The OPCW Whistleblower Scandal: A Newsweek Reporter Resigns, A Counter-Narrative Won’t Die

December 30th, 2019 by Scott Ritter

It is perhaps the least reported media scandal about the least reported international controversy in recent times—the resignation of Tareq Haddad, a well-regarded journalist from Newsweek, a mainstay of the mainstream media. 

At issue was what he said regarding the magazine’s refusal to cover the scandal unfolding within the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Evidence has been building for some time that the OPCW cooked the books in its investigation of alleged chemical weapons use in the Syrian town of Douma on April 7, 2018. These allegations served as the justification for a subsequent joint U.S.-U.K.-France attack against suspected chemical weapons targets inside Syria, despite the fact that the OPCW had yet to inspect the Douma location, let alone issue a report on its findings.

In an announcement on Twitter, Haddad declared,

“I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW letter were refused for no valid reason,” adding, “I have collected evidence of how they [the OPCW] suppressed the story in addition to evidence from another case where info inconvenient to US govt was removed, though it was factually correct.”

Haddad further noted that he had been threatened by Newsweek with legal action if he sought to publish his findings elsewhere.

The OPCW’s Douma investigation has been under a cloud of controversy since shortly after its interim report was released to the public in early March 2019. The document was prepared by Ian Henderson, an engineer working for the OPCW. It challenged the conclusions of the inspection team regarding the provenance of two chlorine canisters located at the incident scene, and was leaked to the press.

The document, which the OPCW subsequently declared to be genuine, raised the probability that the canisters had been manually placed at the scene, as opposed to having been dropped by the Syrian Air Force, raising the question as to whether the entire Douma incident had been staged.

Haddad’s story, however, was not about Ian Henderson’s report, but rather a series of new documents, backed up by an inspector-turned-whistleblower known only as “Alex,” that accused the OPCW leadership of ignoring the findings of its own inspectors in favor of a revisionist report prepared by another team of inspectors based out of Turkey. This second group allegedly relied heavily on data and witnesses provided by the Syrian Civil Defense (the “White Helmets”) and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), two ostensibly humanitarian organizations opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Haddad’s new sources emerged after the publication of the OPCW’s final report on the Douma incident in July 2019. That document concluded that chlorine had been used as a weapon at Douma, likely via chlorine canisters dropped from aircraft—making the Syrian government solely responsible and legitimizing the U.S.-led aerial attacks.

The leaked material was verified by interviews to select reporters (possibly including Haddad, who is seeking whistleblower-like protection from Newsweek) by “Alex,” who claims to have been part of the Douma investigation. The narrative that emerges from a cursory examination of this new data is damning—the OPCW suppressed the findings of the investigation team, which concluded that chlorine had notbeen used as a weapon at Douma. The OPCW management then conspired with the U.S. government to manufacture another report, based on an alternate set of facts, which sustained the notion that the Syrian government had, in fact, used chlorine as a weapon.

The OPCW management has largely ignored the leaks. The current director general, Fernando Arias, defended the work of his organization, declaring,

“While some of these diverse views continue to circulate in some public discussion forums, I would like to reiterate that I stand by the independent, professional conclusion [of the investigation].”

For its part, Newsweek, through a spokesperson, told a reporter,

“The writer [Haddad] pitched a conspiracy theory rather than an idea for objective reporting. Newsweek editors rejected the pitch.”

Under normal circumstances, the leaked documents and first-hand testimony of a whistleblower like “Alex” would have garnered the attention of the mainstream media, especially given their link to the Trump administration. There was a time when the media wasn’t afraid to take a controversial story and run with it, even one that involved multilateral arms control. In August 1998, I resigned from my position as a chief weapons inspector with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), which had been charged with the removal, destruction, or dismantling of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in accordance with relevant UN Security Council resolutions. My resignation was front-page news at both The New York Times and The Washington Post (among others), and I was called to testify before the both the Senate and the House about my allegations, which centered on American interference with the work of UNSCOM.

In retrospect, I’d be delusional to believe that the sole reason the media had taken an interest in my story was that they found the intricacies of disarming Iraq fascinating. The reality was that, at least from the perspective of the mass media, my resignation had served as a means to play the story off against competing domestic political power bases, which in my case consisted of an incumbent Democratic president, Bill Clinton, and a Congress where both houses were controlled by Republicans.

My story had relevance not because I was empowered with fact-based truth (I was), but because my cause was taken up by one side (congressional Republicans) and used as a political cudgel against the other (President Clinton). The moment both the president and Congress came together of one mind, choosing military-backed regime change over legitimate disarmament, my utility was eliminated, and the media dropped me like a bad habit. The demonization of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq precluded any meaningful discussion of issues of disarmament, with the end result the unquestioning embrace of the notion that Iraq had retained WMD, despite there being no evidence to sustain this, and an acceptance of war as the only viable solution, despite the fact that weapons inspections had proven they could be useful.

While conventional wisdom eventually evolved to accept the fact that the UN disarmament process had worked, and that I was correct when I’d reported that Iraq had been qualitatively disarmed and no longer posed a threat worthy of war, the fact remains that the issue of Iraqi WMD was always secondary to the issue of Saddam Hussein. Even once there was agreement that the WMD had been nonexistent, there was never any rethinking of how we had collectively pigeonholed Saddam into the “evil dictator” category, with the merits of his removal rarely questioned.

There are many similarities between my case and that of the OPCW inspectors, especially when it comes to their defending the integrity of the institution they represent and resisting the corruption of outside influences. The OPCW matter, however, remains a matter of internal dispute, denied the grand stage of American politics and the media attention that would garner.

There are several reasons for this. First, it is hard to rally people around a case where the central debate is over the relevance of particles per billion, or engineering equations concerning the tensile strength of concrete and steel. While the underlying science and math appears to be on the side of Ian Henderson and “Alex,” the refusal of the OPCW to engage in any substantive discussion means that what passes for a “debate” has been hijacked by social media personalities. They’re led by Eliot Higgins and his cohort of Bellingcat “specialists” who back up their questionable science with well-worn tropes designating all who oppose them as “pro-Assad” conspiracy theorists and/or Russian-controlled trolls who are simply regurgitating “Kremlin talking points.”

Newsweek’s suppression of the reporting of Tareq Haddad is disturbing; the failure of the mainstream media to pick up the metaphorical ball and run with it is a damning indictment of the current state of journalism today. There was a time when an intrepid investigative reporter like Seymour Hersh would have sunk his teeth into a story such as this. But Hersh’s one-time outlet of choice—the New Yorker—and its editor, David Remnick, have foregone the pursuit of truth in favor of publishing stories that demonize Assad and Putin. The same can be said of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major media outlets.

The OPCW whistleblower scandal has all the elements of a blockbuster—heroes, villains, scandal, lies, and cover-up. But fact-based truth is no longer the fuel of the media business that modern journalism is supposed to sustain, especially when the truth can so easily be fobbed off as “pro-Assad” or “pro-Russia.” As long as this model remains in place, and the work of genuine journalists such as Tareq Haddad is suppressed by editors, the American people will remain prisoners of their own ignorance.

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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War (2018).

Trump Signs Measure Enabling Establishment of a U.S. Space Force

December 30th, 2019 by Prof. Karl Grossman

President Trump has signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020 that establishes a U.S. Space Force as the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces—despite the Outer Space Treaty designating space as a global commons to be used for peaceful purposes.

Reported Space News: “Trump signed the NDAA flanked by top defense and military officials at a ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.” It quoted Trump saying: “Today marks a landmark achievement as we officially inaugurate the newest branch or our military, the U.S. Space Force. This is very big and important moment.”

The Space News article quoted U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper saying at the signing December 20:

“Our reliance on space-based capabilities has grown dramatically and today outer space has evolved into a warfighting domain of its own. Maintaining American dominance in that domain is now the mission of the United States Space Force.”

Bruce Gagnon, the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, headquartered in Maine, said of what happened:

“The words ‘warfighting domain’ and US ‘dominance in space’ indicate that the Pentagon is actively planning to fight a war in space. This misguided notion is probably the most dangerous and frightening development of my lifetime—and I had thought the Cold War-era was bad. The idea that the U.S. thinks it can fight and ‘win’ a war in space is indeed the height of insanity.”

The U.S. Congress joining with the Trump administration “to push forward with this ‘US exceptionalism to the max’ notion indicates just how much the aerospace industry has taken control of Washington,” Gagnon, of Brunswick, Maine, continued.

“It is clear to me that what the Pentagon has long called ‘the largest, and most expensive industrial project in human history—‘Star Wars,’ will drive our nation’s economy over the cliff,” said Gagnon. “There will be rockets and weapons in space and more homeless across the nation than anyone could ever imagine. Yes, we should call it Pyramids to the Heavens. The aerospace industry is the contemporary version of the Pharaohs of Egypt and the taxpayers will be the slaves. But everything has an Achilles Heel and the enormous cost of Star Wars could just be it.”

He stated:

“It’s more than the right time for the public to declare a resounding NO.”

The formation of a U.S. Space Force and the U.S. drive for “American dominance” of space will inevitably turn space into a war zone because other nations, China and Russia and then more, will respond in kind. There will be an arms race in space.

The landmark Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was put together by the U.S., the former Soviet Union, and the U.K., and since signed by most nations on Earth. It was spurred, as Craig Eisendrath, as a U.S. State Department officer involved in its creation, by the Soviet Union launching Sputnik, the first space satellite, as he noted in the 2001 TV documentary I wrote and narrate, “Star Wars Returns.” It’s online. See this. Eisendrath said “we sought to de-weaponize space before it got weaponized…to keep war out of space.”

The Outer Space Treaty prohibits the placement of weapons of mass destruction in space, and although the Trump administration and U.S. military have been claiming a Space Force is necessary because of Russia and China moving into space militarily, in fact Russia and China —and U.S. neighbor Canada—have been leaders for decades in pushing for an expansion of the Outer Space Treaty. They have been advocating the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty under which the placement of any weapons in space would be barred. The U.S.—under both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations—has opposed the PAROS treaty and has effectively vetoed it at the United Nations. (I’ve been there to see this.)

“’Today is an historic moment for our nation as we launch the United States Space Force,’” Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett told reporters Dec. 20,” said the Space News article. “The Space Force is the first new military service created since 1947, when the Air Force was born from the U.S. Army Air Corps,” it continued.

“The Space Force authorization marks a huge political victory for Trump, who started championing the idea of a space service in early 2018 and directed the Pentagon in June 2018 to figure out a plan to make it happen,” said Space News, quoting Barrett as saying: “The president’s vision has become a reality with overwhelming bipartisan and bicameral support from Congress.” Raymond: “We do have a plan to rename the principal Air Force bases that house space units to be space bases.”

In a subsequent article, Space News reported that with the establishment of a U.S. Space Force, there is a plan to rename U.S. Air Force bases as U.S. Space Force bases. The piece said:

“Air Force installations that primarily do space work would be renamed Space Force bases. Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, for example, could become Peterson Space Force Base. Other candidates for re-designation include Colorado-based Schriever Air Force Base and Buckley Air Force Base, Patrick Air Force Base in Florida and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.”

The article quoted General John “Jay” Raymond, who has been commander of the U.S. Space Command and has become commander of the new U.S. Space Force, as saying: “We do have a plan to rename the principal Air Force bases that house space units to be space bases.” See this.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military immediately unveiled an “official” U.S. Space Force website.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, the vote for NDAA on December 11 was 377 to 48. Some 189 Republicans and 188 Democrats voted for it. Six Republican House members voted no along with 41 Democrats and one independent. The vote was reported to be a result of a trade-off for 12 weeks of paid parental leave for civilian federal employees. The New York Times’ article on the vote said Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, was pivotal. “It was Mr. Kushner who helped broker a deal to create the Space Force, a chief priority of the president’s, in exchange for the paid parental leave, a measure championed by his wife, Ivanka Trump, also a senior advisor to the president,” said The Times.  See this.

The vote in the U.S. Senate on December 17 was 86 to 8. Some 48 Republicans and 37 Democrats and one independent voted for it. Four Republicans and four Democrats voted no.

Trump tweeted after the House vote: “Wow! All our priorities have made it into the final NDAA: Pay Raises for our Troops, Rebuilding our Military, Paid Parental Leave, Border Security, and Space Force!” See this.

The Space News article went on:

“Getting Congress to go along with the Space Force authorization took significant cajoling from the White House.” The House Armed Services Committee “unsuccessfully tried to pass a bill in the 2018 NDAA to establish a Space Corps. The Pentagon, the Air Force and the Senate at the time were adamantly opposed but all came around after Trump took up the cause.”

“To get Democrats to vote for the NDAA,” Space News said, “Trump went along with one of their top priorities to grant federal workers 12 weeks of paid time off after the birth or adoption of a child or to handle family health emergencies.”

It was a trade-off of the most profound historic proportions: paid parental leave for government employees, common in countries all over the world, for a measure that would turn space into an arena of war.

Effective as of December 2019, reported Space News, “The Air Force re-names the Air Force Space Command the U.S. Space Force….As many as 16,000 military and civilian personnel from Air Force Space Command will be assigned to the U.S. Space Force….Air Force Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, the commander of U.S. Space Command, will serve as the first Chief of Space Operations…chief of staff of the Space Force” and “become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by December 2020. The Office of the Chief of Space Operations—aka the Space Force headquarters—will be stood up at the Pentagon over the next 60 days.”

Further, there will be “a new Senate-confirmed position of assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration” and a “Space Force Acquisition Council”….The space acquisition executive will oversee the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), the Space Rapid Capabilities Office and the Space Development Agency.”

Space News said General “Raymond told reporters Dec. 20 that the establishment of a Space Force ‘truly launches us into a new era.’ However, there are still ‘thousands of actions will have to take place’ over the coming months and years.”

“’The uniforms, the patch, the song, the culture of a service, that work will continue,’ Raymond said,” the article went on. “We’re not going to be in a rush. That’s not something that we’re going to roll out on day one. Communicating to the public the importance of the Space Force to national security will be a priority, he said. Raymond is aware that the Space Force is mocked and called a ‘Space Farce’ and he thinks that is a problem. ‘This is not a ‘farce,’ he said. ‘This is nationally critical.’”

As to: “Will there be ‘spacemen’?” asked Space News, a trade journal. “How the members of the Space Force will be designated will be debated for some time before the service settles on a name. For now, the new branch will be formed with airmen assigned to serve under the Space force. A new name will be given to members of the Space Force eventually. ‘We want to develop our own identity,’ a senior official said. ‘We don’t want to say on day one ‘they’re going to be called x.’ Eventually, airmen will be asked to permanently transfer to the Space Force. The estimated 16,000 people who will be expected to transfer include 3,400 officers, 6,200 enlisted personnel and the rest civilians.”

“Graduates of the military academies of the other services will be allowed to commission into the Space Force,” reported Space News. “The actual transfer of airmen to the Space Force will be a laborious process that will require standing up a new personnel and compensation system. Each airman individually will have to volunteer to be separated from the Air Force. Officers would have to be reappointed and enlisted personnel would have to be re-enlisted to serve under the Space Force.”

“The Army is of special importance because it has a large cadre of space operators and experts estimated at more than 2,000 people,” the Space News article continued. “Barrett said the plan is to eventually bring them on. ‘Naturally the Amy and Navy will be partners,’ she said. ‘Over time they will be fully engaged.’ She said Army and Navy officials have been involved in the planning and rollout of the Space Force. Barrett also wants to figure out a plan for National Guard and Reserve units to serve on the Space Force.”

As to “how much money will the Space Force have”—what Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network calls the “Achilles Heel” of the scheme—Space News said “Congress approved $40 million for Space Force operations and maintenance in the fiscal year 2020 appropriations. That is less than the $72.4 million requested by the Trump administration, although Barrett said Dec. 20 that the funding would be enough to get started…In a Dec. 2 memo, a copy of which was obtained by SpaceNews,” the article went on, “Barrett requested the following transfers to the Space Force for fiscal year 2020: $9.3 billion from Air Force space-related weapons systems and operations, $1.4 billion from weapons system sustainment, $275 million from major command support, $26.3 million from education and training, $95 million from headquarters spending. Barrett said the personnel costs associated with all these programs also will transfer to the Space Force.”

National Public Radio has reported that Trump’s advocacy of a Space Force “started as a joke.” NPR’s Claudia Grisales in August related: “Early last year President Trump riffed on an idea he called ‘Space Force’ before a crowd of Marines in San Diego. It drew laughs, but the moment was a breakthrough for a plan that had languished for nearly 20 years.” She continued: “’I said maybe we need a new force, we’ll call it the Space Force,’ Trump said at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in March 2018. ‘And I was not really serious. Then I said, ‘What a great idea, maybe we’ll have to do that.’”

Gagnon recounts a protest he organized against the weaponization of space at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 1989 at which Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon participated, told those present that “any war in space would be the one and only. By destroying satellites in space massive amounts of space debris would be created that would cause a cascading effect and even the billion-dollar International Space Station would likely be broken into tiny bits. So much space junk would be created, Mitchell told us, that we’d never be able to get a rocket off the planet again because of the minefield of debris orbiting the Earth at 15,000 mph. That would mean activity on Earth below would immediately shut down—cell phones, ATM machines, cable TV, traffic lights, weather prediction and more—all hooked up to satellites, would be lost. Modern society would go dark.”

As to the weapons a Space Force might use, proposed for Reagan’s “Star Wars” program were hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons onboard orbiting battle platforms with onboard nuclear reactors or “super” plutonium systems providing the power for the weapons. General James Abramson, head of “Star Wars,” or as it was officially termed Strategic Defense Initiative, said at a Symposium on Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1988 that “without reactors in orbit” there would need to be “a long” extension cord bringing up power up from Earth.

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This article was originally published on Common Dreams.

Karl Grossman is a professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, is the author of Weapons In Space and wrote and narrated the TV documentary Nukes In Space: The Nuclearization and Weaponization of the Heavens. 

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US Strategy and What the Gas Pipeline War Is Costing Us

December 30th, 2019 by Manlio Dinucci

Although they were locked in a convoluted struggle concerning the impeachment of President Trump, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate laid down their arms in order to vote, in quasi-unanimity,  for the imposition of heavy sanctions on the companies participating in the construction of North Stream 2, the doubling of the gas pipeline which delivers Russian gas to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The main victims were the European companies which had helped finance the 11 billion dollar project with the Russian company Gazprom.

The project is now  80 % finished. The Austrian company Omy, British/Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, French Engie, German companies Uniper and Wintershall, Italian Saipem and Swiss Allseas are also taking part in the laying of the pipeline.

The doubling of North Stream increases Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, warn the United States. Above all, they are preoccupied by the fact that the gas pipeline – by crossing the Baltic in waters belonging to Russia, Finland, Sweden and Germany – thus avoids the Visegrad countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary), the Baltic States and Ukraine. In other words, the European countries which have the closest ties to Washington through NATO (to which we must add Italy).

Rather than being economic, the goal for the USA is strategic. This is confirmed by the fact that the sanctions on North Stream 2 are included in the National Defense Authorization Act, the legislative act which, for fiscal year 2020, hands the Pentagon the colossal sum of 738 billion dollars for new wars and new weapons (including space weapons), to which must be added other posts which bring the US military expenditure to approximately 1,000 billion dollars. The economic sanctions on North Stream 2 are part of a politico-military escalation against Russia.

An ulterior confirmation can be found in the fact that the US Congress has established sanctions not only against North Stream 2, but also against the Turk-Stream, which, in its final phase of realisation, will bring Russian gas across the Black Sea to Eastern Thrace,the small European area of Turkey. From there, by another pipeline, Russian gas should be delivered to Bulgaria, Serbia and other European countries. This is the Russian riposte to the US action which managed to block the South Stream pipeline in 2014. South Stream was intended to link Russia to Italy across the Black Sea and by land to Tarvisio (Udine). Italy would therefore have become a switch platform for gas in the EU, with notable economic advantages. The Obama administration was able to scuttle the project, with the collaboration of the European Union.

The company Saipem (Italian Eni Group), once again affected by the US sanctions against North Stream 2, was severely hit by the blockage of South Stream – in 2014, it lost contracts to the value of 2.4 billion Euros, to which other contracts would have been added if the project had continued. But at the time, no-one in Italy or in the EU protested against the burial of the project which was being organised by the USA. Now German interests are in play, and critical voices are being raised in Germany and in the EU against US sanctions against North Stream 2.

Nothing is being said about the fact that the European Union has agreed to import liquified natural gas (LNG) from the USA, an extract from bituminous shale by the destructive technique of hydraulic fracturation (fracking). In order to damage Russia, Washington is attempting to reduce its gas exports to the EU, obliging European consumers to foot the bill.

Since President Donald Trump and the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, signed in Washington in July 2018 the Joint Statement of 25 July: European Union imports of U.S. Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), the EU has doubled its importation of LNG from the USA, co-financing the infrastructures via an initial expenditure of 656 million Euros. However, this did not save European companies from US sanctions.

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This article appeared on the Italian web newspaper, Il Manifesto. Translation is by Pete Kimberley

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from Stefan Sauer/dpa

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Turkey Sending Troops to Libya? Erdogan Supported Tripoli Forces to Fight Trump Supported Haftar Forces?

December 29th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

It appears likely. According to Turkey’s Anadolu news agency, President Erdogan will send troops to Libya to support the Tripoli-based/UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA).

It’s combatting Trump-supported/longtime CIA asset/warlord Khalifa Haftar for control of the country.

Anadolu news said in late November, “Ankara and the Tripoli-based GNA signed two separate agreements, one on military cooperation and another on maritime boundaries of the countries in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

On Thursday, Erdogan said the following:

“Since there is (a Libyan GNA) invitation right now, we will accept it. We will present the motion to send troops (to the country) as soon as (Turkey’s) parliament resumes.”

“God willing, we will pass it in parliament on January 8-9 and thus respond to an invitation.”

Libyan GNA interior minister  Fathi Bashagha said his government will officially request military support from Turkey, adding:

“If the situation escalates then we have the right to defend Tripoli and its residents” with foreign help.

In late November, GNA Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj signed a memorandum of understanding on security and military cooperation with Turkey.

His ministers and Turkish parliamentarians OK’d the deal, a separate GNA request needed to send troops — what apparently is forthcoming.

Moscow expressed concern about escalating the conflict further, urging diplomatic resolution to end it.

Reports of Russian mercenaries involved are greatly exaggerated. Moscow strongly denies them.

According to Bloomberg News, Erdogan and Libya’s Sarraj approved a maritime deal last month in contested gas-rich eastern Mediterranean waters, saying:

The “preliminary agreement demarcates an 18.6-nautical mile line that will form the maritime boundary separating what will be the two countries’ respective exclusive economic zones,” adding:

Libya’s (GNA) “presidential council and Turkey’s parliament approved the memorandum of understanding.”

According to Turkish official in charge of maritime and aviation boundary affairs Catagay Erciyes, the deal “amounts to a political message that Turkey can’t be sidelined in the eastern Mediterranean and nothing can be really achieved in the region without Turkey’s participation.”

Waters in question are contested by Greece, Cyprus and Egypt, these countries criticizing what they call a brazen Turkish bid to control them.

Libya and Greece disagree over offshore exploration licenses Athens and Crete (the most populous Greek island) agreed on — the waters located between Turkey and Libya.

According to risk analyst Anthony Skinner, “Erdogan’s strategy has been to intensify tensions to such an extent as to force serious concessions from Greek Cyprus during future negotiations on the status of the island and how its natural gas wealth will be distributed,” adding:

“Standing up strongly for Turkish Cypriots constitutes part of Erdogan’s nationalist credentials, but also forms a key part of Turkey’s political identity and will remain a priority national interest.”

Bloomberg said Greece claims Erdogan’s deal with Libya “violate(s) continental shelf and economic exclusive zones of its own islands, including Crete.”

According to Erciyes, the Greek islands in question lie “on the wrong side of the median line between mainlands.”

Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and Israel are contesting for control of gas-rich eastern Mediterranean waters.

Turkish drilling ships operate off Cyprus in waters Ankara claims as its exclusive economic zone per agreements with northern Cyprus it controls.

On Thursday, Erdogan said “(a)s long as the (GNA) government in Libya stands firm on its feet,” he’ll go all-out to secure what he and Sarraj agreed on.

His interest in getting involved in the Libyan conflict appears all about wanting control of resource-rich eastern Mediterranenan waters.

And where’s there’s gas, there’s likely oil.

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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 OneWorld

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Get Ready to Fight Israel’s Next War. Asking America to do the “Dirty Work”

December 29th, 2019 by Kurt Nimmo

It will be up to you, the clueless American citizen, to fight and pay for Israel’s war against its neighbors. This coming war was announced this week by Aviv Kochavi, the Israel Defense Force chief of staff. 

Max Blumenthal distills Kochavi’s threat. 

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Kochavi’s “lecture at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya seemed to be aimed at both the ears of Israeli citizens and the ears of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas,” reports Ynet, the online outlet for Yedioth Ahronot propaganda. 

Kochavi “sought to adjust the public’s expectations, while simultaneously sending a message of deterrence to the enemy,” the newspaper continues. 

This was an attempt to convey to the Israeli public that the home front will come under intense fire and the army will suffer great losses. 

All of this plays an important part in preparing for a wide-scale military conflict. It’s important to remember, however, one of the vital parts in waging a military conflict is setting clear and achievable goals, and that is the job of the IDF and the political echelon. 

In other words, the IDF has told the Israeli public to prepare for the destruction if its civilian infrastructure in response to the IDF destroying the civilian infrastructure in Iran, Syria, and Iraq (the latter two underwent the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure and the murder of millions of innocent people; Iraq was destroyed at the behest of Israel-first neocons in the Bush administration, not because it posed a threat to America, but rather Israel). 

Part of the current propaganda effort is to prepare the Israeli people to live in bomb shelters while their homes, schools, and hospitals are bombed—little different than what Israel has done in Gaza and did in the past to Lebanon—and “allocate hundreds of millions of shekels to obtain air defense systems that are able to thwart any potential missile attack Iran may launch at Israel.” The track record on the effectiveness of these so-called defense systems is dismal. 

Last year, Israel’s David’s Sling missile defense system failed stupendously to intercept missiles fired from Syria, a neighbor obsessively bombed by Israel over the last few years. “This has been a recurring problem for nations with substantial investments in interceptor missiles. The costly missiles have tended to perform poorly in even the most favorable tests, and using them against perceived threats, as today, risks very public failures,” writes Jason Ditz. 

So, basically, Kochavi has told the Israeli people they will suffer inestimable losses in human life and property and their children will be conscripted to fight and die in order to pound Iran to dust, something the little country of Israel—which would not exist without American largess dispensed under what amounts to a voodoo trance—is unable to do on its own. 

This means, of course, the US military will be obliged to finish what Israel has long itched to start—a regional war to reduce Iran, Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon to smoldering ruins similar to those created by the psychopathic “creative destruction” neocons during the years of Bush the Lesser. 

Kochavi played fast and loose with the lives of Israeli citizens, who are as brainwashed and oblivious to their destruction as millions of Americans. 

“Although such actions could lead to an escalation in violence and casualties, they put Israel back in the driver’s seat and allow it to redirect the dynamics in the needed direction [in the direction of Zionist domination of the region and the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people],” Kochavi summarized. 

The willingness to act sends a message to the enemy that contrary to Israel’s image as a country that only launches airstrikes and is not prepared to absorb casualties, the willingness to exert force and risk that price to ensure peace for its citizens, reinforces Israel’s deterrence and may delay a major confrontation, or alternatively allow us to control one when it finally happens.

This message—prepare for immense suffering, standby and witness your relatives and friends blown to bloody pieces in the name of Zionist domination—is not simply intended for the fat and happy living in the racist and ethnic cleansing state of Israel. It is, as well, a message to the American people—you will be required to fight the Zionist war of domination, a war Israel knows it cannot win, never mind the fantasy Israel will win any contest due to its “skilled and deadly ground forces.” 

Congress has repeatedly, over successive decades, promised that it will not only subsidize Israel, but fight its wars as well. This would be impossible if not for endless propaganda portraying tiny Israel locked in am existential battle with a world of antisemites. 

“Indeed, one might argue that there is a tendency in Washington to see the world and even domestic policies through Israel’s eyes,” writes Philip Giraldi. “One might even suggest that the United States government is being progressively Zionized because of the free hand that Israel and its supporters have, which gives them the ability to seek benefits for Israel that they would be unlikely to pursue for the United States.”

The remarks of Colonel Pat Lang, a former special ops officer and head of the Defense Humint Service, are worth quoting at length. 

It’s an open question but I think the answer is probably yes. The U.S. military now seems to be totally focused on Israeli policy goals in Iran, Syria and Iraq… Israel wants Iran neutered and eliminated as a power rival in the Middle East. The putative Iranian nuclear weapons program is just one target of Israeli policy toward Iran. To reach the goal of Morgenthau-style comfort with regard to Iran, Israel wants to destroy Syria and Hizbullah as allies of Iran… The process of conditioning American officers to make them Zionists has been ongoing for a long time… Americans are mentally driven by aggressive sports analogies and Israel was a winner [of the 1967 “Six Day War”]. That made a big difference in spite of the repeated day long attacks by the Israeli air force and navy against U.S.S. Liberty, an American SIGINT collector positioned off the Egyptian coast…  The indoctrination and conditioning program described by Shoshana Bryen began in earnest after that and has carried through to the present under the umbrella of AIPAC and its galaxy of linked organizations especially JINSA. This program has been wildly, incredibly successful. As a result, there is an unthinking willingness among senior, and not so senior American officers to support Israeli policy in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and now Saudi Arabia. The handful of M[iddle] E[ast] trained and educated U.S. officers are ignored, treated as technical experts or shoved out the door when they speak up.

This control of the US military by a foreign power was admitted by Shoshana Bryen. She is an ardent neocon involved in the indoctrination of US military personnel, a former director of the Jewish Policy Center, and a senior director of Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. “The United States military… is a Zionist institution,” she said, according to Pat Lang. 

This means that a fight initiated by Israel against Iran and its “proxies” will certainly involve the US military. Criticism of this war by the people who will pay and die for it will be censored, denounced as antisemitism, and declared to be treason (recall the corporate media talking heads excoriating antiwar activists during Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, most notably Bill O’Reilly at Fox News). 

I hate to end this post on a sour note, but there really is no other choice. Israel has long prepared to attack Iran—and Hezbollah in Lebanon (the 2006 effort failed)—and has demanded the US do the dirty work despite the fact there is no chance Iran will bomb the US with its intermediate missiles. Chants of “Death to America” are rhetorical and hardly a threat. 

But then, as the arch neocon above admitted, the Pentagon is Zionist occupied territory. Add to this the unswerving support of Congress for Israel’s crimes against humanity—and its tireless effort to shut down any opposition to the endless violence of Zionists (including subverting what is left of the Bill of Rights)—and you can bet your bottom dollar we will be sucked into another catastrophic war. 

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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.

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British Democracy on Death Row

December 29th, 2019 by True Publica

It’s all over the internet – you must have read about it by now. It’s all about Page 48 – and it is here that democracy dies in Britain. It was in the Conservative Manifesto. But the country voted for it – so that’s OK then. No need to make a thing of it in the mainstream media then.

Boris Johnson has declared this government to be a ‘people’s government’ as if somehow parliament was an enemy of the state. Unable to think of his own words – the prime minister quoted Margeret Thatcher’s idol Ronald Reagan as he addressed his new cabinet for the first time since the general election. Johnson told his ministers: ‘We should have absolutely no embarrassment about saying we are a people’s government, this is a people’s cabinet, and we are going to be working on delivering the priorities of the British people. And that’s what they want us to do.’

The ‘people’s government’ he refers to is a government soon to be digging away at the foundations of our democracy.

Boris Johnson then announced that he will amend the Brexit Bill to outlaw any extension beyond the end of 2020. The markets took the news badly and Sterling lost all of its gains since the announcement was made that Boris Johnson had won the election. One wonders if Johnson’s hedge-fund backers were tipped off in advance.

During the election campaign, there was little in the way of scrutiny by the mainstream media (and by that I mean none) during the election campaign, about the protection of parliamentary democracy. One sentence on Page 48 of the Conservative Manifesto said it all. “After Brexit, we also need to look at the broader aspects of our constitution: the relationship between the government, parliament and the courts.”

These words – just two dozen are the most sinister to have emerged from this campaign. Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings were not at all happy when MPs stood up to the PM in parliament and prevented him from carrying out what he arrogantly wanted, and he was similarly antagonistic towards the senior judges who declared that his proroguing of parliament was not legal. And Johnson is soon to take vengeance for such affrontery.

He will not just take steps to reduce the powers of MPs and therefore increase his own – but will take action to reduce the power of Supreme Court judges so that similar situations cannot occur in the future.

Also on buried on Page 48 – a single mention of the party’s pledge to “update” the 1998 Human Rights Act, which brings the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) into domestic law. You won’t be surprised to know that it doesn’t actually specify what this update is made up of, or when it will happen. The language is deliberately vague, indicating that the update will “ensure that there is a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government.” This is not a pledge designed to draw the attention of scrutiny. Again, the mainstream media completely passed on it as if it meant nothing. It means that the state will legislate in favour of itself and disadvantage the nation in prejudice.

The HRA passed with overwhelming cross-party support in 1998. Yes – the Conservatives overwhelmingly backed it then. And why wouldn’t they – the ECHR itself was crafted by Winston Churchill and Conservative lawyer David Maxwell-Fyfe.

“The word ‘update’ is interesting,” said Shreya Atrey, Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law at Oxford. “They are really relying on not being clear so that later they can do what they want. We can say that repeal is off the table. That is a good thing, and we should hold them to account, dare they cross that line. But given their past record, we can say that they mean to ‘weaken’ the commitments that we have to the ECHR.”

Nadia O’Mara, policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, an advocacy group, also warned that although an “update” “might sound innocuous, even progressive, given the Conservatives “history of trying to ‘scrap’ the HRA, it could lead to something far more sinister.”

“While the manifesto pledge is scant on detail, recent Conservative announcements suggest the proposal is likely to be aimed at when and where those rights can be enjoyed and who can be held to account for their violation,” she said.

We shouldn’t forget that Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal has new executive powers baked into it giving executive authority not seen in Britain for 400 years aside of World Wars. It’s all very Trump-like. The difference is that America – for all its failings has a constitution to protect the people from state overreach.

In the end, whatever the eventual form of the HRA, the systematic attacks on it and on democracy itself are symptomatic of a troubling trend and trajectory in Britain: these are populist attempts to undermine the perceived legitimacy of the rule of law. And as we have seen, it has become the norm to attack supreme court judges, backed up by the right-wing press who use inflammatory language such as “enemies of the people.” This has now morphed into “we are the people’s government” and somehow that’s OK. Britain’s institutions – those organisations that uphold civil society are to be taken apart piecemeal.

Democracy is now being threatened by the loose language of a manifesto that proves that the gentleman’s agreement of Britain’s unwritten constitution means nothing in the 21st century. Democracy is on death row and the government intends to be its judge, jury and then executioner. We’re facing an alliance of the mainstream right and the far right: what the philosopher Hannah Arendt called “the alliance of the elite and the mob”.

It’s not just me saying this, look at the comments coming thick and fast now that Johson’s government is playing fast and loose with our democratic principles.

Josiah Mortimer – Electoral Reform Society: “Westminster’s voting system is not just bust. It’s bankrupt, decrepit, discredited. Trust in politics is at rock bottom. It’s no wonder why.”

Rafael Behr – Prospect: “For onlookers, it (parliament) has been an impenetrable struggle, with arcane procedures and ancient ceremonial powers revived and weaponised. The whole spectacle has raised doubts about the relevance and fitness of parliament as the host venue for British democracy.”

Mary Fitzgerald – openDemocracy: “This year we’ve also won court cases to force transparency from the government – and seen off countless legal threats from bullies armed with expensive lawyers.”

Willie Sullivan – politics.co.uk: “It’s time for an overhaul to sort out this political stitch-up – we need a fairly elected second chamber to replace this archaic boys club we have now.”

Naomi Smith – CEO Best for Britain campaign, there are “We must be hyper-vigilant to any chipping away of the checks and balances that keep our democracy functioning. We have already seen that Johnson is prepared to bend the law to his will – further subversion by stealth cannot be allowed.”

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas warned: “Judicial independence is critical to our democracy. The prime minister has already fallen foul of the Supreme Court. So I find his proposed constitution, democracy and rights commission very worrying. There must be no attack on our judiciary.”

Outgoing Supreme Court president Lady Hale – who famously ruled against Mr Johnson’s five-week prorogation of parliament – used her retirement speech last week to warn Mr Johnson against political appointment of senior judges in another distortion of Britain democracy. “Judges have not been appointed for party political reasons in this country since at least the Second World War, we do not want to turn into the Supreme Court of the United States – whether in powers or in process of appointment.”

More democratic principles are being immediately challenged. Forcing new Voter ID requirements is just one of them. Electoral boundary changes will soon be another. Postal voting will be reformed with re-registration required every 36 months, and then there’s the Brexit Withdrawal Bill, which will substantially erode and diminish Britain’s democracy. Over 2020, we will see hundreds of years of democratic stability undone and many warnings of political overreach as civil society becomes the target of this governments disdain for the rule of law.

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As the US, China, and Russia Build New Nuclear Weapons Systems, How Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) be Built in? What are the Dangers?

December 29th, 2019 by Matt Field

Researchers in the United States and elsewhere are paying a lot of attention to the prospect that in the coming years new nuclear weapons—and the infrastructure built to operate them—will include greater levels of artificial intelligence and automation. Earlier this month, three prominent US defense experts published a comprehensive analysis of how automation is already involved in nuclear command and control systems and of what could go wrong if countries implement even riskier forms of it.

The working paper “A Stable Nuclear Future? The Impact of Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence” by the team of Michael Horowitz, Paul Scharre, and Alexander Velez-Green comes on the heels of other scholarly takes on the impact artificial intelligence (AI) will have on strategies around using nuclear weapons. All this research reflects the fact that militaries around the world are incorporating more artificial intelligence into non-nuclear weaponry—and that several countries are overhauling their nuclear weapons programs. “We wanted to better understand both the potentially stabilizing and destabilizing effects of automation on nuclear stability,” Scharre, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told the Bulletin.

“In particular, as we see nations modernize their nuclear arsenals, there is both a risk and an opportunity in how they use automation in their nuclear operations.”

The report notes that nuclear weapons systems already include some automated functionality: For example, warning systems automatically alert nuclear weapons operators of an attack. After the Cold War, Russian missiles were programmed to automatically retarget themselves to hit US targets if they were launched without a flight plan. For its part, the United States at one point designed its entire missile arsenal so that it could be retargeted in seconds from its peacetime default of flying into the ocean. Even these forms of automation are risky as an accidental launch could “spark a nuclear war,” the report says. But some countries, the report warns, might resort to riskier types of automation.

Those risks could come from a variety of different sources. Countries could develop unmanned vehicles carrying nuclear weapons; with no one on board and responsible for deploying a nuclear weapon, the systems could be hacked or otherwise “slip out of control,” the authors say. In fact, the report notes, Russia is already reportedly developing an autonomous nuclear torpedo. Horowitz, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor, told the Bulletin that the weapon, called Poseidon or Status-6, could be the start of a trend, though it’s not yet clear how or if AI will be included. “While so much about it is uncertain, Russia’s willingness to explore the notion of a long-duration, underwater, uninhabited nuclear delivery vehicle in Status-6 shows that fear of conventional or nuclear inferiority could create some incentives to pursue greater autonomy,” Horowitz said.

Countries might also build more artificial intelligence into the so-called early warning systems that indicate whether a nuclear attack is underway, or insert more powerful AI into the strategic decision support systems they use to keep tabs on other militaries and nuclear forces. Even simple forms of automation in such systems have, in the past, exacerbated nuclear tensions. The report cites a famous 1983 incident where a Soviet officer, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, had to disregard automated audible and visual warnings that US nuclear missiles were inbound. Fortunately, Petrov chose not to trust what his systems were telling him and defied the powerful cognitive phenomenon known as automation bias.

Another problematic form of early automation was the Soviet strategic decision support system known as VYRAN. It was a computer program in place to warn Soviet leaders when the United States had achieved a level of military superiority that required Moscow to launch a nuclear attack. But Soviet intelligence agents were inputting information that often confirmed their pre-existing beliefs about US intentions. “This feedback loop amplified and intensified those perceived threats, rather than providing Soviet leaders with a clearer understanding of US intentions,” the report notes. There is evidence that countries including Russia and China are placing more emphasis on developing these sorts of so-called computational models for analyzing threats.

The US military tests a missile in the ocean.

A Trident II D5 missile test. The US military, along with others around the world, is upgrading its nuclear weapons systems. Credit: US Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ronald Gutridge.

Despite all these drawbacks, however, the report’s authors believe there could be reasons to implement more AI and automation into nuclear weapons systems. They note how artificial intelligence systems could process more data and allow officials in charge of nuclear weapons greater situational awareness. Automation could also be useful in communicating commands in “highly contested electromagnetic environments,” as the report dryly puts it—perhaps, say, during a war. But, the report says, “many of these ways that autonomous systems could increase the resiliency and accuracy of [nuclear command and control systems] are speculative.”

The countries most likely to take on the risks of incorporating greater levels of artificial intelligence and automation in their nuclear weapons systems are the ones that are less certain of their ability to retaliate after an attack on their nuclear arsenal. As the report notes, that’s because the consequences of missing signs of an actual incoming attack—a false negative–would be relatively lower in more confident countries.

Horowitz believes that incorporating artificial intelligence in nuclear weapons systems themselves poses mostly low probability risks. In fact, what concerns him most is how AI in non-nuclear military systems could affect nuclear weapons’ policies.  “The risk I worry most about is how conventional military applications of AI, by increasing the speed of war, could place pressure on the early warning and launch doctrines of nuclear weapons states that fear decapitation in conventional war,” Horowitz told the Bulletin.

Or, as the report puts it, AI-induced time pressure could lead to a chain of decision-making that, in the worst cases, could result in a country launching a pre-emptive nuclear attack. “Fear of losing quickly could create incentives for more rapid escalation to the nuclear level.”

The report predicts that there’s a pretty strong likelihood that more automation will “creep its way” into nuclear operations over time—especially as nations modernize their nuclear forces. The United States has already embarked on a multi-decade, trillion-dollar-plus plan to upgrade its nuclear forces; Russia and China are similarly modernizing theirs.

“What is interesting, though, is that both the United States and Russia—and the Soviet Union before that—have had elements of automation in their nuclear operations, early warning, command-and-control, and delivery systems for decades,” Scharre said. “So it is an issue worthy of deeper exploration.”

Maybe that’s even a bit of an understatement.

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Featured image: A US Air Force commander simulates launching a nuclear weapon during a test. Nuclear command and control systems already incorporate various forms of automation. As countries build new systems, will they insert more artificial intelligence? Credit: US Air Force/Staff Sgt. Christopher Ruano.

Israel’s Strike that Killed Nine Members of al-Sawarka Family. Mistakenly “Categorized as a Military Compound”

December 29th, 2019 by Middle East Eye

Israel has said that an attack on the Gaza Strip which killed nine Palestinians from the same family happened after the premises were mistakenly categorised as a “military compound” used by Islamic Jihad.

In November, Israel conducted a series of air strikes on the Gaza Strip after it assassinated a senior Islamic Jihad commander and his wife.

The Palestinian armed group retaliated to the assassination by launching a barrage of rockets into Israel, before the two parties agreed on a ceasefire following joint Egyptian and UN mediation.

During the two days of air strikes, at least 34 Palestinians were reported killed and more than 100 wounded.

No Israelis were killed during the same time period.

The deadliest of these attacks was carried out on the home of the al-Sawarka family, killing eight members of the family, including children.

A week after the strike, a ninth member of the family, Mohammed al-Sawarka, died from injuries sustained in the bombing.

“I was sleeping when the house was bombarded,” 11-year-old Diyaa Rasmi al-Sawarka, one of the survivors, told Middle East Eye at the time.

“I tried to run away but my foot was stuck under the rubble. I started screaming but no one heard me, all my family members were under the rubble.”

When Diyaa, who sustained minor injuries to his leg and head, was transferred to hospital, he found out that he had lost his father and a number of his cousins in the raid.

‘No justification’

At the time, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process said “there is no justification to attacking civilians in Gaza”.

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus said a day after the strike that the army’s intelligence had indicated “no civilians were expected to be harmed”.

But on Tuesday, the Israeli army said that while the intelligence it obtained showed that the family home was part of an Islamic Jihad “compound”, the premises should have been marked as a civilian complex “with some military activity.”

According to a previous report by MEE, the victims’ family had rejected the Israeli army’s claims.

The al-Sawarka family home consisted of two shacks covered with corrugated metal sheets in an impoverished area of the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.

Israel has imposed a crippling blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007, after Hamas won contested Palestinian legislative elections a year earlier.

It holds Hamas, the de facto ruling party in Gaza, responsible for all fire coming from the small Palestinian territory, even though other armed factions also operate in the area.

Since 2008, it has  carried out three wars with Gaza killing thousands of Palestinians and creating major infrastructural damage.

The United Nations warned in 2012 that Gaza would become unliveable by 2020.*

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Featured image: Israel said a day after the strike that “no civilians were expected to be harmed” (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

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New Evidence of OPCW Manufactured Nonexistent Douma Chemical Weapons Incident, Syria Report, Promoted “Fake News”

December 29th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

The so-called OPCW chemical watchdog lost all credibility, breaching its mandate time and again, operating as a pro-Western imperial agent, not a Chemical Weapons Convention implementing body.

The Nobel committee should order the organization to return its 2013 peace prize, awarded “for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons,” adding:

“The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law.”

Reality Check: The OPCW manufactured a nonexistent CW incident in Douma, Syria, Damascus falsely blamed for what didn’t happen.

In Syria, it’s serving as a implementing body for US-led Western and Israeli interests, abandoning hard truths for fake news.

In mid-December, WikiLeaks released evidence on how the organization doctored its report on an alleged April 7, 2018 CW attack in Douma, Syria.

The so-called incident was fake news, a US/NATO-staged false flag, Syria wrongfully blamed for a victimless nonevent.

Douma eyewitnesses and medical personal confirmed that no one in Douma was hospitalized or became ill from exposure to chemical or other toxins.

In 2018, Russian technical experts experts found no evidence of chemical or other toxins in Douma soil samples and other analysis of the site.

Documents obtained by WikiLeaks showed that the OPCW doctored information in a redacted version of its initial Douma report.

On Friday, WikiLeaks released more internal OPCW documents it obtained on Douma, saying the following:

“One of the documents is an e-mail exchange dated 27 and 28 February between members of the fact finding mission (FFM) deployed to Douma and the senior officials of the OPCW,” adding:

“It includes an e-mail from Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, where he instructs that an engineering report from Ian Henderson should be removed from the secure registry of the organization,” saying:

“ ‘Please get this document out of DRA (Documents Registry Archive).’ ”

“ ‘And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.”

Henderson’s inspection of the alleged Douma incident site found two cylinders (allegedly containing toxic chlorine) he believed were manually placed there — not dropped from an aircraft or helicopter as falsely reported.

WikiLeaks: “His findings were omitted from the official final OPCW report on the Douma incident.”

A second new document Wikileaks obtained details minutes from a June 6, 2018 meeting attended by four OPCW staff members together with toxicologists, pharmacologists, a bioanalytical and a toxicological chemist — “all specialists in chemical weapons (analysis), according to the minutes.”

The meeting’s purpose was “(t)o  solicit expert advice on the value of exhuming suspected victims of the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018.”

Participating experts advised the OPCW team that exhumations would be of little value, the leaked minutes adding:

“With respect to the consistency of the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure.”

The OPCW team members’ “take-away message” from the meeting was that “symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified.”

A third document obtained by WikiLeaks includes emails from August 20 – 28, 2018 that discuss the meeting between the OPCW’s team and participating toxicological experts.

A fourth document includes late July 2018 emails between these individuals.

According to WikiLeaks, information in them “state(s) that  the eight OPCW inspectors deployed to Douma during the fact finding mission (except one, a paramedic) should be excluded from discussions on the project.”

In its doctored report, the OPCW falsely claimed that toxic chlorine was used in an alleged Douma April 2018 CW incident — no evidence suggests happened.

Earlier OPCW documents released by WikiLeaks showed “internal disagreement within the (organization) about how facts were misrepresented in a redacted version of” its initial Douma report.

OPCW misrepresentation substituted for factual accuracy, the US and its imperial partners falsely blaming Damascus for a nonevent.

Yet days after the staged incident (with no casualties), US, UK, and French warplanes terror-bombed Syrian sites.

Then US war secretary James Mattis falsely claimed the mission was to “destroy (Syria’s)  chemical weapons research, development and production capabilities.”

Nothing of the kind existed then or now – what was and remains

well known to Washington, Britain and France.

One facility struck at the time was a Barzeh district research lab involved in development of cancer drugs.

Then-Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford falsely called it a “military facility…for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological warfare technology.”

Days before the facility was struck, OPCW inspectors visited the Barzeh lab site. Analysis of samples collected showed no evidence toxic chemical substances, nothing indicating the facility was involved in developing, producing or testing CWs.

At the time, Russian General Staff Gen. Sergey Rudskoy explained that if the US, UK and France “really believed that chemical weapons stockpiles actually existed (at the facility), then their air strikes would have led to a large-scale contamination and as far as Damascus goes, tens of thousands of people would have been killed.”

Eliminating CWs requires destroying them under carefully controlled conditions so toxins can’t enter the environment and spread.

Blowing them up amounts to conducting a massive CW attack.

“Immediately after the (airstrike), people who worked at (Barzeh and two other) destroyed facilities and just bystanders without any protective equipment visited them. None of them got poisoned with toxic agents,” Rudskoy explained.

The April 14 terror-bombing mission had nothing to do with destroying Syrian CW facilities – everything to do with weakening its military capabilities.

Syrian air defense systems downed most missiles fired, including dozens aimed at military bases, aiming to inflict significant damage.

The fake April 2018 Douma incident was staged by al-Qaeda-linked White Helmets, masquerading as civil defense workers.

After nearly nine years of US-orchestrated aggression, the struggle for Syria’s soul continues at yearend and in the new year.

Liberation has a long way to go because the US came to Syria to stay indefinitely, occupying northern and southern parts of the country.

Eliminating its presence, along with Turkey’s occupation of northern Syrian territory, is essential for Syrians again to be free.

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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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The Burkina Faso Time Bomb Is About to Blow, and It Might Take Down West Africa

December 29th, 2019 by Andrew Korybko

The landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso is a time bomb that’s about to explode as evidenced by the drastic increase in terrorist-related violence there over the past year and its attendant humanitarian consequences, yet both the region and the rest of the world as a whole seem powerless to prevent what the UN warned last month might become “another Syria”.

Burkinabe Backgrounder

The word “Syria” has become a euphemism for many things to different people, but practically everyone can agree that it’s a buzzword for one of the worst humanitarian crises this century, which is why the world should take notice when the UN warned last month that the landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso is at risk of becoming “another Syria“. That country has been experiencing a drastic increase in terrorist-related violence all throughout the past year as a result of its Malian neighbor’s security challenges finally spilling across its border and destabilizing this fragile but geostrategically significant state, exactly as the author foresaw would inevitably happen in a series of three articles that he published in just as many years. The reader is encouraged to skim through them at the very least in order to better acquaint themselves with the genesis of this crisis:

Long story short, the 2011 NATO War on Libya led to an outflow of heavily armed and highly trained Tuaregs back to their Malian homeland where they restarted their separatist insurgency a year later that was quickly subverted by the Islamist Ansar al-Dine, which in turn paved the way for France’s ongoing anti-terrorist intervention there since January 2013. The region’s former colonial power then organized a multinational coalition called the G5 Sahel in 2014 in an ultimately failed effort to contain the chaotic processes that were unleashed several years prior. One of its members, Burkina Faso, experienced a People’s Revolution in October of that year which unseated its long-serving leader Blaise Compaore, the man who notoriously killed Burkinabe revolutionary icon Thomas Sankara. Compaore’s loyalists in the security sector staged an unsuccessful coup nearly a year later in September 2015, and since then, the country’s situation has been worsening.

From Slow-Motion Destabilization To Accelerated Crisis

It was therefore only a matter of time before the transregional terrorist threats emanating from Mali spread across the border and began to fill the Burkinabe security vacuum. The past year saw this process unfolding in full force as terrorists went on a slaughtering spree all across the northern provinces and also started specifically targeting Christians too. Nearly half a million people have fled from their homes, which is what prompted the UN to issue its dire warning about Burkina Faso becoming “another Syria”. Last month, terrorists killed several dozen local workers on their way to a foreign-owned gold mine, which also attracted widespread international attention for perhaps the first time since the country’s previously slow-motion but increasingly accelerated destabilization began over half a decade ago. The consequences of this crisis continuing to go unchallenged could catalyze a large-scale regional refugee outflow to the EU.

That obvious observation makes it all the more surprising why the rest of the world hasn’t yet stepped up to help the Burkinabe people, though it should also be said that no so-called “humanitarian intervention” or anti-terrorist one should be commenced without the permission of the country’s internationally recognized authorities. Even if more concerted multilateral efforts are undertaken, that might still not solve the problem as seen by France’s humiliating failure over nearly the past 7 years. It’s not enough to just put “boots on the ground” since the most sustainable solution lies in more comprehensive measures that include socio-economic support to the locals and assistance to the government in restoring its writ over the border provinces. On top of that, the host state’s security forces must be reformed in order to ensure that they can adequately respond to terrorist threats as they emerge.

The New “Syraq”

Thus far, nothing of the sort has happened on the level needed to make a noticeable difference, which is why the country continues to descend further into destabilization and is now at risk of becoming just as much of an exporter of regional terrorist threats as neighboring Mali is. Niger, too, is slowly but steadily getting sucked into this black hole of chaos too, which is why the author described their tri-border region earlier this year as being the new “Syraq”. Libya used to be regarded as the greatest security threat to the continent since the 2011 NATO war, though that country has comparatively stabilized over the past year as General Haftar’s forces progressively restored law and order over vast swathes of it whereas West Africa has gone in the opposite direction. The geographic enormity of the space that’s been adversely affected by this trend is astounding and should alone imbue the international community with a sense of urgency for getting involved.

Alas, seeing as how that hasn’t yet happened, the dire prediction can be made that this regional security crisis will continue to worsen over the next year until it attracts enough attention to finally become the global issue that it deserves to have been in the first place. There’s no ideal solution for dealing with it because the security challenges are so asymmetric and involve a mix of terrorism, insurgency, rebellion, and the disastrous socio-economic and political conditions that exacerbate all of the aforementioned. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that a process of so-called “nation-building” is needed, though not at all in the form that the word has come to embody since the end of the Old Cold War. What’s meant by this is that the locals in each afflicted community and the nations as a whole that they’re a part of must come together to decide what exactly is needed to restore stability and to what extent they should rely on foreign assistance to this end.

The Time For Non-Traditional Partners Has Arrived

It’s difficult to imagine this campaign succeeding if it’s waged without any international support whatsoever, though therein lies one of the most pressing questions, and that’s whether or not the regional states’ foreign backers can be trusted to not abuse their intervention invitation to promote their own interests at their hosts’ expense. History indicates that West Africa’s traditional French and American partners can’t be fully relied upon, which opens up the possibility of inviting non-traditional ones like Russia, China, Turkey, and even Pakistan playing different roles depending on their specific expertise. None of them should commit ground forces, but they can still assist with security training, economic development, and the restoration of governance in previously terrorist-afflicted areas. Therefore, the ideal solution would be if the West Africa region prioritized reaching out to those multipolar countries for support instead of their traditional partners.

That’s not to say that those previously mentioned states will necessarily succeed with this gargantuan effort — whether individually, collectively, or jointly — but just that it presents the best chance for changing the dynamics for the better after it’s been proven that French and American support has hitherto been ineffective in countering regional security threats. Doubling down by requesting even more assistance from their traditional partners could very well be counterproductive because they have a track record of failure that indirectly contributed to worsening the regional crisis. It’s debatable why they haven’t yet succeeded, but the fact of the matter is that they simply haven’t, so it’s time to explore other options if the regional stakeholders are serious about dealing with this crisis. They certainly seem to be, so it’ll remain to be seen what relevant developments might occur on this front next year.

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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

The Long History of Russophobia, Starting with Its Religious Roots

December 29th, 2019 by Guy Mettan

This article was originally published on June 9, 2016.

The former editor of the Tribune de Genève, [Guy Mettan-RI] visited Moscow and presented his new book Russia and the West: A Thousand Year War, which reviews the phenomenon of Russophobia: its roots, historical evolution and modern incarnations.

Izvestia had a chance to interview him.

Izvestia What inspired you to write about this?

Guy Mettan: There are two reasons why I began this work. The first is a personal, family reason. In 1994, my wife and I adopted a Russian girl, who now is now 25. Her name is Oksana, and she is from the Vladimir region. After we adopted her, I became interested in learning as much as possible about Russia and becoming familiar with this large country. In the 1990’s, one could obtain Russian citizenship after adopting a Russian child. So we did that: my wife and I are citizens of Russia and Switzerland, and Russia became part of our family’s life and history. I am a citizen of Russia, but I pay taxes in Switzerland.

The second reason why I started this work is professional. My trips to Russia gave me an opportunity to learn what this country was all about. I understood how big the difference was between the Russia presented in the Western media and the one I saw myself. I just couldn’t bear to watch this situation, and decided to investigate the reasons.

What made me actually start this project was the events in Ukraine in 2014. I saw the Western press systematically supporting one side, expressing only one point of view – that of the government that usurped power in Kiev. And I decided to figure out why this happened.

It’s important to understand that I wasn’t trying to answer the question of who was to blame for the events in Ukraine. I was interested in why the Western media presented this story in their own way. What was at the root of such a heightened negative relation to Russia?

Izv  Could you tell us a little about the main thrust of your book?

GM: I looked at history and concluded that all this Russophobia started when Charlemagne created the Western Empire 1,200 years ago, laying the foundation for the Great Religious Split in 1054. Charlemagne created his empire in opposition to the existing situation, when the center of the civilized world was Byzantium.

The most shocking thing I realized was that everything they taught us in school was wrong. They claimed that the dissidents belonged to the Eastern Church, who split from Rome. Now I know that what happened was just the opposite: it was the Western Catholic Church that dissented from the universal church, while the Eastern Church remained and still is Orthodox.

In order to shift the blame from themselves, Western theologians of that time launched a campaign to justify putting the onus on the Eastern Church. They used arguments that returned again and again as part of the confrontation between the West and Russia. Back then, in the Middle Ages, they began referring to the Greek world, i.e. Byzantium, as a “territory of tyranny and barbarism” in order to disavow responsibility for the schism.

After the fall of Constantinople, when Byzantium ended, and Russia took the place of Byzantium as the Third Rome, all those superstitions, all those lies about the desacralization of the Hellenic World, were automatically transferred to Russia.

It’s strange to see the notes of Western travelers through Russia starting in the 15th century: they all describe Russia in the same terms they had used to describe Byzantium. These fabrications, this criticism considerably increased after the reforms of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, when Russia became powerful on the European political scene. And by the end of the 18th century, it had become Russophobia.

Born in France under Louis XV, it was used for a while by Napoleon to justify animosity toward Russia, which stood in the way of France’s expansionist policy. The “Will of Peter the Great” was used by Napoleon as a justification for his Russian campaign.

We can compare this with modern times, when in order to achieve their goals, Americans invented the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Russophobia existed in France as a political ideology up until the 19th century, when after losing the Franco-Prussian War, France realized that its main enemy was no longer Russia but Germany, becoming Russia’s ally.

As for England, Russophobia appeared there around 1815, when Great Britain, in alliance with Russia, beat Napoleon. Once the common enemy defeated, England reversed course and made Russia its enemy, feeding Russophobia. Since the 1820’s, London has used an anti-Russian ideology to mask its expansionist policies, both in the Mediterranean and in other regions – Egypt, India and China.

In Germany, the situation didn’t change until the end of the 19th century, when the German Empire was created. It had no colonies, and there was no place to get any from, since England, France, Spain and Portugal had got a head start. All the colonies having been allocated without Russia, a political movement appeared in Germany that sought “‘expansion toward the East”, i.e., modern Ukraine and Russia. This attempt failed during the First World War, and later, Hitler used the same ideology.

It’s no accident that German historians were at the origin of what is known as “revisionism”, the tendency to understate the USSR’s contribution to the victory over the Third Reich, overestimating the contribution of the US and Britain.

The third type of Russophobia is American, and it began in 1945. As soon as they defeated Germany through joint efforts with the USSR, at the cost of millions of Soviet lives, the same story born after the victory over Napoleon in 1815 was disseminated. The US reversed course and yesterday’s ally became its major enemy. This is how the Cold War started.

The Americans used the same arguments as the English in 1815, claiming that they “fought against communism, tyranny, expansionism”, their arguments hardly differing, except for the so-called fight against communism. This turned out to be a gimmick, because when the Soviet Union collapsed, the confrontation between the West and Russia didn’t end.

The nineteenth century story is repeating itself: the US keeps talking about a “threat” supposedly emanating from Russia, in order to achieve its own goals, promote its own interests, and pursue its own expansion. Today it demonizes Russia in order to place NATO missiles in Poland, using the same words and arguments that Napoleon used 200 years ago.

Izv Once at an international conference in the mid 1990s, I spoke to a journalist from Denmark. He told me why Europe was so afraid of Russia: “See how big Russia is, and how small Denmark is. We were always afraid of you. We are still afraid of your aggression.”

GM: If you look at the map, you will see that the territory of Russia dominates all of Europe. So when Europeans look at the map, they feel anxious and concerned, because “such a huge country cannot be anything other than a threat.” Besides, European maps deliberately depict Russia as even bigger than it really is, increasing Russophobia. Its immense size is great for European cartoonists, who traditionally draw Russia as a huge bear standing over a tiny Europe.

Izv: Recently, I read the following statement by a French author: “Europe is a peninsula in Eurasia.”  What would you say to that?

GM: Today Europe is frustrated. As a colonial power, it dominated the world for two and a half centuries. Today the situation is totally different, and Europe is uneasy. It’s used to playing a different role. That’s why it’s anxious. On the one hand, the European ego finds itself in this uncomfortable situation; on the other, the European Union has reached the limits of its development and has internal problems. That’s why it’s easy to blame Russia for everything.

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Originally published by Izvestia (Russian)

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The Key to the Environmental Crisis Is Beneath Our Feet

December 29th, 2019 by Ellen Brown

The Green New Deal resolution that was introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives in February hit a wall in the Senate, where it was called unrealistic and unaffordable. In a Washington Post article titled “The Green New Deal Sets Us Up for Failure. We Need a Better Approach,” former Colorado governor and Democratic presidential candidate John Hickenlooper framed the problem like this:

The resolution sets unachievable goals. We do not yet have the technology needed to reach “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” in 10 years. That’s why many wind and solar companies don’t support it. There is no clean substitute for jet fuel. Electric vehicles are growing quickly, yet are still in their infancy. Manufacturing industries such as steel and chemicals, which account for almost as much carbon emissions as transportation, are even harder to decarbonize.

Amid this technological innovation, we need to ensure that energy is not only clean but also affordable. Millions of Americans struggle with “energy poverty.” Too often, low-income Americans must choose between paying for medicine and having their heat shut off. …

If climate change policy becomes synonymous in the U.S. psyche with higher utility bills, rising taxes and lost jobs, we will have missed our shot.

The problem may be that a transition to 100% renewables is the wrong target. Reversing climate change need not mean emptying our pockets and tightening our belts. It is possible to sequester carbon and restore our collapsing ecosystem using the financial resources we already have, and it can be done while at the same time improving the quality of our food, water, air and general health.

The Larger Problem – and the Solution – Is in the Soil

Contrary to popular belief, the biggest environmental polluters are not big fossil fuel companies. They are big agribusiness and factory farming, with six powerful food industry giants – Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Dean Foods, Dow AgroSciences, Tyson and Monsanto (now merged with Bayer) – playing a major role. Oil-dependent farming, industrial livestock operations, the clearing of carbon-storing fields and forests, the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and the combustion of fuel to process and distribute food are estimated to be responsible for as much as one-half of human-caused pollution. Climate change, while partly a consequence of the excessive relocation of carbon and other elements from the earth into the atmosphere, is more fundamentally just one symptom of overall ecosystem distress from centuries of over-tilling, over-grazing, over-burning, over-hunting, over-fishing and deforestation.

Big Ag’s toxin-laden, nutrient-poor food is also a major contributor to the U.S. obesity epidemic and many other diseases. Yet these are the industries getting the largest subsidies from U.S. taxpayers, to the tune of more than $20 billion annually. We don’t hear about this for the same reason that they get the subsidies – they have massively funded lobbies capable of bribing their way into special treatment.

The story we do hear, as Judith Schwartz observes in The Guardian, is, “Climate change is global warming caused by too much CO2 in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels. We stop climate change by making the transition to renewable energy.” Schwartz does not discount this part of the story but points to several problems with it:

One is the uncomfortable fact that even if, by some miracle, we could immediately cut emissions to zero, due to inertia in the system it would take more than a century for CO2 levels to drop to 350 parts per million, which is considered the safe threshold. Plus, here’s what we don’t talk about when we talk about climate: we can all go solar and drive electric cars and still have the problems – the unprecedented heat waves, the wacky weather – that we now associate with CO2-driven climate change.

But that hasn’t stopped investors, who see the climate crisis as simply another profit opportunity. According to a study by Morgan Stanley analysts reported in Forbes in October, halting global warming and reducing net carbon emissions to zero would take an investment of $50 trillion over the next three decades, including $14 trillion for renewables; $11 trillion to build the factories, batteries and infrastructure necessary for a widespread switch to electric vehicles; $2.5 trillion for carbon capture and storage; $20 trillion to provide clean hydrogen fuel for power, cars and other industries, and $2.7 trillion for biofuels. The article goes on to highlight the investment opportunities presented by these challenges by recommending various big companies expected to lead the transition, including  Exxon, Chevron, BP, General Electric, Shell and similar corporate giants – many of them the very companies blamed by Green New Deal advocates for the crisis.

A Truly Green New Deal

There is a much cheaper and faster way to sequester carbon from the atmosphere that doesn’t rely on these corporate giants to transition us to 100% renewables. Additionally, it can be done while at the same time reducing the chronic diseases that impose an even heavier cost on citizens and governments. Our most powerful partner is nature itself, which over hundreds of millions of years has evolved the most efficient carbon sequestration system on the planet. As David Perry writes on the World Economic Forum website:

This solution leverages a natural process that every plant undergoes, powered by a source that is always available, costs little to nothing to run and does not cause further pollution. This power source is the sun, and the process is photosynthesis.

A plant takes carbon dioxide out of the air and, with the help of sunlight and water, converts it to sugars. Every bit of that plant – stems, leaves, roots – is made from carbon that was once in our atmosphere. Some of this carbon goes into the soil as roots. The roots, then, release sugars to feed soil microbes. These microbes perform their own chemical processes to convert carbon into even more stable forms.

Perry observes that before farmland was cultivated, it had soil carbon levels of from 3% to 7%. Today, those levels are roughly 1% carbon. If every acre of farmland globally were returned to a soil carbon level of just 3%, 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide would be removed from the atmosphere and stored in the soil – equal to the amount of carbon that has been drawn into the atmosphere since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago. The size of the potential solution matches the size of the problem.

So how can we increase the carbon content of soil? Through “regenerative” farming practices, says Perry, including planting cover crops, no-till farming, rotating crops, reducing chemicals and fertilizers, and managed grazing (combining trees, forage plants and livestock together as an integrated system, a technique called “silvopasture”). These practices have been demonstrated to drive carbon into the soil and keep it there, resulting in carbon-enriched soils that are healthier and more resilient to extreme weather conditions and show improved water permeability, preventing the rainwater runoff that contributes to rising sea levels and rising temperatures. Evaporation from degraded, exposed soil has been shown to cause 1,600% more heat annually than all the world’s powerhouses combined. Regenerative farming methods also produce increased microbial diversity, higher yields, reduced input requirements, more nutritious harvests and increased farm profits.

These highly favorable results were confirmed by Paul Hawken and his team in the project that was the subject of his best-selling 2016 book, “Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.” The project involved evaluating the 100 most promising solutions to the environmental crisis for cost and effectiveness. The results surprised the researchers themselves. The best-performing sector was not “Transport” or “Materials” or “Buildings and Cities” or even “Electricity Generation.” It was the sector called “Food,” including how we grow our food, market it and use it. Of the top 30 solutions, 12 were various forms of regenerative agriculture, including silvopasture, tropical staple trees, conservation agriculture, tree intercropping, managed grazing, farmland restoration and multistrata agroforestry.

How to Fund It All

If regenerative farming increases farmers’ bottom lines, why aren’t they already doing it? For one thing, the benefits of the approach are not well known. But even if they were, farmers would have a hard time making the switch. As noted in a Rolling Stone article titled “How Big Agriculture Is Preventing Farmers From Combating the Climate Crisis”:

[I]implementing these practices requires an economic flexibility most farmers don’t have, and which is almost impossible to achieve within a government-backed system designed to preserve a large-scale, corporate-farming monoculture based around commodity crops like corn and soybeans, which often cost smaller farmers more money to grow than they can make selling.

Farmers are locked into a system that is destroying their farmlands and the planet, because a handful of giant agribusinesses have captured Congress and the regulators. One proposed solution is to transfer the $20 billion in subsidies that now go mainly to Big Ag into a fund to compensate small farmers who transition to regenerative practices. We also need to enforce the antitrust laws and break up the biggest agribusinesses, something for which legislation is now pending in Congress.

At the grassroots level, we can vote with our pocketbooks by demanding truly nutritious foods. New technology is in development that can help with this grassroots approach by validating how nutrient-dense our foods really are. One such device, developed by Dan Kittredge and team, is a hand-held consumer spectrometer called a Bionutrient Meter, which tests nutrient density at point of purchase. The goal is to bring transparency to the marketplace, empowering consumers to choose their foods based on demonstrated nutrient quality, providing economic incentives to growers and grocers to drive regenerative practices across the system. Other new technology measures nutrient density in the soil, allowing farmers to be compensated in proportion to their verified success in carbon sequestration and soil regeneration.

Granted, $20 billion is unlikely to be enough to finance the critically needed transition from destructive to regenerative agriculture, but Congress can supplement this fund by tapping the deep pocket of the central bank. In the last decade, the Fed has demonstrated that its pool of financial liquidity is potentially limitless, but the chief beneficiaries of its largess have been big banks and their wealthy clients. We need a form of quantitative easing that actually serves the local productive economy. That might require modifying the Federal Reserve Act, but Congress has modified it before. The only real limit on new money creation is consumer price inflation, and there is room for a great deal more money to be pumped into the productive local economy before that ceiling is hit than is circulating in it now. For a detailed analysis of this issue, see my earlier articles here and here and latest book, “Banking on the People.”

The bottom line is that saving the planet from environmental destruction is not only achievable, but that by focusing on regenerative agriculture and tapping up the central bank for funding, the climate crisis can be addressed without raising taxes and while restoring our collective health.

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This article was first posted on Truthdig. com.

Ellen Brown chairs the Public Banking Institute and has written thirteen books, including her latest, Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

Global Warming: “Fixing the Climate Data around the Policy”

December 29th, 2019 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

TEN YEARS AGO AT COP15 IN COPENHAGEN.

More than 15,000 people gathered in Copenhagen in December 2009 for COP 15: the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). 

MADRID COP 25. Ten Years Later. Plus Ça Change plus c’est la même chose. 

Climate Activists fail to recognize that powerful corporate interests including Big Oil and the Rockefellers are financing the climate debate.

The objective is to “promote ‘green financial instruments’,  led by Green Bonds, to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects.” . (F. William Engdahl)

What is at stake is a multi-trillion dollar endeavor to promote “climate friendly” investment portfolios including projects in nuclear energy (by the same companies that produce nuclear weapons).

I wrote this article ten years ago.

What is important in assessing today’s climate debate is that ten years ago leading up to Copenhagen COP15 in December 2009 there was evidence of manipulation of the data.

The Global Warming Emails.  

In November 2009, barely a few weeks before the inauguration of the Copenhagen Summit, a vast data bank of over 3000 email exchanges between key Climate Change scientists and researchers was revealed.

While the emails do not prove that the entire data base was falsified, they nonetheless point to scientific dishonesty and deceit on the part of several prominent scientists who are directly linked to the UNPCC.

Read carefully.

Michel Chossudovsky, December 29, 2019

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This article was first published on November 30, 2009

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Official delegations from 192 nations will mingle with “observers” from major business organizations.  The Business Roundtable, The Rockefeller Foundation, The US Chamber of Commerce, The International Chamber of Commerce, among others, are registered as observer non-governmental organizations. (Individual financial institutions and multinational corporations are not formally registered. They will be partipating under the sponsorship of their respective umbrella business organizations, which have observer status.)

The representatives of environmental and civil society organizations will also be in attendance.Parties & Observers

Heads of state and heads of government are slated to be in appearance in the later part of the Summit event. (See The essentials in Copenhagen – COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009)

It is worth noting that key decisions and orientations on COP15 had already been wrapped up at the World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) held in May in Copenhagen, six months ahead of COP15.

The WBSCC brought together some of the World’s most prominent business executives and World leaders including Al Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. (The World Business Summit on Climate Change, includes webcast)

The results of these high level consultations were forwarded to the Danish government as well as to the governments of participating member states. A so-called summary report for policymakers was drafted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, on behalf the corporate executives participating in the event. This report has very little to do with environmental protection. It largely consists in a profit driven agenda, which uses the global warming consensus as a justification. (For details see Climate Council: The World Business Summit on Climate Change)

“The underlying ambition of the Summit was to address the twin challenges of climate change and the economic crisis. Participants at the Summit considered how these risks can be turned into opportunity if business and governments work together, and what policies, incentives, and investments will most effectively stimulate low-carbon growth.” (Copenhagen Climate Council)

The agenda of the Copenhagen Climate Summit (7-18 December 2009), is upheld both by the governments, the business executives and the NGO community as “one of the most significant gatherings in history. It is being called the most complex and vital agreement the world has ever seen.”

CO2 emissions are heralded as the single and most important threat to the future of humanity.

The focus of the Summit is on strictly environmental issues. No mention of the word “war” –i.e. the US-NATO led war and its devastating environmental consequences.

No mention of the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons as an instrument of “peacemaking”.

No mention, as part of an environmental debate, of the radioactive fallout resulting from the Pentagon’s humanitarian nuclear bombs. Tactical nuclear weapons, according to scientific opinion commissioned by the Pentagon are “safe for the surrounding civilian population”.

No mention of “weather warfare” or “environmental modification techniques” (ENMOD) and climatic warfare.

No mention in the debate on climate change of the US Air Force 2025 project entitled “Owning the Weather” for military use. (See FAS, AF2025 v3c15-1 | Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning… | (Ch 1) see also SPACE.com — U.S. Military Wants to Own the Weather)

Despite a vast body of scientific knowledge, the issue of deliberate climatic manipulations for military use is no longer part of the UN agenda on climate change. It was, however, part of the agenda of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. (See Michel Chossudovsky, Environmental Warfare and Climate Change, Global Research, 27 November 2005, See also Michel Chossudovsky,  Weather Warfare: Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare, The Ecologist, December 2007)

CO2 is the logo, which describes the Worldwide crisis. No other variable is contemplated.

Moreover, no meaningful anti-pollution clean air policy directed against CO2 emissions can be formulated as an objective in its own right, because the reduction of CO2 emissions is subordinate to the Global Warming consensus.

The words “poverty”, “unemployment” and “disease” resulting from a global economic depression are not a matter of emphasis because authoritative financial sources state unequivocally: “the economic recession is over”.

And the war in the Middle East and Central Asia is not a war but “a humanitarian operation directed against terrorists and rogue states.”

The Real Crisis

The Copenhagen Summit not only serves powerful corporate interests, which have a stake in the global multibillion dollar carbon trading scheme, it also serves to divert public attention from the devastation resulting from the “real crisis” underlying the process of economic globalization and a profit driven war without borders, which the Pentagon calls “the long war”.

We are at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. War and economic depression constitute the real crisis, yet both the governments and the media have focused their attention on the environmental devastation resulting from CO2 emissions, which is upheld as the greatest threat to humanity.

The Multibillion Dollar Carbon Trading System

The carbon trading system is a multibillion money-making bonanza for the financial establishment. The stakes are extremely high and the various lobby groups on behalf of Wall Street have already positioned themselves.

According to a recent report, “the carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU’s emissions trading scheme…  The speed of that growth will depend on whether the Copenhagen summit gives a go-ahead for a low-carbon economy, but Ager says whatever happens schemes such as the ETS will expand around the globe.” (Terry Macalister, Carbon trading could be worth twice that of oil in next decade, The Guardian, 28 November 2009)

The large financial conglomerates, involved in derivative trade, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank America Merrill Lynch, Barclay’s, Citi Bank, Nomura, Société Générale, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are actively involved in carbon trading.( FACTBOX: Investment banks in carbon trading | Reuters, 14 September 2009)

The legitimacy of the carbon trading system rests on the legitimacy of the Global Warming Consensus, which views CO2 emissions as the single threat to the environment. And for Wall Street the carbon trading system is a convenient and secure money-making safety-net, allowing for the transfer of billions of dollars into the pockets of a handful of conglomerates.

“Every major financial house in New York and London has set up carbon trading operations. Very big numbers are dancing in their heads, and they need them to replace the “wealth” that evaporated in the housing bust. Louis Redshaw, head of environmental markets at Barclays Capital, told the New York Times, “Carbon will be the world’s biggest market over all.” Barclays thinks the current $60 billion carbon market could grow to $1 trillion within a decade. Four years ago Redshaw, a former electricity trader, couldn’t get anyone to talk to him about carbon.” (Mark Braly, The Multibillion Dollar Carbon Trading, RenewableEnergyWorld.com, 5 March 2008)

The Global Warming Data Base

Is the Global Warming Consensus based on reliable data?

There are indications that both the concepts and the data on temperature and greenhouse gas emissions including CO2 have been adjusted and shaped to fit the agenda of the UN Panel on Climate Change.

For several years, the claims of the UN Panel on Climate Change (UNPCC) including the data base have been questioned. (See Global Research’s Climate Change Dossier: Archive of more than 100 articles) 

Critical analysis of the climate change consensus has been conveyed in reports by several prominent scientists.

There has been, in this regard, a persistent attempt to silence the critics as conveyed in the writings of MIT meteorologist Richard S. Lindzen (See  Richard Lindzen, Climate of Fear: Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence., Global Research, 7 April 2007)

Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libelled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis. (Ibid)

ClimateGate and the Emails’ Scandal 

In November 2009, barely a few weeks before the inauguration of the Copenhagen Summit, a vast data bank of over 3000 email exchanges between key Climate Change scientists and researchers was revealed.

While the emails do not prove that the entire data base was falsified, they nonetheless point to scientific dishonesty and deceit on the part of several prominent scientists who are directly linked to the UNPCC.

The emails suggest that the data was shaped, with a view to supporting a predetermined policy agenda. “Fixing the climate data to fit the policy” is the modus operandi as revealed in the email messages of top scientists, directly linked to the work of the UN Panel on Climate Change?

The British media has acknowledged that the scientists were intent upon manipulating the data on Climate Change as well as excluding the critics:

[the comments below the quotes are by The Telegraph].

From: Phil Jones. To: Many. Nov 16, 1999
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Critics cite this as evidence that data was manipulated to mask the fact that global temperatures are falling. Prof Jones claims the meaning of “trick” has been misinterpreted

From Phil Jones To: Michael Mann (Pennsylvania State University). July 8, 2004
“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

The IPCC is the UN body charged with monitoring climate change. The scientists did not want it to consider studies that challenge the view that global warming is genuine and man-made.

From: Kevin Trenberth (US National Center for Atmospheric Research). To: Michael Mann. Oct 12, 2009
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t… Our observing system is inadequate”

Prof Trenberth appears to accept a key argument of global warming sceptics – that there is no evidence temperatures have increased over the past 10 years.

From: Phil Jones. To: Many. March 11, 2003
“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.”

Prof Jones appears to be lobbying for the dismissal of the editor of Climate Research, a scientific journal that published papers downplaying climate change.

From Phil Jones. To: Michael Mann. Date: May 29, 2008
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise.”

Climate change sceptics tried to use Freedom of Information laws to obtain raw climate data submitted to an IPCC report known as AR4. The scientists did not want their email exchanges about the data to be made public.

From: Michael Mann. To: Phil Jones and Gabi Hegerl (University of Edinburgh). Date: Aug 10, 2004
“Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future.”

The scientists make no attempt to hide their disdain for climate change sceptics who request more information about their work

(University of East Anglia emails: the most contentious quotes – Telegraph, 23 November 2009).

The complete list of contentious emails can be consulted at Alleged CRU Emails – Searchable published by eastangliaemails.com:

What is significant is that the authors of the emails are directly involved in the UN Panel on Climate Change:

“[They are] the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Professor Philip Jones, the CRU’s director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC’s key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.

Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history. (Prof. Christopher Booker, Climate Change: This is the Worst Scientific Scandal of our Generation, The Telegraph, 28 November 2009)

One of the contentious emails by Dr Jones (published by  eastangliaemails.com) points to the deliberate manipulation of the data:

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or
first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps
to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from
1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual
land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land
N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999
for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with
data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 xxx xxxx xxxx
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email [email protected]
NR4 7TJ
UK

Source: Alleged CRU Emails – Searchable published by eastangliaemails.com

US Congressional Probe

Barely two weeks before the inauguration of the Copenhagen Summit, the US Congress is now probing into “the Global Warming Emails”:

“U.S. congress has begun investigating climate scientists whose emails and documents were hacked into to see if their global warming theories have misrepresented the truth behind the cause of climate change.

Investigators have begun “studying” the 1,079 e-mails and over 3,800 documents that hackers stole last week from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University in the U.K, Rep. Darrel Issa from California told the Wall Street Journal.

Some of the leaked e-mails and files – which were posted on sites like www.Wikileaks.org  and www.EastAngliaEmails.com – show growing tensions between scientists and skeptics. Others are mundane announcements of upcoming conferences or research trips.

According to his website, Rep. James Inhofe from Oklahoma said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers “cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not.”

The White House Science Adviser John Holdren has also come under investigation, after one of his emails written in 2003 to Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, was hacked.

“I’m happy to stand by my contribution to this exchange. I think anybody who reads what I wrote in its entirety will find it a serious and balanced treatment of the question of ‘burden of proof’ in situations where science germane to public policy is in dispute,” Holdren said.

Meanwhile, The University of East Anglia said it will cooperate with police and proceed with its own internal investigation. The University posted a statement calling the disclosure “mischievous” and saying it is aiding the police in an investigation.

The statement also quotes Jones, CRU’s director, explaining his November 1999 e-mail, which said: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

Jones said that the word trick was used “colloquially as in a clever thing to do” and that it “is ludicrous to suggest that it refers to anything untoward.”

The leaked data comes just two weeks before the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen will begin on Dec. 7 -18, when 192 nations will meet to discuss a solution on how to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases worldwide. (International Business Times, November 24, 2009)

Meanwhile, the “international community” (supported by the mainstream media) has launched a counteroffensive, accusing the critics of waging a smear campaign:

The chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, stood by his panel’s 2007 findings last week. That study is the foundation for a global climate response, including carbon emission targets proposed this week by both the US and China.

So far, climate scientists say nothing in the leaked emails [that] takes away from the fact that the climate change evidence is solid. In fact, a new study in the journal Science shows the polar ice cap melting is happening at a faster rate than predicted just a few years ago.

In a teleconference call with reporters this week, one of the scientists whose emails were leaked, Pennsylvania State University paleoclimatologist Michael Mann, said that “regardless of how cherry-picked” the emails are, there is “absolutely nothing in any of the emails that calls into the question the deep level of consensus of climate change.”

…

This is a “smear campaign to distract the public,” added Mann, a coauthor of the Copenhagen Diagnosis, the report on climate change released this week ahead of the Copenhagen. “Those opposed to climate action, simply don’t have the science on their side,” he added.

Professor Trevor Davies of the East Anglia CRU called the stolen data the latest example of a campaign intended “to distract from reasoned debate” about global climate change ahead of the Copenhagen summit. (As Copenhagen summit nears, ‘Climategate’ dogs global warming debate | csmonitor.com, Christian Science Monitor, 28 November 2009, emphasis added)

But what is significant in this counteroffensive, is that the authenticity of the emails has not been challenged by the IPCC scientists.

The scientists are not saying “we did not do it”. What they are saying is that the Global Warming Consensus holds irrespective of their actions to selectively manipulate the data as well as exclude the critics from the scientific debate on climate change.

What is the Stance of the Civil Society and Environmentalist Organizations

Civil society organisations are currently mobilizing with a view to pressuring the official governmental delegations:

 “Two years ago, at a previous UN climate conference in Bali, all UN governments agreed on a timetable that would ensure a strong climate deal by the time of the Copenhagen conference. The implications of not achieving this goal are massive, and nearly unthinkable. Turn to our great partners film – the Age of Stupid – if you need to be convinced why.

The meeting – which should include major heads of state for the last three days, will attempt to reach a massively complex agreement on cutting carbon, providing finance for mitigation and adaptation, and supporting technology transfer from the North to the South.

This is a major milestone in history, and one where civil society must speak with one voice in calling for a fair, ambitious and binding deal. We are ready, but we need to let the leaders know the world is ready too. Are you? (COP-15 Copenhagen Climate Conference | TckTckTck)

Where do civil society activists stand in relation to the climate change email scandal?

Will these civil society organizations, many of which are funded by major foundations and governments, continue to unreservedly endorse the Global Warming consensus?

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace are among several key civil society organizations which are pushing the Copenhagen agenda. Their position is unchanged.

Environmentalist organizations are demanding a reduction in CO2 emissions, not as a means to tackling polution, but as an instrument to reverse the process of global warming. For many of these organizations, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the “bible”. It cannot be challenged even if the climate data base which supports the Global Warming Consensus turns out to be questionable or contentious.

While the mainstream NGO lobby groups including Greenpeace and WWF continue to support the consensus, there is a small and growing movement which challenges the legitimacy of  the Copenhagen CO15 Summit agenda, while also accusing the UNPCC of manipulating the data. This manipulation of the data also serves the profit driven carbon trading scheme.

The Alternative Summit: KlimaForum09

The NGOs will be meeting in a parallel alternative summit, KlimaForum09. More than 10,000 people a day are expected to attend the sessions of KlimatForum09

Major international NGOs and environmentalist groups will be in attendance including Friends of the Earth, Campaign against Climate Change among others.

Klimaforum09 is to finalize a draft declaration which “will put forth a vision of a more socially just world society, [while]  emphasizing  the need to create substantial changes in the social and economic structures of society in order to meet the challenges of global warming and food sovereignty.” (See  Declaration · Klimaforum09)

While there is fierce opposition to the multibillion carbon trading system within the NGO community, the Alternative Summit will not challenge the Global Warming consensus and its underlying data base. (All events · Klimaforum09).

While critical and active voices will emerge from within the various sessions of the Alternative Forum, the organizational envelope of KlimaForum09 remains compliant to the official agenda. In many regards, the rhetoric of the KlimaForum09’s Danish organizers ties in with that of the host government of the official Summit, which coincidentally also funds the Alternative Summit. (Political Platform · Klimaforum09“). What this means is that the boundaries of dissent within the Alternative Summit have been carefully defined.

There can be no real activism unless the falsehoods and manipulations underlying the activities of the UNPCC, including the data base and the multibillion profit driven carbon trading scheme, are fully revealed, debated and understood.

 

Austerity and its Consequences. America Threatens to Self-destruct if Other Countries don’t Obey it

December 29th, 2019 by Michael Welch

“If the free-traders cannot understand how one nation can grow rich at the expense of another, we need not wonder, since these same gentlemen also refuse to understand how within one country one class can enrich itself at the expense of another.” – Karl Marx, 1848 [1]

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This week’s Global Research News Hour features audio from two keynote lectures presented at the 14th Forum of the World Association for Political Economy, held this year in Winnipeg, Canada July 19-21.

The World Association for Political Economy is an international academic organization founded by Marxist economists and related groups around the world. The mission of WAPE is to utilize modern Marxist economics to analyse 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. Past forums have been held in Shanghai, Shimane (Japan), Beijing, Paris, Suzhou (China), Amherst (USA), Mexico City (Mexico), Florianopolis (Brazil) and Hanoi (Vietnam), among other world centres.

This year’s theme was Class, State and Nation in the 21st Century. Over the course of three days, a heavy emphasis of the various papers presented by participants was on the rise of China’s economy, and its model of economic development versus the model of financialization favoured by the U.S. goliath. Other topics included the ‘greening’ of economics, the Venezuelan crisis, extractivism in Canada and world impact and context of the 1919 General Strike in Winnipeg.

The lectures excerpted from the conference were the opening keynote by Utsa Patnaik, and the closing keynote by renowned economist, writer and political advisor Michael Hudson.

Dr. Patnaik’s presentation, entitled, ‘Austerity’ and its Consequences in the Advanced and Developing Worlds: The Present in the Light of the Inter-War Depression makes a direct comparison between the finance-dominated globalization policies of the last four decades, and the period between the First and Second World Wars, and notes similar trends towards austerity and income-deflation policies, unemployment, financial speculation and bubbles and the rise of the fascist right in the wake of left capitulation on the dominance of global free trade and financialization of global capital. She points to the particular case of India and the devastation of its farmers and working class, and to the rise of farmers, workers, and women as a positive sign of resistance. An abbreviated version of her talk airs in the first half hour.

Michael Hudson’s presentation is entitled, America Threatens to Self-destruct if Other Countries don’t Obey it. The distiguished economist marks the rise of the United States after the war into a ‘pro-rentier’ economy which has turned it into a high cost, financialized economy wherein wealth is increasingly derived through investment and financial instruments as opposed to trade, commodity production, and industrial activity. Mr. Hudson outlines how rival economies may escape the trap of financialization and debt servitutde the U.S. is attempting to impose on the world. An abbreviated version of his talk airs in the second half hour of the program. The unabridged talk was filmed and appears below.

Video courtesy of Paul Graham.

 

Utsa Patnaik is a graduate of Oxford University. She served at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi as a Professor from 1973 until 2010. Her special areas of interest are in the problems of transition from agriculture and peasant predominant societies to industrial society, both in a historical context and at present in relation to India; as well as questions relating to food security and poverty.

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He is also the author of J is for Junk Economics from (2017), Killing the Host from (2015), and his 1968 classic Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire. His website is michael-hudson.com

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The Global Research News Hour now airs Fridays at 6pm PST, 8pm CST and 9pm EST on Alternative Current Radio (alternativecurrentradio.com)

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Notes:

  1. Speech to the Democratic Association of Brussels at its public meeting of January 9, 1848,  MECW Volume 6, p. 450; first published as a pamphlet in Brussels, February 1848; http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/M&E/1848/01/09ft.htm#marx

Depleted Uranium and Radioactive Contamination in Iraq: An Overview

December 28th, 2019 by Prof Souad N. Al-Azzawi

First published on August 22, 2017, this authoritative report by Dr. Al- Azzawi addresses the war crimes committed by the US and its allies through the use of  depleted uranium (radioactive) ammunition, resulting in countless deaths attributable to the spread of leukemia among children, congenital malformations, breast cancer. etc. Dr. Al-Azzawi is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

***

The amount of devastation caused by the Depleted Uranium (DU) weaponry used against Iraq during the consecutive US led wars is historically unprecedented in modern warfare. The devastating magnitude of the complications and damage caused as a result of the use of such radioactive and toxic weapons on the environment and the human population was intensified as a result of the intentional concealment, denial and misleading information released by the Pentagon about the quantities, characteristics, and Iraqi area’s within which these weapons were used.

Information revealed about a severe illness known as the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ which spread amongst US Army veterans who were exposed to DU while using these weaponry, helped Iraqi researchers and Medical Doctors to understand the nature of the effect of these weapons, and the means required to investigate further into this issue.

DU is a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal produced as waste by the nuclear power industry. It is used in weapons because it is an extremely hard material capable of piercing armor.

The synergistic impact on health due to the 1991 post-Gulf War1 economic sanctions, and DU related radioactive and toxic contamination, raised the number of casualties in contaminated areas such as in Southern Iraq.

During 2003, the invading forces used additional rounds of DU in heavily populated areas such as Baghdad, Samawa, Fallujah, Diyala, Najaf, Salahuddin, Basra and Nasiriya (again), and other cities.

The continual use of DU after-Gulf War I in 1991, then during and after the US led military operations in 2003 invasion of Iraq increased the total contamination area with DU in Iraq. Consequently, civilians in previously contaminated areas received an extra dose of radioactivity after 2003. An action that can only be interpreted as committing unseen genocide against the unarmed civilian population in these areas.

Accordingly, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have received higher doses of radioactivity than those received from standard natural sources of radiation. As a result, a multifold increase of diseases related to Low Level Radiation (LLR) exposure have been registered amongst Iraqis since 1995, including an increase of children’s leukemia, congenital malformations, breast cancer etc…

The leukemia incidence rates for instance, shifted towards younger children during these recent years, and its association with geographically distributed contaminated areas, offers strong evidence of the correlation between LLR exposure, and the resulting health damages.

Through this paper, an overview of major scientific DU conclusions will be presented, drawn from investigations and research conducted since the year 1991 by Iraqi researchers and MDs. This research was never published outside Iraq because of the comprehensive sanctions imposed on Iraq from (1991-2003). They were published only in Iraqi University peer reviewed journals and two related conferences.  Schemes of the research papers can be classified into three categories:

  1. DU contamination detection and exploration programs.
  2. DU effects on human body cells.
  3. DU related epidemiological studies.

1.0 Introduction:

Depleted Uranium (DU) weaponry has been used against Iraq since the Gulf War 1 in 1991. An estimated (DU) expenditure of 320 – 800 tons were shot mainly on the withdrawing Iraqi troops from Kuwait to the north of Basra City [ 1].

The use of (DU) ammunition on Iraqi territory never stopped since 1991. Different generations of (DU) supported Tomahawk missiles & Bunker Buster Bombs [1] have been used during the 90’s on what were known as the No-Fly Zones (Northern & Southern regions of Iraq), and during the attack on Iraq in 1998. Bombing Iraq with DU continued during the military operations of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, then afterwards in other cities which resisted the occupation of Iraq [2].

With the comprehensive sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1991, the United States & its allies used radioactive & toxic weapons to exhaust Iraq’s institutions & population to prepare for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Using extra hundreds of tons of (DU) expenditure   during the invasion of Iraq made the radioactive contamination situation more complicated.

For many years the US-UK led armed forces avoided any release of information about the amounts, types, and locations of the targets destroyed by these weapons within Iraqi territories [2]. As a result, thousands of Iraqi children and their families in West Basra were repeatedly exposed for extended durations to DU low-level radiation (LLR) and toxic effects. Many researchers have found a direct correlation between this exposure, and the significant increase of certain diseases such as congenital malformations, malignancies, congenital heart diseases, chromosomal aberration, and multiple malformations in Basra [3].

Right after Gulf War 1, European and American Anti-DU activists and NGO’s issued many publications identifying the harmful effects of DU on-Gulf War veteran health and Iraqi population. These publications helped Iraqi researchers start a series of exploration research programs to define DU contaminated areas in Iraq, and to estimate the radiation doses the civilian population in Southern Iraq and the Iraqi troops located there were exposed to during military operations in 1991. The programs also set out to assess the risk level related to contamination levels in the surrounding environment.

These exploration research programs were performed under severely constrained conditions allowing very limited technical resources because of the US imposed economic sanctions on Iraq during the 90’s posing a serious scientific challenge at the time.

Conducting these researches under the tight conditions and very limited technical and other resources under the economic sanctions was a serious scientific challenge at the time since the American and British occupation forces:

  • Forbidding any release of information related to types, amounts, and locations of targets destroyed by DU projectiles, and any statistics related to Iraqi army and civilian casualties after the occupation of 2003 [4].
  • Refusal to clean up contaminated areas (as was performed by the same named troops) in Kuwait [5].
  • International agencies were prohibited the right to conduct full (DU) related exploration programs and risk assessments by US led occupying forces [6] the way they did in Kosovo [7]. Such an act indicates that these forces are relying on time to dissipate these contaminants with the purpose that the evidence of this crime be lost. Such assessment with proper resources, experts, and technology would link, with conclusive evidence, the harmful health impacts with exposure to DU oxidesamong the population of the contaminated areas.

Using such weapon and related misleading information can be considered as war crimes. They represent grave breach of the Geneva Convention and international law becausethese weapons have caused and continue to cause undifferentiated harm and suffering to civilian populations in all contaminated areas long after the end of the military operations [8].

DU contamination mechanism and health impacts

Dr Rosalie Bertell, a radiology scientist wrote in 2006 [9]; when DU munitions hit the target, they ignite prophetically and generate heat that reaches a temperature of (3000-6000°C). This heat causes a sublimation of DU and other metals to form a gas or aerosol in the forming DU nanoparticles. The nanoparticles can cross the lung-blood barrier and gain entrance to the cells resulting in the creation of free radicals. This is an effect of ionizing radiation. The other effect of DU comes from the fact that it is classified as a toxic heavy metal. Heavy metal toxicity attacks the proteins in the human tissue cells which normally fights the free radicals and creates additional free radicals [9]. This causes an oxidative stress that leads to failure of protective enzymes, damaging the cellular communication system and the mitochondria. Free radicals can also disrupt the protein’s folding process of (DNA). This misrouting of proteins causes certain diseases such as cystic fibrosis, diabetes insipidus and cancer. The amassing and accumulation of misfolded proteins leads to neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease. Gulf veterans have manifested many of the symptoms of these neurodegenerative diseases. Other effects are:

  • Immune and Hormonal systems’ damage
  • Distribution of thyroid function
  • Mycoplasmal Invasion to human body
  • Teratogenic Toxicity, where soluble DU oxides crosses the placenta to the fetus. As a result, damages might range from behavioral problems to mental retardation and congenital malformations.

Studies have shown that the Gulf War1 male veterans were twice as likely- and female veterans almost three times as likely- to report children with birth defects than counterparts who did not serve in the first Gulf War [9].

In her analysis, Dr. Bertell further emphasized that the carcinogenic properties of Uranium are linked the weakening the immune system of individuals, and showing that a depressed immune system often changes the status of subclinical cancer into clinically diagnosable cancer. Other related important studies related to these aspects are of Miller, A. et al [10] [11], Hindin et al [12], and Schroder [13].

The existence of radioactive DU oxides in these areasis considered ascontinuous source of exposure to both toxins and harmful radioactivity. It also represents a continuous and systematic attack on the civilian population each time DU oxide contaminated dust storm blow on the city of Basra and all surrounding areas tens of years to come.

In this paper, the genuine scientific efforts of the Iraqi scientists and researchers who tried hard to define DU contaminated areas in Southern Iraq after Gulf War 1 of 1991, and to show a correlation with its perceived consequences on general population health, all while under the US-UK led economic sanctions imposed on Iraq will be reviewed.

Most of these studies couldn’t find their way to internationally peer-reviewed journals because of the comprehensive sanctions imposed on Iraq, even though they have been published in Iraqi University peer-reviewed scientific journals in addition to the proceedings of two DU and War Consequences scientific conferences (1998, 2002).

It is also an obligation to let the world know that some of these studies cost the authors their lives after the occupation of Iraq in 2003. One of them is Dr. Alim Abdul Hameed Yacoub (Dean of Basra Medical College) who was killed, along with his son, when his car was forced off the highway on the way to his home town of Basra after being attacked and threatened twice at his home by pro-occupation militias two weeks before his death. They cost other researchers their freedom, such as Dr. Huda Ammash who was accused of being (Lady Anthrax) and imprisoned without any real accusation for 3 years just because she conducted very important research on Iraqi Armed Forces veterans who were exposed to DU weapons.

In addition to the assassination of about 500 Iraqi scientists after the US led invasion of Iraq by US trained Death Squads and pro-occupation militias, in what appears to be measures taken to discontinue any kind of scientific research in Iraq including DU-related research [14] in occupied Iraq.

2.0 Schemes of DU related research that have been conducted and published in Iraq (1991-2003):

Studies in this paper are classified into the following schemes:

  1. Detection and modeling of DU contaminated areas through site measurements and laboratory tests
  2. Epidemiological Studies Related to (DU) Contamination Health Effects.
  1. Pathological Studies of DU Effects on Human Health

2.1 Detection and modeling of DU contaminated areas through site measurements and laboratory tests

In 1993 the first Iraqi team of researchers from the Iraqi Atomic Commission and the College of Science in University of Baghdad [15][16] investigated with very limited information and a Sampling Program the increase of DU related radioactivity in selected areas West of Basra. Destroyed Iraqi tanks and vehicles contaminated upon destruction with DU ammunition were still laying around these areas. The areas included: Northern Rumaila oil fields, Al-Shamia, Kharanje, Southern Rumaila oil field, and Jabal Sanam. Exposure measurements revealed the existence of DU contamination in the studied areas. Tables 1, 2, and 3 show the results of these measurements. As we can see from the results not allsampled tanks and Iraqi artilleries have been destroyed by DU projectiles.

Table (1) Field Measurements of 1993 at North Rumela Area [15]

Table (2): Field Measurements of 1993 at Shamia Airfield /Khudairat al-Audhaimi Area [15]

Table (3): Field Radioactivity Measurements of 1993 at DMZ and Surrounding Area [15]

In 1996 Al-Azzawi, S.N. and her team conducted a comprehensive exploration program through the Environmental Engineering Department in University of Baghdad [17] [18] [19][20][21] [22][23].  The program involved taking hundreds of exposure measurements, soil and destroyed targets smear samples, surface water and channels sediments samples, bio-samples from vegetation cover, fish, and grazing animal tissues.  Sampling included areas of heavy military engagement during the first Gulf War of 1991 such as Safwan, Jabal Sanam, al-Zubair, Northern Rumaila oil fields, and Southern Rumaila Oil Fields (Figures 1 and 2). The measurements and tests were part of the academic requirements of three Masters of Engineering degree thesis in Environmental Engineering.

A BGS-4 gamma-ray scintillation counter was used to measure onsite exposure. The counters were used for 124 field exposure measurements in and around the destroyed tanks and other military vehicles. High purity germanium detectors were used to test 124 soil and sediment samples, 58 surface and groundwater samples and 158 bio-samples in the Laboratory of Environmental Radiation in the Iraqi Atomic Organization. All field measurements were supervised and by specialists from Iraqi atomic energy organization and according to IAEA related standards. Also, all laboratory tests were conducted during continuous visits and checking of UN/US inspection teams to all the latter organization’s activities.

Selected measurements from 1996 exploration program results are shown in (Table 5). Modeling pollution transport from hundreds of destroyed artilleries to surrounding areas till 1996 shows the spreading of DU contamination in the area from 1991 – 1996 [17] [18] [19]:

  • 1,718 km² of soil contaminated with DU oxides and particles,
  • 140,000 m² of channel sediments,
  • 845,100 tons of vegetation cover

Table 5: Selected Exposure and Soil Radioactivity Measurements From the 1996 exploration program [17] [18]

T: Destroyed Tank        A: Destroyed Armored Vehicle

Risk assessment related to previous measurements showed that people in the Western part of Basra City, and the Iraqi and American troops received a total whole body radioactive dosage of (442 – 577) mSv [24], mostly during the first six months of the 1991 Gulf War military operations. Comparing this value with the background annual radioactivity vlue of (2.4 mSv) we can see that this amount is about 200 times more than normal natural radioactivity the human body receives. Findings of  the predicted health damages related to these doses were defined and published at the time[25].

In 1999 – 2000 a follow-up exploration program in the same contaminated area of West Basra was conducted by (Al-Azzawi and Al Nuiamy, 2002) [24] [25]. The program included radioactivity measurements of site exposure, soil sediments, water samples, and laboratory tests. Samples were collected from previously studied areas plus areas where most of the DU contaminated tanks and wreckage were collected and unfortunately placed on the banks of Wafaa Al Qaied waterway causing further contamination.

Results of this program indicated the existence of higher than natural background radioactivity in some of the soil samples and sediments from nearby surface water channels sediments in the areas but in general the radioactivity was less than that of 1996. Sand and dust storms with the weathering process contributed to the dispersion of these contaminants to nearby populated areas.More than (127) days of dust storms used to hit that area since the Nineties of last century [26].

Also in 1999-2000 Al-Azzawi, Maarouf and Al-Mousori conducted an exploration program to check of the possibility of radiological contamination in Ninevah Governorate and its center Mosul City, after being attacked in 1998 by new generations of Cruise missiles (AGM 154 J50W) on three targets on the Eastern bank of Tigris River in Mosul city. The program also involved checking the extension of The Chernobyl Plume on Iraqi territories after 13 years [27].

The field measurements using Portable Scintillation Counter have proved that there is clear radiological pollution in the study area. The measured average exposure rate was 11.38 µR.h-1 in Mosul city and 10.11 µR.h-1 in Nineveh governorate which are more than the background level of the study area that amounted to 7.0 µR.h-1.

The laboratory tests have also shown an increase in Ra-226 concentrations which is one daughter of the decay series of U-238. The tested maximum concentration of Ra-226 is 146 Bq.kg-1 in Mosul City and 107 Bq.kg-1 in Nineveh governorate, while the background level calculated in these regions should be 55 Bq.kg-1. This is an indication that the increase can be attributed to the pollution of the study area by Uranium weaponry and that the missiles used to destroy these targets contain Uranium radioisotopes.

The Pentagon kept denying the existence of radiological contamination and the harmful effects of DU on human population and environment. They also accused the findings of the Iraqi research teams during the Nineties as (Iraqi regime propaganda).

After 4 years under the US occupation of Iraq comes the proof from the occupation assigned Iraqi government that all our work was genuine and scientifically credible.

During the National Meeting on Radiological Pollution in Iraq, held in Mansur Melia Hotel in Baghdad, the Minister of Environment in Iraq Narmeen Othman presented the results of the environmental radiological assessment that were conducted in 2007 in some areas of Iraq including Northern and Southern Oil Fields in Southern Iraq after a significant increase of registered cancer cases (as being mentioned in that meeting) [28]. Results of that assessment shows the following:

  • In Rumaila Oil Fields 48 sites were found radiologically contaminated
  • Among the 17 stations of Northern Rumaila Oil Fields, eight sites were found contaminated with radioactive radionuclide
  • Also Phase one of that environmental radiological assessment showed 264 radiologically contaminated samples as follows:
  • In Samawa area 202 samples were collected. 71 soil samples, 10 water samples, 106 dust smear samples. And one vegetation cover sample. Contaminated samples were 36 sample.
  • In Zubair area, 62 samples. 41 of them contaminated.
  • In Basra area, 103 samples. 62 samples were radiologically contaminated.
  • In Nasrya area, 153 samples. 49 of them were contaminated.

It is noteworthy to highlight the fact that these findings come after 15 years of the original exploration programs we have conducted in these areas [ ] [ ].

Tawfiq, N. F. et al in 2000 [29] measured alpha-emitters concentrations in soil samples from different Iraqi cities using Solid State Nuclear Track detectors CR-39 and CN-85. Her team found high concentration radioisotopes measurements of (7.8) ppm in Muthana governorate (Samawa City).

The Dutch troops later in 2003 refused to camp in Samawa City, due to high DU related radioactivity detected by those troops [30]. After few days, they finally moved to a nearby desert area. It was also confirmed that New York Guardsmen serving in Samawa city during 2003 were exposed to DU [31].

Tawfiq research team also confirmed that other cities with higher radioisotope concentrations in soil than that of the area’s background levels which typically range in (1.02-2.2) PPM were: Basra (7.2) ppm, Nasirya (Al-Shatra city) (6.2) ppm. These locations fell on withdrawing Iraqi troops withdrawal route from Kuwait in Jan 1991. The same route the Iraqi troops were intercepted and destroyed by US DU weapons.

In 2000, Al-Gurabi, S. and her team measured DU related increases in radioactivity along the areas bordering Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. They also measured Northern Rumaila Oil Field and areas to the Northwest of Basrah City [32]. Results showed higher activity concentrations of DU related radioisotopes in all investigated areas except the center of Basrah City.

Butras, Wartan and Butras in (2000-2001) [33] measured radioactivity in three different areas of Basrah using Alpha and Beta measuring LB1200 detectors. The measured areas:

A: Iraqi-Saudi-Kuwaiti borders

B: Qurna city, Zubair city, Faw and Umm Kasir seaports.

C: Shatt Al-Arab district in Basra

Results proved the existence of higher radioactivity measurements than background levels of (18*10-3) mRem/hr in area (A) after 10 years of the war. Umm Kasir area registered (10 * 10-3) mRem/hr, compared to normal background levels in the area are within the range of (7 * 10-3) mRem/hr [33].

During the year 2000, Al-Kinani, et al [34] collected (11) soil samples from Safwan, Southern Rumaila and the unarmed border zone using a gamma radiation detector. Results indicated that (7) of these samples were contaminated with DU radioisotopes. Sample (SSI) U235/U238 ratio was found to be (0.00351) which indicates high DU contamination a destroyed tank in that area. Other ratios ranged between (0.0041-0.0037).

Dozens of other studies were conducted and published in Arabic or English peer-reviewed scientific journals of various Iraqi universities. Those published investigation programs were all conducted by well-known professors and researchers who followed the IAEA and other international scientific standards’ procedures.  Researches and radiological laboratory tests that were done in conjunction with the environmental department of the Iraqi Atomic Commission were searched and reviewed by periodic UN inspection teams’ visits and the IAEA teams. These teamswere inspecting all the activities throughout the nineties until the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Radiation Protection Centre (RPC) has also identified between 300 and 365 contaminated sites by 2006. Most of them located in the Basra region in Southern Iraq [35 ]

2.2 Epidemiological Studies Related to (DU) Contamination Health Effects:

Many epidemiological studies were conducted in contaminated cities to define the correlation between (DU) contamination and the increase of malignancy incidence rates and congenital malformation in Basra Governorate for example. Most of these studies were performed by faculty members of Al-Basra College of Medicine since 1995. Some of these studies were published in the University of Basra Medical Journal. Others were presented in the two Iraqi conferences about the effect of economic sanction and (DU) weaponry used against humans and the environment in Iraq, held in 1998 and 2002 respectively.

Results of these studies pointed out a very clear trend concerning the existence of correlation between contamination and the resulted increase of the related diseases in geographically contaminated areas. Among others, the following studies are specifically important:

  • Alim Yacoub et al, 1998 [36] [37] presented an analysis of recorded cases of registered malignant diseases among children under 15 years of age in Basra for the period (1990 – 1997). This analysis showed a rise of 60% in children’s leukemia from 1990 to 1997. Also, a 120% increase in all malignant cases among children under the age of 15 for the same period were registered. The study also showed the shift of age distribution of leukemia cases towards younger than 5 years of age from 13% in 1990 to 41% of total cases in 1997.
  • Al-Sadoon, et al, 1998 [38] showed a threefold increase in congenital malformations registered cases in 1998 compared to 1990 in Basra city. Congenital heart diseases, chromosomal aberrations, and multiple malformations all indicate exposure to teratogenic environmental factor.
  • Alim Yacoub, et al, 1999 [39] also introduced an analysis of the incidence and pattern of malignant diseases in Basra from the analysis of the histopathological reports of Basra University Teaching Hospital for the period 1990-1997.

The study indicated that there was a rise of about 160% in reported cases of uterine cancer in 1997 compared to 1990 and an increase of 143% in thyroid cancer cases in 1997 compared to 1990 recordings. Also, a 102% increase in breast cancer and 82% rise in lymphomas in 1997 compared to 1990.

The records also indicated a shift in the types of the five major leading malignancies in Basra in 1997 such as breast, bladder, lymphomas, uterine, and skin cancers. While those of 1990 were malignant diseases of bladder, skin, breast, lung, and larynx.

  • Alim Yacoub, Imad Al-Sadoon and Jenan Hasan, 2002 presented a paper [40] that examines the association between exposure to DU radiation and the rising incidence of malignancies among children in Basra through time sequence criteria, and dose-response criteria through the geographical shift of the increase of incidence rates in Al-Zubair and other Western areas from less than 5/100,000 prior to 1993 to 22/100,000 in 2000  compared to only Al-Hartha area (North of Basrah) only prior to 1993 (with the highest incidence rates of 10/100,000 in 1993). They also tested the biological plausibility criteria through the shift of the increase of leukemia incidence rate towards younger ages of less than 5 years old after 1995.

Yacoub et al, 2002, couldn’t explain the reason behind the constant increase of malignancies incidence rates among children in Al-Hartha district in Northern Basra City, figure from (10 incidents / 100,000) to (42.7 / 100,000) in the year 2000.

This increase can be attributed to the existence of the largest electrical power generation and transformation facilities in Iraq of 800 MW. This power plant was destroyed during air raids several times first week of bombing in 1991. Nobody measured the radioactivity in Al-Hartha power plant, which might be also destroyed with DU expenditure.

We must be aware that these epidemiological studies were limited to Basra General Hospital, which is the education hospital of Basra Medical College. The mentioned number of cancer incidence cases and congenital malformations would be a lot higher if the studies involved all hospitals of Basra.

  • Abbas Ali & Jawad al Ali, 2002 [41] presented an evaluation of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) annual incidence which started to rise from 1995 up to the year 2000, when the increase began to plateau.
  • Pathological Studies of DU Effects on Human Health

Dr. Huda Ammash- Professor of Molecular Biology in the College of Science in University of Baghdad, 1998, presented a paper on the mechanisms of toxicity induced by free radicals resulting from irradiation with DU and ionization of the atmosphere in Iraq [42] [43]. This paper pinpointed the need for DU toxicity studies on enzymes (SOD), Caralase, hydrogenates and Glyceraldehydes Dehydrogenates levels. She also presented the multi aborative cases on the DNA level where out of 50 studied cases, 29 cases were found with DNA abnormalities (with no hereditary evidence). Other multi aborative cases investigating the toxoplasmosis effect showed that out of 130 cases, over 65% more were infected than those recorded in 1989.

Muhammed, Z.T. et al, 2002, [44] published a paper about the effects of DU radiation on the human immune system enzyme. A group of (26) Iraqi veterans who were exposed to DU radiation with (43) control individuals were all subjected to tests for Adenosine DA Amines (ADN) enzyme activity. Results indicated mean activity of the enzyme of the exposed individuals of (0.184 ±0.016) U/gm protein, while the unexposed individual’s enzyme activity (0.291 ±0.022) U/gm protein.

ADA enzyme activity in the exposed individuals were found to be significantly lower than the control group. P<0.05 significant correlation coefficient was found between ADA activity as an important immune enzyme and related clinical signs and symptoms related to defective cellular immune functions.

Ammash, H., Alwan, L. and Marouf, B.A.,2002, published a paper (in Arabic) [45] about the results of Genetic hematological analysis for a group of individuals who live in DU contaminated areas in Southern Iraq. Blood tests for the (47) individuals who lived in Basra contaminated areas and other (30) individuals as a control group who lived in Baghdad. The research included other clinical and correlated factors.

Blood tests included hemoglobin concentration, packed cell volume test (PCV), total count (WBC) test and chromosomal changes and defects tests. Factors such as exposure type and exposure time due to nature of work were taken into consideration (45% of the studied groups are from Iraqi troops who were involved in military engagements of the Gulf War 1). The others were civilians who lived in contaminated areas.

The test results of the study clearly showed that a 21% of the studied individuals in Basra group suffered a reduction in hemoglobin concentration of (9-13) g/dl.

The other 79% of the individuals from Al-Basrah studied groups with normal hemoglobin concentrations of (12-15) g/dl and (13-18) g/dl for males and females in the group respectively.

The blood Packed Cell Volume (PCV) test results showed that 25.5% of the Basrah study group showed abnormal (PCV) rates of (30-39) % less than the normal rate. One male’s individual blood (PCV) was 3% higher than normal. Other individuals’ blood (PCV) in the studied group had normal rates ranging between (40-54) %.

Total count of white blood cells (WBC) test results showed that 8% of the individuals in the Basrah study group had less than normal (WBC) which is 4000 c/ml or higher than the normal rate or (11000) c/ml. Control group individuals all had normal (WBC).

Compound chromosomal changes in the lymphocytes of peripheral blood of the individuals of the Basra study group had been found to have a ratio of (0.1118) % which is significantly higher than that of the control group. The ratio of dicentric and ring centric chromosomal abnormality fraction was found to be (0.04479) which is also higher than the ordinary ratio. Chromosomal damages were mostly in male veteran individuals. One case was that of a 13-year-old at the time of exposure in Al-Zubair contaminated area.

From the Veterinary College of Basra University, Khadier, A.A. et al, 2000[46] conducted a study to detect levels of DU related radioactivity in pastures and animals within the contaminated areas of Safwan, Al-Zubair, N. Rumaila, Jabal Sanam, Kharanj Village, etc.

Blood samples from sheep and other grazing animals were collected. Analysis of blood samples using Lyoluminescence and Track Detectors proved the existence of very small concentrations of radioisotopes in a few sheep that fed from and around the destroyed artillery and tanks within the studied areas. It is believed the polluted dust on the leaves was the source of radioisotopes in the tested blood samples.

Al-Sadi, H.I. and Sawad, A. 2002 [47] from the Veterinary College of the University of Basrah also presented a study about the pathological conditions of the animals in Basrah. The study reported the existence of three types of animal neoplasm; seminoma in rams, mesotheliomas in buffalo, and ovarian cystadenomas in female dogs.

These types of neoplasms have never been reported in these regions before the Nineties. Also, some types of congenital defects in farm animals have been described.

2.4 Other related studies after the occupation of Iraq (post 2003)

The American and British armed forces used Depleted Uranium weapons during the military operations of Iraq’s invasion and occupation in 2003. As usual they wouldn’t admit or release information where and the amounts they have used to prevent the civilian population the extra exposure to more of these toxic and radioactive munitions. The UK government in 2010 admitted that British forces fired less than three tons of DU in 2003 [48].

The American armed forces kept lying and misleading the public until the findings of a DU related research published by the European organization PAX in collaboration with the ICBDUW and George Mason University of America. The research confirmed the use of about 181000 shells of depleted uranium or about 200 tons (Wim Zwijnenburg and Doug Weir, 2016). The research also identified the places where it was used [2]. Maps and illustrations showed that US forces fired these DU projectiles in most densely populated cities this at the time, including Basra, Baghdad, Najaf, Amarah, Tikrit, Karbala, Falluja and Baquba, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Areas bombed by DUweapons during the 2003 Iraqi occupation in 2003[2].

In 2006 and 2007 technical staff from the Iraqi Radiation Protection Centre collected environmental samples at four selected sites in Southern Iraq, namely As Samawah, Al Nassiryah, Al Basrah and Al Zubayr [49]. Since no information from US/UK armed forces defines where they used the DU ammunition in 2003!!because this information wasreleased in 2016 [2]. It seems clear that the samples were collected from previously identified DU contaminated areas of 1991.

A total of 520 samples of soil, water, vegetation, and smear tests, were taken. collected samples were shipped from Iraq to the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland, which, on behalf of UNEP, analyzed them using Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS). The radioanalytical results were then made available to the IAEA to make a prospective estimation of the radiation doses to the Iraqi population living in the above-mentioned four locations and the associated radiological risks [49].

The results of that very limited investigation program stated that:

“annual radiation doses to the public that could arise from the various types of exposure scenarios were calculated. based on the measurements carried out on the samples collected in this study. The radiation doses from DU were found sufficiently low not pose a radiological hazard to the population living at the four studied locations” [49 ].

That meansIAEA built their dose calculations on measured radioactivity in 2006, while contamination in these areas exist since 1991 (because all these areas were included in our exploration programs and researches in the Nineties as mentioned previously) [17] [18 ] [29] The risk assessment should have included cumulative radiation doses of all paths for the period 1991 to 2006,  and not as they calculated from the instant they measured in 2006 (as an isolated event).

Soil concentration and activity values of the contaminants also should have been calculated back to their 1991 values and not its value in 2006 where its been dissipating and decaying for more than 15 years.

The risk assessment calculations IAEA adopted, depending on the following pathways [49 ]:

I Inhalation of soil re-suspended by the action of wind or human activities;

II Inhalation of re-suspended dust inside military vehicles hit by DU munitions;

III. Ingestion of soil;

  1. Ingestion of vegetables;
  2. Ingestion of and drinking water.”

Remember that in IAEA risk calculations they considered the exposed population live above these areas??, while dominant wind direction in Iraq and during dust storms is NW-SE [50].  That means they should have measure additional doses from contaminants blowing down from Samawa city on Nasiriya, Basra, and Zubair cities from 1991-2006, and so on of all other cities, check locations of these cities in figure.

Figure 5: Map of Iraq showing locations of cities involved in IAEA risk assessment(Samawa, Nasiriya, Basra, and Zubair).

IAEA risk assessment missed two other important pathways:

  1. Ingestion of contaminated meat, milk, and other items of food chain.
  2. Absorption of DU oxides through skin and immersion in emitted Radon cloud.

If we take all these factors in the calculation of the risk assessment the value would be hundreds of times higher than what IAEA team calculated.

During 2004 and 2005, after the US military assault on Falluja and the destruction of more than 50% of it, tests on city residents who had children or lost embryos suffered from congenital malformations showed that there were more concentrations of uranium than normal in their bodies (Alaani et al.,2012) [51]

Alaani et al, 2012 [52] published results have drawn attention to increases in congenital birth anomalies and cancer in Fallujah Iraq blamed on teratogenic, genetic and genomic stress thought to result from depleted Uranium contamination following the battles in the town in 2004.  Hair samples from 25 fathers and mothers of children diagnosed with congenital anomalies were analyzed for Uranium and 51 other elements suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases. Thus, raised about the characteristics and composition of weapons now being deployed in modern battlefields.

Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan, and Entesar Ariabi, 2010 [53] Published a paper that concludes  results confirm the reported increases in cancer and infant mortality which are alarmingly high in Falluja. Also, the paper confirms a remarkable reduction in the sex ratio in the cohort born one year after the fighting in 2004 identifies that year as the time of the environmental contamination.

Samira T. Abdulghani, et al. [54] paper about “Perinatal and neonatal mortality in Fallujah General Hospital, Fallujah City, Anbar Province, west of Iraq.” Scientific Research, Open Access.  http://www.scirp.org/journal/OpenAccess.aspx.

Dr Jawad al Ali, 2005 [55] published a paper about variable degrees of increased rates of cancers in Basra, particularly breast cancer, lymphomas, lung, colo-rectal ovaries, soft tissues and kidneys.

He added that Cancers which show no increase include the cancers of stomach, uterus and skin cancers. The overall incidences over the year showed tangible increase particularly during the year 2005.

Geographical distribution: the highest rate was in the west of Basra followed by the center of Basra, eastern area and the lowest is at the northern area. The age risk: the data showed massive increase in risk with age. The lowest rate is for the children less than five years (11.4/100.000). The highest rate was for the age group more than 65 years

(541.9/100.000). The total incidence rate was 59.1/100.000.

Conclusion

  • The USA and UK continuously used Depleted Uranium weapons against the population and environment in Iraq from 1991 until today.
  • Occupation intentionally denied and covered up the types, locations and amounts of DU projectiles that have been used in Iraq to prevent taking measures that could have reduce health damages on civilians resulting from the exposure to cumulative doses of these contaminants.
  • Occupation forces prohibited UNEP, WHO and other international agencies to conduct any exploration programs to detect DU contamination and assess the health risks and clean up remedies during the way it has been conducted in Serbia and Kosovo.
  • Forbidding the release of any casualties statistics by the health ministry of the occupation assigned government in Iraq right after the occupation of Iraq is another crime to cover up the magnitude of human lives losses related to the occupation of Iraq.
  • Exploration programs and site measurements proved without a doubt that the existence of DU related radioactive contamination all over most of Iraq (except the northern area of Kurdistan).
  • Published epidemiological studies in Basrah introduced a clear correlation between DU related exposure and the multifold increase of malignancies, congenital malformations, and multiple malformations among the population in DU contaminated areas.
  • Other pathological and hematological studies indicated the existence of chromosomal and DNA aberrations and abnormalities in the 1991 Iraqi Gulf War veterans. Other studies proved their effects on lowering the activities of the human immune system in exposed individuals.
  • Intentional continuous use of DU against the people and environment of Iraq is a crime against humanity due to its undifferentiated harmful health impacts on civilian long times after the military operations. Existing DU contamination in the surrounding environment is a continuous source of exposure to civilian’s population, and can be considered as systematic attacks on civilians in each DU contaminated dust storm blown on these cities. Article 4 of the official regulations and Article 7 of the ICC.

Notes 

[1] William, Dai. 2002. “Hazards of Uranium weapons in proposed war on Iraq”, sept. 22nd, 2002. The Eos life-work resource center.

Updated 27 October 2002. http://www.eoslifework.co.uk/u231.html.

[2] Wim Zwijnenburg and Doug Weir, 2016. Targets of Opportunity; Analysis of the use of depleted uranium by A-10s in the 2003 Iraq War. A joint investigation by PAX and ICBUW. Published on www.paxforpeace.nl website.

[3] Asaf Durakoviæ.1999.” Medical Effects of Internal Contamination with Uranium”. CMJ online. March 1999 (Volume 40, Number 1).

http://www.fukuleaks.org/edanoleaks/Scribble_Japan_Earthquake/pdfs/medical_effects_cmj.pdf.

[4] USA Today, 2003, Iraq’s Health Ministry ordered to stop counting civilian dead from war, Dec. 12 2003.

[5] Kirby, A., 2003, “US rejects Iraq DU clean-up”, BBC news online, April 14th 2003.

[ 6] Sunday Herald, “WHO suppressed scientific study into depleted uranium cancer fears in Iraq”. Feb 22, 2004.

[7] Depleted Uranium sites in Kosovo detailed by UNEP. http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=189&ArticleID=2741.

[8] Karen Parker,  2007.”War Crimes Committed by the United States in Iraq and Mechanisms for Accountability”. Consumers for peace. Oct.10, 2007.

[9] Rosalie Bertell, 2006. “Depleted Uranium: All the Questions about Du and Gulf War Syndrome are Not Yet Answered”. International journal of Health services.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2190/13JL-9LHM-FMR4-0V7B.

[10] Miller, A. et al. “Genomic instability in human osteoblast cells after exposure to depleted Uranium: Delay lethality and micronuclei formation”. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. vol.64(2-3), 2003 (PP 247-259).

[11] Miller, A. et al, “Effect of the military-relevant heavy metal, depleted uranium and heavy metal tungsten-alloy on gene expression in human liver carcinoma cells (HepG2).” Mol. Cell Biochem. vol. 255(1-2). Jan. 2004 (PP. 247-56).

[12] Hindin, R., Brugge, D. and Panikkar, B. (2005), ‘Teratogenicity of Depleted Uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective’, Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source, 4:17, http://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1476-069X-4-17.

[13] Chroder, H. et al. “Chromosome aberration analysis in peripheral lymphocytes of Gulf War and Balkans War veterans”. Radiation Prot. Dosimetry. Vol. 103(3) 2003 (PP. 211-219).

[14] Spanish Campaign against the Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq.

Iraq Solidaridad 2005-2013. “The killing of Iraqi Academics: A War to Erase the Future and Culture of Iraq.” List of Iraqi academics assassinated in Iraq during the US-led occupation. http://www.iraqsolidaridad.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/List-of-Iraqi-academics-assassinated-November-2013.pdf.

[15] International Conference on DU, 2000, “Health, ecological, legal, and economic aspects of conventional radioactive weapons”, Committee of Solidarity   with the Arab Cause, Nov. 26-2, 2000, Gehone, Spain.

[16] Iraq Foreign Affairs Ministry, 1995, “Radiation effects”, an official paper submitted by the Iraqi delegation to the briefing meeting on nuclear liability during the 42nd Session of the General Conference, Vienna, 1995.

[17] Al-Azzawi, S., Maarouf, B., Seleh, M.J., Al-Saji, M., Al-Hilli, W., and Maguar, A., 1997.  “Damages resulted from the use of DU weaponry against Iraq”. Technical Report published in Arabic, Environmental Engineering Dept. College of Engineering, University of Baghdad. Baghdad, Iraq, 157pp.

[18] Al-Azzawi, S.N., Ma’arof, B.A., Mahmmod, M.A., Al-Hili, W.M., Al-Saji,, M., Jada’an, A.M. 1999. “Environmental Pollution Resulting from The Use of Depleted Uranium Weaponry Against Iraq in 1991.” Journal of Arabic Universities Association. College of engineering. University of Baghdad, vol. 6, no. 2, Baghdad, Iraq. Published in Arabic. Pp.47-62.

[19] Al-Azzawi, S. et al, “Environmental Pollution Resulting from the Use of Depleted Uranium Weaponry Against Iraq During 1991, World International Conference on DU, Hamburg, Germany, 2003.

[20] Al-Azzawi, S., and Al-Saji, M., 1998. “Effects of DU radioactive pollution on surface and ground water in selected regions in southern Iraq”. Journal of Arabic Universities Association, vol. 6, no. 1, Baghdad. Iraq. (Arabic language).

[21] Al-Hilli, W., 1998. “Effects of radioactive weapons on soil and air quality in Iraq”, M. Sc. Thesis in environmental engineering. College of Engineering. University of Baghdad. Baghdad, Iraq, 1998.

[22] Al-Saji, M., 1998, “Effects of radiological weapons on surface and groundwater quality in selected areas southern Iraq”. M. Sc. thesis in environmental engineering. College of Engineering, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq.

[23] Maguar, A.,1998. “Effects of radiological pollution on human and living environment in southern Iraq”. MSc. thesis, environmental engineering. College of engineering. University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq.

[24] Al-Azzawi, S., and Al Naemi, A. 2002, “Assessment of radiological doses and risks resulted from DU contamination in the highway war zone in al-Basrah governorate”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq. March 26-27/ 2002. Baghdad, Iraq.

[25] Al-Azzawi, S., and Al Naemi, A., 2002, “Risk assessment related to radiological contamination resulted from the use of DU ammunition in al-Basrah war zone”, proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq, March 26-27, 2002, Baghdad, Iraq.

[26] TW, 2016.” Significant increase in frequency and intensity of sandstorms in the Middle East over the past 15 years”. The Watchers Website (WT). June 17, 2016.

https://watchers.news/2016/06/17/significant-increase-in-frequency-and-intensity-of-sandstorms-in-the-middle-east-over-the-past-15-years.

[27] Al-Azzawi, S., Maarouf, B., and Mazouri, N., 2002. “Environmental radiological pollution from the use of DU weaponry against Ninevah governorate during the war”, proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq, March 26-27 2002, Baghdad, Iraq.

[28] Hadi al Rubaiay, 2009. “Depleted Uranium is Innocent until Prove its Guilt”. National meeting of the consultants committee of Prime Minister Office on radiological pollution in Iraq. Mansour Melia hotel. Iraqi Media Network Report in Arabic.

file:///H: ف%20الندوة%20الوطنية%20للوقاية%20من%20التلوث%20الاشعاعي..%20اليورانيوم%20الhtml.

[29] Tawfiq, N., et.al., 2002, Determination of Alpha-emitters in Iraqi soil samples using solid state nuclear track detectors CR-39 and CN-85, Proceeding of Conference on the Effects of DU Weaponary on Human and Environment in Iraq, March 26-27, 2002, Baghdad, Iraq.

[30] ICBUW, 2006.” Dutch military in Iraq delays troop transfer from suspected DU contaminated area”. International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons. Sept. 29. 2006.

http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/dutch-military-in-iraq-delays-troop-transfer-from.

[31] Joanne, L., 2004, “Testing of New York guardsmen: first confirmed cases of Iraq war depleted Uranium exposure”, World Scientist web-site; http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/dwica-a21.shtml.

[32] Al Ghurabi, S. et. al., 2002, “DU pollution in southern Iraq after ten years”. Proceedings of the Conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq. published in Arabic. Vol. 1, March 26-27, 2002, Baghdad, Iraq

[33] Butrus, S., Wartan, K., and Butrus, L., 2002, “Assessing radioactive contamination levels in Basrah governorate”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq, March 26-27, 2002, Baghdad, Iraq, published in Arabic.

[34] Alkinany, A., Twege, D., and Abdul Allah, K., 2002, “Investigating DU radioactivity in selected locations in Basrah”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq, March 26-27, 2002, Baghdad, Iraq, published in Arabic.

[35]The Guardian, 2013. “Iraq’s depleted uranium clean-up to cost $30m as contamination spreads”. March 6, 2013.

[36] Yaqoub, A.A., Al-Sadoon, I., and Hassan, J., 1998. “Incidence and pattern of malignant diseases among children in Basrah with specific reference to leukemia during the period of 1990-1998”. Proceeding of the conference on health and environmental consequences of DU used by U.S. and British forces in the 1991 Gulf War, Dec. 2-3, 1998, Baghdad, Iraq.

[37] Yaqoub, A., et.al., 1999. “Depleted Uranium and health of people in Basrah: an epidemiological evidence; 1-The incidence and pattern of malignant diseases among children in Basrah with specific reference to leukemia during the period of 1990-1998”.  Medical journal of Basrah University (MJBU). Vol.17, no.1&2, 1999, Basrah, Iraq.

[38] Al-Sadoon, I., Hassan, J., and Yaqoub, A., 1998. “Incidence and pattern of congenital anomalies among birth in Basrah during the period 1990-1998”. Proceeding of the conference on health and environmental consequences of DU used by U.S. and British forces in the 1991 Gulf War. Dec. 2-3, 1998. Baghdad, Iraq.

[39] Yaqoub, A., Ajeel, N., and Al-Wiswasy, M., 1998. “Incidence and pattern of malignant diseases (excluding leukemia) during 1990-1997”. Proceeding of the conference on health and environmental consequences of DU used by U.S. and British forces in the 1991 Gulf War. Dec. 2-3, 1998. Baghdad, Iraq.

[40] Yaqoub, A., Al-Sadoon, I., and Hassan, J., 2002. “The evidence of casual association between exposure to DU and malignancies among children in Basrah by applying epidemiological criteria of causality”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq. March 26-27, 2002. Baghdad, Iraq.

[41] Ali, A., and Al-Ali, J., 2002. “Chronic myeloid leukemia in Basrah after the Gulf War II”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq. March 26-27, 2002. Baghdad, Iraq.

[42] Ammash, H., 1998. “Mechanism of toxicity induced by free radicals resulting from irradiation with DU and ionization of atmosphere in Iraq”. Proceeding of the conference on health and environmental consequences of DU used by U.S. and British forces in the 1991 Gulf War.Dec. 2-3, 1998. Baghdad, Iraq.

[43] Ammash, H., 2000. “Toxic pollution, the Gulf War, and sanctions, the impact on the environment and health in Iraq”. Iraq under Siege, editor: Anthony Arnove, South End Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2000.

[44]Mohammed, Z., et.al., 2002. “Detection of DU effects on human by use of immune system enzyme”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq. March 26-27, 2002. Baghdad, Iraq.

[45] Ammash, H., Alwan, L., and Maarouf, B., 2002. “Genetic hematological study for a selected population from DU contaminated areas in Basrah”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq. March 26-27, 2002. Baghdad, Iraq.

[46] Khudair, A., Abdul Kader, K., and Al-Taha, T., 2002. “Study of the radiological pollution level in pastures of Basrah in 2000”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq. March 26-27, 2002. Baghdad, Iraq.

[47] Al-Sadi, H., and Sawad, A., 2002. “Some interesting pathological conditions in animals in Basrah and the possible etiological role of DU used in 1991 aggression against Iraq”. Proceedings of the conference on the effects of the use of DU weaponry on human and environment in Iraq. March 26-27, 2002. Baghdad, Iraq.

[48] RT, 2010.” Reports emerge the UK used depleted uranium weapons in Iraq”. Russia Today New. July 23. 2010. https://www.rt.com/news/uk-iraq-depleted-uranium/.

[49] Danesi1,P.R.,and Telleria2, D.M ,2006. “Radiological Conditions at Four Selected Sites in South Iraq with Residues of Depleted Uranium”. 1, International Atomic Energy Agency Consultant, Vienna, Austria.  2International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria.

file:///H:/DU%20contamination%20doses%20in%20southern%20Iraq%20measured%20for%20UNEP%202003.pdf.

[50] Tara Mohamed Anwar. “ Country Pasture/Forage Resource Profile. Iraq”.

http://www.fao.org/ag/agp/agpc/doc/counprof/iraq/iraq.html.

[51] Alaani, S., Tafash, M., Busby, C., Hamdan, M., and Blaurock-Busch, E., 2011.  Uranium and Other Contaminants in Hair from the Parents of Children with Congenital Anomalies in Fallujah, Iraq. Conflict and Health, V.5; 2011, PMC3177876.

[ 52] Busby C, Hamdan M, Ariabi E. 2010. Cancer, Infant mortality and birth sex ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009. Int. J. Environ Res. Public Health 7, 2828-2837.

[53] Alaani S, Savabieasfahani M, Tafash M, Manduca P. 2011. Four polygamous families with congenital birth defects from Fallujah, Iraq. Int. J. Environ Res Public Health 8, 89-96.

[ 54] Al-Ali, Jawad, 2005. “Epidemiological study at Southern Iraq, Basra city”. Proceeding of the Cancer trend in Basra, Iraq. Depleted uranium – 4.5-billion-year health risk meeting. At 17-20 Auditorium in the Parliament House, Japan. Sept 12. 2006.

http://www.rauhanpuolustajat.org/tiedostot/seminaariraportti.pdf.

All images in this article are from the author.

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ISIS Is a US-Israeli Creation. Top Ten “Indications”

December 28th, 2019 by Makia Freeman

Relevant article first posted on GR in April 2016.

ISIS is a US-Israeli creation, a fact as clear as the sky is blue. It’s a truth as black and white as the colors on their flag. For many alternative news readers, this may be patently obvious, but this article is written for the large majority of people in the world who still have no idea who is really behind the rise of ISIS. No matter which name they go by – ISIS, ISIL, IS or Daesh – the group has been deliberately engineered by the US and Israel to achieve certain geopolitical goals. They are a religious, fundamentalist, Sunni terrorist organization created to terrorize and overthrow certain secular or Shiite Arab nations such as Syria and Iraq, but they are not just “Islamic”. They may be Muslims, and they may be advocating an Islamic State, but they are very much working towards the goals of Zionism. 

It’s amazing how many people still struggle to get that point. We have been inundated with propaganda surrounding the fraudulent war on terror, notably terms such as Islamic terrorism and radical Islam, but more accurate phrases would be Zio-Islamic terrorism and radical Zio-Islam. Secret military agencies such as the CIA and the Mossad pull the strings. Here is a list of the top 10 ‘indications’ that ISIS is a US-Israeli creation.

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #1: ISIS Foreknowledge via Leaked DIA Doc

The DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) is 1 of 16 US military intelligence agencies. According to a leaked document obtained by Judicial Watch, the DIA wrote on August 12, 2012 that:

“there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime …”

This was written before ISIS came on to the world stage. Clearly ISIS was no random uprising, but rather a carefully groomed and orchestrated controlled opposition group.

The “supporting powers to the opposition” referred to are Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the GCC nations such as Qatar, who are in turn being supported by the US-UK-Israeli axis in their struggle to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. As I outlined in this article Syrian Ground War About to Begin? WW3 Inches Closer, the US is backing the Sunni nations while Russia, China and Iran are backing the Shia nations, so there is the definite potential for this to erupt into World War 3. Below are screenshots of the actual DIA document:

ISIS-US-Israeli-creation-1


 ISIS-US-Israeli-creation-2

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #2: ISIS Never Attacks Israel

It is more than highly strange and suspicious that ISIS never attacks Israel – it is another indication that ISIS is controlled by Israel. If ISIS were a genuine and independent uprising that was not covertly orchestrated by the US and Israel, why would they not try to attack the Zionist regime, which has attacked almost of all of its Muslim neighbors ever since its inception in 1948? Israel has attacked Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, and of course has decimated Palestine. It has systemically tried to divide and conquer its Arab neighbors. It continually complains of Islamic terrorism. Yet, when ISIS comes on the scene as the bloody and barbaric king of Islamic terrorism, it finds no fault with Israel and sees no reason to target a regime which has perpetrated massive injustice against Muslims? This stretches credibility to a snapping point.

ISIS and Israel don’t attack each other – they help each other. Israel was treating ISIS soldiers and other anti-Assad rebels in its hospitals! Mortal enemies or best of friends?

ISIS US Israeli creation toyota akbar

ISIS US-Israeli creation toyota

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #3: Toyota Trucks

Where did ISIS get an entire fleet of matching Toyota pick-up trucks? Why do so many of its photo shots feature a fleet of matching Toyotas – matching in both model and color? As this Information Clearing House article humorously states:

“The official story is ISIS stole them from the “Good Terrorists” (Al Nusra), who were originally given their cool wheels by the US government. Which would seem to beg a couple of enquiries. Not least of which is – why are the US giving any terrorists matching fleets of luxury SUVs? And for that matter, how many fleets are we talking about?

So, exactly how many trucks did the US supply? Where are ISIS currently garaging this impressive collection? And why do they all have to be Toyotas? Is it a terrorist thing, or simply a US Govt preference? Do Toyota mind the brand-association? Or the fact that so many of the ISIS drive-by photo-ops look like perverted car ads?”

Some of these trucks were actually used vehicles that got sent from the US and Canada over to Syria. This Texan plumber discovered to his horror that his old truck was being used in the war, replete with his business name still on the door!

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #4: ISIS’ First Class Social Media Skills

The issue of the Toyotas leads us to the next question about ISIS. Who’s handling their publicity? How have they managed to get so many photos of Toyota truck drive bys? How have they managed to master Western social media so well to spread their message, propaganda and threats? How have they managed to produce slick videos depicting (fake) beheadings? How does a barbaric group of killers, who speak a language very different to English, who espouse fundamentalist, religious ideals (such as Sharia law), and often criticize all things Western, manage to develop such excellent social media skills?

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #5: Israeli Group SITE First to Release ISIS Footage

Another key giveaway that ISIS is a US-Israeli creation is that the Israeli group SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) are often the first to find and publicly release the video (as their co-founder Rita Katz has let slip on occasion). SITE was involved in the slew of fake green screen ISIS beheadings of 2014. Speaking of fake beheadhings, why did this fictional Turkish TV drama show a beheading just like that of ISIS?

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #6: ISIS Leader Baghdadi a Mossad Agent

Although this indication is hard to confirm, there were reports apparently originating from Edward Snowden that the leader of ISIS (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) was actually an Israeli Mossad agent by the name of Simon Elliot or Elliot Shimon: [GR Editor’s note: this source and quotation are yet to be fully verified, including the source originating from Eduard Snowden]

“Simon Elliot (Elliot Shimon) aka Al-Baghdadi was born of two Jewish parents and is a Mossad agent. We offer below three translations that want to assert that the Caliph Al-Baghdadi is a full Mossad agent and that he was born Jewish father and mother:

The real name of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is “Simon Elliott.” The so-called “Elliot” was recruited by the Israeli Mossad  and was trained in espionage and psychological warfare against Arab and Islamic societies. This information was attributed to Edward Snowden …”

Bashar Assad, President of Syria. The US has been actively plotting strategies to destabilize and overthrow his government.

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #7: Leaked Cables Showing US Plotting Syrian Overthrow

Julian Assange of Wikileaks did a great job in capturing information about what was happening in Syria years before the “Arab springs” and current war started in 2011. He reveals how William Roebuck, then chargé d’affaires at the US embassy in Damascus, was plotting to destablize the Syrian government. The following quotes from Roebuck’s cables to Washington show how he was outlining the vulnerabilities of Assad:

“– Vulnerability:

— THE ALLIANCE WITH TEHRAN: Bashar is walking a fine line in his increasingly strong relations with Iran, seeking necessary support while not completely alienating Syria,s moderate Sunni Arab neighbors by being perceived as aiding Persian and fundamentalist Shia interests. Bashar’s decision to not attend the Talabani ) Ahmadinejad summit in Tehran following FM Moallem,s trip to Iraq can be seen as a manifestation of Bashar’s sensitivity to the Arab optic on his Iranian alliance.

— Possible action:

— PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria that the Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque construction to business. Both the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here, (as well as prominent Syrian Sunni religious leaders), are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue.”

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #8: Russia Bombs ISIS, US Protects ISIS

Before Russia militarily entered Syria, the US claims it was “attacking” ISIS, yet Russia was able to do in a few months what the US has been unable to do for years. Why? Is the US military that incompetent, or this is further proof that the US has been funding and supporting ISIS all this time? At one point there were even reports that US soldiers were told not to fire on ISIS targets, even if they had a clear view of them, as this Free Beacon article reports:

“U.S. military pilots who have returned from the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq are confirming that they were blocked from dropping 75 percent of their ordnance on terror targets because they could not get clearance to launch a strike, according to a leading member of Congress.”

Why did US State Department spokesman Mark Toner struggle to celebrate the fact that ISIS had lost Palmyra recently?

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #9: ISIS Always the Excuse for Further Intervention

Finally, consider this: why is ISIS always the perfect excuse for further military intervention in Syria? Given the history of foreign meddling in Syria, particularly by the US and Israel in the last 70 years, isn’t it rather convenient that the specter of ISIS is the justification offered for proposed no-fly zones, air strikes and ground troops? How would the US and Israel conquer the Middle East without their pet Frankenstein ISIS?

Share this article with those who haven’t yet awoken to the truth about ISIS. Many have already seen through the propaganda. Once enough of us do, the usefulness of this ridiculous, dangerous and vaudevillian terrorist group will expire – and maybe a critical mass of people will pull back the curtain and, for once, get a glimpse of the true puppetmasters.

Concluding Note

ISIS is a US-Israeli Creation: Indication #10: ISIS is an Acronym for Mossad. [The Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. Interesting Coincidence] 

ISIS itself is an acronym, not just for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but for Israeli Secret Intelligence Service! This is another way to describe the Mossad, the shady Zionist spy agency whose motto is “by way of deception, thou shalt do war”. In this video (below), the 2 authors being interviewed (Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman) admit that the acronym ISIS = Mossad.

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Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative news / independent media site The Freedom Articles and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com (FaceBook here), writing on many aspects of truth and freedom, from exposing aspects of the worldwide conspiracy to suggesting solutions for how humanity can create a new system of peace and abundance.

Minor Editing by Global Research

Notes:

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYONiyG-CZk

http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0bc_1448229854

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43085.htm

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/culturehousedaily/2014/09/the-four-wheel-drive-is-to-isis-what-the-longbow-was-to-the-english-at-agincourt/

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-15/how-texas-plumbers-truck-wound-isis-hands

http://www.activistpost.com/2014/09/probing-site-intelligence-group.html

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aNUm0Z_lXs

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06DAMASCUS5399_a.html

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxs7yog_CjM

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/us-pilots-confirm-obama-admin-blocks-75-percent-of-isis-strikes/

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnjnJvQXPz

No Joy in a World at War

December 27th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Joy to the world is a mirage — during the holiday season and throughout the year.

Reality is polar opposite in US war theaters. Post-9/11 alone, millions died. Countless millions more suffer from injuries, displacement, lack of essentials to life and despair.

Who’s celebrating amidst mass slaughter and destruction? What joy exists along side human misery on an appalling scale?

Who’s enjoying a winter wonderland upon a midnight clear in times of endless war, human suffering and injustice?

How can the worst of all possible worlds be joyous for countless tens of millions in US theaters of war and by other means?

Where’s the joy in growing poverty, unemployment, and mass underemployment in America and other Western societies?

Hypocrisy, not democracy defines how they’re governed — increasingly totalitarian, plutocratic, and debauched, democracy of, by, and for the privileged few alone.

On Chicago’s mean winter streets, homeless military veterans and countless others unable to afford shelter huddle in doorways, on benches, along the city’s upscale Magnificent Mile, and elsewhere, hoping passers-by will offer loose change to help them make it through another day.

An uncaring nation doesn’t give a damn about its most disadvantaged — its discretionary revenue going mainly for militarism, warmaking, corporate handouts, and tax breaks for the rich.

A nation permanently at war on humanity at home and abroad hurdles recklessly toward full-blown tyranny —  on the phony pretext of protecting national security at a time its only threats are invented.

Bipartisan hardliners running things threaten everyone everywhere — during the holiday season and all other times of the year.

They’re the mortal enemy of peace, equity and justice, of speech, press and academic freedoms — all of the above eroding or nonexistent to make the world safe for wealth, power and privilege.

Where’s the joy in a world perpetually at war under police state rule enforcing state terror on nonbelievers, in carving up whole continents for profit, in seeking dominance by brute force, in believing mass casualties are a small price to pay for pursuing imperial goals.

Book of Matthew passages, saying “(b)lessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth…Blessed are the merciful…the pure of heart…the peacemakers” ignore a violent, chaotic, merciless world with no signs of change.

Festiveness is meaningless when survival is at stake, when the American way tramples on the rights of ordinary people at home and abroad, when mass incarceration replaced freedom, when impoverished US inner cities resemble Occupied Palestine, when killer cops operate with impunity, when plunder is considered economic development, when obscene wealth for the few comes at the expense of the vast majority.

Where is the joy in a world ravaged by pain, torment, and anguish, where life and liberty are threatened, where governance of, by, and for the privileged few alone comes at the expense of most others.

That’s the state of things in the US, the West, and most other countries — unsafe and unfit to live in for their ordinary people during the holiday season and throughout the year.

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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 The Unz Review

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US Congress Approves Legislation to Wage a Hybrid “Humanitarian War” on Venezuela?

December 27th, 2019 by Nino Pagliccia

Last December 16 both houses in the US approved the appropriation bill to be signed by president Trump. Aside from the mind-boggling amount of $1.4 trillion that was approved in total our interest was in looking at the details concerning Venezuela.

A press release issued by the organization Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) is quite misleading in its over optimism suggesting that the appropriations bill “rejects the use of force in Venezuela and endorses a negotiated solution to the country’s crisis”. Another interpretation may be more realistic.

The full bill of 1773 pages includes a section about Venezuela. The first reference to the country is to state that “not less than $30 million shall be made available for democracy programs for Venezuela” and that the funds “shall be made available for assistance for communities in countries supporting or otherwise impacted by refugees from Venezuela, including Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Curacao, and Trinidad and Tobago”. It is not possible to know if this is above the previously reported $52 million announced by Mark Green, the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) last September. To make it more confusing the same report states that this “is in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars already committed by the US to support the more than 4 million vulnerable Venezuelans who have fled the country’s crisis.”

The 50-page-long section of the bill that codifies legislation about Venezuela is titled ‘‘Venezuela Emergency Relief, Democracy Assistance, and Development Act of 2019’’ or ‘‘VERDAD Act of 2019’’.

The legislation co-sponsored by senators Robert Menendez and Marco Rubio, was introduced last April in the Senate, and later referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. That same April self-appointed interim president Juan Guaidó staged (another) coup at La Carlota air base in eastern Caracas and called for the military to rise up against Maduro in the hope that the military would defect in mass and join him. The timing of the legislation and the attempted coup may have been carefully planned to coincide, but the coup never happened.

Aside from the $30 million for democracy programs, the VERDAD Act authorises a whopping $400 million for fiscal year 2020 to carry out “humanitarian relief” activities such as humanitarian assistance to individuals and communities in Venezuela and humanitarian aid to Venezuelans and hosting communities in neighboring countries. The US Secretary of State is mandated to provide within 180 days an update to the Venezuela humanitarian assistance strategy in coordination with USAID. Aside from this proviso, the allocation of the expenditures is very vague and leaves the door open to any interpretation or act of faith. For instance, it is not obvious that humanitarian assistance from the US can be provided within Venezuela. What then?

The legislation with the misnomer VERDAD, which means TRUTH in Spanish, is a repetition of untruths to justify the need to provide humanitarian relief. It has the standard US government recognition for the president of the National Assembly Juan Guaidó who was “sworn in” (read, self-appointed) as interim president on January 23, 2019 following the “fraudulent” (read, not suitable to the US) election of May 20, 2018. It further states the US full support for the International Contact Group on Venezuela (European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Uruguay), the OAS and the Lima Group (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Saint Lucia). Relevant comparison here is the almost 120 countries that have recognised the Maduro government.

Moreover, the VERDAD Act calls for “new presidential election in Venezuela that complies with international standards” (read, accepted by the US), with international observers like the OAS (read, the organization that contributed to the military coup in Bolivia), and boosting “independent media outlets” (read, corporate media). To carry out this activity the bill grants an extra $17.5 million to the office of the Secretary of State.

In a nutshell we can safely say that the US government will make large amounts of US tax payers money available for regime change in Venezuela under the guise of “humanitarian relief” for a crisis that the US government created to start with.

The VERDAD Act of 2019 has nothing new that we had not heard or reported before with the exception, perhaps, of the statement referred to by WOLA, “Nothing in this title [Title I – Venezuela Assistance] may be construed as an authorization for the use of military force.” But that does not give any reassurance to Venezuelans because in a Hybrid Warfare scenario it is very easy to create a situation where new conditions – likely fabricated under the pretence of national security – may be used on a whim to trigger a military intervention.

Indeed, a Hybrid Warfare uses some means that are readily recognisable such as infowar, discredit of leadership, recognition of an opposition, implementation of sanctions, financial and economic blockade, among others. These have all been utilised in the case of Venezuela, and the VERDAD Act spells them out with a dollar amount. But there are many other means of a Hybrid Warfare to achieve regime change that are not announced or perceptible, at least not until we see the resulting impact. For instance, the triggering of protests and riots, the arming of the opposition, acts of sabotage, promises of bribery for treason, and others.

If the US premises that Nicolas Maduro is a dictator and that there is no democratic process in Venezuela are false in order to justify its ideological goal, how can we trust Washington’s accountability process in the management of those funds appropriated for “humanitarian relief”? Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to end the sanctions? What if those funds are used to co-opt other governments in the region, the Lima Group countries, the OAS, or to create a paid mercenary group such as that proposed by private security firm Blackwater to topple Maduro?

The ultimate question is, is the US government using its legislative power to legitimize a Hybrid Warfare against Venezuela with the VERDAD Act of 2019?

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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Activists gather in front of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, DC in March, 2019.

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Human Rights and Political Conflict in Cameroon: The Anglophone Secessionist State of “Ambazonia”

December 27th, 2019 by J. B. Gerald

On an ugliness scale of one to ten, if the U.S. Guantanamo prison is 7, the French military in Algeria 8, Pinochet’s controls of Chile 9, and the Inquisition 10, the severity, scale and number of Cameroon military human rights violations is possibly 4 and a half. Still, is the suffering of any victim ever forgotten.

The Republic of Cameroon continues to endure a low intensity conflict with its English minority. After Anglophone attorneys struck for better legal and civil rights in 2016 and were joined by teachers and students, there were arrests and some expectable government violence. The movement rekindled historical grievances and spread. In Anglophone regions armed militia began attacking government facilities and closing schools, kidnapping uncooperative teachers and students while the government military responded as militaries do. There are alleged war crimes by both sides.

English and French are languages imposed by colonial rule and an addition to the peoples’ tribal languages and vernacular pidgeon. The conflict of “English” and “French” concerns who controls the money, jobs, schools, laws. To some degree it is a conflict between power elites. It’s certainly of no help at all to the half a million Anglophones who have fled from their homes and are internally displaced. This is not a freedom struggle.

With the world public aware of the military’s human rights violations Cameroon’s President Biya (democratically elected by a substantial majority), was persuaded to negotiate with the Anglophone leaders. Anglophone militant leaders finding support outside the country speak with an authority that exceeds the power and numbers of their constituencies. An Anglophone secessionist state of “Ambazonia” has been declared on the border of Nigeria and includes Cameroon’s only oil refinery which is currently inoperable. The local militias do not want “their” oil sold by the state. Ambazonia’s militias and enforcers, the “Amba boys” are generally feared. A diverse rebel military is at war with Cameroon’s military.

Ambazonia is also likely to include the Bakassi peninsula oilfields, a resource rich section of coast abutting Nigeria assigned to Cameroon by the International Court of Justice in 2002 and with its own history of attempted secession (“The Republic of Bakassi”). The Peninsula had its own armed resistance movements. Negotiations between Nigeria and Cameroon were able to avoid war in 2006. The Peninsula’s Anglophone fishing people remain Nigerians but under the caretaking of Cameroon. Cameroon’s exploration and development of the Bakassi oilfields relied on the use of the country’s only oil refinery (Cameroon is the 12th largest African oil producer, Nigeria the first) it is quite possible that the current struggle for Anglophone rights has more to do with international oil interests than Cameroon’s languages.

President Biya’s efforts to appease the Anglophone cause include freeing many political prisoners as well as a willingness to negotiate anything but the breakup of the country. He has encouraged negotiations in preference to using military force. But the twenty percent Anglophone minority leadership is increasingly intransigent. Militant Anglophone forces have refused to negotiate without additional conditions, the freeing of leading political prisoners and withdrawal of Cameroon’s military forces from their regions. Now the government has passed legislation assigning the two predominantly Anglophone regions of the country “special status,” addressing issues of the judicial and educational systems raised by the strike, placing these and control of the regions’ cultural life in Anglophone hands. Anglophone militant leadership rejects the new plans saying it wants nothing less than full independence as initially represented by the declared state of “Ambazonia.” This would grant it control of and profit from sale of oil. This position makes negotiations difficult and is only tenable with foreign country support.

To the far North the Cameroon military tries to improve its response time as villages are attacked by Boko Haram raiders, from Nigeria usually. Following the killing of New Testament translator Angus Fung in Wum last September, Benjamin Tem was killed in his home October 20th. Both were involved in the project of translating the New Testament into the northern Cameroon language of Aghem. (1) In December by the 17th, Boko Haram killed seven Camerounais Christians and took twenty-one boys and girls age 12 to 21 prisoner.(2)Last November 6th Boko Haram attacked a Christian church in Moskota killing a former pastor and a deaf child. Others escaped as the church was destroyed. Much of the village was burned after its food supplies were removed. The motive for the Boko Haram attacks is guessed to be part of a program to eliminate Christians and so move the region toward the rebirth of the Sokoto Caliphate which the British destroyed some centuries ago. (3) Boko Haram is also attacking Christians in neighboring Nigeria and Chad.

Christians in the region are under a threat of genocide which NGO reports on human rights violations in Cameroon strangely but consistently ignore. Fortunately the government is making some effort to protect Christian villages. And there is a U.N. presence. Despite Anglophone leadership’s orders to close schools, UNICEF reports that school attendance for students in the Northwest and Southwest (Anglophone) regions increased from 4% last September to a current 38.49%, while teachers working rose from 2% to 30%. (4)

The gears of very large machinery are turning but risk crushing the lives of the Anglophone community.

To remember accounts of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire would write of the “third force” moving among the catastrophic events. There are accounts of militia away from the cities, young men with new cellphones, modern communications and functioning cellphone services.

Several other things seem strange or out of place here. The Anglophone diaspora’s representatives are well connected. With exception the wealthy and privileged are allowed to become the diaspora while a low income and oppressed population stays at home or joins the half a million current refugees in Cameroon.

The human rights atrocities of the Eastern Congo took many years to be noticed by the world public while millions died. In Cameroon alleged human rights violations have been raised repeatedly with a death toll of three thousand since the attorney strike of 2016. The U.S. cut military aid to Cameroon’s armed forces due to reports of human rights abuses. This may have simply been an excuse as part of the professed U.S. policy change to withdraw troops throughout the continent. Some Anglophones attempt to blame government forces for the destruction of government built hospitals and schools. In poor communities people are not likely to burn their own hospitals, or schools, or community centers. These policies are made by the elite. Anglophone leadership has forbidden state education to proceed and so closed down regional schools damaging a generation of Anglophone youth. Any teachers and students standing for their right to education are endangered.

When a government hospital serving an Anglophone region is burned down, the report goes into a file collected by a University of Toronto’s “Database of Atrocities on Cameroon’s Anglophone Crisis,” as in the instance of the burning of Muyuka District Hospital at the end of March(5): the event is verified by the database which avoids assessing responsibility for this attack. The report’s material unrealistically accuses the “terrorist Republic of Cameroun military.” Reports of atrocities are submitted anonymously. Toronto teams in this effort with a variety of English, U.S. and former Commonwealth universities. Not one of them is Francophone.

This kind of information collection is usually the domain of the United Nations. It is unclear just who will control or censor the data collected by the University of Toronto. The public will have access to news reports from global media sources such as Deutsch Welle and Voice of America. For instance, currently the Separatists are kidnapping election candidates for government positions in Anglophone areas. (6) Neither corporate media nor NGOs point out that there is no indication at all of consensus or democracy in the management of the Anglophone policies.

An important information source for troubles in Cameroon is the International Crisis Group,(7) providing verifiable information with good depth, continuity and minimal slanting, except in the areas it neglects, such as tribal identifications or factors of income. Its faults as an information source reflect the wealth of its donors (such as Canada, France, the Henry Luce Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund etc.), and lack of noticeable African representation.

In a previous essay(8) I’ve noted the extensive joint report of Canada’s Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa & Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights on “Cameroon’s Unfolding Catastrophe, Evidence of Human Rights Violations and Crimes against Humanity.”(9) The report discusses the crisis in Cameroon as if unaware of the country’s war with ISIS and the government’s attempts to protect the Christian villagers from slaughters by foreign forces. The report provides a source for the International Crisis Group as well as Lawyers Rights Watch Canada which I’ve resigned from to maintain impartiality. The CHRDA founder, an attorney among those initiating the Cameroon Anglophone lawyers strike of 2016 which precipitated the current struggle for Anglophone Independence in Cameroon, spoke for Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada, in General Debate at the UN Human Rights Council, September 13th, 2019.

I find LRWC’s recent “Open Letter to President Macron about Human Rights Abuses in Cameroon,”(10) unwise in attributing to France the power to arrange Cameroon’s submission to Swiss-led talks. It denigrates African independence and is a disingenuous request since objections to any serious negotiations rest with the Anglophone leaders. A line – “We trust that France does not want to be complicit in another genocide in Africa after Rwanda,” is ominous. The letter is signed by fifty primarily Anglophone experts on genocide and human rights, and NGOs, of various stature and weight including Lawyers Rights Watch Canada.

The difference of language is being used to remind groups of their difference, to insist on their difference, to occasion casualties and destruction of the social fabric, for more casualties, and I worry for the survival of the Anglophone community in Cameroon.

With a thought to history, in the 1961 UN administered plebiscite of British Cameroons the south voted to join what is now the Republic of Cameroon. The north which was heavily Muslim, voted to join Nigeria. Some attributed the vote in the south to the people’s difficulties in getting along with the Igbo peoples who lived on the Nigerian side of the border. In the late Sixties, the forced or contrived secession from Nigeria of the Igbo state of Biafra was attempted, right across the border from the Anglophones’ current creation of “Ambazonia.” Biafra’s formation and secession as an independent state led to the deaths of possibly two million Biafrans by the extremes of starvation. The British as primary supporters of the victorious Nigerian government were vulnerable to charges of genocide. France’s interests generally supported Biafra. I think the Anglophone minority in Cameroon is much too small a minority to risk such adamant stands – without substantial foreign support. So this attempt at secession should be looked at very carefully. If you consider what the ‘game plan’ of the major powers is with yet another resource-rich sliver of Africa, and what the independence of an Anglophone region could mean for the lives of its people, the amount of pure hatred for Africans is astounding.

A genocide warning continues then for the Anglophone population of Cameroon. Their adversary isn’t necessarily the Francophone government but rather a consensus of non-African states, corporations, individuals, motivated by greed or the arrogance of technological superiority (perhaps these have become the same), who have openly and covertly managed country after African country into the abyss of insecurity, conflict, loss of life, to be followed by corporate pillage.

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Notes

1. “Second Bible Translator Killed in Northern Cameroon,” October 24, 2019, Persecution.

2. “Boko Haram Targets Cameroonian Christians,” Dec. 17, 2019, Persecution.

3. “Retired Pioneer Pastor and Others Killed in Latest Boko Haram Attacks,” Nov. 16, 2019, Persecution.

4. “UNICEF Cameroon Humanitarian Situation Report, November 2019,” UN Childrens Fund, reliefweb.

5. “BREAKING NEWS-MUYUKA HOSPITAL BURNT DOWN BY LRC THUGS AFTER THAT OF KUMBA,” YouTube: TOP10NEWS, March 30/31, 2019, Open Source Investigations Lab, Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law; “Universities to track atrocities in Anglophone Cameroon,” Dec. 11, 2019, DW; “A Household Name in Cameroon,” April 24, 2019, International Crisis Group.

6. “Cameroon: Separatists Kidnap Candidates to Protest Election,” Moki Edwin Kindzeka, Dec. 17, 2019, VOA.

7. “A Household Name in Cameroon,” April 24, 2019, International Crisis Group.

8. “Genocide Warnings for Three African States,” J.B.Gerald, Sept. 17, 2019, nightslantern.ca.

9. “Cameroon’s Unfolding Catastrophe, Evidence of Human Rights Violations and Crimes against Humanity,” June 3, 2019, Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa & Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

10. “Cameroon: Open Letter to President Macron about Human Rights Abuses in Cameroon,” November 19, 2019, Lawyers Rights Watch Canada.

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Trump Threatens Syria: Will POTUS Come to the Rescue of Al-Qaeda Terrorists in Idlib?

December 27th, 2019 by Miri Wood

Trump wished the Syrian Arab Republic a belated Merry Christmas by tweeting yet another threat, warning the Syrian Armed Forces not to liberate Idlib from the approximately 10,000 al Qaeda terrorists who have occupied this area of the country, since the beginning of the crisis.

Surely the 45th President of the USA knows these stats, supported even by the same UN that also wails for al Qaeda on a regular basis. Surely Trump heard Special Presidential Envoy to the alleged anti-Daesh Global Coalition, Brett McGurk when he emphatically stated that  Idlib province is the largest al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.

The Trump threat comes on the heels of his signing the new NDAA law, which includes the Qatar-funded Caesar Hoax legislation, unprecedented peak colonialism which attempts to forbid Syria from protecting its citizenship from terrorists armed by NATO, within its own borders. The nasty Trump threat comes as Syria militarily enforces the Astana Agreement, already liberating more than 30 villages from the criminally insane al Qaeda savages.

fascist-coalition

Perhaps Trump is seeking a bump in his approval ratings; the only time that he was revered, cheered, practically fellated, was when he bombed Syria for al Qaeda, based on the criminal lies of the British illegal whose medical license was permanently revoked due to his terrorism ties, via fake news! CNN, on 7 April 2017.

British undoctor illegal, Shajul Islam was the source of the Khan Sheikhoun chemical hoax, 4 April 2017.

In the tweet where the POTUS threatens to again use the US military as al Qaeda’s second air force, Trump again gave his support to the caliph wannabe, rabid Erdogan, lying that the leader of Turkey — the country through which most of the 350,000 foreign killers entered, and without stepping on any of the almost 200,000 land mines still not cleared — was working to stop the carnage (“carnage” is a word he likes, having used it in his inaugural speech, when he promised that ”American carnage” would stop, though soon after, he flexed those “American carnage” muscles, bombing two bridges in Syria).

Though Trump has been consistent in supporting Erdogan’s war crimes against Syria — in late January 2017 he announced his support for Turkey’s invasion and occupation of Jarabulus — it is possible that the kissy faces in the tweet were meant as a request for Turkey to stop recycling its al Qaeda militias from Syria into Libya.

The above quote from Laureate Najib Mahfouz is appropriate for the tripartite aggressors running the UN; it is also applicable to Trump’s menacing tweet, given that two prominent members of al Qaeda are on the US Treasury Department’s SDN list. Terrorist al Jolani has been designated since 2013 and also has a ten million dollar bounty on his head (again, the US taxpayer pays and pays: Pays for the weapons to arm takfiri in Syria, pays for the bombing of Syria, pays for the 501(c) ‘charities’ and think tanks that function as press liaisons for al Qaeda in Syria.).

terrorist-trump

Jolani donned Trump wig 7 April 2017.

Nusra Front Commander Jolani Meets Commanders of FSA Moderate Rebels in Idlib with help of Erdogan

Nusra Front Commander Jolani Meets Commanders of FSA Moderate Rebels in Idlib with help of Erdogan. [Trump does not know this?]

Saudi Muhaysini is also on the SDN list.

al Muhaysini is on the US Specially Designated Nationals list. Here he is with child soldiers he has trained.

Despite the ongoing economic terrorism inflicted on Syria, by the Trump regime, terrorists continue to have exceptional telecommunications access, courtesy of Trump’s pal, Erdogan. Saudi illegal and designee Muhaysini has recently condemned Christmas celebrations, enjoyed throughout the Syrian Arab Republic, except in al Qaeda occupied areas of Idlib.

How very odd that the great Christian President Donald J. Trump wishes to protect these violent Al Qaeda criminals.

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Erdogan Recycles Idlib Terrorists from Syria to Libya, Trump Forces Relocated to Northern Iraq

December 27th, 2019 by Arabi Souri

Libya is the next destination for the anti-Islamic Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood terrorists loyal to the Turkish pariah Erdogan, meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Army gives the terrorists 24 hours to leave Maraat Noman.

Erdogan is now shifting to North Africa, there’s oil and there’s a new task assigned to the Zionist stooge: Cut off the road for China, keep Europe under check, and weaken Russia in that part of the world.

Mad at the Russian President Putin who didn’t notify him of the swift Syrian Arab Army operation in southeastern Idlib, Erdogan lashing out at Russia and trying his luck with the remnant of the international Muslim Brotherhood organization elsewhere. The terrorists who came to Syria and became part of the ‘Syrian Moderate Opposition’ will now be recycled into ‘Libyan Moderate Opposition.’

The Syrian leadership has waited more than 1 year and 1 month before deciding to implement the Astana Agreement by force, the agreement signed between Erdogan and Putin should have secured the vital arteries of M5 and M4 and reopened them between Aleppo and northeast Syria and the coastal side, and also with the southern provinces of Damascus and Daraa through Homs and Hama. These highways are literally the artery of the Syrian economy.

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad decided to not give Erdogan any further excuse after the latter started his military invasion into the northern parts of Syria. In a message to the Syrian Arab Army units positioned in southern Idlib, Dr. Assad gave them order to deploy north and northeast: ‘Every inch of Syria should be liberated.’

After swiftly penetrating the territories and cleaning more than 40 villages and towns from al-Qaeda Levant (aka HTS and Nusra Front), the SAA is on the outskirts of the strategic town of Ma’rat al-Numan.

The Syrian Arab Army gave the terrorists in control of the city a 24 hours ultimatum to ‘leave or will never’. Tomorrow is a new day.

The following report by the Syrian Ikhbariya news channel provides an overview of the situation and also mentions the airlifting of Trump forces from northeast Syria to northern Iraq:

Transcript of the English translation of the above report:

The Turkish occupation forces withdrew groups of their terrorist organizations from the northern countryside of Hasakeh in preparation for their transfer to Libya, these forces continue to withdraw groups of their mercenaries from Ras al-Ain and its surroundings in the northern countryside of Hasakeh at the rate of approximately 60 terrorists from each terrorist group to send the terrorists to Libya through Turkish territory to get them into the battles that are taking place there.

The Turkish occupation forces have moved about 100 terrorists from Jaysh Al-Islam organization from their areas of deployment in the northern countryside of Hasakeh, to use them in the battles in Idlib’s southern countryside, in an attempt to support the terrorist organizations that have collapsed in front of the Syrian Arab Army.

On another front, two US coalition helicopters landed at the illegal Kharab al-Jir airport in al-Malikia countryside near the Iraqi border and withdrew US officers towards northern Iraq.

Since the beginning of the Turkish aggression on Syrian territory, the United States occupation forces transported hundreds of their soldiers and military equipment from several areas of Syria to Iraq through illegal corridors and airports.

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At first, NATO invaded Libya and destroyed the state there turning it into a hub to export anti-Islamic Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood takfiri terrorists, it used the terrorists in a number of countries notably in Syria. Now after their defeat in Syria, it’s not possible to move on the previous plan and deploy them into Iran, that failed with the Iranians foiling the ‘protests’ plot there, and in Iraq which turned out more difficult than expected, and in Lebanon where the Hezb Allah – President Aoun’s alliance turned the tide against the plotter.

The only vulnerable place where the US can still stretch its last muscles is back to North Africa, where it can endanger the Mediterranean and cause endless worries for the EU, the AU, AL, and the rest of the world. (EU: European Union, AU: African Union, AL: what’s left of the Arab League). Not to serve any interests of the US or its people, on the contrary, it’s creating endless enemies for them while impoverishing them, it’s to serve the same old project: Greater Israel.

The ropes jumper who played Europe and Russia is a faithful servant for those who appointed him in a project they still think is viable, Erdogan also still thinks he can have a place in it. The mystery remains: Why did Putin save Erdogan from a confirmed end in 2016?

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Libya: Haftar’s Air Force Commander Drops Bombshell Confession: Jets from Egypt’s President Sisi, “French Specialists” Provide Support

December 27th, 2019 by Yeni Safak

GR Editor’s Note: This report by Yeni Şafak, a conservative Turkish daily newspaper has not been corroborated by other news sources.

New developments in war-torn Libya have come to light since the capture of Amar Youssef Al-Jakam, Assistant Air Force Commander of Haftar’s forces, who has spilled the beans of the extent of international actors’ involvement in the country’s civil war.

Al-Jakam, who was captured after his plane was downed during a mission for east Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, stated that French soldiers provided technological support, while Egyptian putschist leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi deployed F-16 warplanes to the African nation.

“A team made up of French specialists is conducting reconnaissance, tapping and logistics activities,” he said.

Noting that Sisi deployed warplanes such as the F-16 fighter jet and the Rafale found in the Egyptian military’s inventory, he confessed that these planes took off from the Al-Barani air base in Egypt and struck targets in Misrata and Tripoli.

Russian mercenaries belonging to the Wagner paramilitary group support Haftar’s forces in Tarhuna, southeast of Tripoli, providing aerial backup and using jamming systems, according to Al-Jakam.

“Emirati officers operate all drones from Al-Kharouba base; in the area of al-Majra, located 25 kilometers east of Benghazi, they have their own operation command,” he said.

Turkey backs Libya’s internationally recognized government and has said it could deploy troops there if it receives such a request. Libya’s Tripoli-based government has been fighting off a months-long offensive by Khalifa Haftar’s forces based in the east of the country. Haftar’s Libyan National Army has received support from Russia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

In April, Haftar’s forces launched a military campaign to capture Tripoli from the GNA but have so far failed to progress beyond the city’s outskirts.

According to UN data, over 1,000 people have been killed since the start of the operation and more than 5,000 injured.

Since the ouster of late leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, two seats of power have emerged in Libya: one in eastern Libya supported mainly by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and another in Tripoli, which enjoys UN and international recognition. [as well as support by Turkey]

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Boeing Executive in Charge of 737 MAX Legal Response Has Been Fired

December 27th, 2019 by Zero Hedge

Boeing shareholders just can’t catch a break.

Barely three days after now-former Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s termination at the hands of the company’s board of directors, another top-ranking company official has retired been pushed out.

According to a press release published shortly after American markets closed on Thursday, Boeing revealed that the company’s top legal official, former federal judge J Michael Luttig, has decided to “retire” after just over six months in a position that was created by Muilenburg specifically for Luttig.

Here’s more from the press release:

The Boeing Company announced today that J. Michael Luttig, 65, valued Counselor and Senior Advisor to the Boeing Board of Directors, has informed the Board of his long-considered retirement at year end.

Luttig, who served as Boeing’s General Counsel from 2006 until assuming his current responsibilities in May 2019, has been managing legal matters associated with the Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accidents, and advising the Board on strategic matters.

Boeing interim President and CEO Greg Smith praised Luttig in a quote included with Boeing’s press release.

“Judge Luttig is one of the finest legal minds in the Nation and he has expertly and tirelessly guided our company as General Counsel, Counselor, and Senior Advisor,” said Interim Boeing President and CEO Greg Smith. “We are deeply indebted to Judge Luttig for his extraordinary service to Boeing over these nearly 14 years, especially through this past, challenging year for our company,” said Smith. “The Board and I will always be grateful for the Judge’s remarkable service to The Boeing Company – and I will personally always be grateful for his friendship.”

According to the Seattle Times, during his brief tenure at Boeing, Luttig assembled a deeply connected defense team of outside lawyers to represent Boeing executives and employees in a criminal investigation launched by federal authorities after the second 737 MAX crash, which occurred just minutes after a Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 took off from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport on March 10, 2019.

Luttig’s appointment signaled that Boeing was planning to aggressively combat any criminal charges or civil lawsuits tied to the two 737 crashes, which killed 346 people, including all of the passengers and crew.

Luttig was named to the newly created position in May, as the Chicago-based company faced an onslaught of lawsuits and a federal criminal investigation arising from the crashes. Until then, Luttig had served as Boeing’s general counsel since 2006.

His duties regarding the 737 MAX will now fall to Brett Gerry, who replaced Luttig as general counsel.

Luttig’s appointment to the new position last spring reflected the complex and costly fallout stemming from the crashes, coming on the heels of statements indicating Boeing planned to take an aggressive stance in responding to lawsuits and any potential criminal allegations

The Department of Justice, aided by the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General and the FBI, is investigating the design and certification process for the MAX to try and determine whether the FAA’s decision to certify the 737 MAX 8 amounted to criminal negligence.

It’s possible that Luttig’s departure is simply a natural consequence of Muilenburg’s ouster. It’s also possible that his departure is tied to recent revelations that Boeing withheld critical internal text messages from the FAA.

Still, given Luttig’s crucial role within Boeing’s legal department, something about the timing of Luttig’s departure doesn’t sit right.And with Boeing shares on track to finish the year above the 2019 lows reached in March, we imagine shareholders will soon be asking themselves: ‘what does this guy know that I don’t?’

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Strikers Call to Step Up Class Struggle Against France’s President Macron

December 27th, 2019 by Alex Lantier

The ongoing mass transit and public sector strike which is paralyzing much of transport in France to protest Macron’s pension cuts entered its fourth week today. Despite attempts by the union bureaucracies to impose a “Christmas truce” by suspending all action beyond the local level, strikers continue to march and protest against the pension cuts, knowing that they have a broad majority of the population behind them.

Yesterday, as strike committee meetings of rail and mass transit workers voted to continue the action, strikers spoke to WSWS journalists in Paris. They demanded stepped-up action against Macron in order to definitively crush the state’s ability to impose such socially regressive cuts on the workers. At the same time, they all stressed workers’ growing mistrust towards the trade union bureaucracies, who are negotiating with the state behind the backs of the workers.

Raphaël, a machinist at the Paris mass transit network (RATP), said:

“This is what we call a rank-and-file protest. Yes, you will see some trade union stickers here and there, but for three-quarters of us, it has gone beyond the question of union membership, it is really the workers who are speaking. Today the rank-and-file called this demonstration. We are sending a message to the government and the union heads: there will be no holiday truce.”

Raphaël stressed that workers are in a struggle against not only the state but also its maneuvers with the union bureaucracy:

“Today we are protesting because we do not want this cut. It is absolutely not that the union leaders called these strikes, it was very much on our own initiative. We did it ourselves, as worker-citizens. So we are sending a message to both the union bureaucrats and to the government: no, this package will not pass. We will not tolerate it, and we will not tolerate you.”

Such sentiments underscore the basic need for workers to form their own committees of action, independent of the unions. With workers in France entering into a political struggle with the state and with the major banks and financial aristocracy around the world, it is critical for workers to be able to unify these struggles and organize them independently of such nationally-based bureaucracies, which are closely tied to Macron.

Raphaël stressed that as they strike, RATP workers are conscious of representing the interests of workers and of the broad majority of the French population. Beyond a tiny majority of super-rich individuals, he noted, no one will benefit from the reform:

“If you look at everything, the passage to a system of pensions by ‘points’ of indeterminate value, encouraging retirement investment accounts, increasing the pension age—it is not good for the French citizen, for the worker.”

Above all, strikers are increasingly conscious that they are participating in an international resurgence of class struggle that is exposing the great objective conflicts within society. After decades in which austerity policies were imposed across Europe after the Stalinist restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union in 1991, the working class is launching its first major, international counteroffensive.

“Of course we are defending our people, our wages, our conditions in the entire world,” Raphaël said. “It is a free market policy that did not start yesterday. It has lasted 20, 30 years. And yes, for now, the wealthy have won. But we also can win … We get up each morning, by the sweat of our brow, and we all go work. We are honest people, we make the economy run, we pay our taxes, we buy things, all that.”

Asked about this international resurgence—with auto and teachers strikes in America and Poland, and mass protests against dictatorships in Algeria, Iraq, Bolivia and Chile—Raphaël stressed that the awareness of this broader international struggle was steeling workers in France.

He said,

“We produce, produce, and we are to receive less even as we produce more. After a while, it is just not possible anymore. So I support workers in the entire world. I know already that what happened with the ‘yellow vests’ over the last year has had an impact on the entire world. I know that the strikes we are carrying out are reported all the way to South America, we get many videos from South American rail workers who support us and tell us not to give up, because you are showing the way … So we do not want to give up.”

A class confrontation is rapidly emerging between the workers and the Macron government, which has declared that it will ram its pension cuts through Parliament in February. In this struggle, the only viable strategy for the workers is to struggle to bring down Macron, appealing to the solidarity of workers around the world for a fight to transfer state power to bodies of struggle created by the working class. In France and worldwide, the dynamic of the class struggle is drawing workers into a revolutionary confrontation with the financial aristocracy.

Raphaël stressed the anger building among the workers at the class arrogance of Macron, a former investment banker, and of ruling circles more broadly.

He said,

“They lack respect, we have seen this for some time in the way they speak about workers and French citizens as a general rule. They call us toothless people, undisciplined primitives. Macron said there are many illiterates and alcoholics. This is class arrogance. Listen to Gérald Darmanin (a member of Macron’s party), who advises him to get closer to the people, to see people who drink beer and eat with their hands. We have now had enough of this.”

Pascal, a photographer and “yellow vest,” also stressed the class arrogance of French ruling circles, including the union bureaucrats. “No, they did not help us,” he said. “The union bureaucracies now they are quote-unquote calling the ‘yellow vests’ to come support the strike. But … the unions in fact do not really want to hear anything about us. There is a class rejection on their part. The ‘yellow vests’ are really as low as they are willing to go speak to, they say we are violent, that we are neo-fascists, and on and on.”

Pascal stressed his deep distrust of the “dialog” between the state and employers’ organizations with the union leaders: “It is a power game, individuals trying to get power. After they all end up owing each other things and they cut deals. Now it is the rank-and-file, the citizens and the workers to participate in decision-making.”

Raphaël explained,

“I am a worker, I started working at sixteen. Now I do not intend to continue working until I am 66, 68, 70. That is inappropriate. I want a decent retirement and to have time to enjoy it, as well. We are not here just to work endlessly for a few people who will take all the wealth that we produce.”

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Video: Russian Airstrikes Wipe Out Convoy of Turkish-backed Terrorists

December 27th, 2019 by South Front

By the evening of December 25, government forces have repelled a counter-attack by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its Turkish-backed allies on the town of Jarjnaz in southern Idlib and have resumed their advance on the town of Maarat al-Numan.

The militant counter-attack started on December 24 evening with at least two suicide bombing attacks on positions of the Syrian Army. Despite this, the terrorists were not able to break the army defense line. Pro-militant sources claim that they destroyed at least 5 units of military equipment belonging to the army and killed over 12 soldiers. Despite this, Idlib militants appear to be unable to stop the army advance in an open battle.

On December 25, the Russian Aerospace Forces bombed a military convoy of Ahrar al-Sham moving near the town of Kafr Nubl in southern Idlib, according to reports by Arab media. The terrorist group’s General Commander Abu Jaber al-Sheikh was reportedly injured in the strike. Several other influential Ahrar al-Sham commanders and members were killed.

Ahrar al-Sham is the radical Turkish-backed militant group. It is the core of the pro-Turkish militant alliance known as the National Front for Liberation.

Leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Abu Muhammed al-Jolani released an official video statement on the recent developments in southern Idlib. The terrorist blamed Iran and Russia for the recent setbacks of the “revolution” in Greater Idlib and threatened the region with consequences.

He also claimed that his forces achieved many of their goas against the “regime” (mostly destroying Syrian economy and killing civilians) and is about to achieve the victory. However, Russia and Iran stand on their way. The Russian motivation, according to al-Jolani, is to restore “the glory of the USSR”. It is interesting to note that this remark reflects the mainstream propaganda that often paints the current situation around the world as the Second Cold War and Russia as the USSR 2.0.

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It’s Something About the U.S. Trumps

December 27th, 2019 by Jan Oberg

It’s something about their eyes – and not only that they are reading.

It’s something about the main celebration – the longest sequence – of the military, armed forces, police and all in law enforcement, all in uniform and all around the world.

It’s something about soldiers being shown when the word “peace” is mentioned.

It’s something about that flag on his lapel and the American flag-coloured outfit.

It’s something about the underlying theme of goodness versus evil – America represented by the Red Cross.

It’s something about giving aid rather than creating the good society where nobody needs aid.

It’s something about not saying anything about the future but seeing only six days ahead, visionlessly.

It’s something about these two having no contact with each other, joylessly.

It’s something about their fixed, starry gaze that reveals that they don’t speak from their hearts but perform their role.

Yes, what is that something?

See and listen here to The First Lady’s speech to the armed forces.

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Defend the Silao Seven! Fired Mexican GM Workers

December 27th, 2019 by World Socialist Web Site

The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter urges workers to support the General Motors workers at the Silao, Mexico factory who were fired for supporting the 40-day strike by GM workers in the United States in September and October.

In the weeks leading up to the walkout, GM sought to increase production at the Silao complex, where 6,000 workers manufacture the company’s most profitable vehicles, the Silverado and Sierra pickup trucks, for $2.25 an hour. But GM’s strikebreaking plans were disrupted when the Silao workers refused to accept speedup and forced overtime. Fearing that resistance would spread to other GM plants in Mexico, corporate executives in Detroit quickly shut down the Silao plant.

For their courageous act of solidarity, GM and the gangster-ridden Confederation of Mexican Workers union tracked down the leaders of the rebellion and fired them. The victimized workers included several who had more than 20 years of seniority at GM.

After the end of the strike, GM refused to reinstate the workers. Exploiting the economic hardship workers would face without a job or an income, GM pressured several to accept “voluntary” severance packages instead of fighting their terminations. The remaining workers have been blacklisted by GM and area employers have refused to hire them.

The Silao workers have set up a defense fund to support their families and pay for legal assistance while they fight to get their jobs back. In an open letter to US workers, the Silao workers, who called their group the “Generating Movement,” have appealed for support.

To donate: visit https://www.paypal.me/israelcervante, select a currency and amount and enter your payment information.

Left to right: Mauricio Negrete Pérez, Arturo Martínez and Israel Cervantes Córdova

The following is their statement:

We, the group of fired workers at General Motors Silao Complex who joined hand in hand and strongly supported our fellow workers in the strike at General Motors in the United States, are continuing our struggle against the employer and our union leaders, resisting their pacts and alliance with the authorities. Our struggle is not over, and we are not willing to take a step back, which is why we are requesting your solidarity and your support for our defense fund. The economic situation is hitting us hard, and the main purpose we are asking for your help is to keep going, fighting for our reinstatement and for a democratic movement of workers at GM Silao.

The labor authorities in Mexico have not shown any willingness to address the lawsuits we have filed against the transnational corporation General Motors at the Silao Complex. Those same authorities have deals with the conciliation and arbitration boards to obstruct our lawsuits and close our path. That is why we request your support for our workers’ movement and our fight for the livelihood of those workers fired at General Motors Silao Complex.

In advance, we thank you for your solidarity and understanding.
We are still fighting!
For the international unity of workers at GM!
Not one step back!

Signed,
Dolores Israel Cervantes Córdova
Pilar de la Luz Torres Rosales
Ramón Rodríguez Gutiérrez
Arturo Martínez Fernández
Javier Martínez Mosqueda
Mauricio Negrete Pérez
María Guadalupe Ibarra Ramírez
Generating Movement

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The United Auto Workers union has not said a thing about the fired Mexican GM workers. That is because the corrupt criminals who run the UAW fear nothing more than US, Canadian and Mexican workers coming together to fight the attack on jobs, wages and conditions that all autoworkers confront. For years, the UAW depicted the Mexican workers as little more than industrial slaves who were supposedly stealing “American jobs.” But now it is clear that the Mexican workers, just as much as their US brothers and sisters, want to join together and fight the efforts by the corporations and the unions to pit workers against each other in a race to the bottom.

For 40 days, GM workers in the US fought on the picket lines. Far from unifying GM workers with Ford, Fiat Chrysler and other workers, in the US and internationally, the UAW deliberately isolated GM workers, put them on starvation-level strike pay, and then rammed through a concessions contract that will close plants, force out thousands of higher-paid workers and replace them with temps who, as one Lordstown worker said, “are treated no better than Mexican workers.”

Like the Silao workers, dozens of GM workers in US plants were also fired for “strike-related activity.” This includes 61-year-old Juan Gonzales, a Flint Assembly worker with more than 20 years at GM, who was terminated the first day back after the strike, allegedly for statements he made on social media. “They want to force those workers into poverty, just like us, in order to shut us up,” Juan told the Autoworker Newsletter. “We are all building the same cars for the same companies. These cars have parts from all over the world. We need to get together and unite no matter what country we are from.”

All over the world, workers increasingly understand that it is impossible to organize an effective strike, let alone a broader social movement against inequality and capitalist exploitation, without collaborating across national borders. Earlier this year, 70,000 auto parts and electronics workers in the maquiladora sweatshops in Matamoros, Mexico, revolted against the corrupt unions, carried out wildcat strikes to demand higher wages and shorter working hours, and marched to the US border to appeal to American workers to join their fight.

The Mexican workers stood up for American workers. Now it is the duty of American autoworkers to defend their courageous class brothers and sisters in Mexico. The fight to support these workers and demand their reinstatement will only strengthen US workers.

This means organizing independently of the UAW, which is nothing but a bribed tool of corporate management, and building rank-and-file factory committees, led by the most class conscious and militant workers, who are democratically elected and accountable to workers, not the profit interests of the corporations.

To fight the global strategy of the auto companies, workers need to reject the nationalism of the UAW, Trump and the Democrats, and adopt an international strategy to unify autoworkers around the world.

To donate: visit https://www.paypal.me/israelcervante, select a currency and amount and enter your payment information.

Who are the Silao Seven?

Dolores Israel Cervantes Córdova, 13 years at the plant, fired on August 28, 2019

After winning several acknowledgements for repair work in final assembly, Cervantes, an outspoken opponent of the company-controlled union, was fired after GM falsely claimed that he had failed a drug test. He used his own money to take an independent test, which proved that he had no drugs in his system. Afterwards, Cervantes refused to sign a “voluntary” severance package management told him to sign and instead decided to fight for reinstatement. “I have three children, one who is trying to go to the university, one who is in high school, and one in kindergarten,” Cervantes told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter. “I’m still paying for my home through Infonavit [state loan], while helping my 86-year-old mother and 83-year-old father.”

Pilar de la Luz Torres Rosales, 8 years at the plant, fired on September 13, 2019

Rosales, who was active in the militant Generating Movement, was fired by GM after she returned from a medical leave due to a shoulder injury she sustained at work. In a statement to US workers shortly after her firing, Rosales said, “I join you in your strike, fellow GM workers, to fight together and in support of each other against unjustified firings. Let’s do this through an independent workers’ commission and not through the same unions.”

Strikers at GM’s Flint Assembly plant

Ramón Rodríguez Gutiérrez, 23 years at the plant, fired on September 20, 2019

Before being terminated, Gutiérrez was a co-worker of Israel Cervantes in the same work area and one of the first participants in the militant workers group. “Two people depend on my income, my wife and a daughter who is studying in Irapuato, where we live,” Gutiérrez told the Autoworker Newsletter .

Arturo Martínez Fernández, 23 years at the plant, fired on September 20, 2019

Fernández was among those fired summarily the day after the Silao workers group announced they would oppose speed-ups and forced overtime in order to support the strike by US GM workers. “I worked in final repairs, paint and final processing. We worked in a shop in the back called the ‘fleet’ where we re-painted pieces, did ‘spots’ and the final repairs on any imperfections. I have five dependents: my wife, an 18-year-old son, a 13-year-old daughter, a 10-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter,” Fernández said.

Javier Martínez Mosqueda, 24 years at the plant, fired on September 24, 2019

Before being fired Mosqueda worked in the final assembly area and was a team leader of seven workers. Two supervisors began harassing him for organizing with other Silao workers in the Generating Movement group, compelling him to file a complaint. Rather than addressing his grievance, management demoted Mosqueda and sent him to an area of the plant with heavier workloads. “I was unable to move and stuck doing one single operation,” he said, adding that management’s aim was to force him to resign. Unable to break him, management fired Mosqueda after four weeks and the union refused to help him. That day, Mosqueda sent the following appeal to US workers, “Today, I’m laid off but in solidarity with you and your strike and my fellow GM workers in any part of the world. I’m convinced that we must fight together.” Since being terminated, Mosqueda has been unable to find another job because he has been blacklisted.

Mauricio Negrete Pérez, 21 years at the plant, fired on October 1, 2019

After years of discussions, Pérez and Israel Cervantes co-founded the militant rank-and-file group in April 2019 to break free from the company-controlled trade union. Pérez received several warnings from supervisors after he refused to work overtime during the GM strike in the US and was ultimately fired. “My activities in the plant were assisting the assembly people when they had issues with the machinery,” he told the Autoworker Newsletter. “As maintenance workers, we had to do preventative care on any day of the week, even Sundays and holidays. I’m from Salamanca, so I would wake up at 3:45 a.m. and return home at 7:30 p.m. I have two children. One is sick with a severe cognitive deficit. My wife and I need medical care, but we lost that right when I got fired.”

María Guadalupe Ibarra Ramírez, 8 years at the plant, fired on June 5, 2019

A member of the Generating Movement and an outspoken critic of GM and the company union, Ramírez was terminated without compensation while on medical leave for a severe back injury sustained when she picked up a heavy box in the transmission area. Ramírez worked in several areas of the Silao complex, including bodywork, general assembly, paint, machinery and transmissions. “They claimed there was no operational area where I could work and that they couldn’t relocate me since they are running 12-hour shifts,” she told the newsletter. “I’m the head of a household, in charge of two children and my mother and I’m now selling candies to cover part of the daily expenses.”

Silao GM complex

GM workers in US speak out to defend victimized Mexican workers

During the historic 40-day GM strike, workers on the picket lines in Flint, Detroit and Ft. Wayne, Indiana expressed their support for the fired Silao workers. A veteran Flint engine worker said, “I believe it’s going to be the workers of the world that have to unite against the corporations to protect ourselves. It’s not just the US anymore or the Canadian workers, it’s all of us in the same fight.”

A third-generation autoworker at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant said, “All my brothers and sisters in Mexico, we are all fighting for the same thing. We, American workers, are fighting for you who were fired to get your jobs back. We stand in solidarity with you.”

A worker at the Ft. Wayne, Indiana plant, which produces the same Silverado and Sierra pickup trucks as the Silao factory, said, “It is awesome that the Mexican workers took a stand with us. We are one, it’s one company and GM should treat everybody equally no matter what country we work in. The Mexican workers are trying to provide for their families too. We’re tired of being treated like crap no matter where we’re working, in the US or outside. It’s wrong.” Asked what she would say to the victimized Silao workers, she said, “Keep up the good fight. We are proud of you and thank you for taking a stand for us, and we will stand with you.”

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Bolsonaro in 2019: A Year of False Hope and Failures for Brazil

December 27th, 2019 by Paul Antonopoulos

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, accompanied by First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro, made a Christmas address to their country on Tuesday night. The address was just as comical as Bolsonaro’s year of failures, with the most interesting part being the president claiming that the year ended “without any denunciation of corruption.” No corruption scandals?

Perhaps he forgot that the Minas Gerais Electoral Public Prosecution Service prosecuted Tourism Minister Marcelo Álvaro Antônio and ten others on charges of setting up fake congressional candidates in Minas Gerais with the aim of collecting more public campaign funding. Even after the minister was indicted by the Federal Police and denounced, the government decided to keep him in government.

But more shockingly, as explained by David Miranda, all three of Bolsonaro’s politically active sons, along with his wife, have been implicated in corruption scandals. The most serious of these investigations is how senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of Jair, spearheaded a corruption racket during his 15 years as a Rio congressman, while maintaining links with ”The Untouchables,” a notorious death squad called Rio’s “most lethal and secretive phalanx of hired guns.” The Bolsonaro family has well-documented social ties to members of Rio’s mafia, yet the Brazilian president has the audacity to claim during Tuesday’s address, next to his wife donning a Jesus t-shirt, that the year ended without any corruption scandals that consistently plagues Brazil?

Even away from the blatant lie of finishing the year without a corruption scandal, surrounded by expectations, Economic Minister Paulo Guedes failed to deliver the great economic promises for Brazil that were expected in 2019. Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in October 2018, defeating Fernando Haddad of the Worker’s Party in the presidential runoff, made the Brazilian financial market very comfortable. The reason for this excitement? Paulo Guedes, a neoliberal Chicago Boy, would lead the economy.

Brazil was projected for a 2.5% growth rate at the beginning of the year but ended with 1%. Investors postponed their investments because of the political fragility and confusion that the Bolsonaro government itself created, for example, his inconsistent China policy. As a part of Guedes neoliberal agenda, he began to be more politically active in Brasília – attempting to ensure Bolsonaro’s confused and faltering rhetoric would not disrupt his plans of downsizing the Brazilian state’s role in the economy to the benefit of the mega-rich and the detriment of the poor. Guedes’ Security Reform had a vision of reducing debt by reducing pensions, including against the most vulnerable and poor in Brazil.

Willing to appease the Christian Zionist Evangelical support, accounting for at least a third of the population, Bolsonaro even before taking office promised that, like U.S. President Donald Trump had, he would transfer the Brazilian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This again affected investments in Brazil as Bolsonaro was trying to prioritize his theological worldview rather than the recovery of his economically ruined country that has an unemployment rate of 11.6%, and many of the employed in informal or part-time work, and a poverty rate of about a quarter of the population. The Arab League and Iran did not shy away from confronting Bolsonaro’s attempt to move the embassy in Israel, breaking a promise to the Evangelicals as he was forced to back down, and instead decided to only open a trade office in Jerusalem.

This threat by the Arab League and risking relations with China, Brazil’s largest trading partner, has forced Bolsonaro to be less theologically motivated and more pragmatic in recent months. This will likely carry on into 2020 as Trump shot down a U.S. backing for the South American country to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) back in October. This came despite Bolsonaro enthusiastically embracing the moniker of “Tropical Trump” and consistently saying one of the biggest achievements of his government was securing Washington’s support for Brazil to join the OECD.

In a further headache for the Brazilian president, the U.S. dollar strengthened over the first year of the Bolsonaro administration, to the extent that Guedes declared that Brazilians should get used to the high value of the U.S. currency. The political insecurity generated by Bolsonaro, coupled with the difficulties of implementing proposals from the Ministry of Economy, as a series of high-impact privatizations did not bring about the expected investments. Foreign investments into Brazilian infrastructure would relieve pressure on the Brazilian Real, but the dollar has skyrocketed now because of this investment frustration. There was an expectation that foreign investors would bring dollars into Brazil, pushing the dollar market lower, which has not happened.

And as a final blow from Trump to Bolsonaro, let’s forget the announcement that tariffs will not be placed by the U.S. against Brazil.

So, in a year that was full of promise, Bolsonaro’s first year of administration has been an abject failure – full of corruption and controversies, economic stagnation, failure to keep the Evangelicals happy with an embassy move to Jerusalem, and hostile actions by Trump despite Bolsonaro’s enthusiasm for the U.S. president. Perhaps slowly in 2020 he will remember his country’s membership in BRICS.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

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‘Israel’ Puts Jordan Valley Annexation on Hold Fearing ICC Investigation

December 27th, 2019 by QudsN

The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a meeting that was supposed to discuss the annexation of the Jordan Valley, following the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a probe into Israeli war crimes in Gaza, West Bank, and Jerusalem.

The meeting had been scheduled to take place last week, but was called off last minute once ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced intention on Friday to investigate Israeli crimes.

Netanyahu announced in September, during Israeli elections, that the occupation state will annex the Jordan Valley if his Likud party would win the elections.

With another election that will take place next March, Netanyahu is believed to have intended to double down on his promise. The occupation state, however, was concerned the annexation would provide further proofs of Israel’s crimes.

“Because of the prosecutor’s decision in the Hague, the issue of the Jordan Valley annexation will be put on a long hold,” an Israeli government source told Yedioth Ahronoth.

In her recommendation, Bensouda said Israel has not only failed to stop settlement building in the West Bank, the Jewish state also intends to annex some parts of the territory.

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Featured image is from The Duran

Israel Discusses Denying ICC Staff Entry into Israel

December 27th, 2019 by IMEMC

Israel is considering preventing the entry of officials from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in response to the chief prosecutor’s decision to investigate its possible war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories, the Middle East Monitor reported.

Israel Hayom published, on Monday, that representatives from the Israeli ministries of Foreign Affairs, Justice and National Security, have discussed practical ways to respond to the ICC chief prosecutor’s decision to investigate Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

The paper said representatives from the three ministries met, on Sunday, in the office of Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and discussed the possibility of preventing the entry of ICC staff into Israel.

Israel is considering taking steps similar to the ones taken by the US administration, which refuses to grant entry visas for ICC employees, in response to the court’s intention to investigate American soldiers who participated in the war in Afghanistan.

Netanyahu is to transfer all deliberations on the matter to the Israeli security cabinet, and impose a gag order to prevent the disclosure of Israel’s future actions on the issue, the paper said.

On Friday, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced her intention to open a full investigation into possible Israeli war crimes in the Palestinian territories.

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Video: Army Liberates More Territory from Idlib Militants

December 27th, 2019 by South Front

On December 26, units of the Syrian Army liberated the villages of Khuwayn al-Sha’r, Judaydat Nawaf, Samkeh and Delim, as well as several nearby points in southern Idlib.

During the past few days, the speed of the Syrian Army advance in the region decreased in comparison of the first days of the operation launched on December 19. This is linked to the ongoing behind-the-scenes negotiations on the fate of Maarat al-Numan and bad weather. Taking into account reports that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies rejected a surrender proposal from Damascus, a new round of full-scale hostilities will likely take place soon.

According to pro-militant media outlets, up to 200 members of militant groups were killed or injured since December 19. At the same time, they claim even a bigger number of casualties among Syrian Army troops. Both these numbers seem to be overestimated.

Early on December 26, at least 85 Turkish military vehicles and trucks entered the Greater Idlib region in northwestern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

The SOHR claimed that a part of the vehicles headed towards a Turkish observation post near the town of al-Eis in southwestern Aleppo, while the rest moved to a second observation post in the district of al-Rashidin west of Aleppo’s city center.

Earlier, on December 2, about 100 Turkish military vehicles entered Greater Idlib. They were intended for observation posts in southern Idlib and northwest Hama.

Ankara is once again intensifying its diplomatic, propaganda and even military efforts in order to rescue radical groups operating in northwestern Syria.

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US War Budget Targets China

December 27th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

A previous article discussed how the US FY 2020 war budget targets Russia, Turkey and Syria.

Euphemistically called annual National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAAs), they’re all about advancing America’s imperium, along with enriching corporate America by waging endless wars of aggression on invented enemies and other hostile actions, costing trillions of dollars.

This fiscal year’s war budget through September 30, 2020 imposes illegal sanctions on companies involved in constructing Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to European countries if they don’t cease and desist operations.

Sales of US stealth F-35 warplanes to Turkey are prohibited over its purchase of Russian S-400 air defense missiles.

The measure also calls on Trump to sanction the country for its action under the so-called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA).

Syria is targeted as well, new illegal sanctions imposed on President Bashar al-Assad, members of his government, and individuals supporting it — for heroic efforts to free the country from US-supported terrorists, unlawful occupation of northern and southern areas by Pentagon and Turkish troops, along with wanting Trump regime theft of Syrian oil stopped.

A section of the war budget focuses on China, targeting the country over actions by Hong Kong authorities to end months of orchestrated riots, violence, vandalism, and chaos in the city with US dirty hands all over them.

The so-called Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act passed by the House and Senate this month calls for sanctioning China over alleged mistreatment of these people.

Credible evidence backing claims about China’s alleged detention of millions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang is sorely lacking.

Beijing rejects the charge, saying there’s no mass internment, no so-called “re-education camps.”

Yet unsubstantiated claims are in the US war budget to punish China over this alleged issue.

The measure also requires the director of national intelligence (DNI) to report regularly on the alleged threats of Chinese hegemony over the global 5G wireless infrastructure buildout, falsely claiming it poses a threat to US national security.

A war budget provision calls for protecting Chinese-Americans from (nonexistent) Beijing pressure or interference in their affairs.

It addresses allegations of Chinese efforts to interfere in Taiwan’s 2020 elections, citing no evidence that a threat exists.

It reaffirms restrictions on China’s telecom giant Huawei and calls for increasing ties to Taiwan.

It suggests foreign interference in US elections will increase ahead. No evidence indicates meddling by Russia or any other countries in the US electoral process at any time in memory, nothing suggesting a future threat.

The US war budget establishes a so-called Social Media Data and Threat Analysis Center run by the DNI.

Its mission may end up inventing threats and so-called malign behavior, not countering any of the above to US security because no evidence suggests they exist online or in other forms.

In response to the anti-China provision in the US war budget, Beijing’s Defense Ministry’s spokesperson Wu Qian said the measure violates the One-China Policy and meddles in its internal affairs, adding:

The US “pursues unilateralism and protectionism. This behavior makes it clear to the international community that (its government is) the saboteur of the current international order.”

Hostile US policy toward China is all about wanting its economic, industrial, financial, technological, and political advances undermined, its sovereign rights subordinated to US interests.

Washington treats all nations the same way, allies and adversaries alike, wanting them controlled, doing its bidding.

What’s going on risks confrontation with China, Russia, Iran, and other nations the US doesn’t control if hardball tactics short of war don’t work.

That’s why US rage for unchallenged global dominance threatens everyone everywhere.

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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.

What’s Really Behind Estonia’s ‘Border Dispute’ with Russia?

December 26th, 2019 by Andrew Korybko

The tiny Baltic nation of Estonia is attempting to revive a so-called “border dispute” with Russia in order to position itself as one of NATO’s “frontline states” against the Eurasian Great Power, which Tallinn expects will result in more military support from the bloc that its ruling party could then leverage for domestic political purposes, though this plan could very easily backfire if Trump demands that the country — which is experiencing a population decline and economic slowdown — pay its “fair share” just like the US’ other “allies” in exchange for the selfsame support.

Estonia surprised Russia after its Foreign Minister said last month that the border treaty between the two countries was unlikely to be ratified because of Tallinn’s unhappiness with Moscow’s lack of adherence to the outdated and legally void Treaty of Tartu. This 1920 agreement established the interwar border between the two but was replaced by a slightly modified territorial status quo following Estonia’s accession to the USSR in 1940. Although it’s since become popular in Estonian society after the end of the Old Cold War to claim that the country’s incorporation into the Soviet Union was done under duress and was therefore “illegal”, the fact remains that Estonia tacitly agreed to retain its USSR-era borders after investing substantial sums of money in developing infrastructure along the joint frontier with Russia, something that the Russian Embassy in Tallinn was quick to point out following the Estonian Foreign Minister’s provocative statement. Observers should also be reminded that the two countries already signed a border treaty in 2014, but it’s the subsequent ratification process that’s now suddenly being politicized by the Estonian side.

This begs the question of why that is, especially at this present moment in time, and the answer is that Estonia most likely believes that it can leverage its refusal to ratify the treaty and the media publicity related to this decision in order to receive more military support from NATO that the country’s leaders can then manipulate for domestic political purposes. It’s unrealistic to expect Russia to make any concessions on its internationally recognized territory in order to avoid this possible escalation scenario, so the intention behind Tallinn’s move must have more to do with NATO and domestic politics than any serious desire to reclaim its so-called “lost territories” that are now almost entirely populated by Russians as it is. In fact, considering that Estonia literally regards the over one-quarter of its population that are ethnic Russians as second-class citizens by making it extremely difficult for them to receive the civic rights that they’re entitled to by international law, as well as regularly suspecting them of being “fifth columnists”, it wouldn’t make sense for Tallinn to want to increase the numbers of this demographic through the annexation of Russian-populated land unless it planned to ethnically cleanse those people immediately afterwards.

All of that’s unrealistic though but is being brought up just to show the insincerity behind Estonia’s territorial demands and prove that even the state itself knows that Russia won’t budge a single inch on this issue, not that it actually even wants it to anyhow for the reason that was just explained. Rather, the ruling party hopes that it can exploit this manufactured dispute for the purpose of receiving more military support from NATO that it can then manipulate through perception management tactics to improve its own domestic political standing. On the surface, it’s not exactly implausible that the bloc and its American hegemon would be receptive to this since they have an interest in “containing” Russia, even though the speculative outcome of a more muscular military presence in this former Soviet Republic would violate the (at this point mostly symbolic) NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997. Regional heavyweight Poland, which is one of the most pro-American states in the world, also envisages expanding its influence throughout the “Three Seas Initiative” (TSI) by making the “Baltic Brothers” its “junior partners” in a de-facto modern-day revival of the former Commonwealth, which could function as the US’ “Lead From Behind” proxy in the region.

Having said that, Poland has also set a new precedent by offering to pay at least $2 billion for the “honor” of hosting more American servicemen, which conforms to Trump’s demands that his country’s “allies” pay their “fair share” in exchange for continued military support. Washington is already in negotiations about this with Seoul, Tokyo, and soon even Berlin, so it’s unlikely that it’ll compromise on its own policy with Tallinn just for the sake of scoring a “cheap shot” by “containing” Russia via a new deployment there. The US knows that Estonia wants an American military base since the country literally asked for one last year and recently bragged in early November about how it “punches above its weight” in NATO because of how committed it is to the bloc. It’s therefore not unbelievable that Tallinn might have chosen this exact time to manufacture a “border dispute” with Russia in order to create the so-called “publicly plausible” pretext for the US to satisfy its request, but there are a couple of problems associated with this, not even counting the regional security one for Moscow if Washington finally agrees to its Baltic “ally’s” proposal.

The first is that the US and NATO already acknowledge the uncontested legality of Estonia’s borders with Russia because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to accept the country’s membership into the bloc. NATO doesn’t allow members with current territorial disputes to join, which is one of the reasons why both Georgia and Ukraine have yet to do so. It’s indeed possible that the Trump Administration might unilaterally announce a change of policy in this respect that could throw the bloc into even more confusion than it’s already in following Macron’s dramatic declaration that it’s “brain dead“. Even in the event that the US and/or some NATO countries agree to acknowledge Estonia’s “border dispute” with Russia as “legitimate”, then the next problem is whether or not this tiny country with a declining population and in the midst of an economic slowdown can even afford to pay Trump’s prospective “protection fee”, which might further contribute to its economic problems that could in turn accelerate its out-migration and thus jeopardize its already fraught strategic stability as a state. Should this scenario come to pass, then it would essentially amount to the ruling party sacrificing the state’s long-term strategic interests in exchange for short-term political benefits, which would inevitably destabilize the country and ironically do what Russia is regularly accused of wanting to do without any evidence whatsoever.

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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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Selected Articles: Trump’s Multibillion Dollar Military Budget

December 26th, 2019 by Global Research News

Lying is a money making activity and lies are commodities. There is a profitable global market for media and public figures committed to spreading disinformation.

Needless to say, “Telling the Truth”, on the other hand, Is Not a Money-Making Proposition. The monthly deficit we have been faced with over the past year is proof of this concept.

With this in mind, can you spare a dollar a day to keep disinformation away? Your support could make the difference and ensure that GlobalResearch.ca is here for a long time to come!

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‘Atrocious’: 188 Democrats Join GOP to Hand Trump $738 Billion Military Budget that Includes ‘Space Force’

By Jake Johnson, December 26, 2019

More than 180 House Democrats joined a nearly united Republican caucus Wednesday night to pass a sweeping $738 billion military spending bill that gives President Donald Trump his long-sought “Space Force,” free rein to wage endless wars, and a green light to continue fueling the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.

Just 48 members of the House, including 41 Democrats, voted against the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which increases the Pentagon budget by $22 billion. The final vote was 377-48.

Fireworks Instead of Mortar Shells: Syrian Christians Flood the Streets in Spiritual Unity of Christmas Celebrations

By Mark Taliano and RT News, December 26, 2019

Mainstream media perpetrates huge deceptions and promulgates criminal war propaganda as policy. Often the omission is worse than the direct lie. Regularly, mainstream messaging omits context and ROOT CAUSES of events that it claims to be describing. The root cause of the Christmas celebrations in Syria is the FACT that Syria and its allies LIBERATED these areas from WESTERN-SUPPORTED terrorists. If this root cause is not stated clearly, then the messaging intentionally leaves itself open to misinterpretation. It becomes war propaganda that serves to vilify Syria and Syrians as it exonerates the war criminals from their heinous war crimes.

You Say You Want a (Russian) Revolution?

By Pepe Escobar, December 26, 2019

Once in a blue moon an indispensable book comes out making a clear case for sanity in what is now a post-MAD world. That’s the responsibility carried by “The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs,” by Andrei Martyanov (Clarity Press), arguably the most important book of 2019.

Martyanov is the total package — and he comes with extra special attributes as a top-flight Russian military analyst, born in Baku in those Back in the U.S.S.R. days, living and working in the U.S., and writing and blogging in English.

Nord Stream 2, US Sanctions and Trump’s “Economic Suicide”?

By Peter Koenig, December 26, 2019

Nord Stream 2 is an under-water pipeline crossing from Kingisepp in Russia to Greifswald in Germany, under the Baltic sea. Its cost is estimated at more than US$ 100 billion. It parallels Nord stream 1 (see map), and is supposed to make Germany energy secure, especially once Germany exits from nuclear energy. After the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany has already permanently shut down eight of its 17 reactors and pledged to close the rest by the end of 2022.

Fast Food Nations and Global Nutrition

By Colin Todhunter, December 26, 2019

Daniel Maingi works with small farmers in Kenya and belongs to the organisation Growth Partners for Africa. He remembers a time when his family would grow and eat a diversity of crops, such as mung beans, green grams, pigeon peas and a variety of fruits now considered ‘wild’.

Following the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the 1980s and 1990s, the foods of his childhood have been replaced with maize. He says that in the morning you make porridge from maize. For lunch, it’s boiled maize and a few green beans. In the evening, a dough-like maize dish is served with meat. He adds that it is now a monoculture diet.

In the United Kingdom: Do Subjects Deserve Their Rulers?

By Andre Vltchek, December 24, 2019

Just put Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn next to each other, and listen to each of them for ten minutes, and it would appear that anyone who would vote for the leader of the Conservative Party should be ripe for the mental asylum.

Trump Administration and Moscow Shoot Down Bipartisan DASKA “Sanctions Bill from Hell”

By Sarah Abed, December 24, 2019

In August of 2018, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) first introduced what Graham referred to as a “sanctions bill from hell” targeting Russia and President Vladimir Putinand making it harder for the United States to leave NATO. Despite bipartisan grievances with Moscow the bill didn’t gain much traction.

The measure to push President Trump to take a tougher stance against Russia over alleged election interference, aggression towards Ukraine and involvement in Syria’s proxy war is titled the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act (DASKA) and would impose strict and broad penalties.

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The Christmas Truce of 1914: Abolish All Wars. Indict Today’s War Criminals in High Office

December 26th, 2019 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

First published on December 25, 2018

The Christmas Truce of 1914 was an initiative of the soldiers on both sides; it was a mark of human solidarity and fraternity against the political and military architects of World War I.

The  Spirit of Christmas in December 1914 prevailed:

“In the front lines, the fraternisation of Christmas Eve is continued throughout the day; not all units know about it, and it is not universal but is widespread over at least half of the British front. Many bodies that have been lying out in no man’s land are buried, some in joint burials. Many men record the strange and wonderful events; may men exchange tokens or addresses with German soldiers, many of whom speak English. 81 British soldiers die on this day; a few die in areas that are otherwise peaceful and with fraternisation going on, victims of alert snipers. In other areas, there is considerable activity: 2nd Grenadier Guards suffer losses in a day of heavy fighting. As night fell, things grew quiet as men fell back to their trenches to take whatever Christmas meal that had been provided for them.”

The Military High Command on both sides was firmly opposed to the Spirit of Christmas in the trenches. The Mot d’ordre of the French and British high command was to promote an “offensive spirit” in the trenches. In the words of General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, “Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices, however tempting and amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited“:

 Instructions were issued to commanders of all Divisions:

“such an attitude is however most dangerous for it discourages initiative in commanders and destroys the offensive spirit in all ranks…the Corps Commander therefore directs Divisional Commanders to impress on subordinate commanders the absolute necessity of encouraging offensive spirit…”

Lessons of the 1914 Christmas Truce 

The military oath taken at the time of induction demands unbending support and allegiance to the US Constitution, while also demanding that US troops obey orders from their President and Commander in Chief Donald Trump:

“I,____________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God”

Both president Donald Trump as well as his predecessor Barack Obama not to mention George W. Bush have blatantly violated all tenets of domestic and international law.

So that making an oath to “obey orders from the President” is tantamount to violating rather than defending the US Constitution.

“The fact that a person [e.g. Coalition troops] acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

Anti-war sentiment alone will not result in abolishing all wars.

An effective grass roots resistance against war requires a movement within the ranks of US-NATO Armed Forces to disobey orders. That is the message of the 1914 Christmas Truce. Lay down your arms, disobey orders emanating from wars criminal in high office.

And once a movement of members of the Armed Forces of all ranks integrates a civilian grassroots protest movement, with soldiers refusing to fight, the US-NATO military agenda will be in shatters.

The issue of war propaganda must also be addressed including the indoctrination of those serving in the Armed Forces.  The official US-NATO motto is: Going after the bad guys, waging a  “Global War on Terrorism” against so-called “jihadists”.

What is not mentioned is that the jihadist are mercenaries, trained and financed by US-NATO and their allies.

Without the gush of daily (corporate) media disinformation which upholds US-NATO led wars as humanitarian endeavours under the banner of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), the war-makers in high office would have no leg to stand on.

Within the corporate media, journalists also have the choice to “disobey orders” and many of them are doing so, as well as joining the ranks of the independent media.

This is the spirit of Christmas which we wish to uphold, based on the Lessons of  the Christmas Truce of December 1914.

May Peace and the Spirit of Christmas prevail!

Abolish All Wars! indict the War Criminal in high Office.

Restore sanity in international diplomacy.

Michel Chossudovsky,  Global Research,  December 25, 2018, December 24, 2019,  December 25, 2020

 

The Christmas Truce of 1914

by 1914-1918.net

The Christmas Truce has become an enduring image of the triumph of man’s spirit over adversity. What really happened in no man’s land between British and German infantry in December 1914, and who was there?

Once the fighting of the First Battle of Ypres died down in November 1914, British units that had been holding the Ypres Salient were relieved by French ones. By December, the BEF had moved and was now holding a continuous sector of the Western Front from a little south of St Eloi, round past Armentières to Neuve Chapelle, past Festubert and to the La Bassée Canal at Givenchy.

The British force in France now consisted of the shattered units of the regular army, most of which had been all but destroyed at Ypres and which were in the process of being rebuilt by receiving new drafts, with the welcome addition of two Divisions making up the Indian Corps and some units of the Territorial Force.

The position being held consisted of crude trenches and breastworks. The weather had been continuously wet for some time, and conditions were particularly trying.

The static and dull nature of trench warfare and the close proximity of the enemy (which meant that they could be heard, and their breakfast cooking smelled, although rarely seen) caused many men to be curious about the men they were facing. They were certainly facing the same conditions of wet and cold, and in a strange way a mutual respect developed.

There were occasional shouted conversations between trenches, and the odd instance of exchange of goods, although to be too adventurous was foolhardy for men were continually lost to sniper fire.

Build up to the truce

Under strong French pressure to take the initiative, the army was ordered into a series of small piecemeal attacks that proved to be very costly. Cut down by rifle and machine gun fire and unable to enter enemy trenches, the attacking units left many casualties lying in no man’s land and on the enemy barbed wire defences.

5 December 1914

II Corps HQ [General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien] issued an instruction to commanders of all Divisions:

“It is during this period that the greatest danger to the morale of troops exists. Experience of this and of every other war proves undoubtedly that troops in trenches in close proximity to the enemy slide very easily, if permitted to do so, into a “live and let live” theory of life…officers and men sink into a military lethargy from which it is difficult to arouse them when the moment for great sacrifices again arises…the attitude of our troops can be readily understood and to a certain extent commands sympathy…such an attitude is however most dangerous for it discourages initiative in commanders and destroys the offensive spirit in all ranks…the Corps Commander therefore directs Divisional Commanders to impress on subordinate commanders the absolute necessity of encouraging offensive spirit… friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices, however tempting and amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited” 

The early weeks of December 1914

Tremendous volumes of mail and gifts for the troops were sent from homes in the United Kingdom and Germany. King George V sent a Christmas card to every soldier, sailor and nurse; the Princess Mary fund despatched a gift box to every serving soldier.

14 December 1914

An attack of 8th Brigade at Wytschaete on 14 December 1914 fails with heavy casualties. 18 December 1914An attack by 22nd Brigade [2nd Queen’s and 2nd Royal Warwickshire] on the Well Farm position at La Boutillerie fails with heavy casualties.

A further effort [by 20th Brigade; 2nd Scots Guards and 2nd Border] later in the day also fails.19 December 1914An attack by 11th Brigade [1st Somerset Light Infantry, 1st Hampshire and 1st Rifle Brigade] on the “German Birdcage” east of Ploegsteert Wood fails with heavy casualties, many of which are caused by British heavy artillery firing short of target.

20 December 1914

Local truce on the front of 22nd Brigade; Germans begin by taking in British wounded from no man’s land. There is some contact: according to Lt G. Heinekey of 2nd Queen’s, it lasted all morning. Lt Henry Bower, 1st South Staffordshire and at least one soldier of the 2nd Queen’s were killed by rifle fire from neighbouring units while assisting with the wounded. A similar activity took place on the front of 20th Brigade.

23 December 1914

A German soldier, Karl Aldag, reports that both sides had been heard singing hymns in the trenches. German troops coming into the lines bring Christmas trees. Some men begin to place them on the parapets of the fire trenches. Local truce on the front of 23rd Brigade.

24 December 1914, Christmas Eve

The weather changes to a hard frost. This makes trench conditions a little more bearable. 98 British soldiers die on this day, many are victims of sniper fire.

A German aeroplane drops a bomb on Dover: the first air raid in British history. During the afternoon and early evening, British infantry are astonished to see many Christmas trees with candles and paper lanterns, on enemy parapets.

There is much singing of carols, hymns and popular songs, and a gradual exchange of communication and even meetings in some areas. Many of these meetings are to arrange collection of bodies. In other places, firing continues. Battalion officers are uncertain how to react; in general they maintain precautions.

The night brings a clear, still air with a hard frost. British and German troops fraternise at Christmas 1914

 

25 December 1914, Christmas Day

Men of 20th Brigade bury their dead of the attack of 18 December, alongside German soldiers engaged in the same activity. Christmas Day, 1914.Units behind the lines attend church services and have in most cases arranged Christmas dinners which are taken in barns and shattered buildings.

In the front lines, the fraternisation of Christmas Eve is continued throughout the day; not all units know about it, and it is not universal but is widespread over at least half of the British front. Many bodies that have been lying out in no man’s land are buried, some in joint burials. Many men record the strange and wonderful events; may men exchange tokens or addresses with German soldiers, many of whom speak English.

81 British soldiers die on this day; a few die in areas that are otherwise peaceful and with fraternisation going on, victims of alert snipers. In other areas, there is considerable activity: 2nd Grenadier Guards suffer losses in a day of heavy fighting. As night fell, things grew quiet as men fell back to their trenches to take whatever Christmas meal that had been provided for them.

Some snow. In some areas, the friendly spirit was resumed. Gradually however, officers and men on both sides began to resume normal trench caution. The atmosphere in general remained relaxed as Brigade and Battalion officers took a pragmatic view of events. The chance was taken to carry out work that would otherwise have been hazardous. By now, however, news of the truce was reaching higher commands. General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien requested particulars of those units and officers who took part, with a view to disciplinary action. In the event, no action was taken against any unit or officer. 62 British soldiers die on this day.

27-31 December 1914

The weather turns wet again, with rain, sleet and storms. There were instances of men disappearing in the flooded trenches. Yet in some areas the friendly mood remained for several days and there was almost no firing, although open fraternisation gradually died away. On New Years Eve, there was a certain amount of singing and exchange of messages, but no truce as such.

BBC Video on the Christmas 1914 Truce

__________________________________________________________________________________

British units which took part in the truce

Brigade Unit
5th Division on Wulverghem – Messines road and in the River Douve valley
14th Brigade 1st Devonshire
1st East Surrey
2nd Manchester
15th Brigade 1/6th Cheshire
1st Norfolk
4th Division in front of Ploegsteert Wood
10th Brigade 1st Royal Warwickshire
2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers
2nd Seaforth Highlanders
1st Royal Irish Fusiliers
11th Brigade 1st Hampshire
1st Rifle Brigade
1st East Lancashire
1/5th London (London Rifle Brigade)
12th Brigade 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers
2nd Essex
1/2nd Monmouthshire
XXXIII Bde RFA 135 Battery RFA
31 Heavy Battery RGA
6th Division at Frelinghien and Houplines
16th Brigade 1st Leicestershire
1st Buffs (East Kent)
17th Brigade 2nd Leinster
3rd Rifle Brigade
1/16th London (Queen’s Westminster Rifles)
1st North Staffordshire
19th Brigade 2nd Royal Welsh Fusiliers
2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
1/5th Cameronians (Scottish Rifles)
XXXVIII Bde RFA 24 Battery RFA
XIII (H) Bde RFA 87 Battery RFA
7th Division at Bois Grenier, La Boutillerie and on the Fromelles road
20th Brigade 2nd Border
2nd Gordon Highlanders
1/6th Gordon Highlanders
2nd Scots Guards
21st Brigade 2nd Wiltshire
2nd Bedfordshire
2nd Yorkshire
22nd Brigade 2nd Queen’s (Royal West Surrey)
1/8th Royal Scots
XXIII Bde RFA 104 Battery RFA
XIV Bde RFA F and T Batteries RHA
III Heavy Bde RGA 111 and 112 Batteries RGA
A and B Squadrons, the Northumberland Hussars
8th Division at Picantin, Fauquissart and Neuve Chapelle
23rd Brigade 2nd Devonshire
2nd Cameronians (Scottish Rifles)
24th Brigade 2nd East Lancashire
2nd Northamptonshire
25th Brigade 1/13th London (Kensington)
1st Royal Irish Rifles > War diary from Christmas 1914
XLV Bde RFA 5 Battery RFA
2 Field Company, the Royal Engineers
Meerut Division at Richebourg l’Avoué
Gharwal Brigade 1/39 Gharwal Rifles
2/39 Gharwal Rifles
18th Hussars

Note: those units that were under command of the Divisions and Brigades shown but do not appear in the table did not take part in fraternisation, often because they were in billets and out of the front line at the time. The list has been compiled by reference to war diaries, soldiers letters, reports, etc.

German units which took part in the truce

Brigade Unit
6th Bavarian Reserve Division, facing Kemmel
12th Bavarian Reserve Brigade 17th Bavarian Reserve Regiment
40th Division, facing Wulverghem and Ploegsteert Wood and at Frelinghien
48th Brigade 10th Infantry Regiment
88th Brigade 104th Infantry Regiment
6th Jaeger Battalion
89th Brigade 133rd Infantry Regiment Saxon
134th Infantry Regiment
24th Division, on the Armentieres-Lille railway
47th Brigade 179th Infantry Regiment
48th Brigade 107th Infantry Regiment
13th Division, at Fromelles and on Rue des Bois Blancs
25th Brigade 158th Infantry Regiment
13th Infantry Regiment
11th Jaeger Battalion
26th Brigade 55th Infantry Regiment
15th Infantry Regiment
14th Division, at Aubers and Festubert
27th Brigade 16th Infantry Regiment (3rd Westphalian)

 

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Daily Life in Syria. The Eyes of the Syrian People

December 26th, 2019 by Rawan R. Mahmasa

Life in Aleppo is quite far from calling it “safe”. Concerning the western part of Aleppo, everyday we get missiles originally from Aleppo countryside which is under the terrorists control.

It is not easy to live under their mercy! Personally speaking, I teach English at public schools at the Eastern countryside, things are so different there!!! People barely have something to eat or they make crops just to pass by! There is also no electricity, no fuel, nothing! However, life in Aleppo, the city, is horrible. Sometimes we sleep by the sounds of explosions and bombs. I know, it is hard to believe. But believe me, we are sick of this and we want to live in peace even just for a day. I go out and pray that I’ll be back safe and sound.

Most Syrians believe and trust The Assad government (the Syrian Army) because so far it did not stop trying to manage this war with all its bad consequences.

Public hospitals still treat patients for free, schools are reopened, salaries for labors ..etc. As a Syrian citizen, of course the Western countries are responsible for the economic embargo especially the US government.

Well, Syrians are working hard to prove that the West is doing wrong by helping and arming the terrorists in Syria. We think the Western countries got rid of the worlds most dangerous terrorists by sending them to Syria under the title of JIHAD. They are sent to meet their death! Does the West know that one day those groups of terrorists could threaten the West.

Furthermore, we didn’t mention oil, gas, petrol stealing!

We want your people to know everything about the war in Syria.

We love our president and we will continue supporting the SAA what ever may befall us.

70% of the Syrian childern have psychological and physical disorders. Losing a family is not easy! Charities did a great job by taking care of the injured kids.

Canadians are good people. We know that they are very kind and they have nothing to do with the West and its policy. In my opinion, Canadians should give us another chance and try to look at this war from the eyes of the Syrians, not the fake propaganda which the West is supporting.

I hope I made myself clear. Thank you so much.

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Who Is Winning the Arms Race? Russia’s “Super-Weapons”

December 26th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Russia’s defense budget is a small fraction of what the US spends for militarism and warmaking. Yet Russia’s super-weapons exceed the best in the West because of efficient and effective use of its resources.

Meeting with Russia’s Defense Ministry Board on Tuesday, Putin discussed Moscow’s military development and key objectives next year.

Ahead of the meeting, he “visited an exhibition of advanced Russian weapons and equipment.

He was shown “the mortar (artillery) battery automation facilities set, the Adjutant complex, the Epokha unmanned combat module, the Harpoon-2M portable anti-drone system, a Russian-made buggy, the Phoenix UAV, the Piranha inflatable airboat and the latest Topaz, Taktika and Kalan armored vests,” according the Kremlin website.

Addressing Russia’s Defense Board, he said the following:

“(M)any quality and system-wide changes took place in the Armed Forces in 2019. The share of modern weapons in the nuclear triad has reached 82%,” adding:

“The latest ballistic missiles with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) are being delivered to the Strategic Missile Forces.”

“This weapon of the future can penetrate both the existing and any future missile defense systems.”

“Important steps have been taken to improve control, communications, intelligence and electronic warfare systems.”

“The progress is mainly due to the introduction of the most recent technologies in the collection, transmission and processing of information.”

“(W)eapons and equipment used in the Aerospace Forces, Navy, and in other branches and services are being systematically replaced by modern ones, including those based on digital technology and artificial intelligence.”

“Robotic systems and unmanned aerial vehicles are being rigorously introduced and used in combat training, which dramatically boosts the capabilities of armed units and subunits.”

“No country in the world has hypersonic weapons more…capable of reaching across continents” than Russia.

“The degradation of the weapons control system is a cause for a serious concern.”

“I’m not only referring to the breaking by the (US) of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty under totally artificial pretexts that have no grounds whatsoever.”

“Washington also created uncertainty as to its participation in the Open Air Treaty.”

“Unclear is…the future of Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (while the US) strengthen(s) (its) defense capabilities” for offense.

“The US military budget…is comparable to the combined defense effort of the rest of the world.”

Putin earlier said Russia will not engage in an arms race. It’ll use its resources effectively and efficiently for maximum bang for the buck, my words interpreting his.

He also stressed that, unlike the US and NATO, Russia abides by its treaty obligations.

“How are we able to…remain in the lead,” he asked? “By using our brains, by intellect, by a better work organization, by minimizing” waste, fraud and abuse, by focusing on achieving maximum defense capabilities against possible aggression.

In numerous super-weapon categories, Russia’s exceeds the best in the West, the best in the world. “We need it to be better than the best,” said Putin, adding:

“This is not a chess game where…we can be content with a draw.” Russian weapons and defense capabilities “must be better” than any other countries.

“We can achieve that,” Putin stressed. It’s already achieved in many areas of development cost-effectively.

A unique situation exists in the post-WW II era. The US and NATO “are trying to catch up with us,” Putin explained.

No other nations possess hypersonic super-weapons, only Russia, some deployed in service, others being developed “according to plan.”

These super-weapons include:

  • a 200-ton Sarmat ICBM able to successfully breach ABM defenses;
  • a low-flying stealth nuclear-powered cruise missile with a far greater range than US ones;
  • a nuclear-powered, high-speed, unmanned submersible vehicle – able to operate undetected at great ocean depths, armed with conventional or nuclear missiles;
  • a new hypersonic missile with greater than Mach-5 speed (Mach-1 the speed of sound), carrying nuclear or conventional warheads, able to penetrate ABM defenses;
  • new hypersonic, high-precision missiles able to “hit targets at inter-continental distance and can adjust their altitude and course as they travel,” and
  • significant progress made in laser weapons technology.

In his Tuesday remarks, Putin said development of a ground-launched Zircon hypersonic missile is underway that’s virtually invisible to radar at Mach 9 (around 6.3 thousand miles per hour).

Development of other state-of-the-art super-weapons are proceeding according to plan, including technologically superior drones, hypersonic gliders, and other high-tech arms to let Russia meet any future military challenge.

Last month, Putin said Russia “ma(de) a step forward compared to the world’s other military powers.”

Emphasis is on “advanced high-precision weapons and means of aerospace defense,” as well as “the active use of artificial intelligence in the production of military hardware,” Putin adding:

“The line of unmanned reconnaissance and attack aircraft, laser and hypersonic systems, weapons based on new physical principles, as well as robotic systems, capable of performing diverse tasks on the battlefield, should be expanded.”

Russia needs state-of-the-art weapons for defense because “the world is facing serious challenges and threats” over Washington’s withdrawal from the INF and other international treaties, its militarized encroachment near Moscow’s borders, its aim to militarize space, and its other hostile actions that threaten world peace.

Among major powers, Russia and China are the leading proponents of world peace, stability, and mutual cooperation among all nations.

The US, NATO and Israel are the mortal enemies of these objectives.

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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: The S-400 Triumph, previously known as the S-300 PMU-3, is an anti-aircraft weapon system developed in the 1990s by Russia’s Almaz Central Design Bureau as an upgrade of the S-300 family. Credit: Dmitriy Fomin/ flickr

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‘Atrocious’: 188 Democrats Join GOP to Hand Trump $738 Billion Military Budget that Includes ‘Space Force’

December 26th, 2019 by Jake Johnson

“It is Orwellian for Congress to hand over billions of dollars worth of weapons and bombs to a president waging a horrific, unconstitutional war in Yemen—and call that progressive.”

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More than 180 House Democrats joined a nearly united Republican caucus Wednesday night to pass a sweeping $738 billion military spending bill that gives President Donald Trump his long-sought “Space Force,” free rein to wage endless wars, and a green light to continue fueling the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.

Just 48 members of the House, including 41 Democrats, voted against the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which increases the Pentagon budget by $22 billion. The final vote was 377-48.

“This NDAA is atrocious, and it’s very depressing that only 48 members of congress voted against it,” tweeted anti-war group CodePink.

In a floor speech ahead of Wednesday’s vote, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), the most vocal opponent of the NDAA in the House, said “there are many things you can call the bill, but it’s Orwellian to call it progressive.” Khanna was standing across the aisle from Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who hailed the measure as “the most progressive defense bill we have passed in decades.”

“Let’s speak in facts,” said Khanna. “This defense budget is $120 billion more than what Obama left us with. That could fund free public college for every American. It could fund access to high-speed, affordable internet for every American. But it’s worse. The bipartisan amendment to stop the war in Yemen: stripped by the White House. The bipartisan amendment to stop the war in Iran: stripped by the White House.”

According to the New York Times, Smith—chairman of the House Armed Services Committee—negotiated several provisions of the NDAA directly with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser.

“It was Mr. Kushner who helped broker a deal to create the Space Force, a chief priority of the president’s, in exchange for the paid parental leave [for federal employees],” the Times reported Wednesday. “It was also Mr. Kushner who intervened on measures targeting Saudi Arabia that would have prohibited arms sales or military assistance to the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. He said they were nonstarters for the White House.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) foreign policy adviser Matt Duss expressed outrage that Democrats allowed Kushner—who has close ties to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman—to kill an amendment that would have helped end U.S. complicity in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who voted against the NDAA, noted in a statement that the final version also stripped out her House-passed amendment that would have repealed the 2002 Iraq Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).

“With the release of the Afghanistan Papers, it is especially imperative that we take a hard look at our military spending and authorizations,” said Lee, the only member of Congress to vote against the war in Afghanistan in 2001. “I can tell you: it is an appalling, but not shocking read for those of us who have been working to stop endless war. It’s past time to end the longest war in United States history, withdraw our troops, and bring our servicemembers home.”

The 2020 NDAA now heads to the Republican-controlled Senate, where it is expected to pass. In a tweet ahead of the House vote on Wednesday, Trump praised the bill and said he would sign it into law “immediately.”

“New rule: Every member of Congress who voted to give the most corrupt, unhinged, and unstable president in history $738 billion to fight endless wars, fund a bogus space force, and put our troops at risk must never tell us that we cannot afford Medicare for All or a Green New Deal,” Warren Gunnels, Sanders’ senior adviser, tweeted Wednesday night. “Ever.”

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Fireworks Instead of Mortar Shells: Syrian Christians Flood the Streets in Spiritual Unity of Christmas Celebrations

December 26th, 2019 by Mark Taliano

Mainstream media perpetrates huge deceptions and promulgates criminal war propaganda as policy. Often the omission is worse than the direct lie. Regularly, mainstream messaging omits context and ROOT CAUSES of events that it claims to be describing. The root cause of the Christmas celebrations in Syria is the FACT that Syria and its allies LIBERATED these areas from WESTERN-SUPPORTED terrorists. If this root cause is not stated clearly, then the messaging intentionally leaves itself open to misinterpretation. It becomes war propaganda that serves to vilify Syria and Syrians as it exonerates the war criminals from their heinous war crimes.

There are no Christmas celebrations in terrorist-occupied areas. They are forbidden. The terrorists BURN CROSSES and DESTROY everything Christian. They have been doing this throughout the course of the entire Regime Change war.

Thank the legitimate Syrian government lead by President Assad, the Syrian military, and Syria’s allies for these scenes of joy and celebration. Denounce the West, NATO, and their allies for the curse of terrorism that has plagued this benighted holy land for nine years. — Mark Taliano

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Flashy firework displays and bright lit Christmas trees popped up all across Syria to celebrate Christmas, a joyous day not only for the Christian minority, but to people of other faiths living in the country.

Christians were among the minority groups persecuted by various Islamist militant forces, which tore Syria into pieces since 2011. The central government has managed to regain control over most of the country, and life there is slowly returning to normality. That includes celebrating Christmas openly and without fear of sectarian violence.

Aleppo remains a major center of Christianity in Syria and naturally had some of the biggest Christmas events with thousands of people flooding the streets to take part in the festivities. Roughly half of the city was controlled by jihadist groups for years, and they were ousted in the last weeks of 2016.

The capital Damascus too had its share of jubilations, complete with a big light show in the Abbasiyeen Square.

There were fireworks, parades and carols in other part of the city. And a lot of grateful prayers for an end to the constant threat of shelling from the suburbs, which were previously held by the jihadists.

Lights-decorated Christmas trees and nativity scenes adorned other Syrian cities too. Considering the country’s war-torn history, the spiritual healing of Syrian people came with the heart-warming Christmas atmosphere.

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Nancy Pelosi’s Scripted Impeachment Failure. Or, …Leading the Dems from Blue… to Yellow!

December 26th, 2019 by Brett Redmayne-Titley

For the voter, the Democratic Party no longer has any interest in performing its function as an opposition party. The charade of purported constitutional jurisprudence seen in the US House impeachment hearings should forever confirm this. This degradation of political will far too nicely coincides with the long term duality of current and long term speaker Nancy Pelosi who, while dressed in the blue ensemble of a democrat somehow sports the accoutrements of a republican.

Many questions remain as to Pelosi’s long-term resistance to impeachment until recently forced into action by her party members uprising. The two resultant Articles of Impeachment, Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress now head to the Senate after the long-expected party-line vote and equally expected defeat. The only defections from this plot were just two Democrats… and the 2020 voter.

Yes, the Dems and their congressional minions have indeed continued their next chapter in the ongoing DNC coup against Donald Trump, however, the televised version in the House is a public distraction from the real coup: Opposition leader Pelosi’s increasing backdoor willingness to allow the republicans to lighten their load within in her private chambers. Pelosi and her impeachment show trial have far too nicely played into the hands of the Republicans and aided her opposition’s November victory.

Is this merely stupidity?

With this political treason, Pelosi has again made a declaration to the upcoming voter that the DNC has abandoned any pretext whatsoever that it is an opposition party and/or interested in winning in 2020. Or that Pelosi is functionally a Democrat.

After Texas congressman, Al Green from the House rostrum called for Trump’s impeachment two years ago Pelosi, as House Speaker and Majority Leader refusedrepeatedly. The Speaker’s intransigence came despite the “sea change”mid-term elections of 2018 where these many new House members took their seats with a mandate for one change-Trump– and a change in the old guard in the corrupt to its core DNC machine. Joining Green were the growing howls from many incoming freshmen Congresspersons that lead to a strongly worded op-ed by seven of them that finally spurred Pelosi to action.

Julian Assange likely sits in stir due to releasing the proof in the weeks before 2016 election which proved forever– with hard evidence-that the DNC, like its sponsored candidates- has a singular interest in offering only a status quo presidential candidate who will functionally mirror the interests of the republicans. Not the voters.

Naturally, many wanted Pelosi out. More than thirty.  So started a behind the scenes battle royale for enough votes to maintain Pelosi’s speaker’s representation of said status quo. Predictably, after enough newbies proved their true congressional worth by rolling over on their voters and their integrity, Pelosi got their votes and so weathered this storm in a teacup, thus prevailing as Speaker. Next, she resumed her previous role of remaining as the ongoing voice of opposition- to her party– again and again. Talk tough she did, but opposition actions against the president, his cabinet, court nominees and the many unilateral executive decisions that affected all Americans was tepid at best or none existent as usual.

Pelosi has a track record of being an opposition leader wrapped in cotton wool. Her voting record and unwillingness to spawn populist legislation or effective house opposition to republican de-legislation along with her wholesale disregard as to effective action against the rise in power of the neo-conservative right-wing zealots in Congress should have lead to her demise years ago. As to impeachments past, even the proven lies of Bush II and Dick Cheney that directly caused the deaths of more than 6,800 US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and spawned the military’s subsequent pillaging of the US economy, neither was enough for her to support that call for impeachment either. Viewing the proceedings of the past two weeks, Pelosi, despite her daily publicly stated disdain for all things Trump, is merely crying crocodile tears to the American voter.

One would have thought that for Pelosi, after the 2016 collapse of the DNC, the choice of impeachment proceedings was the perfect opportunity to right her ship, educate the voter on the reality of Trump and his corporatist entourage in the White House while utilizing the public hearings as the media bully pulpit to sway public opinion towards the Dems?

Nope.

Behind the scenes reportedly Pelosi was going it alone in her efforts to frustrate her colleague’s impeachment efforts. Despite Trump’s ever-growing rap sheet of presidential constitutional violations and internationally embarrassing third-grade level paranoid outbursts, Pelosi was always verbally outraged, but in using her power as Speaker she was as effective as a Nevada boxing commissioner. Hence, when Pelosi did succumb to the majority in her party and allow for impeachment hearings, she remained the sole opposition force working from the top against her party to minimize this majority opinion.

Of all the accrued list of impeachable offences committed by Trump, Pelosi, over demonstrative objection from senior Dems, chose instead the small subset of the Ukraine saga: the one allegation most difficult to ultimately present to the Senate. Or to the public.Worse, her restriction made the day by day black comedy of the hearings a public example of DNC ineptitude, duplicity, and obvious partisan folly of the worst kind: A coup. Or,an utterly biblical election year PR disaster!

Reportedly, Pelosi’s party leader Steny Hoyer along with senior Democratic Caucus members Eliot Engeland Maxine Waters along with Al Green and the majority of the Judiciary Committee insisted that the Speaker go Full Monty with any impeachment effort. Pelosi, showing her true opposition leadership, refused. This being an election year, Ms Pelosi should have been interested in swaying public opinion in her party’s favour by exposing many of the other of Trump’s far more easily proven high crimes and misdemeanours. Au Contraire.

Instead, the actions of Ms Pelosi, in the eyes of the voter, only further destroyed any remaining reason for DNC loyalty-since it has no loyalty to them- while in turn emboldening dramatically the man Pelosi is supposed to be in opposition to on their behalf before November.

The singular Ukraine allegations against Trump too conveniently offered the president plausible denial of the charges that would allow the Senate to acquit. With polls showing that during the 2014 Ukraine coup only one-in-six Americans can so much as finding Ukraine on a globe, this singular avenue of attack by Pelosi did not bode well. Regardless of this coup being forecast to certain failure, Pelosi still eliminated all the other more easily proven and, for the public, easily understood offences. In this decision, Pelosi destroyed all the other political ammunition available for a public examination of Trump’s true track record of venal if not criminal administration- mere months before the 2020.

Of course, Trump supporters will be reluctant to admit to Trump’s many other impeachable offences whatsoever, but on the other side of the aisle, there was certainly a strong flavour developing to include all the many other reasons for impeachment. Starting with the Robert Mueller Q&A before congress on July 24, 2019, it seemed clearthat further examples of Obstruction of Congress (Justice)  were clear-cut and undeniable. Yet, Pelosi remained disinterested except for Mueller’s deflective and specious connections to “the Russians.”These Mueller Report obstructionexamples might have been added to the singular Ukraine linked charges along with further examples from the Stormy Daniels cover-up. However, Pelosi by herself kept the charge to the one harder to prove example of Ukraine.

The Emoluments Clause violations by Trump are staggering and Trump has not denied them. As was the offence with his attempt to bring the June 2020 G-7 Summit and millions in profit to his bank’s Trump National Doral Miami golf resort in Florida,or the many examples of nepotism that has enabled family members direct access to foreign contract opportunities, these violations were more easily proven than the disjointed Ukraine connection. Trump has revelled in these many brazen violations, quid pro-quos and cabinet member criminalities that would have otherwise made Warren Harding drop dead.

Trump’s many unilateral executive orders that have eliminated congressionally ratified international treaties, national regulatory Agencies and regulations and outlawed science have been similarly unopposed by the Dems. His endless delusional and paranoid tweets delivered in the language of a five-year-old child put to bed without supper have been an international embarrassment to American diplomacy and decorum thus making him a buffoon in the eyes of world leaders. This was highlighted as revealed in the recent “hot mic” incident with Canada’s Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Princess Anne, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at this week’s NATO summit in London. Their backhanded sinceritylead to Trump and his easily bruised ego running off to sulk, scream and tweet from the sanctity of Air Force One.

This is only a passing list of the allegations that could have been brought to bear by impeachment. One might go on and on to include the president’s adulterous if not criminal indiscretions with enough “ladies” to make Harvey Weinstein a competitor, or Trump robbing $3.7 Billion from the military’s bloated military budget without congressional authority for his wall or his refusal to honour or enforce established environmental regulations and his pathological disinterest in the truth on any subject, or his certification of hatred, bigotry, and first-degree military murder for fun with impunity when Trump granted full pardons to barbarians, First Lieutenant Clint Lorance and Major Mathew Golsteyn, and Special Ops Chief, Edward Gallagher who should have all been put up against a wall and shot instead.

But this misses the greater point: the list of impeachable offences available for examination, no matter how long or short in one’s view, was reduced by the opposition party’s leader to just a single, now seemingly frivolous, phone call, etc., etc.

Pelosi could have rolled the dice on all potential charges, brought all these before a national election year audience for weeks or months and effectively assassinated Trump’s legacy to date in the process. Instead, for no good reason yet offered, Pelosi narrowed the impeachment investigation to a point that ensured that Trump would be able to crow from the Senate belfry about his complete exoneration right up to Nov. 2020.  The current reality is that Pelosi has all by herself done a perfect job of legitimizing all of Trump’s three years of societal crimes… and his 2020 presidency.

Making it as easy as possible for any fence-sitting independent voter to quickly make up their mind, Pelosi scripted an Abbott and Costello routine that left little remaining doubt.  When Jerry Nadler was given the role of “Bud”to Adam Schiff’s “Lou”as the clown princes for the comedy routine show trial in the House, any viewer could smell something rotten behind the curtain decaying quickly into a stench. With today’s day time TV audience quite familiar with many a  fictitious courtroom drama, anyone with a Tele could tell that Schiff and  Nadler were quickly developing their lengthy rap sheet and were the ones more likely than Trump to frog march the next perp-walk.

Certainly, all network and mainstream news put their pro-constitutional spin on this poorly executed coup, while Fox News paddled furiously in delivering the pro-Trump analysis of the plot daily. But there was a new actor that the voter had been told was waiting in the wings, but strangely never made his appearance: MSM media darling and unfathomably anointed DNC frontrunner, Dirty Joe Biden. Pelosi introduced this stink bomb and nothing MSM can do will prevent that foul smell of Biden’s political corruption-past and present- from now reaching the voter.

Dirty Joe, who is only alive in the polls due to the same MSM editorial propagation, already has, in the mind of many voters, a big fat “L” on the tips of his forked tongue to go along with his used car salesman smile. While this may well be the perfect election metaphor for a man seeking to offer up to the voter a broken down clunker of a country desperately in need of a new engine, Pelosi’s incredible bungling means that DNC status-quo favourite Biden, already anointed by MSM in HRC style as the white Barrack Obama… is political toast.

The Nixon Impeachment hearings started and ended in the democratically controlled Senate but at the Watergate Hearings, it was predicted that Tricky Dick would survive. But as the televised hearings continued daily, it was not Senate members only whose opinions of the matter were changing quickly…it was the American public. Helpfully, the bombshell testimony of John Dean and the revelations of the secret White House tapes by Alex Butterfield set public opinion on impeachment forever windward. When the phones within Senate offices began ringing off the hook demanding the impeachment of this crook, the Nixon presidency was terminally reduced to political red meat.

Pelosi, if she had incorporated a full docket of charges to be presented against Trump, would have had the same possibility of similarly swaying public opinion and therefore impeachment in the Senate. If not, at the ballot box. But…

So, what was Pelosi thinking? She has single-handedly certified the Democrats as still being as fraudulent as the 2016 Podesta/ Wasserman-Schultz emails proved just days before Clinton’s complete implosion of late October. Pelosi’s failure has completely failed to shift the political winds of public opinion against Trump one bit, tanked the predicted DNC frontrunner and dramatically showcased for two weeks why any voter faced with the upcoming November choice of the lesser of two evils of democracy will, thanks to Pelosi, choose instead the Republican Turd Sandwich.

Why not?

In America’s fait accompli of a declining monocracy what Pelosi has brought to the full attention of the 2020 voter is that; when it comes to the DNC, the Dems’ and Pelosi’s unwillingness to perform the function of an opposition party, hers is a political fraud designed for failure. The Dems failure at opposition  was further demonstrated to the voter this past week when the same Pelosi lead opposition allowed the Military and their private contractors got a $22 Billion increase to waste as Pelosi’s congress extracted $8.2 Billion from the Food Stamps program. Then, Before the week was out Pelosi’s opposition was revealed be further effective in allowing Trump to have 187 or 25% of federal circuit court judges confirmed… in just three years!

Now facing public defeat, Fearless Leader has shelved her watered-down articles of Impeachment in an obvious further sign of desperation and weakness before the voter. Having failed, she now suddenly tries to retain election year purpose for her Bay of Pigs style effort for she knows what every voter knows who has been tortured by her historic two week act of party impotence: The moment the Speaker of the House hands over the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, she, at that same moment, hands Trump the victory in November…in a landslide!

Now that’s opposition. That’s leadership. That’s Nancy Pelosi!

After reviewing the last two weeks of Democratic Party leadership and opposition, as to Pelosi and her side of the American political duopoly, the correct colour for her and her party’s banner is not bright blue with an ever reddening hue creeping in around the edges.

In the minds of the 2020 voter, the more accurate colour for the Democratic party is now…transparent… fucking… yellow!

 

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 180 in-depth articles over the past ten years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated and republished. On-scene reporting from important current events has led to his many multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, Keystone XL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Erdogan’s Turkey and many more. He can be reached at: live-on-scene ((at)) gmx.com. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos

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German Politician: “Ami Go Home!”… The US is waging bloody economic wars against the entire world

December 26th, 2019 by InfoBrics

Oskar Lafontaine is a German politician, candidate for Chancellor in the German federal election of 1990, Chairman of the Social Democratic Party from 1995 to 1999, Minister of Finance from 1998 to 1999, leader of The Left in Saarland since 2010.

The United States of America is waging bloody economic wars against the entire world, and now against us Germans. The German government is talking interference with our sovereignty. What a fallacy! We have never been a sovereign state. After the end of the World War II, it is the Americans who have been handling issues of war and peace in Germany.

In 1963, Charles de Gaulle said:

“Having allies… is a matter of course for us in the historical era in which we find ourselves. But to have your own free choice… is also a categorical imperative, because alliances have no absolute virtue, no matter what feelings they are based on. And if you give up control over yourself, you run the risk of never regaining it.”

Later, Francois Mitterrand would add:

“You can’t hand the solution over to others when life or death is at stake.”

American military bases in Germany imperil us instead of protecting. The United States is pushing us to a war with its aggressive policy of encircling Russia and China, with allocating huge amounts of $738 billion for military purposes, by means of withdrawing from the INF Treaty and placing short-range missiles next to the Russian borders. It is in our interest to liberate the German soil from US military bases.

“Ami go home!” the students chanted in 1968, when the United States killed millions of people in Vietnam, using its military bases in Germany. “Ami go home!” the Germans urged when the United States, under the guise of lying about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, unleashed the war in Iraq using its military facilities in Germany – a war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. “Ami go home!” – this appeal should become the motto of German politics today, when the greatest military power in the world is obviously violating international law and terrorizing all of the world.

This has been taken from Oscar Lafontaine’s Facebook and distributed by the German NachdenkSeiten run by another “heavyweight” of German politics – Albrecht Müller, a long-term ally of German Chancellor Willy Brandt, Bundestag member from 1987 to 1994.

“People like Oscar Lafontaine,” Albrecht Müller writes in his commentary, “able to get across their ideas, are a must-have in politics. The demand [on the US to leave Germany] is by no means radical. It’s appropriate. Many Germans believe so, but not those who shape today’s politics in Berlin. The German establishment and representatives of the major news outlets are either associated with the United States and dependent on them, or serve the interests of the military establishment. There are also people who simply lack courage and consider the ‘Ami go home’ demand unduly radical.

What else should happen? Sanctions have been imposed against us Germans. The weaponization process is at our expense. We are involved in maneuvers next to the Russian borders. Convoys with military equipment block our railways. What is finally going to make the cup run over?”

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The Case for Free Public Transit in Toronto

December 26th, 2019 by Saron Gebresellassi

Free public transit is a growing movement around the world. 

According to the book Free Public Transit: And Why We Don’t Pay To Ride Elevators, there are 200 cities around the world with some form of fare-free transit, and 97 that are completely fare-free. 

Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, implemented free transit in 2013, and it was adopted nationwide last year. Luxembourg is another country where transit is free. The idea has also gained traction in the United States. Kansas City is set to become the first major city in North America with free public transit. On December 5, their city council voted unanimously to eliminate bus fares.

Fare-free transit makes sense. Basic mobility is essential for all people for work, household tasks and broader participation in society. Transit should be accessible to all as a public service. After all, we don’t charge user fees for libraries, parks, schools and health care.

Moreover, the urgency of the climate crisis demands bold action. Encouraging public transit use would ease congestion and make our streets safer.

In an increasingly expensive and unequal city, abolishing fares would also greatly improve the quality of life for poor and working-class Torontonians for whom the cost of the TTC represents a serious economic hardship. The money currently being spent on fare enforcement could certainly be put to better use.

While transit advocates have historically prioritized improved service over abolishing fares, the two are intertwined. Expanding the transit network, particularly into underserviced neighbourhoods, will create quality jobs and add to the tax base.

Right now, there is little political support for abolishing transit fares in Toronto. Josh Matlow is the only city councillor on record to support the idea.

But in July, CUPE Local 2, which represents TTC electrical workers, came out in favour of free transit. The NDP pledged to support cities interested in moving toward fare-free public transit in the recent federal election. And Michael Coteau, who is running for the Ontario Liberal leadership, has called for the elimination of transit fares in the province within a decade.

It’s certainly true that free public transit is an expensive proposition. Paying for it will require a dramatic shift in political priorities. The Harris government’s cut to the provincial operating subsidy two decades ago – which paid for half of the operating costs – has devastated the TTC. As a result, the transit system is now the least subsidized in North America, with 70 per cent of its operating costs paid for by fares.

How would we pay for free transit?

The $1.2 billion in lost revenue would have to be made up. And that’s not including the cost of expanding the system to accommodate an increase in ridership.

The downloading of operating costs by the provincial government would have to be reversed. Free Transit Toronto is calling for a massive increase in federal and provincial funding financed by a more progressive tax system. Re-allocating provincial spending on highways would help. There is room to contribute at the municipal level as well.

Despite Mayor John Tory’s recent pledge to increase property tax rates to pay for much-needed services, more can be done. A congestion charge and a parking levy, for example, are permissible under the City of Toronto Act. In addition, the city could cut the ever-increasing police budget and abandon the Gardiner Expressway extension.

Free public transit is attainable. The city has already eliminated fares for children 12 and under, and it has been a huge success.

It doesn’t have to happen all at once. Free Transit Toronto is calling for the gradual elimination of transit fares over time, beginning with seniors, people on social assistance and the unemployed, as well as during extreme weather alerts (Paris already does this).

In addition, the group stresses the need for public ownership of all transit services.

With free public transit, we can tackle climate change and growing inequality and create a more livable city.

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Saron Gebresellassi is a human rights lawyer. Matt Fodor is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at York University.

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Boris Johnson Has Changed His Mind on ‘Reset’ with Russia

December 26th, 2019 by Johanna Ross

Recently Boris Johnson was quoted as saying he had ‘changed his mind’ on whether there could be a ‘reset’ in relations between Britain and Russia. Interviewed when on a visit to Estonia, he said that despite remaining an optimist and hoping for an improvement in bilateral relations, he found that the situation was ‘very, very disappointing’ and that there were ‘terrible problems’ that prevented cooperation between the two nations. He was in particular referring to, of course, the attempted murder of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal on the streets of Salisbury last year, which the UK has always blamed the Russian government for, despite the lack of evidence.

So should we be surprised by this? After all, Boris Johnson has in some ways maintained a more positive attitude towards Russia, despite being Foreign Secretary at the time of the Skripal case. He said back in 2017 that he was a ‘committed Russophile’ and that he wanted to see an improvement in relations with Russia, joking that he was the first ever Foreign Secretary to be called ‘Boris’. In an interview with Deutsche Welle he said that he loved Russia and that the UK had ‘no quarrel’ with the country. Even as recently as November this year he spoke quite sensibly on the topic of alleged Russian interference in UK elections, stating “There’s no evidence of that and you’ve got to be very careful… you simply can’t cast aspersions on everybody who comes from a certain country, just because of their nationality.”

As Mayor of London, Boris forged friendships and contacts within the Russian community, many of whom became wealthy donors to the Conservative party.  Sergei Nalobin, a Russian diplomat and son of a former KGB general, was one such member of the now defunct Conservative Friends of Russia, who once tweeted that he was a ‘good friend’ of Boris Johnson. And as recently as the day after the election, Johnson was at a party held by media guru Evgenii Lebedev, son of Alexander Lebedev, an ex-KGB agent. Indeed before the December election the Prime Minister was having to defend his delay of a controversial report into Russian interference in UK politics, as rumours began it had been suppressed due to details of substantial donations made by Russian oligarchs to his party. Lyubov Chernukhin, wife of Vladimir Chernukhin, paid £200,000 to the Conservative party in recent times, and in the past £160,000 for a tennis match with Johnson and £135,000 for a night with former Prime Minister Theresa May.

And yet, when it comes to policy towards Russia, Johnson has toed the establishment line.  He was criticised at the time of the Skripal case for accusing the Russian President Vladimir Putin for being personally responsible for the poisoning, without any concrete evidence.  He had said that the scientists at the UK’s chemical weapons centre at Porton Down assured him the ‘novichok’ had come from Russia. Later it emerged that Porton Down did not in fact ascertain that the poison had come from Russia, and it was established that Russia had ceased production of the substance long ago. He then asserted that only Russia had the motivation for targeting Skripal, as he was a defector, and yet as some have pointed out, the UK had equal motive. There are indeed many discrepancies in the UK version of events.

This is where Johnson’s Russia policy is laced with hypocrisy. For on the one hand, the country is treated as a pariah state, but on the other, he is more than willing to accept donations from wealthy individuals connected to the Kremlin. Indeed it is likely that if the UK had a similar trade relationship to the one it has with Saudi Arabia, its policy towards Russia would be quite different. One only has to look at the horrific murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, and its aftermath, to realise that UK foreign policy is very much determined by economic factors, not moral ones. Arms deals worth billions of pounds dictate that Britain will never do more than criticise the murder in passing, despite clear links to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and international condemnation of the Saudis and their human rights record. The UK court of appeal in fact ruled recently that British arms sales to Saudi Arabia are ‘unlawful’ because of their use in the Saudi onslaught of Yemen. And yet no such Cold War will be waged against the Saudi kingdom, which continues to be an ally of the US and UK in the Middle East.

So, no, we are not to be surprised at Johnson’s statement. British foreign policy towards Russia is consistent in its disdain and contempt for this Eurasian nation, which it has never really understood, or properly attempted to. As Winston Churchil once declared, Russia was a ‘riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma’.  We are no further forward today…

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Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

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Chemical Weapons Watchdog Is Just an American Lap Dog

December 26th, 2019 by Scott Ritter

A spate of leaks from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international inspectorate created for the purpose of implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention, has raised serious questions about the institution’s integrity, objectivity and credibility. The leaks address issues pertaining to the OPCW investigation into allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack civilians in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7, 2018. These allegations, which originated from such anti-Assad organizations as the Syrian Civil Defense (the so-called White Helmets) and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), were immediately embraced as credible by the OPCW, and were used by the United States, France and the United Kingdom to justify punitive military strikes against facilities inside Syria assessed by these nations as having been involved in chemical weapons-related activities before the OPCW initiated any on-site investigation.

The Douma incident was initially described by the White Helmets, SAMS and the U.S., U.K. and French governments as involving both sarin nerve agent and chlorine gas. However, this narrative was altered when OPCW inspectors released, on July 6, 2018, interim findings of their investigation that found no evidence of the use of sarin. The focus of the investigation quickly shifted to a pair of chlorine cylinders claimed by the White Helmets to have been dropped onto apartment buildings in Douma by the Syrian Air Force, resulting in the release of a cloud of chlorine gas that killed dozens of Syrian civilians. In March, the OPCW released its final report on the Douma incident, noting that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018,” that “this toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine” and that “the toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

Much has been written about the OPCW inspection process in Syria, and particularly the methodology used by the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM), an inspection body created by the OPCW in 2014 “to establish facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.” The FFM was created under the direction of Ahmet Üzümcü, a career Turkish diplomat with extensive experience in multinational organizations, including service as Turkey’s ambassador to NATO. Üzümcü was the OPCW’s third director general, having been selected from a field of seven candidates by its executive council to replace Argentine diplomat Rogelio Pfirter. Pfirter had held the position since being nominated to replace the OPCW’s first director general, José Maurício Bustani. Bustani’s tenure was marred by controversy that saw the OPCW transition away from its intended role as an independent implementor of the Chemical Weapons Convention to that of a tool of unilateral U.S. policy, a role that continues to mar the OPCW’s work in Syria today, especially when it comes to its investigation of the alleged use by the Syrian government of chemical weapons against civilians in Douma in April 2018.

Bustani was removed from his position in 2002, following an unprecedented campaign led by John Bolton, who at the time was serving as the undersecretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs in the U.S. State Department. What was Bustani’s crime? In 2001, he had dared to enter negotiations with the government of Iraq to secure that nation’s entry into the OPCW, thereby setting the stage for OPCW inspectors to visit Iraq and bring its chemical weapons capability under OPCW control. As director general, there was nothing untoward about Bustani’s action. But Iraq circa 2001 was not a typical recruitment target. In the aftermath of the Gulf War in 1991, the U.N. Security Council had passed a resolution under Chapter VII requiring Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including its chemical weapons capability, to be “removed, destroyed or rendered harmless” under the supervision of inspectors working on behalf of the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM.

The pursuit of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction led to a series of confrontations with Iraq that culminated in inspectors being ordered out of the country by the U.S. in 1998, prior to a 72-hour aerial attack—Operation Desert Fox. Iraq refused to allow UNSCOM inspectors to return, rightfully claiming that the U.S. had infiltrated the ranks of the inspectors and was using the inspection process to spy on Iraqi leadership for the purposes of facilitating regime change. The lack of inspectors in Iraq allowed the U.S. and others to engage in wild speculation regarding Iraqi rearmament activities, including in the field of chemical weapons. This speculation was used to fuel a call for military action against Iraq, citing the threat of a reconstituted WMD capability as the justification. Bustani sought to defuse this situation by bringing Iraq into the OPCW, an act that, if completed, would have derailed the U.S. case for military intervention in Iraq. Bolton’s intervention included threats to Bustani and his family, as well as threats to withhold U.S. dues to the OPCW accounting for some 22% of that organization’s budget; had the latter threat been implemented, it would have resulted in OPCW’s disbandment.

Bustani’s departure marked the end of the OPCW as an independent organization. Pfirter, Bolton’s hand-picked replacement, vowed to keep the OPCW out of Iraq. In an interview with U.S. media shortly after his appointment, Pfirter noted that while all nations should be encouraged to join the OPCW, “We should be very aware that there are United Nations resolutions in effect” that precluded Iraqi membership “at the expense” of its obligations to the Security Council. Under the threat of military action, Iraq allowed UNMOVIC inspectors to return in 2002; by February 2003, no WMD had been found, a result that did not meet with U.S. satisfaction. In March 2003, UNMOVIC inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq under orders of the U.S., paving the way for the subsequent invasion and occupation of that nation that same month (the CIA later concluded that Iraq had been disarmed of its weapons of mass destruction by the summer of 1991).

Under Pfirter’s leadership, the OPCW became a compliant tool of U.S. foreign policy objectives. By completely subordinating OPCW operations through the constant threat of fiscal ruin, the U.S. engaged in a continuous quid pro quo arrangement, trading the financial solvency of an ostensible multilateral organization for complicity in operating as a de facto extension of American unilateral policy. Bolton’s actions in 2002 put the OPCW and its employees on notice: Cross the U.S., and you will pay a terminal price.

When Üzümcü took over the OPCW’s reins in 2010, the organization was very much the model of multinational consensus, which, in the case of any multilateral organization in which the U.S. plays a critical role, meant that nothing transpired without the express approval of the U.S. and its European NATO allies, in particular the United Kingdom and France. Shortly after he took office, Üzümcü was joined by Robert Fairweather, a career British diplomat who served as Üzümcü’s chief of Cabinet. (While Üzümcü was the ostensible head of the OPCW, the daily task of managing the functioning of the OPCW was that of the chief of Cabinet. In short, nothing transpired within the OPCW without Fairweather’s knowledge and concurrence.)

Üzümcü and Fairweather’s tenure at the OPCW was dominated by Syria, where, since 2011, the government of President Bashar Assad had been engaged in a full-scale conflict with a foreign-funded and -equipped insurgency whose purpose was regime change. By 2013, allegations emerged from both the Syrian government and rebel forces concerning the use of chemical weapons by the other side. In August 2013, the OPCW dispatched an inspection team into Syria as part of a U.N.-led effort, which included specialists from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.N. itself, to investigate allegations that sarin had been used in attack on civilians in the town of Ghouta. While the mission found conclusive evidence that sarin nerve agent had been used, it did not assign blame for the attack.

Despite the lack of causality, the U.S. and its NATO allies quickly assigned blame for the sarin attacks on the Syrian government. To forestall U.S. military action against Syria, the Russian government helped broker a dealwhereby the U.S. agreed to refrain from undertaking military action if the Syrian government joined the OPCW and subjected the totality of its chemical weapons stockpile to elimination. In October 2013, the OPCW-U.N. Joint Mission, created under the authority of U.N. Security Council resolution 2118 (2103), began the process of identifying, cataloging, removing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. This process was completed in September 2014 (in December 2013, the OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its disarmament work in Syria).

If the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons was an example of the OPCW at its best, what followed was a case study of just the opposite. In May 2014, the OPCW created the Fact-Finding Mission, or FFM, charged with establishing “facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals, reportedly chlorine, for hostile purposes in the Syrian Arab Republic.” The FFM was headed by Malik Ellahi, who served as head of the OPCW’s government relations and political affairs branch. The appointment of someone lacking both technical and operational experience suggests that Ellahi’s primary role was political. Under his leadership, the FFM established a close working relationship with the anti-Assad Syrian opposition, including the White Helmets and SAMS.

In 2015, responsibility for coordinating the work of the FFM with the anti-Assad opposition was transferred to a British inspector named Len Phillips (another element of the FFM, led by a different inspector, was responsible for coordinating with the Syrian government). Phillips developed a close working relationship with the White Helmets and SAMS and played a key role in OPCW’s investigation of the April 2017 chemical incident in Khan Shaykhun. By April 2018, the FFM had undergone a leadership transition, with Phillips replaced by a Tunisian inspector named Sami Barrek. It was Barrek who led the FFM into Syria in April 2018 to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use at Douma. Like Phillips, Barrek maintained a close working relationship with the White Helmets and SAMS.

Once the FFM wrapped up its investigation in Douma, however, it became apparent to Fairweather that it had a problem. There were serious questions about whether chlorine had, in fact, been used as a weapon. The solution, brokered by Fairweather, was to release an interim report that ruled out sarin altogether, but left the door open regarding chlorine. This report was released on July 6, 2018. Later that month, both Üzümcü and Fairweather were gone, replaced by a Spaniard named Fernando Arias and a French diplomat named Sébastien Braha. It would be up to them to clean up the Douma situation.

The situation Braha inherited from Fairweather was unenviable. According to an unnamed OPCW official who spoke with the media after the fact, two days prior to the publication of the interim report, on July 4, 2018, Fairweather had been paid a visit by a trio of U.S. officials, who indicated to Fairweather and the members of the FFM responsible for writing the report that it was the U.S. position that the chlorine cannisters in question had been used to dispense chlorine gas at Douma, an assertion that could not be backed up by the evidence. Despite this, the message that Fairweather left with the OPCW personnel was that there had to be a “smoking gun.” It was now Braha’s job to manufacture one.

Braha did this by dispatching OPCW inspectors to Turkey in September 2018 to interview new witnesses identified by the White Helmets, and by commissioning new engineering studies that better explained the presence of the two chlorine cannisters found in Douma. By March, Braha had assembled enough information to enable the technical directorate to issue its final report. Almost immediately, dissent appeared in the ranks of the OPCW. An engineering report that contradicted the findings published by Braha was leaked, setting off a firestorm of controversy derived from its conclusion that the chlorine cannisters found in Douma had most likely been staged by the White Helmets.

The OPCW, while eventually acknowledging that the leaked report was genuine, explained its exclusion from the final report on the grounds that it attributed blame, something the FFM was not mandated to do. According to the OPCW, the engineering report in question had been submitted to the investigation and identification team, a newly created body within the OPCW mandated to make such determinations. Moreover, Director General Arias stood by the report’s conclusion that it had “reasonable grounds” to believe “that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018.”

Arias’ explanation came under attack in November, when WikiLeaks published an email sent by a member of the FFM team that had participated in the Douma investigation. In this email, which was sent on June 22, 2018, and addressed to Robert Fairweather, the author noted that, when it came to the Douma incident, “[p]urposely singling out chlorine gas as one of the possibilities is disingenuous.” The author of the email, who had participated in drafting the original interim report, noted that the original text had emphasized that there was insufficient evidence to support this conclusion, and that the new text represented “a major deviation from the original report.” Moreover, the author took umbrage at the new report’s conclusions, which claimed to be “based on the high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives detected in environmental samples.” According to email’s author “They were, in most cases, present only in parts per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace quantities.” In short, the OPCW had cooked the books, manufacturing evidence from thin air that it then used to draw conclusions that sustained the U.S. position that chlorine gas had been used by the Syrian government at Douma.

Arias, while not addressing the specifics of the allegations set forth in the leaked email, recently declared that it is “the nature of any thorough inquiry for individuals in a team to express subjective views,” noting that “I stand by the independent, professional conclusion” presented by the OPCW about the Douma incident. This explanation, however, does not fly in the face of the evidence. The OPCW’s credibility as an investigative body has been brought into question through these leaks, as has its independent character. If an organization like the OPCW can be used at will by the U.S., the United Kingdom and France to trigger military attacks intended to support regime-change activities in member states, then it no longer serves a useful purpose to the international community it ostensibly serves. To survive as a credible entity, the OPCW must open itself to a full-scale audit of its activities in Syria by an independent authority with inspector general-like investigatory powers. Anything short of this leaves the OPCW, an organization that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its contributions to world peace, permanently stained by the reality that it is little more than a lap dog of the United States, used to promote the very conflicts it was designed to prevent.

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Scott Ritter spent more than a dozen years in the intelligence field, beginning in 1985 as a ground intelligence officer with the US Marine Corps, where he served with the Marine Corps component of the Rapid Deployment Force at the Brigade and Battalion level.

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The Trump-Biden and the Russia-Ukraine Saga: The Game is About Eurasia

December 26th, 2019 by Padraig McGrath

On December 23rd, the Washington Post ran a piece exploring the possible motivations behind US president Donald Trump’s decision to pause US military aid to Ukraine on July 12th last year. On September 28th 2018 and February 16th respectively, President Trump had signed into law 2 bills from Congress which approved a combined $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, including the provision of lethal weaponry.

The question is extensively explored in the Washington Post article, as in other articles on the issue, as to whether or not Trump’s July 12th decision to withhold the military aid violated the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act, which states that once Congress appropriates funds and the president signs the relevant spending bill, then it is not within the president’s legal power to withhold those funds.

The Washington Post and other media have also tentatively explored the unresolved question as to what connection, if any, Trump’s July 12th decision to withhold the funds might have had to his subsequent July 25th telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodydmyr Zelensky, which became central to arguments for his impeachment. Was Trump using the withholding of aid in order to pressure Zelensky into launching investigations into Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian business-interests, and those of other senior figures in the US Democratic Party? To be fair, the Washington Post article, and a surprisingly high proportion of the other media-coverage of these questions, have been soberly analytical. Refreshingly, the coverage has managed to avoid the worst excesses of liberal Trump Derangement Syndrome.

I believe that the legal debate is largely incidental to what is really happening, and that any moral debate on this issue is even more superfluous than the legal debate. However, before we set the complex legal issues aside, it should be briefly stated that they are not unimportant. Even if we understand that 99% of everybody’s motivations for getting entangled in the legal debate are politically partisan, it is at least conceivable that a person might wish to ask these questions from a non-partisan, purely legal point of view, and that purely juridical concern should not be dismissed out of hand.

Regarding the Bidens’ role in this fiasco, one surprising aspect is that it took so many years for the controversy regarding Burisma Holdings to go viral, even in alt-media. The facts that not only Hunter Biden but also Devon Archer, a former John Kerry campaign manager, sat on Burisma’s board of directors, and that Burisma was extensively invested in shale-gas extraction in the vicinity of the Donbas war-zone, had been public knowledge in the Russian-speaking world ever since 2014.

However, in order to understand what is really happening at the deeper systemic level, we need to also set the endless cycle of allegations and counter-allegations aside. The petty political or financial agendas of the Bidens, or Trump, or this or that member of Congress, are incidental to the big systemic picture. Sure, all the players have their own self-interested petty motivations, but the sum of all those motivations does not amount to an explanation of why the game is being played in the first place. Politicians, and occasionally their wastrel offspring, are merely unwitting instruments of history, not agents of history. The parameters of the game are determined by a core geo-strategic logic.

What vital geo-strategic interest does the United States have in Ukraine?

Back in 2014, there was certainly hope in US business circles that Ukraine could be a profitable colony, and some US companies including Monsanto have profited from their expansion into Ukraine. However, for most US commercial interests, it quickly became clear in the immediate post-coup period that Ukraine was simply too much of a self-destructive black hole to hope that it might ever become a profitable colony. Ukraine’s culture of blatant kleptocracy was simply too pervasive and ingrained for most western concerns’ money to be safe there.

So rather than the economic exploitation of Ukraine, the United States’ vital geo-strategic interest in Ukraine centrally stems from the point that the maintenance of permanent instability in Ukraine presents developmental and security-challenges to Russia. Furthermore, the maintenance of perpetual Ukrainian hostility toward Russia is useful to larger US geo-strategic interests. We need to remember Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 statement that “without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire.” Brzezinski had identified 3 “geo-strategic pivots” on the Eurasian land-mass which were vital to the task of protecting broader and more global US interests – Iran, Turkey and Ukraine. We have to admit that, as badly as the US foreign policy establishment miscalculated in Ukraine, they still got a piece of what they wanted. The loss of Ukraine’s potential membership was a major blow to the Eurasian Customs Union’s potential for economic reach.

Furthermore, Ukraine’s geography renders it a perfect instrument to drive an economic wedge between Germany and Russia. The trajectory of Russian-German economic integration which has developed steadily over the past 20 years was unquestionably contrary to the decaying hegemon’s interest. Ever since the late 19th century, American geo-strategists have morbidly feared the economic synthesis of Germany’s technological resources with Russia’s human resources and natural resources.

In this regard, all of the legal allegations and counter-allegations regarding Trump and the Bidens are merely incidental noise, and the attached moral arguments are even more absurd.

Here’s what’s really happening:

Trump’s role as a political outsider in Washington is, in this context, manifested in the point that he still thinks like a businessman, not like a geo-strategic planner. As Ukraine is simply too dysfunctional to be turned into a profitable US colony, Trump simply has no meaningful interest in Ukraine. Trump has most probably never bothered reading Halford Mackinder or George Kennan. His critics and political enemies will argue that, as a mere businessman, Trump doesn’t understand is that the game is not about “Ukraine” – the game is about Eurasia.

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Padraig McGrath is a political analyst.

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Impeachment Is a Distraction: Heavily Scripted Vote Demonstrates that Democracy Really Is Dead

December 26th, 2019 by Philip Giraldi

Watching the impeachment “vote” was hard work. With only a few exceptions, each Congressman rose for roughly 90 seconds and provided a prearranged, almost completely scripted-along-party-lines explanation of how he or she was casting one’s ballot. After four grueling hours of hearing self-serving lies like “no one is above the law,” I was hoping that one of them would either fall off the podium and fracture a leg or actually go mad and break out into a song and dance routine. The entire performance was the strongest possible argument for term limits that is possible to make.

However, one of the more truly interesting aspects of the proceedings was the Democratic Party view of Russia, which was cited constantly. According to most of the Democrats, Russian meddling was the decisive element in getting Donald Trump elected, and many of them also believe that there was collusion between the GOP candidate and President Vladimir Putin. It is a viewpoint that is totally at odds with the facts, even if one actually believes that there was a meeting in the Kremlin at which a malevolent Putin instructed his myrmidons to “get Hillary.” Slippery Adam Schiff, he of the intelligence committee, carefully referred to Russia as an adversary but many other Democrats kept using the word “enemy.”

Regarding Ukraine, it was also interesting to note bipartisan support for supplying lethal weapons to the puppet regime in Kiev so they can kill Russian soldiers. No one, as far as I could discern, made the point that the United States had no real interest in regime change in Ukraine in the first place as it was a dangerous move that was responsive to no actual American interest. After that, funding and arming the locals to confront Moscow also would not seem to be in the US interest. That so many congress critters seem to be hard wired in their Russo-phobia would seem to suggest that they are willfully ignorant on the subject and inclined to take the path of least resistance, which is to blame the Kremlin rather than the horrific US policy that preceded and brought about Moscow’s intervention.

One also has to conclude that while the Republicans continue to mostly quietly support an aggressive foreign policy, the real war party in Congress is now the Democrats. They have incorporated Russia as the enemy so completely into their sense of identity that it has become the fallback position whenever they feel compelled to say something to distance themselves from the GOP. For them Russia and Vladimir Putin are together the real enemy that is out to destroy what remains of American democracy. To put it bluntly, such an argument is ridiculous, but it is clearly believed by many in the House of Representatives and Senate.

While all of that was going on in high definition, there were other things taking place. A week before the “trial” in the House of Representatives, the White House ordered a new round of sanctions directed against Iran. The sanctions in part target the country’s largest private airline Mahan Air, which was accused of “weapons of mass destruction proliferation” and transportation of lethal aid to Yemen. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin issued a statement claiming that “The Iranian regime uses its aviation and shipping industries to supply its regional terrorist and militant groups with weapons, directly contributing to the devastating humanitarian crises in Syria and Yemen.”

Mahan Air has been targeted by the Treasury Department since 2011, when it was claimed that the planes were being used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) to move troops and military hardware around the Middle East region. The airline has 55 planes and flies to 40 international and domestic destinations.

The airline is now sanctioned under the Executive Order 13382 as a “proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters.” Apart from the appalling English usage, one might well question the designation itself as Iran is not the party responsible for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. That honor goes to America’s good friend Saudi Arabia. And blaming the situation in Syria on Iran is also a bit of a misdirection as it is the United States that has prolonged the carnage in that country. And what weapons of mass destruction are involved in both cases is by no means clear. Iran has no nukes and there have been no credible reports of the use of chemical or biological weapons in Yemen, while the stories about Syrian government employment of such weapons have turned out to be fabrications.

The Treasury Department sanctions targeted three general ticket sales agents of Mahan Air, as well as dozens of aircraft belonging to or operated by it. The new sanctions might be viewed as the latest step in the US government campaign to apply “maximum pressure” against Iran. The move will mean that other countries in Europe and the Middle East will stop permitting Mahan Air flights from landing or otherwise using their facilities. The Treasury is clearly willing to use what are referred to as “secondary sanctions” on other countries if the ban on Mahan Air is not supported. It is economic warfare pure and simple and the intent might well be to shut down the airline.

The timing and targeting of the White House move suggest that pressure is being directed against Iran’s transportation links with the rest of the world, thereby isolating it and bringing it that much closer to economic collapse. How Iran will react to the new sanctions is not known, but if it is pushed hard enough it might choose to strike back.

There is also some concern over a bill before Congress that was originally introduced three years ago but which now appears to have sufficient support to pass into law. It would authorize additional sanctions by the US Treasury Department directed against “the Syrian regime, Russia and Iran for past and ongoing war crimes” that it has been claimed took place during the Syrian war. As many of the alleged atrocities in the Syrian war have been exposed as fabrications by groups like the White Helmets, it is by no means clear how Washington will verify its list of “war crimes.” At least one report suggests that the White House now supports the bill and is likely to enforce any sanctions that are put in place.

And, of course, it just might be Israel that will pull the trigger and start a war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, struggling for his political survival, continuously claims that Iran is planning to attack, requiring his continued strong leadership. Last month, Israel carried out a “very intense” attack on Iranian and Syrian targets in Syria, killing 23 soldiers and civilians. Earlier, the Israeli Air Force claimed that it had destroyed an Iranian weapons depot in Iraq and also used drones to hit alleged Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Some believe that the Israeli actions are intended to provoke an Iranian response that will bring the US into the fight.

So, Congress continues to whine pointlessly about Russiagate while the pot is boiling over in the Middle East. It will be interesting to see if it will be possible to make it through the year without something very unpleasant happening.

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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.

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The Russia-Ukraine Gas Deal Took the World by Surprise. New Detente?

December 26th, 2019 by Andrew Korybko

Few could have predicted several years ago that Russia and Ukraine would reconcile with one another to the point of agreeing to ensure the reliable delivery of gas to the EU for the next 5-15 years, but that’s exactly what just happened last week in the most convincing sign yet that the long-awaited “New Detente” is finally beginning to bear some fruit.

Russia and Ukraine took the world by surprise last week after agreeing to ensure the reliable delivery of gas to the EU for at least the next five years and with the option of extending their accord for a full decade after that. This outcome was previously thought to be a political fantasy after the two countries became acrimonious rivals following the neo-fascist consequences of the US-backed EuroMaidan coup in early 2014 and Crimea’s subsequent reunification with Russia shortly thereafter, to say nothing of the presently unresolved Ukrainian Civil War that continues to claim lives in Donbas to this day. It made perfect sense at the time for both parties to disengage from one another and no longer cooperate on the energy front, with Russia instead seeking to diversify its EU-destined transit routes through Nord Stream II and Turkish Stream whereas Ukraine was convinced to buy more expensive American LNG that would be pumped to the country from the West (primarily Poland) through a technique called “reverse gas flow” via existing pipelines.

Both countries made progress on each of these fronts in the years since, which is yet another reason why it was so surprising that they decided to bury the hatchet and agree to prolong their energy cooperation for the benefit of their mutual EU partners. This unexpected development speaks to the enormous achievements that have been made behind the scenes in negotiating the long-awaited “New Detente” since Zelensky’s election earlier this year made it easier for Trump to reverse the anti-Russian policies of their predecessors, Poroshenko and Obama respectively. Without changes at the top of the American and Ukrainian leaderships, it would have been impossible for both of them to reach pragmatic agreements with Russia that would ultimately be to their mutual interests. That’s not to say that the state of relations between the West (which includes Ukraine’s generally pro-Western government in this context) and Russia are perfect, but just that they’re comparatively better than at any time since the onset of the West’s anti-Russian sanctions in 2014.

Russia and Ukraine engaged in a prisoner swap earlier in September which was an important trust-building move signifying their joint intent to break the ice and reopen negotiations on other issues of bilateral interest. That development was importantly preceded by President Putin’s visit to France to meet with his counterpart a few weeks prior, during which time it became apparent that a “New Detente” was certainly in the cards. The subsequent prisoner swap further confirmed that, which was then followed by the resumption of the Normandy Talks earlier this month. The natural evolution of this fast-moving rapprochement was the surprise gas deal which adds some much-needed substance to this otherwise hitherto mostly symbolic process by making the EU as a whole a tangible stakeholder in its continued success. Furthermore, it’s extremely unlikely that this could have occurred had the US not tacitly allowed it, which speaks to its intentions to improve relations with Russia despite the ongoing Ukrainegate impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

Like it was earlier noted, the “New Detente” isn’t perfect, as seen most recently by the US’ decision to impose sanctions on the companies involved in Nord Stream II’s construction, but once again, the state of relations in general are still comparatively better than their nadir in mid-2014 immediately after the EuroMaidan coup and Crimea’s reunification with Russia. The US is still trying to “contain” Russia with mixed success, while Russia is undertaking its best efforts to break out of this “containment” noose and even “flip” some of the US’ traditional partners such as Turkey, so the New Cold War probably won’t end anytime soon. Nor, for that matter, did anybody reasonably expect that it would, but just like during the Old Cold War, there comes a time when the involved parties believe that it’s in their best interests to proverbially take a break and enter into a period of detente. It seems as though that phase is only now just beginning but which has finally borne some fruit after Trump promised to pursue this outcome all throughout the 2016 campaign.

One can argue over why that hasn’t already happened to the extent that he promised (or even if he was fully sincere in the first place), but the point to focus on in the here and now is that some tangible progress has finally been made concerning the future of Russia’s trans-Ukrainian gas supplies to the EU. From the looks of it, all the relevant players — Russia, Ukraine, the EU, and the US — have concrete interests in seeing that this agreement is upheld. It’s convenient for Russia to continue using existing pipelines, Ukraine wants to get paid for its transit role, the EU desires reliable but cheap gas imports, and the US recognizes that this outcome perpetuates the geostrategic role of its Ukrainian proxy that it could then leverage as a “bargaining chip” for reaching a more substantive “New Detente” with Russia sometime next year or the one afterwards. That said, while each player has their interests, they don’t exactly trust one another for different reasons, which means that the “New Detente” might still be offset if any of them decides to play the spoiler or is undermined by their “deep states”.

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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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Erdoğan’s Adventurism in Syria and Libya Has Left Turkey Weaker and Isolated

December 26th, 2019 by Paul Antonopoulos

Still featured on the Turkish Ministry of Affairs website is the “Zero Problems With Our Neighbors” policy that was launched in 2010 with the aim of diffusing Turkey’s many issues with all of its neighbors. However, less than a year into the launch of the new policy, it was quickly abandoned as Turkey decided to support jihadist groups, including Al-Qaeda and ISIS, against Syria despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once calling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as his “brother.”

The Syrian War provided the opportunity for Erdoğan’s grandeur imaginations of a Neo-Ottoman Empire, leading him to quickly abandon Turkey’s “Zero Problems” policy. Today, Turkey has more problems than it had before intervening in the war. Not only has Assad survived the Turkish-backed onslaught (without discounting the role of Western imperialists, Arab dictatorships and Israel), but today there are millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, terrorist attacks have drastically increased in the country, and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), recognized as a terrorist organization by Ankara, has reemerged in Syria after Assad kicked them out of the country. By supporting the war against Syria, Erdoğan created the very conditions for the PKK to return to Syria under the banner of the People’s Protection Units (YPG). By trying to remove Assad, Erdoğan actually strengthened the PKK and their influence, creating more problems for Turkey, but also justifying the illegal occupation of vast areas of northern Syria.

The Turkish economy has reached a critical crisis, partially because of the Syrian war, with the unemployment rate at approximately 14%. Billions of dollars has been invested into destroying Syria, and the only return has been ISIS-supplied oil for Erdoğan’s son Bilal to profit from. However, Erdoğan has masterfully utilized irrational and fragile Turkish hyper ultranationalism to cover the effects his war against Syria has created in his own country; demographically, economically and security-wise, all for little gain except within his own family. To keep the country united despite the spiralling economic and security problems, Erdoğan has resorted to uniting the country against the one more common enemy – Greece.

There is a reason why Turkish media is ranked among the lowest in the world in terms of freedom – it is Erdoğan’s media. He has also masterfully used the media to manipulate his own people with lies and inaccuracies to claim Greek islands and maritime space, despite international law determining these areas as Greece’s territory. The oil and gas rich Aegean Sea is now being claimed by Turkey despite the UN Charter Law of the Sea favoring Greece – the reason why Turkey is 1 out of 15 countries out of 193 UN members not to sign it. Despite this reality, Erdoğan tells Turkish people through the tightly controlled media that under international law they can claim sovereignty over some Greek territories. It is for this reason that Turkey publishes maps that have Greek islands like Kastelorizo completely missing and other islands like Crete moved from their actual position

With Erdoğan failing to defeat the PKK or remove Assad in Syria, he still insists on his grand project of neo-Ottomanism by wanting to steal Greek maritime space, turning to the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated National Government of Accords (GNA) in Libya’s Tripoli, headed by Fayez al-Sarraj, an ethnic Turk himself, as are many of the top people in the government, to divide Greek maritime space between themselves. However, Erdoğan grossly miscalculated and is now in a much weaker position then he was in late November when he began the provocation against Greece. Not only has no country supported his plans to steal Greek maritime space, but in a rare instance, the U.S., Russia and the EU all condemned Turkey’s provocative move.

General Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army (LNA), in opposition to the GNA, used the Erdoğan-Sarraj aggression against Greece to restart his offensive against the Turkish-backed government and in only a matter of days reached 6 kilometers from Tripoli city center. Much of Haftar’s top military personnel were trained in Greek military schools and he utilized the Turkish aggression to his advantage to gain a European ally. Not only has Greece now backed Haftar, but it is expected that when Haftar visits Greece in the coming days, many other European and NATO countries will begin to unrecognize Sarraj. On Monday, I wrote that Italy had to reverse its backing of Sarraj to protect their interests in Libya. Since then, Italy is now distancing itself from Sarraj with Haftar due to arrive in Rome.

Erdoğan’s adventurism with Sarraj against Greece has only isolated Turkey further and legitimized Haftar’s push into Tripoli. The only ally Erdoğan has in the Eastern Mediterranean was Sarraj, but it is likely he will lose power with Haftar’s offensive on Tripoli. With Egypt promising to respond to Turkey in Libya if it intervenes, can Turkey really afford to be at war with Syria, Libya and Egypt at the same time as its economic crisis continues to worsen?

Turkey has never been more isolated, alone and frustrated by losing in Idlib and Libya, and this is set to get worse in 2020. Greece-Cyprus-Israel will sign a pipeline deal on January 2 in Athens that completely bypasses Turkey in the so-called ‘disputed’ waters, and Greece-Cyprus-Egypt-France will discuss Mediterranean issues on January 4-5 in Cairo. For all the military posturing and rhetorical aggression, Erdoğan’s adventurism has only left his country diplomatically isolated, economically struggling and less secure domestically, a gross miscalculation that he will unlikely reverse in pursuit of regional dominance.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

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You Say You Want a (Russian) Revolution?

December 26th, 2019 by Pepe Escobar

Once in a blue moon an indispensable book comes out making a clear case for sanity in what is now a post-MAD world. That’s the responsibility carried by “The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs,” by Andrei Martyanov (Clarity Press), arguably the most important book of 2019.

Martyanov is the total package — and he comes with extra special attributes as a top-flight Russian military analyst, born in Baku in those Back in the U.S.S.R. days, living and working in the U.S., and writing and blogging in English.

Right from the start, Martyanov wastes no time destroying not only Fukuyama’s and Huntington’s ravings but especially Graham Allison’s childish and meaningless Thucydides Trap argument — as if the power equation between the U.S. and China in the 21stcentury could be easily interpreted in parallel to Athens and Sparta slouching towards the Peloponnesian War over 2,400 years ago. What next? Xi Jinping as the new Genghis Khan?

(By the way, the best current essay on Thucydides is in Italian, by Luciano Canfora (“Tucidide: La Menzogna, La Colpa, L’Esilio”). No Trap. Martyanov visibly relishes defining the Trap as a “figment of the imagination” of people who “have a very vague understanding of real warfare in the 21st century.” No wonder Xi explicitly said the Trap does not exist.)

Martyanov had already detailed in his splendid, previous book, “Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning,” how “American lack of historic experience with continental warfare” ended up “planting the seeds of the ultimate destruction of the American military mythology of the 20thand 21stcenturies which is foundational to the American decline, due to hubris and detachment of reality.” Throughout the book, he unceasingly provides solid evidence about the kind of lethality waiting for U.S. forces in a possible, future war against real armies (not the Taliban or Saddam Hussein’s), air forces, air defenses and naval power.

Do the Math

One of the key takeaways is the failure of U.S. mathematical models: and readers of the book do need to digest quite a few mathematical equations. The key point is that this failure led the U.S. “on a continuous downward spiral of diminishing military capabilities against the nation [Russia] she thought she defeated in the Cold War.”

In the U.S., Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was introduced by the late Andrew Marshall, a.k.a. Yoda, the former head of Net Assessment at the Pentagon and the de facto inventor of the “pivot to Asia” concept. Yet Martyanov tells us that RMA actually started as MTR (Military-Technological Revolution), introduced by Soviet military theoreticians back in the 1970s.

One of the staples of RMA concerns nations capable of producing land-attack cruise missiles, a.k.a. TLAMs. As it stands, only the U.S., Russia, China and France can do it. And there are only two global systems providing satellite guidance to cruise missiles: the American GPS and the Russian GLONASS. Neither China’s BeiDou nor the European Galileo qualify – yet – as global GPS systems.

Then there’s Net-Centric Warfare (NCW). The term itself was coined by the late Admiral Arthur Cebrowski in 1998 in an article he co-wrote with John Garstka’s titled, “Network-Centric Warfare – Its Origin and Future.”

Deploying his mathematical equations, Martyanov soon tells us that “the era of subsonic anti-shipping missiles is over.” NATO, that brain-dead organism (copyright Emmanuel Macron) now has to face the supersonic Russian P-800 Onyx and the Kalibr-class M54 in a “highly hostile Electronic Warfare environment.” Every developed modern military today applies Net-Centric Warfare (NCW), developed by the Pentagon in the 1990s.

Martyanov mentions in his new book something that I learned on my visit to Donbass in March 2015: how NCW principles, “based on Russia’s C4ISR capabilities made available by the Russian military to numerically inferior armed forces of the Donbass Republics (LDNR), were used to devastating effect both at the battles of Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo, when attacking the cumbersome Soviet-era Ukrainian Armed Forces military.”

No Escape From the Kinzhal

Martyanov provides ample information on Russia’s latest missile – the hypersonic Mach-10 aero-ballistic Kinzhal, recently tested in the Arctic.

Crucially, as he explains, “no existing anti-missile defense in the U.S. Navy is capable of shooting [it] down even in the case of the detection of this missile.” Kinzhal has a range of 2,000 km, which leaves its carriers, MiG-31K and TU-22M3M, “invulnerable to the only defense a U.S. Carrier Battle Group, a main pillar of U.S. naval power, can mount – carrier fighter aircraft.” These fighters simply don’t have the range.

The Kinzhal was one of the weapons announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s game-changing March 1, 2018 speech at the Federal Assembly. That’s the day, Martyanov stresses, when the real RMA arrived, and “changed completely the face of peer-peer warfare, competition and global power balance dramatically.”

Top Pentagon officials such as General John Hyten,  vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, have admitted on the record there are “no existing countermeasures” against, for instance, the hypersonic, Mach 27 glide vehicle Avangard (which renders anti-ballistic missile systems useless), telling the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee the only way out would be “a nuclear deterrent.” There are also no existing counter-measures against anti-shipping missiles such as the Zircon and Kinzhal.

Any military analyst knows very well how the Kinzhal destroyed a land target the size of a Toyota Corolla in Syria after being launched 1,000 km away in adverse weather conditions. The corollary is the stuff of NATO nightmares: NATO’s command and control installations in Europe are de facto indefensible.

Martyanov gets straight to the point: “The introduction of hypersonic weapons surely pours some serious cold water on the American obsession with securing the North American continent from retaliatory strikes.”

Martyanov is thus unforgiving on U.S. policymakers who “lack the necessary tool-kit for grasping the unfolding geostrategic reality in which the real revolution in military affairs … had dramatically downgraded the always inflated American military capabilities and continues to redefine U.S. geopolitical status away from its self-declared hegemony.”

And it gets worse: “Such weapons ensure a guaranteed retaliation [Martyanov’s italics] on the U.S. proper.” Even the existing Russian nuclear deterrents – and to a lesser degree Chinese, as paraded recently — “are capable of overcoming the existing U.S. anti-ballistic systems and destroying the United States,” no matter what crude propaganda the Pentagon is peddling.

In February 2019, Moscow announced the completion of tests of a nuclear-powered engine for the Petrel cruise missile. This is a subsonic cruise missile with nuclear propulsion that can remain in air for quite a long time, covering intercontinental distances, and able to attack from the most unexpected directions. Martyanov mischievously characterizes the Petrel as “a vengeance weapon in case some among American decision-makers who may help precipitate a new world war might try to hide from the effects of what they have unleashed in the relative safety of the Southern Hemisphere.”

Hybrid War Gone Berserk

A section of the book expands on China’s military progress, and the fruits of the Russia-China strategic partnership, such as Beijing buying $3 billion-worth of S-400 Triumph anti-aircraft missiles — “ideally suited to deal with the exact type of strike assets the United States would use in case of a conventional conflict with China.”

Because of the timing, the analysis does not even take into consideration the arsenal presented in early October at the Beijing parade celebrating the 70thanniversary of the People’s Republic.

That includes, among other things, the “carrier-killer” DF-21D, designed to hit warships at sea at a range of up to 1,500 km; the intermediate range “Guam Killer” DF-26; the DF-17 hypersonic missile; and the long-range submarine-launched and ship-launched YJ-18A anti-ship cruise missiles. Not to mention the DF-41 ICBM – the backbone of China’s nuclear deterrent, capable of reaching the U.S. mainland carrying multiple warheads.

Martyanov could not escape addressing the RAND Corporation, whose reason to exist is to relentlessly push for more money for the Pentagon – blaming Russia for “hybrid war” (an American invention)  even as it moans about the U.S.’s incapacity of defeating Russia in each and every war game. RAND’s war games pitting the U.S. and allies against Russia and China invariably ended in a “catastrophe” for the “finest fighting force in the world.”

Martyanov also addresses the S-500s, capable of reaching AWACS planes and possibly even capable of intercepting hypersonic non-ballistic targets. The S-500 and its latest middle-range state of the art air-defense system S-350 Vityaz will be operational in 2020.

His key takeway: “There is no parity between Russia and the United States in such fields as air-defense, hypersonic weapons and, in general, missile development, to name just a few fields – the United States lags behind in these fields, not just in years but in generations [italics mine].”

All across the Global South, scores of nations are very much aware that the U.S. economic “order” – rather disorder – is on the brink of collapse. In contrast, a cooperative, connected, rule-based, foreign relations between sovereign nations model is being advanced in Eurasia – symbolized by the merging of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the NDB (the BRICS bank).

The key guarantors of the new model are Russia and China. And Beijing and Moscow harbor no illusion whatsoever about the toxic dynamics in Washington. My recent conversations with top analysts in Kazakhstan last month and in Moscow last week once again stressed the futility of negotiating with people described – with  overlapping shades of sarcasm – as exceptionalist fanatics. Russia, China and many corners of Eurasia have figured out there are no possible, meaningful deals with a nation bent on breaking every deal.

Indispensable? No: Vulnerable

Martyanov cannot but evoke Putin’s speech to the Federal Assembly in February 2019, after the unilateral Washington abandonment of the INF treaty, clearing the way for U.S. deployment of intermediate and close range missiles stationed in Europe and pointed at Russia:

“Russia will be forced to create and deploy those types of weapons…against those regions from where we will face a direct threat, but also against those regions hosting the centers where decisions are taken on using those missile systems threatening us.”

Translation: American Invulnerability is over – for good.

In the short term, things can always get worse. At his traditional, year-end presser in Moscow, lasting almost four and a half hours, Putin stated that Russia is more than ready to “simply renew the existing New START agreement”, which is bound to expire in early 2021: “They [the U.S.] can send us the agreement tomorrow, or we can sign and send it to Washington.” And yet, “so far our proposals have been left unanswered. If the New START ceases to exist, nothing in the world will hold back an arms race. I believe this is bad.”

“Bad” is quite the euphemism. Martyanov prefers to stress how “most of the American elites, at least for now, still reside in a state of Orwellian cognitive dissonance” even as the real RMA “blew the myth of American conventional invincibility out of the water.”

Martyanov is one of the very few analysts – always from different parts of Eurasia — who have warned about the danger of the U.S. “accidentally stumbling” into a war against Russia, China, or both which is impossible to be won conventionally, “let alone through the nightmare of a global nuclear catastrophe.”

Is that enough to instill at least a modicum of sense into those who lord over that massive cash cow, the industrial-military-security complex? Don’t count on it.

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Pepe Escobar, a veteran Brazilian journalist, is the correspondent-at-large for Hong Kong-based Asia Times. His latest book is “2030.” Follow him on Facebook.

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Video: Turkish-based ‘Syrian Government’ Threatens Damascus with Military Action

December 26th, 2019 by South Front

Late on December 23, the Turkish-based “Syrian Interim Government” (an entity funded by Turkey in an attempt to legalize its actions in Syria) threatened the real Syrian government with a military action.

In a released statement, it claimed that forces that participated in Turkey’s Olive Branch and Euphrates Shield operations are now moving to Greater Idlib in order to support their counterparts in repelling an attack by “regime forces, Russia and Iranian militias”.

It remains unclear what “forces” the barely existing “defense ministry” is planning to send to Idlib because Turkish-backed militant groups are already supporting al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the battle against the Syrian Army. The Turkish-backed coalition of militant groups, the National Front for Liberation, has always been a useful partner for al-Qaeda in Idlib.

On December 24, united forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the National Front for Liberation and several other militant groups launched a counter-attack in an attempt to retake the town of Jarjnaz from the Syrian Army and its allies.

Clashes between militants and government forces erupted near Jarjnaz itself and the villages of Ghadfa and Abud Dawha. Militants used at least one suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device.

Pro-militant sources that “rebels” destroyed several pieces of military equipment belonging to the army and captured an armoured vehicle and a battle tank. The fighting in the area continued on December 25.

On December 24, a Turkish delegation visited Moscow to discuss the situation in Syria and Libya, as well as the existing bilateral cooperation. Taking into account that Turkey’s soft reaction to the encirclement of its observation post in Surman and the lack of Turkish Army attempts to establish more observation posts to stop the Syrian Army advance, it seems that Ankara once again sold its Idlib proxies to Russia.

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A Star Is Always Born

December 26th, 2019 by Edward Curtin

It is no different now.
The yearning still gnaws.
The night dark, utterly silent,
Sky stretched endlessly back
Into an infinity beyond reach.
And the fears, the tears
Are they any different?
It is no different now.
Joy sometimes, hope too, divisions
Seemingly unbridgeable, vast chasms
Opening between those closest.
Little changes, though two thousand years
Dissolve into oblivion behind us.
It is no different now.
Plus ça change,
Plus c’est la même chose.
Always the same.

Yet a word is heard dimly
Laboring out of the deafening black
Silence, almost but not inaudible.
And the angel says, “Go out,”
And the angel said, “Go out,”
Always the angel, always the voice
Bearing us up along the way
(If you do not turn to the inner light,
Where will you turn?), always calling:
“Journey far through strange country,
Follow the light you barely see
But which is the light of your life.
Follow it across the desert of your heart
Where wild beasts seek to devour you.
There is no time, there is no time
To hesitate. Now is the star’s hour,
Now you are called on a fool’s journey
Into a pig’s pen and a child’s strange
And glorious presence.” Thus speaks the angel
Again and again, no matter how dark
The darkest day, nothing changes.
It is no different now.
Now as always is the star’s hour.
Now as then a star is born to men
To lead us on. A light that darkness
Cannot overcome, despite us.

Love is not a sometimes thing,
Though we abuse it like the earth.
It is all we have to hold us up,
And it always will.

A star is always born.

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This poem was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

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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Nord Stream 2, US Sanctions and Trump’s “Economic Suicide”?

December 26th, 2019 by Peter Koenig

Does Mr. Trump really not grasp that his sanctions left and right – and now on the Russian-German gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 – is committing economic suicide, not for himself, of course, but for the United States? He attempts to punish not only Russia, but all the corporations, construction companies, Russian, German and from everywhere, which collaborated and are still working on the final stretch of the1,250 km pipeline.

Nord Stream 2 is an under-water pipeline crossing from Kingisepp in Russia to Greifswald in Germany, under the Baltic sea. Its cost is estimated at more than US$ 100 billion. It parallels Nord stream 1 (see map), and is supposed to make Germany energy secure, especially once Germany exits from nuclear energy. After the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Germany has already permanently shut down eight of its 17 reactors and pledged to close the rest by the end of 2022.

Russia will supply Germany with 55 billion cubic meters (m3) of liquified natural gas (LNG), via Nord Stream 2, roughly the same amount as is already delivered through Nord Stream 1, two pipelines of about 1,250 km running in parallel on the floor of the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 is scheduled to begin operating in mid-2020.

The pipeline is to 90% completed and will not be stopped, come hell or high water. If worse comes to worst, and European companies do quit over the threat of sanctions, Mr. Peskov, the Russian Presidential spokesperson, says Russia can finish the job with her own ships and construction capacity.

President Trump knows it. So why dishing out sanctions? Hoping that one or the other of the “collaborators” will jump ship – and rather work for US fracking giants than for environmentally friendlier Russian gas? There is certainly a risk of that happening. But how likely is that?

Well, likelier than a common-sense reader may believe. The project’s important part of pipeline-laying work is being carried out by the Swiss-Dutch company Allseas, which would be directly affected by the sanctions. As a consequence, Allseas has suspended its work last Saturday, 21 December; they say “pending clarifications on legal, technical and environmental questions with the US.” Other participating companies are Russia’s Gazprom and European OMV, Wintershall Dea, Engie, Uniper and Shell. So far, they have not reacted to the threat of sanctions.

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On December 17, the Senate passed a Sanctions Bill, to punish any company, German or otherwise which contributes to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Don’t question the legality and the right of the US of interfering with a business / trade transaction between two sovereign countries. It is outrageous. Even more outrageous, though, is that the world at large the more than 190 UN members are (almost) silent. Many of them are also victims of US sanctions. But most don’t even “sanction” back, peacefully, understood, but as a reply to Washington’s breaking international laws with impunity.

The US bill will enter into effect only 30 days after it is signed which means that work on the pipeline may well be finished when the sanctions will become effective. However, as we know, with the US no rule is viable and trustworthy, sanctions may be applied retroactively.

For once, Ms. Merkel seems to stand firm. She says “US sanctions won’t stop the Nord Stream 2 project”, and so says President Putin. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, slammed the US by saying that “US diplomacy is limited to intimidation, by imposing sanctions, ultimatums and threats.” To that, Heiko Maas, German Foreign Minister added “European energy policy is decided in Europe, not in the US.”

The German- Russian Chamber of Commerce expressed yet the strongest position, stating that this project serves Germany’s economic interest and energy security and calling for retaliatory sanctions on the United States. Yes, retaliatory sanctions! But will the Europeans have the guts to do so? – And do so with meaningful sanctions, like tariffs on American goods, or stop importing certain US goods, cars or iPhones, for example.

The US not only wants to sell her own fracking gas – which in addition of violating Germany’s environmental rules – is also much more expensive than Russian LNG. Equally or more important – Washington wants to drive yet another wedge between Germany and Russia. This will not work.

Germany, especially Germany’s business community, has recognized that Russia, the huge landmass of Eurasia all the way to China, is a natural market not only for Germany, but for the whole of Europe – and has been for hundreds of years, before the UK transplanted her empire across the Atlantic, killing millions of indigenous people conquering North America, hoping to have an easier time to reign over the world from her vantage position between two shining seas.

It has almost worked. At least for a while. But now US arrogance, greed and violence around the globe is backfiring. The world is becoming sick and tired of the US exceptionalism. The relatively recent indiscriminate and unlimited sanctions program against anyone, any nation, that doesn’t bend to the whims of Washington, results in economic warfare. It is driving more allies away than it attracts. So, it amounts to America’s economic suicide.

Since the US economy depends on financial hegemony and war – it will be a gradual downfall of the US economy. It may not be a sudden collapse as many may wish, but rather a slow but steady disappearance of the US muscle, exactly the way it ought to be, so as not to hurt countries still depending on the US dollar, giving them time and opportunities to diversify their markets and monetary reserves.

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What may the US holy sanctions for Nord Stream 2 imply? – According to preliminary hints from the State Department they may include individuals involved in the project having their US visas revoked and property blocked. US visa revoked? So what, but property “blocked” – means not just property in the US but around the globe, meaning that property is effectively confiscated, stolen, by US authorities, as we have seen in the case of Venezuela which has lost some 130 billion dollars through outright US asset confiscations – theft – since the beginning of 2017.

All this is possible only because the west is still dominated by a fiat US-dollar run economy that has the capacity to interfere in any western US-dollar based economy. In that sense, US sanctions have a positive long-term effect. They drive foes and allies alike away from the bogus US-dollar economy, towards strong eastern-run, and solid output-based economies, with gold backed currencies, like the Chinese Yuan and the Russian Ruble.

It is puzzling and mind-boggling – that Trump, and the entire financial oligarchs that pull the strings behind Trump, do not see this medium to long-term effect. Do they really believe in their untouchable “exceptionalism” and hope with their superb arrogance, that the world will continue to fall for sanctions, if they see and realize they can live an eastern alternative? – Or, do they know they are doomed, but while going down, they lash around like a dying beast to bring as many countries as possible down with them?

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The exceptional nation US of A displays always the same logic, either you are with us or against us. As could have been expected, Poland along with the Baltic states are anti-Russia and anti-EU, and therefore pro-US. Brussels announced an agreement between the US and these states selling them 112 billion m3 of fracking LNG starting in 2020. The US calls it “freedom gas”. Sounds like “freedom fries’’ instead of French fries, when the French were in a clinch with Washington in 2003 over objecting to the US unilateral invasion of Iraq. – Remember? Same-same. As if people wouldn’t know by now what “freedom made in USA” means.

Maybe the rest of Europe realizes that they owe some loyalty to Russia, as the Russians, the Soviet Union at the time, was the deciding factor in winning WWII against Hitler’s Germany, not the US and her western allies.

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One of Washington’s argument for fighting Nord Steam 2 says that the US does not want to save Ukraine from possible bankruptcy if Kiev loses the $2-3 billion it makes annually from Russian gas transit to Europe. It implies that the new pipeline, by circumventing Ukraine, would deprive Ukraine from the lucrative transit fees. This argument has just become mute, as Russia, after years of legal battles and negotiations has signed a historic agreement with Kiev on an extension to the current gas transit agreement, which expires on December 31, 2019. The agreement will restore the transit fees of US$ 2 – 3 billion per year. In addition, Mr. Putin confirms that Russia is ready to give Ukraine a 25% special discount on its natural gas for domestic consumption. Quite a concession by Mr. Putin towards a country that has in a most ugly way turned its back to Russia, of which it was an integral part for centuries. A laudable and brilliant Russian peace initiative that may have positive implications throughout Eurasia, all the way to China.

In all, still more than 50% of all Russian gas to Europe will continue to be flowing through Ukraine, this is more than 110 billion m3 /year. Both, Russia and Germany have always maintained that Nord Stream 2 was meant as a supplementary route to guarantee stable supplies to Europe, but will not replace transit through Ukrainian territory.

Will this just agreed deal between Russia, Ukraine and the European Commission have an impact on the US sanctions? – Most likely not, because what Russia wants even more than the European market is separating Europe from Russia, and in a wider sense, from Eurasia, including China – a lost cause, of course.

A crucial question is, why does Germany or the EU for that matter not threaten Washington with return sanctions? – Afraid of what? – Is it NATO that runs the EU that will not allow such measures, or else? NATO countries are already divided among themselves – with Germany or the EU imposing sanctions against the US – and over and above NATO’s objections, it might amount to a break-up of NATO. And Europe is not quite ready for this step – yet.

The bottom line is – are the US serious with trying to stop Nord Stream 2 with sanctions, or are they just testing the waters with economic bullying, finding out ‘who is with us and who is against us’ – and where is the limit to unabashed bullying – a lesson Washington then may apply for developing their strategy (sic) of how to subdue Europe in their competitive fight West against East– again, it is a losing proposition, as Washington and Trump’s puppeteers must know. It’s just postponing the downfall into America’s dark doom.

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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.

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‘Blinding the Truth’: Israeli Snipers Target Gaza Protesters in the Eyes

December 26th, 2019 by The New Arab

Media coverage and social media posts went wild when Palestinian photojournalist Muath Amarneh was blinded in his left eye after he was hit by a rubber bullet while covering a protest in the West Bank. 

However, Amarneh was far from unique; Israeli snipers targeting participants in Gaza’s weekly Great Return March protests have aimed for the legs – and eyes. To date, Gaza’s Ministry of Health reports that 50 protesters have been shot in the eye since the demonstrations began March 30, 2018 – leaving them permanently blind.

“Some of these protesters and journalists were hit in the eye with teargas canisters, but most were targeted directly with what is commonly called a ‘rubber bullet,’ giving the impression they are somehow benign,” says Ashraf Alqedra, MD, a treating physician at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital and spokesperson for the Ministry of Health.

“But there is still steel at the core, and although these bullets don’t usually kill, they do grave damage. It is impossible to save an eye hit directly by a rubber-coated steel bullet.”

However, he adds, due to the Israeli blockade, there are no artificial, glass eyes in Gaza – only a cosmetic improvement, but one that can be a significant psychological aid. These are available only by travelling out of Gaza for treatment and permits for such journeys are often not granted.

According to data released by the World Health Organization, Gaza residents submitted 25,897 applications to travel via Erez Crossing to receive medical treatment in the West Bank or Israel; an average of 2,158 were submitted each month. However, the Israeli government only approved 61 percent.

Mai Abu Rwedah: the most recent victim

Mai Abu Rwedah, 20, grew up in north Gaza’s al-Bureij Refugee Camp in a family of nine children supported by a father who works as a janitor for a UN school. She just graduated from university, hoping to start her professional life as a medical secretary and contribute her income.

But that dream was dealt a severe blow December 6, when she became the most recent Gazan to lose an eye to an Israeli bullet.

Abu Rwedah believes in using peaceful, but active, resistance to reclaim Palestinians’ right to return to their ancestral homeland. So, she has joined participants in the Great Return March protest since its launch on March 30, 2018.

On September 21 of that year, she was shot by a rubber-coated bullet in one of her legs, but that didn’t stop her from participating; she kept on going.

Doctors had to extract Mai’s right eye and the bullet damaged her jaw as well

A sit-in protest takes place in Gaza in solidarity with Mai 

Earlier this month, stood with a few friends about 100 metres from the fence that marks the border between Gaza and Israel. She glimpsed an Israeli soldier waving and pointing his finger to his eye.

“He was trying to intimidate me, but I was not afraid because I was doing nothing wrong. I wasn’t even throwing stones,” Abu Rwedeh recalls.

The soldiers fired tear gas then, and Mai and her friends ran away, but still were in sight of the young man who had threatened her.

“He was watching me; wherever I moved he kept watching. Then, suddenly, he raised his gun and pointed it at me. I was about to flee but he was too fast. He shot me in my eye.”

The bullet damaged her jaw as well. Doctors had to extract her right eye, since it was destroyed, Her determination, however, is intact. Abu Rwedeh continues to protest.

The youngest victim

Mohammed Al-Najar, 12, is the second-oldest son among four children, supported by a father who works in a wedding hall in Khan Younis.

In January, during the mid-year vacation from school, Mohammed begged his parents to allow him to watch the Friday protest with his cousins and other relatives, thinking it would give him an exciting story to share with classmates.

He was given permission to ride one of the government buses that collected people from the various neighbourhoods, taking them to the protest sites. When he disembarked, teargas bombs were flying, and he shouted to warn those around him. Then next one hit him directly in his right eye.

When Mohammad learned later that his eye could not be saved, he locked himself in his room and stopped going to school. When he did go back, he struggled.

“At first his marks at school dropped and he isolated himself. He tried to hide his missing eye,” says his mother, Um Edress.

She took to him an organisation that provided psychotherapy, but he refused to speak. Today, he is socialising, but goes quiet when asked about his injury.

The journalist

According to Dr Alqedra, most people with eye injuries from the Great Return March are journalists or photographers.

One of them is Sami Musran 35, a photographer who works for Al-Aqsa TV. On July 19, he was shot several times – first in his hand, the next two times in his shoulders and the fourth time in the chest. (Fortunately, he was wearing a bulletproof vest, so it did not harm him.) The last time cost him his left eye.

Sami says he had received several calls from Israeli officers warning him not to take photos at the Great Return March. His mother also received calls, saying her son might be killed.

“Forty times, my Facebook account was hacked or deleted for me, and I received death threats as well,” he says. “But I decided to keep on with my work to reveal the Israeli crimes against unarmed Palestinians who participate in the march.”

The night before Musran was shot, his wife tried to insist he stay home, but he refused.

“Minutes before I was hit, my mother called me twice, saying she was very worried about me. But I said that nothing happens that isn’t God’s plan,” he recalls.

He was about 250 metres away from of the Israeli fence when two women and a child were shot. Musran was taking photos of them and went in close. That’s when a rubber-coated bullet hit his eye and he lost consciousness. Two days later, he woke up in the intensive care unit to find out he had a skull fracture and an injured eye. The bullet had damaged the iris, retina and cornea and his vision was gone.

Today, it is hard for him to continue with his job; his depth perception is off, he gets headaches and the sight in his remaining eye “fades” at night. But he will keep trying.

“Israel wants to blind the eyes of the truth by sending messages to photographers saying we will hit your eyes to make you stop taking photos,” he says. “But we do not surrender.”

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Trump’s EPA Goes to Bat for Bayer as Company Fights $25 Million Verdict in Roundup Cancer Case

December 26th, 2019 by Andrea Germanos

President Donald Trump‘s Environmental Protection Agency—already accused of being “pesticide cheerleader”—threw its weight behind chemical company Bayer AG on Friday when the agency asked a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court’s ruling in favor of a man who said the company’s Roundup weedkiller was responsible for his cancer.

The case centers on Edwin Hardeman of California, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2015 after using the glyphosate-based pesticide, made by Monsanto, for years on his property. Bayer acquired Monsanto last year.

A federal jury in July ordered the company to pay Hardeman roughly $25 million in damages, a lower amount than the $80 million a federal judge had ordered months earlier.

The EPA maintains—to the outrage of environmental and public health groups—that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. The federal decision notwithstanding, California in 2017 agreed with the World Health Organization’s 2015 classification of glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen.” Trump’s EPA has pushed back on the state’s finding and said that product labels informing users of that cancer risk would “misbranding” and announced in August of this year that the agency would not approve of labels carrying that warning.

In an amicus brief filed Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, attorneys with the EPA and Justice Department said,

EPA approved the label for the pesticide/herbicide at issue here, Roundup, through a registration process that did not require a cancer warning. In fact, EPA has never required a labeling warning of a cancer risk posed by Roundup, and such a warning would be inconsistent with the agency’s scientific assessments of the carcinogenic potential of the product. Mr. Hardeman nevertheless sought damages under California common law, alleging that Monsanto had failed to adequately warn consumers of cancer risks posed by the active ingredient in Roundup. FIFRA therefore preempts Mr. Hardeman’s claims to the extent that they are based on the lack of a warning on Roundup’s labeling.

The filing from the federal government came the same week Bayer AG asked the appeals court to toss out the lower court’s ruling and defended Roundup’s safety.

Bayer is currently facing nearly 43,000 claims related to glyphosate-linked cancer in federal courts. An end to the company’s legal woes is unlikely to happen soon, according to Bloomberg Environment.

“The only vehicle that remotely approaches [an end to litigation] might be bankruptcy,” Loyola Law School professor Adam Zimmerman told the outlet last week. “Short of that, or some victories in court, I don’t see what kind of arrangement would absolve them of future liability.”

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Featured image: Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is the most heavily-used agricultural chemical in history. (Photo: Mike Mozart/Flickr/cc)

China vs the West: Relations with Africa. The Geopolitical Game that Played Out in Namibia to Influence Elections

December 26th, 2019 by Abednego Katuushii Ekandjo

Leading up to the 2019 general elections, the ordinary Namibian citizen did not, and even some of those with some level of sophistication did not seem to fully grasp and understand what was happening in the country and why it was happening as such.

External interference in local elections anywhere is a real thing. The understandings of ordinary citizens of current events are influenced by and limited to whatever “information” their preferred candidate or source of political “information” chooses to divulge to them during campaign rallies or through social media platforms. However, the current major divisions among the population are ultimately the result of a broader geopolitical game between The Peoples Republic of China and the Western world. The main reason is that the emergence of China as a global player in international business transactions (i.e. government tenders, international mining, international consulting, etc.) has ruffled many feathers in the Western business world (Anglo-America), and the Western world, which sees itself as the master of capitalism and which is mainly built on the exploited wealth of especially African and other third world nations, does not take easy to being outsmarted in international business transactions (e.g. Trump’s trade wars with China). Once this perspective is understood, it is then no surprise that Western world rating agencies (e.g. Fitch and Moody’s) have been downgrading countries such as Namibia and South Africa over the last few years that the Chinese (geopolitical rival) have enjoyed big business opportunities in those countries.

This geopolitical conflict between the Chinese and the Western world is fiercely playing out and manifesting itself in Africa in general and Namibia in particular, especially now that the elections in the country were about to take place. The game of geopolitics is played by identifying the “weak points” associated with a country (poverty, unemployment, etc.), and those “weak points” are then attacked with full force to stoke up the emotions of the population and put political pressure on the people in power. The same strategy under different circumstances is used against any country that seem not to fully promote Western world business interests (e.g. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.). Namibians must, therefore, understand that due to the ongoing failure of the Western world to compete against The Peoples Republic of China in international business transactions, the Western world might have possibly deployed its local political front-men in Africa to seriously challenge, under the veils of democracy, the seemingly pro-Chinese governments. Local bread and butter issues, which are legitimate and need to be addressed, are the most obvious and effective weapon employed to win over the hearts of local people that anyone seeking power will use to achieve that objective.

Once the local political front-men get in power, however, the Western world is automatically in charge and the overall problems and challenges of the people remain, despite that their “new leader” seems to be ruling. It is very interesting to note that Wikileaks is a Western world organisation, and it only saw it fit to “leak” certain information so close to the date that the country was expected to make decisions at the polls. Unethical behaviour of any kind by whomever should never be condoned, but as free-thinking patriotic Namibians, we must also look at the bigger picture and put things in their right perspectives.

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Abednego Katuushii Ekandjo writes in his private capacity.

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Remembering The Invasion Of Panama

December 26th, 2019 by Daniel Larison

Panama marked the 30th anniversary of the U.S. invasion with an official day of mourning for the first time this year:

Panama declared a day of national mourning for Friday, the 30th anniversary of the U.S. invasion that ousted dictator Manuel Noriega and resulted in hundreds of deaths in the Central American nation.

The measure approved Wednesday by members of President Laurentino Cortizo’s Cabinet, a first for the country, has been a main demand of relatives of those killed in the military operation, who see it as a symbolic step toward justice for the deaths of Panamanian civilians and soldiers.

The invasion of Panama was the first regime change war of the last thirty years. No one realized it at the time, but it marked the start of an era of hyperactive militarism that has not ended yet. It is the first U.S. war that I can remember, and it is sobering to consider that the U.S. has been engaged in hostilities somewhere in the world almost every year since then. President Bush had questionable legal authority to launch the invasion, and Congress certainly never had time to debate or authorize it. Because the war was short and has been overshadowed by larger military interventions since then, it has faded into obscurity, but we should remember it for the damage that it did and for the precedent of arbitrary presidential warmaking that it set. It was the first in a series of wars against small, outmatched countries that posed no threat to the United States.

The invasion killed hundreds of Panamanian civilians. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, The San Francisco Chronicle reported from the neighborhood in Panama City destroyed during the invasion:

Bernabela Vargas, 53, concedes that Noriega’s ouster remains popular despite the destruction wrought by war and subsequent looting. But she said the ferocity of the attack, which involved U.S. Marines, a Ranger regiment and the 82nd Airborne Division pitted against a weak military force with scant resources, was excessive.

“This was not the way to help us,” said Vargas, who says some of her shell- shocked neighbors still flinch at loud sounds.

Police Sgt. Manuel Antonio Melenez, a Chorillo beat cop, is similarly bitter. When he saw U.S. soldiers assaulting Chorillo, he decided to fight the invaders.

“The problem was the magnitude,” he said. “To get one person, you didn’t need so many deaths.”

The invasion of Panama was obviously a war of choice, and it is difficult to see how Operation Just Cause was actually justified at the time. Noriega was undoubtedly an awful ruler, but did his removal from power really require the deaths of hundreds of innocent people?

Three decades later, many of the relatives of those killed during the invasion are still seeking answers:

“Finally there are important signals for the victims as the 30th anniversary approaches,” Ayola said. “The national mourning and the possibility for other families to identify their own so they can be buried properly. They cannot remain in oblivion.”

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Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

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Israel Preparing for War on Iran?

December 26th, 2019 by Stephen Lendman

Israel’s longtime goal is unchallenged Middle East dominance partnered with Washington.

Achieving it depends on transforming independent regional nations into US/Israeli vassal states by war or other hostile means, Iran most of all.

Along with Turkey, it’s the only regional country able to challenge Israel militarily if attacked.

On Wednesday, IDF chief of staff General Aviv Kochavi claimed Jewish state friction with Iran may increase next year, perhaps leading to war.

Fact: Nonbelligerent Iran threatens no one. Along with the US and NATO, Israel threatens world peace, stability and security.

Kochavi falsely called Iran Israel’s main threat, stressing that close ties to Washington is its key strategic asset.

He ignored Jewish state undeclared war on Palestinians and Syria, time and again terror-bombing Gaza and the Syrian Arab Republic with impunity, the world community ignoring its high crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against long-suffering Palestinians.

Nuclear armed and dangerous Israel falsely claims nonbelligerent Iran poses a nuclear threat.

Its legitimate program has no military component, repeatedly confirmed by the IAEA, its inspectors banned from illegal Israeli nuclear sites, Iran’s legal ones the world’s most heavily monitored.

According to Kochavi, Israel is preparing for war on Iran. If launched, it’ll be preemptive by the Jewish state, possibly together with the US, not the other way around by a nation that hasn’t attacked another one in centuries, what Israel and Washington do repeatedly.

“We will not allow Iran to entrench itself in Syria, or in Iraq,” said Kochavi, failing to explain that Tehran works cooperatively with these nations and others, its military advisors alone in Syria, helping Damascus combat US/Israeli supported terrorists.

Kochavi falsely accused Iran of “smuggl(ing) advanced weapons (into Iraq) on a monthly basis, and we can’t allow that.”

Responding, Iraqi parliamentarian Hassan al-Kaabi called his remarks “incorrect and politically motivated,” bent on “creating sedition and finding an excuse to infiltrate into the Iraqi territory.”

Along with the US, Israel is likely involved in stoking violence, vandalism and chaos in Iraq.

The Jewish state terror-bombed Iraqi sites several times, the Pentagon reportedly providing air support.

According to Kochavi: “In the coming war (with Iran, Syria, Lebanon or Gaza), we will have to attack with great force in populated areas and also target the state structure of the entity that allows terrorism to act against us (sic).”

“Israel will target everything that helps in combat operations, such as electricity, fuel, bridges,” and other targets at its discretion.

Israel considers civilians legitimate targets, striking residential areas indiscriminately in all its wars of aggression, the policy stated earlier by future IDF chief General Gadi Eisenkot, saying:

“We will apply disproportionate force at the heart of the enemy’s weak spot (civilians) and cause great damage and destruction.”

“From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages (towns or cities). They are military bases. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.”

Retired General Giora Eiland earlier said Israel’s war strategy is all about destroying “the national infrastructure (of enemies) and (inflicting) intense suffering among the population.”

This strategy reflects core Israeli policy — to cause maximum casualties, destruction, displacement and human suffering, grave international law breaches.

In November, former Israeli envoy to Washington Michael Oren said the Jewish state is preparing for war with “Iranian proxies,” falsely accusing Tehran of “provocations,” adding:

Senior Israeli officials met “to discuss the possibility of open war with Iran…Israeli troops, especially in the north, have been placed on war footing.”

“Israel is girding for the worst and acting on the assumption that fighting could break out at any time.”

Zionist ideologue Oren once arrogantly said: “We expect the world to stand with us.”

He’s a polarizing figure. Brandeis University students earlier strongly protested against his choice as commencement speaker by university officials.

A letter signed by scores of students slammed his “far-right positions” and marginalization of growing numbers of US Jews who disagree with him.

What’s coming in the new year may be more war at a time when the world community should prioritize ending ongoing ones.

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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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China’s Huawei Continues to Move Around US Sanctions

December 26th, 2019 by Ulson Gunnar

By establishing facilities in Europe to produce components, Chinese telecom giant Huawei is continuing the process of circumventing US sanctions amid a wider US-led trade war aimed at artificially quelling the growing trend of foreign companies outcompeting long-entrenched US monopolies.

US State Department-funded media platform, Voice of America, in an article titled, “Sanctions-Hit Huawei Plans Components Plant in Europe,” would claim:

Chinese telecommunications group Huawei is working on a plan to build its own components at a site in Europe, its chairman told AFP, after it was hit by U.S. sanctions.

Huawei chairman Liang Hua would be quoted in the article as claiming:

“We are planning to manufacture our own components at a production site in Europe in the future,” he said in an interview at AFP’s headquarters. “We are conducting a feasibility study to open a factory in Europe for this. The choice of country will depend on that study.”

Finally, the VOA article would quote Liang Hua as noting:

“In the area of 5G technology, we are already no longer dependent on the supply of chips and other components from American companies.”

The VOA article would also admit that despite full-spectrum pressure from the US, Huawei continues to break records in terms of sales while it continues investing in both growing its market share and moving around US sanctions.

The US-led trade war aimed at firms like Huawei who have recently begun to pull ahead of their US counterparts was meant to hinder, setback or entirely overturn the competition with minimum effort on the part of US firms. Instead, it seems to have only compounded the troubles of American firms unable to compete against Chinese alternatives, while hurting US companies providing parts for or receiving final products from Chinese companies like Huawei.

Too Little, Too Late 

Huawei is already a massive enterprise with a global-spanning business coupling together it with other businesses and even other nations around the world. It possesses a momentum of its own that even in the face of immense setbacks, is able to continue moving forward.

US efforts to curtail or even cripple the firm appear to only be providing temporary setbacks while providing the Chinese firm with impetus to create a more self-sufficient and resilient business model in the intermediate to long-term.

The fact that US sanctions have led to Huawei circumventing any need to deal with US firms to acquire components for its 5G telecom network technology is one example of this.

The US forcing Huawei to move on without Google appears to only have set back the company temporarily while in the long-term illustrating that Google may not be as indispensable as it and the US government attempted to portray it as.

It is likely that this process will only continue, as the necessity for the US to invest in a genuine strategy to compete in terms of developing better business models and through technological innovation over cheap and unsustainable (not to mention ineffective) political tricks seems lost on Washington and the special interests lobbying it to pursue the current regime of sanctions and smears.

While US tactics have set back Huawei in certain terms, they have also set back the interests of US businesses themselves; both businesses that had until recently supplied Huawei with components and thus were rising alongside Huawei throughout its continued success, but also for companies that sold Huawei products or, like Google, placed their products and services within Huawei’s final products (smartphones).

Stitching China and Europe Closer Together 

While Washington has attempted to portray Huawei and other Chinese firms as global pariahs as well as threats to security, the fact is that many nations prefer to do business with Huawei, having conducted their own assessments of the company regarding any potential security threats it might pose to their respective nations and telecom infrastructure.

Nations acquiescing to US pressure do so for political rather than practical reasons, with many fully understanding the high cost of their acquiescence. The nations of Europe, who find themselves under constant pressure from Washington regarding a wide spectrum of issues, has begun taking steps to likewise move out from under Washington’s shadow and to conduct business freely with whomever it desires and with whomever offers them the greatest benefit.

Huawei’s plans to produce components in Europe will be one step further in helping both the Chinese firm and its European partners step out together from under US coercion.

For Washington, policymakers must begin to understand that in the process of trying to isolate and precipitate the decline of companies like Huawei and entire nations like China, they are only bringing about America’s further isolation and decline. This is done not only to the detriment of US-based companies more than happy to collaborate with and share mutual benefits with Chinese firms, but for foreign firms including those in China who have benefited from doing business with their US counterparts and would continue doing so had it not been for the current trade war and sanctions leveled amid it.

A similar process of US sanctions and pressure backfiring against Washington is taking place in Southeast Asia where nations told by the US to abandon Huawei have decided to disregard US demands and move forward in earnest.

Only through genuine competition can the US reverse its current fortunes. At one point in the past, coercion, threats and punitive actions were able to ensure US hegemony militarily and economically across the globe but no longer.

For US interests lobbying Washington to continue to pursue its current, unsustainable and clearly ineffective policies, they have demonstrated that they no longer deserve the power and influence they possess, lacking the ability to upkeep it and laying down the gauntlet for more responsible and constructive US enterprises to take the reins of American policy while there is still something left to steer into the future.

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Gunnar Ulson is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Syria: Trump Administration Builds Military Base in Oil Field

December 26th, 2019 by Telesur

The United States is building a large military base within the al-Omar oil field, in the province of Deir Ezzor, in Syria, local media reported.

“The U.S. is equipping the base to serve as the command headquarters for the international coalition’s operations,” the Syria Now portal reported.

Besides fortifying the field with logistic and military reinforcements, the U.S. Army is building airstrips for its helicopters, which will be used to monitor oil wells from the air.

According to Syrian analysts, Washington is working to find a mechanism that makes it easier to extract as much Syrian oil as quickly as possible.​​​​​​​

To do so, the U.S. is moving electrical equipment to put the electricity network into operation at the oil fields, which would allow it to begin to exploit them.

The meme reads, “The U.S. and its allies continue to misinform the international community about the situation in Syria. This hinders the process of returning Syrian citizens to their homeland.”

Previously, the U.S. government withdrew its soldiers from 11 military bases in Syria and concentrated them in the oil fields located in Remelan.

The al-Omar base will replace the base that existed at the Lafarge Cement Factory, from which U.S. troops withdrew in November.

On Dec. 20, the Acting Charge de-Affairs of Syria’s permanent mission to the United Nations, Louay Fallouh, asked Washington to end the theft of oil and gas resources belonging to the Syrian state and to withdraw its forces from the Arab country.

The Syrian ambassador also rejected the draft resolution for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHOA) on his country’s current situation, as it does not address the alleged humanitarian objectives mentioned in its content.

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The Crimean Rail Bridge Will Contribute to the Peninsula’s Economic Rejuvenation

December 26th, 2019 by Andrew Korybko

The opening of the Crimean rail bridge completes Russia’s physical connectivity initiative with the peninsula and will greatly contribute to rejuvenating its economy after the region languished in neglect for nearly two and a half decades under Ukrainian rule.

President Putin inaugurated the Crimean rail bridge on Monday, which was a monumental event signifying the completion of Russia’s physical connectivity initiative with the peninsula. Construction on this modern marvel began shortly after its reunification with the mainland following the democratic referendum of early 2014 that was conducted in the aftermath of the EuroMaidan coup in Ukraine. The bridge’s road component was opened a year and a half ago in May 2018, but it’s only just now that its rail counterpart entered into operation. This latest development is significant because it will greatly contribute to rejuvenating the region’s economy after it languished in neglect for nearly two and a half decades under Ukrainian rule.

Historically speaking, Crimea was always one of the jewels of the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union, but everything about it drastically deteriorated during the years that it was controlled by post-Soviet Ukraine. That new state refused to develop the region because doing so wasn’t in the short-term financial interests of its ruling oligarchic class, though this ultimately proved to be strategically counterproductive in the long run because it further weakened the sense of attachment that its majority-Russian people felt towards Kiev. Had Ukraine respected Crimea’s residents and sought to improve their living standards after independence, then they might not have identified more with Russia than with their “new country”.

Nevertheless, what’s done is done (or rather, what wasn’t done wasn’t done!), and an underdeveloped Crimea later reunified with Russia. It was then incumbent on the Russian authorities to prove to the people that this was the right decision to make and not one that was driven by immediate security concerns stemming from the sudden rise of neo-fascist sentiment in post-coup Ukraine. Proverbially putting its money where its mouth is, Moscow invested billions of dollars into restoring Crimea’s economy, which naturally involved pioneering direct connectivity with the Russian mainland in order to reduce the time and cost of trade. The Crimean Bridge is the embodiment of that effort, and its recently completed rail component is the crowning economic achievement.

Tourists and businesses alike can now connect with Crimea like never before, which will improve people-to-people contacts and catalyze a revival of the peninsula’s economy that was already ongoing since reunification but will accelerate in the coming years as a result of this project’s completion. President Putin understands the importance of this event, which is why he was personally present to inaugurate the rail bridge. Crimea’s residents can now see with their own eyes that their homeland truly appreciates their historic decision to reunite with them nearly six years ago, which by contrast deepens their antipathy for Ukraine after realizing that there was no reason at all why they had to languish in poverty for almost two and a half decades.

The Ukrainian state took Crimea’s 1954 attachment to their republic for granted after independence, which provoked the population into resenting that unilateral decision by former Soviet leader Khrushchev. The Russian Federation, meanwhile, is doing everything that it can to correct those mistakes by pumping billions of dollars into developing the peninsula. The successful completion of the road and rail corridor between Crimea and the mainland will go a long way towards strengthening its incorporation into the country, as well as of course bringing tangible benefits to the local population. Crimea’s economic rejuvenation is only just beginning, and it’s quickly returning to its historic role as Russia’s crown jewel.

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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