Global Research

This speech by Vladimir Putin coincides with the commencement of the largest NATO war games in Scandinavia, the Baltic states and Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War.

It also coincides with Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF agreement, signed by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan in 1987. 

Meanwhile, major changes in military alliances are occurring, with several of America’s staunchest allies establishing military cooperation agreements with Russia and China.  

The World is at a dangerous crossroads.

Russia is presented by the Western media as a threat to Global Security.

Below are selected statements from Putin’s speech focussing on a number of issues. 

Putin addresses the war in Syria and the defeat of terrorism. He also focusses on the anti-Russian campaign in the US, Britain and the EU.

He recalls his meetings with Donald Trump.

He outlines in detail Russia’s military capabilities as well as Moscow’s strategies in the case of an attack directed against the Russia Federation.

It is important to assess the statements of Vladimir Putin in relation to the  ongoing geopolitical crisis. .

To read the complete transcript published by Valdai, click here

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 22, 2018

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Vladimir Putin took part in the plenary session of the 15^th anniversary meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club.  in Sochi on October 18. This year’s theme is The World We Will Live In: Stability and Development in the 21st Century.

The plenary session moderator is Fyodor Lukyanov, Research Director of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club. 

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Plenary session moderator Fyodor Lukyanov: Good afternoon, friends,

Let’s begin our final session. As per tradition, we have President of Russia Vladimir Putin here as our guest.

Plenary session moderator Fyodor Lukyanov: Good afternoon, friends,

Let’s begin our final session. As per tradition, we have President of Russia Vladimir Putin here as our guest.

Mr President, in case you have forgotten, you are here for the 15^th time. How are you?

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: First, I would like to speak to the permanent participants of our meeting. It is true, 15 years is quite something. I believe that the Valdai Club, as we called it because the first events took place in Novgorod, has become a good international platform over these years, a platform for professionals who are interested in global politics, the economy, culture as well as the work of media. Of course, in relation to Russia.

As a rule, these are experts on Russia. And we would like very much for people who work with Russia to have such a platform, so that we could meet and you could hear our position on all matters of interest for you, your countries, and for us, for Russia, not in someone’s retelling, but firsthand, from me and my colleagues.

These discussions have always presented different and sometimes even opposite points of view. I think that this is the advantage of this discussion club; we call it a discussion club because where there is only one, right point of view, there is no place for discussion.

Truth is born from comparing different approaches to the same phenomena and various assessments. Thanks to your participation, we can reach this result.

I see many world-famous politicians in this hall; here, on my right; and I would like to welcome them all, including the President of Afghanistan and our colleagues from the EAEU. I can also see scientists, cultural figures and journalists. I hope that today’s meeting will also be not only useful but interesting as well.

However, I am a bit confused about the format today. Usually we have several people on this stage, and the discussion lasts for quite some time. Of course, I am ready to fly solo, as the organisers suggest, but I hope that it will not take four or five times longer than usual.

Thank you and let’s just skip the long welcoming remarks and go straight to our conversation, our work and our discussion.

…

To read the complete transcript published by Valdai, click here

Selected Quotations

[Terrorism]

Warfare with the use of aviation and military hardware and so on, a huge number of militant groups on the territory of this country, with militants coming mostly from terrorist organisations based abroad, including Al-Qaeda who were active in this country.

Thank God, we got rid of this but we have not eradicated terrorism per se. Of course, terrorism still poses a great threat to our country as well, which was why we launched these operations in Syria.

Terrorism is a great threat to our neighbours, including Afghanistan – I see President [Hamid] Karzai here. If he is given the floor, he will tell us what is going on in his country today – this is also a serious threat. I mean that we have not defeated terrorism globally, of course, but we have delivered a tremendous blow to it and have certainly drastically changed the situation at home – in the Russian Federation – for the better.

…

[Terrorism in Syria]

But we have largely ruled out that risk by our actions, because we did a lot of damage to the terrorists in Syria. Many of them were eliminated, and some of them, thank God, decided they wanted out: they laid down their arms after losing faith in the principles they considered right. This, I would say, is the most important outcome.

The second, no less important thing, is that we have preserved Syrian statehood and in this sense helped stabilise the region. We talked about this in some detail with the President of Egypt just yesterday; he shares this position, and it is shared by many other countries. Therefore, I believe we have generally achieved the goals we had set for ourselves in starting the operation in the Syrian Arab Republic; we have achieved a result.

Look, after all, for some years before us, countries that agreed to participate in these anti-terrorist operations, most often voluntarily, and maybe even with less than perfect goals and objectives – what result have we seen in the previous three years? None. While we have liberated almost 95 percent of the entire territory of the Syrian Republic. This is my first point.

Second. We supported Syria’s statehood, prevented the state from collapsing. True, there are still many problems. Now we see what is happening on the left bank of the Euphrates. Probably, our colleagues know: this territory is under the patronage of our American partners. They rely on the Kurdish armed forces.

But they have obviously left a loose end: ISIS remains in several locations and has begun to expand its area of influence recently. They took 130 families hostage – almost 700 people.

…

[Military Deescalation in Syria]

The demilitarised zone, on which we agreed, is being created in the Idlib de-escalation zone with a depth of 15–20 kilometres. Not all heavy weapons have been withdrawn yet, and not all members of the terrorist organisations ISIS and Jabhat an-Nusra have left, but our Turkish partners are doing their best to fulfil their obligations.

…

[Russia-Gate]

Are we the ones creating problems? No. Instead, we are being accused of things. They say that Russia was “highly likely” to have done this or that, intervened at one place and wreaked havoc at another. But, no one believes it is necessary to produce any evidence.

For me it is clear, and I have said this: this is the result of the internal political struggle in the Western world as a whole. Now they are fighting over the conditions for Britain’s exit from the EU; the Democrats and the Republicans are fighting in the United States, and there is controversy among the Republicans themselves. So someone has apparently decided that playing the anti-Russia card would be a very convenient way to resolve domestic political problems. This is bad for everyone.

I hope this will pass, but apparently we need to wait for internal political crises to be resolved. Whether this will happen after the Congressional election or not, I do not know yet, but maybe. Or maybe it will happen in 2020, with the next US presidential election, and then he will no longer have to constantly deal with those who speculate with anti-Russia rhetoric.

Were our meetings with President Trump harmful or helpful? I believe that, despite the attempt to discredit these meetings, they nevertheless were more positive than negative. Why? Because we can see what is happening there.

We can certainly see, we know how to read after all, we look at what is happening there in the domestic political landscape. Still, it is better to communicate and interact with each other than, forgive my language, engage in a never-ending dogfight.

Our meetings have hardly improved US domestic politics, I guess. Probably because, again, there are those who are always trying to play this card in the domestic political struggle.

…

[Meetings with Donald Trump]

Fyodor Lukyanov: Several books about Donald Trump have been released, one after another.

Vladimir Putin: We will read them.

Fyodor Lukyanov: Yes, they are very interesting. They create this image of a person who only listens to and hears himself. When you meet with him, does he listen to you?

Vladimir Putin: This is not true. Maybe he behaves this way with someone else – but then they are to blame. We have a comfortable professional dialogue with him. Of course he listens. And not just listens, I see that he reacts to the arguments I make. He may disagree with something I say, just as I would disagree with something he might say. We have different views on some things, different approaches, but this is a normal discussion between partners. I do not share the opinion of those who say that he speaks like a wood grouse calling out and never listening. That is not true.

[Nuclear Capabilities. Missile Defense]

Look, we live in a world where security relies on nuclear capability. Russia is one of the largest nuclear powers. You may be aware, I have said it publicly, we are improving our attack systems as an answer to the United States building its missile defence system. Some of these systems have already been fielded, and some will be put into service in the coming months. I am talking about the Avangard system. Clearly, we have overtaken all our, so to speak, partners and competitors in this sphere, and this fact is acknowledged by the experts. No one has a high-precision hypersonic weapon. Some plan to begin testing it in one or two years, while we have this high-tech modern weapon in service. So, we feel confident in this sense.

Naturally, there are many other risks, but they are shared risks, such as environment, climate change, terrorism, which I mentioned, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. If we are unable to put an effective end to this, it is not clear where it will lead to, and in whose hands this deadly weapon may end up.

So, in this sense, nothing has changed. We are not going anywhere, we have a vast territory, and we do not need anything from anyone. But we value our sovereignty and independence. It has always been this way, at all times in the history of our state. It runs in the blood of our people, as I have repeatedly said. In this sense, we feel confident and calm.

Fyodor Lukyanov: With regard to us not going anywhere and not needing anything, clearly, there are people who will disagree with you.

Vladimir Putin: Absolutely.

[Crimea]

Fyodor Lukyanov: They will say, “What about Crimea?”

Vladimir Putin: Crimea is our land. We are still not going anywhere. Why is it our land? Not because we went there and took it. Even if someone decides to argue with me, the dispute will immediately come to a dead-end. Everyone is democratic here, right? What is democracy? Democracy is the power of the people. How is it exercised, this power of the people? It is exercised through referendums, elections and so on. People came to a referendum in Crimea and voted for independence, first, and then for being part of Russia.

…

Let me remind you for the hundredth time that there was no referendum in Kosovo, only the parliament voted for independence, that was all. Everyone who wanted to support and destroy the former Yugoslavia said: well, thank God, we are fine with that. Here, however, they disagree. Ok then, let’s have a discussion, go over the UN documents, see what the UN Charter is all about, and where it talks about the right of nations to self-determination. This will be an endless discussion. However, we proceed based on the will expressed by the people who live on that territory.

…

[Media]

Look, there are senior executives from our television company Russia Today sitting across from me. What is happening in some countries where they operate? They are being banned. What does this mean? It means those who do so are afraid of the competition. This is what it means. We do not close anyone here, whereas they are faced with conditions that preclude their operation as mass media. Someone is making it hard for them. That means we are winning. We have just one radio station, and we are not a monopoly on this information field. We do not have global media like CNN, Fox News, BBC and so on. We do not have these. We have just one fairly modest channel. Even if it causes so much heartburn and fear of it being able to influence minds, then we are winning this competition. By the way, in France, I know, they don’t really like it, but if I ever have a chance to be in Paris, invite me, and I will come see you, see what is going on there and how things are with work.

…

[Russia. Our National Identity]

Our national identity is what makes us who we are. It is our culture and history.

The preservation of the people, which you just said when you mentioned Solzhenitsyn, is not just about physical preservation, although, maybe, this is, above all, what Solzhenitsyn had in mind, but also about our identity as a people, otherwise we will simply erode and cease to exist. The history of mankind offers us similar examples. We will just be unable to recall the names of those peoples, who have already disappeared from our consciousness. There were lots of them. But why should we follow those examples? We want to be the Russians, or the Tatars, or the Jews, who live here, or the Mordovians, etc. We have 160 ethnic groups living in the Russian Federation. So why should we let ourselves be eroded? We treasure it and we must talk about it. We must strengthen our identity.

…

[Russia, A Multiethnic State]

Russia developed as a multi-ethnic state first, and then as a multi-religious state. But it has lived for a thousand years and remained stable primarily because a very tolerant relationship was initially established between all the ethnic groups within the state and the representatives of different religions. This is the groundwork for Russia’s existence. And if we want Russia to remain as it is, to develop and gain strength, while Russians remain a state-forming nation, then the preservation of this country serves the interests of the Russian people. But if we huff out this caveman nationalism and throw mud at people of other ethnic groups, we will destroy this country – something the Russian people are less than interested in. I want Russia to survive, including in the interests of the Russian people. In this context I have said that I am the most proper and true nationalist and a most effective one too. But this is not caveman nationalism, stupid and idiotic and leading to the collapse of our country. This is the difference.

…

[Nuclear Weapons Doctrine, A Reciprocal Counter Strike if Russia is Attacked]

I will remind you of what I have said. I have said that our nuclear weapons doctrine does not provide for a pre-emptive strike. I would like to ask all of you and those who will later analyse and in one way or another interpret my every word here, to keep in mind that there is no provision for a pre-emptive strike in our nuclear weapons doctrine. Our concept is based on a reciprocal counter strike. There is no need to explain what this is to those who understand, as for those who do not, I would like to say it again: this means that we are prepared and will use nuclear weapons only when we know for certain that some potential aggressor is attacking Russia, our territory. I am not revealing a secret if I say that we have created a system which is being upgraded all the time as needed – a missile early warning radar system. This system monitors the globe, warning about the launch of any strategic missile at sea and identifying the area from which it was launched. Second, the system tracks the trajectory of a missile flight. Third, it locates a nuclear warhead drop zone.

Only when we know for certain – and this takes a few seconds to understand – that Russia is being attacked we will deliver a counter strike. This would be a reciprocal counter strike. Why do I say ‘counter’? Because we will counter missiles flying towards us by sending a missile in the direction of an aggressor. Of course, this amounts to a global catastrophe but I would like to repeat that we cannot be the initiators of such a catastrophe because we have no provision for a pre-emptive strike. Yes, it looks like we are sitting on our hands and waiting until someone uses nuclear weapons against us. Well, yes, this is what it is. But then any aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable and they will be annihilated. And we as the victims of an aggression, we as martyrs would go to paradise while they will simply perish because they won’t even have time to repent their sins.

To read complete transcript click here

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The imperial aggressions of western governments have inflicted multiple holocausts on the Congolese people.

“In Congo, globalized capitalism creates permanent chaos.”

This week I spoke to Swiss Congolese historian, activist and coordinator of the Congolese movement Likambo Ya Mabele Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko about recent developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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Ann Garrison: On February 12, 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that there were 4.49 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 630,500 refugees in neighboring countries. The IDP population had nearly doubled in the previous year alone, mainly as a result of clashes and armed attacks. It sounds like conditions on the ground in Congo are getting worse, much worse.

Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko: Congo is indeed in a critical situation. We know how much its people have suffered since the genocides in Rwanda and all the displacement they caused, then by the wars that Rwanda and Uganda waged against Congo from 1996 to 1997 and then from 1998 to 2003, with the support of the US, UK, and their allies. Today some observers speak of Congo as a post-conflict country, but it’s still in a low-intensity conflict, off and on, hot and cold. A conflict that drags on like this can become even deadlier than declared war, as it has in the North and South Kivu Provinces bordering Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. More than a million of the 4.49 million internally displaced people are in North Kivu Province.

In the past two years the situation has also deteriorated in the Kasai region, where people are being exterminated or displaced to Angola. There has also been an increase in attacks against the populations of the former Katanga Province, which was split into the Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba and Haut-Katanga Provinces in 2015. Congo and its people are not on the brink of the abyss, they have long since fallen into it.

“People are being exterminated in the Kasai region or displaced to Angola.”

AG: It’s hard to know what to say about so much suffering. What would you most like to say about it here?

BKN: Suffering should inspire compassion, but compassion should inspire reflection. Is the person who looks at a suffering human being able to ask himself if he is not involved in one way or another in the suffering of the individual in front of him? Can he or she grasp the causes of the crimes perpetrated against that human being and the political implications that arise from these acts? If we stop at the suffering of the Congolese people, we won’t be able to address its particularities and causes. It will be no different than the depressing and fatalistic images that have shaped the image of Africa in people’s minds. We must examine Western governments’ imperial aggression against Congo and Africa as a whole.

AG: Dr. Denis Mukwege, the Congolese gynecologist who became known as “the man who heals women” for treating the victims of brutal rape in eastern Congo, finally won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Does that give you any hope?

BKN: I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Mukwege in person. I saw this man with women from all over the world who had all been raped during conflicts. They came from Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Syria, and Iraq. I could see how this man spoke to these women, the concern he had for them and his way of telling them that their word counted. He has all my admiration.

That said, it seems to me that there is also something cynical about presenting him with the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s an organized, staged reality that obliterates the imperial aggression in Congo and encourages a global consensus to stop the rapes but continue the war. It makes the Western Nobel Peace Prize audience feel good about themselves and their compassionate response to the victims of African savagery. This was reinforced by Nadia Murad, the Iraqi rape survivor who shared this year’s Peace Prize with Dr. Mukwege. She said that she would continue as a global advocate for victims of rape and torture, and for persecuted minorities, like the Kurdish Yazidi minority she belongs to.

“The Nobel Peace Prize encourages a global consensus to stop the rapes but continue the war.”

The deeply political discourse imposed by the Nobel Committee is intended to bolster, not disturb, the dominant order. It is part of the Western will to write official history, where the important thing is constructing a discourse on the woman, on the brutalities she has to suffer. It’s a discourse wholly accepted in Western societies because of the feminist struggles. In this discourse, Dr. Mukwege is the man of an inter-world, a Black man who is meant to become white. He is like the white man who knows how to defend the rights of women against the barbarism of uncivilized men—Black in this case—who are essentially defined by their savagery.

AG: Male rape is also a weapon of war in Congo and elsewhere. It’s rarely reported, though it was given some attention in “The Nobel committee shines a spotlight on rape in conflict ,” an October 11 “Economist” report that said it’s hard to estimate its frequency because so many men fear to report it because they’re so humiliated and may fear being accused of the crime of homosexuality. Uganda’s Refugee Law Project explained this profoundly in their film Gender Against Men, which I recommend to anyone reading this. The rape of both men and women as a weapon to destroy community makes it more clear that there is an ongoing genocide against the Congolese people, not just “femicide.” Could you talk about how the singular focus on violence against women hides that?

BKN: I have always been disturbed by the speech of Margaret Wallström, the former UN Special Envoy for violence against women and children in conflict. In 2010, after a stay in Congo, she claimed that this country was the rape capital of the world, and urged the Security Council to act to stop it. This statement associated the crime of rape with a specific nation, Congo, and with all the male individuals within. The word “capital” typically refers to the most central location, the brain and heart of a nation, the carrier of the cultural values. So one of Congo’s cultural values would be rape?

This perception of a pathological Congolese society filled with male rapists is also shared by a lot of Western women who campaign for Congolese women, like Eve Ensler. They even go so far as to call what is happening in Congo a femicide, a war against women. This portrays the Congolese male as an atavistic rapist.

“The perception of a pathological Congolese society filled with male rapists is also shared by a lot of Western women who campaign for Congolese women.”

The extreme focus on Congolese women’s bodies is not intended to defend them but is part of a broader discourse on the savagery of Congolese men and Black African male populations in general. Congo is the world capital of rape. Congo is the capital of a savage nation in the heart of Black Africa where Congolese men rape women to destroy them. Who could regret seeing such a deviant society cleared off the face of the earth?

UN envoy Margaret Wallström didn’t call for an end to the imperialist war waged against Congo and Africa in general. She said nothing about the imperial powers who commissioned the war crimes, including rape, against the Congolese people. She did not call on the Security Council to establish a tribunal to prosecute the crimes that were evidenced in the 2010 UN Mapping Report on Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1993-2003 , which revealed most significantly the crimes of longstanding US ally Rwanda. Instead, she called Congo the rape capital of the world and called on the Security Council to intervene against savage Congolese men.

AG: Some people have proposed that Dr. Mukwege, the most internationally recognized moral authority in Congo, should head a transitional government there. They include our mutual friends Patrick Mbecko and Jean-Claude Maswana, both of whom are highly respected Congolese scholars and activists. What do you think of that idea, and how do you imagine “transitional government” in Congo?

BKN: The fact is that I often wonder what people mean when they say that they want a transitional government. I’m sure that our friends Patrick Mbeko and Jean-Claude Maswana have very specific ideas on what it means, but when I read many other Congolese on “transition,” it seems that this is a kind of magic bag that would help us get rid of President Joseph Kabila, his troops, and the Rwandan occupiers. It does not in any way address, for example, the problem of neocolonialism or the case of the so-called Congolese opposition. The latter are, in my opinion, people who must be removed from the political sphere in Congo. They have flagrantly participated in sustaining Kabila’s tyrannical reign, even when the so-called constitution didn’t allow him to stay in power anymore. In addition, they never had the courage to explain to the population what role Rwanda and Uganda were playing in Congo’s tragedy. Are we going to include them in that transitional government? The transition presented this way has no appeal to me, even if it is led by Dr. Mukwege.

“Only a deep and radical rupture would give us the possibility of rebuilding the Congo state.”

I instead subscribe to the thought of another of my friends, Father Jean-Pierre Mbelu. For him, we cannot speak of transitional government in Congo, because it presupposes that there has been a form of democracy that should be restored after a period of crisis. The problem of Congo, however, cannot be summed up by a political crisis. The country is rather subjected to a permanent coup d’etat, and only a deep and radical rupture would give us the possibility of rebuilding the Congo state.Calling for transitions has been the solution that the international community has wanted to systematize in several African countries, including Congo, but its results leave much to be desired. The transition away from Kabila puts, in my opinion, too much weight on Kabila. It does not insist enough on revealing who created Kabila and does not inform us on the type of government and society we want to build after Kabila.

AG: Liberal Democrats and even leftists in the US are now so horrified by Donald Trump that our politics have been largely reduced to pro- and anti-Trump politics. You have the same problem regarding Kabila in Congo, don’t you?

BKN: Yes, and it is an eminently dangerous position because it means in fact no choice. It is an enclosure in a dichotomous circle that does not allow any escape or possibility to imagine other systems than the ones that exist. In this case, we are in the middle of a democratic illusion. Democracy according to this meaning is the right to be for or against. It is the right to change between two sides of the same coin while the ideology that creates the coin remains unchanged. This refers to the fundamental problem posed by capitalism. It is indeed a system that organizes a non-choice, that creates the illusion of choice for the benefit of the oligarchies that rule us. The tragedy of countries like ours is that they run after what they believe to be democracy, a binary system where it is only possible to be pro- or anti-X. It is even sadder because we’ve forgotten that this binary system never existed on the African continent prior to colonization but forms of real democracy did, especially in the Kongo Kingdom.

AG: Kabila should go, as Trump should, but what other forms of organizing are needed to alleviate the suffering and put Congolese on a path to claim their country’s enormous wealth and potential?

BKN: If we think about change, we need to understand that we all live within the context of globalized capitalism. We need also to understand that capitalism appears in different shapes and forms according to the space it is targeting. In Congo, it creates permanent chaos so as to maintain people in that chaos, with no boundaries to the violence because the state exists only as the most minimal simulacra of Western institutions. These are the prerequisites for plundering the country, draining it of its minerals and other natural resources, some of which have been declared strategic for US security. It not only kills and displaces Congolese but also dismantles their communities and so disorients them that they are unable to understand the global capitalist world and the role that Congo is relegated to within it. It all but eliminates their capacity to defend themselves. One must understand and broaden the understanding of this to fight back effectively and bring about change.

The individual alone, even if he or she understands what is at stake, cannot change anything, but Congo is hammered again and again with the idea that only an individual can change the course of events, so people are waiting for that particular individual. It is therefore not surprising to see the extreme focus on who will be the next president. That focus is fundamentally disorientating. It is a key element of the collaboration between the national comprador class and the imperialists, which summarizes the political history of the Congo since its independence.

“Political sovereignty can be regained only at a democratic community level, where pro-poor and rights based policies can be elaborated and ultimately shape the future of Congo.”

So we need to reverse things in a way that distributes power from the base to the top. It is therefore important not for the individual but for the communities to gain a level of control over different aspects of their daily lives. This means that we need strong base-building organizations that will be able to generate power and undertake collective actions to challenge the existing order. Such commitment requires that Congolese come to understand that power as it exists is a social construct put in place by the colonizers 500 years ago. Political sovereignty can be regained only at a democratic community level, where pro-poor and rights based policies can be elaborated and ultimately shape the future of Congo. And again, Congo has in its past known those forms of community-based organizations, so they have to be recovered and adapted to defeat the realities of neoliberalism as differentiated from formal colonialism and neocolonialism.

It will also be necessary to organize self-defense forces because we must not be fooled. Those who exploit us have weapons, and they are not ready to let go of Congo. This must be a war of liberation.

AG: Lastly, could you break down the latest developments in Rwanda’s ongoing occupation of Congo? Rwandan political prisoners Victoire Ingabire and Kizito Mihigo were released earlier this month. Then, last week, Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo won her bid to head the International Organization of La Francophonie . Also last week, a French prosecutor asked a French judge to dismiss charges against Rwandan Patriotic Army officers for assassinating Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira in 1994.

BKN: These last two years, Kabila, who is the proconsul of Kigali in the Congo, has worked to strengthen the Rwandan occupation of the country by appointing senior Tutsi officers in the national army and appointing men like Azarias Ruberwa at the head of the Ministry for Decentralization, which Congolese call the ministry for balkanization. This shows that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and those surrounding him have no intention of withdrawing from the Congo, a country whose wealth allows them to build big shiny buildings in Rwanda’s capital, then point to them and as proof of Rwanda’s economic growth even though most Rwandans are still very poor and the country still relies on foreign aid for 40% of its annual budget.

Rwanda’s shiny surface and the widespread fable about Rwandan economic growth also give Kagame credibility among Africans, and this is why the appointment of Mushikiwabo has been rather well received in Africa. Most Africans are, like the rest of the world, ill-informed about Rwandan realities. They have interpreted Mushikiwabo’s appointment as the victory of an African leader against Europe, France in particular. They forget that France plays the leading role in La Francophonie and France chose Mushikiwabo. [See “The ugly facts about the Francophonie.” When France says that they want a particular person to lead the organization, they more often than not get their way.

“Rwandan President Paul Kagame and those surrounding him have no intention of withdrawing from the Congo.”

Having Mushikiwabo as president is a way for France to regain the influence in Central Africa that it lost to the United States after Bill Clinton’s arrival in the White House. In this French/Rwandan bargain—because that is what it is—Kagame must have demanded that the long-running French investigation of his attack on Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane be permanently closed because it was an aggravating refutation of the panegyric that he is Rwanda’s savior. Some call this a victory for Rwandan diplomacy, but it’s more like a small hit man in the middle of an international mafia using blackmail to achieve his ends. On the French side of the bargain, it helps them reestablish France’s access to the immensely rich Congolese subsoil.

It is also important for France not to appear to be associated with a brutal regime that imprisons female opponents. Thus Kagame was forced to release political prisoners Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and Diane Rwigara to polish his image.In a country that boasts of having worked so hard on the advancement of women, these high-profile female political prisoners, both of whom attempted to challenge Kagame for the presidency, hugely stained his image. But the good news is that these two women refused to keep silent about what was happening in Rwanda after their release. They presage a much more difficult future for Kagame and the deadly system he put in place. It is therefore a great joy to see these women free again and more determined than ever. They are among the leaders and organizers that this long suffering region has hoped for.

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Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at [email protected]. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The US is increasing its pressure on Ecuador to evict WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from its London embassy, where he took political asylum in June 2012. He would then be arrested immediately by British police and subjected to extradition proceedings to face trumped-up espionage charges in the US that could see him jailed for life or even executed.

On Wednesday, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee sent a threatening letter to Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno insisting that he “hand over” Assange to the “proper authorities” as a precondition for improving relations with the United States.

In a bipartisan letter, Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, and former Foreign Relations Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, declared:

“We are very concerned with Julian Assange’s continued presence at your embassy in London and his receipt of Ecuadorian citizenship last year.”

Engel’s role makes even more explicit the leading part being played by the Democrats in the drive to lock away Assange for good and silence WikiLeaks itself. In June, on the eve of a visit to Ecuador by Vice President Mike Pence, 10 Democratic Party senators called on the Trump administration to demand that the Ecuadorian government renege on the political asylum it provided Assange six years ago.

Written in bullying and contemptuous language, the Engel-Ros-Lehtinen letter warns that any further “significant progress” and “warming” in Washington’s relationship with Moreno’s government on a “wide range of issues,” including “economic cooperation” and financial aid, depends on Ecuador terminating Assange’s political asylum.

The letter effectively confirms that if Assange is forced to leave the embassy, on whatever pretext, the British government will deliver him into the hands of the US. Prime Minister Theresa May’s government has repeatedly refused to give Assange an assurance he will not be extradited to the US.

“On numerous occasions, Mr. Assange has compromised the national security of the United States,” the letter states. “He has done so by publicly releasing classified government documents along with confidential materials from individuals connected to our country’s 2016 presidential election.”

The thousands of secret US files published by WikiLeaks document US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, anti-democratic plots and interventions around the world, and massive global surveillance and computer hacking by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies.

The letter also refers to the unsubstantiated conspiracy theory concocted by the US spy agencies and the Democrats to accuse WikiLeaks of aiding Russian “interference” to secure Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. In reality, WikiLeaks published documents, which it insists were not provided by Russia, proving that top Democratic Party officials sought to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders in the primary elections and that Hillary Clinton gave speeches to Wall Street bankers pledging to protect their interests.

The letter brands Assange “a dangerous criminal and a threat to global security,” who “should be brought to justice.” The truth is that Assange and WikiLeaks have courageously continued to publish leaked documents that expose the truly “dangerous criminals”—the US ruling class and its allies, and their illegal invasions, assassinations, regime-change operations and mass surveillance.

As for “justice,” the American intelligence, detention and judicial agencies have a documented record of torture, frame-ups, show trials and incarceration of “enemy combatants” without trial.

The letter adds: “Most recently, we were particularly disturbed to learn that your government restored Mr. Assange’s access to the Internet.” This is also a false assertion.

Last Friday, under the guise of partially restoring Assange’s right to access the internet and receive visitors, Moreno’s government sought to impose a new “special protocol” that provides a pretext for terminating the asylum that the previous Ecuadorian government of Rafael Correa granted him in 2012.

Anyone seeking to visit Assange would have to give the Ecuadorian embassy three days’ notice and wait for written authorisation by the head of the embassy, which could be arbitrarily refused or cancelled without any reason being given. Visitors would have to provide the Ecuadorian authorities with full ID details and either hand over or clear all mobile phones and other communications devices.

Assange, whose health has been severely compromised by being trapped inside the tiny embassy for six years, would have to submit to compulsory quarterly medical evaluations that could provide the pretext for a forced “medical evacuation.”

Far from restoring Assange’s basic democratic rights, the protocol would reinforce the political silencing imposed by Ecuador in March. In direct violation of the right to asylum, it seeks to forbid him from making any comments that criticise or could offend any government, particularly those with “good relations” with Ecuador.

Assange would have to “comply scrupulously” with a “prohibition” on carrying out any “activities that could be considered as political and interference in the internal affairs of other States, or that may cause harm to the good relations of Ecuador with any other State.”

The protocol states that failure to comply with any of its obligations “will entail, in addition to other possible consequences, the termination of the asylum of Mr. Julian Assange.”

One of the possible grounds for a US application to extradite Assange may well be an indictment against the WikiLeaks editor by the Mueller investigation into purported “Russian interference” in the 2016 presidential election. A concerted effort has been waged by US intelligence agencies, the Democratic Party and media outlets such as the New York Times and the Guardian to slander Assange as an agent of both the Putin regime and the Trump campaign because WikiLeaks published the damning exposures of Clinton.

In what may be related to the attempt to link WikiLeaks with Russia, Moreno’s government this week released documents purporting to reveal that it sought to get Assange out of its embassy last December by naming him as a political counsellor to the country’s embassy in Moscow.

British authorities, however, flatly rejected a request for Assange to be given an Ecuadorian diplomatic ID card. According to the documents, a letter dated December 21, 2017 from Britain’s Foreign Office said UK officials “do not consider Mr. Julian Assange to be an acceptable member of the mission.”

Russia’s embassy said on Twitter that the material was “another example of disinformation and fake news.” The embassy repeated its denial of similar reports produced by the Guardian last month. WikiLeaks associate and former British whistle-blower Craig Murray has also publicly rejected claims that Assange wanted or requested to go to Russia.

The files were made public on Tuesday at the instigation of right-wing opposition legislator Paola Vintimilla, whose Social Christian Party opposed the former Correa government’s decision to grant Assange nationality. Assange, an Australian citizen, was compelled to turn to Ecuador in 2012 because the Labor Party-led government in Australia fully lined up with the Obama administration and denied him his right to assistance and protection against persecution.

Under Moreno, who assumed the presidency in May 2017, Ecuador’s government has turned against WikiLeaks and Assange as part of its efforts to reforge relations with Washington. The decision to cut off his communication and visitation rights on March 28 this year was taken one day after the US and Ecuador held top level military talks. Moreno has since repeatedly threatened to repudiate Assange’s political asylum in an apparent effort to pressure him into “voluntarily” leaving the embassy.

As the conspiracy against the WikiLeaks editor escalates, the World Socialist Web Site reiterates its call for all defenders of democratic rights to fight for the unconditional freedom of Julian Assange. It is an essential component of the broader struggle in defence of freedom of speech and an independent and critical media in opposition to the growing censorship of oppositional views by governments and corporate giants such as Facebook and Google.

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French army forces deployed in Syria intend to establish a military base in the US-occupied region in Raqqa.

The Arabic-language Baladi News website affiliated to the terrorists reported on Thursday that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are busy with drilling operations in an area stretching from the Brigade 17 region to Sahlat al-Banat region in Northeast of Raqqa city and from Sahlat al-Banat region to the North of the Sugar plant in Northern Raqqa.

It added that operations to build the walls and construction of buildings in the area will start after drilling operations, noting that a military base is due to be set up for the French forces with the aim of supporting the SDF in Raqqa.

According to the report, the US military troops are in talks with the SDF to further equip al-Tabaqah airbase in Western Raqqa and turn it into their new military base in the region next year.

Sources in the past few months said that the French army has sent weapons, military equipment and forces to Raqqa.

Local sources in Western Raqqa reported that a military convoy of the US and French forces have been dispatched from the town of al-Tabaqah to its airbase.

They added that the convoy consisted of 7 trucks, carrying military equipment, noting that the SDF had declared curfew in al-Tabaqah.

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The alleged torture, dismemberment and killing of Saudi citizen and US permanent resident Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul has triggered justifiable outrage throughout the United States and around the world. But amid the outcry over Khashoggi’s death, many media and public figures still fail to acknowledge the war crimes Saudi Arabia is committing in Yemen with US assistance.

Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, had written critically about the Saudi government and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Post reported that Mohammed had recently attempted to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia in an operation resembling an extrajudicial “rendition,” where a person is forcibly removed from one country and taken to another for interrogation. Bloomberg reported that the United States knew the Saudis planned to seize Khashoggi because US intelligence services had intercepted communications between Saudi officials discussing the plan. According to Turkish sources, participants in Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment were Saudi operatives.

Six days after Khashoggi’s disappearance, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman made the astounding claim,

“If Jamal has been abducted and murdered by agents of the Saudi government … [i]t would be an unfathomable violation of norms of human decency, worse not in numbers but in principle than even the Yemen war.”

In fact, Saudi Arabia is committing war crimes in Yemen and the US government is aiding and abetting them.

Saudi-US War Crimes Committed in Yemen

The Saudi-led coalition is bombing Yemen in order to defeat the Houthi rebels who have been resisting government repression. This war is the culmination of a long-standing grievance the Houthis have had with the state, which was weakened during the Arab spring. Yemen is strategically located on a narrow waterway that links the Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea.

In August, the coalition dropped a 500-pound, laser-guided MK 82 bomb on a bus at a market in Dahyan, killing 51 people, including 40 children. The bomb was manufactured by Lockheed Martin, a leading US defense contractor. Provision of that bomb was part of a US-Saudi arms deal last year.

The August bombing conducted with US-manufactured weapons was not an isolated incident. In 2016, the coalition used a similar bomb to kill 155 people at a funeral in Sana’a.

As recently as October 13, a Saudi-led airstrike killed at least 19 people and injured 30 when it hit a convoy of buses carrying civilians escaping an attack on Hodeidah. The coalition has mounted more than 50 airstrikes on civilian vehicles in 2018 alone.

Targeting civilians is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

By furnishing a bomb with knowledge it would likely be used to commit a war crime, US leaders could be tried for aiding and abetting a war crime under customary international law. They supplied the bomb used in the August 2018 bus attack, knowing a similar one was used in the 2016 funeral bombing.

Trump Administration Lies to Congress About Attempts to Minimize Civilian Casualties

On September 12, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo certified to Congress

“that the governments of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are undertaking demonstrable actions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure resulting from military operations of these governments [in Yemen].”

However, as New York University Professor Mohamad Bazzi noted in The Nation,

“the administration’s assurances contradicted virtually every other independent review of the war, including the recent report by a group of UN experts and several Human Rights Watch investigations that found the Saudi coalition culpable of war crimes.”

On August 28, the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, documented the likely commission of war crimes by parties to the war in Yemen. The group of experts concluded that coalition airstrikes have caused most of the direct civilian casualties, hitting residential areas, weddings, funerals, markets, detention facilities, medical facilities and civilian boats.

The Trump administration is lying to Congress about the coalition’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties. The Wall Street Journal quoted a classified memo revealing that Pompeo certified Saudi-Emeriti compliance with the minimization requirement, notwithstanding opposition by several military and regional experts at the US State Department, “due to a lack of progress on mitigating civilian casualties.”

A new law requires that the administration certify to Congress every six months that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are doing enough to minimize civilian casualties or the US will cease refueling operations in Yemen. Pompeo’s certification was motivated by a desire to protect a forthcoming $2 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to the classified memo.

US leaders are mindful of their potential liability for aiding and abetting Saudi-UAE war crimes in Yemen, according to documents acquired by Reuters pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Pushback From Congress on US Assistance to Saudi Arabia

In March, a bipartisan resolution that would have ended US support, including refueling and targeting assistance, for Saudi military actions in Yemen, was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 55-44. A similar resolution was voted down in the House of Representatives. The resolutions invoked the War Powers Resolution, which allows the president to introduce US Armed Forces into hostilities or imminent hostilities only after Congress has declared war, or in “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces,” or when there is “specific statutory authorization,” such as an Authorization for the Use of Military Force.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), co-sponsor of the Senate bill, stated, “Some will argue on the floor today that we’re really not engaged in hostilities, we’re not exchanging fire. Please tell that to the people of Yemen, whose homes and lives are being destroyed by weapons marked ‘Made in the U.S.A.,’ dropped by planes being refueled by the U.S. military on targets chosen with US assistance.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump is doing a two-step to avoid blaming Saudi Arabia for Khashoggi’s death.

But Congress is pushing back.

On October 10, a bipartisan group of 22 senators sent a letter to Trump, triggering the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which requires the president “to determine whether a foreign person is responsible for an extrajudicial killing, torture, or other gross violation of internationally recognized human rights against an individual exercising freedom of expression, and report to the Committee within 120 days with a determination and a decision on the imposition of sanctions on that foreign person or persons.”

The letter states that Khashoggi “could be a victim of a gross violation of internationally recognized human rights, which includes ‘torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges and trial, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, and other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of person.’”

It calls on Trump to impose sanctions on “any foreign person responsible for such a violation related to Mr. Khashoggi,” including “the highest ranking officials of the Government of Saudi Arabia.”

The timing of this scandal is tricky for congressional Republicans. Several GOP Congress members are demanding an aggressive US response if Saudi Arabia is responsible for Khashoggi’s killing. But with the November 6 midterm elections less than three weeks away, many could face a backlash with voters if they distance themselves from Trump.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and an advisory board member of Veterans for Peace. The editor and contributor to The United States and Torture: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, Cohn testified before Congress about the Bush interrogation policy. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

In a move that sounds straight out of a sci-fi paperback, China is planning to launch the first artificial ‘moon’ into orbit in order to replace street lights and reduce energy costs.

For seventeen years, Global Research, together with partner independent media organizations, has sought Truth in Media with a view to eventually “disarming” the corporate media’s disinformation crusade.

To reverse the tide, we call upon our readers to participate in an important endeavor.

Global Research has over 50,000 subscribers to our Newsletter.

Our objective is to recruit one thousand committed “volunteers” among our 50,000 Newsletter subscribers to support the distribution of Global Research articles (email lists, social media, crossposts). 

Do not send us money. Under Plan A, we call upon our readers to donate 5 minutes a day to Global Research.

Global Research Volunteer Members can contact us at [email protected] for consultations and guidelines.

If, however, you are pressed for time in the course of a busy day, consider Plan B, Consider Making a Donation and/or becoming a Global Research Member. 

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Video: War Criminal Henry Kissinger Heckled at New York University Speech

By RT News, October 21, 2018

New York University students heckled and disrupted an appearance by Henry Kissinger on Tuesday, accusing the former US Secretary of State of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Canada Provides Safe Haven to White Helmet Terrorist Factions

By Mark Taliano, October 21, 2018

Whereas there are untold numbers of Western-created refugees throughout the world, what author Franz Fanon appropriately named “The Wretched of the Earth”, Canada has chosen to prioritize the “White Helmets” evacuated from Syria.

US, Israel Send Secret Delegation to Ukraine to Train Against S-300

By Jason Ditz, October 20, 2018

The US and Israeli militaries recently sent a secret delegation to Ukraine to test the capabilities of the Russian-made S-300 air defense systems. Ukrainian military officials explained the limitations of the systems.

NATO’s Upcoming 40,000-soldier Arctic Drill Is a Message to Russia and China

By Andrew Korybko, October 20, 2018

Norway is hosting these upcoming massive exercises because of its geographic position astride both the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, the latter of which is becoming more militarized after the US recently resurrected its Second Fleet for patrolling this region in response to what it claims is an uptick in Russian submarine activity there.

Anniversary of Gaddafi’s Death and the Current Situation in Libya

By Yuriy Zinin, October 19, 2018

The seventh anniversary of the killing of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on October 20, 2011 provides us with an opportunity to reassess those dramatic events which caused a major step backwards in the country’s development. With the fall of its leader, the country’s power hierarchy collapsed, leading to the disintegration of both government authorities and the armed forces.

Syria: The White Helmets and Armed Group Leader in Daraa Al Balad. Vanessa Beeley

By Vanessa Beeley, October 19, 2018

Russia had offered a separate deal to the rebranded Nusra Front faction, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), occuping areas of Dara’a. According to the report in Enab Baladi, the former Emir of HTS, the infamous Abu Jaber, turned down the Russian proposal. Abu Jaber had originally been one of the founding commanders of the “moderate” extremist group, Ahrar Al Sham, responsible for a number of brutal ethnic cleansing massacres in Syria.

New York University students heckled and disrupted an appearance by Henry Kissinger on Tuesday, accusing the former US Secretary of State of complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

There is no American who has fought with more tenacity, courage and integrity to expose the crimes of corporate power and to thwart the corporate coup d’état that has destroyed our democracy than Ralph Nader. Not one. There is little he has not tried in that effort. He has written investigative exposés on the unsafe practices of the auto industry; published best-sellers such as “Who Runs Congress?”; founded citizen action and consumer groups; testified before countless congressional committees; written a raft of environmental and worker safety bills that were passed in Congress under the now defunct liberal wing of the Democratic Party; and, when he was locked out of the legislative process by corporate Democrats, been a candidate for president. He even helped organize the first Earth Day.

His latest assault is a fable called “How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress.” (And though at times the prose can be a bit stilted and the scatological jokes on par with the humor of the average 10-year-old—the rats crawl up out of the toilet bowls as congressional leaders are taking a dump—Nader is deadly serious about the revolt the rats engender.)

The key in Nader’s story to the citizens retaking control of Congress and the government is sustained mass nationwide demonstrations and rallies. These demonstrations, like all protests that are effective, are organized by full-time staff and steadily build in numbers and momentum. The demonstrations are funded by three enlightened billionaires. I don’t share Nader’s faith—also expressed in his other foray into fiction, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us”—in a renegade wing of the oligarchy funding the overthrow of the corporate state, but he is right that successful movements need to be sustained, grow in size and power, have dedicated organizers and amass significant cash and resources so they do not disintegrate.

Nader writes in his new book:

Protests rise and fall in the ether for the most part. They generally don’t ripple out from the core group of concerned people who originate them. Experts on crowds attribute this to little planning, minuscule budgets, poor leadership, and the lack of focus which induces protest fatigue among the core before they make an impact. The core never convincingly answers the questions, “Just How Far Do the Majority of Our Fellow Citizens Want To Go and How Do They Expect to Get There?”

Another explanation for the lackluster showing of protest movements in this country is that American politicians, over the past twenty-five years, have learned to quietly dismiss big rallies, demonstrations, and even temporary “occupations,” because they have gone nowhere. The lawmakers never consider them when making decisions. Remember, too, that in Washington, giant rallies, such as those against the Iraq War, for the environment or for a jobs program were traditionally held on weekends when neither the members of Congress nor the journalists were around. These crowds are lucky to get a picture in the Sunday newspapers. The lack of publicity curtails any impact they might have had. The smaller gatherings, even those by Veterans for Peace, get zeroed out completely, rating at best a paragraph squib deep in the paper.

The demonstrations for the restoration of our democracy take place in cities around the country. They also see enraged citizens pour into Washington, D.C., to surround and occupy the Capitol and the headquarters of other government agencies and institutions to demand a return to democratic rule. The ruling elites become afraid.

Indeed, it is only when the elites become afraid of us that there will be any hope of destroying corporate power. Politics, as Nader understands, is a game of fear.

As Nader points out, elected officials have surrendered their constitutional power to do the bidding of corporations in return for corporate money. It is a system of legalized bribery. The consent of the governed has become a joke. Politicians in the two ruling parties are the agents of corporate exploitation and oppression, the enemies of democracy. They no longer hold public hearings at the committee level. They govern largely in secret. They pass bills, most written by corporate lobbyists, and appoint judges to protect corporations from lawsuits by those these corporations have wronged, injured or defrauded. They deny our standing in the courts. They divert money from the country’s crumbling infrastructure and social services to sustain a war machine that consumes half of all discretionary spending. They run up massive deficits to give tax cuts to the ruling oligarchs and orchestrate the largest transference of wealth upward in American history. They suppress the minimum wage, break unions and legalize the debt peonage that corporations use to exact punishing tribute from the citizenry, including from young men and women forced to take on $1.5 trillion in debt to get a college education. They revoke laws, controls and regulations that curb the worst abuses of Wall Street. They abolish our most cherished civil liberties, including the right to privacy and due process. Their public proceedings, as was evidenced in the one held for new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, are shameless political theater that mocks the democratic process.

“Congress itself is a clear and present danger to our country,” Nader writes. “It feasts on raw global corporate power and is oblivious to various fateful degradations of life on the planet.” He calls Congress “a concentrated tyranny of self-privilege, secrecy, exclusionary rules and practices.”

Nader warns that any uprising has to be swift to prevent the ruling elites from organizing to crush it. It has to capture the public imagination. And it has to have a sense of humor. He writes of the fictitious uprising in “How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress”:

A contingent from New York and New England, led by nurses and students, delivered a truck load of “Wall Street Rats” with the sign explaining that they would obviously be welcomed by the Congress that had refused to pass a Wall Street speculation tax, such a sales tax would have provided $300 billion a year that might have been utilized to provide healthcare and reduce the student loan burdens. Millions of postcards were being sent showing one giant black rat on the Capitol Dome with a sign saying, “You Didn’t Listen to Them—The People—But Now You’re Going To Listen To Us.” This was only a sliver of the corrosively critical anthropomorphism attributed to the rats and their imagined political agenda. They had become the voice of the public! Little statuettes of [House Speaker] Blamer, [Minority Leader] Melosay, and [Senate Majority Leader] Clearwater, wearing crowns upon which lolled a pompous rat, were selling like hotcakes. Poster art rose to new heights of imaginative, symbolic, and real-life portrayals of what was increasingly being called the perfidious “Withering Heights” of Washington, DC.

The calendar was filled with non-stop street action: rallies, soapbox speeches, marches, and sit-ins at zoos where the protesters said the rats should be given luxury cages as reward for their heroic takeover. The media couldn’t have enough of it. Ratings soared and increasing print, radio, and TV time was being devoted to what was making a very deep impression everywhere. Protests—across the country, red state, blue state, north, south, east, and west—were moving into mobilization stages with overdue specific demands for justice, fairness, and participation qua citizens replacing control qua wealth as the sine qua non of government functioning. And, the most ominous sign of all for incumbents: there were early indications of candidates, holding the same beliefs as the protesters, readying challenges to the lawmakers in the upcoming primaries.

Petitions were circulating on the Internet demanding the members go back to their jobs regardless of the rat infestation. Millions of workers show up every day at jobs far more dangerous. They don’t cower in fear. If they did, they would have their pay cut or be fired by their bosses. The petition pointed out that Members of Congress were getting paid while they stayed home in bed. Outrageous! These petitions contained common left/right demands—the kind that really scare politicians.

No revolution will succeed without a vision. Nader lays out the basics—a guaranteed living wage, full government-funded health insurance, free education including at the university level, the prosecution of corporate criminals, cutting the bloated military budget, an end to empire, criminal justice reform, transferring power from the elites to the citizenry by providing public spaces where consumers, workers and communities can meet and organize, breaking up the big banks and creating a public banking system, protecting and fostering labor unions, removing money from politics, taking the airwaves out of the hands of corporations and returning them to the public and ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industry while keeping fossil fuels in the ground to radically reconfigure our relationship to the ecosystem.

He writes of the popular convergence on the centers of power:

Meanwhile, by car, bus, rail, plane and even by bicycles and by foot, people of all ages, backgrounds, and places continued to pour into Washington. They filled the restaurants and the motels. They usually had to find a room in a city where there were few affordable apartments but many large, under-inhabited houses whose longtime owners wanted to make some money to pay for their property taxes and repairs. So they were renting to the new arrivals.

The ways these visitors made their voices heard were quite imaginative. There was a cavalcade of horseback riders in a procession down Constitution Avenue resplendent with the signs, “Pass this …” or “Pass that …” always ending with the ominous “or Else.” One horseman was using his trumpet to raise the emotional level of the demonstration, which was fully covered in the press. Others joined the daily “resign … or else” rally going on at the backside of the Capitol while mini-demonstrations were becoming daily events in front of the White House and at other major government buildings containing departments and agencies. Even those agencies in the suburbs, such as the Pentagon, the CIA, the Patent Office, or the Food and Drug Administration, where the employees had thought they would be beyond reach, did not escape the rallying.

It is a wonderful vision. I hope it comes to pass. But even if it does not, we should try. Appealing to the ruling elites and the two corporate political parties, as well as attempting to have our voices and concerns addressed by the corporate media, which has blacklisted Nader, is a waste of time. The corporate state will be overthrown by a citizens’ revolt or we will continue to barrel toward a political and ecological nightmare. Nader dares to dream. We should too.

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Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Featured image is from Mr. Fish.

Whereas there are untold numbers of Western-created refugees throughout the world, what author Franz Fanon appropriately named “The Wretched of the Earth”, Canada has chosen to prioritize the “White Helmets” evacuated from Syria.

As with similar colonial narratives, the lies wrapped around this operation constitute war propaganda. White Helmets are not “saviours” to be protected. In fact, they are — in some instances by their own admissions – terrorists. 

Investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley explains in “Syria: The White Helmets and Armed Group Leader in Daraa Al Balad”[1] that  

“if a White Helmet faction is led by Nusra Front (many are according to Al Mahamid), then it follows that the whole group will be Nusra Front. The White Helmets in Dara’a were originally led by a member of the FSA – Abdellah Assarhan. Following Al Mahamid’s logic then all members of the Dara’a White Helmets will be FSA and involved in furthering the sectarian aims of the FSA in Dara’a.”

When Beeley asked if a White Helmets member might be Nusra Front (al Qaeda), Al Mahamid admitted, 

“Of course!  They might be Nusra Front and run a White Helmet center so this means all his colleagues are also Nusra Front … “

Additionally, White Helmets operatives told Beeley that 50% of the evacuees were terrorist leaders and ISIS fighters.[2]

 Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland, for her part, told the Global and Mail[3] that,

“…  the fact that a group of White Helmets and their families were able to escape Syria and are now finding refuge around the world is a real example of not cursing the darkness, and lighting a small candle …”  

Evidence-based reality paints a far different picture. 

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

1. Vanessa Beeley, “Syria: The White Helmets and Armed Group Leader in Daraa Al Balad. Vanessa Beeley.” Global Research, 19 October, 2018. 21^st Century Wire. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-vanessa-beeley-meets-the-white-helmets-and-armed-group-leader-in-daraa-al-balad/5657409) Accessed 20 October, 2018. 

2. RT UK, “White Helmets Revealed ‘Half of the evacuated terrorists are Nusra terrorists.” (https://www.facebook.com/RTUKnews/videos/169835723920024/ ) Accessed 20 October, 2018. 

3. Michelle Zilio, Mark MacKinnon, “Some Syrian White Helmets resettle in Canada, with more on the way.” The Globe And Mail, 19 October, 2018.( https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-some-white-helmets-refugees-resettled-in-canada-with-more-on-the-way/ ) Accessed 20 October, 2018.

Featured image is from MintPress News.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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A member of the 15-man team suspected in the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has died in an accident back in Saudi Arabia, according to Turkish media, prompting suspicion of a cover up.

Meshal Saad al-Bostani, a 31-year-old lieutenant in the Saudi Royal Air Force, is believed to have died in a ‘suspicious car accident’ in the Saudi capital Riyadh, sources told the Turkish Yeni Safak – the one that earlier covered the shocking details of the murder.

A still taken from a Turkish police CCTV video, released by the Sabah newspaper, identified Bostani as he passed through Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on October 2.

He, along 14 other Saudi citizens allegedly arrived and left Turkey on the same day and are alleged by Turkish police to have tortured and murdered Khashoggi after he entered the Saudi consulate.

The unconfirmed death of Bostani has already prompted accusations on social media that a cover up was underway by those who orchestrated Khashoggi’s disappearance.

In the Name of Allah, I posted about 2 days ago that members of that hit team would soon be killed. –They need to go to the Turkish consulate, local news media INTERPOL for safety (Then tell the truth about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman plot)

— Muhammad (@jamiat33) October 18, 2018

Saudi Arabia isn’t safe for anyone, not even their own citizens. I urge everyone to leave the country

— AlDente (@Jolly198704855) October 18, 2018

These fears have also been voiced in Turkish media, with Daily Hürriyet columnist writing Thursday that Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consul-general Mohammad al Otaibi could be “the next execution.”

On Wednesday, it was reported that the consul-general returned to Saudi Arabia on October 16, before authorities searched his residence as part of their investigations.

In reports of an unreleased recording documenting Khashoggi’s alleged murder and dismemberment, Otaibi is believed to have said “do it somewhere else outside or I will be in trouble,” to Khashoggi’s interrogators.

He was reportedly told to “shut up if you want to live when you are back in Saudi Arabia.”

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The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, released a statement on Wednesday, with regard to Palestine. She refers to the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar, stating that “extensive destruction of property without military necessity, as well as population transfers in an occupied territory constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute.”

She expressed her concern for the planned eviction, and displacement of the nearly two hundred residents of Khan al-Ahmar.

The following are quotes taken from the International Criminal Court:

Article 8
War Crimes

Article 8 (2)(a)(iv) : Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity, and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.

Article 8 (2)(b)(vii) : Attacking or bombardment by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives.

Article 8 (2)(b)(viii) : The transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies, or the deportation or transfer of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within or outside this territory.

The prosecutor also expressed alarm at the violence along the Gaza border with Israel, which she claims is “perpetrated by both sides,” and although the case is only preliminary, she is “watching the situation in Palestine closely”. In the context go the Gaza protests and Israel’s response, we can look at the Geneva Conventions, and see more of Israel’s crimes.

Article 8 (2)(b)(xviii) : Employing asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices.

Article 8 (2)(b)(xix) : Employing bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body, such as bullets with a hard envelope which does not entirely cover the core or is pierced with incisions.

Article 8 (2)(b)(xx) : Employing weapons, projectiles and materials and methods of warfare that are of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the international law of armed conflict.

Also in the context of the Gaza protests, as well as well as the nearly 12 year blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel.

Article 6
Genocide

Article 6 (a) : Killing members of the group.

Article 6 (b) : Causing serious bodily or mental harm to the members of the group.

Article 6 (c) : Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about it’s physical destruction in whole or in part.

According to WAFA, Mr. Saeb Erekat, the Secretary General of the Executive Committee of Palestine Liberation Organization, sent a letter to the prosecutor and related more evidence against Israel with regards to the historical and “ongoing colonial settlement activity in the Palestinian city of Hebron.”

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Until recently the United States viewed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, as a major threat to regional stability in the Middle East. Barack Obama made it a mission to roll back ISIS’s territorial and propagandistic gain, and Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to “kick ISIS’s ass.” The United States expended considerable effort, both military and political, in a campaign to defeat the terror group in Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Syria.

But there is also no doubt that the bulk of the effort came from Iran, not the United States. Without Iranian involvement, ISIS would still have a formidable presence in both Iraq and Syria.

ISIS was born out of the ashes of the American invasion of Iraq. Their rise was the logical extension of a process that saw the fabric of secular Sunni society torn asunder by an American occupier unwilling to further empower a Sunni ruling elite that had been loyal to Saddam Hussein. Washington failed to understand the resentment engendered within the Sunni community when Iraq’s Shia, some of whom were beholden to Iran, came to power.

Traditional Sunni tribal power structures were eviscerated as a result, only to be replaced with radicalized Sunni youths beholden to only themselves. Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was al-Qaeda in name only—its mission wasn’t to export jihad to the West, but to free Iraq from the grips of an American and Iranian occupation.

America’s campaign against AQI never resulted in that movement’s destruction. Instead, the United States, in an effort to free itself of the burden of war created when it invaded Iraq in the first place, withdrew from Iraq in 2012, leaving the final phase of AQI’s destruction in the hands of the Iraqi government. This period coincided with the start of the civil unrest in Syria and the creation of a radicalized Islamist opposition to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. The willingness to cede large swaths of Syrian territory to Islamist forces as a means of destabilizing Assad created the conditions for the birth of ISIS in the deserts of both central Syria and western Iraq.

When ISIS advanced on the Iraqi cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, the American-trained and -equipped Iraqi army was unable to halt its advance. Soon the major city of Mosul fell to ISIS, and its forces pushed down the Tigris River valley to the outskirts of Baghdad.

The story of Iraq’s struggle to form a viable resistance to ISIS in the aftermath of the fall of Mosul is little known, and even less appreciated, by the United States. The formation of so-called “Popular Mobilization Forces,” or PMF—organized at the behest of Iraq’s senior Shia leadership, and trained, equipped, and led by Iran—was the single most important factor behind the halting of ISIS’s drive on Baghdad and its eventual eviction from Iraqi territory.

Western media have paid a disproportionate amount of attention to the actions of a select few American-trained Iraqi security forces, which, with ample support from U.S. airpower and advisors, helped end fighting in and around Mosul. All the while, they’ve ignored that the lion’s share of the fighting was done by the Iranian-directed PMF. This fact was not lost on the Iraqi people, many of whom (though not many of the Sunnis) hold the PMF in the highest regard. This sentiment has propelled many of the senior leadership of the PMF into political prominence in Baghdad.

For Iran, the ISIS phenomenon is not limited to Iraq. It is seen as part and parcel of a concerted effort undertaken by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf Arab nations to overthrow Assad in Syria, diminish the power and influence of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and roll back Iranian influence in both Syria and Iraq. ISIS’s geographic presence in Syria, concentrated as it was in the central and northeastern deserts, made it a secondary target compared to the al-Qaeda affiliates operating in and around Aleppo and Damascus.

As the Syrian government, with the assistance of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, gained the upper hand in the fight against the American- and Saudi-backed al-Qaeda groups, however, the importance of ISIS as a source of anti-regime resistance grew. While ISIS never had the power to challenge Damascus directly, the efforts undertaken by the Syrian coalition to defeat ISIS diverted resources needed in the larger fight. As such, the continued existence of a viable ISIS presence on Syrian soil was deemed an acceptable outcome by the United States as it sought to contain Iran’s presence on Syrian soil.

ISIS in Syria lingers on, despite the fact that U.S. military power could ensure its almost immediate elimination. The reason for the stay of execution is not entirely clear, but it could well be that the U.S. sees ISIS as a useful foil against Iran. Efforts by the United States to roll back Iran’s presence inside Syria have recently become more volatile in the wake of fiery rhetoric from senior Trump administration officials and actions undertaken by Iran to harden their positions. The American policy of Iranian rollback includes the re-imposition of economic sanctions and support for opposition groups opposed to the Iranian theocracy.

The latter point is very sensitive. This sensitivity has only been heightened by remarks from Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman suggesting that any struggle for influence between Riyadh and Tehran ought to take place “inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s encouraging Iranian Arab minorities to rise up in opposition to the Iranian government.

When gunmen linked to ISIS attacked a military parade in the Iranian city of Ahvaz, killing and wounding dozens, the Iranian government was quick to blame the United States and Saudi Arabia, among others, and promise retaliation in kind. This prompted National Security Advisor John Bolton to declare to Iran that “there will indeed be hell to pay” if Iran or its proxies attacked the U.S. or its allies.

A few days later, Iranian rockets were launched, not against American targets in Basra, but locations in Syria linked to ISIS. While the Iranian strike was in clear retaliation for the Ahvaz attack, the rockets were emblazoned with slogans hostile to the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. This made it clear that the strike was meant for a broader audience. Among those who took notice were the American forces located a mere three miles away from the targets struck by the Iranians.

Rising tensions and strong rhetoric, if not carefully managed, could easily lead to an unintended—and dangerous—escalation of hostilities. This could test President Donald Trump’s uncertain appetite for direct conflict. Moreover, the American effort to stir up an Iranian opposition could do more to unite competing power factions within Iran’s leadership, and unite Iranians behind that leadership, than to divide and weaken the Iranian polity. The Trump administration seems to operate under the delusion that Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and  Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, are operating in different spheres with somewhat disparate interests. U.S. efforts to drive a wedge between Rouhani and Khamenei will not only  prove fruitless, but backfire, closing the door to any potential negotiations and cementing a hardline response that will have Rouhani, the IRGC, and the supreme leader united in their opposition.

The United States is engaged in a dangerous double game with ISIS that is not only hypocritical in the extreme—given the 9/11 attacks on American soil that precipitated this whole sorry affair—but counterproductive to American national security interests. It has both empowered and legitimized the very Iranian theocracy it seeks to contain.

Rather than relying on ISIS as a foil to blunt Iranian influence in Syria and terrorize its citizenry at home, the Trump administration should recognize the positive role that Iran has played in defeating ISIS. It should build upon that recognition to craft a wider regional peace process that both recognizes the realities inherent in Syria today and reduces the tensions that prompt Iran to lean forward in such an aggressive manner. Unfortunately, such thinking seems beyond the capabilities of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. As such, America will continue to pursue poorly thought out policies with no chance of success without any thought to either cost or consequence.

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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.

Featured image is from Michael Wick / Shutterstock

Trident Juncture 2018 is NATO’s largest exercise since the Cold War.

Around 50.000 troops, 250 aircrafts, aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman, 64 vessels and 10,000 vehicles will participate to Nato’s collective defence scenario (Article 5) from 25 October to 7 November 2018.

All Nato’s members as well as NATO partners Finland and Sweden will participate.

NATO casually describes Trident Juncture as a peacemaking endeavour, as means to defending Scandinavia against Russia:

The drills will take part in Central Norway,  in the North Atlantic including Iceland, in the Baltic Sea and in the airspace of Finland and Sweden.

The aircrafts will operate from four Norwegian air bases, from northern Finland and from Kallax in northern Sweden.

In the Finnish archipelago more than 40 surface vessels will simultaneously hold naval exercise called Northern Coasts, which is connected to Trident Juncture.

Although the majority of Finns are against NATO membership, there is almost no public debate as to why Finland is participating.

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Turkey has recently signed a military cooperation agreement with Kuwait, member of the six-state Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). According to the agreement, signed during the Turkey-Kuwait Military Cooperation Committee meeting, the two countries are planning to share their military experiences and coordinate their activities beginning in 2019.

The GCC alliance includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey already has a military base in Qatar, another GCC member state.

Editor of the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Rai al-Youm, Abdul Bari Atwan, wrote that the Kuwaiti-Turkish accord could lead to deployment of Turkish troops in Kuwait.

“The accord doesn’t rule out deployment of Turkish troops in Kuwait and purchase of Turkish weapons, including armored vehicles, along the lines of the Qatar-Turkey accord that defends Doha against Gulf countries.”

Turkey’s efforts to sell defense industry products to Kuwait are not a secret. Turkey participated in the 2017 Kuwaiti Defense and Aeronautics Fair with 23 companies.

Kuwait-Turkey agreement came in the backdrop of close Turkish ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkish moves to become a shield for Qatar against the Saudi-United Arab Emirates alliance, the decision by Riyadh to assist Kurds in Syria and the tensions that erupted with this month’s disappearance of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Tellingly, Kuwait-Turkey agreement follows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Ben Salman’s brief unsuccessful visit to Kuwait on September 30, 2018. This was his first formal visit as Saudi crown prince to a Gulf Cooperation Council country since becoming the heir apparent.

A source at Kuwait’s emiri court told Reuters that the visit took place in a highly tense atmosphere, and that no political or economic agreements were signed by the two sides. The Kuwaiti daily al-Rai al-Youm, quoted a high-level source as saying that the visiting Saudi prince and his delegation appeared visibly displeased and angry. He only exchanged a few inconsequential words with the Kuwaiti ruler, and headed for his private plane along with his delegation as soon as the dinner was over, and flew back to Riyadh.

According to Kristin Smith Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute, the visit had gone badly, and that key issues – the proposed reopening of production in the Neutral Zone oil fields or the Qatar crisis – had generated disputes.

A top priority of the visit was discussions to restart production in oilfields located in the Neutral Zone shared by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The need to increase oil capacity has intensified as Iranian oil output drops under the pressure of U.S. sanctions, and Venezuelan oil production continues to slide. The administration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump has been publicly hounding OPEC, and swing producer Saudi Arabia, to provide the additional production necessary to smooth oil markets, Diwan said adding:

“With questions mounting  as to whether Saudi Arabia has the spare capacity needed to meet these demands, the untapped potential of the Neutral Zone oilfields of Wafra and Khafji loom large. The fields could contribute half a million barrels toward the 1.5 million barrels of additional output sought by Saudi Arabia. Production was halted in the Neutral Zone over the course of late 2014 and spring of 2015 due to disputes that have never been fully understood. The complex situation in which the two national oil companies jointly manage the fields alongside foreign oil groups with equity stakes seems to have raised difficult issues of sovereignty. It appears that the meetings in Kuwait have thus far failed to resolve the issue, with  Bloomberg reporting that talks stalled over the role of Chevron.”

According to al-Rai al-Youm, the crisis over the oilfields began when Kuwait refused to issue visas to maintenance technicians from the Chevron corporation who had been sent to supervise work on the fields to increase their output and oversee further exploration in the area. Their company had positioned equipment on the Kuwaiti side without consulting the Kuwaiti government. The Saudi government responded by halting production from both fields on the pretext of undertaking maintenance. This maintenance has lasted for four years, shutting the fields down and costing Kuwait some $18 billion in lost production.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have not been good for the past 15 months, Abdel Bari Atwan said, adding:

 “They have been merely ‘proper’, due to Kuwait’s neutrality in the Gulf Crisis and its failure to send significant numbers of troops to fight in Yemen as part of Operation Decisive Storm. Its warplanes played a merely symbolic role in that war. Tensions increased as a result of Kuwait maintaining diplomatic relations with Iran. It also condemned the recent shooting in Ahvaz that caused the deaths of 85 people, unlike Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which indirectly supported the attack. Their media outlets justified it and hosted guest commentators who backed it and deemed it to be a legitimate act of resistance and not terrorism.”

Lebanese researcher Ali Mourad said Kuwaitis are seriously worried about being invaded. He told Al-Monitor,

“Kuwaitis need a regional force like Turkey to deal with Saudi ill intentions. They are truly afraid of a Saudi invasion because of a hegemony crisis in the oil fields, Kuwait’s ties with Qatar and the blank check Trump has issued to MBS [Mohammed bin Salman].”

Mourad said,

“Because of his prevailing fears, Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Al-Sabah went to Washington in September 2017 to beef up ties with Trump. For the past three years the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington has been hosting the Kuwaiti National Day receptions at the Trump International DC hotel. They are of course trying to take steps to free themselves from Saudi hegemony.”

Mourad added,

“But the situation is not the same nowadays. Kuwaitis fear a critical threat from a rogue clique in Saudi Arabia. This is why they call MBS ‘little Saddam.’ Amir Sheikh Sabah is in a weak position. This is why he is looking for alliance with Turkish President Erdogan. This is not really what they want but they have no other choice. As a regional force they can’t ask for help from Iran. There is no regional power other than Turkey.”

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Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net) email: asghazali2011 (@) gmail.com

This morning the Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, promised that the UK’s “response will be considered” if the Saudi authorities are linked to the disappearance of journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. He refused to end arms sales to the regime, claiming that the UK has “a very strict arms sale control mechanism.”

UK government statistics show that since the bombing of Yemen began in 2015, the UK has licensed £4.7 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, including:

• £2.7 billion worth of ML10 licenses (Aircraft, helicopters, drones)
• £1.9 billion worth of ML4 licenses (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures)

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:

“For decades now, the Saudi authorities have committed terrible atrocities against Saudi people, and for the last three and a half years they have used UK arms to wage a terrible war against Yemen.

No matter how bad the situation has got, Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt and their predecessors have prioritised arms sales over human rights.

We hope that the current pressure will force the government into taking action, but it should never have come to this. It shouldn’t take the disappearance of a journalist for the UK to reconsider its relationship with the Saudi regime.”

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The Trump regime’s one-sided support for Israel is deplorably hard-edged.

Earlier this year, it cut off most US funding for Palestinians. All funding through UNRWA for its refugee population ended, a flagrant assault on their rights and welfare.

In September, the State Department closed the PLO office in Washington after operating for 24 years.

At the time, John Bolton said closure was because “Palestinians refusing to take steps to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel” – a bald-faced lie.

It’s because Palestinians haven’t unconditionally surrendered to unacceptable US and Israeli demands. The move severed formal US diplomatic relations with Palestinians.

Trump regime hardliners want Palestinians severely punished for refusing to abandon their fundamental rights.

The latest blow came Thursday. Pompeo announced what he called the merger of Washington’s Jerusalem embassy with its consulate in the city, downgrading the status of Palestinians more than already.

He lied calling the move a way “to achieve significant efficiencies and increase our effectiveness.”

He lied claiming the merged facilities don’t “signal a change of US policy on Jerusalem, the West Bank, or the Gaza Strip.”

He lied saying the Trump regime “is strongly committed to achieving a lasting and comprehensive peace that offers a brighter future to Israel and the Palestinians.”

Washington and the Jewish state deplore peace and stability, why endless regional wars rage, why Palestinians are terrorized by apartheid rule, why suffocating Gaza blockade continues.

Merging the two diplomatic facilities has nothing to do with either greater efficiency or pursuing Israeli/Palestinian conflict resolution.

It has everything to do with unacceptable Trump regime toughness against Palestinians, contempt for their fundamental rights.

Israeli deputy diplomacy minister/former envoy to the US Michael Oren, notorious for supporting apartheid viciousness, shamefully called the move a great day for Israel, Jerusalem, and the US.

PLO secretary general Saeb Erekat responded to the action as follows, saying:

“The decision of the United States to end the consulate’s existence…has nothing to do with efficiency, but a lot with the desire to please the ideological American team, which is primed to dismantle the foundations of the international system and US foreign policy in order to reward Israel for its violations and crimes,” adding:

The Trump regime “is making clear that it is working together with the Israeli government to impose Greater Israel with no Palestinian sovereignty.”

Palestinian MK Ahmad Tibi called the move “a negative development,” aiming to undermine Palestinian sovereign rights, killing any chance for a two-state solution the US and Israel long ago rejected.

Up to now, the US Jerusalem consulate served as a de facto Palestinian embassy. Merging it with the US embassy closes its mission. It recognizes exclusive (illegal) Israeli control over the city, hardening occupation harshness more than already.

Separately on Tuesday, Trump’s Zionist ideologue envoy to Israel David Friedman broke longstanding precedent by visiting an illegal West Bank settlement, showing overt support for what demands condemnation.

It was also more evidence of  Trump’s contempt for resolving the longstanding Israeli/Palestinian conflict equitably – supporting Jewish state lawlessness, dismissive of Palestinian rights.

Before becoming US envoy, Friedman headed an extremist fundraising group involved in raising tens of millions of dollars for one of the most radicalized West Bank settlements.

His appointment by Trump signaled one-sided regime support for Israel, Palestinian interests to be ignored.

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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.

If you read anything today, read Andre Damon’s analysis of the concerted  effort by the state and its corporate partners—the very essence corporatism, fascism as Mussolini described it—to once again dominate the narrative as it did before the internet and the web. 

Damon critiques a paper put out by the Atlantic Council. The author, John T. Watts, a former Australian Army officer and consultant to the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, writes that in order for the state to regain its monopoly over the narrative, it must engage in censorship. 

The problem, according to Watts, is that “Technology has democratized the ability for sub-state groups and individuals to broadcast a narrative with limited resources and virtually unlimited scope… In the past, the general public had limited sources of information, which were managed by professional gatekeepers.”

Damon clarifies: 

In other words, the rise of uncensored social media allowed small groups with ideas that correspond to those of the broader population to challenge the political narrative of vested interests on an equal footing, without the “professional gatekeepers” of the mainstream print and broadcast media, which publicizes only a pro-government narrative.

“The most striking element of the document, however, is that it is not describing the future, but contemporary reality. Everything is in the present tense. The machinery of mass censorship has already been built,” Damon writes. 

If the dismemberment murder of Jamal Khashoggi demonstrates anything, it is that the state will use the most extreme measures to maintain its monopoly of power. 

The uninformed may argue this would never happen in America. Granted, the liquidation of serious opposition to the neoliberal regime usually does not require murder and dismemberment, although it has resorted to assassination in a number of cases (the murders of the Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton come to mind). 

The state always wars against dissent. From the Palmer Raids to COINTELPRO and beyond, there is a mechanism waiting in the shadows to undermine, sabotage, and eliminate political dissent. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

First published on March 29, 2019

During his recent visit to New Hampshire on 3/20/18, President Trump declared once again that the US is facing a ‘drug epidemic’.  This time he advocated the death penalty for criminal drug dealers as the solution to a national crisis that has killed over 1 million Americans since the 1990’s (when the blockbuster prescription opiate Oxycontin was first released on the market).   

Trump promised that the Justice Department would develop the most severe penalties for criminal drug traffickers, by which he meant foreigners.  He argued that his proposed “Wall” (between the Mexican- US border) would cut the flow of drugs responsible for the ongoing addiction of millions of US citizens – as though the prescription opiate addiction epidemic resulted from a foreign invasion, and not corporate decisions from Big Pharma.

President Trump’s claim that 116 ‘drug deaths’ occur every day (42,000 a year) is a major underestimate.  In 2017, alone over 64,000 drug overdose deaths were reported in official statistics (with many unreported cases signed off as natural or undetermined, especially in counties too poor to afford autopsies and expensive forensic toxicology).  Another 4 million Americans, at least, are currently addicted to opioids and at risk for overdose.

In comparative terms, more American workers have been killed or devastated by narcotics (mostly via prescription) in 2017 alone, than in the entire decade of the Vietnam War with its 58,000 dead and 500,000 wounded. In 2017, 40,000 Americans died in motor vehicle accidents and another 39,000 by gun violence – and these statistics are not broken down to include vehicular accidents due to drug intoxication or gun violence over drugs.  Prescription or illegal opiates, alone or mixed with other sedative drugs, like Valium, or alcohol, are the most prominent and preventable cause of premature death in the United States today.

This pattern is unique to the United States, where the irresponsible medical prescription of highly addicting narcotics has been the primary portal of entry into the degrading life of addiction for millions.  Despite President Trump’s claims, the addiction crisis is not a product of urban Afro-American street dealers or Mexican narco-traffickers: This uniquely American crisis has been created and fueled by billionaire-owned US pharmaceutical corporations, which produced, distributed and wildly profited from legal narcotics.

They were aided by the irresponsible prescription practice of tens of thousands of doctors and other ‘providers’ who introduced millions of vulnerable patients to the world of narcotic dependency – including youngsters with sports injuries and workers with job-related pain.  These are physicians and medical providers who rarely stopped to examine their own responsibility, even when their otherwise healthy patients overdosed or were destroyed by addiction.  It is especially outrageous that doctors and ‘Big Pharma’ worked hand in hand for over 20 years to create this epidemic, enjoying wild profits and almost total legal immunity.  Few have dared to openly question their irresponsibility and greed.  In the poorest and most vulnerable areas of this country, the most irresponsible and unaccountable incompetence has replaced real medical care and created a health care apartheid.

The Federal Drug Enforcement Agency (FDA) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) have protected the corporate drug traffickers and ensured the manicured and cultured narco-bosses the highest rates of return on their products.  These polished pushers have their names engraved on the walls of museums and opera houses around the country.

The majority of Presidential, Federal, State and municipal candidates from both major parties have received millions of dollars in electoral campaign funds from these huge legal narcotic manufacturers and distributors, as well as from physicians and other representative of the ‘pain-treatment industry’.  Over the past decades, politicians have openly or secretly opposed or weakened legislation designed to address this crisis.

Why not just ask President Trump to direct his Justice Department to impose the death penalty on the board of directors of the big corporate narcotic manufacturers or distributors or on the CEOs of major ‘pain clinics’ or on the owners of local rural ‘health centers’ that drove the villagers of West Virginia into their life-destroying downward spirals?

When will the DEA finally storm the medical centers to arrest the over-prescribing ‘providers’ of narcotics and benzodiazepine tranquilizers (a very common deadly combination)?

When will the SWAT teams seize the vacation homes of the CEOs of major US hospitals where the convenient and fake ideology of promising a ‘pain-free’ experience (‘make it Zero on the Pain Scale’) led to the generalized promotion of highly addicting narcotics for minor injuries, arthritic pain, or chronic back discomfort due to work or obesity?  Responsible alternatives existed and were used in the rest of the world – largely untouched by this prescription-fueled crisis.

No doubt what President Trump has in mind is something else: the expulsion of Latin American workers under the pretext of going after the drug dealers and the even more massive incarceration of petty street dealers in the African American community.

Trump will then turn to further monitoring and arresting small-scale American marijuana farmers, who earn a basic income from growing a product that many believe is safe, non-addicting, and significantly reduces demand for dangerous narcotics.

As ugly as this all seems, the complicity of the political, economic and the medical elite in exponentially spreading deadly narcotics among the poor, working class and downwardly mobile middle class, points to a deeper and more sinister policy goal:  the systematic elimination of millions of American workers made redundant in the new economy.  This is a ‘gentler genocide’, where millions of workers die prematurely seeking an escape from pain as they have been replaced by a new technology and a new ideology: Robots, artificial intelligence and digitalization have rendered them disposable, while the out-sourcing of work to low paid overseas laborers and immigrants have guaranteed unimaginable profits for the elite decision makers.

This highly profitable process, benefiting the political, pharmaceutical, financial, police and judicial elites, conveniently blames the victims, a significant proportion of whom come from the poor and working class in this country, including white rural and small town addicts, especially youth, stuck at minimum wage jobs with no prospects of a decent future – injured construction workers, 15% of whom abuse prescription narcotics for work-related injuries, as well as the marginalized petty drug dealers from the urban slums and desperate Latino immigrants forced to accommodate the cartels.  These people have little rights and are easily monitored, incarcerated, expelled and just written-off in one-line obituaries.

The narcotic-fueled genocide had grown out of a calculated corporate strategy meant to cull and subdue a huge population of potentially restive marginalized workers and their families, blaming the overdosing victims for their own ‘irresponsible’ choices, their reliance on prescription opiates, their lack of access to competent medical care, and their untimely deaths as though this were all a collective suicide as the great nation marches forward.

The higher the death toll among marginalized Americans, the greater the reliance on political distractions and racist deceptions.  President Trump loudly blames street-level retail distributors, while ignoring the links between  tax-exempt mega-billionaires who have profited from the shortened life-expectancies of addicted workers (scores of billions of dollars already saved in future pension and health care expenses) and the millions fired for addiction and denied jobless benefits and treatment.  Trump has yet to even mention the actions of the legal pharma-medical industry that set this in motion.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party leaders denounce the worker-victims of addiction and their communities as ‘irresponsible and racist’, for having believed the populist rhetoric of candidate Trump.  Trump’s most intense rural areas of support coincided with areas of the worst opioid addiction and suicide rates.  Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton wrote off scores of millions of vulnerable Americans as ‘deplorables’ and never once addressed the addiction crisis that grew exponentially during her husband’s administration.

Since the implementation of NAFTA during the 1990’s, scores of millions of American workers have been relegated to unstable, low paid jobs, deprived of health benefits and subject to grueling work, prone to physical and mental injuries.  Workplace injuries set the stage for the prescription narcotic crisis.  Even worse, today workers are constantly distracted by electronic gadgets at the workplace, with their orders from above arriving digitally.  These highly profitable gadgets have created enormous distractions and contributed to workplace death and injuries. The plaything of choice for the masses, the I-phone, has added to the addiction crisis, by increasing the rate of injury.  This mind-numbing distraction, produced abroad at incredible profit, has played an unexplored role in the increase in premature death in the US.

 The corporate narcotic elites, like the ultra-cultured Sackler clan owners of Perdue Pharmaceuticals, and their allies in the finance sector, support the diverse ideological distractions fashioned by their politician pawns:  Eager to please her donor-owners, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats blame the working class for their backwardness and genetic propensity to addiction and degradation.  Meanwhile, President Trump and the Republicans blame ‘outside’ suppliers and distributors including Mexican narco-cartels, illegal immigrant traffickers, black urban street dealers and now point to overseas Chinese fentanyl labs – as though the entire crisis came from the outside.  Trump’s approach flies in the face of the unquestionable source of most narcotic addiction in the US: Irresponsible prescribing of highly addicting legal narcotics.

No other industrialized country is experiencing this scale of addiction and pre-mature death.  No other industrialized country relies on a private, for-profit, unregulated system of delivering medical care to its citizens.  Only the US.

Both elite political parties avoid the basic issue of the long-term, large-scale structural imperatives underlying the transformation of the US work places.  They refuse to address the marginalization of tens of millions of American workers and their families, made disposable by corporate economic and political decisions.

The US corporate elite are completely incapable of developing, let alone favoring, any policy that addresses the needs of millions of surplus office and factory workers and their family members replaced by new technology and ‘global’ economic policies.  The American financial and political elite is not about to support an economic, political and cultural ‘GI’ bill to save the scores of millions shoved to the wayside in their rush to obscene wealth and power.

The unstated, but clearly implemented, ‘final solution’ is a Social Darwinian policy of active and passive neglect, the unleashing of profitable prescription narcotics into the population of vulnerable disposable workers, offering them a convenient, painless way out – the opioid solution to the over-population problem of redundant rural and small town ‘Helots’.  The political elite’s willing complicity with Big Pharma, the medical profession, the financial oligarchs and the prison-industrial complex has transformed the country in many ways.  Shortened lives and depopulation of rural and small town communities translates into lower demand for public services, such as schools, health care, pensions and housing.  This is guaranteeing a greater concentration of national wealth in the hands of a tiny elite.  The financial press has openly celebrated the projected decrease in pension liabilities as a result of the drop in worker life expectancy.

The ongoing mass genocide by opioids may have started to arouse popular discontent among working people who do not want to continue dying young and miserable!  Social services and child protective services for the millions of orphaned or abandoned children of this crisis have been demanding real policies.  Unfortunately, the usual platitudes and failed policies prevail.  Drug education and ‘opioid addiction treatment’ programs (currently among the largest expense in some union health plans) are pointless Band-Aids when confronted by the larger policy decisions fuelling this crisis.  Nevertheless, thousands of health care professionals are beginning to resist corporate pressure to prescribe cheap opioids – and fight for more expensive, but less dangerous, alternative for addressing their patients’ pain.  Even if all medical providers stopped over-prescribing narcotics today, there are still millions of addicts already created by past practice, who seek the most deadly street drugs, like fentanyl, to feed their addiction.

Politicians now publicly denounce ‘Big Pharma’, while privately winking at the lobbyists and accepting millions from their ‘donor-owners’.

Public critics in the corporate media are quick to condemn the workers’ susceptibility to narcotic addiction but not the underlying causative imperatives of global capitalism.

Mainstream academics celebrate corporate technological advances with occasional neo-Malthusian warnings about the dangers of millions of redundant workers, while ignoring the profit-driven role of narcotics in reducing the social threat of excess workers!

Finally the role of an elite and respected profession must be re-evaluated in a historic context:  In the 1930’s German doctors helped develop an ideology of ‘racial hygiene’ and a technology to demonize and eliminate millions of human beings deemed redundant and inferior, through overwork in slave camps, starvation and active genocide – serving the ambitions of Nazi expansionism and deriving significant profit for select individuals and corporations.  US physicians and the broader medical community have less consciously assisted in the ongoing ‘culling of the herd’ of American laborers and rural residents rendered superfluous and undesirable by the decisions of a global oligarchy increasingly unwilling to share public wealth with its masses.  There are similarities.

Once prosperous, industrial cities and towns, as well as rural villages, in the US have seen marked declines in populations and a premature death crisis among those who remain.

A crucial Pentagon report on the US defense industrial base and “supply chain resiliency” bluntly accuses China of “military expansion” and “a strategy of economic aggression,” mostly because Beijing is the only source for “a number of chemical products used in munitions and missiles.”

Russia is mentioned only once, but in a crucial paragraph: as a – what else – “threat,” alongside China, for the US defense industry.

The Pentagon, in this report, may not be advocating total war against both Russia and China – as it was interpreted in some quarters. What it does is configure the trade war against China as even more incandescent, while laying bare the true motivations behind the sanctioning of Russia.

The US Department of Commerce has imposed restrictions on 12 Russian corporations that are deemed to be “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the US.” In practice, this means that American corporations cannot export dual-use products to any of the sanctioned Russian companies.

There are very clear reasons behind these sanctions – and they are not related to national security. It’s all about “free market” competition.

At the heart of the storm is the Irkut MC-21 narrow-body passenger jet – the first in the world with a capacity of more than 130 passengers to have composite-based wings.

AeroComposit is responsible for the development of these composite wings. The estimated share of composites in the overall design is 40%.

The MC-21’s PD-14 engine – which is unable to power combat jets – will be manufactured by Aviadvigatel. Until now MC-21s had Pratt & Whitney engines. The PD-14 is the first new engine 100% made in Russia since the break up of the USSR.

Aviation experts are sure that an MC-21 equipped with a PD-14 easily beats the competition; the Airbus A320 and the Boeing-737.

Then there’s the PD-35 engine – which Aviadvigatel is developing specifically to equip an already announced Russia-China wide-body twinjet airliner to be built by the joint venture China-Russia Commercial Aircraft International Corp Ltd (CRAIC), launched in May 2017 in Shanghai.

Aviation experts are convinced this is the only project anywhere in the world capable of challenging the decades-long monopoly of Boeing and Airbus.

Will these sanctions prevent Russia from perfecting the MC-21 and investing in the new airliner? Hardly. Top military analyst Andrei Martyanov convincingly makes the case that these sanctions are at best “laughable,” considering how “makers of avionics and aggregates” for the ultra-sophisticated Su-35 and Su-57 fighter jets would have no problem replacing Western parts on commercial jets.

Oh China, you’re so ‘malign’

Even before the Pentagon report, it was clear that the Trump administration’s number one goal in relation to China was to ultimately cut off extended US corporate supply chains and re-implant them – along with tens of thousands of jobs – back into the US.

This radical reorganization of global capitalism may not be exactly appealing for US multinationals because they would lose all the cost-benefit advantages that seduced them to delocalize to China in the first place. And the lost advantages won’t be offset by more corporate tax breaks.

It gets worse – from the point to view of global trade: for Trump administration hawks, the re-industrialization of the US presupposes Chinese industrial stagnation. That explains to a large extent the all-out demonization of the high-tech Made in China 2025 drive in all its aspects.

And this flows in parallel to demonizing Russia. Thus we have US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke threatening no less than a blockade of Russian energy flows:

“The United States has that ability, with our Navy, to make sure the sea lanes are open, and, if necessary, to blockade … to make sure that their energy does not go to market.”

The commercial and industrial demonization of China reached a paroxysm with Vice-President Mike Pence accusing China of “reckless harassment,” trying to “malign” Trump’s credibility and even being the top US election meddler, displacing Russia. That’s hardly attuned to a commercial strategy whose main goal should be to create US jobs.

President Xi Jinping and his advisers are not necessarily averse to making a few trade concessions. But that becomes impossible, from Beijing’s point of view, when China is sanctioned because it is buying Russian weapons systems.

Beijing also can read some extra writing on the trade wall, an inevitable consequence of Pence’s accusations; Magnitsky-style sanctioning of Russian individuals and businesses may soon be extended to the Chinese.

After all, Pence said Russia’s alleged interference in US affairs paled in comparison with China’s “malign” actions.

China’s ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, in his interview with Fox News, strove for his diplomatic best:

“It would be hard to imagine that one-fifth of the global population could develop and prosper, not by relying mainly on their own efforts, but by stealing or forcing some transfer of technology from others … That’s impossible. The Chinese people are as hard-working and diligent as anybody on earth.”

That is something that will be validated once again in Brussels this week at the biennial ASEM – Asia Europe – summit, first held in 1996. The theme of this year’s summit is “Europe and Asia: global partners and global challenges.” At the top of the agenda is trade, investment and connectivity – at least between Europe and Asia.

Washington’s offensive on China should not be interpreted under the optics of “fair trade,” but rather as a strategy for containing China technologically, which touches upon the absolutely crucial theme: to prevent China from developing the connectivity supporting the extended supply chains which are at the heart of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

We don’t need no peer competitors

A glaring giveaway that these overlapping sanctions on Russia and China are all about the good old Brzezinski fear of Eurasia being dominated by the emergence of “peer competitors” was recently offered by Wess Mitchell, the US State Department Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs – the same post previously held by Victoria “F*ck the EU” Nuland.

This is the original Mitchell testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And this is the redacted, sanitized State Department version.

A crucial phrase in the middle of the second paragraph simply disappeared: “It continues to be among the foremost national security interests of the United States to prevent the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers.”

That’s all the geopolitics Beijing and Moscow need to know. Not that they didn’t know it already.

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Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Friday said that he had killed 300 Palestinians “in only three and a half minutes”.

“When I was defense minister, more than 300 Hamas members were killed in only three and a half minutes,” Barak said in statements to the Hebrew TV channel Seven.

Barak criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and said that he has repeatedly capitulated to Hamas because he does not have a strategy.

In commentary on Barak’s statements, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said that the Israeli leader’s confessions about killing 300 Palestinians in about three minutes confirm that Israel is a terrorist entity led by a group of murderers.

Abu Zuhri wrote on Twitter that the international community must react immediately to these dangerous confessions.

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The US and Israeli militaries recently sent a secret delegation to Ukraine to test the capabilities of the Russian-made S-300 air defense systems. Ukrainian military officials explained the limitations of the systems.

The sudden interest in the S-300 is because Russia has, in recent weeks, given the Syrian government enough of the advanced systems to cover their entire airspace. This was done after Israeli attacks along the coast led to the shoot-down of a Russian surveillance plane.

For Israel in particular, the S-300 is seen as threatening to curb their ability to attack Syria with impunity, despite Netanyahu government claims that they’ll keep attacking. Since the deliveries there have been no reports of Israeli warplanes violating Syrian airspace, whereas this was happening multiple times weekly before the deliveries.

Ukraine has S-300s as a throwback to its previously close ties with Russia. Though most of the nation’s systems have fallen into disrepair, their military’s experience with them means they may have some insight in ways to counter the system.

This may be easier said than done, however, as the S-300 has a massive amount of range, and even if not foolproof, any aggressive action against the Syrian systems would likely lead to both a Russian reaction and a serious risk of aircraft being destroyed in the fight.

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NATO’s upcoming Trident Junction 18 drill in Norway will be held at the end of the month and is expected to see the participation of 40,000 troops.

The US and its allies have been making a big deal about Russia’s Arctic interests for over the past decade since the country planted its flag under the North Pole in 2007, which was Moscow’s dramatic way of asserting its UN-submitted claims to the region on the basis that the Siberian-originating undersea Lomonosov Ridge’s extension all the way to that point makes it Russian territory. The Arctic is poised to become increasingly important in world affairs over the coming decades because the progressive melting of polar ice is allowing for the year-round establishment of the Northern Sea Route between Western and Eastern Eurasia that will cut traditional shipping times in half. Not only that, but the region also has the world’s largest untapped oil and gas reserves, as well as copious mineral deposits, thus making it extra strategic.

Norway is hosting these upcoming massive exercises because of its geographic position astride both the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, the latter of which is becoming more militarized after the US recently resurrected its Second Fleet for patrolling this region in response to what it claims is an uptick in Russian submarine activity there. America is also doubling its Marine deployment to Norway and moving its base of operations there closer to the Russian border, which prompted the UK to announce that it plans to follow suit as well by building a base in the country for hosting the 800 troops that it wants to dispatch there. Not only are these moves designed to test Russia’s mettle and continue the trend of NATO’s creeping military presence towards its borders, but there might also be a distinctly anti-Chinese motivation behind them too.

The People’s Republic is expected to rely on the Northern Sea Route for a large share of its bilateral trade with the EU in the future, so there’s a certain strategic logic inherent in the US flexing its muscles to show that it will still retain control over part of this trade route in spite of Russia’s dominating position in the center of it. There are practically no realistic prospects that China could ever militarize this route, but the message that the US wants to send is that it can do so at the North Atlantic juncture in order to cut off maritime trade between the two halves of Eurasia in the event of any crisis in American-Chinese relations, the same as it could also do in the Strait of Malacca and Suez Canal.

The point is to put pressure on China and get it to “compromise” with the US on a new trade deal out of fear that refusing to do so will leave its maritime trade routes forever vulnerable to external disruptions.

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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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A cursory warning was left by renowned physics professor Stephen Hawking regarding a future where a race of superhumans, manipulating their DNA, would taking control of their own evolution. The warning came just before his death in March of this year.

The Washington Post in its article, “Stephen Hawking feared race of ‘superhumans’ able to manipulate their own DNA,” would explain (my emphasis):

Before he died in March, the Cambridge University professor predicted that people this century would gain the capacity to edit human traits such as intelligence and aggression. And he worried that the capacity for genetic engineering would be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.

To be clear, Professor Hawking wasn’t warning about the technology in and of itself, but its monopolization by a handful of wealthy interests.

The Threat of Technological Monopolies 

When we look at any chapter in human history, disparity in technology has always led to tragic episodes of exploitation, violence, atrocities and even genocide. The invention and use of firearms by Western Europeans against tribes everywhere from Asia and Africa to North and South America provide us one look at how huge advantages in technology have been abused against those who lack access to it.

The invention of the atomic bomb gave the United States a period of time where it held a virtual monopoly over nuclear weapons. It eagerly used not one, but two atomic bombs on the already defeated Japanese at the end of World War II. Before America’s nuclear monopoly was finally broken up by first Soviet and then Chinese nuclear weapon tests, the US had considered using further nuclear weapons during the Korean War and at at least two junctures during the Vietnam War.

Today, corporate monopolies over the very sort of biotechnology that will give rise to the race of superhumans Professor Hawking warned about, are already a source of constant, steeply controversial use and abuse.

Whether it is deceptive business practices by large agricultural corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Bayer peddling unsafe genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or pharmaceutical corporations seizing, then price gouging charity and publicly-funded breakthroughs like gene therapy, we can already see attempts being made to concentrate biotechnology in the hands of the wealthy, and it already being eagerly abused against those without access or control over it.

It Has Already Started 

The Washington Post article would elaborate further, quoting from Professor Hawking:

Humanity, he wrote, was entering “a new phase of what might be called self-designed evolution, in which we will be able to change and improve our DNA. We have now mapped DNA, which means we have read ‘the book of life,’ so we can start writing in corrections.”

Initially, he predicted, these modifications would be reserved for the repair of certain defects, such as muscular dystrophy, that are controlled by single genes and therefore make for relatively simple corrections.

“Nevertheless, I am sure that during this century people will discover how to modify both intelligence and instincts such as aggression,” Hawking wrote.

There would be an attempt to pass laws restricting the genetic engineering of human traits, he anticipated. “But some people won’t be able to resist the temptation to improve human characteristics, such as size of memory, resistance to disease and length of life,” he anticipated.

Hawking would also point out that, obviously, unimproved humans would be unable to compete and that significant political problems would result amid this growing disparity.

It is already possible to modify human DNA, and not necessarily before birth, but in living, breathing individuals. The process of gene therapy is the targeted editing of DNA through the use of viruses reprogrammed to, instead of hijacking a human cell and making copies of itself as it does in nature, inserting edited DNA designed to serve a specific purpose.

For example, researchers at Penn State University and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia were able to edit the T-cells of leukemia patients who had otherwise terminal cancer, according to the New York Times.

The edits made the patients’ immune system capable of seeing and destroying cancer cells throughout their bodies. Patients who were not responding to chemotherapy and would have otherwise certainly died in days, have been put in so-far permanent remission.

But if edits can transform ordinary immune systems to be cancer-conquering, future breakthroughs could accomplish everything from further improvements of our immune systems, to regenerative medicine (regrowing healthy cardiac cells in aging hearts as this study attempted to do in the UK).

Where would the limit be and was Professor Hawking’s fears unrealistic or unfounded?

The breakthrough at Penn State, funded entirely by charity and public funds, was later hijacked by pharmaceutical giant Novartis who would go on to raise the price for the FDA-approved therapy several times higher than even costs during the highly customized and experimental research and development phase. Similar fates await other breakthroughs, paid for by the public and then scooped into the “hands of the wealthy,” just as Professor Hawking warned.

It is clear that future breakthroughs improving human strength, intellect and longevity will likewise also be scooped up by these well-positioned biotechnology monopolies if nothing is done. While Professor Hawking’s warning sounded like a far-fetched warning about threats in the distant future, we are already seeing that dark future take shape right now.

The Geopolitics of Human Gene Editing 

Human resources are what defines any nation and forms the cornerstone of its wealth and security. Healthy, well-educated and intelligent populations make strong nations. Thus, a nation with segments of its population possessing superhuman abilities, augmented by gene editing, would possess an obvious advantage over other nations or even over other segments within their own nation lacking these traits.

We, right now, have people walking among us who have had their genes edited to fight diseases like leukemia. A biotechnology startup, BioViva, has already tested gene therapies on its founder and CEO Elizabeth Parrish as a means of defeating human aging, the South China Morning Post reported.

It’s not a matter of if, or even when, because it has already begun. The real question is, when will such editing and gene therapies start having an impact on economics and security, and what are nations doing to build the fundamental necessities to both leverage this technology and defend against those abusing it?

Nations like China have invested heavily in biotechnology and gene therapy, providing a counterbalance to what was at one point a clearly North American and European monopoly. Individuals and small organizations around the globe are currently building up a community of opensource research and development, to further ensure this technology ends up in as many hands as possible.

While some may fear runaway “proliferation,” we should stop and think about why the US stopped dropping atomic bombs on other nations. It was not from self-restraint but from the threat of retaliation from nations who eventually acquired nuclear weapons as well. What emerged was a dangerous but effective balance of power that has prevailed for decades since.

A similar balance of power is required for biotechnology, a technology so powerful and with implications so profound that it may redefine our very humanity.

Nations would benefit from investing in education to build up a workforce capable of researching, developing and effectively utilizing this emerging technology. Nations would benefit from investing in start ups and cultivating independent institutions capable of producing breakthroughs to give nations parity with current leaders in biotechnology.

Professor Hawking was a brilliant man in life, and provided us with a somber but essential warning as he departed us. We will ignore the looming threat of biotechnology and human gene editing being monopolized at our own peril.

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Gunnar Ulson, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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Politics can, after a time, becomes a myopic exercise of expedient measures and desperate hope.  Politics, raw and crude, is at its best at points where survival matters. Conversely, it can illustrate human vices in raw fashion, low points of idiocy and the disaster of folly.

The Morrison government in Australia risks succumbing to another march of folly.  Having arisen from a decision to summarily execute its leader (politically speaking), Malcolm Turnbull’s replacement looks wooden, a hulk of swaying confusion in search of a purpose.  No perspective to exploit is beyond Scott Morrison’s purview, be it psychologically ruined children on Manus Island or the prospect of disturbing relations with a move of the Australian embassy to Jerusalem.

The latest shot to Morrison’s less than tranquil ship has come from the abrupt move to consider Jerusalem as the new seat of Australia’s representation, one made simultaneously with a not so considered contemplation of repudiating the Iran nuclear deal.  Some figures, cocooned by security and a cultivated sense of obliviousness, felt it sensible.  Colin Rubinstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council felt it politically savvy.  “Look at his backbench.  Look at his ministry.  If you took a poll I think you’d find a lot of support.”

A cruder rationale lurks behind the decision: an attempt, made at short notice, to shore up the Jewish vote in the federal seat of Wentworth, vacated by Turnbull in the aftermath of the Liberal Party’s leadership challenge.  The good, irate citizens of that seat are being asked whether to return a Liberal member to Canberra, a point complicated by a competitive field of candidates and dollops of anger.

In this instance, a leaked briefing or bulletin by the Australian domestic intelligence service on the possible disturbance of any such announcement found its way into the public domain.  Marked “Secret” and “AUSTEO” (Australian eyes only), it received distribution on October 15, a day before Morrison floated the idea of an embassy relocation.

The ASIO Bulletin is sombre and reflective, no doubt aware that the Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem came with much blood (dozens of Palestinians slaughtered along with 2,400 injured during protests in May):

“We expect any announcement on the possible relocation of the Australian embassy to Jerusalem, or consideration of voting against Palestinians in the United Nations, may provoke protest, unrest and possibly some violence in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The document also noted that,

“possible Australian interests may be the target of protest activity following any announcement.”

Morrison, having been caught off guard (why would you listen to cautious intelligence officials?) sought a second opinion from ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis to placate critics.  “I want to… reassure Australians that ASIO has no evidence at this time of any planned violence in response to the government’s announcement on 16 October and the matter was fully discussed by Cabinet.”

Another (failed) element of Morrison’s Jerusalem botching stems from attempts to minimise the reaction from various Muslim states to the prospects of moving Australian diplomats from Tel Aviv.  One state, Australia’s northern neighbour with the largest Muslim populace on the planet, came to mind.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi had been rather busy on the WhatsApp program conveying notes of concern to Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, a point that was dismissed by the Morrison government as small beer.  A spokesman for Senator Payne went so far as to call the exchange part of a “constructive discussion.”

The messages, also leaked, suggested that the term “constructive” had been rather worn.  The action would, according to Marsudi, prove a “slap” to “Indonesia’s face”.  Irritated at the timing of the announcement (Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki was visiting Jakarta), Payne’s counterpart wondered: “Is it really necessary to do this on Tuesday?”

Payne’s spokesman, briefed to soften the agitation, explained his boss’s position:

“Minister Payne emphasised that there had been no change to Australia’s commitment to the Middle East peace process and to a durable and resilient two-state solution that allowed Israel and a future Palestinian state to exist side by side, within internationally recognised borders.”

This did little to calm Marsudi, who badgered Australia’s ambassador Gary Quinlan for two meetings in three days to explain why the contents of her conversation with Payne had made their merry way into the public domain.

The statement from the Council of Arab Ambassadors in Canberra, signed by Egyptian ambassador Mohamad Khairat as head of the Council, did much to blow off any suggestions that Morrison’s grand idea would not be damaging.

“The two-state solution means nothing without an equitable resolution of these final-status issues.  In the absence of functioning peace process, the sensible course of action would be for Australia to recognise the State of Palestine based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

The waters of diplomacy have been muddied, and Morrison is keen to find convenient scapegoats.  The Victorian Labor government has been accused of leaking the ASIO bulletin to The Guardian Australia, though this vaguely libellous accusation ignores the genuine possibility that staff on Morrison’s own side might well have done so.  According to an ASIO spokesman, Lewis had spoken to the Australian Federal Police head Andrew Colvin and “formally referred this matter to the AFP for investigation.”

This entire tie-up revealed a standard perversion in Australian attitudes to classified information: the disclosure of WhatsApp messages between representatives of a foreign country is frowned upon but less egregious than a sober, relevant document warning government officials about the consequences of an expedient foreign policy decision.  The latter informs an otherwise ignorant public about a government making policy on the hop; the former is a disclosure of tittle-tattle and anger, useful in exposing hypocrisy.  Both, at this terminus of the Morrison government, reveal a slide into imminent electoral extinction.

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

The onset of three major developments next month will change the entire dynamic of the War on Syria, meaning that the country’s decision makers must urgently assess the true state of strategic affairs as they presently stand, forecast the most probable scenarios that will unfold across the coming months, and seriously consider which policies could help them make the best out of an increasingly difficult situation.

The War on Syria has already lasted almost eight years but is finally approaching its conclusion as the kinetic phase of military conflict gradually makes way for the non-kinetic one of political negotiations and “compromises”. For patriotic reasons, the democratically elected and legitimate government of Syria wants to restore Damascus’ sovereignty over “every inch” of Syria, but this is becoming ever more challenging in light of the present state of strategic affairs and the dramatic changes that are slated to take place next month. It’s imperative that decision makers properly understand the complex international situation that’s thus far impeded their liberation of Idlib and the Northeast, as well as how three forthcoming major developments are poised to fundamentally alter the entire dynamic of the War on Syria, in order to forecast the most probable scenarios across the coming months and deeply reflect on which policy proposals are best suited for advancing the country’s interests under these pressing circumstances.

The Three Game-Changers

Before reviewing the state of play in and around Syria today, it’s necessary to point out the three events that are expected to alter the course of the entire War on Syria, both in its military and political manifestations.

1. The US-Imposed October Deadline For Assembling The Constitutional Commission

The US subjectively imposed a deadline of the end of October for the assembling of the UN-supervised Constitutional Committee that was previously agreed upon by all internationally recognized parties of the conflict. In and of itself it wouldn’t matter whether this deadline comes and goes, but the problem is that the US is threatening to tighten its sanctions regime against the country if it doesn’t comply. Not only that, but America also recently announced that it might sanction all foreign companies that participate in Syria’s reconstruction, meaning that Russian companies will certainly fall under this purview and all of their partners could be subjected to so-called “secondary sanctions” because of it.

In other words, a Russian company will have to potentially risk losing all of its Western business contracts if it decides to participate in the Syrian reconstruction process. The workaround is for completely new companies to be created specifically for this purpose (such as “shell companies”), but it can’t be discounted that the US will discover their true connections to the original entity and capture them and their partners in its weaponized sanctions net. This is relevant for Syria because it could lead to Moscow more “actively encouraging” it to accelerate the political process in spite of its official public comments to the contrary in order to avoid these threatened economic complications for its companies.

2. The Reimposition Of The US’ Energy-Related Sanctions Against Iran

The US will reimpose its unilateral sanctions against Iran and its energy industry early next month, which crucially includes so-called “secondary sanctions” against all violators. While Iran has survived much worse in the past and has plenty of experience managing what it refers to as its “Resistance Economy”, one shouldn’t underestimate the US’ resolve to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees by making this forthcoming round of economic punishment against it much more severe than everything that came beforehand. This partly has to do with the Trump Administration’s obsession in carrying out regime change against the country, but also with its intentions to increase the political and economic cost of Iran’s military assistance to Syria, which the US considers partly responsible for thwarting its plans in the country.

One of the US’ strategies is to tacitly offer Iran the possibility of sanctions relief if it downscales and ultimately removes its military presence in Syria so that Trump can then trumpet it as one of the greatest-ever successes of his administration even if this “phased withdrawal” is undertaken for reasons that have nothing to openly do with “succumbing to American pressure” like the US might portray it as. Either way, in spite of the ideological alliance that Syria enjoys with Iran, it needs to recognize that Tehran’s military role in the country is becoming one of the most heavily politicized issues in contemporary Mideast geopolitics and that all sides might ultimately have to “compromise” on it in order to keep the situation from uncontrollably escalating to Damascus’ detriment.

3. Staffan De Mistura Will Step Down At The End Of November

The UN Envoy to Syria will step down from his post for personal reasons at the end of next month, which regrettably comes at one of the most sensitive political moments for Syria. He’s already said that he would like to assemble the Constitutional Commission before then and is undeniably trying his best to accomplish this task, but his removal from the scene risks undermining the important relationships that he established as the global body’s mediator in this conflict over the past four years of his tenure. This could inadvertently disrupt whatever prospective political gains are made before then, and could even in fact prevent any significant ones from being made in the first place if some of the conflict’s parties deliberately procrastinate on reaching an agreement because of it.

Syria needs to prepare to establish a new working relationship with whomever de Mistura’s successor will be, which might be easier said than done because it’s not yet clear who will replace him. It’s very possible that that individual might be overly biased against Damascus and therefore function as an obstacle to the political process, which could cynically serve to advance the American agenda for Syria by dragging this out way beyond the US’ subjectively imposed deadline and serving as the preplanned pretext for implementing a tougher sanctions regime against the country and its partners. At the same time, however, de Mistura’s resignation could also present an opportunity for all stakeholders to strike a pragmatic deal on the Constitutional Commission before then in order to continue his legacy.

The State Of Affairs

Having described the three impending game-changing developments that will happen next month, it’s now time to evaluate the state of affairs as they presently exist.

Overall:

The kinetic (military) phase of the conflict is gradually giving way to its inevitable non-kinetic (political) one as hostilities abate across the country due to a combination of military gains and “ceasefires”, both of which were achieved through substantial Russian support. The government is still struggling with its desire to liberate “every inch” of Syria, however, because the latest deal in Idlib indefinitely delayed the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) offensive on the region, while the so-called “deconfliction line” along the Euphrates River has essentially divided the country into Russian and American “spheres of influence”. About the latter, it should be noted that the US responded with disproportionate and utterly overwhelming military force in February when an attempt was reportedly made by the SAA and its allies to cross the Euphrates, showing that America will not allow any violations of the “gentlemen’s agreement” that it made with Russia in this respect.

For as unfortunate as it is, the reality is that the US has established approximately 20 bases in the agriculturally and energy-rich areas of Northeastern Syria under the control of their Kurdish allies and it’s extremely unlikely that they’ll be removed by force, especially because Russia will not risk an escalation of military hostilities with its rival over this issue. In fact, the Russian position seems to be to “balance” between all parties of the conflict in order to avoid military hostilities that could quickly spiral out of control and derail the political process that it wants to preside over, so Moscow’s military support in liberating the Northeast and Idlib shouldn’t be taken for granted regardless of whatever Syria’s partner says in public or private about this. The simple fact is that the resolution of the Idlib issue will facilitate a political deal in the Northeast and should therefore be prioritized.

Idlib:

Last month’s Russian-Turkish Idlib deal was the culmination of intense diplomacy over the preceding weeks and came to represent the strategic closeness of these Great Powers’ bilateral relations following their 2016 rapprochement. The purpose of the agreement was first and foremost to stop the impending SAA liberation operation in the region that Russia feared could have caused a clash between its Syrian and Turkish partners and therefore led to the rapid unravelling of its delicate “balancing” act between them. It’s irresponsible to speculate about which “side” Russia would support in that scenario, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that Turkey is a comparatively much larger, profitable, and influential partner for Russia than Syria is, so that might reasonably figure into Moscow’s calculations and also explain why it sought to stop the SAA offensive in the first place at the behest of its Turkish partners.

Russia wouldn’t have tried to stop Idlib’s military liberation by the SAA had it not seriously believed that this goal could be “less disruptively” accomplished through its diplomatic contacts with Turkey, which was more than willing to have Moscow implicitly acknowledge its “sphere of influence” in the region by bestowing it with the responsibility to rid the area of terrorists. From Ankara’s perspective, not only did it gain important domestic, regional, and even global prestige through this agreement, but it may have also thought that it could leverage its newfound position of military-political authority here to cement its influence and improve the odds that Idlib could be granted “autonomy” (whether officially or unofficially) throughout the forthcoming course of the political process. Turkey’s end goal in Idlib therefore represents a serious challenge to the restoration of Damascus’ sovereignty in that part of the country.

Northeast:

Like it was earlier explained, the US is strictly enforcing the so-called “deconfliction line” along the Euphrates and doesn’t tolerate any violations of its “gentlemen’s agreement” with Russia. This makes it all but impossible for the SAA to militarily liberate the region, which is why political means will most likely have to be utilized instead. Those will be explained later on in the analysis, but for now it’s important to talk more about the state of affairs in that part of the country today. The US’ 20 or so bases imply that it doesn’t plan to leave the region, probably because it plans to weaponize its agricultural and energy resources by using them to exert influence over the rest of the country. Even in the event that it’s not as successful with this strategic scheme as it would like, then there’s a very high probability that it’ll rely on those resources to reconstruct that relatively less populated and less-destroyed corner of the country.

When coupled with the assistance that the US’ Saudi and other partners will commit to the Kurdish-controlled Northeast, and bearing in mind the weaponized sanctions (both primary and “secondary”) that will be imposed against Damascus’ own reconstruction partners, it’s conceivable that the occupied third of the country will be reconstructed at a faster pace than the rest of it, which will itself be manipulated in future infowar campaigns against Syria to push forward the destabilizing narrative that the “government isn’t capable of rebuilding”. To put it another way, the US is planning to turn the Northeast into an “oasis of prosperity”, or at least superficially so, in order to contrast with the lack of comparative progress elsewhere in Syria. In reality, however, US control over the region is tenuous and upheld by the YPG’s brutal military dictatorship over the majority-non-Kurdish inhabitants, which has also drawn Turkey’s ire and interestingly aligned it with Damascus’ broader interests in the region to a certain degree.

Scenarios

The situation in Syria and each of its two presently occupied regions could unfold in a variety of ways, but there are several that are more likely than others.

Overall:

The trend towards non-kinetic (political) conflict will continue though it should be expected that occasional flashpoints might erupt along the Idlib “de-escalation zone” zone and the Euphrates “deconfliction line”, but it’s extremely improbable that Russia will risk its strategic partnership with Turkey to turn against Ankara to Damascus’  benefit in the first-mentioned region while there’s close to no chance whatsoever that it’ll do the same vis-à-vis the US and possibly even risk a global standoff. This sobering assessment suggests that Syria needs to urgently consider the diplomatic means at its disposal for getting the best possible deal out of each of these two regions in order to bring about a sustainable political solution to the conflict in general. It should be stressed, however, that any prospective deal shouldn’t be against the nation’s interests but instead pragmatically leverage the existing state of affairs to the nation’s best possible benefit given the trying circumstances.

Amidst the diplomatic tango that will inevitably take place between Damascus and the self-proclaimed “authorities” in idlib and the Northeast, as well as between their Great Power backers of Turkey and the US respectively, and interspersed with occasional flare-ups of violence alone the de-facto “lines of control” (predictably smoothed over through Russia’s ”balancing” mediation), one shouldn’t forget about Iran’s comparatively “quieter” but nonetheless increasingly focused-upon position in the country. The onset of US sanctions early next month and the Trump Administration’s obsession with “rolling back Iranian influence” in the Mideast will impose new costs on Tehran’s military assistance to Syria, as well as incentivize Russia to “gently” curtail its partner’s influence out of its own self-interested reasons that it believes to be to the benefit of the region as a whole. This will be returned to once again later in the analysis, though it’s important to keep in mind at this time.

Idlib:

The immediate fate of Idlb hinges on Turkey’s adherence to its joint agreement with Russia to progressively expel terrorist groups from the region. Thus far, it hasn’t been implemented at its expected pace, which has caused some observers to question Ankara’s sincerity. Still, the task at hand is nevertheless enormous and it’s unrealistic to have thought that everything would be handled perfectly and on time, as nothing in this conflict has thus far met any prior deadlines. Taking stock of the situation, one of two probable scenarios will inevitably transpire; either Turkey succeeds in removing terrorists from Idlib or it doesn’t. The first-mentioned will lead to the “de-escalation zone” being frozen in place pending the outcome of the ongoing constitutional reform process which Turkey hopes to influence to its favor by trying to facilitate the bestowment of formal or informal “autonomy” to this region so that it can control it as a proxy state.

As for the second-mentioned possibility, the outbreak of hostilities between the SAA and the Turkish Armed Forces or their “rebel” allies along the Idlib “de-escalation zone” would cause Russia to immediately intervene as a diplomatic mediator between both sides, but it will not “choose” Syria over Turkey under any realistic scenario because there’s simply too much at stake for Moscow to lose if it does. That, however, doesn’t meant that it will behave in an “anti-Syrian” fashion, as it might even carry out a few highly publicized “surgical strikes” against terrorist groups in the region in order to prove that it hasn’t lost its will to fight against these organizations in spite of any potential Turkish failure to completely eradicate them. That said, it should be understood that Russia doesn’t see any direct threat to its own interests from these terrorists because it regards them as “safely contained”, which is another reason why it won’t take Syria’s “side” over Turkey’s.

Northeast:

Source: South Front

The Kurds will continue to expand their administrative control over the region and advance their incipient “state-forming” processes, though they’re cleverly in the middle of “rebranding” their efforts by removing ethnic chauvinist language and symbols in order to give of the misleading impression that they are “inclusive” of the majority-non-Kurdish Arab, Assyrian, and Turkoman inhabitants of the region. This will still probably not prevent occasional revolts from popping up, but they’ll be brutally put down any time that they happen and won’t be reported on by the Mainstream Media. All of this will occur concurrently with their American, European, and Gulf patrons increasing their political, economic, military, and media support to this new sub-state political entity, which will allow it to gain more international “recognition” as a “legitimate” entity that “deserves” to be included in the eventual political solution to the conflict.

For as much as Turkey is opposed to this and has threatened to invade the region if the PYD-YPG Kurds are given a seat at the negotiating table and/or continue to move towards de-facto “autonomy”, Ankara’s ambitions are in the process of being curtailed by the US. The Kurds’ “rebranding” effort is part of the measures designed to calm the Turks down, because for as fearful as they are of this part of Syria being used to support terrorist activity within their own borders, they’re not yet willing to pay the financial, military, and political costs of what could turn into a quagmire through “mission creep”. Furthermore, the presence of so many US bases and servicemen serves as a strong deterrent to any impulsive Turkish military action, and Washington can always exploit the Kurdish threat against Ankara to reach a deal with it concerning Turkey’s assistance to Iran after the forthcoming sanctions.

Recommendations

In light of everything that’s been discussed in this analysis thus far, the following are three general recommendations that are designed to help Syria most effectively deal with the three game-changing developments described earlier in the work and adapt to the most likely scenarios that are forecasted to unfold in the coming future:

1. Prepare For The “Phased Withdrawal” Of Iranian Forces From Syria

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind about Russia’s intentions to “balance” between the West (which includes “Israel”) and Iran in Syria, which it endeavors to do in order to improve its regional diplomatic appeal as the Mideast’s preeminent Great Power and potentially advance a so-called “New Détente” that could ultimately lead to the removal of sanctions. This could prospectively see Russia “encouraging” the “phased withdrawal” of Iranian forces from all of Syria just like it succeeded in doing from around the “Israeli”-occupied Golan Heights in the southwestern part of the country earlier this summer, something that Tehran might actually take Moscow up on if the US’ forthcoming sanctions regime imposes unacceptable costs to the continuance of its military mission in the Arab Republic. In addition, the SAA’s recent anti-terrorist gains all across the liberated portions of the country might no longer require Iran’s support to sustain either.

In the very probable event that American pressure, Russian “balancing”, and the SAA’s anti-terrorist successes combine to create the conditions for Iran to undertake a “phased withdrawal” from the country under dignified conditions and leave the battlefield as heroes, then Damascus must understand exactly what this would entail. Unlike before when Iranian military support pivotally aided the SAA’s liberation of the Damascus suburbs and the southwest of the country, it’s no longer as relevant as it once was in this respect because of the impossibility of repeating these successes in Idlib and the Northeast where the strategic situation is completely different due to the direct military involvement of Turkey and the US. Thus, Iranian forces no longer have any offensive military appeal and only function as unofficial “peacekeepers”, which might not be needed much anymore. Their removal therefore won’t have any negative effects and could jumpstart the political process.

2. Take Advantage Of The Last Month Of De Mistura’s Tenure

De Mistura was far from perfect in his position as the UN’s envoy on Syria but he can still be regarded as better than his predecessors. Damascus must therefore take advantage of his last month in that role to assemble the Constitutional Commission or at least make verifiable progress on that goal in order to avoid the ever-intensifying sanctions regime that the US threatened to impose upon it if that doesn’t happen. This isn’t to say that Syria is “submitting” to the US by prioritizing this process, but just that it convincingly appears to be the most pragmatic course of action under the present circumstances of Iran’s possible “phased withdrawal” from the country and Russia’s predicted “encouragement” of Damascus to more seriously participate in this framework afterwards. It’s therefore best for Syria to use de Mistura’s mediating services and solid relationship with the “rebels” to make progress on this issue.

Included in this admittedly controversial recommendation is the possibility for Syria to “play politics” within the group and slow down the pace at which the negotiations unfold after “complicating” them on whatever pretexts can be plausibly utilized once the Constitutional Commission has been assembled. Forming the group itself is designed to buy Syria and its Russian partner time to avoid the promised imposition of tougher sanctions against both of them if it doesn’t adhere to the US’ subjective deadline, which could reasonably be extended to the end of November before de Mistura’s resignation if all sides are sincere in reaching a deal. Just like Syria has done with Astana whenever it was confronted with a proposal that it didn’t approve of like the Russian-written “draft constitution”, so too can it delay proceedings with the Constitutional Commission while giving off the impression that some degree of “progress” has still been achieved.

3. Seriously Contemplate The Pragmatic Merits Of Decentralization

There is no way that the SAA will forcibly remove the Turkish military from Idlib and the American one from the Northeast so Damascus needs to be realistic and realize that liberating “every inch” of Syria will have to be accomplished through non-kinetic means within the ambit of the political process. The ideal solution is to restore the central government’s sovereignty over every corner of the country like it was before the war began, but the conflict fundamentally changed Syria and that “maximalist” solution – no matter how ethically, morally, and legally legitimate it is – is no longer feasible so Damascus must play with the cards that it’s dealt at this final stage of the war. Accordingly, asymmetric decentralization modeled off of Russia’s “suggestions” from January 2017 is the most pragmatic way to get all parties to engage in mutually acceptable “compromises” for ending the conflict.

Some constructive proposals include the granting of regional decentralization (“autonomy”) to the Northeast, “judicial autonomy” to Idlib (which would enable it to continue implementing Sharia), and “municipal autonomy” to the major cities so that they have greater rights to independently make legislative and financial decisions. In exchange, the SAA could be deployed along Idlib and the Northeast’s international borders (the latter of which might lessen Turkey’s concerns about Kurdish terrorism there) while the interior of each region might continue to be “policed” by what could be constitutionally legitimized as “regional militias”, understanding that the SAA has no power to disarm and demobilize them given Turkey and the US’ respective presences there. About those, Turkey might be convinced by Russia to withdraw its forces while the Northeast’s “autonomy” might bestow it with the “right” to continue hosting American bases despite Damascus’ principled opposition to this.

Concluding Thoughts

Next month is going to be one of the most important that Syria has experienced since the beginning of the war because of the possible imposition of a more intensified sanctions regime against it and its international reconstruction partners, the geopolitical consequences of the US’ reimposition of energy-related sanctions against Iran, and de Mistura’s departure from his role at the end of November, so it’s incumbent on Damascus to responsibly assess the most likely ramifications of these influential changes and prepare corresponding policies for making the best of these destabilizing developments. Acknowledging the impossibility that the SAA and its Iranian allies can forcibly dislodge the Turkish and American militaries from the country, and accepting that Russia doesn’t regard itself as having any responsibility to help Syria with either of these two tasks (as it believes that its “balancing” role ensures regional peace), then the unavoidable conclusion is that across-the-board political “compromises” must be made by all warring parties.

Damascus cannot restore the centralized state that existed prior to the war, just like the “rebels” can’t overthrow the Syrian government and the Kurds can’t obtain independence. The common denominator of “compromise” between them is therefore the proposed system of asymmetric decentralization that could provide the latter two with differing degrees of “autonomy” that “legitimizes” their unique circumstances at this final stage of the conflict where the battlefront is more or less frozen due to the “gentlemen’s agreements” that Russia reached with their Turkish and American Great Power patrons respectively. It’s inevitable that decentralization in some shape or form will be implemented in Syria as part of the ongoing constitutional reform process, but its specific details – and especially those regarding control of each region’s international borders, the future of their “militias”, and their hosting of foreign military bases – must be discussed further in the context of the Constitutional Commission.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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.

ISIS has captured 700 hostages, including US and European citizens, in Syria and is killing 10 people a day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during the Valdai Discussion Club’s 15th Annual Meeting on October 18. He criticized US forces for this “catastrophic” failure adding that the terrorists “have delivered ultimatums and made certain demands, threatening … to shoot ten people every day.” According to Putin, the terrorists already started carrying out their threats and executed ten hostages two days ago.

On October 17, the Russian news agency TASS reported citing a military diplomatic source that the hostages were captured by ISIS in the province of Deir Ezzor during a failed advance of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and the US-led coalition.

On October 18, the SDF repelled an ISIS attack near the village of al-Baghuz al-Fawqani in the Euphrates Valley. During the recent clashes in the Hajin pocket, the SDF destroyed a suicide vehicle borne improvised explosive device and 15 ISIS members. 2 SDF members also died.

According to the Syrian state media, US-led coalition warplanes bombed civilian buildings in the village of al-Susah killing and injuring multiple civilians. The US-led coalition is often avoiding to comment on such reports. However, even Amnesty International says that Washington is hiding the real number of civilian casualties as a result of its operations in Syria.

Meanwhile, Russia and Turkey informed the UN that the timeline for the implementation of the Idlib de-confliction agreement had been expanded. One of the key problems behind the delay is the unwillingness of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and similar terrorist groups to withdraw from the agreed demilitarized zone.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

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It is understandable people are outraged over the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. 

Meanwhile, few are outraged over the murder of thousands in Yemen and the prospect of the worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory. The United States in directly involved in killing innocents in Yemen. 

Trump wants to sell billions of dollars of armaments to the Saudis and these will be used to kill more people in Yemen. The president says cranking out bombs, missiles, tanks, fighter jets, etc. will create jobs for Americans. 

In other words, if you want to support your family and stay off the public dole, you have to participate in mass murder. 

The average American, however, is at best vaguely aware of the role the US plays in Yemen. When was the last time you read a report about these war  crimes in The New York Times or saw a report on CNN? It’s the job of the corporate media to keep these grisly realities safely hidden or at best seriously underreported. 

Hypocrisy reeks from the White House, Congress, and the suites of the corporate media. Saudi Arabia has persecuted and executed critics for decades, yet the murder of one journalist—who wasn’t even a serious critic of the medieval regime—outrages the public.

If most Americans knew the truth about the Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam, they would want nothing to do with the Saudis despite their bounty of oil. Instead, the attention of the American people is steered toward Iran, described as the top sponsor of terrorism, when in fact the top sponsors of terror are the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. 

Dozens of unarmed people are killed by Israeli snipers—including medics and children—for the crime of protesting ill-treatment at the hands of what can only be described as an apartheid and racist government. 

Back in April, Israel’s trained murderers killed Yasser Murtaja, a photojournalist who worked for the BBC and Vice. Not a word from Trump or his raft of neocons on Murtaja’s death, nor the wounding of half a dozen other journalists deliberately targeted by the IDF. 

Trump tells us there will be a “deal of the century” between Israel and the Palestinians, a deal arranged by his son-in-law, a confirmed Zionist sharing a relationship with Bibi Netanyahu, the Likudnik prime minister of Israel. 

Previous Israeli leaders have called the Palestinians “beasts on two legs” and “crocodiles.” General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, said all Palestinians must be killed if they don’t agree to become slaves. Israel Koenig declared the Israeli government must use terror, assassination, intimidation, the cut off of all social services, and land confiscation to ethnically cleanse  Galilee of its Arab population. There are dozens of quotes like this from Israeli leaders and academics. 

In Saudi Arabia, the government will chop your head off it you consume alcohol, are involved in a consensual homosexual relationship, heterosexual adultery, consume illegal drugs, or engage in other nonviolent behavior. Because Saudi Arabia doesn’t have a penal code, judges can sentence a person to death for almost anything. 

Trump has ignored—or is quite possibly ignorant—the crimes committed by these two rogue regimes. His main news source is reportedly Fox News, so it makes sense he knows nothing about this. Everything he needs to know is provided by his son-in-law and his neocon national security adviser, the psychopath John Bolton. 

No, the US government will not punish Saudi Arabia for its behavior. Trump believes “rogue killers” are responsible for the murder of Khashoggi. It looks like the blame will be placed Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a top aide to Mohammed bin Salman, the boy prince who tortures his relatives and steals their wealth. 

MbS may be replaced by his younger brother Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US, but this will change absolutely nothing. 

The pathology of the Saudi regime is rooted in the Wahhabi brand of Sunni Islam. For the Wahhabi, all who do not follow their austere and violent religion are infidels deserving death, especially the Shi’a. In the demented mindset of the Saudi royals, famine and targeting civilian buses are entirely justified because, like Israel, Saudi Arabia is a racist and religiously intolerant state. For the racist and religious zealot, those outside the tribe are crocodiles, cockroaches in bottles, and beasts walking on two legs. 

The Khashoggi affair will eventually fall out of the news cycle and it will soon be business as usual between Trump and MbS or whomever his replacement may or may not be. 

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Another Day in the Empire.

Kurt Nimmo is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

As a columnist for the Washington Post, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi frequently criticized his home country’s government—denouncing the country’s treatment of women and most recently, in his final column published Wednesday, calling on Saudi officials to embrace press freedom. 

But as critics accuse President Donald Trump of conspiring with the Saudis to cover up Khashoggi’s suspected murder, one journalist on Wednesday highlighted an article published in the Independent, weeks after Trump was elected in November of 2016—noting that Khashoggi’s criticism of the Saudis wasn’t the only thing that led the government to ban his work from appearing in his home country.

While the move was likely fueled by his outspoken criticism of the monarchy and its policies, the journalist was only blacklisted from working in the kingdom after criticizing Trump.

Los Angeles Times columnist Virginia Heffernan posted about her realization late Wednesday after coming across the Independent article.

Just now realizing: Khashoggi was banned in KSA was not because he was critical of Mohammad bin Salman, the devastation of Yemen, Wahhabism, or the Salafi movement. It was because, ON NOVEMBER 10, 2016, in DC, Khashoggi mildly criticized…Donald Trump. https://t.co/GeFh0nlJ0l

— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) October 17, 2018

Citing the Middle East Eye’s reporting, the Independent published a story saying that Khashoggi spoke at the Washington Institute on November 10, 2016—the day after Trump won the presidential election—remarking that Trump’s Middle East stances were “contradictory.”

Soon after, a Saudi government source was quoted by the Middle East Eye as saying,

“The author Jamal Khashoggi does not represent the government of Saudi Arabia or its positions at any level, and…his opinions only represent his personal views, not that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

By early December, Saudi authorities had banned Khashoggi “from writing in newspapers, appearing on TV, and attending conferences” in the kingdom, leading the author to a self-imposed exile.

To several political observers on Twitter, the revelation that the Saudis had so directly come to the defense of Trump gave new meaning to the fact that the president is now attempting to shield Saudi Arabia from the international outrage that’s exploded in the 16 days since Khashoggi disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul—especially following reports that U.S. intelligence agencies had known of a Saudi plan to detain Khashoggi.

Mounting evidence has pointed to a murder by a “hit team” with links to MBS, but the Trump administration has criticized those accusing the Saudis of involvement, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo telling reporters,

“We ought to give them a few more days” to complete their own investigation and issuing a reminder that the Saudis “are an important strategic alliance of the U.S. and we need to be mindful of that as well.”

Here’s an unsettling historical footnote that now seems rather significant: Saudi Arabia banned Jamal Khashoggi for criticizing… Donald Trump. https://t.co/wfdbL4IzM0

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) October 18, 2018

Major element of this to remember: #Khashoggi was banned in 2016 from working in media in Saudi Arabia… because he criticized Trump. So the Saudis murdered a journalist they previously banned for speaking badly about Trump, & now Trump refuses to condemn them for it.

— Mark Hughes (@markhughesfilms) October 12, 2018

This may end up being more relevant than you think. https://t.co/uGujlEoEnL

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 18, 2018

Khashoggi was banned from Saudi media **after being critical of Trump,** not the Crown.

US intelligence knew of the Saudis' plan to arrest Khashoggi and did not share that information with him.

This administration is criminally liable.

— Ally Maynard (@missmayn) October 17, 2018

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The seventh anniversary of the killing of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi on October 20, 2011 provides us with an opportunity to reassess those dramatic events which caused a major step backwards in the country’s development. With the fall of its leader, the country’s power hierarchy collapsed, leading to the disintegration of both government authorities and the armed forces.

The “triumph of the February 17th Revolution and the fall of the dictatorship” was initially greeted with euphoria, but this mood was not enough to prevent the country from falling apart. The victors, who had seized power with the support of NATO and an unlikely coalition of various armed groups, were unable to prevent the country’s descent into chaos.  That coalition split apart in 2014, and the country has effectively been split in two ever since. There are now two opposed “territories”, one headed by Tripoli in the west of Libya, the other headed by Tobruk, in the east. Each has its own government, parliament and armed forces.

What is more, the capital, Tripoli, is controlled by four main armed groups, which, together, prop up the Government of National Accord, headed by Fayez al-Sarraj.  Their official role is to guarantee security, serve as a police force, and guard the airport, government organisations and prisons etc. According to many experts in the region, these armed groups have built up an unprecedented level of control over both public and private organisations. They are involved in business and a wide range of illegal schemes: these include various forms of smuggling, especially of oil.

This situation gives rise to rivalry with other armed groups which came to Tripoli as victors after the collapse of the regime, but these newcomers have been sidelined as time has passed.

They were angered by Facebook posts in which commanders of pro-government militias showed off their luxury cars and flats. That explains why, at the end of August, the commanders of 7 brigades from Tarhuna, 45 km south of the capital, adopted the slogan “An end to corruption!” and moved their forces against the alliance of four armed groups.

Despite calls by the Government of National Accord for peace, serious armed clashes have broken out in several parts of Tripoli – the worst eruption of violence in the city in the last four years. Between August and the end of September, 115 people were killed and 383 wounded in these clashes. Thousands of families have fled to avoid the fighting between groups of militants.

As a result, the UN has declared a state of emergency in the capital. In the view of these events, it is hardly surprising that the UN special envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, recently declared that the planned general elections, the result of several years of negotiations by the UN, are unlikely to take place on the intended date of December 10 this year.

It seems as if the combined efforts of the UN, a number of European countries and Libya’s Arab neighbours to reconcile the two factions based on the Libyan Political Agreement signed in 2015 in Shkirat are doomed to failure. (The Shkirat Agreement called for the creation of national transitional state bodies, elections to the newly-formed parliament, presidential elections, etc.)

Another problem is that Libya still lacks charismatic leaders who could unite society and persuade it to accept the necessary compromises. The existing political elites are all pulling in different directions.

It is hard to see how things could have been otherwise. The UN’s efforts to broker and implement an agreement was hampered by the fact that the politicians’ authority was limited by their dependence on armed groups and their “godfathers”.

Libya since the fall of Gaddafi has been a tragic example of how a country which used to be stable, and which is rich in oil reserves, can be brought to its knees by internal conflict. Libyans’ standard of living has fallen dramatically. People are weighed down by the problems of everyday life: a shortage of cash in the economy, power cuts and interruptions to the water supply, a lack of flour in the shops, endless queues at bakeries, etc.

And, at an international level, the country is faced with potential threats from its neighbours in North Africa and the Middle East. The authorities are unable to effectively police the country’s borders, which extend over 6 000 km. In 2017 the majority of the 200 000 migrants who travelled across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe started their journey in Libya.

Seven years ago, Western politicians and the media cheered on the militants and celebrated their victory over the “dictator”. This enthusiasm has long since vanished. Reality has confounded all those optimistic predictions and naive hopes. They lack the will or the power to sort out the chaos.

Nevertheless, the same countries that intervened in the internal conflict in Libya under the pretext of “fighting against dictatorship and for democracy” were keen to unleash a similar situation in Syria. The government, army and people of Syria, with their allies, have been able to resist that policy and prevent the breakup of their country and its transformation into another Libya.

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Yury Zinin, Leading Research Fellow at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.

Featured image is from NEO.

The October 15 deadline agreed to by Turkey, Russia and Iran for Turkey to evacuate all heavy weapons and jihadist groups along a 15-20 km demilitarised demarcation line around Idlib and its rural area, including rural Latakia, has come and gone. Nevertheless, despite serious Turkish pressure on jihadists to leave Syria or move out of the demilitarised zone to spare Idlib an imminent attack by the Syrian Army and Russia, jihadists remain in their barracks. All the same, Damascus and Moscow consider the time unpropitious for a large attack on the city. Thus, a further delay has been accorded to Turkey to continue its efforts. Any attack on Idlib, the first US line of defence in Syria, has been postponed.

But why is this the USA’s first line of defence in Syria? Simply because Syria has been freed and only the regions of the northern cities of Idlib and al-Hasaka (and a small part of Deir-ezzour east of the Euphrates) are still occupied.

In September, Russia, Iran and Syria decided to liberate the entire Syrian territory, starting from Idlib and ending in al-Hasaka where the US occupation forces are based and unwilling to leave anytime soon. This is why Washington sees Idlib as its first line of defence and this is why the US wanted to hit Syria under a false pretext of the “use of chemical weapons” to prevent the liberation of Idlib by Damascus forces. Moscow and Damascus understood US intentions and decided to call off all military preparations in order to prevent a US attack on Syria. The date set for a wide scale attack on Idlib was abrogated; Syria and its allies decided to stand down and give Turkey the opportunity to try and stand in between the belligerents. This decision helped avoid a possible confrontation between the two superpowers, Russia and the US, with their militaries facing each other down in the Levant.

Meanwhile, Syria’s allies prepared three lines of defence: the first facing Tal el-Eiss, the second at “the apartment 3000” and the third at the entrance of the city of Aleppo. They had received solid intelligence that al-Qaeda and other jihadists had gathered around 10,000 men and were preparing to launch an attack against Aleppo. The Russian-Turkish deal stopped the imminent attack. Turkey was given an extension and an unspecified span of time to control Idlib. Syria and its allies will wait for the most opportune moment to attack the city if the US backs down from war in Syria and circumstances become more congenial.

Sources close to decision makers in Syria said: “There is no doubt the entire Syrian territory will return to the control of the Syrian government, including Idlib and al-Hasaka. The Qunietra and Nasib crossing between Syria and Jordan has reopened. Soon the borders between Syria and Iraq will re-open now that there is a new prime minister in Iraq”.

“The Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari visited Syria not only to reopen the border crossing between the two countries but also to bring Syria back to the Arab League. Iraq believes that Saudi Arabia and its allies are no longer willing to continue the war in Syria and they have stopped financing jihadists and rebels. Syria will deal with the two occupiers (Turkey and the US) and end this war”, said the source.

The first step is expected to be made official by Amman, willing to resume its pre-2011 relationship with Damascus by sending its diplomats to Syria in the coming days. According to the source,

“the Jordanian step has been approved by the Gulf and western countries in the hope of detaching Syria from Iran”.

“Those who open their borders and airports to jihadists from all over the world to come and fight in Syria, and those who emptied their prisons to send all inmates to establish a terrorist platform in the Levant to create a fail state have decided to change their policy and re-establish diplomatic ties with Damascus. We don’t oppose this move but we won’t forget because we have paid a very heavy price due to these “old friends” who destroyed our country”, said the source.

“There is no doubt,” – continues the source – “that the number of allied troops has been dramatically reduced in Syria. Iran has reduced its costs and reduced to a minimum the presence of its allies on the ground (Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani and other). However, no one can force Iran to leave the Levant in exchange for financial support to rebuild the country. Only idiots believe we can exchange the relationship between Syria and Iran for tens or hundreds of billions or sell the Golan Heights for any price. The Syrian-Iranian strategic bond is much stronger than what people can imagine”.

Middle Eastern leaders and the Arab League are prepared to receive back among them the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as they acknowledge that the regime change operation has failed. Turkey has been given more time and the liberation of Idlib has been postponed. The jihadists and rebels are not yet convinced that the war is over and haven’t yet realized that no country will supply them with weapons any longer. They are only buying time and their fate is sealed. In al-Hasaka Kurdish militants will come to understand that the US forces can’t stay for long. The US base at al-Tanaf will be abandoned mainly because the al-Rukban refugee camp – 80,000 to 90,000 refugees supplied by the US and surrounded by the Syrian and Iraqi armies – has become a burden and because the al-Bu Kamal crossing will reopen soon. It is time for the Kurds to understand that they can only survive by coming to terms with Damascus.

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All images in this article are from EJM.

“If you shout at us we will cry, we are so sensitive” Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid told me on the 20th September 2018.  Al Mahamid is the leader of the still-functioning White Helmet center in Dara’a Al Balad to the south of Damascus in Syria. Al Mahamid had donned his white helmet for the camera before he spoke to us about the role of these White Helmets who had remained in Dara’a Al Balad, when other White Helmet members had boarded the buses for Idlib with Nusra Front or for Israel and Jordan as part of the special evacuation organised by the members of the US Coalition. 

The journey to this White Helmet center had been a circuitous one. I traveled with my translator and a Syrian journalist working independently on this trip. Since July 2018 a tenuous ceasefire had been negotiated between the armed groups and members of the Russian Reconciliation team. Conditions included the surrendering of heavy and medium weapons. (De-escalation zones had previously been established in mid 2017). Russia secured the right of admission to liberated areas for the Syrian Arab Army and the withdrawl of extremist groups from areas close to the Jordanian borders. The Al Nassib border crossing, for example, would come back under the management of the SAA. While some groups occupying areas in the countryside and city of Daraa accepted the Russian conditions, Dara’a Al Balad was one of the areas that chose to continue with a ‘policy of confrontation’.

“..military factions have refused the offer entirely and choose confrontations, especially in Dara’a al-Balad and the towns of Saida, elmiathin, Nasib, el-Emtaih, al-Naimah, el-Taebah, arriving at the western countryside of Tafas, Nawa and its surrounding. The concerned factions include “al-Thawra Army”, “First Artillery Regment” “Osod al-Sunna”, “Falojat Horan Brigade”, “Thuwar al- Jaidour” and “al-Bunyan al-Marsous”.” ~ taken from a report in Enab Baladi in July 2018

Russia had offered a separate deal to the rebranded Nusra Front faction, Hayat Tahrir Al Sham (HTS), occuping areas of Dara’a. According to the report in Enab Baladi, the former Emir of HTS, the infamous Abu Jaber, turned down the Russian proposal. Abu Jaber had originally been one of the founding commanders of the “moderate” extremist group, Ahrar Al Sham, responsible for a number of brutal ethnic cleansing massacres in Syria. The carnage in Al Zara in the suburbs of Homs was carried out by this group in May 2016, targeting a predominantly Alawite community. One of the more horrifying images to emerge from this bloodthirsty rampage was one depicting Ahrar Al Sham militants standing over the corpses of brutally murdered women. Despite these repugnant sectarian crimes against the Syrian people, the US administration refused to comply with Russian demands that Ahrar Al Sham be designated a “terrorist” group.

Sheikh Abdullah Muhaysini with SAA captives at Abu Duhur Air Base. (Photo: Syria Comment)

In January 2017 Abu Jaber resigned from Ahrar Al Sham altogether and five major extremist groups merged into the rebranded HTS with Abu Jaber as their Emir. In October 2017, Abu Jaber was replaced as Emir by Mohammed Al-Joulani. During its formation, HTS had also released a statement “saying that six leading jihadi scholars have joined the newly formed group.” One of these was Sheikh Abdullah Mohammed Al Muhaysini, a Riyadh educated and financed zealot, one of the most extreme and bloodthirsty ideologues operating in Syria. The US administration designated Muhaysini a terrorist in 2016.

The UK Intelligence propaganda construct, and multi-million-dollar US Coalition-financed White Helmet group has consistently demonstrated its ties to these terrorist and “moderate” extremist groups in Syria. White Helmet operatives have been filmed with Muhaysini in the countryside of Northern Hama/Idlib, welcoming terrorist factions evacuated from Daraya as part of the Syrian Government’s Amnesty and Reconciliation deal, in August 2016 . Muhaysini has often endorsed and supported the White Helmets, describing them as “no different to the Mujahadeen (armed groups)” in September 2016.

Muhaysni talks about White Helmets: "They are no diff from the Mujahideen". Thanks, Sheikh that's what we've been saying all along #Syria pic.twitter.com/kjEXqULCGx

— Walid (@walid970721) September 30, 2016

In March 2017, while Emir of HTS, effectively Al Qaeda, Abu Jaber praised the White Helmets as the “hidden soldiers of the revolution”. The White Helmet billionaire funded PR industry and their supporters in corporate media have tried, unsuccessfully, to distance the White Helmets from their ties with HTS.

On March 16 the leader of HTS (Al-Qaeda in #Syria) Abu Jaber thanked the #WhiteHelmets & called them the "hidden soldiers of the revolution" pic.twitter.com/1ac8M8xb5d

— Walid (@walid970721) March 20, 2017

This introduction will provide important background to the claims and statements made by the White Helmets and FSA commander, Adham Alkarad whom I also met in Dara’a Al Balad in September 2018 while inside the White Helmet headquarters.

Entering Daraa – Dara’a Countryside, Al Omari Mosque, Al Manshia and Dara’a Al Balad

Members of armed group Shabab Al Sunnah in Al Manshia, Dara’a Al Balad. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

After discussions with the Syrian Arab Army and Russian Military Police officials we entered areas of the countryside of Daraa and Daraa City , accompanied by members of one of the armed groups that had accepted Russian/Syrian ceasefire conditions, Shabab Al Sunnah. We visited the Ramsa border with Jordan which is for vehicles only and was one of the main supply routes from Jordan to the assorted armed groups occupying Daraa City and the surrounding areas.As we hear so often during these trips, the members of Shabab Al Sunnah confirmed that Nusra Front had been the dominant force in the province.

The Ramsa border with Jordan. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley) 

Logo of the “Sons of Al Aqsa” brigade in the border checkpoint at Ramsa border with Jordan. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Air Defence Base 

The road into the Air Defence Base in the Dara’a Countryside

After the border with Jordan, we headed north-west to the Air Defence Base that had been the scene of the massacre of the SAA soldiers defending the base by members of the Al Bunyan Al Marsous military operations group that was made up of 17 armed factions including HTS, Ahrar Al Sham and various divisions of the “moderate” FSA. The motto of the group was “Death and No Humiliation”. On 20th June 2017, the base was overrun by extremist groups. The majority of the SAA soldiers were brutally murdered. To our knowledge four soliders were taken captive and the bodies and captives were brought back to an area very close to the White Helmet center in Dara’a Al Balad.

Image taken from Twitter showing Air Defence Base under attack and on point of capture June 2017. 

SAA bodies, killed at the Air Defence Base, were piled up in the back of a truck before being brought back to Dara’a City. (Photo: Screenshot from video)

A White Helmet operative was videoed clambering over the broken and bloody bodies of the soldiers while one of the armed group members held a severed head aloft in triumph. Another video was also released showing the militants laughing and manhandling the bodies piled on top of one another in the back of the truck. I will cover this incident in more detail later in the article and demonstrate that the White Helmets and HTS/FSA were responsible for a hideous war crime, one of many ignored by the colonial media cartel in the West.

The Air Defence Base now back under the control of the SAA since July 2018. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The Air Defence Base had then been taken over and occupied by HTS/Nusra Front, again according to the Shabab Al Sunnah fighters, before its liberation by the SAA in 2018.

The road into the Air Defence Base. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The road into the base was still strewn with the remnants of destroyed tanks and armoured vehicles, the burned out remains of a rocket launcher pick-up truck was turning to ash behind a bank of earth. Inside the base we could see the familiar HTS graffitti and logos of the military groups on the walls of the huts and corrugated metal portakabins. It was a strange experience to walk around the base in the company of fighters who very possibly participated in the “moderate” offensive that had claimed the lives of the SAA defenders whose bodes had then been so abused and dehumanized.

Al Manshia

A street in Al Manshia district. The Graffitti reads ‘Islamic State’. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

After visiting the Air Defence Base, we drove through the Al Manshia district of Dara’a Al Balad. In 2014 Al Manshia was still under control of the SAA and it came under concerted attack from the “moderate” FSA forces. These militants, power multiplied by the US Coalition, pounded Al Manshia with tank and mortar fire, they dug tunnels under SAA positions, packed them with explosives and detonated them. For the FSA the taking over of Al Manshia was strategically important as it secured control over all of Dara’a Al Balad (Old City) and opened the road to Dara’a al-Mahatta (New City) for the armed groups. It was also a battle to prevent SAA control over the Nassib border crossing with Jordan and to secure the crossing for the supply of equipment for the armed groups. Battles in Al Manshia raged back and forth and in February 2017, the FSA combined forces with Ahrar Al Sham and HTS (Al Qaeda) to conduct another major offensive against the entrenched SAA. One month later the SAA pushed back against the Nusra Front-led forces and retook part of Al Manshia. Final SAA liberation of the Manshia district took place in July 2018.

In the early days of the Syrian conflict, the reporting was heavily weighted in favour of the “rebels” and was being led by the likes of the BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN who lionised the armed groups while holding the Syrian government almost entirely responsible for the loss of life as the sectarian mob violence that they whitewashed threatened civilians and security forces alike and chaos reigned, particularly in Dara’a. I will not be going into depth in this article but recommended reading (or viewing) on the reality of what happened in Dara’a can be found here, here and here.

“The Omari Mosque was the scene of backstage preparations, costume changes and rehearsals.  The Libyan terrorists, fresh from the battlefield of the US-NATO   regime change  attack on Libya, were in Deraa well ahead of the March 2011 uprising violence.  The cleric of the Omari Mosque was Sheikh Ahmad al Sayasneh .[…] However, the visitors from Libya did not make themselves known to the cleric, as that would blow their cover.  Instead, they worked with local men; a few key players who they worked to make their partners and confidants. The participation of local Muslim Brotherhood followers, who would assist the foreign Libyan mercenaries/terrorists, was an essential part of the CIA plan, which was well scripted and directed from Jordan.” ~ Steven Sahiounie, The Day Before Deraa:How the War Broke out in Syria.

Independent journalist Eva Bartlett interviewed a Dara’a priest, Father Gerges Rizk in May 2018. He also explained the geopolitical context of what was really behind the “protests” in Daraa. WATCH: 

These relentless extremist-group campaigns to dominate the district have left Al Manshia scarred and battered. Driving through the neighbourhood we saw the familiar bullet-strafed and mortar- fractured buildings, collapsing into the rubble that was strewn haphazardly across much of the devastated area. I filmed our journey through Al Manshia to the Al Omari Mosque, still accompanied by the Shabab Al Sunnah fighters. At one point we draw level with them to ask them to slow down so I can film. The final part of the video is as we arrive at the back of the Al Omari mosque. Watch: 

Al Omari Mosque

We pulled up behind the Al Omari Mosque which was the scene of the allegedly “peaceful” protests that rocked the centre of Dara’a and became the beacon of Western media sensationalism and “rebel”-biased fervour in the early days of the Syrian conflict. We followed the Shabab Al Sunnah fighters into the courtyard of the Mosque and we had time to wander among the archways and to film the damage that had been done to the historic site.

We stopped to speak to this 13 year old boy, Ahmed, who was happy to be back at school since the ceasefire took effect in Dara’a Al Balad. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Walking around the Mosque was reminiscent of entering the Omayyed Mosque in the Old City of Aleppo immediately after its liberation from the extremist gangs that had occupied it for almost five years and converted it into a sniper’s nest and military centre. There was still a sense of brooding tension and I felt the same again inside the Al Omari Mosque. A young boy who is seen in the video (and photo above) did stop to tell us that life was better now that the ceasefire had come into effect, he was glad to be back in school and to see an end to the violence that had wracked his neighbourhood for so many years.

Video footage taken inside the Al Omari Mosque. Watch: 

The White Helmets of Dara’a Al Balad 

The White Helmet center in Dara’a Al Balad. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The Shabab al Sunnah fighters had picked up on the fact we wanted to speak to the White Helmets so they obliged by bringing us to the only functioning White Helmet center remaining in Daraa and Quneitra according to the members we spoke to in the center. It was explained to them that I was an independent British journalist by my translator. The Center was a small building in the grounds of what looked like a school complex.

The White Helmet center is the pin showing how close the center is to the Al Omari Mosque.

Satellite image showing the buildings that made up the White Helmet center in Dara’a Al Balad. 

When I asked what the larger building was, I was told it had previously been a school that had been taken over by Nusra Front/HTS, so again it appears that the White Helmets were operating in close proximity to the terrorist group. This close collaboration was also evident in East Aleppoand in Eastern Ghouta based upon testimony from civilians who had lived under the occupation of the extremist groups partnered by the White Helmets.

The Nusra Front occupied building – the White Helmet center was on the other side of the ground in front of this building. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

When I visited the Christian town of Al Skeilbiyyeh in September, I was also shown a White Helmet and Nusra Front center in Al Madiq Citadel that was the tallest building in an area fully occupied by a combinaton of Ahrar Al Sham, Nusra Front (HTS) and Jaish Al Islam according to the National Defence Forces who were defending their town against attacks by these groups. The NDF also told me that the majority of these terrorist groups and the White Helmets had arrived together following their evacuation from Eastern Ghouta in March/April 2018.

The White Helmet center shared with Nusra Front in Al Madiq Citadel around 700 meters from the Al Skeilbiyyeh NDF front lines. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Throughout the various SAA allied military campaigns to liberate areas of Syrian territory, it is customary for the White Helmets to relocate with their Nusra Front counterparts during the reconcilation and evacuation process. Therefore, it was a rare opportunity to speak to White Helmets who had chosen to remain in an area still under control  of the armed groups but under the partial supervision of the Syrian government and the Russian Reconciliation teams.

Entering the White Helmet center video footage. WATCH:

Conversations with White Helmets – Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid

The leader of this White Helmet center was a character who introduced himself as Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid. Once he had ascertained that I was a British journalist, he appeared to want to present an image that would impress me. At one point he put on his white helmet before launching into a defence of the White Helmet reputation . He insisted that even though they had been funded by the British government, they were not influenced by British policy. Al Mahamid did make the point, however, that they were pressured to follow British policies and he makes the distinction between serving “friends and enemies” which immediately suggests a degree of bias rather than his proclaimed neutrality:

“When I say that we are independent it means that we do not follow any one, when some come to me and say that you should follow British policies I say to them, no. We serve all people, our friends and our enemies.”  ~ Al Mahamid

During his initial display of neutrality Al Mahamid was clearly on a drive to persuade me of the White Helmet good reputation. When questioned about the White Helmet involvement in executions carried out by HTS and associated groups in Dara’a, Al Mahamid was quick to echo the White Helmet party line which presents these White Helmets who do collaborate in crimes committed against Syrian civilians and SAA prisoners, as being “bad apples“, who are “sacked” for “misconduct” – rather than criminal thugs who collaborate in torture, execution and the punishmentof those who do not comply with their sectarian ideology or who have remained loyal to Syria’s government and army.

“..we have fired members only because they attended some sort of executions, because we save lives and we do not help anyone to kill any one because it is against humanity and notice that all White Helmet members are full of humanity and sensitive to the extent if you shout at them they cry.  So our work is plain humanitarian work, and when we used to bring soldiers here, we used to respect them and treat them as one of us, because all Syrians are losing.”  ~ Al Mahamid (emphasis added)

Al Mahamid was asked about the White Helmet connections to Nusra Front (HTS) bearing in mind the praise heaped upon the White Helmets by Abu Jaber and Muhaysini. Again, Al Mahamid was adamant that their White Helmet center had no such affiliation, despite being next door to the Nusra Front buildings. In his eagerness to present the case for their center he was quick to say that it was very possible that other White Helmet groups in Syria were affiliated to Nusra Front and made up of Nusra Front militants. The question was – “do you think that some White Helmet members or centers acted in a different way from other White Helmet centers, East Aleppo or other cities?”

“Of course, here we do not belong to any one, but someone in the Western area, for example, might be Nusra front. “

Al Mahamid was asked again –  “so White Helmet members may also be Nusra Front?”

“Of course! They might be Nusra Front and run a White Helmet center so this means all his colleagues are also Nusra Front , but not in my area.” ~ Al Mahamid (emphasis added)

An interesting point is made here by Al Mahamid. If a White Helmet center is run by a Nusra Front member then all his colleagues will also be Nusra Front. This vindicates claims made by myself and other independent analysts that any area occupied by Nusra Front will be dominated and controlled by Nusra Front. Nusra Front is a brutal, ideologically supremacist organisation, so it would make perfect sense that if a White Helmet group is led by a prominent member of Nusra Front, the members are likely to adhere to the same ideology and to follow the same practices of extreme sectarian hatred and violence.

AbdulAziz Maghrabi seated centre, with Ahrar Al Sham & Abu Amara fighters. (Photo: Maghrabi’s Facebook page)

Case in question is the leadership of the White Helmets in East Aleppo.  Abdulaziz Maghrabi was not only an armed member of Nusra Front but had also been an armed member of the Turkish-backed Al Tawhid brigade which invaded East Aleppo in 2012. Maghrabi also demonstrated allegiance to Abu Amara, the Nusra Front protection corps in East Aleppo. Maghrabi was photographed, on a number of occasions, working with both Nusra Front fighters and Abu Amara groups.

When we asked Al Mahamid about the Israeli evacuation of White Helmets, he became very animated:

“There are some (armed) factions connected with Israel, those factions were gathered by Israel in Quneitra and were told that you will leave with the White Helmets. By the way the number of White Helmets in the southern area are 635, but those who left were 800. This means that there are (armed) factions who work with Mossad and they were extracted alongside the White Helmets. But for us here, we stood against this and demanded that the record of the White Helmet members to be reviewed because not all who left were White Helmets. Because not all those who left were White Helmets, there were people who left from Quneitra.  There were terrorists, some left from the Yarmouk Basin” 

“You mean ISIS” we asked

“Exactly!” 

“So ISIS left with other armed factions alongside the White Helmets?”

“What happened is that Israel told the factions it supports to leave with the White Helmets. But here in this center were 38 members but no one left.”

“So, those who left – where were they from?”

“They were from Quneitra and the FSA and armed factions who are supported by Israel. This what we witnessed, I do not deny the fact that around 50 % of those who left to Israel were White Helmets but the rest were factions supported by Israel.”

#Quneitra – Maadeh Nassar "The Commander of the 'Golan Knights Brigade", Ahmad Al-Nuhas Commander of the "Brigade of the Sword of the Levant", Alaa Halaki "Commander of the Ababel army" and Abu Ratib Nassar, leader of the 'Golan Knights Brigade" escape to #Israel today morning. pic.twitter.com/tPe2OSAGrG

— maytham (@maytham956) July 22, 2018

Video: following the tracks of the armed groups and the White Helmets into Israeli occupied Syrian territory. WATCH:

During my time in the south, I had also visited Quneitra and followed in the tracks of the armed groups and White Helmets as they were evacuated from Syria into the Israeli-occupied Syrian territory of the Golan heights and, from there, were transported to Jordan. Of the estimated 800 who escaped Syria by this Israel-facilitated route, allegedly only 442 made it to Jordan for resettlement in the designated countries which included Canada, UK, France and Germany.

I visited one White Helmet center in Jabata Al Khashab, Quneitra which was again contained within a complex controlled by Nusra Front but also incorporating the centers of the FSA and Al-Furqan brigade. I was shown to a small room which was reportedly used as a prison and torture cell by the armed groups. The room was actually part of the White Helmet building, which I was told, was known as Station 103.

My short video on the White Helmet Station 103 opposite Nusra Front HQ. WATCH: 

While at the border crossing with Israeli occupied Syrian territory we also saw the footings and remains of what had been a three storey hospital (sign reads “birth clinic”) that, I was told,  had been dismantled by the armed groups before they exited Syria. Israeli food products and medicine packaging were strewn around the site. We were also told that terrorist fighters only, were treated at the hospital, no civilians. Terrorists who were seriously injured were taken into Israel for treatment before being returned to southern Syria. This was confirmation of previous reports of the collaboration between Israel and the various armed groups occupying southern Syria.

Al Mahamid’s claim that 50% of those evacuated by Israel were extremist and terrorist group leaders was also confirmed by a number of civilians living close to the areas traversed by the “special” evacuees. As always, when asking for people to identify the different groups, I was given the familiar puzzled look before they told me “they are all the same, all terrorists”. In the centers I visited in the south, it was clear that Nusra Front and the assorted extremist groups were working together.

According to eminent analyst and journalist, Sharmine Narwani, “Israel is so heavily vested in keeping Syria and its allies away from its borders, it has actively bolstered al-Qaeda and other extremists in Syria’s southern theater.”.

“Despite its U.S. and UN designation as a terrorist organization, Nusra has been openly fighting alongside the “Southern Front,” a group of 54 opposition militias funded and commanded by a U.S.-led war room based in Amman, Jordan called the Military Operations Center (MOC). [..]Efforts to conceal the depth of cooperation between Nusra and the FSA go right to the top. Says one FSA commander in Daraa: “In many battles, al-Nusra takes part, but we don’t tell the (MOC) operations room about it.” ~  Are Al Qaeda Affiliates Fighting Alongside U.S Rebels in Syria’s South?

The “birth clinic” terrorist hospital, equipped and supported by Israel. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

The Israeli security fence that has been erected on illegally occupied Syrian territory in the Golan. This is the gate that was used by the White Helmets and terrorist factions in July 2018. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

White Helmet Number Two – Nidal Al Mahamid.

Nidal introduced himself as the mechanic for the White Helmet vehicles. Parked in the bay behind him was a UK-registered fire engine. Contrary to reports in Western media that the White Helmets would be systematically targeted by the Syrian government and the SAA – Nidal seemed to have no problem working under the “semi-supervision” of the government.

“I was in charge of the vehicles department at the white helmets and now under semi- supervision from the regime who provides services to areas under its control.”

UK firetruck in the Daraa Al Balad White Helmet center. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Nidal informed me that they had been paid by the Mayday Rescue organisation but had not received any payments since June when the reconciliation negotiations were ongoing. This must raise the question – if the UK Government is financially supporting a genuine humanitarian effort for the people of Syria why would funding suddenly cease when an area is returned to the control of the Syrian state yet the organisation chooses to remain to “serve” the same people?

Mayday Rescue is the UK FCO (Foreign Commonwealth Office) sub-contractor which channels funding from the Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) to the White Helmets. The Netherlands government has recently suspended funding to the White Helmets and Mayday Rescue on the basis that neither were able to provide reassurances that the funding was not ending up in the hands of the armed extremist groups, including Al Qaeda. Mayday Rescue was founded in 2014 by James Le Mesurier, a former MI6/British Military operative who established the White Helmets in Turkey and Jordan in 2013, while working for the ARK Group.

Nidal Al Mahamid at the White Helmet center in Daraa Al Balad. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Nidal told us that the White Helmet workers in Dara’a Al Balad were receiving $ 150 per month with an additional $ 25 for food and essentials. There had been another center on the Dam road, according to Nidal, but this was now closed down since the reconciliation agreement with the Syrian Government. This salary is  considerably higher than that of a SAA soldier who takes home around $ 50 per month. Many SAA soldiers are obliged to take another job such as taxi driving to be able to take care of their families and needs. The claim has always been that the White Helmets are volunteers rather than de facto paid up employees of foreign governments led by the U.K and U.S whose long-term policy is the overthrow of the Syrian government.

“Mustafa Mahamed was the manager at this center. He joined the reconciliation. All of the administration joined the reconciliation. We stayed here. Raed Saleh was the head of the White Helmets but we didnt hear from him for 6 months.”

Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid interjected at one point that Raed Saleh had “sold them out, traded them in“. Certainly there did not seem to be any great love for the main spokesperson for the White Helmets who appears to be comfortably ensconsed in Turkey and clearly is not concerned for  the White Helmets in Dara’a Al Balad.

How Impartial is Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid really? 

As I was leaving the White Helmet center in Dara’a Al Balad, Abu Mohanad came after me, he wanted to reassure me that he was not “sectarian” – “I married a Shia Muslim woman” he told me with a grin on his face. It was clearly impossible to verify this curious statement. However, the research carried out into Abu Mohanad and his “affiliations” demonstrated that his performance to camera had not been an entirely honest one.

Abu Mohanad’s profile picture taken from his Facebook page. 

A video and photograph posted to the page in February 2018 show Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid holding up placards and joining a demonstration in solidarity with the armed factions in Eastern Ghouta as the SAA military campaign had begun, to liberate the area from the terrorist and extremist group occupation. In the video we see a prayer for military action by the “jihadists” and armed factions in Eastern Ghouta. One of the slogans being displayed, in the video, calls for military action to take Damascus and the coastal areas in support of the Jihadists in Eastern Ghouta.

There is another slogan calling upon the sons of “Houran” (the armed groups in Daraa) to go to the aid of their Salafist counterparts in Eastern Ghouta. Abu Mohanad had emphasised his lack of political or military affiliation during his interview, yet this activity suggests otherwise. Houran is the plain that covers territory in Daraa, Sweida and extends into Jordan.

Taken from the Facebook page of Abu Mohanad. The far left sign at the back reads ” Ghouta is screaming at you faithful sons of Houran, so answer the call”

A quick scan of the “friends” of Abu Mohanad on his Facebook page reveal a number of armed members or supporters of extremist groups such as Jaish Al Islam, responsible for the atrocities in Douma that include the thousands of kidnap victims held and tortured in the “Repentance” prisons. There is a video interview with Abu Mohanad after he has been injured in Daraa in May 2018.

Screenshot from Halab Today interview with Abu Mohanad in May 2018.

In a 2015 Al Jazeera video report we see Abu Mohanad being interviewed alongside members of the White Helmet teams in what we believe to be the Dam Road center in Dara’a Al Balad. During the video we see the White Helmet members training inside the center wearing T-shirts with the FSA logo on the back.

#WhiteHelmets are "impartial". Except when they wear the Free Syrian Army logo T-Shirts in training in #Daraa 2015. 🤥🤥The propaganda loop is seriously fraying. #WhiteHelmet centers in Daraa #Quneitra were shared wth Nusra Front, FSA, Furqan Brigade and others. @21WIRE pic.twitter.com/WCj13IoH0g

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) October 15, 2018

The leader of the White Helmets at this point is Abdellah Assarhan. Assarhan was also known as Abu Yassin. Assarhan was reportedly killed when his car was targeted in March 2017 and hisfuneral was attended by an assortment of White Helmets and extremist armed group members.

An early Facebook profile photo of Assarhan shows him wearing a T-shirt with the FSA logo. According to a Facebook tribute to Assarhan by someone who clearly knew him well, Assarhan was one of the early fomenters of the violence in Daraa – he called for the formation of the “revolutionary” armed factions at the beginning of the Syrian conflict, in the Dara’a camps.

The Air Defence Base Massacre

According to Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid, the White Helmet leader in Dara’a Al Balad the White Helmets have never participated in any violence. After putting on his white helmet he proceeded to give me this statement:

We have just worked with civilians, and I hope that those who attack the white helmets to stop, we did not take part in any fights, and we did not take part in any bloodshed, we used to save everyone, military personnel, civilians, men and women. Welcome to the White Helmets center in Dara’a”

Here is the short video footage of that speech. Watch video here.

As already mentioned the massacre of the SAA 5th Division in the Air Defence Base took place on the 20th June 2018 and was barely reported in western media circles. The loss of life among the SAA defenders of Syria and protectors of the Syrian people is deliberately marginalised or played down by the NATO-aligned media who do their utmost to dehumanise the courageous men and women who have taken up arms to defend their country against what is effectively an invasion of foreign terrorist groups financed and controlled by the US Coalition, the Gulf States, Turkey and Israel.

Collage of screenshots from the video of the White Helmet abusing the corpses of SAA soldiers. 

A number of gruesome videos have emerged showing the aftermath of this massacre, none of which will be embedded in this article, out of respect for the families of the dead and mutilated SAA soldiers. In one video that was tweeted by journalist, Ali Kourani, we see a White Helmet member climbing over the corpses of the soldiers in the back of a pick-up truck. While he is picking through the bodies, an extremist militant pulls out the severed head of one of the soldiers and holds it up to camera as a victory trophy. The headless body is then kicked by the terrorist fighter as it lies suspended on the tailgate of the truck.

Another video shows the truck seeming to arrive in Dara’a City. The bloodied and broken bodies of the SAA soldiers are jostled and mocked by bystanders and armed militants. Two men lift the head of one soldier to camera and laugh,  the soldier’s face is covered in fresh blood. That video has been removed from most sites including YouTube. The link to my tweet is here but the footage is extremely distressing.

Photos from the Facebook page of one of the armed groups – showing the four SAA soldiers captured during the massacre at the Air Defence Base. 

In a video posted by Al Bunyan Al Marsous (BM) operations room, they take responsibility for the massacre, celebrating the bloodbath to camera. Four SAA soldiers were taken captive that day. 1. Khaled Khleif alFares from the northern countryside of Hama, Makta’a al-Hajar, Fifth brigade. 2. Yousef Ahmad al-Sajer from al-Hasakeh, Raas al-Ayn, Fifth brigade. 3. Essa Ya’koub Ahmad from the countryside of Damascus, al-Ziabiyyeh, Fifth Brigade.  4. Muhannad Khaleifeh Shehadeh from the northern countryside of Hama, Makta’a al-Hajar, Fifth brigade.

In the photos shown above we can see the BM logo in the top left hand corner of the photographs. According to the video footage I have found, these four SAA soldiers were brought back to Dara’a City close to the White Helmet center that I visited. The truck carrying the dead bodies of the martyred SAA soldiers of the Fifth Brigade also returned to the same area.

BM released another video showing three of the captives speaking to camera. The fourth captive, Muhannad Khaleifeh Shehadeh from Hama was brought to what looked like a “medical center” where he was questioned aggressively by the armed militants standing around his bed. At the end of the video link, one of the armed extremists tells the “medical” staff to “fix” the soldier, to keep him alive for interrogation. These soldiers were eventually released as part of the reconciliation deals, in July 2018.

Now lets go back to what Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid said to me while in the White Helmet center.

“So our work is plain humanitarian work, and when we used to bring soldiers here, we used to respect them and treat them as one of us, because all Syrians are losing.” ~ Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid

We have made the connection between HTS and associated armed groups and the White Helmets. We have determined that the White Helmet center was once more in the grounds of a Nusra Front- dominated complex, as were all the White Helmet centers that I visited in the south. We have ascertained the high probability that the bodies of the SAA soldiers were brought back to the vicinity of the White Helmet centers in Dara’a City. We have see that a White Helmet operative was picking through the mutilated corpses of the freshly killed SAA soldiers and we heard that he was “sacked” for participating in what was clearly a war crime.

“..we have fired members only because they attended some sort of executions, because we save lives and we do not help anyone to kill any one because it is against humanity and notice that all White Helmet members are full of humanity and sensitive to the extent if you shout at them they cry.” ~ Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid

Eva Bartlett visited Dara’a in September 2018 and she told me:

“When in Daraa city this September, two medics with the Syrian Arab Army told me of not only the terrorist disposal of kidnapped and murdered Syrian soldiers, but also that of the White Helmets. According to the medics, when the Syrian army entered Daraa al-Balad, they asked civilians who had remained there, during the terrorist occupation, about the activities of the White Helmets. Civilians told them they had seen the White Helmets collecting the body parts of Syrian soldiers killed by terrorists, and throwing them away, in bags.”

The British Government has openly said that the White Helmets provide an “invaluable reporting and advocacy role”. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (both severely compromised NGOs who align themselves with U.S and U.K State imperialist policies) have admitted (in the same document) that the White Helmets “are their most routinely reliable source for reporting”.

The British government document goes on to say “(White Helmets) have provided essential corroboration that (Russian) strikes were not targeting Da’esh but moderate opposition entities. This has provided confidence to statements made by UK and other international leaders in condemnation of Russian actions” (emphasis added).

Effectively, asking the White Helmets to provide evidence of their own organisation’s participation in war crimes and collaboration in the atrocities carried out by the “moderate” entities is a hiding to nothing. They are literally paid not to do so as it would jeapordise their role as chief “evidence” provider to corroborate British foreign policy in Syria – regime change. The White Helmets have been given  immunity by the governments that are bankrolling their propaganda construct and they know this.

Despite the White Helmet history of  falsification of evidence , proven by the OPCW interim reporton the alleged Douma chemical attacks that precipitated the FUKUS unlawful aggression against Syria – the White Helmets will not be held to account for enabling a criminal violation of international law by their controlling cartel of rogue nations. The corporate media has circled its wagons around the White Helmet organisation in an effort to prevent the wholesale discrediting of the group as nothing more than a terrorist auxiliary, trained in Turkey and Jordan, sustained with foreign money and upholding the violent, sectarian principles of the armed groups they associate and work with.

Adham Alkarad – Commander of the Engineering and Missile Division of the FSA

Adham Alkarad takes a selfie with one of his creations. He is best known for the Omar rocket, a 500kg rocket that targeted both Syrian military and civilians areas. (Photo: AlKarad’s Facebook page)

While we were talking to the White Helmets in Dara’a Al Balad, a van pulled up with blacked out windows. A man came out, dressed in black and wearing sunglasses. He came straight up to me to find out what we were doing at the center. Once he learned I was British, he visibly relaxed and was less aggressive in his tone. He introduced himself as Akram AlKarad (also known as Abu Qusay). Alkarad was a short man, of stocky build and spoke almost perfect english with an American accent.

As we were about to leave, we didnt have much time with AlKarad. He pulled me to one side and told me that armed groups under his control had not accepted reconciliation.

“We didnt fight 6 years for this. We didnt fight to capitulate now” 

I asked AlKarad why he wanted to continue with violence after all the death and destruction that Syrians had endured for 7 years.

“We are not armed. We only have light weapons but we will keep protesting. There will be a protest in the Omari Mosque tomorrow. Why dont you come?”  AlKarad asked me

When I declined, AlKarad became more insistent until eventually he told me:

“Well, if you wont come, I will call the BBC and CNN directly to make sure they cover the protests here tomorrow.”  (empahasis added)

At this point the mood had become tense and we decided to leave the White Helmet center and head back to the outskirts of Daraa. When we returned to the SAA headquarters, one of the Generals told me that AlKarad had been responsible for the design and manufacture of the 500kg Omar rocket. The General took his shirt off to show me the multiple shrapnel scars that covered his torso from an attack by Alkarad’s brigade on the SAA Military HQ and surrounding civilian areas.

Taken from the Facebook page of Alkarad’s brigade – the logo is in the top left hand corner – The Engineering and Missile Battalion. 

These so called “moderates” described in western media as “rebels” had an arsenal of weaponry that defies the image of “grass-roots revolutionaries” so pervasive in the West. I have compiled a series of videos produced by AlKarad and his Engineering and Missile battalion (EM) which demonstrates the fire-power that these “moderates” were able to produce and obtain. AlKarad was the leader of the EM battalion which became later the EM regiment which is part of “18 March” Brigade of the FSA.

The video clips have been taken from AlKarad and his EM regiment Facebook pages. The logo of the regiment can be seen on the majority of the clips used. WATCH:

It is also clear from the list of members of the BM operations room that Alkarad’s EM belonged to the group. Alkarad himself has posted statements from BM to his FB page, here . In May 2016 AlKarad issued a statement on his Facebook page giving civilians 3 days to evacuate areas in Daraa under the control of the SAA, before AlKarad would launch an offensive  with the “Storm” surface to surface rockets. The statement ends with the chilling justification for the potential deaths of civilians in those areas “After the warning period has expired, we will be innocent in front of God”. The “Storm” rocket is a hugely destructive missile and there would be a very high likelihood of a civilian massacre yet this is not explored by the corporate media when they report on the “rebel” campaigns of devastation and terror.

Photos on the EM regiment Facebook page show the corpses of SAA soldiers early June 2017 before the attack on the Air Defence Base on the 20th June. In September 2016, AlKarad published a speech on his YouTube channel calling for intervention by Pakistan, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia in solidarity with “Sunni muslims”, he also calls upon other nations to stand by the Syrian “revolution”. AlKarad reads his speech in English in a clear attempt to influence his western supporters.

An excerpt from AlKarad’s speech (English with Arabic subtitles). Watch video here.

In March 2017, AlKarad published a statement to his Facebook page, from BM,  threatening the SAA soldiers and positions in Al Manshia, only two months before the attack on the Air Defence Base.

The Abu Baker missile produced by AlKarad’s EM regiment (Photo: Regiment Facebook page)

Conclusions

The fact that AlKarad turned up at the White Helmet center in Dara’a Al Balad so soon after we started talking to the members is indicative of his influence in the area and over the British Government “propaganda construct”. The fact that AlKarad told me he would contact CNN and BBC directly is an indication of the direct lines of contact between U.S and U.K state media outlets and the leaders of the armed groups in Syria. We have published videos showing the White Helmets sporting the FSA logo, during a training exercise. The fact that one of their early group leaders was an armed member of the FSA and a founder of the military factions in Dara’a, again suggests that the White Helmets in Dara’a had very clear partiality towards the “moderate” extremist factions who promote sectarian division to push for international intervention in Syria.

AlKarad profile picture on his Facebook page. 

AlKarad’s EM regiment was a part of the Al Bunyan Al Marsous attack on the Air Defence Base. The SAA bodies and captives were brought back to Dara’a City. A White Helmet was seen particpating in and celebrating the dismemberment of those bodies. Eva Bartlett was told that civilians in Dara’a had witnessed the White Helmet operatives cutting up the bodies of SAA soldiers and putting them in plastic bags before throwing them in the rubbish dump. We see a rubbish dump in the video of the White Helmet, tweeted by Ali Kourani.

Abu Mohanad Al Mahamid interview in Daraa Al Balad. (Photo: Screenshot)

A White Helmet operative has told me that if a White Helmet faction is led by Nusra Front (many are according to Al Mahamid), then it follows that the whole group will be Nusra Front. The White Helmets in Dara’a were originally led by a member of the FSA – Abdellah Assarhan. Following Al Mahamid’s logic then all members of the Dara’a White Helmets will be FSA and involved in furthering the sectarian aims of the FSA in Dara’a.

It is simply not good enough to “sack” a member of the White Helmets who has participated in excecutions, torture, brutality and violence. The prima facie evidence is now strong enough that there should be a demand for a public enquiry into this organisation.  The White Helmets provide the majority of “evidence” used by the British government and its allies in the U.S Coaltion, to shape their foreign policy in Syria and to support their systematic violation of international law and unlawful aggression against Syria and her allies. The White Helmets and the governments that finance them, and effectively provide them with immunity from accountability, should all be brought to justice for the crimes they have committed against the sovereign nation of Syria.

*

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Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team. Please support her work at her Patreon account. 

In the midst of an ever-escalating tariff war, I do not share the view that Sino-American tensions are all about trade imbalances. The real battle is a strategic clash over innovation and technology — the Holy Grail of any nation’s prosperity. 

Yes, there is a large and seemingly chronic trade imbalance between the United States and China that is growing even wider today. But this is just as much a function of America’s own macroeconomic problems as a reflection of unfair Chinese trading practices long alleged by the Washington consensus and now underscored by the shrill rhetoric of the Trump Administration.

The United States suffers from a chronic deficiency of domestic saving. Its net national saving rate was just 3% in the first half of 2018 — up a bit from the 1.9% post-crisis average (2009-17) but still less than half the 6.3% norm of the final three decades of the 20^th century. Lacking in saving and wanting to invest, consume, and grow, the US must import surplus saving from abroad and run massive current account and trade deficits to attract foreign capital.

Therein lies Trump’s folly. The United States had trade deficits with 102 nations in 2017 — a multilateral problem.¹ By opting for budget-busting tax cuts in late 2017, America’s already depressed domestic saving will move sharply lower in the years ahead, pushing its current account and trade gaps even deeper into deficit. Moves to rectify this imbalance with tariffs against China will only backfire. The Chinese piece of the trade deficit will shift to higher-cost trading partners, putting more pressure on American consumers. That is already happening. There can be no bilateral fix for a multilateral problem.

Trade deficits are a foil for a far more profound struggle between the US and China. A recent White House policy paper says it all: “…the Chinese State seeks to access the crown jewels of American technology and intellectual property.”² White House advisor Peter Navarro adds that, “China has targeted America’s industries of the future … if China successfully captures these emerging industries, America will have no economic future.”³

These charges draw heavily on the March findings of a so-called Section 301 investigation conducted by the US Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, a report which has become central to the national anti-China narrative.⁴ Unfortunately, the USTR’s conclusions are wide of the mark in four areas:⁵

1. Joint ventures. Allegations of forced technology transfers through the JV structure overlook the most basic aspect of these arrangements — two partners working together willingly, in the context of commercially and legally binding agreements, to create a business that requires a sharing of personnel, systems, and processes. That was certainly my own experience as a senior executive in a joint venture between my former employer, Morgan Stanley, and the China Construction Bank in building China’s first investment bank, CICC. At no point was I forced to turn over anything to my Chinese partners.
2. Allegations of stealing America’s secrets via cyberhacking were addressed in the Sunnylands Summit of 2015 between Presidents Obama and Xi; since then, cyber incursions have been sharply reduced, a point overlooked by the USTR in its emphasis on cyberhacking activity that largely predates this summit.
3. Outbound capture. The USTR also charges China with technology theft through its “going out” policies of acquiring US companies and their proprietary systems. Such allegations of predatory behavior are exaggerated. Tabulations by the American Enterprise Institute find that only 16 of China’s 228 outward bound global M&A deals over the decade ending in 2017 were in the technology sector; that compares with fully 51 deals in the real estate sector over the same period.⁶
4. Industrial policy. The USTR insists that China is using industrial policies, such as Made in China 2025 or AI 2030, to gain an unfair advantage in the acquisition of foreign technology. Yet from Japan to Germany to Pentagon-sponsored innovations of America’s military-industrial complex, industrial policies have been more the rule than the exception for today’s leading economies.

Unfortunately, there is a striking element of hypocrisy that runs through the USTR’s accusations of Chinese intellectual property theft. In the 19^th century, Great Britain, Continental Europe and the United States all engaged in a multitude of flagrant abuses of technology transfers. There are countless examples of industrial espionage, illegal recruitment, the kidnapping of foreign workers with knowledge of proprietary production techniques, trademark counterfeiting, and the artificial protection of interlocking patents.⁷ This is not to say China should be excused just because others did the same. But historical context and precedent can hardly be ignored in putting today’s accusations in perspective.

The allegations leveled against China by the USTR make it sound as if the Chinese are interlopers — that they have no rightful claim to the hallowed ground of innovation that has long defined the prosperity of nations. That overlooks the simple but important fact that ancient China was the world’s preeminent innovator. From agricultural production to textile weaving, from paper and printing to missiles and gunpower, from magnetic polarity and navigational guidance to breakthroughs in civil and mechanical engineering and nautics, from discoveries of ferrous metallurgy and ceramic technology, China’s extraordinary breakthroughs in science and technology came well before the 18^th and 19^th century agricultural and industrial revolutions in Europe, and the United States.⁸ By the late 11^th century, China’s per capita iron output was five to six times the European average; by the 13^th century, Chinese textile spinning was operating at efficiency levels that Europe would not enjoy for another 500 years.⁹

The real question is not whether ancient China knew how to innovate, but why the China of the 14^thcentury didn’t capitalize on its innovative culture through its own industrial revolution.

China’s lag in science and technology became especially acute in the first 75 years of the 20^th century, brought on by the combination of the collapse of the late Qing dynasty, the national revolution, and the inward-looking focus of Mao Zedong. But this gap was more a function of systemic failures in China’s political system than a loss of the creative DNA of the Chinese people. The same culture that gave us magnetic polarity, gunpowder, and paper is perfectly capable of doing it again.

While the innovation debate is of critical importance to the current dispute between the US and China, it raises an even deeper question: Will China make the transition from imported to home-grown, or indigenous, innovation that is required to avoid the dreaded “middle-income trap” which has long ensnared most developing nations?¹⁰

On this count, there are five pieces of compelling evidence to believe that China will pull it off:

1. Silicon Valley-like hubs. Hubs provide the cultural assimilation between leading universities, venture capital investors, and serial entrepreneurs. China has established 17 tech hubs.¹¹ The most notable include the so-called Greater Bay Area (the broader Pearl River Delta area — Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangdong), Z-Park in Beijing (Zhongguancun Software Park), and the Guangzhou Innovation Hub. Comparable efforts have sprung up in Shanghai Pudong (i.e., Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park as well as the Lujiazui fintech incubation center) and, more recently, at Tsinghua University (the Tsinghua Institute for Artificial Intelligence).
2. Start-up companies. Hubs foster start-ups, providing incentives for a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. Over the past decade, the Chinese start-up culture has hit its stride. China now has over 160 “unicorns” – private companies with valuations in excess of $1 billion each — versus about 130 unicorns in the United States.¹² China’s unicorns span the gamut — from the fintech of internet finance, to a vast e-commerce platform, to online travel, to cloud computing, to big data management, to new energy, and logistics. Moreover, there is also a large population of listed Chinese companies which are already on the leading edge of the global innovation curve – from e-commerce and social media giants like Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, and Baidu, to world-class leaders in DNA sequencing and biogenetics such as BGI and Hengri, to high-speed rail, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence, where China and the United States are the global leaders in what could well be this century’s most important technology gambit.
3. Strategy and governance. The lessons of ancient China are not without interest in assessing the future of Chinese innovation and technological development. Then, as now, success hinges on implementation and effective governance to catalyze the creative spark of entrepreneurs and innovators. China’s two high-profile industrial polices, Made in China 2025 (MIC2025) and Artificial Intelligence 2030 (AI2030), are clear signs that modern China will differentiate itself from its ancient past.
4. China’s innovation DNA. China’s DNA as an unparalleled historic innovator is very much evident today. Chinese educational reforms are now turning out more than 5 million graduates per year in the so-called STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering.¹³ And it’s not just quantity — the quality is increasingly impressive. From nanoscience and nanotechnology, to quantum networking, to stem-cell research and regenerative medicine, to gene editing and the genetics of cancer research, to AI-related breakthroughs that put China, at most, only one year behind the United States in this key leading edge area. The new innovators of modern China speak volumes to the nation’s own “crown jewels” — as do the added synergies coming from some 350,000 Chinese students studying in American universities, many specializing in science and technology.
5. R&D. US National Science Foundation data put Chinese spending on overall research and development of $409 billion in 2015 (in international dollars) — nearly double that of 2010 and second only to America’s $497-billion; significantly, fully 84% of overall Chinese R&D expenditures is earmarked for “experimental development,” making China the global leader in this leading-edge category. Equally compelling, the NSF also reports that in 2016 China surpassed the United States as the world’s leader in academic science and engineering publications.¹⁴

This evidence takes us to an even bigger question: Is China coming full circle — from an ancient civilization that once led the world in innovation and technology to a modern nation now focused on research, scientific development, indigenous innovation, and commercialization of these activities? By fixating on IP theft, cyberhacking, and forced technology transfer, and ignoring their contribution to US as well as Chinese technological advances, the USTR’s stress on the dark side of Chinese innovation allows for literally no consideration of this possibility. That may well be one of America’s most egregious blunders.

Let me end where I started, with the clash. Much has been made over the race for technological supremacy as the decisive factor in the struggle for economic dominance between China and the United States. There is, however, an alternative perspective. Each economy needs the productivity payback from technology and innovation for its own purposes – China to avoid the middle-income trap and the United States to counter the risks of economic stagnation that might well arise from another productivity slowdown that now appears to be under way.¹⁵ Resolving the innovation dilemma does not imply defeating the other in the arena of global power. This contrast between the zero-sum imagery of the conflict and a win-win outcome of mutual success is of great potential importance in understanding and ultimately resolving the strains in the US-Sino relationship.

This alternative interpretation leads to a very different set of issues — not just for China but also for the United States. As an American, I will put it bluntly: Is the China fixation of the US Trade Representative, to say nothing of the more extreme charges of Peter Navarro and President Trump, the real challenge that the United States needs to face in the years ahead?

In the end, America’s race, like that of most nations, is more with itself than with any purported foreign adversary. America’s scapegoating of China would make Don Quixote blush. It is a convenient excuse for ducking the tough issues of economic strategy that the United States has avoided for decades – namely, its saving and productivity imperatives. Both the US and China face formidable economic challenges in the years ahead. While the short-term economic outlook for China has become problematic, its longer-term prospects remain solid. The oppostite is the case for the United States — impressive short-term momentum but serious longer-term issues. Both nations win if they solve their own problems. They both lose if they attack the other in a destructive and diversionary trade war.

Over time, there is a growing risk that perception becomes reality. The US body politic is in danger of convincing itself that China, a nation with a long and rich heritage as a leader in technological innovation, now needs to cheat in order to regain that edge and in doing so will stop at nothing short of the outright theft of the crown jewels of America’s economic primacy, its intellectual property.

China, for its part, is increasingly convinced that it is being victimized by an American containment strategy aimed at restricting its geostrategic role as well as limiting its progress on the road to indigenous innovation, sustained development, and prosperity.

The longer the current US-China dispute persists, the deeper those convictions are likely to become ingrained on both sides of the relationship. And then, the long and tragic history of struggles between rising and ruling powers — the so-called Thucydides Trap¹⁶ — will become all the more relevant. Resolving the innovation dilemma is key to avoiding that potentially dire outcome.

This article is based on a speech recently made in Hong Kong at an AmCham China Conference event.

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Stephen S. Roach, Senior Fellow, Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and former Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia.

Notes

¹ See Stephen S. Roach, “A Bilateral Foil for America’s Multilateral Dilemma,” Project Syndicate, May 2018

² See White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, “How China’s Economic Aggression Threatens the Technologies and Intellectual Property of the United States and the World,” June 2018.

³ CNBC interview with Peter Navarro, June 19, 2018

⁴ See Office of the United States Trade Representative, “Findings of the Investigation Into China’s Acts, Policies, and Practices Related to Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, and Innovation Under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974,” March 22, 2018 

⁵ The four points below draw on Stephen Roach, “America’s Weak Case Against China,” Project Syndicate, April 2018

⁶ See American Enterprise Institute, China Global Investment Tracker.

⁷ See Ha-Joon Chang, “Intellectual Property Rights and Economic Development: Historical Lessons and Emerging Issues,” Journal of Human Development, 2001; also see, Charles R. Morris, “We Were Pirates, Too,” Foreign Policy, May 2018.

⁸ See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volumes I-VII, Cambridge University Press, 1954-98; also see, Colin A. Ronan, The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China, Books 1-3, Cambridge University Press 1978-86

⁹ See Justin Yifu Lin, “The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 1995

¹⁰ See B. Kang, et. al., “Avoiding the Middle-income Trap: Indigenous innovative effort vs foreign innovative effort,” IDE Discussion Paper No. 509, March 2015

¹¹ See CB Insights, Global Tech Hubs Report, 2018

¹² See Torch High Technology Industry Development Center of China’s Ministry of Science and Technology jointly with Great Wall Strategy Consultants in Beijing, March 23, 2018

¹³ Source: N. McCarthy, “The Countries with the Most STEM Graduates,” Forbes, Feb. 2017

¹⁴ National Science Board, 2018 Science & Engineering Indicators, US National Science Foundation, Washington, DC

¹⁵ D.M. Byrne, et. al., “Does the United States have a Productivity Slowdown or a Measurement Problem?” Finance and Economic Discussion Series, Federal Reserve Board, Mar 2016 

¹⁶ See Graham T. Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape the Thucydides’s Trap? Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017

Featured image is from APJJF.

Read Part I and II here.

Candidates from a military-intelligence background are seeking the Democratic Party nomination in 40 percent of the congressional districts targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the 2018 elections. They make up the largest single occupational group running in the Democratic primaries. If the Democratic military-intelligence candidates won all 44 of the districts in which they are running—which is theoretically possible, if very unlikely—they would constitute, as a bloc, ten percent of the membership of the House of Representatives.

From the State Department to Capitol Hill

The final category of military-intelligence candidates consists of veterans of the US State Department during the Obama years, most of them former aides to Hillary Clinton. These are among the best financed and most publicized of the likely Democratic nominees. In the event of a Democratic “wave” in November, most would find themselves with seats in Congress.

Tom Malinowski, a former congressional aide and Clinton administration official, headed the Washington office of Human Rights Watch for 13 years before joining the Obama administration under Secretary of State John Kerry as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. He is seeking the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Leonard Lance.

Lauren Baer was a legal adviser to both Secretaries Clinton and Kerry, as well as US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She is now seeking the Democratic nomination in the 18th District of Florida, where her principal opponent is Pam Keith, a former judge advocate general in the US Navy and now legal counsel to Florida Power & Light. Both women push additional buttons for identity politics, as Baer is openly gay and Keith is African-American.

Nancy Soderberg is a longtime US foreign policy figure going back to the Clinton administration, first at the National Security Council, then as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, then as an alternate US representative at the UN Security Council with the rank of ambassador. She has spent much of her time since then heading private overseas operations like the International Crisis Group, while playing a prominent role in the Florida Democratic Party. She is effectively unchallenged for the Democratic nomination in Florida’s 6th Congressional District (Daytona Beach), where the incumbent Republican Ron DeSantis is running for governor.

Edward Meier was a senior adviser to the State Department. According to his campaign website, he “was responsible for coordinating the military-to-civilian transition in Iraq—ensuring our diplomats and aid workers would be safe and secure after the withdrawal of US troops. In this role, he traveled to Iraq on multiple official trips working closely with the US military and the Iraqi government. …” He went on to be director of policy outreach for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Meier fell short Tuesday in his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 32nd District of Texas, finishing fourth out of five Democrats running against incumbent Republican Pete Sessions in a suburban Dallas district Clinton carried over Donald Trump, even though he spent the most money.

Sara Jacobs is another State Department official turned Clinton campaign aide, working on “conflict zones in East and West Africa,” particularly the campaign against Boko Haram in Nigeria, and helping to “spearhead President Obama’s efforts to improve governance in the security sector of our counterterrorism partners,” according to her campaign website. She was a foreign policy adviser to the Clinton campaign and is now seeking the Democratic nomination in California’s 49th District, where incumbent Darrell Issa is retiring.

Jacobs is the best-financed Democrat in the race, as befits the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, but at age 29 she would be the youngest congresswoman ever, and she has been snubbed in favor of several more experienced rivals by recent Democratic Party caucuses. One of her opponents is Douglas Applegate, a career Marine Corps judge advocate general with combat tours in Fallujah, Baghdad and Ramadi, who narrowly lost the 2016 race to Issa.

Talley Sergent, yet another State Department official turned Clinton campaign aide, is running in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Charleston, against two-term incumbent Republican Alex Mooney. A former aide to Senator Jay Rockefeller, Sergent worked on slavery and sex trafficking at the State Department, then managed Clinton’s disastrous campaign in West Virginia before becoming a public relations executive for The Coca-Cola Co.

Challenging her for the Democratic nomination is Aaron Scheinberg, West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran, deployed first as a platoon leader in the 4th Infantry Division, then as a civil affairs officer in Haswah, Iraq. Scheinberg is now executive director of The Mission Continues, a nonprofit promoting the employment of veterans, whose board of directors includes such figures as Michele Flournoy, Pentagon undersecretary in the Obama administration; Meghan O’Sullivan, Iraq director for the National Security Council under George W. Bush; and retired General Ray S. Odierno, former commander of US forces in Iraq.

Jessica Morse was Iraq country coordinator for the State Department in the course of “over a decade as a national security strategist,” according to her website. She worked for the US Agency for International Development, a longtime CIA front, then as adviser to the US Pacific Command, where she “strengthened the US-India defense relationship … and worked to counter terrorist threats in South Asia.” Her opponent for the Democratic nomination in the 4th District of California, to face Republican incumbent Tom McClintock, is another former State Department officer, Regina Bateson, who was a vice-consul in Guatemala and “studied terrorist travel and border security,” according to her campaign website.

A stealth candidate—and some celebrities

The American corporate media has been slow to comment on the extraordinary influx of military and intelligence officers into the Democratic Party’s 2018 congressional campaign. The media prefers to cover the campaign from the standpoint of secondary characteristics, focusing on the great number of women running for office, mainly as Democrats, supposedly in response to Trump’s misogyny.

An exception to this pattern was the article February 8 by the Capitol Hill publication Roll Call, under the headline, “Active-Duty Candidates Can Run—But Can They Campaign?” The article profiled a Tennessee Democratic congressional candidate, Matt Reel, who was called up from his reserve status for a five-month deployment with the 20th Special Forces Group (Green Berets). According to the article, “Even Matt Reel’s staff doesn’t know where he’s deployed.”

Image on the right: Matt Reel

Reel announced his campaign for the 7th District seat shortly after incumbent Republican Marsha Blackburn announced that she was leaving the House of Representatives to run for the US Senate seat from Tennessee currently held by Bob Corker, who is retiring. Because of the late announcements, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has not yet targeted the district and Reel is not included in the figures cited earlier in this article.

The unusual situation for Reel is that, under Pentagon rules, he cannot direct his own campaign while he is on active duty. His aides and supporters can continue to campaign, but he is barred from communicating with them in any way. Reel is not even allowed to tell them where he is, since the military deployment is covert. This truly “dark horse” candidate left his campaign having shot a few commercials and other video material, and will return a month or so before the August 2 primary.

Reel is one more example of a candidate from the “black ops” section of the military running as a Democrat. In his case, the two cannot be separated: he has been a Democratic Party functionary and a Green Beret since completing college. A former chief of staff to Alabama Representative Terri Sewell, his most recent position was deputy staff director for the Democrats on the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

While Reel is considered an extreme long-shot as a candidate, running in a district won by the Republicans in 2016 by a 3-1 margin, the DCCC is heavily promoting a number of career military candidates, most of them women, as star recruits for the most competitive districts in 2018, those where a switch from Republican to Democratic control is most likely. These candidates have access to funding far beyond what would be expected for first-time candidates without huge personal resources.

Running in the 31st District of Texas is Mary Jennings Hegar, a helicopter pilot and certified military celebrity—Angelina Jolie is cast to play her in a biographical film based on her memoir, Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front. Hegar came to prominence through a lawsuit against the Pentagon policy of barring women from combat. Opposing her for the nomination to face incumbent Republican John Carter is Kent Lester, a West Point graduate and career military officer who retired as a lieutenant colonel after deployments to Panama and Bosnia, among other locations.

In Virginia’s 2nd District, which encompasses the Norfolk-Hampton Roads area with its complex of naval bases and shipyards, the DCCC has promoted Elaine Luria, one of the first Navy women to serve as an officer on a nuclear-powered ship, as its favored candidate under the “Red-to-Blue” program. Luria has “deployed six times to the Middle East and Western Pacific as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer.” She was second-in-command of a guided missile cruiser and commanded assault craft supporting a Marine Corps deployment.

Other military candidates who had already raked in more than one million dollars in campaign funds in 2017, the year before the election, and have been widely publicized in local media in their districts, include:

Mikie Sherrill, a career Navy helicopter pilot, with ten years’ active service in Europe and the Middle East, now a federal prosecutor. She reported raising $1,230,000 by December 31, 2017 for her campaign for the Democratic nomination in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, where incumbent Republican Rodney Freylingheusen is retiring.

Chrissy Houlahan, a former US Air Force captain, has raised $1,228,000 for her campaign in Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District, against incumbent Republican Ryan Costello.

Amy McGrath, a career Marine fighter pilot with 89 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, has raised $1,133,000 for her campaign in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Andy Barr.

Some political conclusions

There is growing popular hostility to the Trump administration, but within the political straitjacket of the two-party system, it is trapped without any genuine outlet. In November 2016, faced with the choice of equally repugnant ruling class figures—Hillary Clinton, the longtime stooge of Wall Street and the Pentagon, and Donald Trump, the corrupt billionaire from the financial underworld of real estate swindling and casino gambling—millions refused to vote. But disappointment and anger over the bankrupt, right-wing policies of the Obama administration led a sufficient number of working people to vote for Trump, particularly in devastated industrial states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, that he could eke out an Electoral College victory despite losing the popular vote.

The 2018 elections could well see a similar process, but in reverse. Angered by the tax cuts for the wealthy and big business, the gutting of social programs like Medicaid and food stamps, the attacks on immigrants and democratic rights more generally, and Trump’s threats of military violence and even nuclear war, millions of working people, however reluctantly, will go to the polls to cast their ballots for the official “opposition,” the Democratic Party, which does not actually oppose Trump at all.

It is by no means certain that the Democrats will win control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm election on November 6. But the details presented in this report demonstrate that a Democratic victory would in no sense represent a shift to the left in capitalist politics.

In a sense, the Democratic Party’s promotion of a large number of military-intelligence candidates for competitive districts represents an insurance policy for the US ruling elite. In the event of a major swing to the Democrats, the House of Representatives will receive an influx of new members drawn primarily from the national security apparatus, trusted servants of American imperialism.

Parenthetically, it should be noted that there would be no comparable influx of Bernie Sanders supporters or other “left”-talking candidates in the event of a Democratic landslide. Only five of the 221 candidates reviewed in this study had links to Sanders or billed themselves as “progressive.” None is likely to win the primary, let alone the general election.

When the dust clears after November 6, 2018, there will almost certainly be more former CIA agents in the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives than former Sanders activists. It is the military-intelligence operatives who constitute the spine of the Democratic Party, not the Sanders “Our Revolution” group. This is a devastating verdict on the claims of the Vermont senator, backed by various pseudo-left groups, that it is possible to reform the Democratic Party and push it to the left.

The preponderance of national security operatives in the Democratic primaries sheds additional light on the nature of the Obama administration. Far from representing a resurgence of liberal reformism, as apologists for the Democrats like the International Socialist Organization claimed at the time of his election, Obama’s eight years in office marked the further ascendancy of the military-intelligence apparatus within the Democratic Party.

This is demonstrated by the subsequent role of his top personnel. Among the former Obama civilian officials who are running in the Democratic primaries for seats in the House of Representatives, 16 served in the State Department, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security or National Security Council, while only five served in domestic agencies. One of those, Haley Stevens, was chief of staff for the Obama auto industry task force, which imposed 50 percent wage cuts on newly hired auto workers. Among the five, only Stevens is considered a likely winner in the primary.

The Democratic Party has always been a party of the American capitalist class, and that means, from the dawn of the 20th century on, it has been a party of imperialism and imperialist war, whatever the occasional “peace” noises made by its candidates for the purpose of diverting and derailing mass antiwar sentiment among the American people.

For more than a century, a major political task of the Marxist movement in the United States has been to combat illusions in the Democratic Party, particularly those engendered by its comparatively brief periods of reformist politics, under President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, and again during the Kennedy-Johnson years of the 1960s. The struggle against the Democratic Party, as well as the Republicans, remains the main focus of the effort to establish the political independence of the working class.

But the 2018 campaign represents something qualitatively different. Neither party offers any credible prospect of significant social reform. Both offer right-wing nostrums, laced with militarism, while seeking to split the working class along the lines of race, gender and national origin.

The campaign takes place in the wake of more than a year of unrelenting focus by the Democrats on the anti-Russian campaign, a narrative claiming that Trump’s victory in the presidential election was the result of Russian interference and that Trump is, for all practical purposes, a Russian stooge in the White House.

Not a shred of evidence has been provided either of Russian interference or of collusion with Russia on the part of the Trump campaign. Nor is there any suggestion that there was any significant element of fraud in either the vote or its tabulation by local and state governments.

But the Democratic Party has deliberately sought to whip up and appeal to the most right-wing, McCarthyite, chauvinist sentiments. It denounces Trump not for his right-wing policies, his immigrant baiting, his consorting with fascists and white supremacists, or his tax cut bonanza for the wealthy, but because he is allegedly insufficiently committed to confronting Russia militarily in the Middle East, Central Asia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe and the Baltic.

Clinton ran in 2016 as the favored candidate of the military-intelligence apparatus, amassing hundreds of endorsements by retired generals, admirals and spymasters, and criticizing Trump as unqualified to be the commander-in-chief.

This political orientation has developed and deepened in 2018. The Democratic Party is running in the congressional elections not only as the party that takes a tougher line on Russia, but as the party that enlists as its candidates and representatives those who have been directly responsible for waging war, both overt and covert, on behalf of American imperialism. It is seeking to be not only the party for the Pentagon and CIA, but the party of the Pentagon and CIA.

This is not merely a result of the political psychology or even the career paths of those who make up the upper echelon of the Democratic Party. It has a social and class character. The Democratic Party has long abandoned even a limited role as a party pledging social reforms in the interests of working people as a whole, in favor of the promotion of privileges for sections of the upper-middle class, doled out on the basis of identity politics.

The Democratic Party proposes a certain redistribution of wealth and power within the most privileged layer of the population, while leaving the essential social structure unchanged, with society divided between the super-rich at the top, a privileged upper-middle class, perhaps ten percent or less, and below them, the vast majority of working people, whose conditions of life continue to deteriorate as the economic “recovery” from the 2008 Wall Street crash approaches its tenth year.

The upper-middle-class layer that provides the “mass” base of the Democratic Party has moved drastically to the right over the past four decades, enriched by the stock market boom, consciously hostile to the working class, and enthusiastically supportive of the military-intelligence apparatus which, in the final analysis, guarantees its own social position against potential threats, both foreign and domestic. It is this social evolution that now finds expression on the surface of capitalist politics, in the rise of the military-intelligence “faction” to the leadership of the Democratic Party.

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Janjak Desalin (Jean Jacques Dessalines), said, “I Want the Assets of the Country to be Equitably Divided” and for that he was assassinated, 212 years ago today.

Nearly a million Haitians took to the streets nationwide in Haiti today, October 17, 2018. The day marked the 212th year anniversary of the assassination of Haiti’s liberator and founding father Janjak Desalin by the mulatto sons of France and their slave-making European fathers and white settler colonists. The comical colonial co-option was obvious as many of the suspected criminals/Bafyòti who are at the heart of Haiti’s neocolonial corruption and who are accused of stealing state funds, entered the demonstrations, also asking for the stolen monies to be returned and for a stop to impunity! But the people know who they are. The Haitian population assures they are mobilized in an unprecedented manner and won’t be distracted…. Haitians died today. They want the Western-imposed government out of Haiti. They want an end to impunity. The people of Haiti want the $3.8 billion PetroCaribe funds returned to Haiti with a legitimate government ruling.

Honor to Defile – Kouwon pou Defile, the warrior mother who gathered the pieces of our Liberator and held on to our dignity on that October day, 212 years ago, as Aset did for Kmt. Thank you Defile!

If I am a whole human being today I have to say: Thank you Desalin! End the Unjust System.

***

Whereas Canada claims to have a “feminist” foreign policy, based on humanitarian, and civilizing considerations, “we” support al Qaeda and affiliated terrorists in Syria and beyond. How to explain this glaring contradiction?  

As Canadians, we are immersed in colonial mindsets and institutions. In fact, we actively destroy human rights in Syria, and everywhere else we target militarily. Libya is very anti-feminist (and pro-slavery)[1] thanks to us. Prior to the NATO war on Libya, the country boasted the highest standard of living in Africa.[2]

Kiev is neo-Nazi infested[3] thanks to our “interventions”, and Afghanistan is very anti-feminist despite Amnesty International’s 2012 urging, ‘NATO: keep the progress going’,[4] on women’s rights in Afghanistan.

We are sold (and easily accept) the lie that Assad is a “brutal dictator”[5] presumably so Canadians will think that we are “saving” Syrians. His replacement will be ISIS/al Qaeda.

Would this be “good governance”?

We already know what western-imposed “good governance” looks like in terrorist-occupied areas of Syria. Terrorist-gangs slaughter each other and civilians, torture, behead, use coercive tactics such as hoarding of food and medicine, enslave people, selectively follow fundamentalist “interpretations” of Sharia Law, forbid regular, secular schooling for kids, train child terrorists, kidnap, engage in sex slavery, organ harvesting, and economies of plunder, use humans as shields, impose destitution, poverty, and disemployment and on and on. How are these criminal depravities “humanitarian” or “civilizing”? In what ways do they represent “democracy and freedom”?

What about “revolutions”? Are regime-change wars using proxy fanatic terrorists revolutions to be supported? Since when are al Qaeda and affiliated terrorists “rebels”?

The colonial lies are outrageous, and completely disconnected from reality, but we believe them nonetheless because our minds have been colonized by 24/7 mind-numbing colonial media and colonial political “representatives”.

Can we escape from this barbaric supremacist mindset that permeates our lives and our minds? Prof. Anderson provides some solutions.[6] He urges, for example, that we should

• consider historically different views of the nation-state, 
• consider the importance of the principle of self-determination, 
• consider avoiding “systematically deceitful corporate media” and 
• challenge the illusions of the “western civilizing influence.” 

As US-led NATO and its vassal states target one country after another for destruction, we would do well to remember that the transnational oligarchy and their policymaking circles are also targeting you and me, and their foundational ideology is the Big Lie.  

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

1. News.com.au, “Slave auctions in Libya caught on camera.” New York Post, 4 December, 2017.  (https://nypost.com/2017/12/04/slave-auctions-in-libya-caught-on-camera/), Accessed 18 October, 2018.

2. Mark Taliano, “Terror Inc. and the War on Libya.” Global Research, 26 January, 2015. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/terror-inc-and-the-war-on-libya/5426922) Accessed 18 October, 2018.

3. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, “The US Sponsored Neoliberal Neo-Nazi Coup d’Etat in Ukraine. An Act of War.” Global Research, 15 February, 2015/21 March 2014. ( https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-neoliberal-neo-nazi-coup-detat/5431339) Accessed 18 October, 2018.

4. Prof. Tim Anderson, “Afghanistan: Amnesty International lauds war and occupation as ‘progress’ for women.” Stop The War Coalition, Sydney, 20 May, 2012. ( http://links.org.au/node/2876) Accessed 18 October, 2018.

5. Prof. Tim Anderson, “Mr. Soft Heart or Brutal Tyrant? Anti-Assad Narrative Falls Apart at Seams.” Sputnik, 11 March, 2015.( https://sputniknews.com/politics/201511031029549034-assad-high-public-support-syria-elections/) Accessed 18 October, 2018.

6. Prof. Tim Anderson, “Western Intervention and The Colonial Mindset.” Global Research, 20 January, 2015. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/western-intervention-and-the-colonial-mindset/5425633) Accessed 18 October, 2015. 

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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While some people are campaigning to get friends off Facebook due to its authoritarian censorship, I would also like to note that my Facebook network has been a great tool in learning about the hidden mechanisms of our time–often in high resolution, close-up details.  Through Facebook posts I have learned who Muammar Gaddafi really was, what he meant for the Libyan people, and why the West was determined to destroy Libya.  I have learned how the Western governments tried to destroy Syria.  I have learned the century old history of the Western project to destroy Russia.  I have learned how the corporate political party duopoly sells us projects of exploitation and subjugation through their good cop/bad cop marketing scheme.  I have learned how sociopolitical, economic and cultural institutions perpetuate a capitalist hierarchy according to the interests of the ruling class.  

Many of us are learning the structural mechanism of how the global capitalist hierarchy places people under the rule of corporatism, colonialism and militarism, while shelling out schemes after schemes to blind us, divide us, exploit us and subjugate us.  One of my FB friends, the historian Luciana Bohne described what Facebook does with the old saying which is often ascribed to Lenin: “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

We reside within the imperial framework.  There are a myriad ways that we are connected to the structural mechanisms of inhumanity.  The fact that we are a part of the system is a given condition.  It is a challenge to recognize the overall effectiveness of our actions in serving the purpose of bringing about a structural change to forward the interests of the people in harmony with our environment, while we are also a part of the structure.

Obviously, it is a difficult task, balancing ourselves to firmly stand, when we realize that we stand on colonized ground. How do we bring about a new world as we are born into the imperial cage, never fully seeing a world truly based on sharing, mutual respect and harmony with each other and with our environment?

One thing that’s clear is that we need each other to stand straight in raising awareness of the dire necessity of systemic change.  The very act of connecting to one another spreads the critical awareness we need to build, the momentum to push away the decaying order of inhumanity.

Here, again, we must weigh a delicate balance.  I certainly do not suggest that we ignore blatant imperialism in forwarding short term gain.  We must be able to point out false ideas even when they are presented by well known, respected figures.  However, we also do not want to become ideological terrorists, who engage in character assassinations among us with guilt by association, false accusations and fabrications. Those social media suicide bombers do not see the victims as human beings.  They would call names in the most hideous manner and they would baselessly accuse the targets of being government agents. They also often claim to be “socialists”.  I would certainly do not wish to live in a “socialist” world filled with such unhinged people.  Those people effectively divide us while giving the impression of socialism being authoritarian, undemocratic and totalitarian just as it’s advertised by the western establishment.  We must not let those people colonize the ideas of socialism that directly challenge the capitalist domination.  I am sure some of them are supported by the government agencies.

See how such people can cultivate doubts and suspicions among us?  The marginalization and alienation imposed by the capitalist pressure, infiltrations, and direct attacks against dissidents create unhealthy mental conditions of paranoia, delusion and aggression among us.  This is a force of destruction which can break us apart.  The western authorities have known it, have known how to cultivate it for generations. We must be aware of it.

How Much is Your Story?

The capitalist system places different values to different ideas, stories, and things according to how well they fit within the interests of the ruling class.  It is not just the people who are put in a hierarchical order according to their usefulness.  For example, the media, schools, academic fields and society in general systematically value stories that reinforce the official narratives, while diminishing, or outright attacking obstacles that may hinder the integrity of the system.  Isolated incidences, personal anecdotes, or systematic tendencies within certain contexts can be amplified or attenuated to give us an illusion of “reality” to manipulate our perception.

From this perspective, we should note that the mainstream media has been very keen on advertising the sinister aspect of Facebook for some time.  The establishment always attempts to manipulate major forces in our society by such interventions.  With the case of Facebook, however, we also know that it closely resembles a terminated government funded social media program, and that Facebook officials have been willingly working with the imperial establishment in implementing policies.  We certainly must have a realistic expectation toward it as well.

One of the most appropriate examples of the manipulation today would be how Russia has been portrayed in our society. The western establishment has been going all the way back to 1917 to demonize the trajectory of Russia as something that can be simply described as “evil”.  Our school programs, entertainment, literature, music, movies, you name it, every layer of our society is embedded with some sort of bits and pieces indicating that “Stalin was a brutal dictator”, “communism never worked”, “socialism is undemocratic”, “evil is evil” and so on and so forth.  The Western governments have certainly put enormous efforts in setting the trajectory of anti-USSR/Russia as a hegemonic agenda to break Russia apart in extracting its resources while incorporating its people in the western capitalist order.  The demonization has been a necessary step for the imperial assault.

For example, in one of our Facebook exchanges on the topic, author John Steppling provided me with an article in which a Soviet history expert Professor Grover Carr Furr of Montclair State University says:

“The professor pointed out that historian Robert Conquest (the author of “The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purges of the 1930s” who passed away on August 3, 2015) had been working for the British Information Research Department (IRD) since its establishment and up to 1956. The IRD, originally called the Communist Information Bureau, was founded in 1947, when the Cold War era began.

“[The IRD’s’] main task was to combat Communist influence throughout the world by planting stories among politicians, journalists and others in a position to influence public opinion,” Professor Furr explained.

Conquest’s work was to contribute to the so-called “black history” of the Soviet Union, the professor noted, “in other words, fake stories put out as fact and distributed among journalists and others able to influence public opinion.”

“His book The Great Terror, a basic anti-communist text on the subject of the power struggle that took place in the Soviet Union in 1937, was in fact a recompilation of text he had written when working for the secret services. The book was finished and published with the help of the IRD. A third of the publication run was bought by the Praeger Press, normally associated with the publication of literature originating from CIA sources,” Professor Furr pointed out.

The professor remarked that to our days Conquest remains one of the most important sources of material on the Soviet Union for anti-communist and Russophobic historians.

The propagandist activity, masquerading as scholarship, was aimed against the USSR and coordinated by US/British intelligence.

Furr noted that Conquest periodically met with heavy criticism from prominent Western scholars, which blasted him for “consciously falsifying information” about the Soviet Union. In fact Conquest just used any source that was hostile to Stalin and the USSR, turning a blind eye to the fact whether it was reliable or not.”

Another example involves the case of celebrated Soviet defector and author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  His book “The Gulag Archipelago”–detailing atrocious stories of the Soviet prison system–became a huge hit in the West, while Solzhenitsyn himself was subsequently awarded a Nobel Prize.  However, beneath the official approval by the establishment, his reputation is quite questionable to say the least.  Renouned American intellectual Gore Vidal even describes him thus: “He is a bad novelist and a fool. The combination usually makes for great popularity in the US.” Furthermore, according to this article (which also quoted Vidal):

“Solzhenitsyn defected to the West and settled in Vermont for a time. He was a staunch supporter of U.S. imperialism, urging at one point for the U.S. to return to Vietnam and finish the job on the commies there. In time, Solzhenitsyn began to pine away for the glory days of the Tsar and his anti-Semitism became increasingly apparent to the point where even his previous imperialist backers had to abandon him. The only people who seem to invoke his name these days are nutbags from the far right like Alex Jones.”

Here is another article on him.

The atmosphere concocted by the establishment to define certain countries as unconditionally evil gives a special meaning to stories from those countries.  Those stories, whether they are true or false, fundamentally differ in their meaning within the imperial framework compared to, for example, someone from Africa talking about the French colonial atrocities of massacres and mutilations, a black youth talking about police shootings in the US, a Palestinian child talking about losing his or her entire family by Israeli bombing and so on.

The imperial theater gives special roles to stories from the imperial targets.  You might remember a sobbing young girl describing how Iraqi soldiers took babies out of incubators, which, of course, turned out to be a completely fabricated story.  However, it firmly served in reinforcing the western colonial war momentum against Iraq, which ended up killing millions.

Such a dynamic has played a crucial role in building the momentum for propping up a Western puppet government in Ukraine, which has killed over 10,000 eastern Ukrainian people so far, where the majority speak Russian.

Moreover, in the 1990s, the US backed destruction of USSR by Boris Yeltsin, who was openly described by US government officials as a US agent, brought about tremendous hardship for the people of Russia while turning  sufferings into profits for Wall Street and “Russian Oligarchs”.

According to Luciana Bohne:

“Between 1992 and 2000, there were between five and six million “surplus deaths,” 170,000 people were murdered, the GDP fell by 50% (more than during German occupation in WW II), 70 million fell into poverty, death rates increased by 60%, like countries at war, life expectancy decreased in males to 57, abortions increased spectacularly, birth rates fell , , , suicides, tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria (eradicated in the 1930s) . . . In short (and this was supposed to be a short post) Russia, under “shock-therapy” “reforms” became the site of an economic genocide.”

More recently, the demonization of Russia has become legal ground for a legislative action.  Diana Johnstone points out the utter absurdity of the richest man in Russia Mikhail Khodorkovsky–who was jailed in Russia for engaging in criminal financial schemes to acquire public assets while giving financial opportunities to his western allies– blatantly influencing US politics by being a part of the momentum in enacting the Magnisky Act.  All this has been going on without an objection from any US officials, meanwhile, the US government is accusing Russians of “political interventions”.  She concludes in her article:

“U.S. policy-makers practice interference every day. And they are perfectly willing to allow Russians to interfere in American politics – so long as those Russians like Khodorkovsky, who aspire to precisely the same unipolar world sought by the State Department. Indeed, the American empire depends on such interference from Iraqis, Libyans, Iranians, Russians, Cubans – all those who come to Washington to try to get U.S. power to settle old scores or overthrow the government in the country they came from and put themselves in power. All those are perfectly welcome to lobby for a world ruled by America.”

Capitalist hierarchy surrounds us with structural violence, inflicts active targeted assaults, and induces divisions and conflicts among us.  It is imperative that we are aware of the dynamics in our struggles for a better tomorrow.

Now, having said all this, I would like all of you to ponder upon the fundamental trait of social media like Facebook.  While we drag around our national identities, narratives told by regional authorities, our personal circumstances and our personal interests, we are facing each other as people in a virtual space.  We instantly communicate regardless of time, space and borders.  This has not happened in the history of mankind.  This might be a tiny glitch in the neo-feudal era of capitalism.  But this is an image of our species having a perspective of our own—regardless of our places in the global capitalist hierarchy.  Could it inspire us to have real momentum for a future beyond the capitalist order?   Could I suggest that when we argue with our fellow humans in this space, we take a moment and remind ourselves that we are in the special place in the special time for our species.  I will certainly do so myself, and I hope you do too.

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Hiroyuki Hamada is an artist. He has exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe and is represented by Bookstein Projects. He has been awarded various residencies including those at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Edward F. Albee Foundation/William Flanagan Memorial Creative Person’s Center, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and the MacDowell Colony. In 1998 Hamada was the recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant, and in 2009 and 2016 he was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives and works in New York.

There would be far-reaching implications for the US if the incoming Mexican government goes through with the current Defense Minister’s suggestion to legalize opium for medicinal use.

This so-called “solution” has long been discussed and is seen by some as a pragmatic approach for lessening the heavy carnage caused by the country’s drug war over the past decade, which has killed more than 200,000 people since it first began in 2006. The concept is simple enough and it’s that the country’s opium farmers, which have made Mexico the world’s third-largest supplier of this drug, would sell their harvests to government-approved entities for use in scientific studies and medicine instead of giving them to the cartels, though this would require that the state provide adequate protection to both the farmers and their crops. This is a lot easier said than done because the security services are thought to be deeply infiltrated by the cartels, and many citizens live in fear of what would happen if these forces found out that they were cooperating with the government.

Mexico would therefore probably have to go through with what President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, popularly known by his initials as AMLO, previously proposed in calling for a ceasefire with the cartels and even bestowing amnesty on non-violent members of these gangs in order to restore national stability. For as risky of a policy as it may be, it’s not impossible for it to succeed to the benefit of most Mexicans as a whole, though that doesn’t mean that it would also be in the US’ national interests to see this plan unfold. The country has been so ravaged by the collateral damage caused by the rampant use of hard drugs within its society, which includes crime waves and overdoses, that the legalization of opium for medicinal use in Mexico might make its drug crisis many orders of magnitude worse if there aren’t proper border security measures in place beforehand.

Unless Mexico is successful in purging its security forces and the state in general of the cartels’ pernicious influence, which is highly unlikely, then the US’ southern neighbor will practically transform into one of America’s greatest Hybrid War threats overnight if this legalization proposal is ever implemented. The expected large-scale export of opium or its manufactured heroin product from Mexico into the US would ravage local communities even more than they already are and could contribute to the drug being even more easily and cheaply available than ever before, thus leading to more addictions that people will have to battle for the rest of their lives, to say nothing of the consequent crime wave that might follow. There’s simply no way that legalizing opium for any purposes in Mexico is good for the US’ so-called “soft security” if its southern neighbor remains totally corrupt and strict border security isn’t in place.

It can therefore be expected that the US will either pressure Mexico to keep opium cultivation illegal or will try to find a way to shield itself from the catastrophic consequences if this happens.

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This article was originally published on Oriental Review.

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 Oriental Review.

Read Part I here.

There are 57 candidates for the Democratic nomination in 44 congressional districts who boast as their major credential their years of service in intelligence, in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at the State Department, or some combination of all three. They make up the largest single occupational group running in the Democratic primaries that began March 6 in Texas and extend through mid-September, selecting the candidates who will appear on the general election ballot on November 6.

Aside from their sheer number, and the fact that more than 40 percent, 24 of the 57, are women, there are other aspects worth considering.

Agents, but no longer secret

First: The number of candidates who openly proclaim their role in the CIA or military intelligence. In years past, such activities would be considered confidential, if not scandalous for a figure seeking public office. Not only would the candidates want to disguise their connections to the spy apparatus, the CIA itself would insist on it, particularly for those who worked in operations rather than analysis, since exposure, even long after leaving the agency, could be portrayed as compromising “sources and methods.”

This is no longer the case. The 2018 candidates drawn from this shadow world of espionage, drone murders and other forms of assassination positively glory in their records. And the CIA and Pentagon have clearly placed no obstacles in the way.

We’ve already reviewed the cases of Elissa Slotkin, running in Michigan’s 8th District, who served three tours with the CIA in Baghdad, and Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force intelligence officer in Iraq, running for the Democratic nomination in the 23rd District of Texas. There are many others.

Abigail Spanberger, seeking the Democratic nomination in a district in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, has the following declaration at the top of her campaign website: “After nearly a decade serving in the CIA, I’m running for Congress in Virginia’s 7th District to fight for opportunity, equality and security for all Americans. My previous service as a law enforcement officer, a CIA officer, and a community volunteer has taught me the value of listening.” Indeed!

Abigail Spanberger’s campaign website

Spanberger worked for the CIA as an operations officer, in which capacity, “She traveled and lived abroad collecting intelligence, managing assets, and overseeing high-profile programs in service to the United States.” Her opponent for the Democratic nomination is a career Marine Corps pilot, Dan Ward, in one of nearly a dozen contests involving multiple military-intelligence candidates.

Jesse Colvin, running in the 1st District of Maryland, spent six years in Army intelligence, including four combat deployments to Afghanistan and a year near the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea. According to his campaign biography, “I am a proud graduate of the US Army’s Ranger Course, the premier leadership school in the military. I am even more honored to have served in the 75th Ranger Regiment—the Army Rangers. Rangers lead in many key roles throughout the Special Operations Forces’ (SOF) community, and I am lucky to have served and led with men and women of this caliber.”

His biography continues:

“As a Ranger, my four combat deployments in Afghanistan took place within a Joint Special Operations Task Force. I led intelligence teams whose work facilitated capture/kill missions of Taliban, al-Qaeda and other terrorist leaders. I managed a lethal drone program. I ran human intelligence sources. Every day, my team and I made dozens of decisions whose outcomes carried life and death consequences for my fellow Rangers, our Afghan partners, and Afghan civilians.”

Jesse Colvin (front right) with his unit in Afghanistan

Jeffrey Beals, seeking the Democratic nomination in the 19th District of New York, is now a school teacher, but writes on his website,

“After beginning my career as a CIA intelligence officer, I joined the State Department … I answered the call to help our country in Iraq in 2004 and became one of the longest serving US diplomats of the Iraq War. Fluent in Arabic, I faced down insurgents to set up the first diplomatic talks between our ambassador, our generals and the insurgency. I helped bring warring factions together to create a constitution for Iraq and was decorated by both the US Army and the State Department.”

Unfortunately for Beals, his fundraising, $174,000 by December 31, 2017, is dwarfed by that of another military-intelligence rival for the nomination, Patrick Ryan, a West Point graduate with two tours of duty in Iraq, “including a tour as the lead intelligence officer for an infantry battalion of 1,000 soldiers and officers responsible for ground operations in Mosul,” according to his campaign website. Ryan had raised $906,000 by December 31, and two other candidates in that district, a politically connected lawyer and a medical device manufacturer, had raised more than one million dollars each, all seeking to challenge two-term Republican incumbent John Faso in the Hudson Valley district.

Jonathan Ebel, running in the 13th District of Illinois, served four years as a naval intelligence officer, including on the staff of the US European Command in Stuttgart, Germany during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He now teaches religion at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Then there is Shelly Chauncey, seeking the Democratic nomination in the 5th District of Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia suburbs. Her website strikes a feminist note:

“Shelly served her nation for more than a decade with the Central Intelligence Agency. She began her career as a secretary and worked her way up to become a counter-intelligence officer. Shelly served as an undercover officer with the CIA in Latin America, East Asia and throughout the United States, providing logistical and counter-intelligence support to operatives abroad.”

The reference to undercover operations “throughout the United States” underscores the role of the intelligence apparatus in spying on the American people, although the CIA is, by law, prohibited from such activity.

Another campaign website touches on the domestic operations of the US spy machine. Omar Siddiqui, running in California’s 48th District, describes his background as follows: “On the front lines of national defense, Mr. Siddiqui serves as a private advisor and consultant to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on issues of national security and counter-terrorism and was formerly an advisor and community partner with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Mr. Siddiqui is presently director of special projects of the FBI National Citizens Academy Alumni Association…”

Commanders and planners of the Iraq War

Barack Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination and the 2008 election in large measure by presenting himself as an opponent of the war in Iraq launched under George W. Bush. Once in office, however, he retained Bush’s defense secretary, former CIA Director Robert Gates, and continued the war for another three years, as well as escalating the long-running US war in Afghanistan.

It is noteworthy in this context that so many of the military-intelligence candidates for Democratic congressional nominations boast of their roles in the war in Iraq and even, in some cases, present it as the high point of their professional and even personal lives.

Thus Elissa Slotkin, already referred to above, met her future husband, the pilot of an Apache helicopter gunship, while working as a CIA agent in Baghdad. Dan McCready, a Marine Corps veteran turned “clean energy” multi-millionaire, backed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the Democratic nomination in the 9th District of North Carolina, even claims to have found Jesus in Iraq, where he was baptized in water from the Euphrates River.

The Iraq War veterans are either officers, giving them command responsibility in one of the great crimes of the 21st century, or served in special forces units like the Army Rangers and the Navy SEALs, engaging in covert operations that were among the bloodiest and most brutal of the war, or had high-level responsibility at the Pentagon or the National Security Council.

Daniel Helmer, running in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District against five other well-financed candidates—including former State Department official Alison Friedman, who has already topped the $1 million mark—says remarkably little about what he did in Afghanistan and Iraq, although his photograph in military fatigues is on the front page of his website. But Helmer boasts perhaps the most extensive list of endorsements by retired national security officials of any candidate in the country, including eight generals and admirals, two former deputy directors of the CIA, Avril Haines and David Cohen, and Michele Flournoy, former under secretary of defense for policy. What he did to earn their support is left to the imagination.

Richard Ojeda, elected as a West Virginia state senator in 2016, is now seeking the Democratic nomination in the 3rd Congressional District, covering the southern third of the state. As the WSWS has reported, Ojeda has based his political career on more than two decades in the US Army Airborne, including repeated tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he reached the rank of major. His last post was as executive director of Army recruiting in Beckley, seeking to convince youth in West Virginia and Virginia to become cannon fodder for the Pentagon.

Josh Butner, running in the 50th District of California against Republican Duncan Hunter, Jr., “served for 23 years in the United States Navy where he saw multiple combat deployments, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The career Navy SEAL says almost nothing about what he actually did in the top military assassination unit, but that is to be expected. His campaign website features the slogan “Service, Country, Leadership,” alongside a photograph of Butner in desert fatigues.

Dan Feehan is running to succeed incumbent Democrat Tim Walz in the 1st Congressional District of Minnesota, after Walz announced his candidacy for governor of that state. From 2005 to 2009, according to his campaign biography, Feehan “served as an active duty soldier and completed two combat tours of duty as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.” He then joined the Obama administration, first as a White House aide, then as an acting assistant secretary of defense in the Pentagon.

Andy Kim, running in the 3rd District of New Jersey, has actually raised more money than the incumbent Republican, Tom MacArthur. Kim worked at the Pentagon and as a strategic adviser to generals David Petraeus and John Allen while they were in command of US forces in Afghanistan. He then moved to the National Security Council, where he was Obama’s director for Iraq for two years.

Maura Sullivan, seeking the Democratic nomination in New Hampshire’s 2nd District, where incumbent Democrat Carol Shea-Porter is retiring, was a Marine Corps officer, rising to the rank of captain and deploying to Fallujah, Iraq, scene of some of the bloodiest battles and most horrific US war crimes of that war. She too joined the Obama administration as a civilian administrator at both the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Pentagon.

Jason Crow is running in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District against incumbent Republican Mike Coffman, where he was selected by the DCCC as one of its top candidates in the “Red-to-Blue” program. He is a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division, leading a paratrooper platoon during the invasion of Iraq. He then joined the Army Rangers and served two tours in Afghanistan “as part of the Joint Special Operations Task Force,” where he rose to the rank of captain.

Matthew Morgan had a 20-year career in the Marine Corps “where I would deploy routinely overseas, culminating in several senior staff roles where I’d provide counsel to numerous military leaders, including the secretary of defense.” He did two tours in Iraq and also worked in counterterrorism on the Horn of Africa. Now he is the unopposed candidate for the Democratic nomination in Michigan’s 1st Congressional District, which has switched back and forth between the two big business parties and is currently held by first-term Republican Jack Bergman.

To be continued

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All images in this article are from WSWS.

Two F-15 warplanes of the US-led coalition accidentally struck a unit of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which was involved in the SDF advance on ISIS in the Euphrates Valley, the Russian news agency Sputnik reported on October 17. The strike reportedly killed 6 SDF members and inured 15 others. ISIS terrorists also attacked SDF positions following the incident, according to the report.

Despite initial claims by the SDF leadership that the terrorists in the area will soon be defeated there are no signs that the operation will be finished in the near future. The Russian side even claims that the US-led coalition is using the Hajin pocket to justify its illegal presence in the country. So, nobody is hurrying to defeat the terrorists.

The Trump administration is preparing to impose sanctions on Russian and Iranian companies involved in the reconstruction of Syria, NBC News reported on October 16 citing defense officials.

According to the report, these sanctions will be a part of further political, diplomatic and economic pressure to force Iran out of Syria and deal with the growing Russian influence.

The NBC News report also claimed that right now the US military is not seeking an open confrontation with Iranian forces in the war-torn country. Nonetheless, it’s obvious that Israel, a key US ally in the region and another support of the large-scale anti-Iranian strategy, will not abandon its attempts to strike alleged Iranian and Iran-linked targets in the war-torn country even despite the recent delivery of Russian-made S-300 air defense systems to the Syrian military.

According to multiple reports circulating in Israeli media, Israel and the US have sent a secret military delegation to Ukraine to train against and test Russian-made S-300 missile defense systems. According to reports, servicemen of the Ukrainian military instructed their US and Israeli counterparts on the capabilities of the air defense system as well as allowed US and Israeli specialists to test it in various possible scenarios.

According to reports, F-15 warplanes have trained against the S-300 in the framework of the Clear Sky 2018 international exercise which includes Israeli and US pilots. It wasn’t immediately clear if the Israeli pilots were flying or merely observing from the ground. However, on October 16, a US pilot and his Ukrainian counterpart died in the crash of a Ukrainian Su-27 warplane.

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“The establishment of a republic… means insurrectionary war, it means the desolation of a thousand households.  When the question shall arise, it will be determined… by balls from cannon and from musket, by grape and shrapnel, by bayonet and by the sword.” — Sir Alfred Stephen, NSW Legislative Council , June 16, 1887

The republic has tended to be a dormant idea in Australian politics for decades.  The People’s Advocate, a Sydney-based publication, was unduly optimistic in its June 17, 1854 note which spoke of, “The independence of the Australian colonies” being more than an “abstract idea.  It is certainly approaching as it is the dawn of tomorrow’s sun.”  Occasional flashes of republican sentiment can be found in the historical record, but these have been, in the main, suppressed in favour of a monarchy housed in residences ten thousand miles away.

In 1999, the Republic idea was essentially buried by vote, a feat not without some genius on the part of the then Prime Minister, John Howard. Sensing that more than a few Australians were keen to detach the British dominion from its monarchical moorings, Howard first initiated a “people’s convention” which, he sensed, would botch up any prospect of advancing a decent model to vote upon.  The Republican grouping, distant and smug, was (and here, history is instructive) led by the now deposed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Pro-monarchist groups such as Australians for Constitutional Monarchy pursue a line not merely paradoxical but absurd.  The British Crown is raised to the level of sacrosanct mother, protector, and unifier.   How this squares with sovereignty is a baffling exercise of self-delusion, but one happily embraced by such individuals as Gregory R. Copley, President of the International Strategic Studies Association based in Washington, D.C.

As the globe is fractured by bursts of populist dissatisfaction, suggested Copley at the Annual Conference of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy held at the New South Wales Parliament earlier this month, monarchy was indispensable.  “It is an appropriate time, then to ask where Australia would be today, without the enduring presence of the Crown – our most visible icon of sovereignty and unity – in Australian life.”  In a paean to monarchical systems of government, Copley goes dew-eyed at the fate of monarchies in the 20^th century, whose collapse “was the precursor of today’s global framework.”  This unfortunate turn of events left “a global strategic framework which was inherently fragile.”

The visit by Prince Harry and his new wife, Hollywood second (third?) tier actress Meghan Markle, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has turned the Australian public – or a good part of it at least – to a grotesque, gibbering sight.  This is not sovereignty extolled but emotional slavery demonstrated, the psyche imprisoned in a historical, hereditary system of government.  There have been scenes of imbecilic insensibility as the couple do the rounds.  Young mothers, with their barely sentient offspring, have been waiting at strategic points for the young couple as they arrive at various venues.  Bad weather has proven no deterrent.

People of all age groups have gathered, phones at the ready, to take those snaps that will be shared with the enthusiastic dissemination of a nymphomaniac with venereal disease.  Hours have been expended in the hope to gain a fleeting glance of the royal candy.  Even more unforgivably, nominally respectable journalists have taken to holding flags in anticipation, becoming the very spectacle they are covering.

The words of the Dubbo speech by Prince Harry have been poured over with a reverence befitting subjects rather than citizens, an immaturity that does much to dispel notions of a firm egalitarian sensibility.  The prince was, after all, speaking to “the salt of the earth”, the “backbone of this country.”  Harry had turned shrink – or at least a patient healed by one.  The rural occupants of Australia’s farming communities, earth’s salt and national backbone, duly listened.  “We know that suicide rates in rural and remote areas are greater than in urban populations and this may be especially true among young men in remote regions.” He spoke of “one huge community and with that comes an unparalleled internal support and understanding.”

The Duke and Duchess were being portrayed as the accessible royal couple, and those who dare venture into the outback.  “The best part about visiting country Australia,” claimed the prince, “is the people.”  Well and good, but Harry was merely following a scheduled pattern stretching back to 1954 when his grandmother made Dubbo a stopping point to visit her subjects, all part of visiting “her people”.

Former residents made their return just to see another royal visit.  The Dubbo-born sisters Elizabeth Atkin and Sharon Askew (nee Hind) expressed their gushing desire to revisit some family folklore, given that their grandmother had been asked to prepare a posy of flowers for Queen Elizabeth on that Dubbo tour. “It’s because of this history and it is important to us,” explained Atkin, “it has become your family folk-law.”  The Daily Liberal, one of the papers covering the events in Dubbo enticed readers to search through any pictures that might have been snapped of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their “Picnic in the Park”. “See if… you’re in our pictures.”

Some local must always be selected for the occasion, the point where the royal meets subject, and that subject, it so happens, was Luke Vincent of Buninyong Primary School.  Of immediate interest to the child was the Prince’s beard – the royal facial hair within hand’s reach.  Principal Anne van Dartell was beside herself in ecstatic observation; Luke’s mother, Danielle Sparrow, “just started crying and shaking” being “happy because that’s just Luke and the love he shows.” The lachrymose campaign had taken hold.  “That’s our Lukey, the Lukey-love-effect, he’s just full of lots of love.”

The visit had brought out the obsessives, the surveillance vultures keen to capture every single moment of the tour.  An Instagram fan page dedicated to the couple notes with somewhat creepy insistence each “special moment”, a “pretty much minute by minute” account on “cute” scenes.  The vanquishing of any Australian republic, without bayonet, cannon or musket, has been assured, not merely because of a continued desire to see monarchy as the tit of reassurance, but its youth as modern celebrities of a social media world which has sacralised them as creatures to be revered rather than mocked.

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

Featured image is from Sky News.

Commentary

During the early morning hours of Sunday October 7, members of Unite Here Local 24 in Detroit went on strike against the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel located downtown on Washington Blvd.

The union is striking against the corporation which owns these hotels in eight different cities across the United States demanding higher wages and better working conditions. An entry on the Unite Here website says:

“Thousands of hotel workers in eight U.S. cities say they’ll remain off the job until a new contract is reached with Marriott International. About 7,700 employees of the world’s largest hotel chain are now walking picket lines in Boston, Detroit, Oakland, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose, as well as two cities in Hawaii.”

In Detroit, the Unite Here employees are asking for $2.00 more per hour. One worker said in a statement to the press that his salary has only increased by 70 cents per hour over the last ten years when the hotel was re-opened amid the Great Recession.

A dominant corporate media narrative in Detroit is that the city is experiencing a major upsurge in business development in the downtown and midtown districts.  Many new restaurants have opened along with expanded hotel space largely servicing conventions and tourists. 

However, this purported “boom” in business profitability in downtown and midtown does not take into consideration the wages and conditions of employment for workers in the hospitality industry. Neither does this line of thinking recognize the rising cost of living within the downtown and midtown areas as it relates to housing availability, the skyrocketing of rents and other problems associated with the lack of public transportation.

On Tuesday October 9, Unite Here Local 24 called for a support rally to boost their demands surrounding the strike. Some 500 members and officials of other unions as well as community people came downtown to walk the picket line and speak out against the practices of the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel. 

Detroit Unite Here on Strike at the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel

Various unions were represented including the UAW, Metro AFL-CIO, Michigan Education Association (MEA), SEIU, among others. Speakers at the October 9 rally in front of the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel assailed the corporation for not giving the workers a raise.

With the lowering of the official jobless rate in the U.S. to 3.7 percent many workers believe that there should be a significant increase in real wages. Unfortunately, this has not been the case at all. 

Even an article in the pro-corporate CNBC network stated in July that:

“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, at least in the United States. The top 1 percent of families took home an average of 26.3 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent in 2015, according to a new paper released by the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. This has increased since 2013, showing that income inequality has risen in nearly every state.”

Demands for higher wages among service employees have been taking place now for the last five years. The Fight for $15 campaign in Michigan recently staged a series of demonstrations on October 2 in conjunction with other workers across the country. 

Detroit Unite Here Local 24 President addresses strikers and the community on Oct. 9, 2018

Members of Fight for $15 in Detroit blocked traffic along Woodward Avenue leading to over 20 arrests. Earlier that same day in Flint, a vehicle struck a crowd marching through the city calling for $15 per hour in minimum wages and union representation. The Flint law-enforcement authorities claimed that the incident was an accident which resulted in the taking of eight people to hospital for injuries.

Water Shut-offs and Unaffordable Housing Worsens the Plight of the Working Poor

Compounding the slave-wages paid to many workers in the hospitality and other industries is the inhumane policy of widespread water shut-offs in Detroit. Although this has been a problem for many years, the situation reached critical proportions during the imposition of emergency management and bankruptcy in 2014.

Demonstrations, legal challenges and other opposition activities prompted some initial reforms in the summer of 2014 when the City of Detroit declared a brief moratorium on water shut-offs allowing many households to make arrangements for the payment of arrears and the resumption of their services. However, these inadequate measures do not address the underlining reasons for the crisis which is the usurious bond issuances of financial institutions which drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD) system. 

Water services are still being shut-off at an alarming pace. Rate charges are far too high for a city which is still ranked as the most impoverished among major municipalities in the U.S. Additional drainage fees, commonly referred to as a “rain tax”, are tantamount to extortion since the refusal to pay these costs can result in the termination of services. 

A regionalized Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) was also illegally established in 2014 absent of any public debate or referendum on the restructuring. Decisions made by bank-led emergency management officials to disconnect the City of Flint from the DWSD resulted in the poisoning of the water in that city where thousands have been inflicted with elevated lead and copper related diseases along with a Legionnaires outbreak that killed several people.

Just recently in Detroit, the newly-created Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) announced that it was shutting off water fountains in buildings due to lead levels discovered through testing. At present students are drinking from packaged bottles and portable commercial tanks. There are no feasible plans to replace fountains, lead service lines or other possible sources of the contamination because the new school district crafted by the conservative state legislature cannot sell bonds to fund improvements to the system.

On October 4 an inter-faith coalition of clergy held a demonstration and press conference downtown. The participants marched from the Detroit Riverfront at the Underground Railroad Monument to the Spirit of Detroit right outside City Hall. 

Detroit Inter-faith rally and march to end water shut-offs at the Underground Railroad Monument on the Detroit River, Oct. 4, 2018

The spokespersons for the alliance demanded a water affordability program for the city. Rev. Dr. JoAnn Watson, a former member of the Detroit City Council and author of an affordability plan while she was in government, noted that the city was surrounded by fresh water and consequently there was no need for shut-offs.

Another major aspect of the Detroit economic crises is the systematic relocation of people out of many areas of the city. An example of this phenomenon is the attempt to evict residents from the Park Avenue House Apartments downtown.

Residents received a “30-day Notice to Quit” in early October from the management company running the building saying the apartment had been sold to new owners and everyone had to move. A brief investigation by the Detroit Free Press revealed that there was no evidence of a change in ownership. This building is one of the few remaining in the downtown area where the rents are affordable for low-income residents of the city.

At the same time, there are the continuing problems related to property tax foreclosures. The Moratorium NOW! Coalition has waged a campaign over the last three years to halt property tax foreclosures since they are based on illegal assessments fostered by predatory lending of the banks extending from the late 1990s to the beginning of the Great Recession.

Although a class action lawsuit filed by the Michigan ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund was settled out of court in July, the outcome of the settlement was so narrow that it merely focused on those who were eligible for poverty tax exemptions in the city. Even at this level, it would take a Moratorium NOW! Coalition effort which mobilized community activists to canvass those facing eviction forcing the city administration of corporate-Mayor Mike Duggan to extend the deadlines for participation in the purported “buy-back program”.

Nonetheless, approximately 1,000 owner-occupied homes were placed on the market for sale in the auction which takes place every September and October. Even more egregious is the fact that hundreds of millions in Federal Hardest Hit Funds, which should have gone towards keeping people in their homes, were siphoned off to the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA) for the purpose of tearing down homes at inflated costs resulting in what appeared to be “no-bid” contracts approved by the DLBA and the Duggan administration.

Despite the fact that the DLBA and the Duggan administration are being investigated for these practices by the federal government, the funds have still not been utilized for what should have been the intended objectives of stabilizing neighborhoods in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Almost all of the so-called “developmental investments” in Detroit are centered in the downtown and midtown districts leaving the neighborhoods and small business areas where the majority of the African American population resides, to rot and suffer from continuing over taxation and abandonment. 

Moratorium NOW! Coalition Calls for Teach-In on October 28

The City Lab project is scheduled to come to Detroit for a conference at the Westin Book Cadillac beginning on October 28. This is the same hotel where the United Here Local 24 workers have been on strike for nearly two weeks.

City Lab is yet another effort to remake urban areas in the U.S. and worldwide in the image of Wall Street. The conference is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies and The Atlantic publications. Invited speakers include corporate CEOs such Mary Barra of General Motors whose headquarters is located in downtown Detroit.

The program advanced by City Lab provides no real promise for the majority Black and working class residents of Detroit. It is more of the same top-down approach to urban development whose outcomes will result in further gentrification and dislocation of the nationally oppressed, working class people and impoverished. 

Moratorium NOW! Coalition will host an alternative “Teach-In on City Lab: Real Detroiters Speak Out” on October 28 from 1:00-5:00pm at the St. Peter’s Episcopal Church near the downtown area. The event will feature four panel discussions aimed at addressing the underlying causes of the housing, water services, educational and wealth transferal crises impacting Detroit. 

This Moratorium NOW! Coalition Teach-In will emphasize the need for the mass mobilization and organization of the people to fight against the racist and anti-worker policies of those currently running the city. After the Teach-In participants will demonstrate outside the Westin Book Cadillac in protest against the City Lab Conference.

Recognizing that the ongoing strike by service workers at the hotel where City Lab is scheduled to occur could result in a public relations disaster for the Bloomberg and Atlantic conference, the Detroit News reported on October 15 that the big expensive gathering will be moved to another location if the labor dispute is not resolved. Whether the strike is settled by October 28 or not is almost a secondary issue. The contradictions developing in the city of Detroit and around the U.S. will continue to result in the widening gulf between the have and have nots. 

Only a fundamental transformation of the political and economic system in the U.S. can alter the current social situation.  This so desperately needed change must be initiated by those most impacted by contemporary problems facing growing numbers of people inside the country.   

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images are from the author.

There’s little doubt about Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman’s dirty hands all over Jamal Khashoggi’s elimination.

Turkey claims to have key incriminating evidence, proving kingdom culpability, indicating high level responsibility.

In The Prince, Machiavelli explained how rulers should distance themselves from state-sponsored criminality – shift blame onto convenient patsies.

The Saudis are likely to follow this principle. Its Istanbul consul general Mohammed al-Otaibi was recalled to the kingdom and sacked – step one in shifting blame.

Clearly no one at his level would order the disappearance and killing of a former Saudi insider/turned critic on his own, notably a US resident in a foreign country.

Reportedly Otaibi is under investigation for the Khashoggi incident. He and perhaps others dispatched from the kingdom to Istanbul will likely be blamed for what happened, an attempt to shield the crown prince (MBS) from culpability.

According to the Turkish Yeni Safak broadsheet, Khashoggi was killed in minutes after entering the consulate, his fingers severed. Beheading and dismemberment followed, according to a cited audio recording.

Reportedly the consulate and consul general’s residence were bugged, enabling Turkish intelligence to monitor what went on inside.

Otaibi reportedly was heard on tape saying: “Do this outside. You’re going to get me in trouble.” One of the Saudi officials involved in the incident was heard telling him: “Shut up if you want to live when you return to” the kingdom.”

Asked about the incident when in Turkey, Mike Pompeo said “I don’t have anything to say about that.” His spokeswoman Heather Nauert said he hadn’t heard the alleged audio.

Ankara hasn’t released it or video evidence of Khashoggi’s slaying it claims to have. Washington and perhaps EU governments have their own.

Riyadh failed to comment publicly on the incident – other than king Salman and MBS telling Trump they have no knowledge about what happened – what’s clearly untrue.

The Trump regime is providing cover for the Saudis, intending to keep US relations with the kingdom unchanged.

According to Middle East analyst Simon Henderson, “(t)he US is organizing a diplomatic clean-up operation for MBS and (his) regime,” clearly what’s going on.

In his last Washington Post column, Khashoggi said Middle East regimes “continue silencing the media at an increasing rate” – failing to explain Western print, electronic and social media self-censor, the way all totalitarian regimes operate worldwide.

On Wednesday, Turkish forensic investigators finished examining the Istanbul consulate and official residence of its consul general.

According to the Turkish prosecutor’s office, samples were recovered with no further elaboration.

It’s unknown if Khashoggi’s DNA or blood traces were found. Unnamed sources said evidence discovered indicated what happened to him.

The forensic search included the consulate’s garage and garden, investigators seen leaving the premises with boxes and bags, their contents unrevealed.

According to Turkey’s interior ministry, results of the investigation will be “shared with the world.”

The notion of Saudi self-investigation about what happened is all about wanting blame shifted from king Salman, MBS, and other key officials to lower-level ones.

There’s little doubt about kingdom responsibility for Khashoggi’s fate at the highest level.

There’s no doubt about Western/Saudi relations remaining unchanged once the current furor fades.

A Final Comment

According to the Arabic-language al-Ahd broadsheet,

“signs of a political deal among Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the US in Khashoggi’s assassination case have appeared in the past three days,” adding:

“Possibly they want to implement a plot like the Lockerby case and say that three (Saudis) abducted Khashoggi, and then put them on trial to exonerate” king Salman and MBS.

What’s coming by the kingdom will likely be something like the above scenario.

Whether it’s enough for MBS to remain crown prince remains to be seen. His involvement in what happened clearly showed he’s inept, failing to consider the potential consequences of his action.

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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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Breaking: Seven of Bin Salman’s Bodyguards Among Khashoggi Suspects

By David Hearst, October 18, 2018

Seven of the 15 men suspected of being involved in an operation to kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi belong to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s personal security and protection detail, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Embassy Disappearances: Jamal Khashoggi and the Foreign Policy Web

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 18, 2018

Three powers tussling over image and appearance; all engaged in a wrestle over how best to seem the least hypocritical.  US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi already seems to have found his name into the books of martyred dissidents, but we have no body, merely an inflicted disappearance suggesting a gruesome murder.

Saudis to Admit Jamal Khashoggi Killed During Interrogation?

By Stephen Lendman, October 16, 2018

Citing unnamed sources, media reports claim Riyadh will say he died during a botched interrogation and plan to abduct him, what happened conducted without kingdom permission, parties involved to be held responsible.

Khashoggi Mystery: Rogue Killers or Rogue Royals?

By Andrew Korybko, October 16, 2018

Trump’s claim that “rogue killers” might have been responsible for Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s possible murder is likely only half of the story in the sense that this operation probably wasn’t ordered by Riyadh but might have been undertaken at the behest of rogue royals who want to topple the Crown Prince.

Media Companies, Executives Quit Saudi Event Over Missing Journalist

By Middle East Eye, October 14, 2018

British billionaire Richard Branson has also announced that his Virgin Group would suspend its discussions with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund over a planned $1bn investment in the group’s space ventures in light of events involving Jamal Khashoggi.

Missing Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi Rejiggers the Middle East

By James M. Dorsey, October 12, 2018

Mr. Khashoggi’s fate, whether he was kidnapped by Saudi agents during a visit to the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul to obtain proof of his divorce or murdered on its premises, threatens to severely disrupt the US-Saudi alliance that underwrites much of the Middle East’s fault lines.

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President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi traveled to Russia in the middle of October for a three-day visit that culminated in a meeting with his Russian counterpart in Sochi. The trip was important in showcasing the progress that Russian-Egyptian relations have made since Sisi assumed office in 2014 following a successful coup against Muslim Brotherhood-backed leader Mohamed Morsi who came to power after the so-called “Arab Spring”. Relations between these two historic partners had frayed since the death of Old Cold War hero Gamal Abdel Nasser and his replacement with pro-American leaders Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. What had previously been one of the USSR’s most strategic partnerships gradually become one of its most inconsequential ones, which was regarded as a geopolitical pity by many in Moscow and even some of those in Cairo as well.

That all changed with Sisi’s usurpation of power in 2013 and subsequent victory in national elections a year later. The former Minister of Defense must have been privy to the proof that Morsi’s brief government was backed by the US and some of its regional allies such as Turkey and Qatar, both of whom are led by governments that are very closely aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. This would explain why Sisi sought to expand relations with Russia after becoming president because he wanted to send a message to the US that its previous patronage of a man who Cairo regards as the face of one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups won’t be without geopolitical consequences. That said, Sisi is also smart enough to know that it’s best to “balance” between Great Powers instead of pivot from one to the other.

Resurrecting the historic Russian-Egypt Strategic Partnership has therefore been one of Sisi’s geopolitical priorities because it gives his country a comfortable amount of flexibility on the international arena and shows the rest of the world that he’s not the American puppet that Mubarak was. This is very important for boosting Egyptian national prestige and legitimizing his rule as the leader that the country needs for transitioning into the emerging Multipolar World Order. That’s not to say that Sisi is entirely independent, however, because he’s still very closely tied to the Gulf Monarchies who have patronized his government to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, mostly because they approve of his tough approach to the Muslim Brotherhood (which they also regard as terrorists) and also because of their desire to retain influence over the world’s most populous Arab state.

That hasn’t stood in the way of stronger Russian-Egyptian ties, though, and if anything it might have even facilitated them in the past year since Moscow and Riyadh entered into their game-changing OPEC+ cooperation with one another. The Kingdom no longer has any reason to regard Russia as “infringing on its sphere of influence” like it may have previously thought was happening a few years ago when the two Great Powers were still at loggerheads over Syria, but the rapprochement between them has also led to an ever more pronounced betterment of Russian-Egyptian relations, too. As it stands, Moscow and Cairo are cooperating very closely in the military sphere and have accordingly also begun to coordinate their regional policies in the Mideast, too. This is very important, but the real significance of their reestablished strategic partnership rests in its economic potential.

Egypt will forever occupy a crucial geostrategic position along global maritime trade routes because of its control over the Suez Canal, which has only grown in the few years since it expanded this waterway to include a second canal. Russia was granted the right to construct an industrial zone there, which will enable it to finally reassert some of its economic influence in the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden region that it previously enjoyed during the Old Cold War, though only with the passage of time, of course. What Egypt has in fact provided Russia with is an opportunity to more easily export products throughout this part of the world, which links up with its newfound role in Syria and reunification with Crimea to create a series of Sea Lines Of Communication (SLOC) that are necessary to its revival as a Great Power of hemispheric relevance.

Arms, diplomatic coordination, and investment might be all that Egypt really needs from Russia in order to help “balance” between Great Powers, while its counterpart required a geostrategic foothold in the Red Sea from where it could step back into its Soviet-era footprints in order reassert itself as a trans-regional Great Power. Each country therefore gains from the other because they provide one another with strategic support that none of their other partners were capable of, which has resulted in the reestablishment of their historic strategic partnership. None of this would have been possible, let alone during the brief time that it happened, had it not been for Sisi’s visionary outreaches to Russia, which have allowed Egypt to prove that it still retains some degree of independence in spite of its financial bondage to the GCC and existing partnership with the US.

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This article was originally published on InfoRos.

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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The Metropolitan Community Clinic at Helliniko opened its doors in December of 2011.  Since that time, it has become abundantly clear that the austerity measures resulting from the 1^st memorandum, signed by the then Prime Minister George Papandreou brought catastrophe to Greek society.  Since then we have denounced (and recorded) the effects of austerity on public health and knew that those results would be seen in health indicators.  Seven years later and with the 3^rd memorandum signed and obligations to the state that will carry on to 2060, a study from the respected British medical journal “The Lancet” shows exactly that.  The study is entitled “The burden of disease in Greece, health loss, risk factors, and health financing, 2000–16: an analysis of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016”

To sum up their findings:

• Increased mortality in the general population from 997.8 per 100,000 persons in 2010 to 1,174.9 in 2016 – an increase in mortality by 17.8%
• Cases of tuberculosis have increased amongst Greek citizens.
• Cases of HIV have almost doubled between 2010 – 2012 because the program of distributing free syringes to drug addicts was abandoned to save the cost.
• Increase in cases of severe depression and suicide

The study analyses the increase in deaths in the general population by age (Greece is indicated with blue color) and notes that the increase in deaths “coincided” with the reductions in spending in the public health sector from 2010 onwards.

Source

Additionally there has been an increase in drug side effects, self-harm and many types of cancer found in all ages.  New-borns and children less than 5 years of age die from illnesses that are treatable such as neonatal haemolytic disease and neonatal sepsis.  There have been significant increases of cases of self-harm among adolescents and young adults.  Increased mortality in people aged 15–49 years due to HIV, several treatable neoplasms, all types of cirrhosis, neurological disorders (e.g., multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease), chronic kidney disease, and most types of cardiovascular disease except for ischemic heart disease and stroke.

To sum up:

• Newborns die due to treatable illnesses
• Teenagers and young adults have higher rates of suicide
• Teenagers and young adults are dying from illnesses related to bad nutrition, alcohol abuse, smoking as well as treatable illnesses

“Forzes” in an article on the Lancet study commented:

“The rise in deaths from self-harm among young adults is particularly striking. This is the human cost of Greece’s appallingly high youth unemployment rate. At the height of the crisis, in 2013, it was 58.21% – over half of all young adults. Even now, despite half a million young people leaving the country, it is over 40%. Greek young adults face a stark choice – leave, or face a lifetime of unemployment. It is hardly surprising that self-harm and suicide have increased.”

“But despite this epidemic of despair, the largest mortality increases are not among young adults, but among babies and the very elderly. This speaks to a crisis in healthcare.”

The Lancet study clearly states that from 2008 until 2014 spending on the Greek Public Health System shrank from 9.8% of the GDP in 2008 to 8.1% in 2014, and currently it is at 6%!  And additionally, the GDP shrank more than 25% during the same period (which means that public expenditure is 4.5% compared with 9.8% in 2008!)

The Lancet study further states:

“Since the implementation of the austerity programme, Greece has reduced its ratio of health-care expenditure to GDP to one of the lowest within the EU, with 50% less public hospital funding in 2015 than in 2009. This reduction has left hospitals with a deficit in basic supplies, while consumers are challenged by transient drug shortages.”

All of the above is the best explanation of why Greek public hospitals have literally dissolved, with immense shortages in materials, medication and personnel.  The only reason the hospitals have not utterly collapsed is the dedication of the doctors and nurses work full out to the point of exhaustion and beyond to cover personnel and supply deficiencies.

This evidence bears witness to the fact that austerity kills.  And it kills based on policies implemented by all governments since 2010.

Who will answer from the Greek Ministry of Health and who will justify?

• The list of thousands waiting up to four months to start their cancer treatments while they literally melt away.
• For the inexcusable shortages of medications, requiring the public hospitals to search, beg and borrow in order to cover the needs of their patients.

And to find out the real access that uninsured patients have to the Greek public health service, we would as the Minister of Health:

• How much money has been spent on the hospitalization and diagnostic tests of uninsured patients?
• How many electronic prescriptions (prescriptions recognized in the health system and subsidized by the system) for CT scans, MRI’s, or scintigraphy were issued to uninsured patients and how many exams were finally conducted?

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Any attempt by the British government to use frozen Libyan assets in England to compensate IRA victims of weapons and explosives smuggled into Northern Ireland from Libya would be in breach of United Nations resolutions, a senior Libyan diplomat has insisted.

As an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Bill proceeds through Westminster to allow a portion of about £10-12 billion (€11.4 – €13.6 billion) of frozen assets to be used to assist IRA victims, the Libyan chargé d’affaires to the, UN Elmahdi S Elmajerbi stated that such action would be legally, ethically and morally wrong.

“The [Libyan] government of national accord is confident that the government of the United Kingdom will uphold its responsibility to stop such a Bill,” said Mr Elmajerbi in a letter to the UN Security Council.

Lord Empey of the UUP who introduced the private members’ Bill and DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, who has campaigned for several years to try to win some £1.5 billion (€1.71 billion) in compensation from the Libyan authorities for IRA victims, have acknowledged that Mr Elmajerbi appears to be correct in his legal interpretation.

Lord Empey, however, argued that the British government could use its veto on the security council to gain commitments about compensation before it would agree to the unfreezing of the Libyan assets in England.

Mr Elmajerbi said a number of UN resolutions dictated that such frozen assets when released must be used “for the benefit of the people of Libya”

“The passing of such a Bill is a clear violation of the related Security Council resolution and would place the government of the United Kingdom in breach of its obligations under security council resolutions,” he added.

Lord Empey’s Bill has passed through the House of Lords and is due to be addressed in the House of Commons later this month.

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Getting to the bottom of the Jamal Khashoggi disappearance is a bit like peeling an onion. It is known that Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul on October 2^nd to get a document that would enable him to marry a Turkish woman. It is also known, from surveillance cameras situated outside the building, that he never came out walking the same way he entered. The presumption is that he was either killed inside or abducted, though the abduction theory would have to be based on a Consulate vehicle leaving the building with him presumably concealed inside, something that has not been confirmed by the Turks. If he was killed inside the building and dismembered, as seems likely, he could have had his body parts removed in the suitcases carried by the alleged fifteen official Saudis who had arrived that morning by private jet and left that afternoon the same way. The supposition is that the fifteen men, which may have included some members of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s bodyguard as well as a physician skilled in autopsies who was carrying a bone saw, constituted the execution party for Khashoggi.

There are certain things that should be observed about the Turks, since they are the ones claiming that the disappearance of Khashoggi may have included a summary execution and dismemberment. The Turkish intelligence service, known by its acronym MIT, is very good, very active and very focused on monitoring the activities of foreign embassies and their employees throughout Turkey. They use electronic surveillance and, if the foreign mission has local employees, many of those individuals will be agents reporting to the Turkish government. In my own experience when I was in Istanbul, I had microphones concealed in various places in my residence and both my office and home phones were tapped. A number of local hire consulate employees were believed to be informants for MIT but they were not allowed anywhere near sensitive information.

As Turkey and Saudi Arabia might be termed rivals if not something stronger, it is to be presumed that MIT had the Consulate General building covered with both cameras and microphones, possibly inside the building as well as outside, and may have had a Turkish employer inside who observed some of what was going on. Which is to say that the Turks certainly know exactly what occurred but are playing their cards closely to see what they can derive from that knowledge. The two countries have already initiated a joint investigation into what took place. Turkey’s economy is in free fall and would benefit from “investment” from the Saudis to create an incentive to close the book on Khashoggi. In other words, Turkey’s perspective on the disappearance could easily be influenced by Saudi money and the investigation might well turn up nothing that is definitive.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, has a couple of cards to play also even if it did kill and dismember Khashoggi under orders from the Crown Prince. First of all, the system of petrodollars, which basically requires nearly all purchases of petroleum to be paid in dollars, is underwritten by the Saudis. Petrodollars in turn enable the United States to print money for which there is no backing knowing that there will always be international demand for dollars to buy oil. The Saudis, who also use their own petrodollars to buy U.S. treasury bonds, could pull the plug on that arrangement. That all means that the United States will be looking for an outcome that will not do too much damage to the Saudis.

Second, Saudi Arabia is in bed with Israel in opposition to Iran. This means the Israel Lobby and its many friends in Congress will squawk loudly about Khashoggi but ultimately shy away from doing anything about it. It already appears that a cover story is halfway in place to explain what happened. It is being suggested that a “rogue” element from Saudi Arabia might have carried out without the knowledge of the Crown Prince an interrogation or abduction attempt that went too far. Donald Trump speculated on Monday that that might be the case, suggesting that it may already be part of the official line that will be promoted. Those who know Saudi Arabia well, however, consider a high-level assassination not ordered by the Crown Prince directly to be extremely unlikely, but that does not necessarily mean that a cover story including that feature might not be successfully floated.

In regional terms, Saudi Arabia is also key to Trump’s anticipated Middle East peace plan. If it pulls out from the expected financial guarantees aspect, the plan will fall apart. Riyadh is also committed to buy tens of billions of dollars’ worth of American arms, an agreement that could be canceled if Washington begins to pressure the Saudis for answers. Beyond that, Saudi Arabia could stop pumping oil or fail to increase production when Iranian oil becomes subject to U.S. sanctions early next month, driving the price per barrel up dramatically for everyone. The Saudi government has already indicated that it will respond forcefully to any attempts to punish it over Khashoggi and there is no reason to doubt the seriousness of that threat.

There are, of course, possible impediments to selling the fake news narrative. Some early reports suggested that Khashoggi’s fiancé had observed and possibly recorded the execution inside the consulate using the victim’s Apple wristwatch linked to an iPad in her possession. If that is true, the release of such material to the media will create worldwide demand to learn the truth that will be difficult to control. Also, there are unconfirmed reports that U.S. intelligence knew in advance of Saudi plans to abduct Khashoggi, which could prove embarrassing to the Trump administration and could narrow its options.

The trick will be to see how a bit of extreme brutal behavior by the Saudis can be manipulated by all interested parties to produce a solution that doesn’t damage anyone too much. It will undoubtedly be far from the truth, but truth doesn’t necessarily matter much these days.

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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 that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and email [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCF.

Over 1300 days of Saudi-led aggression against Yemen, the number of victims has changed exponentially, while the International Community and the UN silent towards what’s happening!

A human-made disaster, killing and starvation, airstrikes, lack of food and medicine, blockade with no purpose other than to annihilate Yemen and its people!!

Preliminary result of Saudi-led aggression of more than (15,185) civilian deaths, including (3527) children and (2277) women.

At least (23,822) civilians injured, including 3526 children, and 2587 women who still suffer from lack of medicines, medical supplies and treatment due to the siege by Saudi Arabia and its allies.

The Legal Center also estimates the death of 160,000 Yemeni citizens from children, patients, and the wounded as a result of lack of basic medicines and medical services.

The center further noted that the Saudi military aggression has also caused the death of nearly 2,200 Yemenis from cholera.

Two in five of the Yemeni population, around 12 million people, are expected to face the worst famine in 100 years in coming months due to the escalating war and a deepening economic crisis, the World Food Program (WFP) said Monday.

It highlighted that aerial assaults being conducted by the Saudi-led alliance have resulted in the destruction of 15 airports and 14 ports, and damaged 2,559 roads and bridges in addition to 781 water storage facilities, 191 power stations and 426 telecommunications towers.

The statement went on to say that the incessant Saudi-led bombardment campaign has destroyed more than 421,911 houses, 930 mosques, 888 schools, 327 hospitals and health facilities plus 38 media organizations, halted the operation of 4,500 schools and left more than 4 million people internally displaced.

In addition, the Saudi-led coalition has targeted 1,818 government facilities, 749 food storehouses, 621 food trucks, 628 shops and commercial compounds, 362 fuel stations, 265 tankers, 339 factories, 310 poultry and livestock farms, 219 archaeological sites, 279 tourist facilities and 112 playgrounds and sports complexes.

The Legal Center for Rights and Developments in Yemen then called on the United Nations to shoulder its responsibilities concerning protection of human rights and the rules of international humanitarian law in Yemen.

The center finally asked the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to conduct a professional and impartial investigation into the crimes being perpetrated against civilians in Yemen.

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On Wednesday afternoon, detonation of an unidentified explosive device filled with metal fragments, along with indiscriminate live fire by masked gunmen armed with assault rifles at Crimea’s Kerch Polytechnic College reportedly killed at least 20 people, dozens of others injured, at least 16 in serious condition.

According to Crimea’s government,15 students were killed, including the attacker, six of them minors, and five adults.

Only one gunman was identified. See below. An eyewitness explained what happened as follows, saying:

“There was a blast and then the shooting. We started jumping out of the windows. (School) children’s bodies were lying all over the place.”

Another eyewitness said

“(t)here was a blast. All the glass shattered. (T)hen armed people started running around, opening doors and shooting at everyone.”

A survivor said

“(m)y friend was killed right in front of me. I saw her fall and simply stop moving. I saw boys dropping dead and blood spilling around.”

Another student said

“(w)e were standing outside with friends. Then there was an explosion. All the windows blasted out. We ran, climbed over the fence. There were more explosions or some similar noise. We just ran as far as we could.”

Source: RT.com

The blast reportedly happened on the targeted building’s ground floor, shootings on the second floor. How multiple gunmen with assault rifles weren’t spotted right away before opening fire wasn’t explained so far.

According to Russia’s Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko,

“(i)nvestigators have promptly established the identity of a young man who had arrived at the college immediately before the incident and who, proceeding from a video recording, was holding a rifle in his hand.”

“He turned out to be Vladislav Roslyakov, a fourth-year student from the college. His body with a gunshot wound was found in one of the college’s rooms.”

The identity of other gunmen involved are unknown so far. Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s Federal Security Service and other agencies to fully investigate what happened and determine responsible parties.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said

“(w)e are expecting information on this from the competent bodies.”

According to Crimean Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov, the identified gunman “acted alone,” adding “there is no other data.” His account conflicts with eyewitness saying multiple masked gunmen were involved.

Following the incident, Kerch and Crimea are on high alert, wary of further incidents.

Kerch Polytechnic College’s director said multiple gunmen shot students and teachers, dead and wounded bodies strewn throughout the area attacked.

Russian authorities initially called the incident a terrorist attack, later changing it to multiple homicides.

If a number of masked gunmen were involved as eyewitnesses and the college’s director claim, clearly the initial classification was accurate.

Russian investigators will likely determine accountability for what happened. It’s unknown if it was a Kiev provocation.

Ukrainian forces increased attacks on Donbass in recent days, likely orchestrated by Washington. Is the Crimean incident connected to Kiev aggression?

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Sputniknews.

After the recent purge of over 800 independent media outlets on Facebook, the Supreme Court is now hearing a case that could have ramifications for any future attempts at similar purges.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to take a case that could change free speech on the Internet forever.

Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, No. 17-702, the case that it has agreed to take, will decide if the private operator of a public access network is considered a state actor, CNBC reported.

The case could affect how companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and YouTube are governed. If the Court were to issue a far-reaching ruling it could subject such companies to First Amendment lawsuits and force them to allow a much broader scope of free speech from its users.

The Court decided to take the case on Friday and it is the first case that was taken after Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the Court.

DeeDee Halleck and Jesus Melendez claimed that they were fired from Manhattan Neighborhood Network for speaking critically of the network. And, though the case does not involve the Internet giants, it could create a ruling that expands the First Amendment beyond the government.

“We stand at a moment when the very issue at the heart of this case — the interplay between private entities, nontraditional media, and the First Amendment — has been playing out in the courts, in other branches of government, and in the media itself,” the attorneys from MNN wrote in their letter to the Court asking it to take the case.

The Court could either rule in MNN’s favor, rule against it in a narrow scope that does not affect other companies, or it could rule in a broad manner that would prevent the abilities of private networks and Internet companies to limit or censor speech on their platforms.

Censorship, Free Speech or Enforcing Company Policy

It comes at a time when Facebook has purged around 800 independent media pages in one day. The media outlets ranged the spectrum from far left to far right and many that either had no political affiliation or were not extreme in their politics. Facebook claimed that the pages were engaged in “inauthentic behavior” and as a private company it does not have to answer to anyone regarding how it enforces its terms of service.

ACLU attorney Vera Eidelman said Facebook, as a private company, can enforce their terms however it sees fit, but that could result in serious free speech consequences.

“Drawing the line between ‘real’ and ‘inauthentic’ views is a difficult enterprise that could put everything from important political parody to genuine but outlandish views on the chopping block,” Eidelman said. “It could also chill individuals who only feel safe speaking out anonymously or pseudonymously.”

The MNN case could change that and force Facebook, and other companies, to protect users First Amendment rights.

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Carmine Sabia Jr. is a Christian Conservative political pundit, writer, radio host and editor who covers political news and current events.

Featured image is from Citizen Truth.

China and Japan – the two main holders of the US Treasury securities – have trimmed their ownership of notes and bonds in August, according to the latest figures from the US Treasury Department, released on Tuesday.

The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, issued a statement Wednesday reminding Israel that the demolition of Bedouin village Khan al-Ahmar, in the occupied West Bank, would constitute a war crime.

“I have been following with concern the planned eviction of the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank. Evacuation by force now appears imminent, and with it, the prospects for further escalation and violence,” Bensouda, who is reviewing Israel’s aggressive expansion of illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank, wrote in the statement.

“It bears recalling, as a general matter, that extensive destruction of property without military necessity, and population transfers in an occupied territory constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute,” the statement said.

International human rights groups have already warned Israel that the demolition and forcible transfer of a population under occupation is a war crime but that hasn’t stopped Israel’s high court from upholding the green light on the demolition. The European Parliament has also condemned the planned demolition as a breach of the well established international humanitarian law.

Bensouda’s reminder comes days after Israeli occupation forces entered the Bedouin village with bulldozers prompting confrontations with the members of the Jahalin tribe that live in Khan al-Ahmar and international activists that are resisting Israel’s attempt to displace the over 30 families that have lived there since the 1950s, when they were expelled from the Naqab (Negev) desert.

NOW IN KHAN AL AHMAR: 3 people arrested after Israeli forces arrived to the village to escort bulldozers in infrastructures preparation for the upcoming demolition of the village. #Khanalahmar
By: Oren Ziv and Ahmad al-Bazz/Activestills.org pic.twitter.com/XpvVH7cTr0

— Activestills (@activestills) October 15, 2018

Israel and Palestinian activists have argued the demolition is part of a plan to connect the settlements of Ma’ale Adumim and Kfar Adumim with the occupied city of East Jerusalem, which Israel has illegally annexed.

According to Israeli authorities, the village was built illegally. However, the United Nations has shown that it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits. Between 2010 and 2014, Israel approved only 1.5 percent of all permit requests by Palestinians.

Bensouda also warned she will “continue to keep a close eye” on the developments in Gaza, where Palestinians demanding the end of the occupation and their right as refugees to return home, have sustained weekly protests since March 30.

Israel’s response to the protests have been widely condemned for use of excessive force and what human rights groups have called a “shoot to maim or kill” policy.  Since the Great March of Return began in March, Israeli forces have killed at least 205 Palestinians and wounded over 18,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Israel is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its jurisdiction. Despite this, Israelis suspected of committing crimes on Palestinian territories could face charges.

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Featured image: Bedouins await the imminent demolition of their village, which they have vowed to resist. (Source: Activestills.org)

The B61-12, the new US nuclear bomb which replaces the B-61 deployed in Italy and other European countries, will begin production in less than a year. The announcement was made officially by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). It reveals that the revision of the final project has now been completed with success, and the qualification stage will begin this month at the Pantex Plant in Texas. Production will be authorised to begin in September 2019.

In March 2020, the first unit of production will begin fabricating a series of 500 bombs. As from that time, in other words in about a year and a half, the United States will begin the anti-Russian deployment in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland and probably certain other European countries, of the first nuclear bomb in their arsenal with a precision guidance system. The B61-12 is designed with penetrating capacity, built to explode underground in order to destroy bunkers housing command centres.

Since Italy and the other countries, in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, are offering the USA the bases, the pilots and the aircraft for the deployment of the B61-12, Europe will soon be exposed to a greater risk as the front line of the developing nuclear confrontation with Russia.

An even more dangerous situation appears at the same moment – the return of the Euromissiles, meaning the nuclear missiles which are similar to those deployed in Europe in the 1980’s by the USA, with the official aim of defending against Soviet missiles.

Source: PandoraTV

This category of ground-based nuclear missiles of intermediate range (between 500 and 5,500 km)  were eliminated with the INF Treaty of 1987. But in 2014, the Obama administration accused Russia of having experimented with a cruise missile (# 9M729) whose category was forbidden by the Treaty. Moscow denied that the missile violated the INF Treaty and, in turn, accused Washington of having installed in Poland and Romania launch ramps for interceptor missiles (elements of the “shield”), which could be used to launch cruise missiles bearing nuclear warheads.

The accusation aimed by Washington at Moscow, which is not supported by any evidence, enabled the USA to launch a plan aimed at once again deploying in Europe ground-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles. The Obama administration had already announced in 2015 that “faced with the violation of the INF Treaty by Russia, the United States are considering the deployment of ground-based missiles in Europe”. This plan was confirmed by the Trump administration – in fiscal year 2018, Congress authorised the financing of a “programme of research and development for a cruise missile which could be launched from a mobile road base”.

The plan is supported by the European allies of NATO. The recent North-Atlantic Council,  at the level of Europe’s Defence Ministers, which was attended for Italy by Elisabetta Trenta (M5S), declared that the “INF Treaty is in danger because of the actions of Russia”, which it accused of deploying “a disturbing missile system which constitutes a serious risk for our security”. Hence the necessity that “NATO must maintain nuclear forces which are stable, trust-worthy and efficient” (which explains why the members of the Alliance rejected en bloc the United Nations Treaty for the prohibition of nuclear weapons).

So the grounds are being laid for a European deployment, on the borders of Russian territory, of ground-based intermediate-range US nuclear missiles. It’s as if Russia were deploying in Mexico nuclear missiles pointed at the United States.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by Pete Kimberley

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

There is an emerging orthodoxy, rooted more in fiction than fact, that the 15-year regime of the Ontario Liberals somehow swung the ideological and policy spectrum sharply to the left. But this is a gross misinterpretation of actual history. While the Liberals did indeed implement a hodgepodge of policies that might selectively register as ‘progressive’, their time in power was never about a wholesale repudiation of the Conservative’s Common Sense Revolution but rather about deepening and extending it in ways that were more palatable to a public increasingly fed up with the uncompromising and aggressive style of their Conservative predecessors. In other words, it was continuity, not change, that defined the Liberals’ time in power.

Those at the centre of this historical re-imagining are increasingly recasting the Liberals’ time in government as an extreme left interregnum inconsistent with the ‘progressive’ conservative values of Ontario. They point to all day kindergarten, the expansion of prescription-drug and dental benefits, the subsidization of tuition fees for some post-secondary students, proposed pension reform, modest increases to high-income earners’ taxes, changes to labour legislation, and some investments in new infrastructure and social programs as key illustrations. But these new investments barely made up for inflation and population growth, let alone a reversal of the fiscal legacy of the Harris Conservatives.

Through their first term (2003-07), modest savings were made through the privatization of services formerly covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) like chiropractic therapy, physical rehabilitation and optometry exams. The Dalton McGuinty government also spearheaded the expansion of private healthcare clinics, introducing a graduated healthcare premium that ranged from $60 to $900 per year depending on income level. But this was the calm before the storm.

Decade of Austerity

As the tailwinds of the 2008 recession swept across Ontario, the Liberal government responded with a plan outlining a decade of austerity. The major policy plank of this program was the Open Ontario Plan (OOP), which called for, among other things, tax relief, the privatization of public assets and services, and wage concessions from public sector workers. To give a few examples, the general corporate income tax (CIT) rate was cut 28 per cent, the preferential small business CIT rate was cut 36 per cent, and the tax rate on the first $37,106 of personal taxable income was reduced by more than 16 per cent, while those earning up to $80,000 per year saw a tax cut of 10 per cent. Altogether, tax cuts during this time eroded some $500-million in annual revenue generation making Ontario’s tax regime among the lowest across the OECD.

The omnibus Open for Business Act introduced over 100 amendments to legislation across ten ministries whose stated objective was to create a more competitive business climate. The Liberals solicited CIBC World Markets and Goldman Sachs to come up with a plan to monetize the province’s $60-billion worth of public assets. The idea behind “SuperCorp” was to combine Ontario’s Crown assets, including nuclear power plants, power generation facilities, 29,000 kilometres of electrical transmission and distribution lines, six-hundred plus liquor stores and gaming operations.

The Liberals also established the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services headed by former TD Bank chief economist Don Drummond. The Commission recommended cuts deeper than those of the 1990s followed by the sale of public assets and privatized service delivery. In following through on some 80 per cent of the Drummond Commission’s recommendations, the Liberals eroded an additional $300-million in public revenue by 2015-16. The “crowning irony” for the Liberals was that after a decade in power they had succeeded in cutting the size of government down to when they had taken over from their Conservative predecessors.

In 2013, amid a barrage of scandals, both Premier McGuinty and Finance Minister Dwight Duncan stepped down in what was portrayed as a period of renewal. Kathleen Wynne emerged as new party leader and Premier of Ontario, positioning herself as the “social justice” and “activist” premier against the old guard. In practice, however, much of the Harris-McGuinty legacy continued.

Privatization – Full Steam Ahead

Public-private-partnerships (P3s) proliferated, even though the Auditor General found that Ontario could have saved up to $8-billion through traditional public procurement. Premier Wynne launched a blue-ribbon panel headed by president and former CEO of TD Bank, Ed Clark, to advise the government how to privatize public assets such as the OLG and LCBO, which together bring in more than $4.5-billion annually.

Catching her own party off guard, Kathleen Wynne kickstarted the asset sell-off with Hydro One, which was estimated to bring in close to $750-million in annual public revenue. Under Wynne’s plan, the Liberals sold-off 60 per cent ownership stake bringing in roughly $4-billion in one-off monies while maintaining a 40 per cent public ownership. The Financial Accountability Office (FAO) found that the sale of Hydro one was roughly equivalent to five years of continued public ownership.

Far from progressive public policy, it has been tax cuts and austerity that has prevailed in Ontario over the last decade. Little wonder then that Doug Ford and Co. have stoked the fires of deficit hysteria given the reluctance of the Liberals to deal with the revenue side of government expenditures. The reality is that when it comes to the provinces context matters, perhaps more than anywhere else in the world.

2018’s election saw Wynne herself boasting that Ontario was now “the leanest government in Canada” when it came to per capita program spending. What wasn’t mentioned though was that among the provinces, Ontario was dead last when it came to per capita public revenue, second smallest when it came to the per capita size of Ontario’s public sector as measured by employees, and second-lowest in North America (after Alabama) when it came to corporate tax rates.

Of course, real ideological and policy differences exist between the Liberals and Conservatives. But to refer to the Liberal decade and a half in power as progressive in any meaningful sense of the term is more than just an historical misreading, it’s ideological and political gamesmanship at its worst. With the Ford Conservatives in power, Ontario has now come full circle. In an increasingly unequal and divided province, the time has come to explore what truly progressive politics, and not just those “for the [rich] people,” might actually look like.

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