These included privatisation of almost all state owned enterprises, mass poverty, large scale unemployment, in particular growing youth unemployment, the lack of opportunities for university and college graduates, falling real wages and the accumulation of vast amounts of wealth in the hands of the country’s top ruling families.

In Egypt, for instance, the World Bank and the IMF prescribed extensive neoliberal policies since 1991. By the mid-2000s, more than a decade and a half neoliberal reforms brought the Egyptian society on the brink of a deep social crisis.  In line with the Economic Reform and Structural Adjustment Programme signed with the IMF in 1991, the public sector in Egypt was steadily privatised, and prices and rents liberalised (and increased sharply).  By 2005, 209 of the 314 public sector companies had been sold either wholly or in part, which was accompanied by massive lay-offs, and created extreme insecurity for those who were lucky enough to keep their jobs. Labour unrest increased from 2005 onwards, while high food prices and high inflation added to the suffering of the majority of people, as the businesses were celebrating positive growth rates and increased profit margins.  The World Bank reports show that ‘some 60 percent of Egypt’s population is either poor or vulnerable, and inequality is on the rise’. Egypt’s economy was ruined largely by a combination of the self-destructive policies of its regime and neoliberal policies imposed by the global financial bodies. The country’s economy suffered disastrously under an IMF and World Bank-imposed restructuring process.

The same course took place in Tunisia, Libya, Syria and other countries in the region.  These countries all started taking direct advice and loans from the IMF, the World Bank and bond markets in the 1990s, and since then their autocratic rulers had been consistently praised by these global agencies of neoliberalism, as well as the governments of the US, France and Britain.

Iraq, however, is a different story, in the sense that an exceptionally harsh neoliberal restructuring was introduced by a military invasion, led by the US army, in the most brutal and boldest way ever seen in the world.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by the Bush administration in the US, turned Iraq into a neoliberal utopia.  When Saddam Hussein’s regime was defeated and replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by Paul Bremer, a series of extensive neoliberal measures were quickly introduced in its first month without any waiting period, from privatisation of 200 Iraqi state-owned companies to reducing corporate tax from 45 percent to 15 percent, and from allowing foreign firms to retain 100 percent of their Iraqi assets to a complete restructuring the Iraqi banking system.  Iraq’s oil revenues were put in a US-dominated development fund, the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), held in an account at the Federal Reserve in New York and used for restructuring expenditure.

According to a US government appointed audit’s reports to the US Congress in 2004, 2005 and 2006, Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction (SIGIR), there was poor delivery of contracts, overcharging, embezzlement, and general fraud by private contractors, and $8.8 billion of the $23 billion money held at DFI account remains unaccounted for.

The Coalition Provisional Authority ran the occupation regime during its first 14 months and directed the most extreme version of neoliberal restructuring put in practice ever in the world, enforcing the market as the organising and regulative principle of the state and society.  Even the IMF was alarmed and advised a more cautious approach.  In less than 14 months, Paul Bremer issued 26 orders, as a result of which the Iraqi state was deprived of economic sovereignty and control of its own affairs.  More than half a million Iraqi citizens abruptly lost their jobs, after which over 50 percent of the workforce became unemployed.  All these extensive neoliberal ‘shock programme of economic reforms’ were described by the Economist in September 2003 as a ‘Capitalist Dream’.

When the war started the economy of Iraq had already been in deep trouble, following the eight-year-long war against Iran in the 1980s, the first Gulf War of 1990-91, and UN imposed financial and trade embargo on Iraq since 1990.  On top of this, after the invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority paid large sums of compensation from the Iraqi public sources to a number of international corporations, ostensibly as compensations for ‘lost profits’ or ‘decline of business’ due to Saddam Hussein’s aggressive behaviour in the region since 1990.  Sheraton received $11 million, Bechtel $7 million, Pepsi $3.8 million, Mobil $2.3 million, Kentucky Fried Chicken $321,000 and Toys R Us $190,000 – all US-based enterprises.  Israeli farmers received $8 million, supposedly because they were not able to harvest fully due to the threat from Saddam’s regime, and Israeli hoteliers and travel agencies received $15 million.  A detailed account of these compensations were given in the book by Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments. The Occupation and its Legacy. 

During the first year of the occupation, about $50 billion of reconstruction contracts were commissioned to various US corporations, including Halliburton, Bechtel, SkylinkUSA, Stevedoring Services of America, and BearingPoint. During the same period, only 2 percent of the contracts were given to Iraqi firms.

Research by the Financial Times showed in 2013 that the top 10 American and foreign contractors in Iraq have secured business worth at least $72 billion between them.  Prof David Whyte of Liverpool University describes this economic performance of the Coalition Provisional Authority as ‘one of the most audacious and spectacular crimes of theft in modern history. … The suspension of the normal rule of law by the occupying powers, in turn, encouraged Coalition Provisional Authority tolerance of, and participation in, the theft of public funds in Iraq. State-corporate criminality in the case of occupied Iraq must therefore be understood as part of a wider strategy of political and economic domination’.

The war in Iraq officially ended in 2011, when President Obama declared the withdrawal of the troops in October and the last US soldiers left Iraq on 18 December.  What was left behind, however, a deeply traumatized country with a totally bankrupt economy.  According to the UN, seven million Iraqis were living below the poverty line.  One in five of young men and significantly more young women under 24 are unemployed, in a country where almost 60 percent of the population is under 24. The draconian measures undertaken after the 2003 invasion left behind a seriously weakened Iraq in every sense.  A large amount of Iraqi money was paid to US contractors to implement local projects, many of them never finished, drowned in a sea of bureaucracy, corruption and open theft.  No one knew how many such contractors were hired and how much money were paid to them for the tasks, many of which remained incomplete. In 2009, there were about 13,000 contractors employed by US agencies.

Iraq has experienced several parliamentary elections since the invasion, the first one in 2005 and the latest in 2018. At least fifteen PMs came to power representing different political parties/coalitions. None of them, however, managed to satisfy the serious and rightful demands of the Iraqi people: ending corruption, increasing living standards, creating jobs and opportunities for increasing number of young educated people, providing security, and proper funding for the services.  There are, of course, many local reasons for this failure, from increasing security concerns to the violent civil war in next door Syria, and to longstanding divisions of the country along ethnic and religious lines.

However, the desperate state of the economy, lack of opportunities for the local people, sharply increased corruption as a result of contracting system put in place by the US pro-Consul Bremer contributed to the miserable state of affairs seriously.  At times these different factors converge, and at times they pull against each other, but the state of the economy has remained as the most significant context and the obstacle for any Iraqi government to deal with the serious problems of the country.  Successive Iraqi governments pursued the project of neoliberal transformation of Iraq, sometimes willingly, but mostly reluctantly and as a result of already tightly established links with the IMF and global financial institutions through loans and debt rescheduling.  Iraq’s debt was restructured on terms that made the country subject to fully applying IMF austerity policies, even after the occupation ended officially in 2011.  In 2006, for instance, the government accepted ‘fuel liberalisation programme’, following the IMF recommendations, that was basically cutting off all subsidies of fuel and gas products, which resulted in a sudden explosion of prices of fuel and gas-related items.  The bold neoliberal move by Coalition Provisional Authority following the invasion in 2003, reinforcement of macro-economic stabilisation, cuts in government expenditures, ending state subsidies, and the opening up of the Iraqi economy to foreign investment by selling State-Owned Enterprises, have had dire consequences for the people of Iraq. All these bold neoliberal measures contributed directly to produce a dystopian economy and a failed state, incapable of controlling its own affairs.

‘The battle of peace has to be fought on two fronts’, declared Edward Stettinius Jr., US Secretary of State in June 1945.

‘The first is the security where victory spells freedom from fear. The second is the economic and social front where victory means freedom from want. Only victory on both fronts can assure the world of an enduring peace’.

It was very much in the spirit of the UN, the spirit of cooperation to work towards peace and prosperity. It was only under those conditions, of peace and prosperity, that security was going to be achieved, in any country, in any community, in any area of human life. Security was to be understood in terms of freedom from want (prosperity) and freedom from fear (peace).

While the invasion of Iraq was 16 years ago, the post-invasion war in Iraq continues to this day. Even the war’s quietest months have been punctuated by moments of mass horror, and barely a day has passed without reports of civilians being shot or blown up. Despite any number of official declarations, there has been no ‘turning point’ towards peace, no ‘mission accomplished’ for ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’.

An entire generation of Iraqi children has known little other than life in a country riven by violence, fear, hopelessness, internal displacement and poverty. All around them, the war’s fearful legacy persists.‘We Want a True Homeland’, shouted the young protesters this year. It is common for those living outside it to see Iraq as a country of violence, of war and of constant upheaval; a country where the West has ‘tried and failed’ to provide security; as a country of terror, of ISIS, of human rights abuses and tribal conflict. Others may see it as a developing democracy, or a budding Western-style economy trying to bloom in a barren, unstable region. It is common for us living outside it to forget that this ‘trial and error’ state is also the homeland of millions of people.

The invasion in 2003 was supported by, among others, those who saw a great opportunity for Iraq to be ‘reconstructed’. The invading coalition was going to help.

On 6 April 2003, while Iraq was still under attack from coalition forces, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz stated, ‘There has got to be an effective administration from day one. People need water and food and medicine, and the sewers have to work, the electricity has to work. And that’s a coalition responsibility’. By the time the Iraqi people had a say in choosing a government, three years later, the key economic and political decisions about their country’s future had been made by their occupiers.

American and British plans for Iraq’s future economy went beyond ‘reconstruction’. The emerging state was going to be treated ‘as a blank slate on which the most ideological Washington neoliberals can design their dream economy: fully privatized, foreign-owned and open for business’ (Naomi Klein, 10 April 2003). Those whose homeland it was, the Iraqi public, were absent from these decisions. Without any democratic process, the ‘charity’, the ‘gift’ of liberal and democratic Western states was barely disguised exploitation. In the name of that ‘democratic’ dream of a privatised, foreign-owned and ‘reconstructed’ Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have lost their lives.

As Iraq was being bombed by the coalition, Klein predicted,

‘A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country has been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their newfound “freedom”–for which so many of their loved ones perished–comes pre-shackled with irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling. They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy.’

Almost 17 years later, we see the complete breakdown of trust in the political system; we see corruption, brutality and violence. Protesters carrying the Iraqi flag are demanding their homeland, as their government violates and abuses their human rights, as security forces and anti-riot police open fire using live ammunition and tear gas. As their ‘democratic government’ fails to provide opportunities, social, health and educational safeguards for its children. As, like every one of its governments since 2006, it continues to fail to provide its people with any kind of security.

Security does not simply involve and is not limited to physical attacks resulting in death or injury. That ‘only’ 2,337 civilians were killed this year, compared to 3,300 civilians killed the year before and 13,000 the year before that, does not mean that Iraq is now safer, or more secure. It does so only in a very narrow understanding of security. However, security is a much broader concept or category that includes a commitment to human rights, justice, prosperity and the creation of political, social, environmental, economic and cultural systems that are the building blocks of survival, livelihood and human dignity. In a state rife with injustice, poverty, violations of human rights, government brutality and continuous foreign intervention, there can be no security. There can also be no democracy.

However, Iraq’s devastation was not unpredictable. The neoliberal democratic system that was imposed on the country could not have produced a ‘Western-style democracy’, or the outcomes expected in a developed nation. Highly developed nations face no real threat of major war and enjoy economic prosperity, comparatively low levels of crime, and enduring political and social stability. Despite warnings to the contrary by our security services, even the threat of terrorism is minor. Iraq, on the other hand, was and still is a weak state. Between 2003 and 2020 the only constants have been the following: communal violence, terrorism, poverty, weapons proliferation, crime, political instability, social breakdown, riots, disorder and economic failure. In Iraq we observe the lack of basic security that exists in ‘zones of instability’, where Iraq, after 16 years of ‘reconstruction’, still remains.

As in all weak states, the primary security threats facing the Iraqi population originate primarily from internal, domestic sources. In such states, the more the ruling elites try to establish effective state rule, the more they provoke insurgency. Despite it being declared a democracy, Iraq lacks regime security. In Iraq and other ‘liberated and democratised’ states those internal/domestic security threats have gone hand-in-hand with the external threat posed by a collaborative external actor and the neoliberal destruction it brought to the country.

It was thought –even promised- that an Iraq free of its dictator would become a strong state. A democratic, liberal state, much like those in the developed world. However, Iraq has become a state even weaker, much weaker and less secure, than it was under Saddam Hussein’s iron rule. The continuing protests in Iraq and the killing of protesters in their hundreds by government forces, combined with a persisting insurgency, demonstrate the lack of identification of the population with ‘the state’. What we see contributing to this weakness is the new colonialism masking as political and economic development, through the principle and the process of globalisation. Neoliberal ideology has been promoted to the developing world by the chief advocates of globalisation, the IMF and the World Bank, through their liberalisation programme.

Yes, as predicted, neoliberalism has fostered inequality; a growing unemployment that has gone hand in hand with poverty and mass migration. Globalisation makes security interdependent; terrorism, gun crime and illegal migration are spill over effects of structural, political and economic insecurity in the developing world. Iraq today shows how globalisation incites rebellion and radicalisation.

The advancement of the neoliberal agenda by industrialised states through globalisation has failed to deliver the economic stability and growth it promised. Instead, globalisation continues to increase the gap between rich and poor, between and within states.  Ultimately, inequality is the biggest threat to global security.

Iraq’s neoliberal democracy ‘triumph’ can be seen in some of the victims during 2019:

A doctor trying to treat injured protesters in Baghdad was shot dead by security forces on November 6th.

Two babies died in a hospital in Nasiriya, when tear gas filled their ward, on November 11th.

The members of a family (2 men, 2 women and 4 children) were shot dead by Islamic State members in Iftikhar, on July 24th. Another family of 7 was executed by Islamic State forces in Mosul, on August 25th. Two of them were children.

When an IED was put in a bus in Karbala on September 20th, 12 passengers died.

Iraq has now become the perfect example of physical, political and economic insecurity, destroyed by its purported saviours.

A true homeland?

In the words of Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh,

The invaders come after the tyrants,

the tyrants come after the invaders

and nothing happens…

they replace handcuffs

with other handcuffs…

 

But they destroyed us

Built a prison from our dried blood

And called it a homeland

Then said: be grateful for your country

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Bulent Gokay is Professor of International Relations at Keele University.

Lily Hamourtziadou is Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at Birmingham City University and Senior Researcher for Iraq Body Count (IBC).

Note

[2] All casualty figures are from IBC database.

Featured image is from South Front

“Invisible Balance of Power”. The Phenomenon of Terrorism, The “War on Terrorism”

January 4th, 2020 by Ian Greenhalgh

The world underwent a seismic change on September 11th, 2001 when the biggest, most blatant false flag terror even yet seen took place–the attack on the World Trade Centre in NYC and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The official narrative blamed Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda Islamic terrorist group, a complete fabrication that has had far-reaching consequences.

The creation of the Islamic terrorist bogeyman began long before 9-11, the stereotypical fanatic menacingly waving AK47s and RPGs while screaming incoherently about Allah has been a mass media meme for decades–the 1985 Hollywood blockbuster Back To The Future featured a gang of Libyan terrorists, a decade later the James Cameron-Arnold Schwarzenegger movie True Lies had a plot revolving around Islamic terrorists and stolen nuclear weapons.

Clearly, powerful, shadowy figures in the West have sought to inculcate the minds of the public with the notion that Islamic terror was the new threat to peace and prosperity, to the Western, capitalistic way of life. They have used the mass media to drive this train of thought and sadly, they have been all too successful. A string of further false flag terror events blamed on Islamic fanatics has played out in countries such as Great Britain, France and Germany, the Western public has been sold on the idea that Islamic fundamentalists are a clear and present danger.

It is impossible to gain any meaningful insight into the true nature of these events and the forces driving them from the Western media, both the mainstream and ‘alternative’ forms have been utterly corrupted and co-opted. However, there are still those who seek to subvert the Western narrative and publish the truth about the geopolitics and Machiavellian machinations behind the events of the post 9-11 world.

One such figure is Pakistani author Sajjad Shaukat, in his book, Invisible Balance of Power, first published in 2005 and now republished fourth time in a revised edition, Shaukat examines the phenomena of terrorism and explains how there are both state and non-state actors behind the scenes. An example of the former would be the United States, of the latter, Al-Qaeda is the prime example. The book is packed with solid research and delves far deeper into this murky world than any Western author dares tread.

Shaukat is remarkably even-handed, his analyses notably free of prejudice as he compares and contrasts the tactics and techniques employed by both sides in the so-called ‘War On Terror’. The book contains detailed analysis of Al-Qaeda’s methods–the beheadings, the targetted assassinations, the hostage taking, the suicide bombings and the ambush attacks using improvised explosive devices. However, it also covers the methods used by the United States and it’s allies–the CIA black site prisons and their torture cells, the drone strikes, the kidnappings, the use of private military companies and their mercenaries.

Through painstaking research and in-depth analysis, Shaukat makes a compelling case that both sides in the War On Terror have employed the most cruel and ruthless terroristic methods and are responsible for the deaths of countless innocent civilians, the great majority of them citizens of Islamic countries.

The author goes further by placing this insightful analysis of the “War On Terror” against the backdrop of the global financial, social and political situation and giving a prescient viewpoint on how international finance and politics have been and will continue to be influenced by the perpetual nature of the wars involving both sides of the “War on Terror”; how social and economic instability has been created. One might consider this viewpoint to be almost clairvoyant, given recent unrest in France by the Gilets Jaunes and the ongoing violence in Afghanistan, to name just two examples.

Besides, author’s future assessments such as failure of the power factor or role force by the US-led countries in this ‘different war’ against the non-sovereign entities, prolonged war on terror, entanglement of the US/NATO countries in Afghanistan, increase in the cost of war, internal crises inside America, loss of America’s leverage of bargaining even on the small countries, economic instability in the world, state terrorism, resulting into more terrorism by the non-state actors as noted in case of Indian-Israeli brutal tactics on the Kashmiris and Palestinians, war in Syria, promotion of sectarian divide in the Islamic countries on the basis of Shia and Sunni, rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, war-like situation between Syria and Israel, between Iran and Israel, between India and Pakistan, rise of Russia and China-their collective efforts for moving the world to the multi-polar system etc. proved true.

Shaukat also presents the reader with a set of proposals for resolving this mess, including reconciliation of warring parties and reform of the UN to empower the less powerful, less developed nations, thus leaving the reader with a sense of hope that this global conflict can be resolved.

Even if you do not agree with all of his analyses, you will come away from reading this book armed with a far deeper and more realistic understanding of the post 9-11 world than you could ever hope to garner from consumption of the Western media and that makes it compelling reading for all those who wish to develop a greater, more accurate knowledge of this world we live in.

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Ian Greenhalgh is a British photographer, writer and historian with a particular interest in military history and the real causes of conflicts. His studies in history and background in the media industry have given him a keen insight into the use of mass media as a creator of conflict in the modern world. His favored areas of study include state sponsored terrorism, media manufactured reality and the role of intelligence services in manipulation of populations and the perception of events.

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A Major Conventional War Against Iran Is an Impossibility. Crisis within the US Command Structure

January 4th, 2020 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

First published on July 2, 2019. Revisions, January  4, 2020

**

America’s hegemonic military agenda has reached a dangerous threshold.

The assassination of  IRGC General Soleimani ordered by the President on January 2, 2020 is tantamount to an Act of War against Iran.

President Donald Trump accused Soleimani  of “plotting imminent and sinister attacks”: “We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war…. we caught him in the act and terminated him.”

US Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper described it as a “decisive defensive action” while confirming that the operation ordered by Donald Trump had been carried out by the Pentagon. “The game has changed” said Defense Secretary Esper.  

What Next?  

Was the assassination of General Soleimani related to Iran’s military presence in Iraq and Tehran’s support of the Baghdad government to the detriment of US interests in Iraq?

Or was it related to the broader Middle East war agenda? 

Or was it both?  The battle for Iraq is part of the broader war.  And the US is being in a sense “shoved out” of Iraq. 

While war against Iran is on the drawing board of the Pentagon, under present conditions, an Iraq style all out Blitzkrieg (conventional theater war) involving the simultaneous deployment of ground, air and naval  forces is an impossibility. 

While the US does not have the ability to carry out such a project, various forms of “limited warfare” have been contemplated including targeted missile attacks, so-called “bloody nose operations” (including the use of tactical nuclear weapons), as well as acts of political destabilization and color revolutions (which are already ongoing).

For several reasons, US hegemony in the Middle East has been weakened largely as a result of the evolving structure of military alliances.

And it is precisely because of US weaknesses in the realm of conventional warfare that a nuclear option could be envisaged.  Such an option would inevitably lead to escalation.  

Ignorance and stupidity are factors in the decision making process. According to foreign policy analyst Edward Curtin “Crazy people do crazy things”. 

Who are the crazy people in key decision-making positions? 

Trump foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Brian Hook, (Special Representative for Iran and Advisor to Pompeo), could “advise” President Trump to authorize the use of a “bloody nose operation” using tactical (so-called low yield) nuclear weapons, which the Pentagon has categorized as “harmless to civilians because the explosion is underground”.  

The bloody nose operation” as its Pentagon designation suggests is a military op which allegedly “creates minimum damage”. 

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (July 2019):

Tensions between the United States and Iran are spiraling toward a military confrontation that carries a real possibility that the United States will use nuclear weapons. Iran’s assortment of asymmetrical capabilities—all constructed to be effective against the United States—nearly assures such a confrontation. The current US nuclear posture leaves the Trump administration at least open to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in conventional theaters. Some in the current administration may well think it to be in the best interest of the United States to seek a quick and decisive victory in the oil hub of the Persian Gulf—and to do so by using its nuclear arsenal.

We believe there is a heightened possibility of a US-Iran war triggering a US nuclear strike…

( the use of tactical nukes does not require the authorization of the Commander in Chief. That authorization pertains solely to so-called strategic nuclear weapons) 

Michel Chossudovsky, January 4, 2020

***

This articles analyses America’s military agenda in relation to the Islamic Republic of Iran focussing on Iran’s military capabilities,  the structure of alliances and the crisis within the US Command structure.

1. Iran’s Military

There is the issue of Iran’s military capabilities (ground forces, navy, air force, missile defense), namely its ability to effectively resist and respond to an all out conventional war involving the deployment of US and Allied forces. Within the realm of conventional warfare,  Iran has sizeable military capabilities. Iran is to acquire Russia’s S400 state of the art air defense system.

Iran is ranked as “a major military power” in the Middle East, with an estimated 534,000 active personnel in the army, navy, air force and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It has advanced ballistic missile capabilities as well as a national defense industry. In the case of a US air attack, Iran would target US military facilities in the Persian Gulf.

2. Evolving Structure of Military Alliances

The second consideration has to do with the evolving structure of military alliances (2003-2019) which is largely to the detriment of the United States.

Several of America’s staunchest allies are sleeping with the enemy.

Countries which have borders with Iran including Turkey and Pakistan have military cooperation agreements with Iran. While this in itself excludes the possibility of a ground war, it also affects the planning of US and allied naval and air operations.

Until recently both Turkey (NATO heavyweight) and Pakistan were among America’s faithful allies, hosting US military bases.

From a broader military standpoint, Turkey is actively cooperating with both Iran and Russia. Moreover, Ankara has acquired (July 12, 2019) ahead of schedule Russia’s state of the art S-400 air defense system while de facto opting out from the integrated US-NATO-Israel air defense system.

Needless to say the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is in crisis. Turkey’s exit from NATO is almost de facto. America can no longer rely on its staunchest allies. Moreover, US and Turkish supported militia are fighting one another in Syria.

Moreover, several NATO member states have taken a firm stance against Washington’s Iran policy:  “European allies are grappling with mounting disagreements over foreign policy and growing irritated with Washington’s arrogant leadership style.”

“The most important manifestation of growing European discontent with U.S. leadership is the move by France and other powers to create an independent, “Europeans only” defense capability” (See National Interest, May 24, 2019)

Iraq has also indicated that it will not cooperate with the US in the case of a ground war against Iran.

Under present conditions, none of Iran’s neigbouring states including Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia would allow US-Allied ground forces to transit through their territory. Neither would they cooperate with the US in the conduct of an air war.

In recent developments, Azerbaijan which in the wake of the Cold War became a US ally as well as a member of NATO’s partnership for peace has changed sides. The earlier US-Azeri military cooperation agreements are virtually defunct including the post-Soviet GUAM military alliance (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova).

Bilateral military and intelligence agreements between Iran and Azerbaijan were signed in December 2018. In turn, Iran collaborates extensively with Turkmenistan. With regard to Afghanistan, the internal situation with the Taliban controlling a large part of Afghan territory, would not favor a large scale deployment of US and allied ground forces on the Iran-Afghan border.


Visibly, the policy of strategic encirclement against Iran formulated in the wake of the Iraq war (2003) is no longer functional. Iran has friendly relations with neighbouring countries, which previously were within the US sphere of influence.

The US is increasingly isolated in the Middle East and does not have the support of its NATO allies

Under these conditions, a major conventional theater war by the US involving the deployment of ground forces would be suicide.

This does not mean, however, that war will not take place. In some regards, with the advances in military technologies, an Iraq-style war is obsolete.

We are nonetheless at a dangerous crossroads. Other diabolical forms of military intervention directed against Iran are currently on the drawing board of the Pentagon. These include:

  • various forms of “limited warfare”, ie. targeted missile attacks,
  • US and Allied support of terrorist paramilitary groups
  • so-called “bloody nose operations” (including the use of tactical nuclear weapons),
  • acts of political destabilization and color revolutions
  • false flag attacks and military threats,
  • sabotage, confiscation of financial assets, extensive economic sanctions,
  • electromagnetic and climatic warfare, environmental modification techniques (ENMOD)
  • cyberwarfare
  • chemical and biological warfare.

US Central Command Forward Headquarters Located in Enemy Territory

Another consideration has to do with the crisis within the US Command structure.

USCENTCOM is the theater-level Combatant Command for all operations in the broader Middle East region extending from Afghanistan to North Africa. It is the most important Combat Command of the Unified Command structure. It has led and coordinated several major Middle East war theaters including Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003). It is also involved in Syria.

In the case of a war with Iran, operations in the Middle East would be coordinated by US Central Command with headquarters in Tampa, Florida in permanent liaison with its forward command headquarters in Qatar.

In late June 2019, after Iran shot down a U.S. drone President Trump “called off the swiftly planned military strikes on Iran” while intimating in his tweet that “any attack by Iran on anything American will be met with great and overwhelming force.”

US Central Command (CENTCOM), confirmed the deployment of the US Air Force F-22 stealth fighters to the al-Udeid airbase in Qatar, intended to “defend American forces and interests” in the region against Iran. (See Michael Welch, Persian Peril, Global Research, June 30, 2019). Sounds scary?

“The base is technically Qatari property playing host to the forward headquarters of U.S. Central Command.” With 11,000 US military personnel, it is described as “one of the U.S. military’s most enduring and most strategically positioned operations on the planet”   (Washington Times). Al-Udeid also hosts the US Air Force’s 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, considered to be “America’s most vital overseas air command”.

What both the media and military analysts fail to acknowledge is that US CENTCOM’s forward Middle East headquarters at the al-Udeid military base close to Doha de facto “lies in enemy territory”

Since the May 2017 split of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Qatar has become a staunch ally of both Iran and Turkey (which is also an ally of Iran). While they have no “official” military cooperation agreement with Iran, they share in joint ownership with Iran the largest Worldwide maritime gas fields (see map below).

The split of the GCC has led to a shift in military alliances: In May 2017 Saudi Arabia blocked Qatar’s only land border. In turn Saudi Arabia as well as the UAE have blocked air transportation as well as commercial maritime shipments to Doha.

What is unfolding since May 2017 is a shift in Qatar’s trade routes with the establishment of bilateral agreements with Iran, Turkey as well as Pakistan. In this regard, Russia, Iran, and Qatar provide over half of the world’s known gas reserves.

The Al-Udeid base near Doha is America’s largest military base in the Middle East. In turn, Turkey has now established its own military facility in Qatar. Turkey is no longer an ally of the US. Turkish proxy forces in Syria are fighting US supported militia.

Turkey is now aligned with Russia and Iran. Ankara has now confirmed that it will be acquiring Russia’s S-400 missile air defense system which requires military cooperation with Moscow.

Qatar is swarming with Iranian businessmen, security personnel and experts in the oil and gas industry (with possible links to Iran intelligence?), not to mention the presence of Russian and Chinese personnel.

Question. How on earth can you launch a war on Iran from the territory of a close ally of Iran?

From a strategic point of view it does not make sense. And this is but the tip of the iceberg.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric underlying the official US-Qatar military relationship, The Atlantic Council, a think tank with close ties to both the Pentagon and NATO, confirms that Qatar is now a firm ally of both Iran and Turkey:

Put simply, for Qatar to maintain its independence, Doha will have essentially no choice but to maintain its strong partnership with Turkey, which has been an important ally from the perspective of military support and food security, as well as Iran. The odds are good that Iranian-Qatari ties will continue to strengthen even if Tehran and Doha agree to disagree on certain issues … On June 15 [2019], President Hassan Rouhani emphasized that improving relations with Qatar is a high priority for Iranian policymakers. … Rouhani told the Qatari emir that “stability and security of regional countries are intertwined” and Qatar’s head of state, in turn, stressed that Doha seeks a stronger partnership with the Islamic Republic. (Atlantic Council, June 2019, emphasis added)

What this latest statement by the Atlantic Council suggests is while Qatar hosts USCENTCOM’s forward headquarters, Iran and Qatar are (unofficially) collaborating in the area of “security” (i e. intelligence and military cooperation).

Sloppy military planning, sloppy US foreign policy? sloppy intelligence?

Trump’s statement confirms that they are planning to launch the war against Iran from their forward US Centcom headquarters at the Al Udeid military base, located in enemy territory. Is it rhetoric or sheer stupidity?

The Split of the GCC

The split of the GCC has resulted in the creation of a so-called Iran-Turkey-Qatar axis which has contributed to weakening US hegemony in the Middle East. While Turkey has entered into a military cooperation with Russia, Pakistan is allied with China. And Pakistan has become a major partner of Qatar.

Following the rift between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is in disarray with Qatar siding with Iran and Turkey against Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Qatar is of utmost strategic significance because it shares with Iran the world’s largest maritime gas fields in the Persian Gulf. (see map above). Moreover, since the GCC split-up Kuwait is no longer aligned Saudi Arabia. It nonetheless maintains a close relationship with Washington. Kuwait hosts seven active US military facilities, the most important of which is Camp Doha.

Needless to say, the May 2017 split of the GCC has undermined Trump’s resolve to create an “Arab NATO” (overseen by Saudi Arabia) directed against Iran. This project is virtually defunct, following Egypt’s withdrawal in April 2019.

The Gulf of Oman 

With the 2017 split up of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Oman appears to be aligned with Iran. Under these circumstances, the transit of US war ships to the headquarters of the US Fifth fleet in Bahrain not to mention the conduct of naval operations in the Persian Gulf are potentially in jeopardy.

The Fifth Fleet is under the command of US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT). (NAVCENT’s area of responsibility consists of the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea).

With the split up of the GCC, Oman is now aligned with Iran. Under these circumstances, the transit of US war ships to the headquarters of the US Fifth fleet in Bahrain not to mention the conduct of naval operations in the Persian Gulf would potentially be in jeopardy.

The strait of Hormuz which constitutes the entry point to the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman is controlled by Iran and the Sultanate of Oman (see map, Oman territory at the tip of the Strait).

The width of the strait at one point is of the order of 39 km. All major vessels must transit through Iran and/or Oman territorial waters, under so-called customary transit passage provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

More generally, the structure of alliances is in jeopardy. The US cannot reasonably wage a full-fledged conventional theatre war on Iran without the support of its longstanding allies which are now “sleeping with the enemy”.

Trump’s Fractured “Arab NATO”. History of the Split up of the GCC. 

Amidst the collapse of  America’s sphere of influence in the Middle East, Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) consisted at the outset of his presidency in an improvised attempt to rebuild the structure of military alliances. What the Trump administration had in mind was the formation of a Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), or  “Arab NATO”. This US-sponsored blueprint was slated to include Egypt and Jordan together with the six member states of the GCC.

The draft of the MESA Alliance had been prepared in Washington prior to Trump’s historic May 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia, meeting up with King Salman, leaders of the GCC as well as “more than 50 high-ranking officials from the Arab and Islamic worlds in an unprecedented US-Islamic summit.”

The Riyadh Declaration, issued at the conclusion of the summit on May 21, 2017, announced the intention to establish MESA in Riyadh.” (Arab News, February 19, 2019). The stated mandate of the “Arab NATO”  was to “to combat Iranian hegemony” in the Middle East.

Two days later on May 23, 2017 following this historic meeting, Saudi Arabia ordered the blockade of Qatar, called for an embargo and suspension of diplomatic relations with Doha, on the grounds that The Emir of Qatar was allegedly collaborating with Tehran.

What was the hidden agenda? No doubt it had already been decided upon in Riyadh on May 21, 2017  with the tacit approval of US officials.

The  plan was to exclude Qatar from the proposed MESA Alliance and the GCC, while maintaining the GCC intact.

What happened was a Saudi embargo on Qatar (with the unofficial approval of Washington) which resulted in the   fracture of the GCC with Oman and Kuwait siding with Qatar. In other words,  the GCC was split down the middle. Saudi Arabia was weakened and the “Arab NATO” blueprint was defunct from the very outset.

May 21, 2017: US-Islamic Summit in Riyadh

May 23, 2017: The blockade and embargo of Qatar following alleged statements by the Emir of Qatar. Was this event staged?

June 5, 2019: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt sever diplomatic relations, cut off land, air and sea transportation with Qatar  accusing it of  supporting Iran.

June 7, 2017, Turkey’s parliament pass legislation allowing Turkish troops to be deployed to a Turkish military base in Qatar

January 2018, Qatar initiates talks with Russia with a view to acquiring Russia’s  S-400 air defense system.

Flash forward to mid-April 2019: Trump is back in Riyadh: This time the Saudi Monarchy was entrusted by Washington to formally launching the failed Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA) (first formulated in 2017) despite the fact that three of the invited GCC member states, namely Kuwait, Oman and Qatar were committed to the normalization of relations with Iran. In turn, the Egyptian government of President Sisi decided to boycott the Riyadh summit and withdraw from the “Arab NATO” proposal. Cairo also clarified its position vis a vis Tehran.  Egypt firmly objected to Trump’s plan because it “would increase tensions with Iran”.

Trump’s objective was to create an “Arab Block”. What he got in return was a truncated MESA “Arab Block” made up of a fractured GCC with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Jordan.

Egypt withdraws.

Kuwait and Oman officially took a neutral stance.

Qatar sided with the enemy, thereby further jeopardizing America’s sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf.

An utter geopolitical failure. What kind of alliance is that.

And US Central Command’s Forward headquarters is still located in Qatar despite the fact that two years earlier on May 23, 2017, the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, was accused by Saudi Arabia and the UAE of collaborating with Iran.

It is unclear who gave the order to impose the embargo on Qatar. Saudi Arabia would not have taken that decision without consulting Washington. Visibly, Washington’s intent was to create an Arab NATO Alliance (An Arab Block) directed against Iran “to do the dirty work for us”.

Trump and the Emir of Qatar, UN General Assembly, October 2017, White House photo

The rest is history, the Pentagon decided to maintain US Central Command’s forward headquarters in Qatar, which happens to be Iran’s closest ally and partner.

A foreign policy blunder? Establishing your “official” headquarters in enemy territory, while “unofficially” redeploying part of the war planes, military personnel and command functions to other locations (e.g. in Saudi Arabia)?

No press reports, no questions in the US Congress. Nobody seemed to have noticed that Trump’s war on Iran, if it were to be carried out, would be conducted from the territory of Iran’s closest ally.

An impossibility?

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The War Hoax Redux. How to Start Another War

January 3rd, 2020 by Edward Curtin

.

America’s hegemonic military agenda has reached a dangerous threshold: The assassination of  IRGC General Soleimani ordered by Donald Trump on January 2, 2020 is tantamount to an Act of War against Iran.

US Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper described it as a “decisive defensive action” while confirming that the operation ordered by Donald Trump had been carried out by the Pentagon. “The game has changed” said Defense Secretary Esper.  

This incisive article by Edward Curtin first published in June 2019 intimates that Trump’s team of advisors have been working on creating a justification for confronting Iran. According to Edward Curtin “Crazy people do crazy things”. 

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The Trump administration has a problem: How to start another war – this time with Iran – without having a justifiable reason for one.  No doubt members of Trump’s team, led by the war-thirsty and perdurable John Bolton, are working hard to solve this urgent problem.  If they can’t find a justification, they may have to create one. Or perhaps they will find what they have already created.  Whatever the solution, Americans should feel confident that their leaders, together with their Israeli and Saudi bedfellows, are not sitting on their hands.  Crazy people do crazy things.

After the Gulf War in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, it slowly became apparent what alternative media and war critics had insisted was the case before and during these wars: That the U.S. government had achieved a propaganda coup by tightly controlling the media access to the truth and by getting the mainstream media (MSM) to do their bidding.  This ex post facto revelation was, of course, not prime time or front page news, but was reported bit-by-bit by critics or was buried deep within the news reports.  While some of the truth arrived, it did so obliquely, and corporate media devotees went back to their gullible and comforting sleep.

Yet once again Americans are being played for fools by the government and MSM.  The open secret, the insider’s fact, is that the U.S. plans to attack Iran if they can seduce enough Americans that they are threatened.  The Trump people know this, the corporate media shills know it, for the Bush-Clinton-Obama scenario, written years ago, is to act as if it weren’t so, to act as if a peaceful solution were being seriously considered. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. all learned better.  The U.S. never seeks a peaceful solution.

As in 1991 and 2003, the MSM play along with Trump, who repeatedly says, or has his spokespeople say, that the decision hasn’t been made and that the U.S. wants peace. Within a few hours this is contradicted and confusion and uncertainty reign, as planned. Chaos is the name of the game. But everyone in the know knows the decision to attack has been made at some level, especially once the propaganda dummies are all in place.  But they pretend, while the media wait with baited breath as they anticipate their countdown to the dramatic moment when they report the incident that will “compel” the U.S. to attack.

The corporate media, however, always avoid the key question: How will the U.S. justify its fait accompli and what is its goal?  This question is too disturbing to broach, for it suggests that the fix is in, the show is rigged, something is rotten in the symbiotic relationship between a government intent on war and a media in that government’s service.

What could, in the eyes of the American people, justify a war against Iran, assuming the Trump administration even cares about justification?   Will Iran attack Israel?  No. Will Iran attack the United States?  No.  Of course not, not least because it can’t, even if it wished to do so, which it clearly doesn’t.  Any such Iranian attack – absurd as such a suggestion is – would give the Trump administration ample justification for a war.

So what is the administration to do now that the news from so many quarters – Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. – is so bad?  What, if they are intent on a war with Iran, are they going to do about the absence of a cause for war?  It seems that they are in a dilemma.

“Seem” is the key word. Logically speaking, if there is a war plan, if there is a Bolton/Pompeo/Israeli scenario, then the gun on the wall in the first act of this deadly play, must go off in the final act, no matter how long it takes.  The audience is being primed by the administration and their media mouthpieces to expect a “smoking gun.”  But what might it be?

“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,” George W. Bush said at a staged pseudo-event on October 7, 2002 as he set Americans up for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It was all predictable,  blatant deception.  And the media played along with such an absurdity.  Iraq obviously had no nuclear weapons or the slightest capability to deliver even a firecracker on the U.S.

Now Iran is the Nuclear devil.  Now Iran must be stopped.  Despite clear evidence to the contrary, Iran has been and will be accused of developing nuclear weapons.  Saddam was said to have had them; Iran only developing them, yet both lies need no evidence, just rhetoric.

Nevertheless, it might be claimed that secret “evidence” must be withheld on “national security” grounds or for fear of endangering Iranian informers or their families. Thus a preemptive attack could be justified on the grounds of preventing another “Ground Zero” (a misnomer when applied to the World Trade Center site, but conveniently evocative for stirring nuclear fears).

The American people, still severely shaken by the attacks of September 11, 2001, would surely be alarmed by such a “threat,” especially if it were linked to terrorism (on the high seas? In the air?), which has been the modus operandi of one administration after another.  Aren’t we at war with terror?    But it is a strategy – linking nuclear fears with terrorist fears – that  the Trump administration may be hoping will cover its lack of evidence with emotional blackmail.  But it is a strategy that may not work, since, for some very odd reason, people may prefer facts to fictions.  I emphasize “may.”

Perhaps Trump’s neo-con henchmen’s  best option, therefore, is to promote or create a Tonkin Gulf incident, “unprovoked aggression against American forces,” as Lyndon Johnson put it when he lied to the world in order to get the war he wanted after JFK had been disposed of by the CIA.  It worked in 1964, so it might work again, especially with the help of our special “ally” in the region – Israel.  And today’s attackers won’t be aggressors, they will be terrorists, which seals the deal. Bombs away!

It’s hard to say with certainty what justification the Trump war-crazies will settle on, but time is running out for them.  The news is bad from every corner, so something must be done.

Many years of secret American/Israeli planning for an attack upon Iran can’t be wasted.

The stage is set.  The charade continues.  The MSM keep preparing us for the “smoking gun.” Something’s got to give, and propaganda geniuses are working overtime on delivering us an Oscar-winning justification.

Don’t buy it.

Especially since you’ve heard this before, and I’ve written it.  With a few minor changes and the substitution of Iran for Iraq, this column was published on the morning before George W’s infamous  (the 16 words about uranium from Niger) State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003,  fifty-one days before the invasion of Iraq, and one week before Colin Powell’s lies at the United Nations.

Shocked and surprised should be words eliminated from our vocabularies.

***

For an important discussion of various possibilities involving war against Iran, listen to this incisive discussion and realize the danger these madmen are creating.

Provocations in the Gulf of Oman: Will John Bolton Get His War on Iran?

By Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Pepe Escobar, and Yves Engler, June 16, 2019

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

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2020 Might be Challenging for Ethiopia, But It Can Count on China’s Help

January 3rd, 2020 by Andrew Korybko

Ethiopia is in the midst of historic change but also on the edge of what some observers fear is a looming crisis ahead of the upcoming elections in May. It’s here where the country’s strategic Chinese partner can be of help, not only in sharing its own socio-political experiences, but also in continuing to invest in Ethiopia too.

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Ethiopia had a pretty rocky year all throughout 2019 as it prepares for elections this upcoming May, which observers are closely following to see whether the ambitious socio-political reforms that Prime Minister Abiy presided over since entering office in early 2018 have enough support to keep his party in power. In order to understand the importance of these elections, the reader must become familiarized with the most significant developments that recently occurred in Africa’s second most populous country.

PM Abiy’s rise to the top has been nothing short of meteoric as this then-41-year-old former intelligence officer was surprisingly elected by the former Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to be its chairman in March 2018 following the resignation of his predecessor Hailemariam Desalegn in response to a growing crisis in the Oromia Region. That part of the country is its most populous, plus its titular people comprise the largest ethnic plurality in Ethiopia.

It was therefore extremely symbolic that Abiy was elected since his father is a Muslim Oromo while his mother was a Christian Amhara, the first-mentioned group of which had been clamoring for more political representation in recent years while the latter traditionally ruled over Ethiopia until the end of its civil war in 1991. He was then confirmed by parliament as the country’s newest Prime Minister, after which he immediately set out to undertake a broad range of reforms that changed everything in Ethiopia.

One of PM Abiy’s greatest achievements at home has been to remove the terrorist designation from several prominent opposition groups and invite its foreign-based members back to the country to participate in rebuilding its democracy. He also released many of their supporters from prison and eased state control over the media, which has led to diversity of discourse freely taking place in society. Building off of that, PM Abiy promised to hold multiparty elections that observers expect to be the most democratic in Ethiopia’s history.

On the foreign policy front, PM Abiy swiftly moved to make peace with regional rival and former province Eritrea with which Ethiopia had been engaged in a cold war for nearly two decades at that point following a very bloody border conflict from 1998-2000. This rightly earned him the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this year and completely revolutionized the geopolitical situation in the Horn of Africa. Eritrea’s decision to stop arming the Ethiopian opposition groups formerly designated as terrorists greatly facilitated PM Abiy’s peace push at home.

Despite having the noblest of intentions, however, PM Abiy’s ambitious socio-political reforms have inadvertently unleashed such ethno-religious and regional violence that Ethiopia had the world’s largest number of internally displaced people last year at approximately three million. The Amhara Region saw a failed coup attempt and the Sidama Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region overwhelmingly voted to become a separate region in its own right, raising fears about a future chain reaction of fragmentation.

PM Abiy’s response has been to promote his national unifying vision of “medemer” (“synergy”) and to rebrand the EPRDF as the Prosperity Party, though crucially without the participation of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that was considered by many to be the ruling party’s core coalition member since the end of the civil war. The TPLF has been extremely outspoken in its opposition to his reforms and refused to join the Prosperity Party.

As the reader should now be able to see, Ethiopia is in the midst of historic change but also on the edge of what some observers fear is a looming crisis ahead of the upcoming elections in May. It’s here where the country’s strategic Chinese partner can be of help, not only in sharing its own socio-political experiences, but also in continuing to invest in Ethiopia too. China is the country’s largest foreign investor, primarily involved in manufacturing through the establishment of industrial parks, and recently completed a regional railway.

The Djibouti-Addis Ababa Railway pairs perfectly with PM Abiy’s structural reforms to truly open up the Ethiopian economy to the rest of the world. Moreover, China has shown that it’s sympathetic to its strategic partner’s problems at the moment by agreeing to restructure some of its debt during this extremely sensitive systemic transition. This contradicts the fake news narrative spread by some foreign countries that Chinese development loans are so-called “debt traps” that result in recipients “surrendering their sovereignty”.

It can’t be overstated just how crucial Chinese assistance has been in Ethiopia’s economic rise, nor how pivotal of a role it’ll play going forward. China started scaling up its investments in Ethiopia following the end of the country’s civil war in 1991 and then after the conclusion of its border conflict with Eritrea in 2000. Each time, the international community wrote off Ethiopia as a “failed state” because of famine, poverty, and war, but China believed in the country when no one else would. Importantly, it invested billions of dollars to prove it.

The end result is that hunger has decreased, incomes have risen, and the country is comparatively more stable than when China first invested there. In addition, Ethiopia also boasts Africa’s fastest-growing economy. China’s investments in manufacturing and infrastructure served as a catalyst for these achievements, which also add subtance to PM Abiy’s pleas for peace by giving Ethiopians a tangible reason to reconsider any reckless moves that might destabilize their country ahead of the upcoming elections or shortly afterwards.

It’s true that Ethiopia is entering 2020 surrounded by a lot of uncertainty, but it’s not anything that China hasn’t been through before. The People’s Republic had to rebuild the country after the civil war but didn’t have any external assistance to help it. Ethiopia, however, can always count on China to share its socio-political experiences over the decades and to continue investing in it through the Belt & Road Initiative. Both of these friendly outreaches increase the odds that stability will prevail and Ethiopia’s regional rise won’t be derailed.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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Israel’s Plan to Overthrow the King of Jordan, Annexing the West Bank and the Jordan Valley

January 3rd, 2020 by Adnan Abu Amer

The Israeli right is preparing to present a plan to overthrow the Jordanian king after annexing the Jordan Valley in the West Bank to realise the dream of Jordan being converted to Palestine. They aim to establish a confederation between the PA and “Palestinian Jordan” because the Israeli right is interested in annexing the West Bank without the millions of Palestinians within it. Forcing them to head to Jordan.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper revealed in late December the Israeli right-wing’s approaches and plans, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is based on the claims that Israel has major plans for Jordan, but these plans do not include the same king. This is evidenced by several articles and reports written by right-wing Israeli writers this month who all present similar justifications and results, the main of them all is to destroy the peace treaty with Jordan.

Right-wing Israelis believe that annexing the Jordan Valley is a tactical operation aimed at hitting two Israeli birds with one stone: the first is to work to annex the West Bank and cancel the peace agreement with Jordan, and the second is to topple the Hashemite royal family and to embody the dream of Jordan being Palestine.

It is interesting that this dream is shared by all the Israeli right, with all its components and currents, because they are enthusiastic supporters of the idea that Jordan is Palestine. The ruling Israeli right has begun to detest King Abdullah II.

When King Abdullah is shamefully toppled, Israel will be able to complete its annexation of the West Bank and establish a confederation between the Palestinian Authority and “Palestinian Jordan”.

Moreover, according to the Israeli perception, when that happens, the Palestinians in the West Bank will obtain political rights in Jordan.

According to this Israeli theory, when the Palestinian state is established in Jordan, the Palestinians can resolve their issue, put an end to their suffering and stop using armed operations against Israel, because since 1988, Palestinians in the West Bank have been able to obtain temporary Jordanian passports.

It is worth noting that the Israeli approach may contradict Jordan’s interest in reducing the total number of Palestinians in the kingdom because it refuses at the moment to receive Palestinian refugees from Syria in the way it allowed Syrian and Iraqi refugees to seek refuge on its soil.

Perhaps such aspirational Israeli calls towards Jordan are encouraged by the fact that the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is no longer practical or realistic. Meanwhile, there are claims that the alternative solution is the establishment of an Arab Palestinian state east of the Jordan River, which will achieve peace between Israel and Palestine. They also claim that the river can be used to transport goods and products from either side, with the Israeli Jewish state on one side and the Arab Palestinian country on the other, side by side.

There is another Israeli scenario of Jordan hosting more Palestinians and instead of the kingdom becoming a Palestinian republic, they become citizens with full rights in the Hashemite Kingdom.

The return of Gilad Sharon after a long absence was noteworthy. He is the son of the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had strong relations with the late King Hussein, King Abdullah’s father. Gilad Sharon returned to claim that the current Jordanian ling would not dare to oppose the annexation of the Jordan Valley by Israel, because Israel has him by his weak spot and the continuation of his rule depends on Israel. He also said that if the king opened his mouth, Israel would turn off the water tap and leave the kingdom to go thirsty.

All these are efforts to drive the king to cancel the peace agreement with Israel and allow Tel Aviv to remove him.

King Abdullah finds himself caught between the anger of the Jordanian public and Israel. The situation of his government has become really difficult because his country’s budget is suffering, the sources of income are declining, the Gulf states, which have always been a source of support for Jordan, have reduced their aid, and millions of Arab refugees have flocked to the kingdom in recent years.

In spite of the increase of tensions between Jordan and Israel over the past year, security coordination between them continues as usual and the intelligence cooperation is at its best. This raises questions about the king failing to use this card to pressure Israel unless this cooperation serves him and not the kingdom.

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Featured image: Jordan bans Israelis from entering Al-Baqura‏ area – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

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This American Died for Our Lies in Afghanistan

January 3rd, 2020 by Peter Van Buren

It’s common this time of year to write summary articles trying to make sense of the last 12 months; you’ll soon see them popping up everywhere. But all of them will omit one of the most important stories of the year. For the first time in some two decades, America hasn’t started a new war.

A total of 6,857 American service members have died in war since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. George W. Bush began that war, then invaded Iraq in 2003. Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, then immediately expanded the war in Afghanistan. He went on to restart America’s war in Iraq after it was over the first time, launch a new war that turned Libya into a failed state and triggered refugee flows still disrupting European politics, engage the U.S. in Yemen, and abet a humanitarian crisis in Syria. So three full years without a new war is news indeed.

This year also brought mainstream confirmation of the truth behind the Afghan war. The Washington Post, long an advocate for all the wars everywhere, took a tiny step of penance in publishing the Afghanistan Papers, which show that the American public has been lied to every step of the way over the past 18 years about progress in Afghanistan and the possibility of some sort of success. Government officials from the president(s) to the grunt(s) issued positive statements they knew to be false while hiding evidence that the war was unwinnable. The so-called Afghanistan Papers are actually thousands of pages of notes created by the Special Inspector for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a watchdog federal agency created to oversee the spending of close to $1 trillion in reconstruction money.

The SIGAR documents (all quotes are from the Post‘s Afghanistan Papers reporting) are blunt.

“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan—we didn’t know what we were doing,” said Douglas Lute, a three-star Army general who served as the White House’s Afghan war czar during the Bush and Obama administrations. He added: “What are we trying to do here? We didn’t have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking. …If the American people knew the magnitude of this dysfunction, 2,400 lives lost. Who will say this was in vain?”

There are plenty of similar sentiments going back a decade, with hints of the same almost to the first months of the conflict. Dead men tell no tales, they say, but the record of lies is as stark, final, and unambiguous as the death toll itself.

But Afghanistan was always supposed to be more than a “kinetic” war. The real battles were for the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, with money as the weapon. One of the core lies told to the public, and on the ground in Afghanistan, was that a large portion of the reconstruction money would be spent on education. “We were building schools next to empty schools, and it just didn’t make sense,” a Special Forces officer explained. “The local Afghans said they wanted their kids out herding goats.” Sure, people have to eat, but America would create an Afghan democracy from the primeval mud, with cluster bombs as its Adam, and schools for boys and girls as its Eve.

And it is on that bruised prayer of a lie that Anne Smedinghoff, the only State Department Foreign Service Officer to lose a life in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, died one April morning in 2013 long after the Afghanistan Papers show her bosses in Washington knew the war was unwinnable.

This is what all those lies translated to on the ground. Anne was a diplomat, just 25 years old, assigned by the State Department to create good press in Afghanistan so the people at home could see we were winning. It was a hard fight, her work was supposed to show, but the sacrifices were worth it because we were accomplishing this. This, in the very specific case that destroyed Anne, was handing out unneeded books in front of an unused school building to Afghans who lacked clean water 12 years into America’s longest war so she and (important) more senior people could be photographed doing so. Inside the Beltway, this was called a “happy snap,” photos of Americans doing good with (albeit always in the background) smiling Afghans lapping it up. Yet through a series of grossly preventable micro-errors in security nested like Russian dolls inside the macro-error of what Anne or any American was doing in rural Zabul, Anne’s body was riddled by jagged fragments of steel from an IED.

The school where Anne was killed was “built” by the U.S. in October 2009, only to enjoy a $135,000 “renovation” a few months later that included “foundation work, installation of new windows and doors, interior and exterior paint, electricity and a garden.” The original contractor did miserable work but got away with it in the we’ll-check-later Potemkin world of the Afghanistan Papers. The Army noted as the school opened that “the many smiles on the faces of both men and women showed all were filled with joy and excitement during this special occasion.” That the Afghans in the area likely needed sewage processing to lower infant mortality levels was irrelevant.

The limited official reporting on what happened to Anne bungled most of the details. State clung (as they later did with Benghazi) to the weak tea that the “cause” of Anne’s death was the actions of the bad guys—anything we did up to our very presence on the ground was treated as a kind of minor detail. The desire not to look too deep was underscored by then-secretary of state John Kerry, who said that Anne “tragically gave her young life working to give young Afghans the opportunity to have a better future,” and enjoined the media into blending Anne’s death into what the entire world now knows was the fake narrative Anne herself died trying to create.

Kerry is an easy target because of his Vietnam-era protests, including his famous statement to Congress in 1971 about that war: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” To the State Department, what mattered in the life and then death of Anne Smedinghoff was never such a question, but simply damage control for what the Afghanistan Papers show was an already-failed story.

Anne was only one of thousands of Americans and literally-only-God-knows how many Afghans who died for our lies in Afghanistan. That’s why the biggest story of 2019 is the one no one is talking about—that for the first time in decades, we seem to be slowing this all down. In 2019, only 34 American service members died in war. In 2009 it was 459; in 2003 it was 526.

Someone will inevitably dismiss my writing here as playing politics with a young woman’s death. But if you read just one more sentence, read this: Anne’s presence in Afghanistan was about politics, and her death delivering books for a photo-op was a political act in support of lies. That thrusts her into the role of symbolism, whether anyone likes it or not, and our job is to determine what it is that she symbolizes and try to learn from it.

On the same day that Anne died, an airstrike inadvertently killed 10 Afghan children.

There are nights it takes a fair amount of tequila to abort thoughts about why no one gets impeached for wasting human lives. I am ashamed to admit that I usually just drink from the bottle. But tonight I’ll use a glass, so I can raise it to Anne. I know she wasn’t the last to die for the Afghan mistake, and that there will be “papers” for places like Libya and Syria, too. But there’s always hope at the bottom of a glass, isn’t there?

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Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent.

Featured image: An April 8, 2013 memorial service for Anne Smedinghoff at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Anne was killed in an insurgent attack on Saturday April, 6. 2013 while traveling to donate books to a school in Qalat, Zabul province. (Photo by Musadeq Sadeq/U.S. State Department)

Turkey Transfers Ottoman Archives to the Palestinian Authority to Counter Israel’s Land Claims

January 3rd, 2020 by QudsN

Turkey has given a copy of Ottoman-era archived documents to the Palestinian Authority (PA) to help Palestinians legally counter the Israeli occupation’s land claims, according to Hebrew news sources.

The archives include tens of thousands of land registries from the Palestinian territories under the Ottoman Empire’s control between the years 1516 to 1917.

“Lawyers from the PA are already using the materials in the archive, in order to undermine Israel’s claim on land around Israel,” and especially in occupied Jerusalem and West Bank, according to “Israel National News.”

Turkish authorities delivered the archives to representatives of the PA in Ankara last year and a part of the archives was later transferred to Bethlehem.

Though the documents in the archives have the potential to shake up the occupation state’s real estate market, nothing has happened so far, it said.

But lawyers from Jerusalem’s Arab neighbourhoods are regularly turning to the archive to find documents that help them in legal battles over claims to many properties, mostly in the Jerusalem area, “Israel National News” said.

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Featured image is from Quds News Network

Trump Ordered the Assassination of Soleimani, and the Middle East Prepares for Possible War

January 3rd, 2020 by Steven Sahiounie

Qasem Soleimani was assassinated last night in Baghdad by a drone strike ordered by President Trump. The Iranian Commander of the ‘Quds Force’ was killed alongside the leader of the Iraqi ‘Popular Mobilization Forces’, Jamal Jaafar Ibrahimi, aka Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, along with at least 6 persons.

Regional leaders and analysts feel that Trump has crossed a ‘red-line’ by killing such a high-level Iranian official.  This may illicit a comparable attack on a US official of equal stature. This decision by Trump is unprecedented, and many feel demonstrates his chaotic Middle East foreign policy.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said the Pentagon had taken “decisive defensive action” against Soleimani, and confirmed the attack was on the orders of Trump. He added prophetically, “The game has changed,”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed revenge while his Defense Minister, Brig. Gen. Amir Hatami, said their response would be crushing, and the Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, called the strike an “act of international terrorism”.

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi condemned the U.S. “assassination,” adding that the killing of the Iraqi militia leader was an act of aggression against Iraq and a breach of the conditions under which American forces operate in the country. This killing is the newest in a long line of US actions which periodically cause the Iraqi government and parliament to debate a final ouster of US troops.

Iraqi protestors broke into the US Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday, lighting fires, throwing stones and spraying Anti-American graffiti on the walls.  While the actual embassy was not breached, there was significant fire damage sustained to the outer walls. The protestors sought revenge for the deaths of 24 Iraqi militia members who were targeted and killed by US airstrikes on Sunday, with dozens of others wounded.  The Khataib Hezbollah is an Iraqi militia on the Iraqi government payroll and had fought alongside the US in the defeat of ISIS.

President Trump has blamed the militia, without any evidence presented, for the death of an American contractor, and the injury of US troops in an unclaimed attack at a military base in Kirkuk on Friday.  On Sunday morning, the US forces conducted F-15 airstrikes on 5 facilities in Iraq and Syria which the Pentagon claims are tied to the militia. US Defense Secretary Mark Esper confirmed that Trump ordered the strikes.  The Kataib Hezbollah is an Iraqi militia that operates under the umbrella of the ‘Popular Mobilization Units’ who are an Iraqi government–sanctioned home defense force.

The protestors could be heard chanting, “Death to America” as they burnt US flags and stepped on images of the US Ambassador. The spokesman for Kataib Hezbollah, Mohammed Muhi said, “We will not leave these tents until the embassy and the ambassador leave Iraq.”

“Iran will be held fully responsible for lives lost, or damage incurred, at any of our facilities,” President Trump said in a tweet. “They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!”

The Iraqi interior minister, Yassin al-Yasiri, said in an interview near the embassy that the US attacks had prompted this violence.

“These are the dangerous ramifications of this strike,” he said. “What happened today is the danger that we were afraid of, and that the Americans should have been afraid of.”

Condemnation of the US airstrikes continued as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Abdul Mahdi, announced an official three-day mourning period for the Iraqis killed in the strikes, which he called an “outrageous attack”, and the Iraqi Foreign Ministry reiterated the government’s condemnation of the US airstrikes, and the Iraqi government announced on Monday they would be forced to review its relationship with the US.

The US government and the US media identify the Kataib Hezbollah as a ‘Tehran-backed Shite militia’.  Iraq is a Shite majority, and the Iraqi government is Shite dominated and is aligned with its neighbor Iran both culturally and economically.  The militia is made up of Iraqi citizens, who are fighting terrorism on their soil and have died fighting ISIS.  Trump blames Iran for the Friday attack, but he has attacked Iraq which is hosting US troops, and is supposed to be an ally in the war on terror, killing Iraqi soldiers who have no proven connection to the Friday attack.

In December 2018, Trump visited US troops at a base in Iraq but failed to give any notice to the government in Baghdad, who perceived the arrogant slight as a violation of their sovereignty. In February, Trump announced that he wanted US troops to remain in Iraq to watch Iran, which caused former supporters of the US in Iraq to denounce their presence.  Iraq’s President Barham Salih, a longtime diplomat in Washington, said in March,

“We are surprised by the statements made by the U.S. president on the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. Trump did not ask us to keep U.S. troops to watch Iran.”

In March the Iraqi parliament debated ousting the US military from Iraq, which fields an estimated 5,200 troops there.

“There is a broad consensus among the various political blocs and national forces to eject foreign presence in all forms,” said Fadhil Jabr Shnein, a deputy in the Iraqi parliament.

Qais al-Khazali, a militia commander claimed the US military presence was intended to serve Israel and not Iraq and called for the US to leave Iraq.

The cancer of the Middle East began with the 2003 invasion of Iraq by President Bush.  The disease that was started has spread and has never received treatment.  Iraq remains a destroyed nation, and the current protestors filling the streets in the thousands since October 1 are demanding electricity, water, schools, jobs, medical care, and security which they have never seen since Saddam Hussein was forcibly removed from office by the US. The US is responsible for the deaths of approximately 655,000 Iraqis as a direct result of the invasion from 2003 to 2006. The US attacks abroad for regime change have since continued, such as Libya, Egypt, and Syria.

The US invasion and decimation of Iraq produced a sectarian divide which the US used as the basis of the new Iraqi version of democracy.  The US imposed a sectarian constitution on Iraq which is the reason the current protesters are in the streets demanding a new secular form of government, which is not run on religious sects and their corresponding parties, as the corrupt Iraqi officials cut up the budget to their advantage, and the determent of the people.

Ilan Goldenberg, former Middle East expert under Obama, and now a scholar with the Center of New American Security, said “Unfortunately, I highly doubt the Trump administration has thought out the next step or knows what to do now to avoid a regional war.”

Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA official and counter-terrorism expert, said “For the legitimacy of the Iranian regime, a forceful response against the U.S. should be expected. The American public needs to understand that we may lose American lives after this act.”

Trump’s critics among the Democrats are fearful this heavy-handed strike may lead to an escalation.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a political commentator. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Iraq: The October Revolution of 2019 and the Iran-US Conflict

January 3rd, 2020 by Dirk Adriaensens

The revolts that have swept over Iraq since 1 October 2019 come at a critical moment of increasing tensions between Iran and the United States, both allies of the Iraqi government.

Rivalry between the US and Iran increases

On August 29, 2019, the International Crisis Group published a report calling for the US-Iran conflict not to be settled in Iraq.

“In June, various rockets were fired at American installations in Iraq, and in July-August, explosions destroyed the storage sites for weapons and a convoy of Iraqi paramilitary groups associated with Iran. These incidents helped push US-Iranian tensions to the brink of confrontation and underlined the danger of the situation in Iraq and the Gulf.

Although the US and Iran have not so far collided directly with each other, they are forcing the Iraqi government to take sides. Iraqi leaders are working hard to maintain the country’s neutrality. But increasing external pressure and internal polarization threaten the survival of the government.

What needs to be done? The US and Iran must refrain from engaging Iraq in their rivalry, as this would undermine Iraq’s weak stability after the fight against ISIS. With the help of international actors, Iraq should maintain its diplomatic and domestic political efforts to remain neutral. ”

For geographical and historical reasons, Iraq is in the eye of the storm. Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran and Tehran’s response put heavy pressure on the Iraqi government, a partner for both. The US expects Baghdad to resist Iran, and Iran expects Baghdad to resist the US. An almost impossible position.

Relations between the US and Iran have always had a dual character in Iraq. There has been cooperation between the two countries since the 2003 invasion to pacify Iraq, and at the same time, relations are very conflicting. The two countries are fighting each other for influence in the Middle East. The withdrawal of the Trump government in May 2018 from the nuclear deal and the reintroduction of US economic sanctions against Iran in November 2018 have created an explosive situation. Halfway through 2019, following Washington’s decision to tighten sanctions, a series of incidents opened the door to a new war that could engulf the entire Middle East.

Iran has used the power vacuum after 2003 to invest heavily in Iraq’s political system, economy and security system. Several Shiite militias and notorious death squads, allied to Iran, such as the Badr Brigades, were integrated into the brutal and sectarian National Police, created by the US. Together with the US, they fought the National resistance movement, while also resisting the presence of the US. The US and Iran also worked closely together during the four-year battle to defeat ISIS (2014-2017). Iranian-affiliated Iraqi Shiite militias formed the core of the Hashd al-Shaabi (popular mobilization forces – PMF), an amalgam of paramilitary forces that responded to Great Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s 2014 call to fight ISIS.

In the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion and the subsequent fight against ISIS, Baghdad has the largest US embassy in the Middle East and the largest number of US troops (more than 5,000) in six currently operating military bases:

  • Forward Operating Base Abu Ghraib is one of the first military bases to be established in Iraq by the United States of America. The base is in Abu Ghraib, in the province of Anbar. It is just 32 km from the center of Baghdad and only 15 km from the international airport of the Iraqi capital.
  • Justice Camp Base Base in Kadhimiya, Iraq. Camp Justice, formerly known as Camp Banzai.
  • Forward Operating Base (FOB) Sykes is located in the northern Iraqi province of Nineve, a few miles outside of Tal Afar. The base was used as an established outpost for combat and tactical operations of the United States during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
  • Camp Taji, Iraq – also known as Camp Cooke – is in the immediate vicinity, just 30 km from Baghdad. The base is used by coalition forces in Iraq and not just by the United States.
  • Joint Base Balad was one of the many military installations that are maintained and used by the US in Iraq. It was known by multiple names, including Balad Air Base, Al Bakr Air Base, Camp Anaconda or LSA Anaconda. The base is one of the largest of the Americans.
  • Victory Base Complex – also called VBC – is a combination of military installations around Baghdad International Airport. The complex includes 10 bases – Victory Fuel Point, Slayer, Striker, Cropper, Liberty, Radwaniyah Palace, Dublin, Sather Air Base, Logistics Base Seitz and Victory. The most important is Camp Victory. It houses the headquarters for all American operations in Iraq. The camp also includes the Al Faw Palace.

The end of US-Iran detente

The defeat of ISIS and the inauguration of President Donald Trump have put an end to the silent American-Iranian detente in Iraq and this has led to a period of escalating rivalry. In the aftermath of the Iraqi parliamentary elections of May 2018, that rivalry became very clear. Both Washington and Tehran tried to exert influence through their favorite actors. Their disputes over the formation of the government lasted thirteen months and yielded a list of acceptable, but weak figures, who, even within the political parties to which they belong, lack strong support. Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and President Barham Salih, two somewhat isolated politicians, were appointed in October 2018.

Adel Abdul-Mahdi (image on the right) is the personification of the bankrupt and corrupt political regime imposed by US imperialism. He started his career as a member of the Ba’ath party, then became a leading member of the Iraqi Communist Party and then went into exile in Iran as a loyalist to Ayatollah Khomeini. He returned to Iraq on the back of American tanks and joined the puppet government in 2004 as finance minister. He was described by the US Council on Foreign Relations as “a moderate technocrat who is helpful to American interests.” Like his predecessors since 2004, he helped organize the looting of Iraq’s oil wealth to enrich foreign companies, the local ruling oligarchy, and corrupt politicians and their supporters.

The function of the Minister of the Interior, Defense and Justice remained open for eight months, largely as a result of constant rivalry between Iran and the US. The tug-of-war between the two countries has been going on since 2003, because both the US and Iran must approve the composition of a government after every election. This shows that sovereignty for Iraq is still a distant dream.

US policy towards Iran has put strong pressure on the Abdul-Mahdi government. When Washington reactivated the sanctions against Iran in November 2018, the US called on the Iraqi government to stop payments to Tehran for natural gas and electricity and to diversify its energy imports, including through contracts with US companies. Baghdad asked Washington for more time to pursue alternatives for fear of reprisals from Iran and electricity shortages. Temporary respite from the Trump government allowed Baghdad to continue importing gas and electricity from Iran, but the US continued to urge Baghdad to sign energy infrastructure contracts with US companies.

However, Abdel Mahdi concluded a $ 284 million electricity deal with a German rather than an American company. The Iraqi prime minister refuses to abide by US sanctions and still buys electricity from Iran and allows extensive trade between the two countries. This trade produces large amounts of foreign currency that stimulates the Iranian economy. Abdel Mahdi is willing to buy the S-400 and other military hardware from Russia. He has signed an agreement with China to rebuild essential infrastructure in exchange for oil. And finally he tried to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia and showed his intention to distance himself from US policies in the Middle East. All these decisions made Abdul Mahdi extremely unpopular with the US.

Israel also interferes openly in Iraq. The country used its F-35i stealth fighter jets to attack Iranian targets in Iraq in July and August, seriously damaging four Iraqi bases used by Iranian troops and proxies as a supposed repository of Iranian ballistic missiles. The Iraqi government minimized this issue, first attempted to ignore it, and even attempted to let Israel off the hook. It took weeks before Abdul Mahdi announced in a television interview that there were “references” to Israel’s responsibility.

This reluctant position of the regime in Iraq is evidence of the loyalty to the US. There was not even a trace of indignation from the Iraqi government when Netanyahu bragged about bombing Iraq during his election campaign. The US denied any involvement in these attacks, but it is very doubtful that Israel would hit Iraqi targets without at least the consent of Washington. As a result, US military and coalition forces in Iraq must now request official approval before launching air operations, including in the campaign against ISIS.

Another requirement of the Trump administration is for the Iraqi government to dissolve the Iranian-related militias (PMF). Since the defeat of ISIS, these militias have taken control of various regions in Iraq and have also participated in the recent elections. No unit of the public militias was dissolved, on the contrary: In 2016, the government formally integrated the PMF into the security forces and has no effective control over their actions. The Fatah front, a collection of various militias from the PMF, became the second largest formation after the recent elections.

Endemic corruption

Despite the enormous oil wealth in Iraq, 32,9% or 13 million Iraqis live below the poverty line and youth unemployment is 40 percent according to recent figures from the IMF, while young people under 25 make up 60 percent of Iraq’s 40 million inhabitants. Half of all Iraqis are under the age of 18. The overall unemployment rate is estimated at around 23 percent, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics in Baghdad. The Iraqi organization “Al-Nama” estimates the percentage of unemployed women at more than 80%. Employment Rate in Iraq decreased to 28,20 percent in 2018 from 43,20 percent in 2016. Electricity is supplied for 5 to 8 hours a day, water is polluted, there is a failing medical system, education levels are very low, corruption is endemic. These are just a few of the problems that frustrate Iraqis. Politicians never keep their promises. Restoration and improvement projects are promised, but scrapped before the ink has dried up and the money being allocated disappears into corrupt pockets. The oil, which accounts for more than 90% of government revenues, is also the most important commodity on the black market. Criminal networks, including oil ministry staff, senior political and religious figures, are allegedly involved in corruption, in collaboration with Mafia networks and criminal gangs that smuggle oil and generate large profits. The three most disturbing problems for Iraqis are corruption (47%), unemployment (32%) and safety (21%).

Iraq is one of the most corrupt countries in the Arab world, according to Transparency International reports. The country occupies the 168th of the 180 countries in the corruption index. Deep-rooted corruption in Iraq is one of the factors that has been hampering reconstruction efforts for more than a decade. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has “lost” $ 500 billion during his term of office (2006-2014), according to the Iraqi Integrity Committee (CPI). “Nearly half of the government’s revenues during the eight-year period were “stolen” or “disappeared”, said Adil Nouri, spokesperson for the CPl in October 2015. He called this “the biggest political corruption scandal in the history”. Iraq’s oil revenues amounted to 800 billion dollars between 2006 and 2014, and the Maliki government also received support of 250 billion dollars from various countries, including the US, during that period.

The World Bank ranks Iraq as one of the worst-governed states in the world, and the Iraqi government remains one of the most corrupt regimes in the world. The Iraqi government has so far made little effort to restoring the destroyed cities of its largely Sunni population after the fight against ISIS. It has done little to establish any form of ethnic or sectarian conciliation, and far too much of  the ‘oil wealth’ is consumed by its politicians, officials and a government sector that is one of the best paid and least productive in developing countries.

Corruption, waste of government resources and the purchase of military equipment have increased Iraq’s budget deficit from $ 16.7 billion in 2013, $ 20 billion in 2016 to $ 23 billion for fiscal year 2019. MiddleEastMonitor quoted the head of the parliamentary finance committee Haitham Al-Jubouri on 18 December: “Iraq’s foreign debt amounted to more than $50 billion. More than $20 billion was paid back over the last period”. According to the official, Iraq still owes $27 billion to foreign countries, in addition to $41 billion to Saudi Arabia given as a grant to the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Iraqi lawmaker Majida Al-Tamimi confirmed that Iraq borrowed $1.2 billion in 2005 and $1.4 billion in 2006 from the World Bank and external parties to support investment and bridge the budget deficit. Also the IMF came to the rescue with billion dollar loans that make the country even more dependent on the US and other foreign creditors. It’s not surprising that 78% of the Iraqi people consider the Iraqi economy as “bad” or “very bad”, according to IIACSS polling firm.

The constitution allows Iraqis to have two nationalities, but stipulates that the person appointed to a higher or security position must renounce the other nationality (Article 18, 4). However, no Iraqi official has complied with this Regulation.

Many senior Iraqi officials have dual nationality, including Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (France), former Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and former Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari (UK) and Parliament President Saleem al-Jibouri (Qatar). Of the 66 Iraqi ambassadors, 32 have dual nationality, as well as an estimated 70 to 100 MPs.

Then there are the ministers in the current Iraqi government with a Western background: Mohamed Ali Al hakim – Minister of Foreign Affairs (UK and US), Fuad Hussein – Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister (the Netherlands and France), Thamir Ghadhban – Minister of Oil and Deputy Prime Minister (UK).

Many officials accused of corruption by the Iraqi authorities have fled the country to escape persecution thanks to their foreign passport, including former ministers Abdul Falah al-Sudani (trade), Hazim Shaalan (national defense) and Ayham al-Samarrai (electricity).

Najah al-Shammari serves as the current defense minister from 2019 onwards in the government of Adel Abdul Mahdi. He is a Swedish citizen who is part of the Mahdi cabinet. The minister is under investigation for benefit fraud for claiming housing and child benefits from Sweden, according to the online news site Nyheter Idag and the Swedish newspaper Expressen. He is charged with “crimes against humanity” in Sweden.

President Barham Salih is a British citizen. A complaint was made against him by “Defending Christian Arabs”, who asked the Advocate General in Scotland to open an investigation against him for “crimes against humanity by giving permission or being complicit in the widespread attack on civilian demonstrations in Iraq that resulted in mass killings, injuries, illegal arrests and kidnapping of people. ”

Civil servants are known to demand bribes up to tens of thousands of dollars to give government contracts or even only to put a signature on a public document; also to arrange a lucrative function for a friend or family member. “Political parties are refusing to leave the cabinet because they will no longer be able to grab hold of the treasury”, a senior member of the ruling coalition told AFP.

Many appointments in the Cabinet, Directors General in Ministries and embassy staff are family members of Moqtada Sadr and Hadi Al-Ameri, the head of the Badr organization, the military wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, the two largest parties in the Iraqi Parliament.

Amid the expected rescheduling of the cabinet, positions are already ‘bought’, according to a senior Iraqi official. “A political party is assigned a certain ministry and then sells that ministerial position to the highest bidder”. He described a transaction worth $ 20 million. It is a well-known script: the candidate pays the party for the position and then tries to appropriate as much public money as possible, with which the debt can be paid off. The system is so deeply rooted, observers say, that there is little that Abdel Mahdi can do to stop it.

Iraqi Prime Minister receives many visitors

Donald Trump said in February 2019 that US soldiers must remain in Iraq “to guard Iran.” Two months later, on April 7, Iran’s chief, Ali Khamenei (image on the left), called on Iraqi leaders to ensure that the US military leaves “as quickly as possible.” Meanwhile, a procession of US and Iranian officials came to Iraq to defend their respective interests, including Trump himself during an unannounced visit in December 2018 and, four months later, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with the Iraqi Prime Minister on 17 September to discuss a new military training mission to Iraq. Amid the current uprising, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also arrived in Baghdad on 8 October to discuss escalating tensions between the United States and Iran in the Gulf region.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned Iran on December 13 for a “decisive” reaction if US interests are endangered in Iraq, following a series of rocket attacks on bases where US forces are housed. The military base at Baghdad International Airport became the target of two missiles on December 12. It was already the 10th attack on that basis since October. “We use this opportunity to remind Iran’s leaders that any attack by them or their proxies, which harm Americans, our allies or our interests, will be answered with a decisive response from the US,” Pompeo said in his statement.

The US military leadership has also made it clear that the death or injury of an American citizen is a red line that will lead to retaliation. “My fear is that the Iraqi government is not willing to take action, and if there is no willingness to stop this, then we will come to a point where we are pushed into a corner,” said a US military official. “We will not eat rockets all day and keep quietly watching when some of us are killed.” The US has sent between 5,000 and 7,000 extra troops to Iraq.

ISIS is no longer a big problem for Iraq

Iraq has changed so much because of the protest movement, that ISIS may no longer be an important challenge. The sectarian polarization from which ISIS benefited has faded. Moreover, now that many Sunnis have experienced a double trauma due to the draconian control of ISIS and the subsequent military campaign to recapture their territories, most of them no longer want to have anything to do with the terror group. The Iraqi security forces, in turn, have somewhat curtailed their sectarian excesses and forged a better relationship with the Sunnis.

Despite these reasons for optimism, securing peripheral areas where ISIS is still active remains necessary. But that is a task that should be entrusted to the Iraqi armed forces. The government still needs to rebuild the economies and public services of the areas devastated by the war against ISIS so that displaced persons can return. Healing the wounds of this conflict remains difficult. The judicial approach of the Iraqi government after ISIS threatens to deepen the contradictions in the country. “ISIS Families”: Citizens with alleged family ties to ISIS militants, who have been expelled from their homes, are in danger of becoming a permanently stigmatized underclass.

And as if there are not enough problems already, the Iraqi government must also provide an answer to reports that predict bleak economic prospects and a financial crisis in 2020. The military fight against ISIS was expensive and has exhausted the state treasury. The reconstruction of affected areas such as Nineve, Anbar and Salahaddin and the housing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who remain displaced by the fighting will be even more expensive.

The “lost youth” of Iraq take the future into their own hands

On October 1, young protesters appeared on Tahrir Square in Baghdad to express their dissatisfaction with the unlivable situation in their country. “No future”, “Iraq is done”, “Iraq is finished”, were often heard statements by young Iraqi people, who fled en masse from the country in search of a safe haven where they could build a meaningful future. According to a recent poll, the number of young people who absolutely wanted to leave the country had risen from 17% to 33% between 2012 and 2019. Since the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011, there have been continuous peaceful protests against what the Iraqi anti-occupation movement calls “the second face of the occupation”: the neoliberal economic structures and the sectarian corrupt political structures, a country which remained under control of imperialism. Those protest actions have had no effect so far. But that could soon change.

In the months prior to the October mass demonstrations, university graduates organized sit-ins at various ministries in Baghdad, often together with graduates from other cities. Security forces unleashed hot-water cannons on the sit-ins that were held from June to September.

Instead of giving in to the demands of the young people, the authorities launched a campaign to demolish homes and shops of unemployed and poor workers built on state-owned property in the southern cities of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes, including some who had bought their land from militias or corrupt government officials. Most of them had used up all their savings, had incurred debts or relied on the help of their social network.

On 22 September, a small group of civilian activists in Iraq called to demonstrate on 1 October. They had no idea that their call would result in a general uprising.

The call, which insisted on the need to get out on the street against “the poorly functioning government”, was spread through various social media and was supported by the Al-Hikma Islamic Current, an Islamic Shiite political organization.

The established parties responded differently to the call. The Ba’athists announced that they could seize the opportunity to regain power. Muqtada al-Sadr noted that the end of the current government was near. The Workers Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI) warned the masses against participation in what they saw as protests organized by the Islamic parties. On the eve of October 1, there was a lot of confusion about who exactly was behind the call.

The protest would take place on Tuesday at 10 a.m. – a deliberate choice to distinguish the action from the Friday meetings organized by the Sadrists as well as to disrupt a working day (Friday is Iraq’s closing day). In the first hours of the demonstration on Tahrir Square in Baghdad, there were only a few hundred demonstrators. Most were supporters of the popular former commander of counterterrorism forces, General Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, who were angry with the government’s decision to degrade him.

Soon other demonstrators filled the square. Around noon, the government started using violence against the protesters, first in the form of water cannons and tear gas, and later they used live ammunition. When at least 10 protesters were killed after the first day of protest, the uprising spread to all southern Shiite provinces, including the important oil port of Umm Qasr near Basra, reducing economic activity by more than 50 percent. Since the uprising in October, protesters have blocked access to oil fields in the southern cities of Basra, Nasiriyah and Missan and closed the main roads to ports to paralyze the oil trade. On November 2, the blockade of the Umm Qasr port, the most important access to Iraq, had already cost the government nearly $ 6 billion.

Iranian-sponsored Arab Shiite militias joined the government’s security forces and shot the protesters at random. Death squads faced unarmed demonstrators and every day protesters were shot. The government blacked out social media, shut down the internet, and announced a curfew in various cities. The demonstrators erected barricades and burned tires to prevent militia and government forces from entering their neighborhoods. The fight went on. An Iranian-sponsored militia, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, controlled the main access to Tahrir Square, the central square in Baghdad, and shot at demonstrators who were trying to reach the square. A new militia supported by Iran, Saraya al-Khorasani, attacked the al-Ghazaliya district in Baghdad, bombed a hospital and killed people in their homes.

On October 6, dozens of women and children were killed in Sadr City, the poorest district of Baghdad. Other cities also turned into a battlefield. Protesters set fire to the Islamic Shiite party offices in Nasiriyah and Missan and proclaimed Nasiriyah a city free of government parties. The deterrent effect of the government’s violent repression – along with its allegations of foreign influence – could not stop the protests, on the contrary, more and more people came to the streets. Protesters decided on October 25 to launch a new wave of demonstrations to honor the victims.

In Baghdad, the mobilization was initially motivated by socio-economic motives. The first demonstrators were unemployed youth from the Shiite east side of the city. Many have gone on a general strike to support the protesters and Iraqi unions are organizing events on Tahrir Square to support the protests. In southern Shiite Iraq, teachers’ unions have led a general strike movement in most schools and universities. Civil society students and organizations have also joined the second wave of protest that began on 25 October. Resistance to the political elite includes all social classes. It has become the largest grassroots movement in the modern history of Iraq. Millions of demonstrators take part in the daily actions and demonstrations.

On October 25, protesters and government forces faced each other on the Al-Jumhuriya bridge in Baghdad and two other bridges over the Tigris River that lead to the Green Zone. The demonstrators succeeded in occupying these strategic bridges, where government buildings, villas of top officials, embassies and offices of military mercenaries and other foreign agencies are located. Protesters attempting to move from Tahrir Square to the Green Zone were confronted with extreme violence: government forces used skull-piercing tear gas canisters, sound bombs and live ammunition. The Green Zone covers an area of ​​142 hectares and houses the US embassy of 750 million dollars, which was formally opened in January 2009 with a staff of over 16,000 people, mostly contractors, but including 2,000 diplomats.

The courage and creativity of the mass demonstrators are remarkable. Drivers of tuk-tuks – motorized three-wheeled rickshaws – have transported injured people from Tahrir Square to nearby hospitals. Civil society organizations, trade unions and political groups have set up tents on the square to provide logistical support, medical services, food and water supplies, helmet distribution, educational sessions and more. Doctors, nurses and medical students offer treatment to wounded and sick people on the square day and night. When protesters made a call to bring food to the square, families, restaurant owners, shopkeepers and others outside the camp flooded the protesters with food. The unemployed, the handicapped, members of Baghdad tribes and surrounding areas, academics, the Workers Communist Party of Iraq, the current Al-Sadr party, women’s organizations, opposition members of Parliament, the Iraqi Communist Party – all are involved in the mass demonstrations.

The majority of demonstrators grew up during the US invasion and occupation and the ongoing violence that followed. A banner from a young demonstrator reads: “We are a generation born in your wars, we spent our youth in your terrorism, our adolescence in your sectarianism and our youth in your corruption. We are the generation of stolen dreams and premature aging”. To the question: “How often have you felt so depressed in the past six months that nothing could encourage you?”, 43.7% of Iraqi respondents in the 2019 poll answered: “often” and 39.3% “sometimes” . This says something about the desperation of the Iraqi youth.

Absent in the current protests are the established political parties. These youth protests came as a surprise for them. The influence of well-known clergymen on the course of the protests, such as Great Ayatollah al Sistani and Moqtada al Sadr, has decreased considerably.

Moqtada al Sadr’s attempt to calm down the protesters by announcing that his followers would leave the parliament in solidarity with the protesters did not change the situation much. Protesters criticized the lack of solidarity by the two most important religious institutions in Iraq. They asked: “where is your duty to the Iraqi people, your dedication to piety and faith? Is the anthem played by a lady on the violin worse than killing hundreds of Iraqis?” They referred to an event a few months ago in which both Sunni and Shiite institutions protested against a woman playing the violin during the opening of a sports event in Najaf, because they felt that this was against the “true faith.”

Repression

The protest escalated within a few days with hundreds of deaths and thousands wounded. Party and government offices were set on fire in various cities.

General Qasem Soleimani (image on the right), commander of the forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and architect of the Iranian regional policy visited Baghdad several times since 1 October to discuss the strategy against the uprising with the Iraqi leaders, including Haidi Al Amiri, who heads one of the largest parliamentary blocs in Iraq and the Badr organization supported by Iran.

Most of the deaths are caused by machine gun fire and snipers, randomly in the crowd and on identified protest leaders. Amnesty International stated that security forces in Baghdad had deployed military-grade tear gas shells “to kill demonstrators instead of dispersing them.” These 40 mm shells are, according to Amnesty’s analysis, Serbian Sloboda Ĉaĉak M99 shells, but also M651- tear gas shells and M713 smoke shells produced by the Defense Industries Organization (DIO) of Iran Commissioner Yousra Rajab of the Iraqi parliamentary human rights commission said government forces used CF gas bombs containing poisons that cause blindness, miscarriages in pregnant women, strokes and burns that can lead to death.

The Iraqi army admitted on Monday 7 October that it had shot at demonstrators in Baghdad. “Excessive violence was used and we have begun to hold the commanding officers who have committed these crimes responsible,” the statement said. It was the first time since the outbreak of protests that security forces acknowledged that they had used excessive force.

The government sent the military anti-terrorism troops to Nasiriyah and the situation was initially resolved without further violence. But then came November 28. The security forces raided the demonstrators in Nasiriyah at night, killing at least 46 people and injuring many more.

An eyewitness: “They opened fire non-stop. They recaptured the bridge within five minutes … because they didn’t stop shooting, people ran away. I saw at least five people die before me. Everyone who was shot and killed was left on the street and the troops beat everyone they had captured. I saw them beating people as if they wanted to kill them. It was a catastrophe.

“We ran into houses to hide. The armed forces said through their loudspeakers: “If someone is hiding in a house, come outside or we will blow up the houses”. We had to come out. They were still shooting. They arrested and chased the remaining protesters to al-Habboobi square, the traditional place for the protests. But many residents of the city had gathered there to protect the protesters: men, women and children. The shooting went on until 7 a.m. ”

“The scenes from Nasiriyah this morning look more like a war zone than a city with streets and bridges. This brutal attack is only the last in a long series of fatal events in which Iraqi security forces have acted terribly violently against largely peaceful demonstrators,” said Lynn Maalouf, Middle East director at Amnesty International.

Security forces have launched a widespread campaign of night-time raids, arresting protesters. While some have vanished without a trace, others were subjected to torture and only released after being forced to sign pledges promising to stop participating in protests.

The security forces also resort to enforced disappearances as a way of creating an atmosphere of fear and paranoia among demonstrators. They have targeted medics, lawyers and journalists in particular. In addition, activists and journalists have received warnings that their names would be added to blacklists if they did not stop criticizing the authorities. Security forces have also infiltrated demonstrations, deliberately inciting violence and surveilling activists.

The authorities have systematically prevented information about human rights violations in the context of protests from getting out, including through sustained internet blackouts and the muzzling of government institutions. Paramilitary groups sent their militants to television channels that reported on the protests to destroy their equipment and studios. They attacked wounded protesters in hospitals and kidnapped and threatened journalists, doctors and everyone who supported the demonstrations. The Iraqi Communications and Media Commission issued warnings to five TV channels and decided to close nine others, as a direct result of their coverage of demonstrations. Despite constant reports of kidnappings, arrests and killings, definitive figures and exact information are not available.

Iraqi professor Kamel Abdul Rahim:

“I have never been convinced that Iranian General Qasim Soleimani played a major role in Iraqi politics, but the slaughter committed yesterday (November 28) in al-Nasiriya and Najaf (where at least 69 people were killed) ), a massacre that will no doubt spread to Tahrir Square in Baghdad, is a blatant expression of the way Soleimani views Iraq as an Iranian province. The Iranian ruling administration will never accept its loss in Iraq. They could possibly accept the loss of Yemen or Lebanon and even Syria … but Iraq is the red line.”

“Adel Abdul Mahdi, the generals and the other warlords, the entire political class … they all chose the deadly recipe of Soleimani. We are on the threshold of a bloody phase. The Trump government opted for silence and perhaps approved Soleimani’s plan. After all, there is a great consensus between the two “enemies” America and Iran. The theater for their conflict is Iraq ”.

“Iraqi citizens are the new threat to their common agenda because they oppose this imposed system. The Iraqi citizen has become a burden and the Iraqi people can only count on themselves to bring about change.”

Washington’s silence

Ironically, both Washington and Tehran oppose the protesters’ demand for the abolition of the regime. The position of the US is clear in support of the regime, as evidenced by the telephone conversation that US Foreign Minister Pompeo had with Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi, on the sixth day of the protests, in which he spoke about “the power and depth of the strategic relations between the two countries”, while the blood of the killed protesters had not yet dried up.

The US Department of Foreign Affairs, which is largely concerned with securing the US bases, had initially not commented on the bloody repression of the demonstrators. However, at the end of October, after it was reported that Iran had concluded an agreement with the major Iraqi political parties to keep Mahdi in power and suppress the protests even harder, Washington began to talk about “respecting the demands of the protesters.”

The Atlantic Council, a pro-American think tank on international relations, explains precisely why the US remains so silent about the uprisings in Iraq: “Should the government decide to undertake real reform, it will need support from the international community. On this point, the United States needs to be careful. While calls from the US Embassy to avoid violence are certainly appropriate, it is important to remember that Iraqis are not just tired of Iranian meddling, but anyone’s. While the United States, so far, does not seem to be the focus of the protests, a recent Iraqi opinion poll showed a favorability rating for the United States at 22 percent, which at least was higher than the Iranians, who were at 16 percent. The poll also noted, however, that nearly 43 percent of Iraqis believe the United States influences Iraq in a significant way and that 53 percent believe the 2003 invasion’s purpose was to “occupy Iraq and plunder its wealth.” These numbers suggest that a strong, visible response from the United States could just make things worse.”

An Iraqi uprising initiated by the Shia population

Protests against the Shiite-led government originated in the central and southern provinces of Iraq, which have traditionally been the backbone of Iranian influence in the country. But this is not a Shiite uprising. This is an Iraqi uprising. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq tried to put an end to this system, but failed. Their protests in 2013 led to the emergence of ISIS and the destruction of their cities.

In the capital, sit-ins and strikes by students symbolizes the hope of a young generation that yearns for a non-sectarian policy. But in the south, where militia-backed militias are stronger than the state or the state itself, and where a party or militia can dominate the security apparatus, the anger of the people is even greater.

In Amara, for example, a crowd burned the headquarters of a powerful Iranian-backed militia. Guards opened fire, and during subsequent collisions, demonstrators pulled the wounded commander of the militia out of an ambulance and killed him.

Protesters stormed the Iranian consulate in Najaf, the seat of the powerful Shiite clergy of Iraq. They accused the Iraqi authorities of turning against their own people to defend Iran.

The Guardian reported on 29 November: “In the beginning, only a few dozen people protested,” says a 22-year-old demonstrator in al-Shatrah. “But when the locals heard the bullets and saw that their boys were killed, they left their homes. It became a matter of honor. We decided to free our cities from these parties.”

Many of the most powerful Iraqi politicians and militia commanders come from the south. The youth in the region formed the backbone of the Shiite militias who fought against the Islamic State (ISIS). Anger towards the militias and political parties began, activists say, with the defeat of ISIS, when young men returned from the front lines and discovered that their commanders had become warlords and had accumulated wealth and business contracts.

“So many politicians and officials come from this region, and yet this is a very poor province,” said Mohamed, a human rights activist and anti-corruption campaigner. “During the elections, politicians give people blankets and a few phone cards, give a few men a job with the police, repair a road … that’s how they win votes. After 16 years of Shiite rule, the children now say it was better under Saddam. ”

“Who are the Hashd al Shaabi? Our children were the Hashd. These politicians and commanders climbed on their backs to achieve their goal and gain power and wealth. ”

For Mohamed, “the status of the Shiite clergy has collapsed. If a militia commander now would come to the square, he would be beaten with shoes.” In the south, some of the most bloody incidents have occurred since the uprising began.

Iraq is governed by power sharing between religious and ethnic parties. Each party has their own militias, which are also internally divided and who want to obtain as much economic and political power as possible. Militia leaders who belong to these groups sit on administrative boards and control the ports, borders, oil fields, trade, etc.

The city of Basra is a good example, where the Shi’a Muslim Al-Dawa party controls the Al-Burjisiya oil field, the Sheeba and Al-Muthanna gas fields, the Basra International Airport and the Umm Qasr seaport. Another group, consisting of Asaib Ahl al-Haq and the Badr militia, controls the port of Abu Flous and the railway line. The Sadrist militia controls the stadium of the city and the Al-Shalamcheh border crossing with Iran. Al-Hikma, a Shiite Islamic block, guards the North Al-Rumaila oil field, the port of Al-Maqal and the border crossing with Safwan with Kuwait. Other areas such as the port of Khor Al-Zubair and the rectorate of Basra University are controlled by clans such as the Al-Battat.

Business contracts only go to people or companies that are affiliated with the ruling parties and their militias. Corruption is widespread, law enforcement is completely absent. Political parties and their militias flourish by using state revenues to enrich themselves, ranging from factories and agriculture to tourism, Islamic banking and private schools. Bribes for state contracts with foreign companies are channeled through the parties and militias that control the ministries.

In the predominantly northern Sunni areas of the province of Anbar and Mosul, which were bombed during the war against ISIS, people are not yet en masse on the streets. This is not because of a lack of support, but because of the repressive action against any sign of opposition. Even those in the region who have expressed their solidarity on Facebook are being arrested by security forces, while the authorities have made it clear that anyone who opposes the government will be treated as “terrorist” and ISIS sympathizer.

Regarding the position of the Kurds, the Kurdish leaders fear that they will be on the losing side if any change would occur in the current political system because an amendment to the Iraqi constitution would affect their guaranteed rights. They are therefore not opposed to the Iraqi government and Prime Minister Mahdi.

An uprising of the Iraqi youth

The current uprising was initially dominated by young people between the ages of 17 and 23. The younger generations no longer believe in political parties and the country’s leaders. At Tahrir Square in Baghdad, protesters have set up a “wall of wishes”, Reuters reported on 26 November. “I hated Iraq before October 25, now I am proud of it,” said 16-year-old Fatima Awad. “We used to have no future and no one would protest because everyone was scared. Now we are all gathered in Tahrir Square,” she added.

Unemployment is particularly high among graduates, the vast majority of whom are looking for work in the public sector because the private sector is so weak. Pathogenic factors associated with unemployment are increasing, including suicide, drug addiction and depression. Unemployment has boosted organized crime and has encouraged many young men to join militias.

In addition to the economic slump, the social fabric of Iraq has crumbled since the US-led invasion in 2003. The occupation exacerbated the destruction Iraq had already suffered as a result of the Gulf War of 1991, the bombing campaigns of the 1990s by the United States and the UK , and the murderous economic embargo since 1990. But despite this bleak reality, it is the youth of Iraq who are the driving force behind the ongoing protests.

The hope for a better future not only lives within Iraq, but also among the Iraqis in the diaspora. From Sydney to Toronto and also in Belgium, solidarity campaigns are being organized with the revolts. Sundus Abdul Hadi, an Iraqi-Canadian artist and author wrote in Medium.com on 1 November: “I would say that most of us in the diaspora have been completely seized or even obsessed with what is happening in our motherland. We are with heart and soul with the people in Iraq. Without social media I don’t know what I would do. It gives us the opportunity to make direct contact with people in Iraq, to ​​share their vision and experiences. This I’d say that most of us in the diaspora have been completely absorbed, if not obsessed, with what is going on in our motherland. We are living it, body and soul, with the people in Iraq. If it wasn’t for social media, I don’t know what I’d do. It is giving us an opportunity to connect directly with people in Iraq, to share their vision and experiences. This is in complete contrast to the one-dimensional and one-sided images that came out of the Iraq war in 2003 from embedded journalists. (…) This revolution is also for those of us outside of Iraq, who are displaced or exiled, always longing to return, living in our nostalgias and traumas. It is for the Iraqis that have been robbed of a land to return to, of a homebound future to lay claim to. It is for the Iraqis, like me, who gave birth to children in faraway countries, whispering into their ears that they are Iraqi despite the fact that Iraq is an illusory, mythical place plagued by war and instability.”

At the front of the square, on the edge of the Jumhuriya Bridge, is the 14-storey “Turkish restaurant building” that overlooks Tahrir Square and the Jumhuriya Bridge (which leads to the Green Zone) and is the beating heart of the revolution. It has now been taken over by the young demonstrators who vowed not to leave the building. There are checkpoints at all entrances to the building and Tahrir Square where young volunteers check the possession of weapons that are prohibited at all times on the square. Each floor has a different function: one for the artists and the painters, one for the musicians, one for a library, one for security, etc. The building has been abandoned since 2003 after it was bombed in 2003 and never rebuilt. On all floors there are sleeping places, toilets are built and there is a cleaning service.

A demand for system change and restoration of national identity

Iraq suffers under the capitalist privatization process that pro-consul Bremer introduced after 2003 and was not abolished by successive Iraqi governments. The demonstrators demand – perhaps unknowingly – a return to the welfare state created by the Ba’ath regime, where the Iraqi population had a much higher standard of living than today. The polarization between the elite and the people is caused by the neoliberal economic policy (privatization, job crisis, etc.) and the militarization of the economy.

The most radical demand on Tahrir Square is the dismantling of this entire sectarian, political, Islamic system and an end to the country’s foreign control. This is the first and most important demand. The people want to change the constitution, expel the ruling political parties, abolish sectarian election rules, cancel all treaties with the World Bank. The people want to regain their sovereignty, expel the US army and its bases, expel the Iranian presence, expel the Turkish army, internationalize the issue of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The protesters want a separation of religion and politics. The young Iraqis use words such as citizenship, social justice, as opposed to the religious or ethnic identity that the influential clergy and rulers have imposed on the Iraqi people. The US occupation has done everything to erase the national Iraqi identity and to keep the country ethnically and religiously divided, which has given rise to bloody sectarian conflicts. But that tactic no longer works.

In a piece originally published in German by Rosa-Luxemburg-Foundation, Ansar Jasim and Schluwa Sama reported from Tahrir Square. “This is a movement of all of us, your origin does not play a role here, we are all suppressed by one political class,” an activist explains. Posters that prohibit any sectarian language are everywhere. Instead, people make references to elements that have played a unifying role in history, and Islamic and Christian symbols and drawings adorn Tahrir square.

Cuneiform script and figures from the Mesopotamian heritage of the region are also visible. Protesters do not have an exclusive Arab-Islamic identity as before, but want an identity that reflects the diversity of the country. Time and again they talk about all the different social, ethnic and religious groups that are present on the Square.

The demonstrations are supported by all religious and ethnic groups. The Mandaeans support the demands of the protesters and hand out food, the Chaldean Catholic church patriarch of Babylon Louis Raphael I Sako canceled a planned interview in Hungary and chose to “stay in Baghdad during this difficult time.” In a joint statement, Sako and other leaders of Christian communities thanked “the young men and women, the future of Iraq, for their peaceful protests and for breaking the country’s sectarian barriers and emphasizing the Iraqi national identity.”

Arabic next to Kurdish slogans are everywhere on the square. A Kurdish-Arabic tent invites demonstrators for free tea. There is also great solidarity from the Yezidi community, which sends money, but also brings food and water to the square. Even if they do not have a direct, visible presence on the square, they express their support for change that could lead to a renewed Iraqi identity.

But the religious leaders who run the country are not welcome in the square, with some even denouncing Moqtada al Sadr and others who are held co-responsible for the looting of the country. “Don’t ride the wave, Moqtada” is therefore a popular slogan, as well as “In the name of religion, politicians act like thieves!”

the resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, an apparent concession to the demonstrators, has not paralyzed the movement. It was too little and too late, they claim. Their demand is an entirely new political system, not the removal of one person.

No to “Muhasasa”

The Iraqi constitution has caused anger among the Iraqi people since 2005 and has given rise to continuous protests. “No to Muhasasa, no to political sectarianism,” protesters in Tahrir Square sang after the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi at the end of November 2019. The divisive constitution has anchored “Muhasasa” in Iraqi society. Muhasasa is the system for distributing public offices, political positions and state resources along ethnic-sectarian lines between parties that are part of the ruling elite of the country.

One of the biggest ailments of the Muhasasa, according to Iraqi demonstrators and experts, is that it has driven the sectarian tensions and broke down the social fabric by putting ethnic-sectarian identities in the foreground.

Although the muhasasa was introduced by the United States after the 2003 invasion, the foundations of the system were laid in the early 1990s by Iraqi opposition groups, which worked out a system for proportionate representation of Sunni, Shiites, Kurds and other ethnic sectarian groups in Iraq.

Prof. Saad Naji Jawad has written extensively about the disastrous Iraqi Constitution. I draw from his analysis. When US pro-consul Paul Bremer ​​arrived in Baghdad in May 2003, he had no prior knowledge of Iraqi politics, but immediately began issuing his 100 orders, many of which are still in force today. Bremer also formed a governing body, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), consisting of people selected on the basis of sect, ethnic background and, most importantly, their loyalty to the US. It was the first time in Iraq’s history that agreements were made on a sectarian and ethnic basis. 65% of the IGC members had dual nationality.

The IGC appointed a committee to review the draft for a new constitution. This draft was strongly influenced by American political interests and written by American advisers, in particular the Jewish professor Noah Feldman and Peter Galbraith, assisted by two emigrated Iraqis who had the American and British nationality and had not lived in Iraq since childhood. None of the authors was an expert in constitutional law. The document itself was written in English and was poorly translated into Arabic.

The committee lacked representatives of civil society organizations and the committee’s discussions were not made public. The committee appointed advisers, mostly foreigners, whose names were never disclosed. A few days after their appointment, two Sunni members of the editorial committee and an adviser who objected to the proposed draft were murdered. A few days later, another Sunni committee member was kidnapped and killed. The result was that the Sunni representatives stopped their participation and demanded an investigation into the murder of their colleagues.

The important items in the document were not even discussed. However, the Kurdish members had clear ideas about what they wanted and had a team of American and European experts who advised them.

The IGC was asked to approve the constitution and did so with only minor changes. The Council’s main objection was that the new law did not refer to Islam as the state’s official religion, and Article 7 was included at their insistence.

“Sect” is mentioned a number of times in the Constitution (for example, Articles 12 and 20). This divisive word was never included in earlier Iraqi constitutions and its use was rejected by a large number of Iraqis. The only Iraqis who agreed to use the term were those who participated in the political process.

Iraqis were not aware of the details of the document because no public version was available. Some Iraqi constitutional law experts and academics pointed out the dangers of divisive clauses, based on the very few press releases, but these critics were threatened by police and unknown militias.

The constitution stipulates that in the event of inconsistencies between central laws and laws of a regional government, priority is given to the laws of the local government. This is perhaps the only time in modern constitutional history that such a hierarchy has been established. Immediately after the adoption of the constitution, the Kurdish federal region issued its own local constitution, which contained many clauses that contradicted those of the central government, especially regarding the exploitation of national and regional wealth, such as the oil.

Iraqi women were dissatisfied with the Constitution because the 1959 Progressive Personal Status with all its advanced amendments was canceled (Article 41).

In October 2005, Iraqis voted on a permanent constitution that they had not seen, read, studied, discussed or drafted. Even worse is that they voted for an incomplete document. They followed the instructions of their political and religious leaders and the majority did not realize that this document would become a major source of misery.

The provision in the Constitution to keep the central government weaker than the regional authorities has caused a chronic problem for the state. The Iraqi political discourse has centered on ethnicity and religion instead of Iraqi citizenship. The various components within Iraq have great autonomy and pursue an independent foreign policy. For example, there is no objection to the declared alliance policy between the leaders of the Barzani tribes and Israel. An Iraqi politician, such as Al-Alusi, can visit occupied Palestine – at the invitation of the occupying government – and speak and openly call for an alliance with Israel. Al-Alusi was himself one of those responsible for the de-Ba’athification, a decision that blew up the Iraqi state.

No wonder that for the Iraqis this constitution remains controversial. The debate continues about the ambiguity of most articles. The constitution has undermined the unity and survival of the Iraqi state.

The role of the trade unions in the uprising

Trade unions are present in the protests, but not in the forefront. Months before the uprising broke out, public sector employees in Central and Southern Iraq, including textile workers in Diwaniyah, municipal workers in Muthanna and leather workers in Baghdad, formulated demands for better wages and safe working conditions, decent housing and permanent jobs. But these demands have faded into the background since the protests began.

At a meeting in Basra on October 28, trade unions of lawyers, teachers and employees formed a committee that urged other trade unions to support the demonstrator’s demands rather than their own sectoral demands. According to them, the role of the trade unions would be more effective if they would show their solidarity with the demonstrators instead of playing a leading role in the historical uprising.

Most, if not all, trade unions have issued press releases to support the protest movement. The General Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions (GFITU, the only official federation in present-day Iraq, dominated by the Sadrists) called for “solidarity” with the insurrection without asking the workers to participate in the demonstrations. The GFITU advised the demonstrators to “protect public property and maintain good contact with security forces”. The General Federation of Workers’ Unions in Iraq (GFWUI) condemned the government’s violent action and organized pickets outside oil companies and refineries in Basra, Nasiriyah, and Misan, and also held demonstrations in Baghdad and Babel. The GFWUI also set up tents in Nasiriyah and militants brought food and drink for the demonstrators.

In a mass meeting at the Basra Oil Company, the unions demanded an end to the repression. However, the local section promised to continue production and remove the demonstrators who blocked access. The most militant action is done by the unemployed and the poor workers, not by oilworkers, who are severely punished when they strike.

So far, the most precarious demonstrators have received the hardest blows. The poor, the unemployed, the people who have nothing to lose, are the ones who occupy the front lines and defy riot police, militias and even Iranian paramilitary forces. But to bring about real change, the organized working class will have to play a greater role in the movement if the Iraqi people want a state that actually defends their interests.

All social classes participate in demonstrations

On Tahrir Square, bakers, restaurateurs, doctors and nurses, hairdressers, etc., all offer their services free of charge. Families from all classes and neighborhoods are demonstrating together under the hashtag نازل_اخذ_حقي# (I am demonstrating to claim my rights). Hordes of students leave high schools and universities to participate in the protests. Trade unions have joined the uprising. According to a poll conducted last year, 77% of the Iraqi people supported the uprising of 2018 (in Iraqi Kurdistan it was 53%). The support for the current revolution will be probably higher.

But especially the Tuk Tuk drivers have become the symbol of the revolution par excellence. The Tuktuk is a three-wheeled vehicle that serves as a taxi for the poor, but is now a symbol of the revolution itself. Tuktuks are not only depicted on the walls around the square, songs are written about them and even the newspaper of the revolution, which reports on all activities in the square, is called Tuktuk. Tuktuk drivers were previously socially marginalized and discriminated against. They are mostly young, underage drivers who have no other choice than to do this job, given the high unemployment and widespread poverty.

Now they transport wounded demonstrators and also have a logistical function. They are the only vehicles that are allowed on Tahrir square. The increased social recognition is reflected in more and more donations from other protesters, mainly from other social classes. This is necessary, because these young drivers often offer their services free of charge.

Another group on which the Iraqis have changed their opinion since 1 October are the residents of the southern province of Dhi Qar. Some of the most aggressive protests have taken place here, where protesters have set fire to political party offices and have gained a degree of control over the provincial capital Nasiriyah. In the meantime, the demonstrators of Dhi Qar have gained heroic status among their countrymen. This is despite the fact that the inhabitants of the city have had a bad reputation for decades. They are often described as “bad” fruits that have fallen from the “cursed tree.” If someone did something bad somewhere, it was often said that the person “probably comes from Nasiriyah”.

Since the demonstrations started, the people of Nasiriyah were praised for their courage. “We, the Baghdad demonstrators, have been trying to cross the bridge to the Green Zone for weeks,” is a slogan in Tahrir Square. “We are now asking our fellow demonstrators in Nasiriyah to help us do that faster.”

Women are prominently present in the revolution

Women have long been marginalized and silenced by conservative Islamists and now they have decided to finally make themselves heard. They joined the protest movement en masse. In a society where sexes do not normally mix, protesting alongside men means that a taboo has been broken. This is also a revolution against outdated traditions and norms. Men and women walk hand in hand, hug each other and people even kiss. This is unseen. There is no doubt that the uprising is a turning point for women, but the road to their freedom and rights is still full of obstacles. Breaking the artificial barrier between men and women is one of the most beautiful and significant outcomes of this historic uprising. The women come from all sectors of society, with or without headscarves, Muslims, Christians, young people, the elderly, middle-class and working-class women, housewives … they all participate, in the front lines or as logistical supporters. This is a hopeful evolution and no power will be able to reverse it, despite all the efforts and money that political Islam has spent to impose its feudal culture.

The women who demonstrate, offer help and even spend the night on Tahrir Square also feel completely safe. The office of the Iraqi Human Rights Commissioner stated on November 6 that “since the beginning of demonstrations in the various Iraqi provinces, there has been no case of women being harassed despite the participation of thousands of women”.

Iran, the big enemy?

Although Iran itself is threatened by the US and Israel and suffers from a criminal sanctions regime, the country has worked with the US since 2003 to pacify the country and shape the sectarian system. Iranian and American ambassadors have very actively tried to stop any Iraqi attempt at independence. Both the US and Iran must approve the composition of a government after each election in the secure Green Zone. At the same time, the relationships are very conflicting. Both Washington and Tehran fight each other for complete control of Iraq.

It has also become clear that the American mission in Iraq, set up to create a pro-American model for the region and a stronghold against anti-American militantism, has achieved the exact opposite. The defeat of Iraq was intended to illustrate how much the US firepower could intimidate the region and scare off the so-called “rogue states”. Instead, the policy outlined by the neoconservatives, Israel and the oil companies has ironically strengthened Iran’s power, the only regional power to withstand all that pressure, and is now the new “rogue state.” Iran’s regional status has risen in a way that was impossible without this background of failed imperial politics. Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the Iranian Deputy Chairman for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs – at the Conference The Gulf and Future Challenges, held in Abu Dhabi, January 2004 by the Emirate Center for Strategic Research and Studies – clearly explained Iran’s role in the occupation of Iraq. “The fall of Kabul and Baghdad would not have been easy without the assistance of Iran,” Abtahi said about the role of Iranian militias and intelligence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Iranian threat is now imminent and pro-American authoritarian regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have helped to achieve this.

At the beginning of March 2015, several Arab newspapers reported that Ali Younesi, a senior adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, had declared that Baghdad is the capital of “a new Persian Empire”. “Iran has today become an empire as it has been throughout history and the capital is now Baghdad in Iraq, which reflects the center of our civilization and our culture and identity today, as it was in the past”.

The “ISNA” news agency reported on his intervention in a forum in Tehran entitled “The Iranian Identity”. Younesi said that “Iran and Iraq are geographically indivisible. Younesi, who was the minister of information in President Mohammad Khatami’s ‘reform’ government, denounced anyone opposed to Iranian influence in the Middle East :”We will defend all peoples of the region because we consider them to be part of Iran. We will fight Islamic extremism, fight Takfiri, atheists, neo-Ottomans, Wahhabists, the West and Zionism.”

He emphasized the continuation of Tehran’s support for the Iraqi government and sent a clear message to Turkey: “Our competitors, the historical heirs of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Ottomans, resent our support for Iraq.” Younesi also stated in his speech that his country is planning to establish an “Iranian Federation” in the region: “by Iranian Federation, we do not mean to remove borders but that all nations neighboring the Iranian plateau should be close. I do not mean that we want to conquer the world all over again, but that we must regain our historical position to globally think and act Iranian”

To understand the ambiguous position of Iran, we must go back to the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978-79, initially welcomed by the Iraqi government, because for the two countries the Shah was a common enemy. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, however, saw Saddam Hussein’s secular, Arab-nationalist Ba’ath regime as un-Islamic and “an envoy of Satan”. The call by Khomeini in June 1979 to the Iraqi Shiites to overthrow the Ba’ath regime was therefore badly received in Baghdad. In 1979-1980 there were anti-Ba’ath riots in the Shiite areas of Iraq, and the Iranian government provided extensive support to the Iraqi Shiite militants to unleash an Islamic revolution. The repeated calls for the overthrow of the Ba’ath regime and support for Iraqi Shiite groups by the new regime in Iran was increasingly seen as an existential threat in Baghdad. Iranian pan-Islamism and revolutionary Shia Islamism, against secular Iraqi Arab nationalism were therefore central to the conflict between the two countries. Many of the current rulers in Iraq, including former Prime Minister al-Maliki, returned from Iran to Iraq on the back of the American tanks. Revanchist motifs played a major role. Officers from the former Iraqi army were systematically killed on the basis of death lists. Militias like the BADR Brigades, supported by Iran, sometimes worked together with the US to combat armed resistance, in a particularly brutal way. At other times they turned against the US. The US had no choice but to accept this option so as not to sink further into the Iraqi quagmire.

The Iranian discourse reflects ignorance about the reality of the Arab national identity. It is more important to the Iraqi Shiites than their religious identity. For example, in 1980 Khomeini wrongly thought that the Shiites in the Iraqi army would not fight against Iran and that they would choose Iran’s side because of their religious affiliation. But that didn’t happen. Iran does not seem to realize that the socio-religious rules in Iran are incompatible with the less strict religious behavior of Arab Shiites. This is an element of alienation for Shiite Arabs. The various Iranian statements have also angered the Shiites. 24 “battalions” consisting of 7,500 special police units accompanied more than 3 million Iranians arriving in Karbala province in Iraq to participate in the Arbaeen pilgrimage. Most Iraqi Shiites didn’t like that either..

But the Saudi alternative cannot appeal to the Iraqi Shiites either. The expression of Arab identity or Iraqi identity is the opposite of the reactionary definition of Saudi Wahhabism.

The inhabitants of the Shiite provinces also suffered little from the Anglo/American military campaign that befell the Sunni provinces. No Shiite city has undergone the destruction of Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul, Tikrit and other cities.

Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, stated in October 2019 that the uprisings and demonstrations in Iraq and Lebanon were fueled by foreign powers, a vision also adopted by the Iraqi government and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Khamenei described the demonstrations in a tweet as “a conspiracy that will have no effect!” According to him, this “conspiracy” was led by the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and remnants of the Ba’ath party, to overthrow the government and install a regime under Washington control. Even the highest Shiite religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, indicated a possible plot in a statement, although he also condemned the violence against the demonstrators.

For months there had been rumors of a US-initiated coup in Iraq. More than two months before the uprising, Qays Khaz’ali, leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), an Iranian-sponsored Shiite militia and political party operating in Iraq, said: “There are plans to change the Baghdad government in November, with protests that will break out in October. Protests will not be spontaneous, but organized by factions in Iraq. Pay attention to my words ”

Sharmine Narwani on October 5, 2019: “Al Akhbar newspaper says the Iraqi government heard 3 months ago about of a planned US-backed coup by military officers, followed by street action. Time to be skeptical about events in Iraq? ”

“Protesters confirm the use of snipers in buildings aimed at demonstrators approaching Tahrir Square. During the US coup in Ukraine in 2014, the same method was used to bring about regime change.” So it was insinuated that the snipers shooting at the demonstrators were allied to the US, while the Iraqi army leadership itself admitted that its armed forces are responsible for the death of the demonstrators.

The claim that some Iraqi officers planned a coup has not been proven. Similarly, there are claims that Iran is planning a takeover of power through its militias. That claim cannot be substantiated either.

The story goes that General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi, commander of anti-terrorism forces, would have visited various embassies to receive support for large-scale demonstrations that would lead to a military coup. He was dismissed from office based on those rumors. However, this story lacks credibility.

General Al-Saadi, who became an Iraqi national symbol in 2015 after leading his troops to decisive victories in the fight against ISIS, received the respect of the Iraqi people for impartiality in the war between Iran and the United States in the military campaign against IS. While Iran was arming, financing, and training many of the militias that formed the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), al-Saadi had no problem refusing Iranian support during his successful attempt to recapture territories on ISIS. At the same time, the General did not hesitate to express his frustration with the American patrons of Iraq and openly stated in the media: “Sometimes they carried out airstrikes that I had never asked for, and at other times I begged them for airstrikes that never came”. In a country where loyalty to foreign powers could make or break military and political careers, al-Saadi’s refusal to take sides made him unique in the eyes of Iraqis. His resignation was one of the reasons for the current protests.

Moreover, al-Saadi was only the number two in the command structure of the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), which is led by General Talib Shaghati. Organizations such as CTS form the core of American strategies in the Middle East to keep the region under control. American forces created and trained and armed CTS during the first years of occupation and General Talib Shaghati has been the head of the CTS since 2007. Shagati’s entire family is housed in the US “for security reasons.” The only possible explanation for the removal of al-Saadi from his position is not that he was planning a coup, but that he placed Iraqi interests above foreign interests.

According to some commentators, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are funding the protests in Iraq, because where else would the funds come from to distribute free food and drink daily to the thousands of men and women who permanently occupy Tahrir Square? This claim ignores the massive support of the people for the revolts and the enormous solidarity that this revolution generates.

PMF Militias in Iraq were created after the fatwa of the high Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani to fight ISIS terrorists, but after the fighting ended, they shifted their focus to politics and control various government institutions and major parts of the country. They became the second largest formation in the Iraqi government after the 2018 elections, the party of Moqtada al Sadr being the largest.

These “people’s militias” have violently imposed their rule all over Iraq in the areas they control. They enrich themselves in every possible way. Bribes are demanded at checkpoints, especially on roads to areas conquered by ISIS. According to a report from the London School of Economics, militias in only one city generated an estimated $ 300,000 a day in illegal taxes. There are also reports of militias organizing a scrap trade around Mosul and carrying material away to sell instead of supporting the reconstruction of the city.

The militias control the seaport of Umm Qasr and the oil industry has not been spared either. In 2015, militias plundered the Baiji oil refinery, formerly the largest in Iraq. More recently there have been allegations of organized smuggling from oil fields around Mosul and Kirkuk. Militias have been smuggling oil in Basra for a long time and some have signed lucrative contracts with international oil companies.

When asked: “Do you have a positive or negative image of the following countries?”, In a 2019 poll, only 38% of the Iraqi Shiite population had a positive perception of Iran, compared to 86% in 2014. It is impossible to blame US propaganda for this sharp fall in Iran’s perception. The same poll mentions the 3 main reasons for this negative perception: 1) Dumping Iraq with cheap products; 2) Dumping Iraq with Drugs; 3) Supporting different non efficient and corrupt governments.

Of course, the US is the main culprit for the current chaos in Iraq, but Tehran also bears a great responsibility for the damage done to the relations between the Iraqi and Iranian people. The current hostility to Iran does not come out of the blue, but is the result of years of discontent because of Iran’s cooperation with the US occupation forces who together helped to protect government leaders and protect the sectarian quota system, and directly intervened on various occasions to cancel parliamentary decisions. Now that IS has been defeated, the Shiites notice that their reward is a country where the population has fallen even deeper into poverty, while the political and religious elites are pampering themselves with dazzling mansions and spacious country houses abroad, a country where some militias are involved in lucrative smuggling of oil, drugs and human trafficking, where dress codes and religious fatwas are forcefully enforced, a population in poverty while the country floats on a sea of ​​oil.

The US and Saudi Arabia will naturally want to use the current uprising to try to push through their own agenda and insist on regime change. America and Israel are engaged in a total war in the region against all areas under Iranian influence. America does not really have control over the thousands of demonstrators, but it exploits every event and every political development when it serves its interests. However, what we do not read in the Western media is that the protests are also directed against the American presence and also against the interference of Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Adel Abdul Mahdi offered his resignation on November 29 after the massacre in Nassiriyah, Najaf and Baghdad.

Western media versus social media

The US and Saudi Arabia do naturally want to use the current revolution to try to push through their own agenda. America and Israel are engaged in a total war in the region against all areas under Iranian influence. America does not really have control over the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, but it exploits every event and every political development when it serves its interests. We only read anti-Iranian rhetoric in Western media. However, what we do not read in the press is that the protests are equally directed against the American presence and against the interference of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel.

Fortunately, there are social media that bring powerful stories and a human face to the struggle, in a way that has never been done before. There have been desperate attempts by the government to stop the spread of eyewitness accounts on social media by shutting down the internet. However, that did not work.

Banners on Tahrir Square read: “No to America, No to Erdogan, No to Iran, No to Barzani, No to Israeli NGOs”.

Iraqi poet, novelist, translator and scholar Sinan Antoon was born and raised in Baghdad and his most recent novel is entitled “The Book of Collateral Damage”. He said on November 26, “What is really important is the restoration of Iraqi identity and a new sense of Iraqi nationalism that transcends sectarian discourse institutionalized by the United States in 2003”.

“Iran has a lot of influence in Iraq and has infiltrated many of the institutions and supported many of the Iraqi militias, but all of that is a product of the US occupation and invasion of Iraq. While Iran is one of the targets of these demonstrators, it’s important to remember that many of the banners and posters on the Tahrir square say “no” to any foreign intervention. So they say no to Iran, no to Turkey, no to Israel, no to the United States.

But of course the mass media in the United States, because of their geopolitical interests and their continued interference in the region, write only about Iran, and no one denies that Iran supports many of the parties in Iraq financially and otherwise and infiltrates Iraqi society in so many ways. But there are all those other dimensions and, unfortunately, the regular media in the US and also in Europe are very short-sighted and only focus on the influence that Iran exerts on the Iraqi regime.

And that’s correct. But Iraqis want their country back and they want sovereignty and they are against all kinds of interventions. And the Iraqi state, since 2003, is very weak. We have Turkish troops in Iraq, in the north, we have American troops. The demonstrators are really aware of all this and they understand very well – at least based on what they say when they appear in the media – that the interests of Iraq and Iraqis come first and that sovereignty is very important. Of course it will not be taken back in one day, but they realize that the Iranian regime is not the only threat and not the only sponsor of certain forces in Iraq. ”

The Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi, who became famous after throwing two shoes at Bush while shouting, “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog”, told Euronews that protesters are calling for the fall of the political regime. He also said that they do not want other countries to interfere in Iraq. “The government of the American occupation is rejected. This government has brought disaster to the country … today we want the fall of this political regime and the end of this government”, he explained. “We don’t hate Iran, we don’t hate Saudi Arabia, we don’t hate Turkey. But our message is simple: they must stop interfering with our country. The Iraqi people are a free people”, he said.

“All these human losses, the robbery, the crimes of the Green Zone government are the total responsibility of the US government. They have been protecting that gang of thieves since 2003 with their mercenaries and military bases, just to allow multinational corporations to control Iraq’s oil and other resources”, Souad al-Azzawi, an Iraqi environmental scientist, wrote.

Another comment:” Dear Iraqi sisters and brothers, Americans are working very hard to hijack your demonstrations and use them as an excuse to install an American puppet regime in place of the current regime. Please be vigilant and do not allow Iraq to become a battlefield of world and regional powers.”

Following the revelations in the New York Times and the intercept on November 18, the so-called “control” of Iran over Iraq, an authoritative Iraqi opinion maker wrote:

Some questions …

what are those important secrets that America has unveiled and published in the New York Times, which are not known by the Iraqis ??

  • Is it not America that occupied Iraq and destroyed its national institutions, killed, arrested and displaced millions of people?
  • Is it not the US that created the corrupt sectarian political process and wants to protect and continue it?
  • Is it not the US that has worked for years with Iran and its criminal terrorist militias? The US knows exactly how these gangs came to power; after all they stole billions of dollars together, plundered the wealth of the country, kidnapped innocent people and killed them.
  • Is it not America that controls the space, land, air, security and communication with their spies and knows exactly what is going on, even in the living rooms ???
  • Yes, the US knows all the small and big crimes that Iran and its agents have committed against the people of Iraq since 2003 until now. After all, they were deeply involved and pulled Iran into the Iraqi quagmire.

The rebellious people of Iraq do not need such “revelations” because they rebelled for themselves, their homeland and humanity, after their patience was exhausted and they saw no light at the end of the dark tunnel created by America by its brutal occupation of this country.

Maybe these documents cause a scandal in America, and then they can keep silent about their own role in killing a people and the rape of the country over the years. So these documents should not only be a condemnation of Iran, because Iran is only a partner in the crimes against humanity committed by the US. ”

These are just a few examples to disprove the story of the mass media that the uprising would be aimed primarily at Iran, quod non. The US, but also the Iranian leadership, are terrified of an escalation of this conflict and a possible overthrow of the existing regime, from which they both benefit.

Conclusion

A revolt against the government does not require external conspiracy: all domestic factors for protest, revolt and revolution are present. The Iraqi people have a thousand reasons to revolt against the existing regime. The stigmatization of the uprisings in Iraq as a Zionist-American conspiracy or a Ba’athist uprising is unfair to the hundreds of thousands who want to take their future into their own hands and want to get rid of the political system.

The Iraqi people continue to be a pawn in the game of geopolitical power politics, victims of the hunger for profit of the oil companies and corrupt politicians in an occupied country. Iraqis continue to bear the full burden of 29 years of sanctions, wars, misery, death, destruction, chaos and extreme neoliberalism. The people, however, have always remained alert, have constantly opposed the inhumane situation in which they were forced and want a fairer redistribution of the available resources. The past and present protests also have repeatedly opposed the division of the country, foreign interference and the sectarian structures imposed on them.

There is a continuity in Iraq’s popular resistance since 2003. Iraq is not Ukraine, is not Hong Kong. This is yet another uprising against the Green Zone, the fortified castle where the US, but also Iran, determine the rules of the game through the puppet government they have appointed. Any attempt to turn Iraq into the arena of a US war against Iran must be resisted. The people of Iraq cannot cope with another war.

A new Iraq may be coming, but that will not be welcomed by the American occupier, nor by Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Iraqi authorities, Europe and Iran. The people of Iraq will continue to oppose any foreign occupation and foreign interference and strive for a sovereign Iraq. The first condition is that all foreign troops, mercenaries and foreign counselors leave Iraq.

On a personal note: there is a strong “anti-organization” attitude, a general rejection of political structures and a focus on spontaneity. This attitude is understandable given the demonstrators’ fear of being co-opted by dominant political parties. The slogan “no to political parties” is very popular. The Left and trade unionists in the movement should emphasize that workers should organize themselves politically with a clear program to withstand the pressure of the neoliberal state, the economic elites and the dominant political parties and to remain independent. The lack of organization, the lack of clear alternatives, the political division among the demonstrators, have ensured that the protest movements since 2011 have not led to tangible results, with an absolute low point being the support that some Sunni groups have given to the terror group ISIS. Many demonstrators are young and inexperienced, reject everything, even early elections. They think that the political class will easily give up power, and that afterwards Iraqis will be able to rule themselves freely. Iraq is not a sovereign state, but is dominated by well-organized foreign powers, so the demonstrators should be even better organized if they want this revolution to succeed.

Victory for the demonstrators is not inevitable, perhaps not even likely. But it would be the only just outcome. What happens after a popular uprising is never a certainty, but that should not prevent the peace movement from giving its support to the just demands of the Iraqi people. If this rebellion does not produce the desired results, further rebellions will follow. The Iraqi people want to put an end to foreign interference and the corrupt system that has plunged millions into poverty. These protests are the only guarantee for a long-awaited peace in Iraq. Our solidarity with the justified demands of the Iraqi demonstrators is therefore more than necessary.

“Stay on the streets, never go home, because that is the secret of your success”.

*

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Dirk Adriaensens is a member of the executive committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Between 1992 and 2003 he led several delegations to Iraq to observe the devastating effects of  UN sanctions. He was a member of the International Organising Committee of the World Tribunal on Iraq (2003-2005). He is also co-coordinator of the Global Campaign Against the Assassination of Iraqi Academics. He is co-author of Rendez-Vous in Baghdad, EPO (1994), Cultural Cleansing in Iraq, Pluto Press, London (2010), Beyond Educide, Academia Press, Ghent (2012), Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book ‘The Iraq War Reader, Global Research (2012), Het Midden Oosten, The Times They are a-changin ‘, EPO (2013) and is a frequent contributor to Global Research, Truthout, Al Araby, The International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies and other media.

Featured image: Demonstrators are seen in Basra, Iraq, on July 19, 2019. During the protest, demonstrators assaulted journalist Ayman al-Sheikh. (Reuters/Alaa Al-Marjani)

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Neo-Liberal Colombia – Where Life Has to Defeat Death

January 3rd, 2020 by Andre Vltchek

In one of the poorest neighborhoods of Bogota, Belen, I saw two people bleeding in the middle of the road. One person was clearly dead. A group of onlookers was moving frantically, shouting loudly. There was an attempt to resurrect an injured man. I asked the driver to inquire whether our help was needed, but he was told something insulting by the locals, and insisted that we leave the scene immediately.

Was it a traffic accident? Or a murder? The driver did not know. He actually did not want to know.

“Look,” he said. “You may be a Russian or Chinese Communist, or whatever, but here, in the middle of this slum, you kind of look like a gringo, and that is a damn big disadvantage to both of us, and to my car. So, if you don’t intend to bury your bones here, we should not stop in the middle of this neighborhood, for too long.”

“I thought they love Gringos in Colombia,” I uttered, sarcastically.

“Down there, yes,” my driver waved his hand towards the financial center of Bogota. “But not here. Not up here.”

Before becoming a driver, this individual used to be a top manager, at one of the biggest South Korean electronics companies operating in Colombia. I have always been having good luck with my drivers. During the Dirty War in Peru I once was driven, for weeks, by a retired and thoroughly broke army general, and in Bulgaria, after the East European collapse, by a former ambassador to the United Nations.

Neo-liberal Colombia has some of the greatest and most bizarre disparities I have witnessed anywhere on Earth.

After filming and photographing in the middle of various tough slums that have mushroomed along the hills ‘above’ the capital, I returned to my hotel.

The underclass continues to grow at a rapid rate (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)

Just a few kilometers away from the misery-stricken dwellings, in a coffee shop of my hotel, a group of upper-class Colombians from Cali was having a casual dinner. The people were loud and I could not avoid overhearing their conversation. They spoke about their dogs having diarrhea, regularly, and how it could actually be stopped or prevented.

“It is outrageous,” one of them lamented. “Poor animal has been shitting and shitting. What is it telling us about the quality of Colombian food and water?”

*

Obviously, someone had enough of such contrasts. Or more precisely, few millions of Colombian people decided that the situation is, should we say, “indigestible”.

And, so, on November 21, 2019, Colombia exploded.

Like Chile did, a few weeks earlier.

The explosion has been spontaneous, angry, and for the extreme right-wing government of President Iván Duque Márquez, very embarrassing. Some would say even, scary. His approval rating hit the bottom, 26%. Not as bad as in Chile, where the admirer of Pinochet’s dictatorship, President Pinera, ended up with just a pathetic 10% support from his citizens. Not as bad, but bad enough.

Imagine that you are presiding over a fundamentalist neo-liberal country with hardly any public education or healthcare, with monstrous disparities, with some 9 U.S. military bases (it really depends how you count them; could be bit less or more), and with a foreign policy which has been shamelessly dictated from the North. Imagine that you still have those semi-active left-wing guerilla movements on your territory, but at the same time your government is simply super-hostile towards anything socialist, Communist, red or pink or even slightly progressive. And that many people in your own country actually strongly dislike the direction in which you are moving the nation.

Imagine that you have all sorts of problems at home, and that the left-wing guerilla movements are not the only issues you have to face here: you also have fascist militias which are murdering and disappearing people, you have those narco-mafias which sometimes have better social programs for the poor than your government does, and you also have the anti-imperialist Venezuela fighting for its survival immediately next door; a country which the United States has been trying to destabilize, ruin and turn into a regressive, oppressive Gulf state.

You have hundreds of thousands of the Venezuelan ‘refugees’ on your territory. Some say millions. People who have been escaping from the monstrous U.S. sanctions and from the outright U.K. and German theft of the Venezuelan gold, and monetary assets. It is scary, isn’t it? You have no idea who these people are. Are they really against the Venezuelan President, Maduro? For decades, millions of your people, Colombians, were crossing the border, escaping misery, seeking a better life in Caracas and Maracaibo. You know why it is now the other way round: because Venezuela has been raped, plundered by your masters in the United States and Europe. And it was done with your help, Mr. Duque. Now nobody knows, what is coming next.

Your people are waking up, rising and starting to demand your resignation, or even the demise of the entire Colombian regime.

What do you do; how do you react?

First you pretend that you are listening. Even that you have some sympathy with your own people. But when you see that the protesters think that all that you offer (actually, not that much) is not enough, you deploy the special forces; you do it the Chilean way; you start using brutal police and military contingents, as well as under-cover para-military units. That is what your masters in the North tell you to do, and you are a good obedient servant of the U.S. government and those several “international organizations” controlled by Washington, including the Organization of American States” (OAS), World Bank, IMF, to name just a few.

Dilan Cruz: Not forgotten (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)

You get a clear and loud message from Mike Pompeo in Washington. You can go ‘all the way’. You can kill, without being criticized. You can torture. This is all in the frame of the Monroe Doctrine, or, as some say, of the Second Operation Condor. As long as the killing and torture are done by the “right” people, against the “wrong” ones, they can never be criticized.

You begin frightening people. People begin getting injured, or even dying.

You killed a boy. A young kid. His name was Dilan Cruz. His entire life was ahead of him. He was only 18 years old. Your forces shot him in the head with a bean bag round.

I went there, where it happened. People waved torn Colombian flags; where Dilan was murdered.

That’s where Colombia is at this moment.

National strikes are shaking the capital and other major cities. Smoke and teargas are filling the air above several major streets. The atmosphere is tense. Nihilist, frightening graffiti is everywhere. The glass at your idiotic, overpriced ‘public’ transportation system (just glorified buses, nothing else) is shattered.

It may be just a beginning. Most likely it is.

Your regime is waiting. Will the demonstrators get tired and return home? If they retreat, fine. If not, it is likely that the state is ready to protect the status quo by crushing them; by killing many, injuring thousands, like in Chile.

In neo-liberal Latin America, which is governed by the U.S. and its “Monroe Doctrine”, human lives are worth nothing. What people demand is listened to, then analyzed, and in the end, used against them.

*

In Bogota, in front of the building of the Attorney General of the Nation (Procuraduria General de la Nacion), hundreds of protesters, mainly indigenous, were blocking a square, despite a heavy police presence in the area.

One of the protest leaders, Mr. Felix Rueda, spoke to me, in front of the camera, while the notorious Colombian police force, “Esmad” (the Mobile Anti-Disturbances Squadron), was slowly closing in on us, controlling all the nearby streets:

“We are victims of the armed conflict. We are people who were hit hard by violence; something we thought would never happen again in this country. I represent the victims. And I fight for human rights. All these people around here are victims of the armed conflict.”

A lady behind him begins to shout:

“Here, almost all of us are victims. We are peasants, with no protection, whatsoever.”

Mr. Rueda continues:

“These people are victims of the state violence; perpetrated by the armed groups.”

I asked him why there are no mass media outlets covering their plight.

“Sometimes they come. But mostly just when we break down some doors, or when someone dies. One person has already died during the last weeks. Many were injured. Again, Colombians are now fighting against Colombians.”

Another woman from the crowd screams at me:

“There are also rapes; girls are being raped, even boys…”

Police, military and the para-military response to the protests in Colombia has been so outrageously tough, so violent, that even some mass media outlets in the West had no choice but to notice and to report the gravest excesses. The Guardianwrote on 11 December, 2019:

“For the past three weeks, Colombia has been racked by demonstrations triggered by widespread discontent with the proposed economic reforms of the rightwing president, Iván Duque, whose approval rating has dropped to just 26% since he took office in August last year.

Protesters are also angry at the lack of support for the historic 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), which formally ended five decades of civil war that killed 260,000 and forced more than 7 million to flee their homes.

In a country which not long ago suffered the highest kidnapping rate in the world – and whose security forces have themselves been implicated in forced disappearances – the videos of police snatching protesters evoked disturbing memories.

According to the national victims’ agency more than 150,000 people were forcibly disappeared between 1986 and 2017, with up to 80,000 still missing. Combatants on all sides of the conflict engaged in the practice.”

Since the beginning of the protests, Colombian forces have been disappearing people from the streets; something that is bringing traumatic memories to the citizens. In one case, a young woman protestor, was grabbed and pulled into an unmarked vehicle. Two people jumped into their car and chased the vehicle, persistently, until the victim was released. This was a well-documented case: “a young woman dragged into an unmarked Chevrolet”. But I was told that there were many other cases, that went unreported and almost unnoticed.

*

I flew to Barranquilla, a city on the majestic River Magdalena. This is where this great Colombian waterway joins the warm turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea.

LOSING HOPE: Public mood manifests itself on the walls and buildings of Bogota (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)

This is where one of the greatest novels of the 20thCentury, “Love in the Time of Cholera”, written by the Colombian Communist writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, took place. This is where Florentino Ariza waits for the love of his life, Fermina Daza, for fifty-one years, nine months and four days. This is where he makes love to her, finally, on a river boat, at old age. Looking at the surface of this majestic river, Garcia Marquez, finishes his novel. I always thought that the book was fully connected to Cartagena, but I was explained to, that no; it was linked inseparably to the Magdalena River.

And this is where my friend, one of the most important Colombian journalists, Constanza Vieira, lives.

She picked me up at the airport, together with her partner, drove me to the long, new riverside, where we sat down and spoke for hours about Colombia; her beloved and tortured land.

Her father had met Mao, on two occasions. She knew all about the negotiations between the government and FARC. She is a walking encyclopedia, when it comes to Colombia. But this is not what I wanted to know, this time.

Latin America was in turmoil. The Bolivian government was overthrown in a brutal, fascist coup. Chile and Colombia were rising. Venezuela was fighting for its survival. Where was this country going?

Constanza spoke about corruption under Duque, about Uribe’s crimes, and about the grave violations of human rights in her country:

“Colombia in a setting of South America, is a conservative country; very conservative. It is suffering from one right-wing government after another. Here, the inequality is tremendous, one of the greatest in Latin America. When the protests had erupted here, the governments negotiated with the protesters, but never delivered on what they agreed. Colombia is a neo-liberal country. Now it is being shaken by huge protests. In this context, we have to thank Chile. Because whenever in the past Colombians were demanding true changes, our government would tell us: ‘look at Chile! Chileans and all of us have to be thankful to General Pinochet. The country is so prosperous. Capitalism works! So, the uprising in Chile, where people are rejecting neo-liberalism, is having a tremendous impact on Colombia.” 

The situation in Colombia is truly grotesque, and the cynicism endless. Constanza mentions just one example, which would be hard to even imagine in most of the other countries on the continent:

“In this country, corruption is just enormous. And so are violations of human rights. Now imagine: the government of Duque decided to pay compensation to the victims of human rights violations, as well as victims of corruption – from the budget allocated to public universities!” 

I asked her about the U.S. military bases.

“You see, it is not as simple as it used to be. United States is not staffing the bases with its own soldiers, permanently. The soldiers who come here are usually under-cover. It is often an intelligence unit or two, or these are soldiers who come and go, using local military bases only when they need them.”

As we are parting at the airport, late at night, her partner, a writer, goes back to the “basics” – to Simon Bolivar:

“If you talk to people all over Latin America, the great majority will say that they admire Simon Bolivar. Our great Liberator! But if you listen and look closer, you soon realize that the Bolivarian ideals are being betrayed, almost everywhere, all around us.”

*

Colombia is boiling. There is not just one problem that the country is facing; there are dozens, perhaps hundreds.

While indigenous people have been marching on Bogota, protesting and struggling for their rights and culture to be respected, the coca leaf cultivating farmers (most of them indigenous families) are demanding that their crop finally gets legalized.

All this, while the Colombia peace court is exhuming some 50 bodies in extra-judicial killings cases, presumably committed by the military.

Protesters, mostly indigenous, gathering outside government building in the city (Photo: Andre Vltchek 2019©)

As recently reported by Reuters:

“False positive killings numbered at least 2,248 between 1998 and 2014. The majority of the murders took place during the term of former President Alvaro Uribe, according to the attorney general’s office.”

People were defined as dying in combat, but in reality, they were victims of extra-judicial killings.

Extreme poverty, extra-judicial killings, corruption, unemployment, an embarrassing foreign policy, police brutality, extremely high crime rate – everything is inter-connected. Everything seems to be explosive.

*

One night, all around rebellious Bogota. Graffiti everywhere. Police on high alert. Clusters of people, assembling, then disappearing into the night.

Behind the airport, in the center of a town called Fontibon, there is a meeting of the committee which is organizing one of the strikes. I am being taken there by David Curtidor, a prominent Colombian activist.

He introduced me to Ms. Luz Janneth Zabaleta, a professor of mathematics, who is deeply involved in the organization of the protests. She explained to me:

“Until now, all those government’s so-called reforms were made against the workers, indigenous people and students. This uprising will change everything.”

Her comrade, Arturo Partilla Lizarazo, a labor lawyer passionately supported her words:

“Now Colombia is entering a huge struggle; it is fighting for the dignity of human beings, inhabiting this country. Neo-liberal policies have failed, here and elsewhere. And Colombia is ready to defeat those neo-liberal policies, which have already destroyed so many lives of our people.”

We talk about the former government of President Uribe, which according to both, was basically following a policy of war. We also discuss the awful plight of the common Colombian people, of millions of starving children, the horrendous unemployment rate among young people, and the unimaginable hardship endured by elderly, retired people.

Later, at Parkway, which is a narrow park in the center of the city, I witnessed protesters waving Colombian and Chilean flags. There is live music. Young people are dancing. Units of the riot police are moving along the edges of the park. Are they going to attack? If yes, when? Nobody knows.

I drive through the now empty Bolivar Square, then near the Presidential Palace, barricaded, blocked by the military. Several government buildings are covered by black, protective curtains. Somehow, they look like a funeral halls.

Right next to the government district, there is a red light district’; full of sex workers, pimps and police units. In Colombia, power and misery shamelessly coexist next to each other.

*

On my last day, before departing Bogota for La Paz, Bolivia, I was visited by a legendary educator, German Vladimir Zabala Archila, a liberation theologist who used to work with, among others, with Ivan Illich.

Still very active all-over Latin America, helping to set up revolutionary educational systems in various, particularly indigenous-majority countries, Vladimir is promoting the so-called “Pedagogy of Otherness” (Pedagogia de La Otredad).

Vladimir is an eternal optimist. He believes that Colombia, as well as the entire Latin America, are undergoing tremendous, irreversible transformations:

“We are in the middle of great cultural changes. I can see it even in my own middle-class part of the city. My neighbors, whom I thought were very conservative ladies, are these days banging their pans in the middle of the street, in what is clearly a protest against the system and the government. We call it here “I am scared, but I am marching!”” 

“One of our previous presidents used to say: ‘All we have to do is to become part of the
United States.’ Colombian paramilitary groups infiltrated Venezuela, on behalf of the West. But look now. There is growing solidarity among black and indigenous people in such places like Cali. And even Evo [Morales] was here, marching with us. He is beloved by the people of Colombia.”

“And now?” I asked Vladimir. “Evo… How does it all look from here?”

He does not hesitate:

“We didn’t expect this coup. We were quite certain that Evo’s popularity in Bolivia would protect him. We were confident in Cuban intelligence. We did not think that Santa Cruz would succeed, with its horrible Nazis like Camacho, who are connected with narco-traffickers, and backed by the West…”

But Vladimir is still optimistic, and so am I.

Latin America is waking up. United, as they say here, people can never be defeated. And slowly, reluctantly, Latin American nations are finally trying to unite.

* 

Things will not change overnight in Colombia, but they willeventually change.

As I drive through Bogota, I see anti-government graffiti, I see damaged buildings, the remains of the battles fought between protesters and the security forces. But I also see some strange attempts to infiltrate the rebellion, like the clenched fists that look just too familiar; like Otpor, a symbol of the Western-backed “Color Revolutions”.

It is too early to draw conclusions, but Colombian rebels have to be vigilant. While people are fighting for a new South America, while they are getting injured, while some are even dying, the West is plotting, together with President Duque and his regime; they are analyzing and trying to figure out how to keep things as they have been, for those long stagnant decades. If the government can get away with it, it would give absolutely nothing – zero.

This will be a long and difficult struggle.

Colombia is one of the most damaged places in Latin America; one of the most turbo-capitalist, and one of the most sold out to the West.

On the other hand, its opposition is vibrant and diverse. Its people are amazing; many very brave, educated and determined people.

*

My last day in Bogota, as I was falling asleep, I heard some loud gunshots right in front of my hotel.

After years in Beirut, I was used to such sounds. ‘Celebratory shooting into the air’, I thought, half asleep. But people were screaming, too. Exhausted, I fell asleep.

The next morning, on the way to the airport, I was told by my driver: “At night, they killed a French man, right in front of the entrance to your hotel.”

‘Too many corpses’, I thought. ‘Too many people are dying in Colombia. For whatever reasons, but dying unnatural deaths.’

At the airport, passport control check took almost two hours. Immigration officers were showing absolute and open spite towards the passengers. They were chatting with each other, banging into their mobile phones, even eating. While people waited in endless lines, like cattle. Absolute impunity.

On the Avianca flight from Bogota to La Paz, my neighbor was a typical US lady-apparatchik.

“Where are you from?” she asked me in an arrogant tone of voice, right before take off.

“Russia,” I said.

“What?”

“Russia.”

“What’s that?”

“Russian Federation”.

“Oh, Ru-siah!” She gave me a bizarre, pre-programmed, aggressive look.

I was leaving an old US colony for a new one, recently ‘acquired’ one.

The woman who was sitting next to me on the plane, was radiating the unmistakable chill of death. My body began shaking, slightly. But then I recalled the last words of Garcia Marquez’s brilliant novel, written on the shores of the Rio Magdalena:

“The Captain looked at Fermina Daza and saw on her eyelashes the first glimmer of wintry frost. Then he looked at Florentino Ariza, his invincible power, his intrepid love, and he was overwhelmed by the belated suspicion that it is life, more than death, that has no limits.”

My body relaxed. And I was suddenly certain that it will be life, as well as the great passion for it, that will finally liberate Colombia from the appalling embrace of death.

*

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This article was originally published on 21WIRE.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Five of his latest books are “China Belt and Road Initiative”,“China and Ecological Civilization”with John B. Cobb, Jr., “Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism”, the revolutionary novel “Aurora” and the bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and Latin America, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website, his Twitter and his Patreon. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

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No, a War with Iran Won’t Help Trump Win Re-Election

January 3rd, 2020 by Andrew Korybko

One of the most common opinions circulating around the Alt-Media Community after Major General Soleimani’s assassination is that Trump is provoking a war with Iran in order to help win re-election, but this isn’t the case since he first of all doesn’t believe that he’s provoking anything (irrespective of his military’s actions), and secondly, the immediate costs of such a conflict could actually capsize his re-election bid.

***

Trump never made any secret of his hatred for the Iranian government so it’s easy for many observers to agree with the common opinion circulating around the Alt-Media Community after Major General Soleimani‘s assassination that the President is provoking a war with Iran in order to help win re-election. This is the wrong assessment to make since the US military that’s most directly shaping the course of events doesn’t believe that it’s provoking anything (irrespective of objective fact), hence Trump doesn’t think so either. The Pentagon exudes the ideology of American Exceptionalism and is convinced that it has the right to use all means possible to remove Iran and its allied militias (including the PMU’s Kataib Hezbollah that’s integrated into the Iraqi Armed Forces) from Iraq in the interests of “national security”, to which end it and its “Israeli” ally have bombed these units several times over the past month. It doesn’t matter whether this is the “right” or “wrong” policy to have, but simply that it exists and is how such actions are understood by American decision makers.

Given that the US believes that it has the “right” to carry out such attacks, it therefore perceived the PMU’s subsequent large-scale protests outside of its Iraqi Embassy to pose an imminent threat to its citizens inside the world’s largest diplomatic facility. Since Kataib Hezbollah and the rest of the PMU more broadly have excellent working relations with Iran’s IRGC, it was extremely easy for the US to spin the narrative that there “must” have been a “hidden Iranian hand” behind that high-profile incident, which immediately called to mind Obama’s Benghazi moment and thus compelled Trump to respond in the complete opposite way as his predecessor by doubling down on the US’ military units there and proudly boasting that this is his “anti-Benghazi” moment. Making matters worse from the American perspective (which is simply to explain their thought process and not excuse it), the Ayatollah taunted Trump by saying that he “can’t do anything” in response to the President promising that “Iran will be held fully responsible” and “pay a very BIG PRICE” if Americans are killed.

Maj. Gen. Soleimani was certainly already on the US’ “decapitation strike” kill list even before the embassy siege, but that comment might have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and convinced Trump that he needed to assassinate the brilliant anti-terrorist tactician in order to prove the point that he will not tolerate being “talked down to” by his foe. It might sound petty to some and scary to others, but Trump takes his “twitter beef” real seriously, so much so that he just proved that he’s willing to kill in order to defend his international reputation after being publicly mocked. Iran totally miscalculated Trump’s response to the PMU’s embassy siege and the Ayatollah’s taunt, but it must be said that the President wouldn’t have climbed the escalation ladder as brazenly as he did had Iran not abandoned its “nuclear ambiguity” after the 2015 Rouhani-Obama deal. It was ironically because of his predecessor that Trump figured that the maximum costs that Iran could inflict on the US in response to that assassination could be “manageable”/”acceptable”.

As the author wrote in his earlier piece on the topic about how “Major General Soleimani’s Assassination Isn’t Going To Start World War III“, the US could utterly destroy every single one of Iran’s fixed assets (be they bases, cities, or whatever else) if Trump had the political will to do so in “responding” to any conventional tit-for-tat by the Islamic Republic, whether done so “preemptively” because of supposed “intelligence” that it was preparing a missile strike for example or “retaliatory” in the unlikely event that the aforesaid actually occurs. Iran can therefore only respond asymmetrically lest it wants to commit national suicide, which Trump would be more than happy to assist it with if it comes to that. He doesn’t want to do that, but would believe that he has “no choice” should Iran launch a missile salvo against his country’s regional bases, the GCC’s, and/or “Israel’s”. The military costs of such an unprecedented “punishment” against Iran are manageable because the Islamic Republic doesn’t have nuclear weapons, but the short-term political ones could cost Trump his re-election bid.

There’s no doubt that the aforementioned scenario would result in the deaths of countless people, which Trump would surely be blamed for, including the loss of American and especially “Israeli” lives. The short- and medium-term regional chaos that the collapse of the Islamic Republic would generate in the humanitarian, geopolitical, and economic senses would create such uncertainty across the world that the Democrats might easily be able to portray him as even more “evil” than they already make him out to be and thus scare Americans into not voting for him a second time. The US itself wouldn’t be too directly affected since it’s already pretty much energy self-sufficient as it is so possible disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz won’t affect it, though they could cripple the Chinese economy depending on how long they occur. America is therefore relatively “insulated” from the consequences that could transpire in the “worst-case scenario”, though Trump would probably be sacrificing his political future if he went through with that course of events.

The state of affairs is therefore more complex than it might appear at first glance. Trump doesn’t want to start a war with Iran because it could greatly jeopardize his re-election prospects, though he won’t back down if Iran responds conventionally, and he also won’t shy away from ordering more “decapitation strikes” if he can claim that any of its asymmetrical responses were somehow supposedly linked to the country (regardless of where they were allegedly organized). Iran, though, cannot let this assassination go unanswered, so there’s sure to be an escalation of some sort in the coming future. If events quickly climb the escalation ladder, then both Iran and possibly even Trump himself might end up the losers, with only the Democrats and the US’ military-industrial complex cynically emerging as the “winners” (since “Israel” might be wiped out by Iran before the Islamic Republic is destroyed). In hindsight, this makes one wonder who ordered Iran’s militant removal from Iraq in the first place and whether it was a “deep state” plot to entrap Trump by provoking this very scenario.

Trump is wholly responsible for his own actions, but he — just like the Ayatollah — is being pushed in a direction where it’s impossible to back down and still “save face”. Neither men can afford to do so, which makes it likely that a lot more people than just Maj. Gen. Soleimani might be about to die. To remind the reader once more, however, none of this would be happening had Iran not abandoned its “nuclear ambiguity” by agreeing to the 2015 Rouhani-Obama deal, with that event in hindsight being the tripwire that provoked the American military into wantonly escalating tensions with Iran (despite believing that they’re doing so in “self-defense) because they realized that the maximum costs that the Islamic Republic could inflict on it in response to their actions could be “manageable”. The lesson to be learned from all of this is that the possession of nuclear weapons safeguards a country’s sovereignty by enabling it to inflict “unmanageable”/”unacceptable” costs on its foes and thus deter their aggression, failing which leaders on both sides can be manipulated into a serious crisis.

*

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Jared Rodriguez/Truthout

America at War with Iran? Pentagon Ordered the Killing of IRGC Commander Qasem Soleimani

January 3rd, 2020 by Arabi Souri

The Pentagon confirmed the United States of America’s responsibility of killing the legendary IRGC Quds Brigade commander Qasem Soleimani in a drone attack near Baghdad Airport.

The Pentagon’s statement didn’t elaborate on the cost on the US itself and its interests in the region, and maybe beyond. It just declared war on 3 countries officially after years of trying to hide behind the consumed slogan of ‘fighting terror’, moving from it to ‘Fighting for Terror’.

Qasem Soleimani was a Major General in the Iranian Army, in case the Pentagon’s officials didn’t know.

The former head of the IRGC and currently the top security adviser in Iran issued a statement vowing to avenge the killing of the Iranian top general. Qasem Soleimani was the legendary fighter on the ground who defeated ISIS and other al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and defended Iran itself and the rest of the world from the growing terrorist forces.

The assassination also killed the Deputy Commander of the Iraqi Security Forces – PMU Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

IRGC Commander Major General Hussein Salami, just a day earlier, warned the USA from crossing any red line in its aggression in the region, seems they did because they wanted to escalate the region towards a regional war.

Obviously, the US President instead of ‘draining the swamp’ he drained the US establishment of any sane thinkers and decision-makers by submitting completely to the Zionist lobby, even someone like George W. Bush or Barak Obama, the guy who dropped tens of thousands of bombs on civilians, wouldn’t carry out such insane assassination, especially with tens of thousands of US troops are within the firing range of the Iranian IRGC-Quds Brigades, and the Iraqi PMU as well.

Whatever excuse the US had is no longer worthy of reading, out of our direct experience in the region, the US should be very worried of the consequences and remain on ultra-high alert until Iran officially says they concluded avenging this killing if they’ll ever ‘conclude’.

What we can confirm is this will be the most costly operation the US ever carried out anywhere in the world: by the cost of money, interests, maybe even personnel, and maybe further, but for sure the response will be much bigger than what the US can afford, that includes its satellite entities depending on its protection.

From the decades-long history of resistance and the people of the region, whenever a commander is killed, the subordinates become more hot-headed and seek revenge. This was demonstrated clearly when the US and its stooges killed the Syrian Minister of Defense Abdallah Rajha in 2012 and a number of top security and army generals and instantly al-Qaeda terrorists were given the green light to storm Damascus from a number of axes. The Syrian Arab Army, instead of collapsing, turned the tide in the opposite direction and secured the Syrian capital moving from one victory to another.

The only strategic outcome of this assassination is seeing the US forces out of Iraq, sooner than thought before, opposite to the hopes of who carried out this operation.

*

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

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Major General Soleimani’s Assassination Isn’t Going to Start World War III

January 3rd, 2020 by Andrew Korybko

The US carried out a de-facto act of war against Iran after assassinating Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force in Baghdad last night, but despite the doomsday scenarios that many in Alt-Media are speculating that this will lead to, the commencement of World War III is extremely unlikely for several reasons.

***

The “Decapitation Strike” That Shook The World

Trump’s approval of the US’ assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force in Baghdad last night amounts to a de-facto act of war against Iran, but it wasn’t the decision of a “madman” or someone whose permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) didn’t think this completely through. Rather, it was a premeditated “decapitation strike” carried out to prove the US’ conventional “escalation dominance” in its regional proxy war with Iran, one which America surely knows will elicit a kinetic response of some sort from the Islamic Republic but which the Pentagon and its regional allies are prepared for. Contrary to the narrative bandied about in Alt-Media, the US didn’t “surrender” the Mideast to Russia and Iran in recent years (who, to be clear, are not “allies”, but anti-terrorist “partners of convenience” in Syria) despite some regional setbacks to its grand strategy, but merely adjusted the nature through which it intends to restore its influence there.

Background Context

Instead of continuing to waste hundreds of millions of dollars a day funding the counterproductive 100,000-strong occupation of Iraq and potentially exposing that many troops (“sitting ducks”) to retaliatory attacks, it decided to scale down its conventional presence there and replace it with highly trained Marines and special forces that operate with the support of targeted missile strikes. It was one such strike earlier in the week against the Popular Mobilization Units’ (PMU) Kataib Hezbollah, which is integrated into the Iraqi Armed Forces, that provoked the group’s supporters (allegedly with the coordination of the IRGC according to the US) into besieging the American Embassy in Baghdad. Trump responded by immediately dispatching troops to the world’s largest diplomatic facility and bragging on Twitter that this was his “anti-Benghazi” moment in a clear swipe at Obama’s notorious failure to protect American diplomats back in 2012 when they were in similar circumstances.

Once the unrest died down following the organizers’ decision to withdraw after they declared that their “message has been heard”, US Secretary of Defense ominously warned that his country could take “preemptive action” if it detects any signals that Iran is supposedly planning more anti-American attacks in Iraq. The Islamic Republic denied that it played any role in the recent events unfolding in the neighboring country, but the US obviously didn’t believe it. It therefore set out to assassinate Maj. Gen. Soleimani in order to send the message that it’s serious about “deterring” any forthcoming allegedly Iranian-connected anti-American attacks seeing as how it blamed him for being involved in the latest ones. It also wanted to put additional pressure on Iran to withdraw from Iraq, but probably expected that it could exploit Tehran’s response to this de-facto act of war as a pretext for further intensifying its pressure campaign through more “decapitation strikes”. This attack therefore dangerously escalated tensions with Iran and made many observers fear the onset of World War III.

Some Words About Maj. Gen. Soleimani

What follows isn’t an excuse for America’s actions, but simply a cold, hard analysis explaining why Trump decided to assassinate Solemani and thus carry out a de-facto act of war against Iran, one which will not lead to World War III despite the fearmongering speculation that’s taken social media by storm ever since. Simply put, Iran misjudged the US’ resolve to regain its lost influence in the region and never thought that it would escalate the situation to this level, hence why Maj. Gen. Solemani had no fear of being killed in the heart of Baghdad despite the US’ conventional air superiority and explicit warnings that it could take “preemptive action” against Iran if it believes that it played any role whatsoever in any forthcoming anti-American attacks. It doesn’t matter whether or not the PMU’s Kataib Hezbollah is justified in seeking the removal of US forces from the country through any means possible or if it coordinates those actions with the IRGC since all that’s important is that the US was looking for a pretext to carry out its calculated “decapitation strike” against Maj. Gen. Soleimani.

A few words about him are appropriate at this point. It was through his leadership that the IRGC greatly assisted the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in its destruction of Daesh. He’s played a larger role than any individual in defeating terrorism in Syria and Iraq, and he was widely respected as among one of the most brilliant unconventional warfare tacticians in recent memory. It was because of his success, however, that he became one of the US’ most hated foes since he contributed to the defeat of Washington’s regional proxy forces and thus was partly responsible for the decline in American influence there lately. He was therefore marked for death by the US, but Trump knew that killing him without any pretext would be an unnecessary escalation so he wanted to save that “ace up his sleeve” for later. Iran knows that the US wants it to withdraw from Syria and Iraq but steadfastly refuses because it has the legal right to remain there at the request of those countries’ internationally recognized governments, but nevertheless, the US thinks that “might makes right” and is trying to force it out.

The Islamic Republic Won’t Commit Suicide

American and “Israeli” strikes against allegedly IRGC-allied PMU forces over the past month or so were intended to achieve that outcome, which naturally prompted those forces to kinetically react by targeting a US base earlier in the week that afterwards served as the pretext for America’s latest attack against Kataib Hezbollah which in turn triggered the embassy siege. There’s no doubt that the US is escalating the situation in contravention of international law and targeting anti-terrorist forces that contributed to the defeat of Daesh, but polemics — while having their “perception management” purposes — are pointless when it comes to analyzing situations as objectively as possible and forecasting what might come next. Therefore, they’re being excluded from this piece going forward. Having gotten that out of the way, it’s now time to turn the article’s attention towards rebutting the fearmongering claims that World War III is about to start after Maj. Gen. Soleimani’s assassination.

Iran has the international legal right to defend itself, and its Supreme Leader already vowed a “harsh revenge” to that end, but it’s extremely unlikely to take the form of direct attacks against the US or its allies. As much as the next phrase is going to trigger many Alt-Media folks, the US military is capable of destroying Iran in minutes so long as it’s willing to bear the regional costs of its actions, both short-term in the sense of casualties and long-term as it relates to the geopolitical future of the Mideast. After proving his commitment to overwhelmingly respond to any anti-American attacks that his government alleges (whether truthfully or not) are carried out with any degree of Iranian coordination, Trump certainly wouldn’t hesitate to bomb Iran itself if missiles were launched from there against his or his allies’ forces. The Islamic Republic knows that it would literally be suicide to do such a thing, and despite what neoconservatives, Zionists, and Wahhabis claim about the Iranian authorities, they aren’t an “apocalyptic death cult” and thus aren’t going to start World War III.

Several Scenarios

There’s no doubt that Iran could inflict very serious damage to its regional foes if it chooses to “go out with a bang” (whether after being provoked to do so or at its own prerogative), but it’s much more likely that its response to Maj. Gen. Soleimani’s assassination will take the form of intensified Unconventional Warfare against their interests. The US and its allies must have clearly foreseen this and will likely blame Iran for anything that happens in the coming days no matter whether it’s truly involved or not, using that as a pretext for more “decapitation strikes” and other similar measures intended to decimate it and its allies’ forces. The nature of conflict between the two sides is therefore asymmetric since the US has conventional dominance whereas Iran has its unconventional counterpart, and both might be put to the test in the event of another US Embassy siege in Baghdad, which is very probable in the coming days seeing as how Iraqi society is seething with rage and can easily assemble a critical mass of protesters to besiege the compound once again.

For as big of a prize as seizing the world’s largest diplomatic facility would be for whoever can take it (be it Iran, Iranian-allied, or otherwise), there’s no way that Trump would let that happen. Just like the Berlin Airlift of the Old Cold War, the US would carry out a Baghdad Airlift if it need be, which could entail leveling entire neighborhoods in order to prevent its enemies from hiding anti-air missiles there for taking down its air assets. One can only speculate how such a scenario would unfold, but there shouldn’t be any question in anyone’s mind about the US backing down, especially not during an election year and definitely not after Trump proudly boasted that this is his “anti-Benghazi” moment. Another potential retaliatory scenario is disrupting energy transit through the Strait of Hormuz, but that would affect more than just the US and surely elicit universal condemnation from everyone except perhaps allied Syria, just like if Hezbollah or other IRGC-allied forces decide to bomb “Israel” (in which case it and the US would certainly respond through military means).

Don’t Expect Russia Or China To Save Iran

It’s “politically inconvenient” for many of Iran’s supporters across the world to accept, but the country doesn’t have any state-based military allies willing to go to war alongside it except perhaps Syria, but the SAA has been utterly devastated over the last 9 years and is now a shadow of its former self. There is also absolutely no way that Russia would allow Syria to actively participate in any state-based military hostilities alongside Iran because doing so would endanger the forces and substantial investments that it has in the Arab Republic nowadays. Speaking of which, Russia isn’t Iran’s ally, but “Israel’s”, though it wouldn’t go to war alongside the self-professed “Jewish State” but rather stay out of any potential conflict between the two (which wouldn’t last long considering that the US’ conventional dominance could crush the Islamic Republic within days if Trump authorized it to be unleashed to its fullest extent and he was willing to accept the previously mentioned costs).

Neither Russia nor China would go to war in support of Iran, though they could be expected to issue very strong statements of condemnation against the US and anyone else who might conventionally attack it (whether “preemptively” or as “retaliation”). This objectively existing and easily verifiable statement of fact will likely take many in Alt-Media by surprise who have been indoctrinated over the past couple of years with fake news “analyses” alleging that those two Eurasian Great Powers are “anti-American” and willing to fight the US in order to “save the world”. That will never happen unless one of them is attacked first (though even in that case, neither would go to war for the other because they’ve made it clear that they’re not “military allies”), which probably won’t happen because of the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), at least not unless the US is able to surmount that “obstacle” through the combination of its anti-missile technology and “Space Forces”. In any case, nobody should expect Russia or China to rush to Iran’s aid and defend it from the US.

Concluding Thoughts

The most likely outcome of Maj. Gen. Soleimani’s assassination is an intensified period of proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen which stays just below the conventional threshold given Iran’s inability to survive an overwhelming US’ “retaliatory” strike if Trump authorized one in response to the unlikely massive missile strike that some speculate Tehran might be preparing. The US might also carry out “surgical strikes” against places in Iran where it might claim other strikes were “organized”, such as if Yemen’s Ansarullah attempt to repeat their successful drone strike against Saudi Aramco from last September. “Decapitation strikes” might therefore become increasingly more frequent and nobody would be safe, not even Hezbollah’s Nasrallah in the worst-case scenario, since the US just signaled that it has the political will to take out “high-value targets”. As all of this unfolds, Russia and China will do their utmost to stay away from any regional fray and definitely wouldn’t intervene to defend Iran. As such, Iran’s expected responses will be purely asymmetrical and not conventional.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

The Soleimani Assassination: The Long-Awaited Beginning of the End of America’s Imperial Ambitions

January 3rd, 2020 by Philip Giraldi

The United States is now at war with Iran in a conflict that could easily have been avoided and it will not end well. There will be no declaration of war coming from either side, but the assassination of Iranian Quds Force Commander General Qassem Soleimaniand the head of Kata’ib Hezbollah Abu Mehdi Muhandis by virtue of a Reaper drone strike in Baghdad will shift the long-simmering conflict between the two nations into high gear. Iran cannot let the killing of a senior military officer go unanswered even though it cannot directly confront the United States militarily. But there will be reprisals and Tehran’s suspected use of proxies to stage limited strikes will now be replaced by more damaging actions that can be directly attributed to the Iranian government. As Iran has significant resources locally, one can expect that the entire Persian Gulf region will be destabilized.

And there is also the terrorism card, which will come into play. Iran has an extensive diaspora throughout much of the Middle East and, as it has been threatened by Washington for many years, it has had a long time to prepare for a war to be fought largely in the shadows. No American diplomat, soldier or even tourists in the region should consider him or herself to be safe, quite the contrary. It will be an “open season” on Americans. The U.S. has already ordered a partial evacuation of the Baghdad Embassy and has advised all American citizens to leave the country immediately.

Donald Trump rode to victory in 2016 on a promise to end the useless wars in the Middle East, but he has now demonstrated very clearly that he is a liar. Instead of seeking detente, one of his first actions was to end the JCPOA nuclear agreement and re-introduce sanctions against Iran. In a sense, Iran has from the beginning been the exception to Trump’s no-new-war pledge, a position that might reasonably be directly attributed to his incestuous relationship with the American Jewish community and in particular derived from his pandering to the expressed needs of Israel’s belligerent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump bears full responsibility for what comes next. The neoconservatives and Israelis are predictably cheering the result, with Mark Dubowitz of the pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of Democracies enthusing that it is “bigger than bin Laden…a massive blow to the [Iranian] regime.” Dubowitz, whose credentials as an “Iran expert” are dubious at best, is at least somewhat right in this case. Qassem Suleimani is, to be sure, charismatic and also very popular in Iran. He is Iran’s most powerful military figure in the entire region, being the principal contact for proxies and allies in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. But what Dubowitz does not understand is that no one in a military hierarchy is irreplaceable.  Suleimani’s aides and high officials in the intelligence ministry are certainly more than capable of picking up his mantle and continuing his policies.

In reality, the series of foolish attacks initiated by the United States over the past week will only hasten the departure of much of the U.S. military from the region. The Pentagon and White House have been insisting that Iran was behind an alleged Kata’ib Hezbollah attack on a U.S. installation that then triggered a strike by Washington on claimed militia targets in Syria and also inside Iraq. Even though the U.S. military presence is as a guest of the Iraqi government, Washington went ahead with its attack even after the Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi said “no.”

To justify its actions, Mark Esper, Secretary of Defense, went so far as to insist that “Iran is at war with the whole world,” a clear demonstration of just how ignorant the White House team actually is. The U.S. government characteristically has not provided any evidence demonstrating either Iranian or Kata’ib involvement in recent developments, but after the counter-strike killed 26 Iraqi soldiers, the mass demonstrations against the Embassy in Baghdad became inevitable. The demonstrations were also attributed to Iran by Washington even though the people in the street were undoubtedly Iraqis.

Now that the U.S. has also killed Suleimani and Muhandis in a drone strike at Baghdad Airport, clearly accomplished without the approval of the Iraqi government, it is inevitable that the prime minister will ask American forces to leave. That will in turn make the situation for the remaining U.S. troops in neighboring Syria untenable. And it will also force other Arab states in the region to rethink their hosting of U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen due to the law of unanticipated consequences as it is now clear that Washington has foolishly begun a war that serves no one’s interests.

The blood of the Americans, Iranians and Iraqis who will die in the next few weeks is clearly on Donald Trump’s hands as this war was never inevitable and served no U.S. national interest. It will surely turn out to be a debacle, as well as devastating for all parties involved. And it might well, on top of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, be the long-awaited beginning of the end of America’s imperial ambitions. Let us hope so!

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Sheer Stupidity Defines the Trump Regime’s Foreign Policy. Escalation and the Risk of an All Out War

January 3rd, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

A personal comment in response to the Trump regime’s assassination of redoubtable Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, a national hero now martyred by US imperial rage.

He represented Iranian resilience and resistance against US state-terrorism, its endless wars of aggression, its rage for global control by brute force — responsible for countless millions of deaths, vast destruction, and human misery globally.

The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists. Never beautiful, it was world’s apart from today’s permanent US state of war on humanity at home and abroad.

Throughout the post-WW II Cold War period through Soviet Russia’s December 1991 dissolution, I never feared nuclear war.

Mutually assured destruction (MAD) when cooler heads ran things in Washington prevented the unthinkable.

Today’s criminal class in the nation’s capital makes the unthinkable possible — bipartisan hardliners abhorrent of peace, stability, equity, justice, and the rule of law.

They’re unchallenged by a largely ignorant, indifferent public, brainwashed by political and media talking heads, distracted by bread and circuses — while endless wars rage, the nation’s resources used for mass slaughter, vast destruction, conquest and colonization, at the expense of beneficial social change.

Will planet earth be consumed by US arrogance and rage for dominance?

Is catastrophic nuclear war inevitable? Will humanity survive or perish?

Are we doomed by diabolical US rage to force other countries to bend to its will — naked aggression and other hostile actions its favored tactics, multi-world polarity fought tooth and nail, peace and stability considered un-American!

As a boy, youth and young man, I was free from what I fear now — possible global war that could kill us all.

The road to hell pursued by the US ruling class is paved with ill-intentions — abhorrent of what just societies cherish.

In my 9th decade, I fear for younger generations in the US and elsewhere.

Will they match my longevity or perish in a mushroom-shaped cloud or by other destructive means?

Are they doomed by US rage to rule the world unchallenged by whatever it takes to achieve its aims, the human toll of no consequence?

Heaven help us in the new year and what follows. 2020 began with a bang! Is the worst ahead?

In response to Soleimani’s Trump regime assassination, Russia’s upper house Federation Council Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Konstantin Kosachev called what happened “the worst case scenario,” adding:

Iranian retribution “will not take long…This is very difficult news, a harbinger of new clashes between the Americans and radical Shiites in Iraq.”

“But I will be glad to be proved wrong because wars are easy to start, but very difficult to end.”

A statement by Russia’s Foreign Ministry said:

“We consider the killing of Soleimani as the result of an American missile strike in the vicinity of Baghdad to be a bold step that will lead to increased tension throughout the region,” adding:

“Soleimani was devoted to protecting Iran’s national interests. We express our sincere condolences to the Iranian people.”

Russian expert Dmitry Trenin said Soleimani’s assassination “will not deter Iran. More likely it will further escalate the situation in the region, starting with Iraq” — where it already began by renewed US aggression.

On Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced Soleimani’s successor, saying:

“Following the martyrdom of the glorious General Haj Qasem Soleimani, I name Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani as the commander of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

He also declared three days of mourning to honor Soleimani’s leadership, courage, and dedication to defending Iran from the threat of foreign aggression.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

It’s About Time the ICC Initiates Probe into Israeli War Crimes

January 3rd, 2020 by Michael Jansen

It is about time for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to initiate and actually conduct a probe into war crimes perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people. ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced recently that she would launch a full investigation into crimes committed by Israel as soon as the court’s jurisdiction has been established. She said a preliminary investigation initiated in 2015 had provided sufficient material to meet criteria for proceeding with a full probe that could lead to prosecutions.

Bensouda said she has filed a request with judges for an “expeditious” ruling on jurisdiction due to the contested legal status of the Palestinian territories conquered by Israel in 1967.

While Israel is not a signatory of the ICC’s Statute, Palestine applied in 2009 and gained membership in 2012 after its UN membership was upgraded by the UN General Assembly to “non-member observer state”. Palestine has joined other UN and international organisations and signed key treaties since then, strengthening its case with respect to the ICC.

Palestine signed the ICC statute on January 2, 2015. When its membership entered into force on April 1, 2015. The ICC held a ceremony welcoming Palestine as the 123rd state party to the Rome Statute, which was signed in July 1996 and entered into force on July 1, 2002. The European Union welcomed Palestine’s accession.

The Statute designates four international crimes: Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The ICC has jurisdiction if any of these crimes are committed on the territory of a member state. This is certainly true where the territory of Palestine is concerned.

On January 16, 2015, before Palestine’s membership had entered into force, the ICC prosecutor opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine to determine whether to carry out the full probe. It is on the basis of this investigation that Bensouda intends to proceed. In the view of Bensouda, this confers on Palestine and the Palestinian Authority the right to pursue cases against Israel.

Two previous Palestinian complaints have been problematic. The first was an investigation into Israel’s 2010 attack on Turkish ferryboat, Mavi Marmara, which killed 10 peace activists taking part in a flotilla bound for Gaza. This complaint was dropped early last month.

The second was mounted in August 2014 into Israel’s illegal colonisation of Palestinian territory and onslaught on Gaza that killed 2,100-2,300 Palestinians, 67 Israeli soldiers, five Israeli civilians and one Thai worker. These cases were included in the preliminary probe.

Bensouda decided to take the plunge in 2014 during Israel’s disproportionate assault on Gaza. At that time, she intended her investigation to be entirely independent and focused on crimes defined by the Rome Statute. Unlike other figures critical of Israel actions, she does not regard “Israeli exceptionalism”, or impunity, as a reason for failing to tackle its bad behaviour.

The current focus is on Israeli West Bank settlement activities regarded as illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits colonisation of land conquered in war, Israeli violations in Gaza, abuses by Palestinian Authority security personnel, and Authority pensions for families of Palestinians who have mounted attacks on Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority welcomed Bensouda’s decision to proceed with a full investigation and demanded that proceedings go forward without further delays. “After nearly five years of preliminary examination, the Palestinian people who seek redress in this court expect actions congruent with the urgency and gravity of the situation in Palestine and they rightly demand that these steps are taken without delay.”

Both Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of state Mike Pompeo have said the ICC has no jurisdiction because Palestine is not a “so sovereign state”. Neither Israel nor the US have joined the ICC so they have little direct purchase to exert pressure on the court. Israeli and US opposition to Bensouda’s probe was always expected. While Israel is a constant abuser of Palestinians, the US does its utmost to block efforts to curb Israel or punish it for its illegal actions. Israel and the US are certain to lobby ICC members to oppose and scupper the court’s probe with the aim of defending Israel from the “embarrassment” of having its citizens tried and, finally, found guilty of the “war crimes they have been committing for decades”.

However, the Trump administration, has transformed the US into a rogue state on the international scene. European governments are, in particular, fed up with his withdrawal of the US from well-established global treaties and agreements, including the Paris climate change accord and the six-nation deal to dismantle 90 per cent of Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.

On the Palestine-Israel front, Trump has put the nails in the coffin of the long moribund Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Instead of adopting an even-handed approach to negotiations between Palestine and Israel, Trump has done everything in his power to please and court Israel.

He has renounced 70 years of agreed international policy by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and shifting the US embassy to the Holy City. Trump has ended all US funding to the UN agency looking after Palestinian refugees and Pompeo has argued that Israeli settlements are not “illegal”.

Trump has recognised Israel’s unilateral annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967, and is expected to do the same once Netanyahu annexes Israeli West Bank colonies and the Jordan Valley.  By taking these steps Trump has, essentially, preempted Palestinian-Israeli negotiations by deciding the fate of Jerusalem, refugees and Israeli settlements, key issues dividing the parties, as well as the Golan.

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UN Concerned over British Government’s Failure to Investigate Whether Assange Has Been Subjected to Psychological Torture

January 3rd, 2020 by Ceren Sagir

United Nations special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer has written to governments to press them to investigate properly evidence that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been subjected to psychological torture.

On December 31 Mr Melzer shared on Twitter a letter that he had sent to the British government shaming its failure to address concerns that Mr Assange had been tortured.

The letter, dated October 29, did not receive a response. He has also written to the United States, Swedish and Ecuadorian governments.

The US is seeking Mr Assange’s extradition to face spying charges. The whistleblower has been detained since his arrest in April at the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He had been confined there since 2012 after being granted asylum by the South American country.

At the time Mr Assange was a wanted man in Sweden, having failed to respond to demands for him to return there to face questioning over sexual assault charges. He claimed that Sweden would simply ship him out to a vengeful US, angered by his whistleblowing activities. The assault charges were eventually dropped.

In his tweet Mr Melzer accused the British government of “seriously undermining the credibility of the UK’s commitment to the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment, as well as to the rule of law more generally.”

He said that “recurring and serious” due-process violations in Britain have rendered Mr Assange’s case “inherently arbitrary, to the point of making any legal remedies a pointless formality devoid of prospect.”

Mr Melzer called on the government to retract its extradition authorisation and release him from prison “without further delay.”

Anti-war campaigner John Rees told the Star yesterday:

“Obviously it is a very important intervention from a very high-authority source, but it is not news to anyone who has visited Assange in Belmarsh high-security prison, as I have.

“The conditions he is being kept in are unacceptable and there is absolutely no doubt that the prison regime is directly causing deterioration of his health.”

Mr Rees said it was Home Secretary Priti Patel’s responsibility to intervene.

“The judge has already expressed concern that [Mr Assange’s] legal team are not getting access to their client,” he said. “Both these things are of the most serious nature, it jeopardises any fair hearings coming up in February.”

Former Derby North MP Chris Williamson tweeted:

“The UK government’s treatment of Julian Assange continues to shame Britain.”

Mr Melzer’s call comes as journalist Vaughan Smith told RT that an “obviously sedated” Mr Assange said he was “slowly dying here” during a Christmas Eve phone call between the two friends.

Mr Smith said Mr Assange sounded like a shell of the man he once.

“His speech was slurred. He was speaking slowly,” Mr Smith said. “Now, Julian is highly articulate, a very clear person when he speaks. And he sounded awful. It was very upsetting to hear him.”

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Featured image: Julian Assange court sketch, October 21, 2019, supplied by Julia Quenzler.

West Bank Settlers Attack Undercover Israeli Police Officers Disguised as Palestinians

January 3rd, 2020 by The New Arab

Two Israeli settlers attacked undercover police officers disguised as Palestinian labourers in an illegal West Bank settlement this week.

Believing the police to be Palestinian workers, the teenage settlers approached them in the Bat Ayin settlement and started to interrogate them. The police refused to answer properly, prompting an attack, Haaretz reported.

One teenager used pepper spray on the undercover cop, and the other started beating them.

They were subsequently arrested and taken in for questioning. According to their lawyer, Moshe Polsky, the two teenage boys were held overnight. Their names were not released because they are minors.

Polsky, who is defending the teenagers on behalf of far-right pro-settlement legal aid group Honeinu, said the boys were under full conviction that the officers were Palestinian, thus attacking them is justified during a “stressful security period”.

He also deplored the police officers for “provoking” the settlers by dressing as undercover Palestinians.

Settlers in Bat Ayin are notoriously anti-Palestinian. Unlike other illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, Palestinians are not even allowed to enter.

Israel has occupied the West Bank illegally since 1967, and commits various abuses against Palestinian civilians, human rights groups say.

More than 600,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in constructions considered illegal under international law.

Along with stealing land, Israeli soldiers and settlers routinely harass Palestinians in the occupied territories in various ways.

Israeli military forces and settlers routinely harass Palestinians in the occupied territories through harming and killing civilians, demolishing homes, poisoning livestock, vandalising property and other forms of violence.

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America’s War for Global Domination

January 3rd, 2020 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Author’s Note 

The following  text was presented at the Society for the Defense of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, 10-11 December, 2003 and Humboldt University, Berlin, 12 December 2003.

Written 16 years ago in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq (March-April 2003), the article identifies “the next phase of the US led war”, including Washington’s longstanding intent to wage war on Iran. It also focusses on Tel Aviv’s plan to “create a Greater Israel” which is tantamount to destroying Palestine. 

It addresses the issue of “False Flags” and the role of the media in spreading war propaganda. 

Sixteen years later, America’s hegemonic military agenda has reached a dangerous threshold: The assassination of  IRGC General Soleimani ordered by Donald Trump on January 2, 2020 is tantamount to an Act of War against Iran.

US Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper described it as a “decisive defensive action” while confirming that the operation ordered by Donald Trump had been carried out by the Pentagon. “The game has changed” said Defense Secretary Esper.  

How to reverse the tide of war?

Forcefully undermine the media propaganda apparatus which seeks to justify “humanitarian wars” under the banner of responsibility to protect (R2P).

Impeach all criminals in high office including POTUS as well the entire Congressional apparatus which pays lip service to US led wars.

Target the powerful economic interests which sustain America’s war without borders including Wall Street, Big Oil and the Military Industrial Complex

How to Restore Democracy? 

“To reverse the tide of war, military bases must be closed down, the war machine (namely the production of advanced weapons systems like WMDs) must be stopped and the burgeoning police state must be dismantled. More generally we must reverse the “free market” reforms, dismantle the institutions of global capitalism and disarm financial markets.

The struggle must be broad-based and democratic encompassing all sectors of society at all levels, in all countries, uniting in a major thrust: workers, farmers, independent producers, small businesses, professionals, artists, civil servants, members of the clergy, students and intellectuals.

The antiwar and anti-globalisation movements must be integrated into a single worldwide movement. People must be united across sectors, “single issue” groups must join hands in a common and collective understanding on how the New World Order destroys and impoverishes.” (M. Chossudovsky, December 2003)

No easy undertaking. Topple the hegemonic project.

Regime Change in America? 

Michel Chossudovsky, January 4, 2020

 

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We are at the juncture of the most serious crisis in modern history.

The Bush Administration has embarked upon a military adventure which threatens the future of humanity.

The wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are part of a broader military agenda, which was launched at the end of the Cold War. The ongoing war agenda is a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War and the NATO led wars on Yugoslavia (1991-2001).

(Prof Michel Chossudovsky together with Admiral (ret) Elmar Schmaehling, Humboldt University, Berlin, December 2003)

The post Cold War period has also been marked by numerous US covert intelligence operations within the former Soviet Union, which were instrumental in triggering civil wars in several of the former republics including Chechnya (within the Russian Federation), Georgia and Azerbaijan. In the latter, these covert operations were launched with a view to securing strategic control over oil and gas pipeline corridors.

US military and intelligence operations in the post Cold War era were led in close coordination with the “free market reforms” imposed under IMF guidance in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Balkans, which resulted in the destabilization of national economies and the impoverishment of millions of people.

The World Bank sponsored privatization programmes in these countries enabled Western capital to acquire ownership and gain control of a large share of the economy of the former Eastern block countries. This process is also at the basis of the strategic mergers and/or takeovers of the former Soviet oil and gas industry by powerful Western conglomerates, through financial manipulation and corrupt political practices.

In other words, what is at stake in the US led war is the recolonization of a vast region extending from the Balkans into Central Asia.

The deployment of America’s war machine purports to enlarge America’s economic sphere of influence. The U.S. has established a permanent military presence not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has military bases in several of the former Soviet republics on China’s Western frontier. In turn, since 1999, there has been a military buildup in the South China Sea.

War and Globalization go hand in hand. Militarization supports the conquest of new economic frontiers and the worldwide imposition of “free market” system.

The Next Phase of the War

The Bush administration has already identified Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”. The bombing of presumed ‘terrorist bases’ in Syria by the Israeli Air Force in October was intended to provide a justification for subsequent pre-emptive military interventions. Ariel Sharon launched the attacks with the approval of Donald Rumsfeld. (See Gordon Thomas, Global Outlook, No. 6, Winter 2004)

This planned extension of the war into Syria has serious implications. It means that Israel becomes a major military actor in the US-led war, as well as an ‘official’ member of the Anglo-American coalition.

The Pentagon views ‘territorial control’ over Syria, which constitutes a land bridge between Israel and occupied Iraq, as ‘strategic’ from a military and economic standpoint. It also constitutes a means of controlling the Iraqi border and curbing the flow of volunteer fighters, who are traveling to Baghdad to join the Iraqi resistance movement.

This enlargement of the theater of war is consistent with Ariel Sharon’s plan to build a ‘Greater Israel’ “on the ruins of Palestinian nationalism”. While Israel seeks to extend its territorial domain towards the Euphrates River, with designated areas of Jewish settlement in the Syrian heartland, Palestinians are imprisoned in Gaza and the West Bank behind an ‘Apartheid Wall’.

In the meantime, the US Congress has tightened the economic sanctions on Libya and Iran. As well, Washington is hinting at the need for a ‘regime change’ in Saudi Arabia. Political pressures are building up in Turkey.

So, the war could indeed spill over into a much broader region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian sub-continent and China’s Western frontier.

The “Pre-emptive” Use of Nuclear Weapons

Washington has adopted a first strike “pre-emptive” nuclear policy, which has now received congressional approval. Nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort as during the cold War era.

The US, Britain and Israel have a coordinated nuclear weapons policy. Israeli nuclear warheads are pointed at major cities in the Middle East. The governments of all three countries have stated quite openly, prior to the war on Iraq, that they are prepared to use nuclear weapons “if they are attacked” with so-called “weapons of mass destruction.” Israel is the fifth nuclear power in the World. Its nuclear arsenal is more advanced than that of Britain.

Barely a few weeks following the entry of the US Marines into Baghdad, the US Senate Armed Services Committee gave the green light to the Pentagon to develop a new tactical nuclear bomb, to be used in conventional war theaters, “with a yield [of up to] six times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb”.

Following the Senate decision, the Pentagon redefined the details of its nuclear agenda in a secret meeting with senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex held at Central Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. The meeting was held on August 6, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 58 years ago.

The new nuclear policy explicitly involves the large defense contractors in decision-making. It is tantamount to the “privatization” of nuclear war. Corporations not only reap multibillion dollar profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use nuclear weapons for the “defense of the American Homeland.”

Fully endorsed by the US Congress, the mini-nukes are considered to be “safe for civilians”.

This new generation of nuclear weapons is slated to be used in the next phase of this war, in “conventional war theatres” (e.g. in the Middle East and Central Asia) alongside conventional weapons.

In December 2003, the US Congress allocated $6.3 billion solely for 2004, to develop this new generation of “defensive” nuclear weapons.

The overall annual defense budget is of the order of 400 billion dollars, roughly of the same order of magnitude as the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the Russian Federation.

While there is no firm evidence of the use of mini-nukes in the Iraqi and Afghan war theatres, tests conducted by Canada’s Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC), in Afghanistan confirm that recorded toxic radiation was not attributable to ‘heavy metal’ depleted uranium ammunition (DU), but to another unidentified form of uranium contamination:

“some form of uranium weapon had been used (…) The results were astounding: the donors presented concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times greater than in the Gulf War veterans tested in 1999.” www.umrc.net

The Planning of War

The war on Iraq has been in the planning stages at least since the mid-1990s.

A 1995 National Security document of the Clinton administration stated quite clearly that the objective of the war is oil. “to protect the United States’ uninterrupted, secure U.S. access to oil.

In September 2000, a few months before the accession of George W. Bush to the White House, the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) published its blueprint for global domination under the title: “Rebuilding America’s Defenses.”

The PNAC is a neo-conservative think tank linked to the Defense-Intelligence establishment, the Republican Party and the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) which plays a behind-the-scenes role in the formulation of US foreign policy.

The PNAC’s declared objective is quite simple – to:

“Fight and decisively win in multiple, simultaneous theater wars”.

This statement indicates that the US plans to be involved simultaneously in several war theaters in different regions of the World.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney had commissioned the PNAC blueprint prior to the presidential elections.

The PNAC outlines a roadmap of conquest. It calls for “the direct imposition of U.S. “forward bases” throughout Central Asia and the Middle East “with a view to ensuring economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential “rival” or any viable alternative to America’s vision of a ‘free market’ economy” (See Chris Floyd, Bush’s Crusade for empire, Global Outlook, No. 6, 2003)

The Role of “Massive Casualty Producing Events”

The PNAC blueprint also outlines a consistent framework of war propaganda. One year before 9/11, the PNAC called for “some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor,” which would serve to galvanize US public opinion in support of a war agenda. (See this)

The PNAC architects seem to have anticipated with cynical accuracy, the use of the September 11 attacks as “a war pretext incident.”

The PNAC’s reference to a “catastrophic and catalyzing event” echoes a similar statement by David Rockefeller to the United Nations Business Council in 1994:

“We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”

Similarly, in the words Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book, The Grand Chessboard:.

“…it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus [in America] on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter was one of the key architects of the Al Qaeda network, created by the CIA at the onslaught of the Soviet Afghan war (1979-1989).

The “catastrophic and catalyzing event” as stated by the PNAC is an integral part of US military-intelligence planning. General Franks, who led the military campaign into Iraq, pointed recently (October 2003) to the role of a “massive casualty-producing event” to muster support for the imposition of military rule in America. (See General Tommy Franks calls for Repeal of US Constitution, November 2003).

Franks identifies the precise scenario whereby military rule will be established:

“a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event.” (Ibid)

This statement from an individual, who was actively involved in military and intelligence planning at the highest levels, suggests that the “militarisation of our country” is an ongoing operational assumption. It is part of the broader “Washington consensus”. It identifies the Bush administration’s “roadmap” of war and “Homeland Defense.” Needless to say, it is also an integral part of the neoliberal agenda.

The “terrorist massive casualty-producing event” is presented by General Franks as a crucial political turning point. The resulting crisis and social turmoil are intended to facilitate a major shift in US political, social and institutional structures.

General Franks’ statement reflects a consensus within the US Military as to how events ought to unfold. The “war on terrorism” is to provide a justification for repealing the Rule of Law, ultimately with a view to “preserving civil liberties.”

Franks’ interview suggests that an Al Qaeda sponsored terrorist attack will be used as a “trigger mechanism” for a military coup d’état in America. The PNAC’s “Pearl Harbor type event” would be used as a justification for declaring a State of emergency, leading to the establishment of a military government.

In many regards, the militarisation of civilian State institutions in the US is already functional under the facade of a bogus democracy.

War Propaganda

In the wake of the September attacks on the World Trade Center, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld created to the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), or “Office of Disinformation” as it was labeled by its critics:

“The Department of Defense said they needed to do this, and they were going to actually plant stories that were false in foreign countries — as an effort to influence public opinion across the world. (Interview with Steve Adubato, Fox News, 26 December 2002.)

And, all of a sudden, the OSI was formally disbanded following political pressures and “troublesome” media stories that “its purpose was to deliberately lie to advance American interests.” (Air Force Magazine, January 2003, italics added) “Rumsfeld backed off and said this is embarrassing.” (Adubato, op. cit. italics added) Yet despite this apparent about-turn, the Pentagon’s Orwellian disinformation campaign remains functionally intact: “[T]he secretary of defense is not being particularly candid here. Disinformation in military propaganda is part of war.”(Ibid)

Rumsfeld later confirmed in a press interview that while the OSI no longer exists in name, the “Office’s intended functions are being carried out”. (Quoted in Federation of American Scientists (FAS) Secrecy News, Rumsfeld’s press interview can be consulted here).

A number of government agencies and intelligence units –with links to the Pentagon-remain actively involved in various components of the propaganda campaign. Realities are turned upside down. Acts of war are heralded as “humanitarian interventions” geared towards “regime change” and “the restoration of democracy”. Military occupation and the killing of civilians are presented as “peace-keeping”. The derogation of civil liberties –in the context of the so-called “anti-terrorist legislation”– is portrayed as a means to providing “domestic security” and upholding civil liberties.

The Central Role of Al Qaeda in Bush’s National Security Doctrine

Spelled out in the National Security Strategy (NSS), the preemptive “defensive war” doctrine and the “war on terrorism” against Al Qaeda constitute the two essential building blocks of the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign.

The objective is to present “preemptive military action” –meaning war as an act of “self-defense” against two categories of enemies, “rogue States” and “Islamic terrorists”:

“The war against terrorists of global reach is a global enterprise of uncertain duration. …America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.

…Rogue states and terrorists do not seek to attack us using conventional means. They know such attacks would fail. Instead, they rely on acts of terror and, potentially, the use of weapons of mass destruction (…)

The targets of these attacks are our military forces and our civilian population, in direct violation of one of the principal norms of the law of warfare. As was demonstrated by the losses on September 11, 2001, mass civilian casualties is the specific objective of terrorists and these losses would be exponentially more severe if terrorists acquired and used weapons of mass destruction.

The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction- and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, (…). To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”12 (National Security Strategy, White House, 2002)

To justify pre-emptive military actions, the National Security Doctrine requires the “fabrication” of a terrorist threat, –ie. “an outside enemy.” It also needs to link these terrorist threats to “State sponsorship” by the so-called “rogue states.”

But it also means that the various “massive casualty-producing events” allegedly by Al Qaeda (the fabricated enemy) are part of the National Security agenda.

In the months building up to the invasion of Iraq, covert ‘dirty tricks’ operations were launched to produce misleading intelligence pertaining to both Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and Al Qaeda, which was then fed into the news chain.

In the wake of the war, while the WMD threat has been toned down, Al Qaeda threats to ‘the Homeland’ continue to be repeated ad nauseam in official statements, commented on network TV and pasted on a daily basis across the news tabloids.

And underlying these manipulated realties, “Osama bin Laden” terrorist occurrences are being upheld as a justification for the next phase of this war. The latter hinges in a very direct way:

1) the effectiveness of the Pentagon-CIA propaganda campaign, which is fed into the news chain.

2) The actual occurrence of “massive casualty producing events” as outlined in the PNAC

What this means is that actual (“massive casualty producing”) terrorist events are part and parcel of military planning.

Actual Terrorist Attacks

In other words, to be “effective” the fear and disinformation campaign cannot solely rely on unsubstantiated “warnings” of future attacks, it also requires “real” terrorist occurrences or “incidents”, which provide credibility to the Washington’s war plans. These terrorist events are used to justify the implementation of “emergency measures” as well as “retaliatory military actions”. They are required, in the present context, to create the illusion of “an outside enemy” that is threatening the American Homeland.

The triggering of “war pretext incidents” is part of the Pentagon’s assumptions. In fact it is an integral part of US military history.(See Richard Sanders, War Pretext Incidents, How to Start a War, Global Outlook, published in two parts, Issues 2 and 3, 2002-2003).

In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had envisaged a secret plan entitled “Operation Northwoods”, to deliberately trigger civilian casualties to justify the invasion of Cuba:

“We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” “We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington” “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.” (See the declassified Top Secret 1962 document titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba”16 (See Operation Northwoods here).

There is no evidence that the Pentagon or the CIA played a direct role in recent terrorist attacks, including those in Indonesia (2002), India (2001), Turkey (2003) and Saudi Arabia (2003).

According to the reports, the attacks were undertaken by organizations (or cells of these organizations), which operate quite independently, with a certain degree of autonomy. This independence is in the very nature of a covert intelligence operation. The «intelligence asset» is not in direct contact with its covert sponsors. It is not necessarily cognizant of the role it plays on behalf of its intelligence sponsors.

The fundamental question is who is behind them? Through what sources are they being financed? What is the underlying network of ties?

For instance, in the case of the 2002 Bali bomb attack, the alleged terrorist organization Jemaah Islamiah had links to Indonesia’s military intelligence (BIN), which in turn has links to the CIA and Australian intelligence.

The December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament –which contributed to pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war– were allegedly conducted by two Pakistan-based rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba (“Army of the Pure”) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (“Army of Mohammed”), both of which according to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) are supported by Pakistan’s ISI. (Council on Foreign Relations, Washington 2002).

What the CFR fails to acknowledge is the crucial relationship between the ISI and the CIA and the fact that the ISI continues to support Lashkar, Jaish and the militant Jammu and Kashmir Hizbul Mujahideen (JKHM), while also collaborating with the CIA. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Fabricating an Enemy, March 2003)

A 2002 classified outbrief drafted to guide the Pentagon “calls for the creation of a so-called ‘Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group’ (P2OG), to launch secret operations aimed at “stimulating reactions” among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction — that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing themselves to ‘quick-response’ attacks by U.S. forces.” (William Arkin, The Secret War, The Los Angeles Times, 27 October 2002)

The P2OG initiative is nothing new. It essentially extends an existing apparatus of covert operations. Amply documented, the CIA has supported terrorist groups since the Cold War era. This “prodding of terrorist cells” under covert intelligence operations often requires the infiltration and training of the radical groups linked to Al Qaeda.

In this regard, covert support by the US military and intelligence apparatus has been channeled to various Islamic terrorist organizations through a complex network of intermediaries and intelligence proxies. In the course of the 1990s, agencies of the US government have collaborated with Al Qaeda in a number of covert operations, as confirmed by a 1997 report of the Republican Party Committee of the US Congress. (See US Congress, 16 January 1997). In fact during the war in Bosnia US weapons inspectors were working with Al Qaeda operatives, bringing in large amounts of weapons for the Bosnian Muslim Army.

In other words, the Clinton Administration was “harboring terrorists”. Moreover, official statements and intelligence reports confirm links between US military-intelligence units and Al Qaeda operatives, as occurred in Bosnia (mid 1990s), Kosovo (1998-99) and Macedonia (2001). (See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalisation, The Truth behind September 11, Global Outlook, 2003, Chapter 3)

The Bush Administration and NATO had links to Al Qaeda in Macedonia. And this happened barely a few weeks before September 11, 2001, Senior U.S. military advisers from a private mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon, were fighting alongside Mujahideen in the terrorist attacks on the Macedonian Security forces. This is documented by the Macedonian press and statements made by the Macedonian authorities. (See Michel Chossudovsky, op cit). The U.S. government and the Islamic Militant Network were working hand in glove in supporting and financing the National Liberation Army (NLA), which was involved in the terrorist attacks in Macedonia.

In other words, the US military was collaborating directly with Al Qaeda barely a few weeks before 9/11.

Al Qaeda and Pakistan’s Military Intelligence (ISI)

It is indeed revealing that in virtually all post 9/11 terrorist occurrences, the terrorist organization is reported (by the media and in official statements) as having “ties to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda”. This in itself is a crucial piece of information. Of course, the fact that Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA is neither mentioned in the press reports nor is it considered relevant to an understanding of these terrorist occurrences.

The ties of these terrorist organizations (particularly those in Asia) to Pakistan’s military intelligence (ISI) is acknowledged in a few cases by official sources and press dispatches. Confirmed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), some of these groups are said to have links to Pakistan’s ISI, without identifying the nature of these links. Needless to say, this information is crucial in identifying the sponsors of these terrorist attacks. In other words, the ISI is said to support these terrorist organizations, while at same time maintaining close ties to the CIA.

September 11

While Colin Powell –without supporting evidence-pointed in his February 2003 UN address to “the sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network”, official documents, press and intelligence reports confirm that successive US administrations have supported and abetted the Islamic militant network. This relationship is an established fact, corroborated by numerous studies, acknowledged by Washington’s mainstream think tanks.

Both Colin Powell and his Deputy Richard Armitage, who in the months leading up to the war casually accused Baghdad and other foreign governments of “harboring” Al Qaeda, played a direct role, at different points in their careers, in supporting terrorist organizations.

Both men were implicated –operating behind the scenes– in the Irangate Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, which involved the illegal sale of weapons to Iran to finance the Nicaraguan Contra paramilitary army and the Afghan Mujahideen. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Expose the Links between Al Qaeda and the Bush Administration)

Moreover, both Richard Armitage and Colin Powell played a role in the 9/11 cover-up. The investigations and research conducted in the last two years, including official documents, testimonies and intelligence reports, indicate that September 11 was an carefully planned intelligence operation, rather than a act conducted by a terrorist organization. (For further details, see Centre for Research on Globalization, 24 Key articles, September 2003)

The FBI confirmed in a report made public late September 2001 the role of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence. According to the report, the alleged 9-11 ring leader, Mohammed Atta, had been financed from sources out of Pakistan. A subsequent intelligence report confirmed that the then head of the ISI General Mahmoud Ahmad had transferred money to Mohammed Atta. (See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization, op.cit.)

Moreover, press reports and official statements confirm that the head of the ISI, was an official visit to the US from the 4th to 13th of September 2001. In other words, the head of Pakistan’s ISI, who allegedly transferred money to the terrorists also had a close personal relationship with a number of senior Bush Administration officials, including Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, whom he met in the course of his visit to Washington. (Ibid)

The Antiwar Movement

A cohesive antiwar movement cannot be based solely on the mobilization of antiwar sentiment. It must ultimately unseat the war criminals and question their right to rule.

A necessary condition for bringing down the rulers is to weaken and eventually dismantle their propaganda campaign.

The momentum of the large anti-war rallies in the US, the European Union and around the world, should lay the foundations of a permanent network composed of tens of thousands of local level anti-war committees in neighborhoods, work places, parishes, schools, universities, etc. It is ultimately through this network that the legitimacy of those who “rule in our name” will be challenged.

To shunt the Bush Administration’s war plans and disable its propaganda machine, we must reach out to our fellow citizens across the land, in the US, Europe and around the world, to the millions of ordinary people who have been misled on the causes and consequences of this war.

This also implies fully uncovering the lies behind the “war on terrorism” and revealing the political complicity of the Bush administration in the events of 9/11.

September 11 is a hoax. It’s the biggest lie in US history.

Needless to say, the use of “massive casualty producing events” as pretext to wage war is a criminal act. In the words of Andreas van Buelow, former German Minister of Technology and author of The CIA and September 11:

“If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars.”

Yet it is not sufficient to remove George W. Bush or Tony Blair, who are mere puppets. We must also address the role of the global banks, corporations and financial institutions, which indelibly stand behind the military and political actors.

Increasingly, the military-intelligence establishment (rather than the State Department, the White House and the US Congress) is calling the shots on US foreign policy. Meanwhile, the Texas oil giants, the defense contractors, Wall Street and the powerful media giants, operating discreetly behind the scenes, are pulling the strings. If politicians become a source of major embarrassment, they can themselves be discredited by the media, discarded and a new team of political puppets can be brought to office.

Criminalization of the State

The “Criminalization of the State”, is when war criminals legitimately occupy positions of authority, which enable them to decide “who are the criminals”, when in fact they are criminals.

In the US, both Republicans and Democrats share the same war agenda and there are war criminals in both parties. Both parties are complicit in the 9/11 cover-up and the resultant quest for world domination. All the evidence points to what is best described as “the criminalisation of the State”, which includes the Judiciary and the bipartisan corridors of the US Congress. .

Under the war agenda, high ranking officials of the Bush administration, members of the military, the US Congress and the Judiciary have been granted the authority not only to commit criminal acts, but also to designate those in the antiwar movement who are opposed to these criminal acts as “enemies of the State.”

More generally, the US military and security apparatus endorses and supports dominant economic and financial interests – i.e. the build-up, as well as the exercise, of military might enforces “free trade”. The Pentagon is an arm of Wall Street; NATO coordinates its military operations with the World Bank and the IMF’s policy interventions, and vice versa. Consistently, the security and defense bodies of the Western military alliance, together with the various civilian governmental and intergovernmental bureaucracies (e.g. IMF, World Bank, WTO) share a common understanding, ideological consensus and commitment to the New World Order.

To reverse the tide of war, military bases must be closed down, the war machine (namely the production of advanced weapons systems like WMDs) must be stopped and the burgeoning police state must be dismantled. More generally we must reverse the “free market” reforms, dismantle the institutions of global capitalism and disarm financial markets.

The struggle must be broad-based and democratic encompassing all sectors of society at all levels, in all countries, uniting in a major thrust: workers, farmers, independent producers, small businesses, professionals, artists, civil servants, members of the clergy, students and intellectuals.

The antiwar and anti-globalisation movements must be integrated into a single worldwide movement. People must be united across sectors, “single issue” groups must join hands in a common and collective understanding on how the New World Order destroys and impoverishes.

The globalization of this struggle is fundamental, requiring a degree of solidarity and internationalism unprecedented in world history. This global economic system feeds on social divisiveness between and within countries. Unity of purpose and worldwide coordination among diverse groups and social movements is crucial. A major thrust is required which brings together social movements in all major regions of the world in a common pursuit and commitment to the elimination of poverty and a lasting world peace.

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On Human Rights Day, 10 December 2003, Michel Chossudovsky was awarded The 2003 Human’s Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM). [details deutsch ] Photos of GBM event in Berlin, click here

The German Text of this article was published by Junge Welt: Vortrag von Michel Chossudovsky Neuordnung der Welt Der Krieg der USA um globale Hegemonie (Teil 1)  Die Gesellschaft zum Schutz Von Bürgerrecht Und Menschenwürde (GBM), 10 December 2003

Note: Some of the hyperlinks of  the article first published in December 2003 may be inactive or unavailable.

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The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act: Why Washington Is Both Corrupt and Ignorant

January 3rd, 2020 by Philip Giraldi

The creatures that lurk through the corridors of power in Washington DC have refined corruption to the point where almost anything goes and almost no one is ever held accountable. Traditionally, Congressmen reward their various constituencies by inserting riders into larger pieces of legislation that grant money, exemptions or favors to certain groups or individuals. It is sometimes referred to as “pork.” The recent bloated omnibus spending bills totaling $1.4 trillion, which passed through Congress and were signed off on by President Donald Trump, were for the shameless denizens of Capitol Hill a gold mine. The process was so corrupt that even some Senators like Ted Cruz joked that “Christmas came early in Washington. While you were with your family, while you were shopping for Christmas, the lobbyists were spending and spending. I present to you, the massive omnibus bill that Congress is voting on.”

And no one is more corrupt in Congress than some of those at the top of the food chain, where the Speaker and the Minority leader in the House and the Majority and Minority leaders in the Senate have the final say on what gets cut and what remains. The lugubrious Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is one of the most adept at milking the system to buy his continued reelection in a state where he is actually not very popular, with an approval rating of only 37%. Within the current spending bill he has managed to include more than $1 billion worth of federal spending and tax breaks for some choice constituencies among the Kentucky voters. A tax break for the state’s whisky distillers alone came to a projected $426 million for 2020 and there were also breaks for the state’s thoroughbred horse industry as well as hundreds of millions of dollars more for new federal construction.

One can only wish that politicians would actually commit themselves to doing good for the American people, but the sad reality is that they spend so much time raising and distributing money that they only respond to constituents with the deepest pockets or those who make the most noise. Rarely does anyone actually read the bills that are being voted on. Part of the omnibus spending bills was the $738 billion dollar defense policy component, and, as in the case of the larger amounts intended to keep the federal government funded, the devil is frequently found in the details.

One part of the defense spending is called the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act,” which is intended to punish Syria and its President Bashar al-Assad with sanctions for alleged crimes committed during the country’s eight year civil war. The Caesar Act is named after a Syrian military photographer who reportedly took and then smuggled tens of thousands of photographs out of the country that provided evidence for claims that war crimes had been carried out by the Syrian government. “Caesar” eventually wound up in Washington where he briefed sympathetic lawmakers on the regime’s alleged crimes.

The Caesar Act will impose new sanctions on Syrian leaders and also on companies, states and even individuals that support the Assad government militarily, financially or technically. It will include placing new sanctions on Russia and Iran. Enab Baladi, a website run by opponents of the al-Assad government praised the move, writing that “[The bill] imposes sanctions on military contractors and mercenaries who are fighting for the Syrian government, Russia, Iran, or any of the parties against which sanctions have been previously imposed.” It also observes that the act would be a “deterrent” for anyone seeking to work with or help the al-Assad regime. The US, for its part, has pledged to support international prosecution of criminals in the Syrian government.

The use of sanctions is reminiscent of recent US action directed against Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the White House have been boasting of how Iran’s economy is being destroy through economic warfare and it is clear that the intention is to do the same to Syria. The United States has been destabilizing Syria since the passage of the Syria Accountability Act in 2004. It imposed sanctions on the country even before the 2011 Arab Spring uprising, and they were regularly expanded by the Obama administration prior to the 2016 election.

Treasury Department sanctions have frozen assets of the Syrian government and also of hundreds of companies and individuals. They also ban most interactions with Syria by any US person, which means that anyone traveling to Syria and returning to report favorably on the al-Assad government can be plausibly prosecuted for providing a service to the regime.

To be sure no one is completely blameless amidst the turmoil that has engulfed Syria since 2011. Respectable organizations including Human Rights Watch have been able to identify some of the victims in the Caesar photos and have verified tales of torture and abuse, though it must be observed that fake photos and false testimony are easy to obtain.

But the Syrian regime response to the uprising against its authority is only part of the story, as the violence was fomented largely by Saudi Arabia, and Gulf States and the United States. And by far the worst atrocities against civilians have been committed by the groups actively or tacitly supported by the US, Turkey, the Gulf States and the Saudis, many of which have cooperated openly with the genuine terrorist groups that have been operating in Syria.

There also has to be some question raised about the general credibility of attacks directed against the al-Assad government. It has recently been revealed that both the United Nations Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the US media were pressured to cover-up the fact that Syria did not use chemical weapons against its own civilians in terrorist infested areas. A Newsweek reporter even resigned when he wrote a story seeking to expose the scandal. The magazine had refused to print the piece.

The US sponsored Syrian National Council has been most active in spreading reports about regime activity, much of which has been proven to be little more than propaganda. Caesar’s trip to Washington in 2015 to show his photos was, in fact, sponsored by the SNC and there is a whole series of fabrications spread by a number of groups supported by those who desire regime change in Damascus.

Consider for a moment the Oscar Award winning White Helmets, “the story of real-life heroes and impossible hope.” The group, which cooperates with the terrorist groups operating in its area, travels to bombing sites with its film crews trailing behind it. Once at the sites, with no independent observers, they are able to arrange or even stage what is filmed to conform to their selected narrative. Exploiting their access to the western media, the White Helmets thereby de facto became a major source of “eyewitness” news regarding what was then going on in those many parts of Syria where European and American journalists were quite rightly afraid to go, all part of a broader largely successful “rebel” effort to manufacture fake news that depicts the Damascus government as engaging in war crimes directed against civilians

The mainstream media is a major part of the problem as it generally only reports stories, like the White Helmets, that denigrate the Syrian government and its allies. Watching the recent BBC reporting of the Syrian Army’s push into Idlib province one learns that “Russian backed Syrian groups are attacking Idlib and creating a humanitarian crisis with 230,000 civilians fleeing the fighting.” The only problem with the coverage is that it does not really make clear that Idlib is terrorist occupied territory. Nor does it say where the civilians are fleeing to – nearly all have headed for the safety of Syrian government held areas.

And particularly for those strivers in Congress who are out hustling for money rather than finding out what is really going on in the world, it might be wise to recollect how gullible the Solons on the Potomac have been in the past. Going back to Ahmed Chalabi, who more than any single individual led the US government to believe that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk, there has been a series of disastrous policy choices made after swallowing whole cloth lies and fabrications made by interested parties. Chalabi provided false intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties of the Iraqi government to al-Qaeda. It turned out that he was working for several of the sides in the conflict that ensued, including the Iranian government.

And then there is the Magnitsky Act, sponsored by Russia-phobic Zionist Senator Ben Cardin and signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, which continues to be expanded and exploited by virtue of 2016’s Global Magnitsky Act to intervene in countries that are alleged to be human rights violators. In its original iteration, the Magnitsky Act, sanctioned individual Kremlin officials for their treatment of alleged whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, arrested and imprisoned in Russia. Billionaire Bill Browder has sold a contrived narrative which basically says that he and his “lawyer” Sergei Magnitsky uncovered massive tax fraud and, when they attempted to report it, were punished by a corrupt police force and magistracy, which had actually stolen the money. Magnitsky was arrested and died in prison, allegedly murdered by the police to silence him.

Browder and his apologists portray him as an honest and honorable Western businessman attempting to operate in a corrupt Russian business world. Nevertheless, the loans-for-shares scheme that made him his initial fortune has been correctly characterized as the epitome of corruption by all parties involved, an arrangement whereby foreign investors worked with local oligarchs to strip the former Soviet economy of its assets paying pennies on each dollar of value. Along the way, Browder was reportedly involved in money laundering, making false representations on official documents and bribery.

Browder, who renounced his US citizenship in 1997 reportedly to avoid taxes, has been a frequent visitor to Capitol Hill where he tells congressional committees all about the corrupt and evil President Vladimir Putin. He is also a darling of the completely corrupted mainstream press because he is saying what they want to hear.

So, is the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act just another bit of nonsense, like Chalabi and Magnitsky? Probably, and all it will do is punish the Syrian people by trying to wreck the country’s economy while also limiting the ability of Americans to go independently to the region and see for themselves what is actually going on. It will prolong the pain being experienced by all involved while the legitimate government in Damascus seeks to restore its pre-war borders. It is, unfortunately, a prime example of the United States government in action.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

A New Year and a New Trump Foreign Policy Blunder in Iraq

January 3rd, 2020 by Medea Benjamin

It’s a new year, and the U.S. has found a new enemy—an Iraqi militia called Kata’ib Hezbollah. How tragically predictable was that? So who or what is Kata’ib Hezbollah? Why are U.S. forces attacking it? And where will this lead?

Kata’ib Hezbollah is one of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) that were recruited to fight the Islamic State after the Iraqi armed forces collapsed and Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, fell to IS in June 2014. The first six PMUs were formed by five Shiite militias that all received support from Iran, plus Muqtada al-Sadr’s Iraqi nationalist Peace Company, the reincarnation of his anti-occupation Mahdi Army militia, which he had previously disarmed in 2008 under an agreement with the Iraqi government.

Kata’ib Hezbollah was one of those five original Shiite militias and it existed long before the fight against IS. It was a small Shiite group founded before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, and was part of the Iraqi Resistance throughout the U.S. occupation. In 2011, it reportedly had 1,000 fighters, who were paid $300 to $500 per month, probably mainly funded by Iran. It fought fiercely until the last U.S. occupation forces were withdrawn in December 2011, and claimed responsibility for a rocket attack that killed 5 U.S. soldiers in Baghdad in June 2011. Since forming a PMU in 2014, its leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, has been the overall military commander of the PMUs, reporting directly to the National Security Adviser in the Prime Minister’s office.

In the fight against IS, the PMUs proliferated quickly. Most political parties in Iraq responded to a fatwa by Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani to form and join these units by forming their own. At the peak of the war with IS, the PMUs comprised about 60 brigades with hundreds of thousands of Shia fighters, and even included up to 40,000 Sunni Iraqis.

In the context of the war against the Islamic State, the U.S. and Iran have both provided  a great deal of military support to the PMU and other Iraqi forces, and the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga have also received support from Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif in New York in September 2014 to discuss the crisis, and U.S. Ambassador Stuart Jones said in December 2014, “Let’s face it, Iran is an important neighbor to Iraq. There has to be cooperation between Iran and Iraq. The Iranians are talking to the Iraqi security forces and we’re talking to Iraqi security forces… We’re relying on them to do the deconfliction.”

U.S. officials and corporate media are falsely painting Kata’ib Hezbollah and the PMUs as independent, renegade Iranian-backed militias in Iraq but they are really an official part of the Iraq security forces. As a statement from the Iraqi prime minister’s office made clear, the U.S. airstrikes were an “American attack on the Iraqi armed forces.”  And these were not just any Iraqi military forces, but forces that have borne the brunt of some of the fiercest fighting against the Islamic State.

Open hostility between U.S. forces and Kata’ib Hezbollah began six months ago, when the U.S. allowed Israel to use U.S. bases in Iraq and/or Syria to launch drone strikes against Kata’ib Hezbollah and other PMU forces in Iraq. There are conflicting reports on exactly where the Israeli drones were launched from, but the U.S. had effective control of Iraqi airspace and was clearly complicit in the drone strikes. This led to a campaign by Shia cleric/politician Muqtada al-Sadr and other anti-occupation parties and politicians in the Iraqi National Assembly to once again call for the expulsion of U.S. forces from Iraq, as they successfully did in 2011, and the U.S. was forced to accept new restrictions on its use of Iraqi airspace.

Then, at the end of October, U.S. bases and the Green Zone in Baghdad came under a new wave of rocket and mortar attacks. While previous attacks were blamed on the Islamic State, the U.S. blamed the new round of attacks on Kata’ib Hezbollah. After a sharp increase in rocket attacks on U.S. bases in December, including one that killed a U.S. military contractor on December 27, the Trump administration launched air strikes on December 29 that killed 25 members of Kata’ib Hezbollah and wounded 55. Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi called the strikes a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and declared three national days of mourning for the Iraqi troops that U.S. forces killed.

The U.S. attacks also led to massive protests that besieged the U.S. Embassy and former U.S. occupation headquarters in the Green Zone in Baghdad. U.S. forces at the embassy reportedly used tear gas and stun grenades against the protesters, leaving 62 militiamen and civilians wounded. After the siege, the Trump administration announced that it would send more troops to the Middle East. Approximately 750 troops are expected to be sent as a result of the embassy attack and another 3,000 could be deployed in the next few days.

The U.S. retaliation was bound to inflame tensions with the Iraqi government and increase popular pressure to close U.S. bases in Iraq. In fact, if Kata’ib Hezbollah is indeed responsible for the rocket and mortar attacks, this is probably exactly the chain of events they intended to provoke. Incensed at the Trump administration’s blatant disregard for Iraqi sovereignty and worried about Iraq being dragged into a U.S. proxy war with Iran that will spiral out of control, a broad swath of Iraqi political leaders are now calling for a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The U.S. military presence in Iraq was reestablished in 2014 as part of the campaign against the Islamic State, but that campaign has wound down substantially since the near destruction and reoccupation of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, in 2017. The number of attacks and terrorist incidents linked to the Islamic State in Iraq has declined steadily since then, from 239 in March 2018 to 51 in November 2019, according to Iraq researcher Joel Wing. Wing’s data makes it clear that IS is a vastly diminished force in Iraq.

The real crisis facing Iraq is not a growing IS but the massive public protests, starting in October, that have exposed the dysfunction of the Iraqi government itself. Months of street protests have forced Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi to submit his resignation–he is now simply acting as a caretaker pending new elections. Severe repression by government forces left over 400 protesters dead, but this has only fuelled even greater public outrage.

These demonstrations are not just directed against individual Iraqi politicians or against Iranian influence in Iraq but against the entire post-2003 political regime established by the U.S. occupation. Protesters blame the government’s  sectarianism, its corruption and the enduring foreign influence of both Iran and the U.S. for the failure to invest Iraq’s oil wealth in rebuilding Iraq and improving the lives of a new generation of young Iraqis.

The recent attack on Kata’ib Hezbollah has actually worked in favor of Iran, turning Iraqi public opinion and Iraqi leaders more solidly against the U.S. military presence. So why has the U.S. jeopardized what influence it still has in Iraq by launching airstrikes against Iraqi forces? And why is the U.S. maintaining a reported 5,200 U.S. troops in Iraq, at Al-Asad airbase in Anbar province and smaller bases across Iraq? It already has nearly 70,000 troops in other countries in the region, not least 13,000 in neighboring Kuwait, its largest permanent foreign base after Germany, Japan and South Korea.

While the Pentagon continues to insist that the U.S. troop presence is solely to help Iraq fight ISIS, Trump himself has defined its mission as “also to watch over Iran.” He told that to U.S. servicemen in Iraq in a December 2018 Christmas visit and reiterated it in a February 2019 CBS interview. Iraqi Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi has made clear that the U.S. does not have permission to use Iraq as a base from which to confront Iran. Such a mission would be patently illegal under Iraq’s 2005 constitution, drafted with the help of the United States, which forbids using the country’s territory to harm its neighbors.

Under the 2008 Strategic Framework Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, U.S. forces may only remain in Iraq at the “request and invitation” of the Iraqi government. If that invitation is withdrawn, they must leave, as they were forced to do in 2011. The U.S. presence in Iraq is now almost universally unpopular, especially in the wake of U.S. attacks on the very Iraqi armed forces they are supposedly there to support.

Trump’s effort to blame Iran for this crisis is simply a ploy to divert attention from his own bungled policy. In reality, the blame for the present crisis should be placed squarely on the doorstep of the White House itself. The Trump administration’s reckless decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and revert to the U.S. policy of threats and sanctions that never worked before is backfiring as badly as the rest of the world predicted it would, and Trump has only himself to blame for it – and maybe John Bolton.

So will 2020 be the year when Donald Trump is finally forced to fulfill his endless promises to bring U.S. troops home from at least one of its endless wars and military occupations?  Or will Trump’s penchant for doubling down on brutal and counterproductive policies only lead us deeper into his pet quagmire of ever-escalating conflict with Iran, with the U.S.’s beleaguered forces in Iraq as pawns in yet another unwinnable war?

We hope that 2020 will be the year when the American public finally looks at the fateful choice between war and peace with 20/20 vision, and that we will start severely punishing Trump and every other U.S. politician who opts for threats over diplomacy, coercion over cooperation and war over peace.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Featured image: US Embassy in Iraq under siege. Credit: Creative Commons

War, Rape and Patriarchy: The Japanese Experience

January 3rd, 2020 by Yuki Tanaka

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Policing, Facial Recognition and Targeting Privacy

January 3rd, 2020 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The chances for those seeking a world of solitude are rapidly run out.  A good case can be made that this has already happened.  Aldous Huxley’s Savage, made famous in Brave New World, is out of options, having lost to the Mustapha Monds of the world.  State and corporate regulation of life, surveillance and monitoring, are reviled only in the breach.  And, like Mond, we are told that it is all for the better.

Facial recognition is one such form, celebrated by the corporate suits and the screws of the prison system alike.  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a keen devotee, and it is telling that his company has now reached a level of influence that it can actually write the legislation on its own facial surveillance technology.  Whether Congress or other parliaments pass it is another thing, but political representatives are always up for rent when required.  What matters is selling them the right template of faux protections and safeguards that will enable them to sleep more soundly at night.

The critics come across as Cassandras and killjoys but they are trenchant and convincing.

Artificial intelligence expert Luke Stark argues that, at a technical level, facial recognition systems possess “insurmountable flaws connected to the way they schematize human faces.”  Gender and race categorisations are not only created but re-enforced, a point highlighted by Amazon’s own Rekognition system.  The risks of using such technology, Stark expounds, is “reminiscent of hazardous nuclear technologies.”

Evan Greer continues in the same vein, looking at a world of saturation surveillance with some despair.  “The use of computer algorithms to analyse massive databases of footage and photographs could render human privacy extinct.”  Greer has no need for the qualifier there.

Such concerns keep falling on the stubbornly deaf ears of those in power.

Those like Bezos have software and systems to sell, coated in save-the-world gloss; authorities are seeking products to purchase that are affordable and supposedly effective.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, for instance, uses Rekognition on some level.  On January 15, 2019, a sternly worded letter from a coalition of 85 different groups and organisations took issue with this tendency, rebuking Bezos and the buccaneering tendencies in the facial recognition market.  “By continuing to sell your face surveillance product to government entities, Amazon is gravely threatening the safety of community members, ignoring the protests of its own workers, and undermining public trust in its business.”

This tendency became all too real this year, with an announcement by the Indian government that plans to install a national facial recognition system were being implemented.  The inspiration behind such a measure is characteristic.  Authorities find themselves stretched.  There are few hands to achieve their objectives.  In this case, law enforcement authorities claim to be starved of resources, funding and foot soldiers.  Technological options which stress speed, data compilation and comparisons are being sought as a remedy.

The country’s National Crime Records Bureau, operating within the purview of the Home Ministry, expressed interest in tendersfor what would be the world’s first central facial recognition surveillance system.  The NCRB is matter fact and businesslike in describing the intentions of the program.  “This is an effort in the direction of modernising the police force, information gathering, criminal identification, verification and dissemination among various police forces and units across the country.”

There is no shortage of contenders for such a system, though indigenous variants were a bit slow in coming.  Indian homeland security, like other markets, is thriving.  Atul Rai, who features in a BuzzFeed contribution, is one such exponent. He is CEO of Staqu Technologies, which specialises in data analysis and facial recognition.  His company have been happy to work with the police to digitize musty, filed records lost in papered chaos.  But his approach is sinister in its confidence.  “America had Palantir.  China had SenseTime.  India didn’t have a single brand like that in this space.  So we wanted to be that.”  To be that involved training “our model on the Indian facial ecosystem.”

Problematically, the NCRB never saw fit to raise the issue with policy makers, a point deemed more significant for the finding by the Indian Supreme Court in 2017 that privacy is a fundamental right.  (The jurisprudence prior to this decision had been divided on this point.)  The case of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy (Retd) vs Union of India dealt with a petition concerning the constitutional validity of Aadhaar, an Indian biometric identity scheme.  The nine judges found that, “The right to privacy is protected as an intrinsic part of the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 and as part of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution.”

As Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia policy director at the open-internet advocacy group Access Now warns, “It is deeply concerning that [the NCRB] have done this without any policy consultation and there’s not even a policy document.  There’s no clarity on what problems they are trying to solve”.  Vidushi Marda, lawyer and researcher at Article 19 and Carnegie India, has been wise to the language being used in selling the program; “safety”, “security” and “crime prevention” pepper the platform with arresting confidence.  But according to Marda, it is even more threatening than Aadhaar. “Unless we get plastic surgery at the same time, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Even then, the confident types in government are convinced that plastic surgery modifications can be defeated with the assistance of sketches, pictures published in newspapers, CCTV camera footage, and images from public and private video feeds.

The Indian context is particularly important, given the nationalist ambitions of Narenda Modi’s government, and those of his Bharatiya Janata Party.  Social and military control is central to their politics, with minorities high up the list of targets.  The quasi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir has been rescinded; detention camps are being built with the intention of keeping 2 million people in the north-eastern state of Assam under watchful eye.

While the options for solitude may be thinning at a goggling rate, pockets of resistance against biometric technologies can be found.  There are those within the mother ship that is Amazon who fear abuse.  There are legislatures and local councils in the United States digging in against the adoption of such technologies.  The European Parliament has been showing concern; Sweden found itself falling foul of the Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation in using facial recognition in schools.  But the Indian move suggests that facial recognition continues to hold cash strapped bureaucrats and corporate technologists in thrall.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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More US Fuel on the Middle East Fire: Trump Orders New Troop Deployment to the Region

January 3rd, 2020 by Stephen Lendman

Trump began 2020 with a bang by authorizing more US combat troops to the Middle East.

It’s already ablaze from endless US wars of aggression on nonbelligerent states threatening no one.

The new deployment is an ominous new year’s beginning, perhaps escalating US regional forever wars ahead, including the likelihood of more Pentagon terror-bombing strikes in Iraq.

What Trump OK’d ignored Iraqi furor over last Sunday attacks on Kata’ib Hezbollah paramilitaries, connected to the country’s Popular Mobilization Forces that are part of Iraq’s military, killing 27, wounding many others.

On Tuesday, a Kata’ib Hezbollah statement said “(t)he next step will consist of passing a law to expel the occupying forces and their followers from Iraq,” adding:

“We stress the necessity for the parliament to vote on the departure of US forces that are embroiled in spilling the blood of Iraqis.”

Other parliamentarians and cleric Moqtada al-Sadr urge the same thing, wanting hostile US occupation of the country ended.

According to former US regional diplomat Robert Ford, “the ball has moved in a direction down the field in a way not helpful to a sustained American presence in Iraq.”

Regional analyst Abbas Kadhim believes expulsion of US forces from Iraq is certain, saying:

“I don’t see any member of parliament, particularly in the Shiite bloc, that would stand and vote against” legislation ordering it.

Thousands of US troops occupy the country, along with thousands more so-called private military contractors, consisting of paramilitary hired gun mercenaries and civilians working for US corporations — exploiting Iraq and its people for profit.

On New Year’s eve, US war secretary Mark Esper tweeted the following:

With Trump’s authorization, “I (ordered) the deployment of an infantry battalion from the Immediate Response Force (IRF) of the @82ndABNDiv to the @CENTCOM area of operations in response to recent events in Iraq.”

“Approximately 750 #Soldiers will deploy to the region immediately & additional forces from the IRF are prepared to deploy over the next several days.”

“This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action (sic) taken in response to increased threat levels against US personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today.”

“The (Trump regime) will protect our people and interests anywhere they are found around the world (sic).”

The Hill and other US media reported that around 4,000 US troops are on standby for possible deployment to the Middle East.

Fox News said the US army’s  82nd Airborne Division’s alert brigade was “issued orders to deploy rapidly to Kuwait amid the unrest in Baghdad” — citing three unnamed US war department officials, adding:

“The entire brigade ha(s) a 96-hour alert window to deploy” its paratroopers.

What’s going on is polar opposite how US regional personnel can best be protected.

Their security depends on ending US regional wars, closing US Middle East bases, bringing Pentagon troops home, and declaring a new era of peace and stability over endless US wars of aggression.

Post-9/11 alone, they devastated countries attacked, massacred millions of their people, enraged their survivors, and created a generation of US-haters in nations victimized by its aggression.

Instead of prioritizing peace and stability to the war-torn region and elsewhere, Trump and hardliners infesting his regime appear hellbent for greater regional war.

On New Year’s eve, he falsely accused Iran of “orchestrating an attack on the US embassy in Iraq (sic),” adding:

“They will be held fully responsible…They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a warning, it is a threat.” Does he have more US regional aggression in mind?

Iran had nothing to do with enraged Iraqis who broke into the US Baghdad embassy compound Tuesday, chanting: “Death to America” — in response to Sunday’s Pentagon terror-bombing strikes, an act of aggression against the sovereign state.

Separately, Trump urged Iraqis to challenge Iranian/Iraqi ties that benefit both countries, saying:

“(T)his is your time (sic),” claiming it’s for their “freedom (sic)” — denied them by endless US war, genocidal sanctions, occupation, installation of puppet rule, and exploitation.

In response to false Trump regime accusations of Iranian involvement in Tuesday’s storming of the heavily fortified Baghdad Green Zone, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said the following:

“We are facing a kind of American obscenity and repetitive miscalculation.”

The “impudence of (US) authorities is at such a level that after slaughtering at least 25 people, wounding many Iraqi people, inflicting financial damages on Iraq and violating the country’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity, they (Americans) are now blaming the Islamic Republic of Iran for the protests from the Iraqi people against their own ferocious measures in a blatant and cheap act of pinning the blame on others,” adding:

“On the one hand, the Americans have ignored the Iraqi nation’s liberality and pursuit of independence, and on the other hand, they have forgotten their role in supporting Saddam and in creating daesh (ISIS) and the consequent massacre and depredation of the Iraqi people, and have apparently failed to remember that they are still deemed by the people of Iraq to be ‘occupiers.’ ”

Iran’s UN envoy Majid Takht-Ravanchi said Trump regime “anti-Iranian accusations are made to divert attention from the recent brutal (Sunday) killings, and also from 17 years of occupying Iraq which has resulted in” mass slaughter of its people and vast destruction.

He stressed that Kata’ib Hezbollah and other Popular Mobilization Units “are purely Iraqi groups…under the control of (its) government,” not Iranian proxies, adding:

They “played an important role in fighting against and defeating ISIL terrorists and now (are the) most important guarantee against revitalization of this (US-supported) terrorist group.”

Regional prospects in the new year aren’t encouraging.

Deploying more US combat troops to Iraq increases chances for greater conflict instead stepping back from the brink for peace and stability in this war-torn part of the world.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

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Video: US Sanctions and the Caesar Act, Oil and Gas, Chemical Weapons, and the Syrian Response

January 3rd, 2020 by Bouthaina Shaaban

The Caesar Act is one of the main topics discussed by the Media and Political Advisor in the Syrian Presidency Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban in a thorough must watch and learn from interview with Kamal Khalaf of Al-Mayadeen News channel.

Dr. Shaaban discusses and addresses the pressuring issues and recent developments relating to Syria

The shift from unipolar world to a multipolar world, the US sanctions including the passing of the Caesar’s Act, the Turkish invasion and the Syrian Arab Army’s military operation to clean Idlib from NATO terrorists, the oil and gas, and many other topics.

How will the Syrian government respond and what is underway, including two new revelations for the first time.

Arab Souri

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The junta ruling the United States of America is taking advantage of its financial power it possesses based on the petrodollar trade, its military power in uniforms and covert operations stretching worldwide, and worse its propagandists in the mainstream media whitewashing demonizing its enemies, allowing it to commit crimes against the rest of the world and against its own people with no remorse, just to amass more money, more wealth, and kill more people…

It has resorted to all what it has in its arsenal  against Syria, yet it is not able to break this small nation.

The interview took place in Damascus and was recorded by Al-Mayadeen on 25 December 2019.

The following is the interview in Arabic with English subtitles, followed by the transcript of the English translation and the Arabic transcript of the interview.

The transcript of the English translation

Kamal Khalaf  Today when we came to Damascus, the streets of Damascus were decorated with celebrations and there was joy that we were afraid you will be late for this live episode, because of this congestion, happy holidays.

Dr. Buthaina Shaaban: Happy Holidays, truly, what you mentioned Mr. Kamal is very important, I have not seen Damascus decorated as I saw it tonight, and I think this is a beautiful and natural reaction from the Syrian people after all the attempts of sedition between Muslims and Christians, this year I felt that the Syrian people are telling the whole world that we are all Christians and we are all Muslims.

KK: The Algerian people today bid farewell to a great figure, Ahmed Qayed Saleh, chief of staff of the Algerian army, in a sensitive circumstance and he also saved Algeria, as many Algerians say, from a major crisis, I know the depth of the relationship between Syria and Algeria and how Algeria stood with Syria, the relationship with Syria has not changed during all the years of war.

DBS: True, and I’d like through your honorable screen to condole the Algerian government and people of losing this great personality and today the Algerian people have given testimony to this leader, they gave testimony against all attempts at sedition when demonstrations were appearing in the streets and various talks about the Algerian army and its stand against the people or the people’s stand against the army, today the Algerian people put an end to all these sayings and proved that they all had nothing to do with reality, the people gathered around the army and God bless Qayed Saleh, who will remain a model for those who really saved their country and left.

KK: We begin our episode, our viewers Damascus is currently under the biggest campaign of American pressure and not only the signing of the American president a few days ago the Law of Caesar to punish Syria, but the law comes within a multifaceted campaign, these include expanding the tasks of the chemical attack investigation team for the first time in the organization’s history, assigning the team the task of identifying specific names, as well as the (U.S.) administration blatantly obstructing the returning of the Syrian refugees from neighbouring countries and returning Arab relations with Syria. What are the direct economic and political implications of Caesar’s law on Syria?

What does Damascus think of the foundations of the law, and what are the ways and options to counter the U.S. pressure campaign? What does the heightened pressure on Syria have to do with the strategy of extreme pressure on Iran and what is happening in Both Lebanon and Iraq? During this episode, we also look at the most prominent developments on the ground and political in Syria.

These topics are presented directly to Dr. Buthaina Shaaban tonight. I welcome you again and start with the Caesar Act. Today, the Syrian people have anxiety, they have concerns, we listened through the people we meet on social media, fearing or worried of the passing of Caesar’s bill by the United States President on Syria. Is there really something to worry about this law that has direct implications for the lives of Syrian citizens?

Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban: The truth is that this law is an episode of the pressure campaigns on Syria that started from 2011 to today,and I remember when we went to Geneva in 2014 and met With Wolf Blitzer from CNN, the first question he asked me about this “Caesar” was that he collected photos and testimonials… Etc. But as you know, this law has been presented more than once before Congress and didn’t move in Congress, I think until it had the support of the Zionist lobby and the AIPAC, It doesn’t make sense to be anyone, whoever it is, and I think they didn’t intentionally reveal the character of this “Caesar” because they know that he is just a small tool, but the real work was done by the lobbies against Syria and the Republican and Democratic parties, because it was assigned to the United States defense budget for 2020, which accounts for more than one-third of the U.S. budget and no one can put this law in this budget unless it is from the military or the Zionist lobby, so for us as a Syrian government it is part of all the pressure attempts and all the attempts they tried to take over Syria, but they could not, and this law will not be able to get Syria.

There is no doubt that it is a criminal and unjust law that has nothing to do with international legitimacy or international law, nor respect for state sovereignty, but the Syrian people who have been going through these years know how to face all these challenges.

KK: Do you know who Caesar is? Is he a real character?

DBS: No, we don’t know who Caesar is, surely not. We don’t know, but they said they were the Syrian Task Force that embraced this law, as they call it, from the agents they choose and pay them whoever they are, names do not matter.

KK: Isn’t it remarkable that even the United States has not revealed his name even though he is in the United States, he ultimately has full protection if he exists…

DBS: Sure, I don’t think they didn’t reveal his name out of fear for him, I think maybe the credibility will disappear once and for all if they reveal his name, I think they know he’s a small tool, they didn’t reveal his name, not out of fear (for him) but so that they don’t lose credibility at all. Now the character remains vague and some belief remains that there is a part of the real, they are all fabrications such as chemical (attacks) fabrications and all the fabrications they have fabricated like White Helmets… There’s nothing new about it.

KK: The foundations of the law, the photographs submitted to Congress on which the draft of severe sanctions bill known as Caesar was built, what do you think of them? How factual is it?

DBS: These pictures, as I said, since 2014, any sane person who looks at these images finds that there are a million problems, and since then I have read more than one article saying that Qatar has funded this project, financed the fabrication of these photos and financed the whole story in order to reach Congress and pass a law. The problem is that it was passed by a law, previously through The Executive Order issued by Obama in the form of a presidential order, and an Executive Order is less effective than a law, but now they have turned it into law, i.e. any future administration will abide by this law against Syria. But we rely not on good intentions or on the easing of sanctions, we depend on ourselves, and we will mention in the course of the episode, God willing, that Syria, despite all this suffering, we have twice the number of pharmaceutical factories that we had in 2011, we have drug factories that didn’t even exist, like a drug for treating cancer. The more we face a challenge, the more we focus on strengthening the industrial structure, the agricultural structure, the educational structure and the health structure.

KK: Does it mean turning the crisis into an opportunity?

DBS: God willing.

KK: Allow us to see the highlights of this law in this summary:

Trump signed Caesar’s Law and was included in the 2020 U.S. defense budget, imposing new measures against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian state with its institutions and allies.

Imposing sanctions on the Central Bank of Syria and on Syrian ministers, deputies and citizens, companies and factories, particularly in related infrastructure and military industry.

The sanctions apply on those who supply Syrian airlines with spare parts and maintenance, those who participate in reconstruction projects run by the Syrian government and anyone who supports the energy sector in Syria.

The law consistently mentions Russia and Iran and threatens to impose sanctions on them linked to Syria’s support. It clearly states that sanctions will be imposed on Iranian and Russian officials who support the ‘regime.’

Under the name of humanity and the rescue of civilians, the law authorizes the Secretary of State to support organizations and prosecute people accused of crimes.

The project excludes non-governmental organizations providing assistance in Syria and around this exception many questions about the identity and mission of these organizations.

The law leaves the door open for lifting sanctions if Damascus agrees to negotiate and thereby concede away from the Russian and Iranian support, or if the President finds that lifting sanctions is in favor of U.S. national security.

America declares war on Syria and its allies with the strategy of extreme pressures and the law of Caesar within them, but Newton’s physical law confirms that each reaction has a reaction equal to the amount and reverses it in the direction, how will Syria respond?

KK: How will Syria respond? What economic measures or plans can you face?

DBS: For the truth, what I have heard and what I have read about this law is nothing new. They put all this pressure on us, our allies, our aviation, the Central Bank (Of Syria) and the officials and the government, they put all this pressure on us.

Perhaps today they think that if they exert greater pressure, Syria will accept U.S. terms. They may raise the pressure as a pressure sheet on Syria, but from experience, they should have known that this would not be useful to the truth.

KK: What are the American conditions, Doctor? What do they want? The real purpose of this law?

DBS: I believe that since the beginning of this war on Syria, the main objective is to confiscate the independent national decision and to have Syria in the host of the countries that are subject to the American decision and not to rule itself. I think that this is the problem that the United States is experiencing not only with Syria but with all the countries that it imposes sanctions on, whether it’s Venezuela, Bolivia, China or Russia, this is the main focus.

The United States, as a dominant pole in the world today, is beginning to fear for its position and is punishing all countries that, by certain alliances, could form other poles in the world.

KK: Are there any demands beyond the crisis in Syria towards the Arab-Israeli conflict? The Deal of the Century? The settlement of the Palestinians..?

DBS: We have no (communication) channel between us and the United States and there is no negotiation on any subject at all, whether, by the Deal of the Century or any other subject, They may need through this Jordan and Egypt, while you see the procedures for the Golan and for Jerusalem all arbitrary actions stemming from the Zionist interest. But for us, there is no dialogue in this regard at all.

KK: Only from the experiences of other countries, for example, JASTA (act) towards Saudi was to withdraw funds from Saudi, there were sanctions on Libya after the Lockerbie plane crash, there were sanctions on Iraq after the first Gulf War, there were sanctions on Sudan, all of which ended with a deal in which they asked this or that regime to make a series of concessions, often related to the Arab-Israeli conflict and to (stop) support for liberation movements such as in Libya and elsewhere, so I asked this question about what is required of Syria?

DBS: We don’t have any information what is required, but I think the difference between this law and JASTA and Lockerbie is that this law is trying to punish Syria’s allies, who support Syria, also, as you mentioned in the introduction, it mentioned Iran and Russia more than once in punishing parties that could help Syria in reconstruction.

KK: Could this include China as well as other countries?

DBS: It might, but I think all of these countries have procedures as well, alliance procedures with each other and action measures. I don’t think these sanctions being drafted by the United States will last long, I do not think that states will abide by them for long, because all the states we have mentioned are affected by these sanctions. None of these countries wants to go into direct conflict with the United States but I see action against this current as valid as President Putin said yesterday, he said we are not seeking a military alliance with China but trust with China is very strong and we will contribute to all industrial and technical products with China.

There is a world that is being formed, allied and works, but not to confront who imposes these sanctions. But I think in the short term these sanctions will lose its impact.

KK: Some may consider expanding sanctions to other entities and other countries as a weakness of this law, but on the other hand, is there coordination between you and allies: Iran, Russia, China, and possibly other countries in the face of these sanctions?

DBS: Sure, of course, there is coordination at many levels between us and our allies, and there is a common understanding and understanding between us and our allies about where the world is today and what the United States is doing in this world, and there is great resentment and a vision of what we should all do. So I don’t think all this pressure from the United States will work at all in any file you want from Syria, it’s not going to work.

KK: Today, Doctor, you are telling the Syrian people that Caesar’s law will not change anything?

DBS: No, it won’t change anything. True because since the beginning of the crisis, all the items I have read in Caesar’s Law have nothing new at all: Boycott, ban spare parts and (sanctions on) the central bank and officials, all of them. They are already punishing allies who wanted to send us oil, medicine or food, all of this exists.

I didn’t see anything new in this law. We have to pay attention to the media; they create a media aura about any action to win the war before it begins. In fact, part of this law is a psychological war, especially the way it was drafted.

KK: We hear in the street that after the passage of Caesar’s law, the exchange rate of the dollar will rise to a record level against the Syrian pound.

DBS: The dollar has nothing to do with Caesar or the economic level, there is no economy that goes negatively or positively in a day and night, these are speculations of exchange companies, when they say that the dollar reached the price of 850 Lira you find that in the market no one sells or buys at this price, all of it is just talk on paper, it has nothing to do with the reality of the Syrian economy.

I met with colleagues in charge of the economy and they told me today the economy is 50 times better than it was in 2011, the reality of economic reality is much better than it was at the beginning of the crisis. There is work going on in agriculture, industry, in enterprises and institutions, there is strong work because we know that we must be self-sufficient in everything and we must rely on ourselves.

KK: This is very reassuring, Doctor, especially for Syrians with expectations of the effects of this law, but the law comes amid tremendous U.S. pressure and a firm application of the strategy of extreme pressure on Iran. Is there a relationship between the strategy of extreme pressure on Iran and the passage of Caesar’s law on the one hand, and also is there a connection to what is happening in Iraq and Lebanon? Are these things connected?

DBS: I would like to tell you, Mr. Kamal, that I see the world as one square, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, China, Venezuela and Libya, all one square and there are strategies put in place to break up our countries from within to prevent communication and solidarity between our nations. What is happening in Lebanon and what is happening in Iraq is undoubtedly against Syria, against Lebanon, against Iraq, against Libya, and against all these countries.

They have resorted to methods to break up our societies from within. It is true that there is no doubt that people have right demands and that they have the right to revolt against corruption and against the absence of services, this is their right, but these revolutions did not bring all countries to a better level, including what happened in Syria, did Syria become better because of what some called and took to the street to destroy institutions and destroy factories, is this a way that leads to more freedom, more democracy and more prosperity?

AS: The sanctions and economic pressure exerted on Syria, Lebanon and other countries is mainly aimed at creating a state of popular restlessness and thus the emergence of social classes to claim their rights.

DBS: Thus, the creation of government puppets of the United States of America, we return to the subject of independent national decision. What these governments want, for example, Adel Abdul Mahdi (Iraqi Prime Minister) now resigns, he signed with China two months ago for $10 billion and to pay Iraqi oil, i.e. to exchange Iraqi oil, he opened the Albu Kamal crossing (with Syria) despite all the American pressure, he stood against the Deal of the Century at the United Nations and call for the right of return to the Palestinians, these are the principles and prescriptions that caused these moves against Adel Abdul Mahdi. We all felt that when this Iraqi government came, it was more independent of the United States of America, and that’s what the United States doesn’t want, all the United States wants today is to have a subordinate government in Iraq, a subordinate government in Lebanon, a subordinate government in Syria, in Libya, to hand over this area to Israel to become an Israeli space as they normalize (with Israel) today, this is the real goal of all of this.

Kk: I also have two points about Caesar’s law, but before that, the German Firil Center for Studies publishing objectives related to Caesar’s law, we will present a summary of these goals as stated by the German Study Center.

Prolonging the Syrian crisis and hindering the reconstruction process and reducing the role of Iranian, Russian, Chinese and other companies, in short, Trump wants his share in reconstruction, says the Center for Studies.

Also, pressure Syria and Russia to secure the withdrawal of Iranian forces from Syria and prevent Russia’s expansion in the eastern regions and the (Syrian) Jazeera region, and limit its presence to the bases of Hmeimim and Tartus.

Among the goals to further disintegrate Syrian society in preparation for the 2021 elections.

The law exempts NGOs operating in Syria that provides humanitarian aid to those in need in the occupied territories by Turkey and the United States, these areas will not suffer from economic crises like other areas liberated by the Syrian army and we will see the flow of aid to them more, here will show the economic and living difference which will push, according to the American conviction, the pro-Assad street to move against him, and as a result of economic pressures and threats of submitting Syrian officials to war crimes courts, the Syrian state will make political and military concessions, including bowing to separatist projects.

What do you think of these targets, Doctor?

DBS: These objectives are correct, prolonging the Syrian crisis, trying to pounce on Russian influence and expansion in the region that they consider a threat. These are all correct objectives, but as a result where these goals want to reach? It expresses blatant interference in the affairs of states and the attempt to impose a new colonial hegemony on our state, that is the reality of the matter. They are also concerned that Russia is now on the Mediterranean Sea and as a key partner in Syria, it also has excellent relations even with America’s allies, starting to build relationships and sell weapons even to America’s allies.

The whole international track is worrying for the United States of America. The United States of America sees itself today as no longer the only pole in the world, there are economic, military, geopolitical and regional movements that suggest that the world is heading towards a multipolar world.

So we see this irritating move from the United States of America, whether for Jerusalem or for the Golan, for the Deal of the Century, or for Venezuela, take what you want from what the United States is doing, are irritated movements that try to say that I am the only power in the world and I will remain the only power in the world, this will not happen because the course of economic, political and intellectual progress of the whole world will not allow the USA to remain so, until today the United States is a military and financial force, without a doubt, and the main reason is the Gulf states selling oil in dollars if the dollar fell today the United States would fall or if the oil was sold in non-dollar.

Two weeks ago, I attended an important conference in Beijing called the South-South Dialogue and the Development of Human Rights, and there were important speakers from Africa, Asia and Latin America, you feel that all these speakers are very angry at the Use of Human Rights by the United States to interfere with state affairs.

I gave my speech and I see the representative of Venezuela, the representative of Nigeria and the representative of Tanzania come to me and say to me, “I have spoken on behalf of all of us, we love you and this is what we have to do. Everyone demanded that the Countries of the North also be invited to this Conference and that the Bill of Human Rights be redrafted so that the Countries of the South have an opinion and a voice because they did not have a voice in the drafting of the Bill of Human Rights or in the use of the Bill of Human Rights which is used by America.

What I would like to say is that the world is maturing with important thinking in order to get rid of this American military and political hegemony and colonial domination, in which today the sanctions constitute as one of the most egregious aspects of this hegemony.

KK: A point related to the law of (Caesar) before we talk about other issues in the Syrian and regional affairs, how true is the impact of what is happening in Lebanon, especially with regard to the actions of banks in Lebanon on the Syrian economy?

What we have heard in Syria is that one of the important causes of the current crisis is what is happening in Lebanon, especially the banking issue, is this accurate?

DBS: I think no one has an accurate statistic about what is going on, but you know that I say and believe that everything that is happening in Lebanon affects Syria and everything that is happening in Syria affects Lebanon, and this is a fact that we are very close countries, the two people are very close to each other, the exchange between Syria and Lebanon is on daily bases, and no doubt a lot of Syrian money went to the Lebanese banks in this war on Syria, what happened in Lebanon may have an impact on the Syrian economy, but not so much that cannot be overcome, I do not think that this is a fundamental reason or disruption to the course of the movement and progress of the Syrian economy.

KK: We go back to the United States, directly and accurately, is the United States the reason why Syrian-Arab relations are not back to normal?

DBS: I think this is because of the absence of an independent national resolution in many Arab countries, unfortunately, this is possible, we know in the meetings before, the United States is distributing a statement either at the Non-Aligned Summit or in the Arab League or at the Conference of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, distributes statements to countries and force them to say what it wants.

It is not only preventing the relationship with Syria, but the course of normalization today with the Israeli enemy and the nonsense that we hear that they were like that before, yesterday I was reading how Shimon Peres got a Palestinian visa to enter Palestine, how they think and how to convince those people (of normalization).

We really do not want this version of Arab action, we want a formula similar to our relationship with Algeria, to be a country of resistance, a resistance environment that believes in the Arab-Arab relationship, capable of being independent. This is the future we aspire to with the Arab countries, and God willing, this future will be achieved.

KK: It is (the United States) that prevents the return of refugees. On this subject I will link what we read from the German Center Firil a little while ago, I was struck by the topic of preparing for the 2021 elections, one aspect of U.S. pressure on Syria is to put pressure on Syrian society because the United States has a bet in the 2021 presidential election. Also, the issue of the return of refugees is said to be in the same context, is that true?

DBS: I think they are betting that by not allowing refugees to return to Syria, they may be able to control more of the results of the 2021 presidential elections. However, more than a year ago, I read the publications of the Israeli National Security Center, which explained when the refugees had begun to return and suddenly measures were taken to prevent them from returning and measures were taken in Jordan, where they were not allowed to work and suddenly they were allowed to work, in Turkey and other countries, I read that the non-return of refugees is very important to Israel, because in Jordan, for example, there is a proportion of Syrian refugees and it is changing the demographic nature of Jordan, as well as in Lebanon, it is changing the demographic nature of Lebanon, it also impoverishes Syria by cadres and professional people, these are strategic calculations of first and last objective.

KK: Not including using them as a vote tank in the upcoming (presidential) elections?

DBS: The report of the Center for Israeli National Security Studies did not have this subject, but there is no doubt that this topic is in the minds of Western countries, I think it is time for them to know that they cannot undermine the footsteps of the Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian people, who have sacrificed all these sacrifices to be their voice independent and to be able to choose who they want to govern.

KK: The process of returning refugees continues, albeit in varying proportions.

On the subject of Arab relations, there were signs of a new Saudi approach, has this topic reached a certain level?

DBS: No, it did not reach a certain level, just words and attempts remained in its place, there is no serious path.

KK: Why? The United States and the American decision?

DBS: I think that the Gulf states are not capable, even during the war some of these countries were sending us whispers that “we wish to win the war because we know that without Syria, we will not have a future, but we cannot say that.”

Kk: Like: our hearts are with you and our swords are on you.

DBS: Yes, our hearts are with you, our swords are on you, and we are forced to raise our swords on you. Mr. President always says that we understand that this is the case, we cannot change this situation. The goal of war in the whole world and these sanctions and all the labor of countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East is about the independent national decision, what was Evo Morales’ fault? He was an independent man, Lula de Silva, what was the issue with Lula de Silva? is that he was an independent man of the U.S. decision, it is therefore very important to bear in mind that what the United States is always doing is based on its attempt to maintain the hegemony of one pole over the world and that all the course of events and peoples in the world today is to get rid of this path and to create a new reality leading to a multipolar world, and that is what will happen. These are difficulties on the way, no problem.

KK: In the chemical file, one of the pressures on Syria, this program has already discussed it in detail, but there is a very serious point that may be similar to the American Law of Caesar, which is to give additional powers to the investigation and fact-finding team with regard to chemical attacks, these powers have not been taken by the (OPCW) organization in its history to the extent that today even Russia says that this is not the job of the organization but the job of the United Nations Security Council, you will not deal with this fact-finding team, but I would like to know in this process the chemical issue, where will it eventually reach?

DBS: The subject of the chemical file there is a fundamental problem in the world (mainstream) media, because the world media is under the control of those who run the chemical file and the White Helmets and the war on Syria, what has been published in the last three months about the chemical dossier and what you have also displayed in your episode on Al-Mayadeen is enough for this (OPCW) organization to lose its credibility in the eyes of the people, because as I’ve seen, the team that did the fact-finding on the ground is not the team that wrote the report, the last article written by Tarek Haddad in Newsweek was a startling article, one person who was adopted by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to write the report, and the scientists who checked and investigated and said what was on earth had no opinion whatsoever and many of them came out and talked to WikiLeaks, Tarek Haddad resigned from Newsweek and spoke heartily about the lies that were fabricated about Syria and the chemical file, if there was any justice or shame in the world, such an organization would lose its legitimacy directly because of what it did in Syria.

KK: A member of the team leaked a letter and sent an email saying that “many things were presented in the episode, but the investigation we conducted is different from the report submitted to the Security Council or the United Nations.” But wasn’t there a force that stopped the investigation team? In other words, even the objection of Russia and other countries, and even the leaked letter of a member of the team?

DBS: Today more than one letter and more than one person called for a review, and now the truth is, there is a group from Alternative Media from Britain, France, Australia and Canada doing excellent work to correct the course of this media lie, but they do not listen to either for these or for others.

KK: Does the United States control the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons?

DBS: Sure, without a doubt, it is within the pressure as they passed Caesar’s law, they’re continuing. The White Helmets were given the Oscars Award, and they’re real criminals who worked with terrorist organizations and some of the White Helmets recently showed footage of how they were wrapping women in white gauze and telling them to pretend to be dead and how they brought the children. They put movies on the screens how they lied in all their reports, that’s part of the global path that we have to face and be patient with and no doubt we’ll get rid of it in the future.

KK: There is also a battle that took place a few days ago in the Security Council over a draft resolution to introduce humanitarian aid across the Syrian border, the purpose of this law, which was opposed by a Sino-Russian double veto and why was it rejected so categorically?

DBS: Unfortunately, Kuwait is an Arab country and one of those who adopted this law against Syria, unfortunately…

KK: Although you stood with Kuwait (during the Iraqi invasion).

DBS: We stood with Kuwait as the saying goes, “Everyone works with their origins,” unfortunately. But this law aims to introduce aid across the border without permission and without the knowledge of the Syrian government, that is, they can enter weapons and enter what they want, and exclusively to areas where there are terrorists.

Kk: As has been the case with attempts to bring convoys from Colombia to Venezuela.

DBS: Exactly, not to areas under the control of the Syrian government, this is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of a state, and we cooperate with the United Nations from the beginning, distribute aid and do all the work that the United Nations monitors and participates in. As for China’s stand against this draft resolution, it is important, Russia could have used its veto alone, but China’s stand and perhaps some do not pay attention to the importance of this stand against this draft resolution to say that we are against the violation of the sovereignty of states, and we will stand against this violation. This latter position is very important by China, of course, and by Russia, of course, but for China because it is part of what China is trying to do to show the difference between those who believe in participation, equality, respect for states, respect for the sovereignty of nations and those who try to violate the sovereignty of nations.

KK: China, Russia and the Syrian government have a fear of this security council bill to introduce aid.

DBS: Weapons, not just aid.

KK: Bypassing Syrian sovereignty?

DBS: Sure, no doubt. But how do they justify that they want to get aid into areas controlled by terrorists? How can they tell us that they are here in Syria to fight ISIS and to fight terrorism while all their goal in life is to provide assistance to terrorists, to areas and to areas controlled by terrorists?

Today, as the battle of Idlib began, today they are crying out for the civilians, while all the atrocities and crimes committed by the terrorists against our people in Idlib, Aleppo and everywhere have not condemned any of these acts.

KK: I have a little time left and I have three points, you mentioned the issue of Idlib, what is the purpose of the military operation, although it will really stop as we heard some reports today, and is the fact that the escalation in Idlib is linked to the battle in Tripoli in Libya?

DBS: Why am I laughing now? Because I remember when we stopped the military operation in Idlib a while ago, there was a scheme and then it stopped, they asked me did you stop the military operation because Russia said that the military operation should be stopped? When we start the military operation, they say that we started the military operation because Russia asked you to start the military operation…

Kk: But is there coordination?

DBS: Certainly there is coordination, and The Russian air force is supporting the Syrian army in Operation Idlib, but I want to insist that the battle stops, starts or continues according to military and strategic considerations that evaluate gain and loss at this moment or at another moment, it is not linked to what is happening in Libya, this operation has nothing to do with that, we, of course, regret that the Government of Erdogan is trying to wreak havoc in Syria, Libya and everywhere, but the battle of Idlib is aimed at liberating Idlib, a continuation of the battles fought by the Syrian Arab Army to liberate every inch of Syrian territory, God willing.

KK: The U.S. theft of Syrian oil, this is a subject that worries the Syrians, there is a sense of bitterness among the Syrians, especially after Trump said that there is 45 million dollars a month coming from this oil and this will not leave it, we even heard voices from the United States itself saying that this is against American law, what are you doing about this, oil and wheat as well?

DBS: Yes, oil and wheat, the Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, and this is what I say for the first time, is examining what legal measures we can take on an international level in order to bring a case against the United States of America, because it is actually stealing Syrian oil and violating Syrian sovereignty.

Even the CNBC reporter who met me a few days ago told me what you said to President Bashar al-Assad when he said that Trump is the most transparent president? How do you explain this? I told him it is because Mr. President says the United States in its history plunders the wealth of the people but it does not say so, but today Trump said the Iraqi oil is for me and the Syrian oil is for me, regardless of respect for the sovereignty of states and respect that this wealth belongs to the Syrian people.

What I would like to say is that Syrian oil and Syrian territory will be liberated from the Americans, the Turks and from everyone.

KK: You are preparing a legal file on this matter.

DBS: Yes, hopefully, we are preparing a legal file in this matter to sue the United States for the theft of Syrian oil.

KK: There is a major political, security and military battle in the eastern Mediterranean over gas and oil in the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey went to Libya for this, Egypt has formed a Mediterranean forum with a group of countries, there is a demarcation of the border, Lebanon will start exploring after a while also and has a problem with Israel, where is Syria in this matter?

DBS: I will also say this for the first time, Syria has begun to explore with Russian companies about Syrian oil and gas in the Mediterranean.

KK: You have begun?

DBS: We started, yes, of course, this is national riches and the Syrian government has been doing work for years and has been preparing for this exploration.

Kk: I was saying that Lebanon will start while you began.

DBS: We have come a long way and started exploring in the Mediterranean.

KK: In the gas fields?

DBS: In fields belonging to the Syrian Arab Republic.

KK: Doctor, the Constitutional Committee, where did it stop?

DBS: It stopped because there is a delegation of the Turkish regime that wants to do what it wants, and we, after all the sacrifices made by the Syrian army and people, will not be the future of Syria except as the Syrian people want, and the Syrian constitution will only be what the Syrian people want.

MM: Dr. Buthaina Shaaban, Media and Political Advisor in the Presidency of the Syrian Arab Republic, the time is very late, we had a lot of questions that we did not ask. Thank you very much.

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