Global Research

General Analysis of the Situation

In order to understand Turkey’s approach toward the conflict in Syria, one first needs to explain the military situation there as of September 2018.

There are localized clashes between militant groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in northern Latakia and southern Idlib. The Syrian Arab Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces have recently carried out a series of strikes on weapons depots, equipment and UAV workshops and key facilities belonging to militants in southern and southwestern Idlib.

These as well as deployment of additional SAA units at the contact line between the militant-held and government-held areas are described by pro-militant sources as clear sings of the upcoming SAA operation to defeat Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda-like factions there.

The situation became especially complex following a September 17 announcement by Turkish and Russian Presidents that a 15-20km deep demilitarized zone between militants and government troops will be established in the Idlib de-escalation zone. All heavy weaponry, including battle tanks and artillery as well as hardline militants have to be withdrawn from the area before October 10 and the zone itself is set to be established before October 15. However, it’s still unclear how it’s possible without employing a military option to force radical militant groups, like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, to obey.

In Suweida and Rif Dimashq, the SAA is still working to eliminate ISIS cells operating in the desert area. Separate ISIS attacks on the SAA and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) happen time to time.

In those parts of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor provinces, which are controlled by the Kurdish-dominated SDF, the health care system has been totally destroyed, and no effort is being made to restore major infrastructure. Many of the areas under SDF control suffer from epidemics due to the shortage of clean water, and nearly total absence of medical services. The situation particularly bad, when it comes to restoring normal life and services. Local authorities, who should be involved in these matters, are mainly concerned with their own well-being. Kurdish leaders still view their main task as the creation of an independent enclave and later their own state in these territories. This is why their main concern is to keep the political and military dominance in the Arab-populated area.

Negotiations between Damascus and the Kurds are continuing at a slow pace. The Kurdish political leadership are seeking to get concessions from Damascus, for example some kind of federation within Syria.

Afrin, controlled by the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and Ankara proxies, is experiencing low-intensity guerilla war. Cells of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) regularly carry out bombings and hit-and-run attacks on Turkey-led forces.

The TAF has introduced additional security measures, increased the number of UAVs deployed and imposed practice of burning plots close to cities to react to YPG raids more quickly. However, the YPG continues a limited partisan war in Afrin, but without having sufficient forces to return it to own control.

At the regional level, Ankara wants to position itself as the most important player in the matter of resolving the Syrian crisis. Turkey is actively supporting only those formations in Syria, which are loyal to and affiliated with it. The purpose is to turn Syria into a country loyal to Turkey, to neutralize Kurdish armed formations, to replace the Assad government, and to create a reliable pathway for energy supplies, especially oil, to Turkey. To achieve these goals, Ankara is using the rhetoric of counter-terrorism, though in reality it will support any organization ready to help to achieve its goals.

On the local level, Turkey’s goals and tasks consist of two parts:

The first is to deal with Kurdish armed formations in northern Syria. Turkey is directly fighting Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria, mainly the YPG. The YPG is the core of the US-backed SDF. At the same time, the YPG is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) both military and politically. [the YPG’s political wing, the PYD, is part of the Kurdistan Communities Union (also known KCK) together with PKK] Turkey alongside with the US and many other states consider the PKK as a terrorist group. Despite this, the YPG and the PYD as a dominating part of the SDF receive support from the US.

The announcement that SDF bases would be used to prepare so-called “border security forces” (BSF), which would protect SDF/YPG-occupied parts of Syria, provoked a sharply negative reaction in Ankara, which accused the US of creating a “terrorist army” on the border with Turkey.

If the BSF is successfully established, it would become an important step of the PYD/YPG, backed by the US, en route to establish a Kurdish semi-independent state within Syrian territory. This scenario is unacceptable for Turkey because such a state will pose a direct threat to its national security because of deep ties between the PYD/YPG and the PKK. This became one of the key reasons behind Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch against the YPG in the Syrian area of Afrin. Ahead of the operation the PYD/YPG leadership in Afrin has got multiple suggestions from the Damascus government to settle the situation by a peaceful way allowing the Syrian Army to deploy on the border with Turkey thus preventing the operation. However, all these suggestions have been rejected. After the start of the Turkish operation, the PYD accused Russia of colluding with Ankara to harm the Kurdish population.

From January 20 to March 24, 2018, the TAF and Turkish-backed militant groups delivered a devastating blow to the YPG in Afrin and captured most of the area. Most of the YPG members and their supporters had fled to the government-controlled part of Aleppo province. The Turkish advance stopped when its forces reached positions of the Syrian Army.

This was the second Turkish military operation carried out in northern Syria. The first one, dubbed Operation Euphrates Shield, took place in the al-Bab-Azaz-Jarabulus triangle from August 24, 2016 to March 29, 2017. The operation followed an attempt by Kurdish armed factions to link up their areas in northwestern and northeastern Syria and put an end to these plans.

The PYD is the most influential, but not the only Kurdish political party in northern Syria. In January 2018 the PYD did not participate in the Russian-backed Sochi Congress for Syrian Dialogue. Turkey was against this, though it approved presence of another Syrian Kurdish political party – the Kurdish National Council (ENKS).

The second goal is to keep and expand influence in the province of Idlib. The TAF started entering the province in October 2017 in the framework of the de-escalation zone agreement reached by Ankara, Teheran and Moscow in the Astana talks format. Since then, they have established 12 observation posts in the de-escalation zone. Russia have established 10 and Iran 7 posts near the de-escalation zone under the same agreement.

On May 28, 2018, 11 groups within the Turkish-backed part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) announced the creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF) also known as Jabhat al-Wataniya lil-Tahrir. The merger was announced by Faylaq-al-Sham, the 1st and 2nd Coastal Divisions, the 1st Infantry Division, the Free Idlib Army, Jaysh al-Nasr, the Second Army, Jaysh al-Nukhba, Liwaal-Shuhdaal-Islam, Liwa Al-Hur and the 23^rd Division. The NLF is headed by Faylaq-al-Sham leader, Colonel Fadlallahаl-Haji.

Image on the right: National Liberation Front logo

On the same day, an NLF official announced that the Turkey-created force will take over the Idlib de-escalation zone. Russia, Turkey, and Iran will monitor the situation for 6-12 months, after which a new phase will follow. All the groups in the region will be disbanded and a single army on the basis of the NLF will be created. Idlib will be governed by local Turkish-controlled councils with minimal influence from Russia and Iran, said Omar Khatzayafah.

Turkish forces and their proxies have contributed no efforts to combat Hayat Tahrir al-Sham influence, which is excluded from the de-escalation. In turn, it is carrying out active attempts to increase its influence in area and save the core of the anti-Assad forces. According to available data, Turkey is conducting active negotiations with the group’s leader, Abu Muhammed al-Julani, in an attempt to convince him to rebrand the group once again and merge with the Turkey-led “opposition”. Ankara also allowed the NFL and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to carry out a large-scale crackdown on public figures, field commanders and activists supporting an idea of possible peaceful reconciliation with the Damascus government.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members and supporters are in Idlib

At the same time, the security situation in the militant-controlled part of Idlib province remains poor. Over the past few months, the area has been hit by multiple bombings and assassinations aimed at both civilian and militant targets.

Means Used by Turkey to Achieve Its Aims

When the Syrian conflict began, Turkey turned its own territory, particularly the border zone, into infrastructure used to this day by armed formations for training, rest, and medical support. The Istanbul-Gaziantep route, unofficially dubbed the “jihad-express”, was the main stream of jihadists heading for Syria in 2014-16. The Kilis-Azaz border crossing was also a major logistical hub for militants moving to Syria. Moreover, many Turkish border settlements were de-facto bases where militants were assembled and prepared for crossing the border.

A letter dated March 15, 2013 and signed by Turkey’s Minister of the Interior Muammer Guler, stating that Hatay province was acquiring strategic importance in the context of the transfer of militants from Turkey to Syria, deserves separate treatment. The enabling of the movement within the region, the training and provision of medical aid to wounded fighters, and their crossing of the border into Syria, was mainly conducted through this province. According to the letter, Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and other organizations, which received corresponding authority, would coordinate the work with Hatay province leadership. When transitioning fighters through Hatay using land or air transport and with the participation of various civilian entities, heightened security measures were required. The letter notes that it is advantageous to place the fighters in hostels run by the Ministry of Religious Affairs and government hotels in the province, on direct instructions from the MIT. Similar letters were sent to the Mardin, Urfa, and Antepe provinces.

Hatay hosts the camp for SAA deserters in Apaidin, only 2km from the Syrian border. In September 2012, this camp was considered the FSA headquarters, according to Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, a member of the Republican People’s Party. At that time, there were about 300 former Syrian soldiers and police, including about 30 generals, in the camp.

In September 2013, a Deutsche Welle report mentioned that hundreds of fighters from Al-Qaeda-affiliated organizations were delivered by Turkish ambulances from Syria to the Ceylinpinar hospital, and those who suffered more serious wounds were delivered to the Balikdigol hospital in Sanliurfa province. In August 2014, the Daily Mail published an article about the border town of Reyhanli, which was part of the pipeline for militants into Syria and where Turkish border guards turned a blind eye. ISIS militants rested in the city itself before crossing the border, military uniforms, and possibly also weapons, were being sold right on the streets.

Starting in March 2015, “Syrian rebels” were trained with the help of US and Turkish soldiers at a base in Kirsehir in central Turkey. The US announced that they would fight against ISIS, but representatives of the Turkish opposition said that the trained militants would mainly fight against the Assad government.

The Turkish authorities confirmed in March 2015 the fact of a wounded ISIS field commander, who was a Turkish citizen, undergoing treatment in the hospital in Denizli.

As of 2016, the city of Antalya in Hatay hosted a training camp for FSA members, who were fighting participating in Operation Euphrates Shield.

The media more than once reported the presence of a training camp for “rebels” in Adana province, 8km from the Incirlik airbase. Turkish air force officials did not comment on these reports, and journalists had no access to the base. The official justification of this approach was that the refugees and opposition fighters ought to have free movement across the border.

Two main forces capitalizing on this situation were Jabhat al-Nusra (now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) and ISIS receiving recruits, funds and weapons through Turkish territory. Furthermore, Ankara’s ties to these groups are based not only on fighting Assad, but also on economic relations, and neither Turkish soldiers nor intelligence professionals have any illusions concerning this situation.

It’s also telling that since the start of the conflict, Turkey has sharply increased the intake of water from the Euphrates, which soon caused many Syrian cities and villages to suffer from serious shortages. As soon as the SDF took control of northeastern Syria, the intake of water reached its maximum levels. However, when ISIS was in control of this area, Turkey was keeping the water and electricity supply.

Another major feature of the Turkish collaboration with ISIS was the matter of the security of the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, which caused disagreements among the hardened Islamists within ISIS, since in their interpretation of Islam, adoration of the dead is a sign of lack of belief and of polytheism. However, for some reason the tomb was jointly guarded by ISIS militants and Turkish soldiers. One can say with absolute certainty that there existed an agreement which assigned ISIS the role of protectors in exchange for free movement of militants from Turkey to Syria and back.

More evidence is provided by interviews with ISIS fighters captured by the SDF. One of them was a Libyan named Osman. He was first sent on a short 22-day initial training in Bani-Valid, Libya. Then he was trained with other ISIS recruits in Misrata for 25 days. Days before the graduation Osman was hit from a PKM by a “comrade in arms”, which meant spending another 22 days in Misrata hospital. During that time he was given a fake Libyan passport and sent for treatment in Medicana International, a large Turkish hospital in the Melik Duzu quarter of Istanbul. Osman confirmed the existence of an air corridor from Libya to Turkey for ISIS militants from Africa, Tunisia, and other Maghreb countries, who wished to join their “brothers” in Syria. Wounded fighters were sent from Libya to Turkey on a private plane. “We were helped during boarding,” said Osman. Then I realized that everyone else is also severely wounded, some are even paralyzed.” At the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul ISIS fighters were met by ambulances. Soon all the wounded were placed in Turkish hospitals.

“We were loaded singly and in pairs, after which I found myself at Medicana International”. Osman said that all ISIS movements are under Turkish intelligence oversight. They are also concerned with ensuring the wounded militants’ security. “I once had to be examined by a neurologist, for which I had to be transported to a different hospital. On the way to the hospital I was accompanied by two intelligence officers, armed with pistols.” After the treatment which took another 4 months, he was brought to a hotel close to the hospital, then to a house in the European part of Istanbul. Three days later he was contacted by a militant called Abu Masab al-Iraqi, and they met in the Ibrahim Khalil quarter of the city where he and other mercenaries were told they were going to get tickets for a plane to Urfu. Many ISIS militants and their families and children had already assembled there. Osman indicated the particular importance of two cities, Tel Abyad and Jarablus, in supplying ISIS. This corridor funneled the biggest influx of mercenaries from Turkey to Syria under the supervision of Turkish intelligence and the army. In addition to fighters, it was also used to ship weapons, munitions and uniforms.

Another ISIS member (name unknown) said the following: “My Sudanese friend by the name Khaled Sali who was in ISIS and who lived in Azzaz, proposed I join ISIS too. I agreed because I didn’t know about other formations. He then accompanied me to Khartoum airport, from where I flew to Istanbul. There I was met by local ISIS coordinators and set me up in a hotel whose name I don’t remember. After then I was flown by a Turkish domestic airline to Gaziantep, then to Kilis on the border with Syria. My coordinator was already waiting for me in Azzaz. Crossing the border was simpler than simple. No soldiers, no police, no Turkish authorities. And if they were there, it means we crossed right under their noses.”

Israeli military intelligence head, Major-General Aviv Kochavi said in January 2014 that the cities of Karaman, Osmaniye, and Sanliurfa house Al-Qaeda camps, which are also used as staging points.

After the start of the Russian military operation in Syria, and multiple public revelations of Turkish links to the terrorists, like participation in the ISIS oil business, free movement of these terrorists across the border ceased. Otherwise the Erdogan government would have become a public sponsor of terrorism, which was unacceptable for Erdogan’s image. But the main reason for the closure of the border crossing was the series of defeats ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra suffered, Turkey’s re-evaluation of its strategy in Syria under Russian pressure, and a reduction in the flow of refugees.

Pro-Turkish groups and attempts to create a unified opposition in northern Syria

Turkey currently uses a whole range of military instruments to advance its interests. During Operation Olive Branch in January-March 2018, Turkey involved 12 following groups as a core of its proxy force: the Hamza Division, Liwa Sultan Murad, Faylaq ash-Sham, Jaysh al-Nasr, Jaysh al-Nukhba, Jabhat al-Aisalat wal-Tanmia, the 23rd Division, the 1st Coastal Division, the 2nd Coastal Division, the Free Idlib Army, the 2nd Army and Liwa Shuhada al-Islam. An estimated manpower of these groups is 31,200. Besides this, the operation also involved fighters from other groups, like Ahrar al-Sham, the Sham Legion and others. Some of these groups are now part of the National Liberation Front, created in an attempt to boost combat potential and numeric strength of pro-Turkey bloc in the province of Idlib.

HINT: A few words about the National Liberation Front in the context of Turkish policy. It is yet another attempt by Ankara to take control of a region which is the most problem-ridden de-escalation zone (Idlib), and where al-Qaeda jihadists from HTS have much influence. In the event of direct fighting against HTS, Turkey would face the risk of being bogged down in a prolonged, hard campaign. Turkish troops already have negative experiences associated with Euphrates Shield, where Turkish forces and allied Syrian militants had difficulty in expelling ISIS out of Al-Bab, suffering heavy personnel and equipment losses. In the event of an NLF success in Idlib, Turkey would avoid unnecessary losses and obtain the means of waging military operations ostensibly using a proxy. Moreover, Turkey would also get a “bridgehead” in Syria, which could be used to effectively influence the course of the conflict and the development of the situation in northern Syria.

Apart from that, the presence of NLF formations has economic significance. They protect the Aleppo-Hama road, which is the commercial route from Turkey to Jordan and to Persian Gulf states. Some of these goods will remain in Syria. With Syrian industry destroyed, Turkish goods can achieve dominance.

Another entity created in order to overcome the divisions plaguing the many groups controlled by Ankara is the Syrian National Army (SNA).

A Turkish-staged ceremony of the SNA announcement

It was intended to serve as a force against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib if negotiations between Turkey and the group fail. The SNA will also participate in operations against Kurdish armed groups and will be responsible for consolidating the territories captured by Turkey-led forces. Finally, the creation of the SNA is an effort to re-brand so-called democratic activists after they have tarnished their image with war crimes or with collaboration with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

As of today, the SNA is mainly operating in the al-Bab-Azaz-Jarabulus triangle and in Afrin. When operations in northern Syria are complete, all SNA forces from Jarablus to Idlib should be under a single command.

The main force of the SNA are its 1, 2, and 3 Corps. The SNA formation is proceeding parallel to that of the National Liberation Front. The SNA, formed on May 30, 2017 as a separate force from the FSA, is a new army divided into three corps, consisting of 36 opposition groups under the aegis of the FSA. As of January 2018, it was still being formed and included 25,000 members.

The SNA has received and is receiving support from Liwa Suquoral-Shimal, Ahraral-Sharqiyya, Jaysh al-Nukhba, Faylaq ash-Sham, Liwa Sultan Suleiman Shah, Liwa Sultan Mehmed Fatih, Liwa al-Vakkas, Jabhat Shamiyah, Liwa Muntassir Billah, Liwa Sultan Murad, Jayshal-Shimal, Liwa Samarkand, the 23rd Division, the 9th Division, Fevjal-Mustafa, Liwaal-Awwal al-Magahaweer, Liwa Usudul-Fatiheen, Jayshal-Ahfad, Festaqem Kema Umrit, the Hamza Division, Liwa Asifat Hazm, Jabhat al-Aisalat wal-Tanmia, Jayshal-Nasr, Liwa Hasakah Shield, Jaysh al-Sharqiyya, Liwaal-Fatih, Liwa Sultan Osman, Rejalal-Harb, Liwa al-Shimal, the 5^th Regiment, Jaysh al-Thani and Tacammu Adl.

The first reports of the Turkey-controlled Free Syrian Police (FSP) appeared in January 2017. Police units were formed in Jarablus as part of Operation Euphrates Shield, in order to help the FSA in their rear areas. By October 25, 2017, the Turkey Police Academy had graduated 5,631 Syrian police officers in 5 different schools, according to Anadolu Agency police sources. Syrian policemen were trained to provide security and protection in regions covered by the operation. Some 20% of the participants received SWAT training.

Starting on May 10, 2018, after training in Turkey 620 FSP are ensuring security in north-west Afrin. The cadets, aged between 18 and 45, undergo a month-long training regimen, according to Anadolu. A video posted by Yeni Safak newspaper in January 2017 showed a group of security forces dressed in Turkish police uniforms, chanting “long live Turkey, long live Erdogan and long live a free Syria.”

Türkiye'de eğitim gören Suriyeli polis güçleri, Fırat Kalkanı Harekatı ile kurtulan bölgelerde görev yapacak. pic.twitter.com/lX7kITEegG

— Yeni Şafak (@yenisafak) January 22, 2017

In the autumn of 2018, the situation in Idlib and nearby militant-held areas become the main point of attention of the international media covering the conflict in Syria. The rationale for Turkey’s collaboration with Idlib armed groups is the desire to expand its own influence, while preserving the radical segment of these formations as a shock force to continue exerting pressure on the Assad government, Iran and Russia.

The pattern of working with these groups in the province is set up as follows:

• Small armed groups which did well in Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch are under nearly full operational control;
• Groups united around Ahrar al-Sham, known as the Syrian Liberation Front, are under partial control;
• Al Qaeda in Syria (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and their allies) are in a state of “fruitful cooperation”, with less than total control (less than the SLF);
• The future of small groups not included in the above categories due to their links with ISIS and al-Qaeda (for example, the remnants of Jund al-Aqsa or Hilf Nusrat al-Islam) is yet to be determined.
• ISIS cells in Idlib. Turkey and its local allies have been fighting them with varying success. The problem is that, ideologically, the core of pro-Turkish groups and their allies is quite similar to ISIS. This is made worse by the horrifying level of corruption in and violence by the security forces of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian Liberation Front, which are the only forces capable of relatively significant action against ISIS cells.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains the dominant military force in Idlib, alongside the Syrian Liberation Front. The problem of the Turkish approach is that the stronger the force, the harder it is to control it “behind closed doors” without offering guarantees. Hence various “PR armies” such as the SNA. While sabotaging the fight against terrorists, Ankara is strenuously pretending it is forming the “moderate opposition”. In the short term the odds of the pro-Turkey “moderate opposition” defeating terrorism in Idlib with Ankara’s help are minimal. The Turkish stance toward a possible military operation against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies in Idlib by the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance is proof of it, if additional proof were needed.

The total amount of financing provided to militant groups in Syria from Turkey has never been assessed, but it’s in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It has varied at different stages of conflict, and was disbursed through various sources.

In 2012-2016, the main source of financing was aid from foreign sponsors. Ankara was not too shy to use funds from the US, Persian Gulf monarchies, domestic or foreign volunteers supporting these or other groups. One should also include the CIA program worth $500 million to train “Syrian insurgents”. The 2015-16 migration crisis led to EU-Turkey negotiations on financial aid to Ankara, in return for which Turkey housed the refugees. Turkey asked for €30 billion up front, to be followed by annual payments of €3 billion, but it’s not known how much Turkey actually received, though there was an agreement on €3 billion in 2016 and another €3 by 2018. Considering the numerous world media reports on the terrible conditions for refugees in Turkey, it’s likely the money is mostly being used to finance groups fighting Assad, while refugees are given the lowest priority. Moreover, the Turkish Ministry of Defense and the MIT probably have budget items which are used to finance armed groups, though these would obviously be classified.

As the flow of jihadists and activities of volunteers declined, opposition groups fighting in Syria apparently shifted to self-sufficiency, which looks as follows: Turkey provides weapons, munitions, equipment, transportation and training. In return it receives resources from the occupied territory—oil, agricultural and industrial products. The priority is given to Turkey-manufactured goods in trade on occupied territory.

Turkey also continues to play the role of a clearing house for financing, though now to a lesser extent. One should note the widespread hawala system, an informal financial accounting system which is based on a balance of mutual credits and obligations among brokers and which is widespread in Muslim countries. The Money Services Business is also widespread in Turkey. What they all have in common is an absence of accounting transparency as understood in the West. For example: during a chat on Whats App or another messenger, an individual raising funds indicates the transfer should take place through an entity working with Western Union in Turkey. The recommended contribution varies from $500 and $9500, can be repeated, and is difficult to track. The fund-raiser provides contact information and asks the sponsor to provide a secret code after the transfer in order to collect the money in a town on the Syrian border.

Turkey uses various range of ideologically divided groups ranging from neo-osmanist and pan-turkic to ultra-radical Islamist ones, which are incompatible with the current Syrian government. This shows that in order to fulfill his own political ambitions, Erdogan is ready to make alliances with almost anybody who may serve his interests.

According to UNHCR, in April 2018 there were 3.9 million refugees from Syria in Turkey. Such a number of people cannot help but attract the attention of the Turkish military and intelligence for the purpose of ideological indoctrination and recruitment to fight a war for the new Syria, as envisioned by Erdogan.

A more detailed look at some Turkish-backed groups operating in northern Syria:

Hamza Division. Syrian nationalism. It numbered about 2,200 in September 2017 according to its own reports, and consists mostly of Arabs, Syrian Turkmen, and Kurds. It has its HQ in Mare, Aleppo province, where it operates and its commander in September 2017 was Abdullah Halawa. It cooperates with the Northern Thunder Brigade, the Mare’ Resistance Brigade, the Special Operations Brigade, the Dhi Qar Brigade and the Kurdish Falcons Brigade.

Liwa Sultan Murad. Pan-Turkishm. In 2016, it claimed to have 1,300 troops in 2016, mostly Syrian Turkmen and Arabs. Together with other Turkmen organizations, such as Liwa Sultan Suleiman Shah, Liwa Sultan Mehmed Fatih and Liwa Sultan Osman, it forms the Sultan Murad bloc. According to Turkish sources, Liwa Sultan Mehmed Fatih units undergo training in Turkey itself, though the location of the camp is unknown. It has its HQ in Al-Bab, Aleppo province. The commander as of November 2017 was Mahmoud al-Hajj Hassan.

Faylaq ash-Sham. Salafism. It has about 4,000 members, mostly Arabs. It’s based in Aleppo province, but its zone of responsibility also includes Idlib, Latakia, Hama, and Homs provinces. The commander as of early 2018 was Yasser Abdul Rahim, who was a key field commander during Operation Olive Branch. In February 2018 he was replaced by Khaldun Mador, and currently the commander is Colonel Fadlallahal-Haji. This formation served as the base for the National Liberation Front and the commander of Faylaq ash-Sham became the commander of this new formation. In June 2018 it was joined by Liwa Shuhada al-Islam, who numbers 799. It collaborates with the Army of Mujahideen, the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, and there are reports of close collaboration with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

Jaysh al-Nasr. Salafism. It had 5,000 members, mainly Arabs, as of 2015. Its HQ is in Qalaatal-Madiq, Hama province and its zone of responsibility includes Idlib, Latakia, Hama, and Aleppo provinces. It was commanded by Muhammad Mansour as of early 2018. With the formation of National Liberation Front, Mansour became its deputy commander and chief of staff. The group collaborates closely with Tahrir al-Sham, Jaysh al-Izza and Ahrar ash-Sham.

Jaysh al-Nukhba. It collaborates with groups pursuing Syrian nationalism and Salafism. Its strength was 3,000, mostly Arabs, as of early 2017, according to its own statements. Its Aleppo province HQ is located in Jarablus, its Idlib province HQ in Kafr Nabl, and its zone of responsibility covers Idlib, Latakia, Hama, and Aleppo provinces. This formation is part of the Hawar Kilis Operations Room, the biggest pro-Turkey FSA group. It was commanded by Mohammed Ahmedal-Sayed in early 2017 and collaborates with Jaysh al-Nasr, Ahrar ash-Sham and the Free Idlib Army.

Jabhat al-Aisalat wal-Tanmia. Salafism. It had 5,000 members, mostly Arabs, in late 2015. Its zone of responsibility is Aleppo province and it is part of the Hawar Kilis Operations Room. The group collaborates with Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar ash-Sham.

23^rd Division. Islamic democracy. It numbered 1,400, mostly Arabs, in late 2014. Its HQ is in Qah, Idlib province and its zone of responsibility covers the northern Idlib and Aleppo provinces. Commanded by Abu Mustafa in early 2018, it collaborates with Ahrar ash-Sham, the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement and Festaqem Kema Umrit.

1st Coastal Division. Pan-Turkism. 2800 strong in 2015, it is made up of mostly Syrian Turkmen and Arabs. Its zone of responsibility covers Idlib and Latakia and as of 2014 its commander was Muhammad Haj Ali. It collaborates closely with Tahrir al-Sham, Ahrar ash-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party.

2nd Coastal Division. Pan-Turkism. It numbered around 500, mostly Syrian Turkmen, in 2015. Its zone of responsibility includes Aleppo and Latakia and its commander is Tarik Solak. It collaborates closely with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (in the province of Latakia) and Ahrar ash-Sham.

Free Idlib Army. Syrian nationalism. According to its own account it numbered around 6000, mostly Arabs, in 2016. It has headquarters in the towns of Maaratal-Numaan and Kafr Nabal in the province of Idlib. Its zone of responsibility covers the provinces of Idlib, Latakia and Aleppo. It includes the 13th Division, the Northern Division and the Mountain Hawks Brigade. Currently they are commanded by Suhaib Leoush. They collaborate closely with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Ahrar ash-Sham and Faylaq ash-Sham.

2^nd Army. Syrian nationalism and Islamic democracy. In June 2017 it counted around 1500 members, mostly Arabs. Its zone of responsibility covers Idlib, Latakia and Hama. It includes Division 46, Division 312, and Division 314 and its commander in June 2017 was Mohammed Khaled Khleif. There are reports that they have fought with ISIS in the North of Syria.

Liwa Shuhda al-Islam. Moderate Islam. It had around 700 members, mostly Arabs, in June 2017. Its HQ is in Idlib, Hama and Rif Dimashq. Its commander, Saeed Naqrash, was captured by unknown individuals in April 2018. The group blames Tahrir al-Sham for the kidnapping, which they deny. There are reports of close collaboration with the Islamic Union of the Soldiers of the Levant.

Turkish Diplomatic Approach Toward Northern Syria

Northern Syria is a big knot of contradictions, with every party (Syria, Turkey, Iran, Russia, and of course the US) seeking to implement their own plans.

The Assad government is still viewed as illegitimate by Ankara, though Erdogan prefers not to mention it officially if this is possible. Turkish authorities have also repeatedly claimed that Ankara is fulfilling its obligations under the de-escalation zones agreement. However, no practical steps have been made by Ankara to separate Turkish-backed “moderate” factions from the terrorist groups in Idlib or to combat the terrorists there.

Turkey considered ISIS and Kurdish armed groups to be terrorists. After ISIS suffered defeat, Kurdish armed groups remained the only point in that category. Some Kurdish leaders hoped that Erdogan may lose the presidential election and thus the Turkish stance on the Kurdish issue in northern Syria will soften. However, this has never happened.

On June 4, 2018, Ankara and Washington approved the “road map” for the town of Manbij in northern Aleppo, which is currently controlled by the Kurdish-dominated SDF. According to Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, the first phase of the “road map” would see a withdrawal of Kurdish units from the town, which would come under joint patrols of Turkish and US troops. Turkish top officials also claimed that the agreement implied creating a town administration out of local inhabitants after the Kurdish armed groups’ departure. Turkey also insisted that all Kurdish armed groups within the SDF have to be disarmed or even disbanded in the framework of the roadmap.

Nonetheless, the turn of events appeared to be at odds with Ankara’s desires. The YPG once again claimed that it had withdrawn its members from Manbij. US and Turkish forces started patrols north of the town, on the contact line between the SDF/YPG and Turkish-held areas. No Turkish troops entered Manbij. The political and military control over the town remained in the hands of the YPG-affiliated bodies. Furthermore, the US continued providing Kurdish fighters with various military supplies, including weapons and armoured vehicles, and training. No further joint US-Turkish steps to settle the Manbij issue in favor of the Erdogan government were made.

Moreover, the problem is also that for Erdogan, Afrin, Al-Bab, and Manbij are not enough. He has repeatedly vowed to completely clear Kurish armed groups from the area from Manbij to Sinjar, which means operations in Qamishli, Kobani and Haskah, the main YPG strongholds in Syria. Thus, in order to achieve own goals the Erdogan government is balancing between the US-led bloc and the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance.

From Russia’s point of view, the strategic priority is Syria’s territorial integrity and the prevention of radical islamists from coming to power. Russia is open to dialogue with a moderate part of the Syrian opposition and is ready to participate in the talks. The leadership likely understands that Turkey is a temporary ally of Russia in Syria, where the two countries together with Iran are guaranteeing the ceasefire in de-escalation zones.

Thus, some Russian experts claim that Turkey is allied with the US against Russia, which does have some basis. Turkey is in NATO, Ankara has supported and is still supporting the opposition, especially radical armed groups in Idlib, which are not willing to negotiate with Assad. The conflict of objectives between Turkey and the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance has become obvious when the SAA started preparing for a possible military operation in Idlib.

However, Turkey’s, Syria’s, and therefore also Russia’s interests coincide on the question of Syrian Kurdistan. After Russian forces were dispatched to Syria and particularly after the liberation of Aleppo in 2017, Moscow tried to act as an intermediary between the Kurds and Damascus, trying to convince the latter to create Kurdish autonomy. But the Kurdish leaders rejected talks with Damascus and instead placed their hopes in an alliance with the US. It does not matter whether they picked that option because they felt Washington was the best hope to gain quick independence for Rojava or because of a cash stimulus from US emissaries. Most likely both factors played a role. The prospect of a pro-US Kurdish “independent” state formation was extremely worrisome to Ankara, Damascus, and Tehran, prompting them to close ranks.

Thus, the Kurds have lost their chance to get a wide autonomy within Syria and become a bargaining chip in the negotiations between major players involved in the conflict.

The Astana process format also deserves a few words. In the framework of this formant, Russia, Turkey, and Iran have affirmed their determination to fight terrorism and also those organizations which are considered terrorist by the UNSC, oppose separatism aimed at undermining territorial integrity and the sovereignty of Syria and the security of neighboring countries, continue joint efforts to promote political reconciliation among the Syrians themselves in order to facilitate the earliest possible launch of the Constitutional Committee in Geneva. But the actual situation is radically different. Ankara de-facto controls part of Syria, with the fight against Kurdish armed groups and the expansion of own influence in the war-torn country being the motives. Turkey also lacks a UNSC mandate or a permission from Damascus to deploy forces in the country. These are undoubtedly violations of Ankara’s commitments to the Astana agreements and of Syria’s sovereignty. The participation of the Syrian opposition in the negotiations is also a problem. Many factions just sabotage the talks.  Moreover, there are no significant results in the realm of political decisions on the country’s future, even though they sides continue to affirm their unity in this effort. One could draw the conclusion that the Astana format is not effective and is only a platform for meetings among heads of states, since each country and Turkey in particular is pursuing its own interests.

If one examines Russian participation in the conflict, there is still no evidence that Russia plans to impose a solution for a future Syria by force. Troops and equipment are being withdrawn from Hmeimim, which indicates a gradual drawdown of the military operation and a shift towards diplomatic means. However, while it’s possible to observe the successful implementation of this approach in some separate regions of the country, it has faced significant difficulties on the regional level.

The September 17 announcement of the demilitarized zone in northwestern Syria by President Putin and his Turkish counterpart are a part of the wider strategy aimed at reaching a kind of peaceful settlement to the conflict and to de-escalate the situation. The success of this effort now depends on the ability and willingness of the sides to employ the agreement on the ground and to force radical militants to demilitarize at least the 15-20km deep area.

Conclusion

In the last decade, Turkey’s foreign policy underwent significant changes which transformed its theoretical and practical foundations. The term “neo-Ottomanism” was launched in the context of Turkey’s expanding international activities in the scientific and political realm. While the international community interprets it in a number of ways, it does contain a clear ideological component. Moreover, neo-Ottomanism is the most appropriate term to describe Turkey’s foreign policy ideology and actions. Ankara seeks to become a world power, and that goal drives its activities, particularly concerning the Arab Spring and the war in Syria.

There are many potential clashes of interests between Turkey and Syria, including the Kurdish issue, mutual territorial claims, and ideological and political incompatibility. Since the very start of the protests in Syria, Turkey has rendered and continues to render help to the armed groups and political opposition. Moreover, the bilateral relations are made more complicated by the Euphrates river (nearly half the water is taken by Turkey which deprives countries downstream of water), the looting of industrial enterprises of the manufacturing center of Syria – Aleppo (equipment from nearly 1,000 factories were transported to Turkey). Ankara still believes Assad ought to leave his post, although in the last year its rhetoric concerning Assad’s legitimacy has softened. This was due to the growth of Russian influence on the theater of operations, military defeat suffered by several groups backed by Turkey, and also by the political and economic pressure exerted by Moscow after the Su-24 incident. This shaped Turkish policy toward Syria.

In the best outcome scenario for Syria, Iran, and Russia, Turkey would not plan to annex the Syrian territory it controls in the north of the country in order to avoid a negative reaction from these three states. These territories may be used as bargaining chips in order to gain preferential treatment for work in post-war Syria, thus expanding and strengthening its sphere of influence in that country and strengthening Turkey as a regional power. It’s possible that the Syrian border territories will see something akin to a trans-border protectorate, without redrawing national boundaries. Turkey has already transformed the agglomeration of its proxies into something like a unified opposition, with whom Ankara imagines Assad will discuss the future of Syria, thus giving it a place in the war-destroyed country and thus ensuring Turkey’s interests are safeguarded.

In the contemporary military and diplomatic reality surrounding the Syrian crisis, Ankara is pursuing the following tactical goals:

• To eliminate or at least disarm and limit influence of US-backed Kurdish armed groups in northern Syria;
• To strengthen a united pro-Turkish opposition Idlib and to eliminate any resistance to it, including in some scenarios the elimination of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies;
• To facilitate return of refugees from Turkey to Syrian areas under its own control;

If these goals are achieved, Ankara will significantly increase its influence on the diplomatic settlement of the crisis and on the future of the post-war Syria. The returned refugees and supporters of militant groups in the Turkish-controlled part of Syria will become an electoral base of pro-Turkish political figures and parties in case of the implementation of the peaceful scenario. If no wide-scale diplomatic deal on the conflict is reached, one must consider the possibility of a pro-Turkish quasi-state in northern Syria, confirming the thesis that Erdogan is seeking to build a neo-Ottoman empire.

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There is surely a severe cost afflicted on any nation that successfully acquires a nuclear arsenal. Not merely a financial burden but, more significantly, a psychological price that is paid by those who attain, safeguard and threaten the deployment of nuclear weapons. Their possession warps the persona of a state’s leaders, ensuring they become reckless, malevolent and unpredictable.

The atomic bomb’s arrival in August 1945 brought with it a terrible psychosis that has threatened the globe for seven decades. Nuclear weapons have unleashed the worst tendencies in humankind, revealing a suicidal, blind streak that seems to be embedded in our species’ mindset. Over the past few centuries, humans have attacked each other with increasing coldness, reaching a high point during the Second World War with 50 million or more killed.

As the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev said to America’s new president Gerald Ford in November 1974,

“Both you and I fought in World War II. That war was child’s play as compared to nuclear war”.

During the second half of World War II, military plans for aerial or ground assaults calculated death tolls in the thousands, or tens of thousands, which seemed almost apocalyptic at the time. With the atomic bomb’s invention, and from November 1952 the hydrogen bomb, the death estimates suddenly jumped to millions, then tens of millions.

The astonishing death toll increases can only have serious psychological consequences for a country’s leaders. Indeed, nuclear weapons “cast a shadow over any crisis or conflict” as a Bill Clinton era study highlighted, while they ensure a “national persona” of irrationality and sinister behavior. Nuclear weapons are consistently used akin to a gunman robbing a bank, the outlaw achieving his goals through intimidation by waving his weapon around but hardly ever firing. Consecutive US presidents have threatened disobedient states with the nuclear gun so as to achieve crucial demands.

Evidence of the madness induced by nuclear weapons was witnessed, for example, at a military conference near Omaha, Nebraska in mid-December 1960. At this meeting, in the presence of American commanders from across the world, plans were revealed whereby at least 400 million people would be killed with nuclear attacks. About 300 million would be wiped out in China, along with another 100 million or so from the Soviet Union.

Every city in both the USSR and China would be hit. The final death toll would exceed half a billion, as radioactive fallout blown on the wind would destroy the Warsaw Pact states, and also America’s NATO allies in western Europe. US General Thomas Power, commander-in-chief of Strategic Air Command, even expressed disapproval at a suggestion during the conference that only the Soviets be attacked, with communist China let off the hook.

As early as mid-September 1945, the US had outlined plans to attack 66 Soviet cities with 204 atomic bombs. Yet, in late 1945, America had possession of only two atomic devices. By the summer of 1950, the stockpile had climbed to almost 300 atomic bombs, so this stratagem was then feasible. By the time General Power was giving his speech at the Offutt Air Force Base in late 1960, the US possessed about 18,000 nuclear bombs – many of which were now of the hydrogen type, up to a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb.

General Power’s old colleague, General Curtis LeMay, was keen to unload nuclear bombs on the Soviets, Chinese, Cubans and North Vietnamese – living up to his Second World War nickname, “Bombs away LeMay”. As General LeMay himself said in 1968,

“I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror”.

Much of the blame for America’s nuclear plans – which continue to the current day – should not, however, be attached to military figures programmed from a young age to serve their leaders, engage in warfare and defeat the enemy.

Plans to wipe out the Chinese and Soviets, were formulated during the Dwight D. Eisenhower years of the 1950s. Eisenhower was aghast at a strategy that would kill hundreds of millions, but he accepted the risks and outlined that no other military plan be formulated, mainly for budgetary reasons.

The public had been told only the president had authority to initiate nuclear war. However, Eisenhower delegated nuclear authority to his theater commanders, who in turn permitted their own subordinates to initiate an attack, if they felt it was required. This is a policy that surely continues.

Part of the thinking behind this is that, should the White House be struck by a Soviet (later Russian) nuclear-armed missile, the president would obviously be eliminated and unable to order a retaliation. Russia would not be harmed. So, to prevent this, many fingers are placed on “nuclear buttons” – and the likelihood is such a scenario is not just the case in the US, but also among the other nuclear powers.

The true culprits in planning nuclear Armageddon are the government bosses running the country, who often hail from largely civilian backgrounds, and by definition are supposed to serve the populace. Despite Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, also having misgivings about the unprecedented death tolls from nuclear assaults, JFK agreed as well to the “major attack options” in the early 1960s. As likewise did consecutive presidents from Lyndon B. Johnson to Ronald Reagan, and most likely until Donald Trump, who is a strong nuclear advocate himself.

As General LeMay pointed out, people are mostly against and fearful of nuclear war – many Americans have long felt it the greatest threat to humanity, ahead of even climate change. Yet government leaders have deliberately imposed the risks of nuclear war on populations, in their bid for global and regional supremacy.

The fateful path American leaders chose, in exploring nuclear research through its Manhattan Project, can be traced to decisions made by president Franklin D. Roosevelt from early 1942. Initially, America’s pursuit may somewhat have been driven by beating Hitler in the atomic race. Even during World War II, with the Soviet Union an official ally, American planners were concocting strategies to attack Russia with its developing atomic arsenal. After the Battle of Stalingrad and with Japan in retreat, it was increasingly clear to the Roosevelt administration that Russia would become its only rival at war’s end.

Furthermore, the desire to overtake Hitler in attaining the bomb was soon no longer valid. From early 1944, Allied intelligence reports were pouring in that the Nazis’ nuclear program was “idle”. In spring 1945, with the Red Army spilling into Germany from the east, as America and Britain rolled in from the west, it was crystal clear that a besieged Hitler had no atomic weapons. Nor had he seriously desired to, because of a variety of fears and prejudices, as outlined by the influential Nazi war minister Albert Speer in his postwar writings.

Yet for America, since 1920 the world’s most powerful country, it seemed a natural progression for her to own the world’s most powerful weapon. Atomic bomb production came at an initial cost of $2 billion (just under $28 billion today) that continues rising with “upgrades” to current times. The thermonuclear weapons are today over 100 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, with one exchange enough to unleash the extinction phenomenon of nuclear winter, discovered in 1983.

When president Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945, Harry Truman carried through the atomic task with zeal, buoyed by enthusiastic support from British counterpart Winston Churchill. In March 1944, US Major General Leslie Groves confided to nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat that “the real purpose in making the [atomic] bomb was to subdue to Soviets”.

The US would utilize its new atomic weapons in demonstrating to Russia precisely who the global power was. The defeat of Japan had long become clear, and the country was already being incinerated by firestorms through conventional American assaults. Continued destruction of each Japanese city through firebombing would surely have compelled Emperor Hirohito to surrender before long, with no A-bombs required.

Charred remains of Japanese civilians after the firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9–10 March 1945. (Source: Public Domain)

Now as Japan was reeling under subsequent atomic attacks, Stalin, a ruthless dictator at the pinnacle of his power, heeded the message. Indeed, during the Potsdam Conference in eastern Germany, Stalin was informed by Truman in person on 24 July 1945 of the Americans having “a new weapon of unusual destructive force”. All eyes were fixed on Stalin at this moment, such as those of US Secretary of State James Byrnes and British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who noted with dismay the Soviet boss’s calm reaction when told of the “unusual” weapon.

Though Stalin most likely knew of America’s nuclear program long before Truman, a general rule of the Soviet leader was to retain composure and never reveal signs of weakness, particularly in front of Western diplomats. During Stalin’s many discussions with capitalist statesmen, he was loath to display surprise, agitation, anger, etc. Addressing the head of a Yugoslav delegation in January 1945, Stalin said,

“Bourgeois statesmen are very touchy and vindictive. You have to control your emotions; if you are guided by your emotions, you lose”.

Meanwhile, hours after the Hiroshima attack, president Truman described the arrival of atomic warfare as, “the greatest achievement of organized science in history”. Truman also assured the American people that “atomic power can become a powerful and forceful influence towards the maintenance of world peace”.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

President Andrzej Duda’s authoritarian government can expect a rough political ride in December, when politicians, diplomats and campaigners stream into Katowice, Poland, for the next UN summit on climate change.

Poland’s so-called climate policy – to aim for “carbon neutrality” by discounting emissions from the coal industry with carbon sucked up by its forests – will face richly-deserved criticism. How loudly that will be heard on the streets is a different matter: Poland’s parliament has banned “spontaneous” gatherings in Katowice during the summit.

Donald Trump, who last year withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, will also be the target of derision, not only from demonstrators but from some politicians inside the talks. The main business at Katowice (the 24th conference of parties to the 1992 Rio climate convention, or COP24) will be to finalise a “rulebook” to monitor government promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions (“nationally determined contributions” or NDCs) made in Paris.

The Paris agreement acknowledged that global temperatures should be kept “well below” 2 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels, and that 1.5 degrees is preferable. Campaigners use every phrase in the document to challenge pro-fossil-fuel policies; to resist attempts to make the global south pay the price for warming; and to promote “just transition” that combines the move from fossil fuels with struggles for social justice.

Source: The Bullet

While fighting all these battles, it’s important not to neglect the larger picture. The Paris agreement is most significant not as a beacon around which the world can gather to stop climate change, but as the outcome of a disastrous process of failure to reverse the growth of fossil fuel consumption, the main cause of warming. At Paris, the idea of binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions was finally abandoned, in favour of voluntary commitments.

While diplomats laud these commitments, the reality is downplayed: even if governments implement their promises, global average temperature is projected to reach 2.7 degrees above pre-industrial levels by 2100, rather than 2 degrees or 1.5 degrees.

Historical perspective is useful. Thirty years ago, in June 1988, climate scientists collectively warned that the atmosphere was warming and that greenhouse gases were the main cause. They gathered with diplomats in Toronto, Canada, to form the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body.

A year earlier, in 1987, international action had been coordinated, through the Montreal protocol, to curtail the production of chlorofluorocarbons that was opening a dangerous hole in the protective layer of ozone around the earth. The Toronto conference, optimistically, urged similar coordination to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2005. The resistance proved greater.

At the Rio summit in 1992, the US insisted that there would be no binding targets for reducing emissions. Its diplomats, and even some northern NGOs, focused on deforestation, a minor contributor to global warming, to avoid talking about the major issue: fossil fuel use. To deal with that, market mechanisms could and must be used, they argued. That thinking guided the 1997 Kyoto agreement, which provided for an emissions trading systems that failed miserably to stop oil, gas and coal use galloping upwards. The 2009 Copenhagen conference failed to produce a post-Kyoto deal; Paris, with its voluntary targets, followed.

While market mechanisms were prescribed for cutting fossil fuel use, governments oversaw subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption, running to hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Global total emissions from burning fossil fuels, compared to the 1988 level, not only did not fall by 20% by 2005, as envisaged in Toronto; they grew by 35%. In 2017, they were 60% above the 1988 level.

Why has the Rio process failed so disastrously, where the Montreal protocol succeeded? Certainly, politics matters. The 1992 climate change convention was signed as neoliberalism was sweeping through the most powerful countries. While the US Republicans, and major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, resisted binding emissions targets, US Democrats and European governments prevaricated. They denounced climate science denial and acknowledged the global warming threat – but nevertheless saw the market as the lever to deal with it. In 1997, Democrats and Republicans united behind a US Senate bill to kill off the principle of binding targets; it passed by 95-0.

Future historians will surely look back at the Rio process as a historic collective failure by the world’s leading states, on the scale of the slide to war in 1914. There are no easy responses to this failure. But answers must be sought outside the confines of the Rio process. It is not our framework; let’s not normalise it.

The underlying reasons for the states’ failure are of course deeper than politics. The CFCs regulated by the Montreal protocol were a marginal technology, which used to be used in fridge manufacture. But there is nothing marginal about fossil fuels. They are consumed by many of the largest technological systems – car-based transport systems, and urban infrastructure that supports them; electricity networks; industrial systems reliant on carbon-heavy materials like steel; agricultural methods that soak up gas-based fertilisers – embedded in the social and economic systems in which we live.

While writing a book on the global history of fossil fuel use, just published, I worked to understand that technology-society nexus. The fossil-fuel based technological systems have been integral to capitalism, and to the labour process it controls; capital’s expansion has driven those systems’ expansion; a technological transition away from fossil fuels will most effectively be accomplished as part of a transition away from capitalism. These profound changes are never going to be undertaken by governments.

Public discussion about reducing consumption of fossil fuels, or fuel-intensive products, all too often focus on individual households. This is misleading for three reasons. Firstly, household fuel consumption is riven by inequality. Many households in the global north consume dozens, even hundreds, of times more than those in the global south. More than a billion people, mostly in the countryside in the global south, still don’t have access to electricity.

Secondly, even those households that live within the dominant fossil-fuel-supplied energy system, with reasonably regular electricity, winter heat, motorised transport and so on – about 60% of the world population – do not control the supply of fuels. They can not easily opt for measures that could slash their fuel consumption, such as insulating housing, or providing decent public transport to reduce car use. Individuals have still less control over their indirect fuel consumption, e.g. of coal to make steel, or oil to make plastic, in the products they buy; oil used in supply chains; or gas used to make fertiliser to produce food.

Thirdly, the way those technological systems use fuels and fuel-intensive materials is historically formed. There is nothing inevitable, or efficient, about the wasteful use of plastic packaging; about city transport systems based on heavy, fuel-intensive, usually single-passenger cars; about fertiliser-heavy industrial agriculture; or even about centralised electricity networks. These technologies are used in the way they are, thanks to the social and economic systems in which they are embedded. Capitalism doesn’t just exploit technology; it shapes it.

The transition away from fossil fuels will be a transition away from capitalism towards a society that lives in harmony with nature, fashioning from it what it needs, not what feeds profit. Politically, that has to be fought for outside the UN process.

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Simon Pirani is author of Burning Up: a Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption, published by Pluto Press

Featured image is from Flickr.

Canada’s Charter of Rights provides the ultimate legal safety for its citizens: rights that include freedom of speech, religion, of association, and the right of citizens to enter and leave Canada.  These rights are only of use, however, if the government respects them and accepts responsibility when it has betrayed them.

Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Sudanese described as a religious healer, was accepted by Canada as a refugee in 1990; he married a Canadian woman, had a child, and became a citizen in 1995.  By the late 1990s, however, he was swept up in the security establishment’s – CSIS and FBI’s – search for “Muslim terrorists” and faced harassment by both CSIS and the Montreal police.  

Abdelrazik returned to Sudan in 2003 to see his ailing mother, a trip that turned into a six-year nightmare.  Canada’s treatment of him can only be described as vicious.  CSIS had Sudan arrest and imprison him in 2003, when he claims he was tortured.  While Canadian consular staff claimed publicly that they were trying to help him, they were actually coordinating with CSIS and FBI interrogators. CSIS and FBI agents told Abdelrazik that he would never see Canada again, and that was clearly their intent, because when Sudan released him with no charges in 2004, Canada did not allow him to return.  In brief: he was placed on the US no-fly list and, days later, the UN terror list, which froze his assets; these lists were then used as (bogus) reasons to ban his return; he was repeatedly refused emergency travel documents and when he was forced to raise money for a (subsequent) ticket to return home, his donors were threatened with charges of supporting terrorism!  His epic struggle ended in 2009 with the ruling of a Federal judge that allowed him back.

On his return in 2009, Abdelrazik filed a complaint about his treatment by CSIS as well as a $27 million civil lawsuit against the Canadian government (and a Minister) asking for an apology and compensation for its breach of his Charter rights. These challenges were in the public interest because they exposed significant problems in Canadian security oversight and in the use of secret evidence.

Abdelrazik had never been charged with any crime and the RCMP cleared him of criminal activity.  The “robust intelligence” that Jason Kenny had boasted about evaporated; CSIS’ tales about Abdelrazik’s supposed connections to al Qaeda, a criminal association with Adil Charkaoui (another CSIS victim), a bombing plot and the supposed discovery of RDX explosive in his car turned out to be fabrications for which no one would be held responsible.  

The CSIS response to Abdelrazik’s complaint was that no one was accountable; the CSIS Review Committee claimed that it didn’t know if it had jurisdiction!  The complaint exposed the freewheeling operation of a security agency without clear legal limits or effective oversight. It also demonstrated, as in the Maher Arar case, the dangers to Canadians of CSIS coordination with the FBI; the US had tried to put Abdelrazik in Guantanamo, and his name remains on the American “terror list”.  While Ralph Goodale, the Minister of Public Safety has offered further legislative safeguards, critics claim they remain woefully inadequate. 

While Stephen Harper‘s government stonewalled the compensation it owed the Canadian Muslim men who had been tortured abroad because of CSIS “mistakes”, Trudeau honored the Charter protections by several multi-million payouts in 2017.  As might have been expected, the media whipped up Islamophobic howls of outrage at the compensation to the Muslim victims, adding traumatic insult to the real injuries they had suffered.  

The angry public response caused the Liberal government, on Sept. 18, 2018, to ask Federal Court Justice Martine St-Louis to postpone “indefinitely” the hearing to compensate Abdelrazik; she “reluctantly” agreed, but ordered monthly progress reports. To Abdelrazik’s lawyer, Paul Champ, this delay after nine years was “contemptible”. 

If the Canadian government is permitted to walk away from its horrific treatment of Abdelrazik, it can walk away from its violations of any Canadian’s rights.

The media-induced outrage to the compensation ignored the root causes of the victims’ abuse: CSIS’ criminal incompetence and — more importantly — the use of secret evidence.  Those who are accused (and typically their lawyers) face a Kafkaesque situation in which they have no way of knowing what the evidence against them is, and no way of refuting it. Predictably, security agencies support the use of secret evidence because it allows them to safely make or use career- enhancing misinterpretations of evidence knowing that the sources will never be identified or penalized.  

Citizens and taxpayers should be spurred to action by the travesty of justice that secret evidence encourages — as well as the high costs legitimately associated with it.

Canadians must demand that the Liberal government honor its obligations under the Canadian Charter of Rights to compensate Abousfian Abdelrazik. At the same time, they must also demand an end to the use of secret evidence as well as more accountability from CSIS.  

Protecting Abdelrazik’s rights protects the rights of all Canadians.

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Karin Brothers is a freelance writer. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

During the past several years, there has been increased pressure coming from some in the federal government aided and abetted powerful advocacy groups in the private sector to police social and alternative media. It is a multi-pronged attack on the First Amendment which has already limited the types of information that Americans have access to, thereby narrowing policy options to suit those in power.

The process has been ostensibly driven by concerns over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election, but it is really about who controls and limits the public’s right to know what is going on out of sight in Washington and New York City, where politics and money come together. If one is interested in the free flow of information and viewpoints that comes with the alternative media, it certainly does not look that way. Robert Parry described it as a deliberate process of “demonizing and silencing dissent that questions mainstream narratives.”

Last October top executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter were summoned to Capitol Hill for a discussion of their role in what is alleged to be Russia’s influence on the presidential campaign and went back home contrite and promising to improve. They have indeed improved by punishing members whose views have been found to be unacceptable, blocking them and suspending their access to the sites. Meanwhile, the federal government for its part has attempted to silence independent non-U.S. based voices by declaring Russian media outlets RT America and Sputnik to be “foreign agents,” requiring them to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). It is an unprecedented action against a news agency and invites quid-pro-quo for U.S. media operating overseas, leaving the American public more ignorant of world affairs than it already is.

Qatar based Al-Jazeera, which has been particularly targeted by Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as “a major exporter of hate against the Jewish people,” will also be required to register with FARA to comply with the new National Defense Authorization Act. Al-Jazeera, it should be noted, has employed undercover investigative journalism to expose the corruption of Britain’s government by Israeli supported Jewish groups. It’s similar series on the activity of Zionist lobbyists in America is on hold due to threats from Jewish organizations to severely punish the network if the documentary should ever be aired.

One of the organizations most interested in limiting conversations about what is going on in the world is the ADL which claims that it is “the world’s leading organization combating anti-Semitism and hate of all kinds,” though it clearly excludes incitement or even physical harm directed against Palestinian Arabs resentful of the Israeli occupation of their country. Its definition of “hatred” is really quite selective and is focused on anyone criticizing Israel or Jewish related issues. Its goal is to have any such speech or writing categorized as anti-Semitism and, eventually, to have “hate crime” legislation that criminalizes such expressions.

It is particularly ironic that Israel, which has now declared that it is in no way subject to international law, has itself proposed across the board censorship of the most prominent social media platforms on a global scale by creating an “international coalition that would make limiting criticism of Israel its primary objective.” It would operate through a “loose coalition…[that] would keep an eye on content and where it is being posted, and members of the coalition would work to demand that the platforms remove the content…in any of their countries at the request of members.”

More recently, Israel has been exposed by Wikileaks as hosting a conference describing how it now has a Command Center that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to scan the internet worldwide looking for “anti-Semitic” content. For Israel, anti-Semitic content means any criticism of its government or its behavior towards the Arabs. It reportedly pulls 200,000 posts a day and then reviews them using AI for content considered to be unacceptable. The roughly 10,000 posts determined to be anti-Semitic are then passed on to “intelligence and law enforcement agencies” in countries that have hate speech legislation for further action. The Israeli government also complains directly to the social media source to have the material taken down and works through Jewish organizations in cities and countries where there is considerable “anti-Semitic” activity to pressure governments to act even if there is no legal basis.

As most genuine independent journalism is currently limited to the alternative media, and that media lives on the internet, the ADL and those who are acting in collusion with the Israeli government are focusing on “cyberhate” as the problem and are working with major internet providers to voluntarily censor their product. On October 10th, 2017 the ADL issued a press release out of its New York City offices to explain just how far the censorship process has gone. The organization boasted of the fact that it was working with Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter “to engineer new solutions to stop cyberhate.” Apple is not identified by name in the press release but one should presume that it is also involved, as well as YouTube, which is owned by Google. When you consider that the associates in this venture with ADL are vast corporations that control huge slices of the communications industry, the consequences of some kind of corporate decision on what constitutes “hate” become clear. Combatting “cyberhate” will inevitably become across-the-board censorship for viewpoints that are considered to be unacceptable, including any criticism of Israel.

ADL will be the “convener” for the group, providing “insight on how hate and extremist content manifests – and constantly evolves-online.” Which means it will define the problem, which it calls the “spew[ing] of hateful ideologies” so the corporate world can take steps to block such material. And “the initiative will be managed by ADL’s Center for Technology and Society in Silicon Valley.”

Facebook already employs thousands of censors and there is literally no limit to how far those who want to restrict material that they consider offensive will go. To be sure, most groups who want to limit the flow of information do not have the clout or resources of ADL with its $64 million annual operating budget so its “cyberhate” campaign will no doubt serve as a model that others will then follow. For ADL, reducing criticism of Israel is a much-sought-after goal. For the rest of us, it is a trip into darkness.

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This article was originally published on American Herald Tribune.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer who served nineteen years overseas in Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He was the CIA Chief of Base for the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and was one of the first Americans to enter Afghanistan in December 2001. Phil is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that seeks to encourage and promote a U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East that is consistent with American values and interests. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Overseen by the National Park Service, Washington’s National Mall is included in the US National Register of Historic Places.

It’s one of many districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects in the country deemed worthy of preservation for their historic significance.

It’s located between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, Capitol Hill a short distance away.

On August 18, 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream Speech” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of around 250,000 assembled on the mall, one of the largest political rallies in US history.

The Constitution’s First Amendment states:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

These rights are fundamental. Jefferson once said speech and other rights “cannot be limited without being lost.”

Palko v. Connecticut (1937), Texas v. Johnson (1989), and other Supreme Court rulings affirmed the same principles.

Speech, media, and academic freedoms, along with peacefully assembling to express them are inviolable. Compromising them threatens their loss. Losing them jeopardizes all other rights, what tyranny is all about.

The Trump regime’s National Park Service may alter First Amendment rights by charging fees for groups wanting to hold protests or other demonstrations on and around the National Mall – unprecedented if instituted.

Restricting public demonstrations on sidewalks in front of the White House and Trump’s Washington hotel may also be imposed.

Draft “Pay to Protest” regulations are open to public comment until October 15.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund executive director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and the organization’s legal director Carl Messineo slammed the proposal, saying:

“For the first time, the US government wants demonstrators to pay to use our parks, sidewalks and streets to engage in free speech in the nation’s capital. This should be called what it is: a protest tax,” adding:

“This is a bold effort by the Trump administration to burden and restrict access to public spaces for First Amendment activities in Washington. If enacted, it would fundamentally alter” the most fundamental of all constitutional rights.

They include unrestricted freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. The executive, Congress, and courts, are obligated to respect, protect, and preserve them, including in national parks and other public spaces nationwide.

Anti-protest laws, executive orders, and regulations exist in various states. According to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), the following are some of the most egregious:

Louisiana’s “critical infrastructure” law criminalizes what it calls “unauthorized entry” onto a pipeline site. Individuals convicted face up to five years in prison.

Similar Big Oil-backed laws were enacted in Oklahoma and Iowa. They’re under consideration in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Following months of Standing Rock anti-Dakota Access Pipeline demonstrations in 2016 and 2017, seeking to protect sacred Native American land and waterways, North Dakota enacted new laws, prohibiting what it calls riots, criminal trespass, and wearing face coverings.

A Missouri enacted law greatly restricts the right of public union employees to strike or picket, undermining fundamental labor rights, as well as free expression and peaceful assembly.

Pending legislation in Virginia, Massachusetts, Illinois, and elsewhere aim to criminalize these and similar rights.

At the federal, state, and local levels, America is on a slippery slope toward full-blown tyranny.

Abolishing, jeopardizing, or otherwise compromising fundamental constitutional rights is what totalitarian rule is all about.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

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.

The historical Moon-Kim summit ended- after three days of excitement, hope and determination- at the sacred Cheon-ji (Heaven’s Lake) located at the top of Mt Baek-du where Dangun, son of Hwanung who descended from heaven to found the Korean nation more than 4,300 thousand years ago.

Through their meeting, two Koreas reaffirmed their common sacred origin and destiny.

By raising high their tightly united hands, they declared that the reunification of the North and the South is eternal

Before we discuss the contents of the joint declaration of the third Kim-Moon summit, let’s see some of the highlights of the event.

First, the composition of the delegation was meaningful. By and large three groups of people were included. First group was composed of policy decision makers including ministers and the key staff of the Blue House (Korean White House) in charge of foreign affairs and national security. The presence of this group was intended to show Moon’s strong determination to carry out the summit agreements.

The second group represented the business world represented by the heads of Samsung, Hyundai, LG, SK and other Chaebols. It was the first time that most of the heads of Chaebols (family industrial conglomerates) visited North Korea. Their presence was intended to show to the world in general, and, to North Korean in particular, the possibility of Chaebols participation in North Korea’s economic development.

The third group is composed of the heads of two liberal political parties, people representing the world of arts and culture, local government, academics, sports and NGOs. This group was given the task of exploring North-South cooperation in their respective field of interest.

In short, the composition of the delegation showed clearly Moon’s roadmap of North-South cooperation and his strong intention support it. The issue of denuclearization was an important agenda, but this issue was something that should be solved by Washington and Pyongyang. What Moon hoped to get in connection with this issue was Kim’s more concrete and practical commitment to the denuclearization. Moon got it.

There are several other highlights to be mentioned. First, when the Moon’s plane arrived, Kim Jung-un and his first lady waited at the airport; this was unusual; it had never happened before. Second, Moon and Kim exposed themselves in an open car and greeted the crowd of one hundred thousand people standing and waving the flags of the Korean peninsula along the road leading to Pyongyang. This was a first time event in North Korea. Moon stopped the car and shook hands with the crowd. The amazing thing was that there was no V-form security display by North Korean security team seen during the Panmunjom summit on April 27th and the Singapore summit on June 12th. 

These events seem to show two things.

They showed how North Korea highly regarded Moon’s role of go-between for the solution of the nuclear crisis. Moreover, Pyongyang was eager to show the world that North Korea was a safe place to visit and to live.

There was another thing to mention. Throughout the three – day event, Kim Jong-un acted as if he were a little brother of Moon Jae-in who is, of course, much older. Such behaviour of Kim showed clearly that he was not an “arrogant dictator” (as portrayed by the Western media) but a good Confucian man respecting the elders. Kim has shown that he was a humble man. It is very important to point out also that Kim wished to show to the world that North Korea is not what it was; it is now a country where people want peace and they can pursue their happiness in daily life like any other people in the world.

What also came to my attention was what happened in the evening of September 19th. Moon and his whole delegation were invited to a mass gymnastic show. There were 150,000 people including children and young people; they displayed unbelievably high level of perfection in their athletic and artistic performances. Moon was given a chance to speak for two minutes. 

Images from The Hankyoreh

He declared

“We have lived together for 5,000 years but separated only for 70 years. I urge you to end those hostilities and take a big step toward unification”. 

He continued:

“Pyongyang citizens, fellow citizens whom I love, to-day, I agree with detailed measures to get rid of fears of war and risk of armed conflict from the Korean peninsula”

When Moon finished his speech, the huge crowd shouted in one voice “Long Live!”; many cried; they clapped hand standing for long minutes.

Moon’s short speech hit the core of the hearts of Koreans and perhaps the world, because reunited peaceful Korea could mean the end of starvation of North Koreans and the end of fear of war and violence in both Koreas.

What Moon said was, for all practical purposes, his declaration of the end of the bloody Korean War and hope for the peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula.

The Joint Declaration is rich in contents and far reaching in implications. It has six parts (see full text in Annex)

Part 1. This part deals with the plan of demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula. It has two sections: the implementation of the 4.27 Summit Declaration of Panmunjom and the creation of a joint military committee designed to insure the implementation of the military agreement. The military agreement was signed by respective defence ministers on the same day (September 18) as the main declaration.

The military agreement shows that there will be a buffer zones on land, sea and air within which no major military activities are allowed. On land, there will be the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) within Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). The Agreement stipulates that within the MDL, hostile military activities such as artillery exercises will be forbidden.

On sea, both on the east coast and the west coast, there will be buffer zones of more than hundred km of length. Similarly on air, there will be air buffer zones within which no military exercises will be allowed. In addition, at the DMZ, 11 guard posts will be pulled out. Finally, the Joint Security Area (JSA) will be disarmed after the removal of mines.

The messages given by these agreements are clear; neither side wants war; they want to be free from threatening dark clouds of hostility. These agreements are telling to the world that there will be no more war in the Korean peninsula. 

They also mean a warning to Washington “Do not start a war against North Korea; South Korea will not participate in such a war!” These agreements may make the Washington hawks think twice before contemplating any dreadful hostile actions. 

However, for the time being, it will not be easy for the ROK not to participate in a US initiated war, unless Korea is free from the regime of Operation Control (OPCON) and the Combined Forces Command (CFC) which puts all South Korean Forces under US command. (See Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research September 19, 2018)

Part 2. This part is concerned with North-South economic cooperation. It has four sections: east coast and west coast railway connections; reopening of the Gaesung Industrial Complex and Mt. Gumgwang resort facilities; North-South environment cooperation with emphasis on the forest industry; and North-South cooperation for epidemic disease prevention. Most of these cooperation activities are not possible because of the US-led UN sanctions. However, both sides showed a common vision for eventual cooperation. 

The leaders of Chaebols met with North Korean team in charge of economic affairs. One of the outcomes of those meetings was that South Korean capital and technology could come to the North when the sanctions will be lifted. 

The North-South economic cooperation is, perhaps, as important to South Korea as it is so to North Korea. The potential economic growth of South Korea seems to have hit the ceiling; the rate of the growth of its exports has been declining since 2010; the annual rate of its GDP growth is below 3% for years; the rate of under-employment is as high as 14%. The situation is so bad that there is a risk of repeating the Japan’s experience of two – decades long economic slump. 

Korea has been relying, for its economic growth, heavily on exports of two groups of goods, namely, electronic products and transport equipment (cars and ships) representing more than 85% of the total value of export. These products are mostly produced by two Chaebols. The trouble is that the Chaebols are no longer competitive. In 2017, the export of ships fell by more than 50%. 

Korea needs to diversify not only the goods and services to export but also the producers of these goods and services. Korea needs to export less technology intensive goods and services produced by large firms which do not create as many jobs as the small-and medium-sized firms (SMEs) create. Korea needs to export more labour intensive goods and services produced by SMEs and this is possible through the combination of South Korea capital and North Korean rich natural resources and well disciplined and low-waged labour. Years of experiences at the Gaesung Industrial Complex prove the benefits of this approach.. 

Part 3. This part deals with humanitarian issues, namely, the reunion of separated families. There are about 55,000 separated families in South Korea.  South Korea will open a permanent office to facilitate the family reunions and introduce the use of videos for on-line meetings.

Part 4. Here, numerous areas of non-political and non – military cooperation were identified. One example was the formation of North-South integrated sport teams for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and a joint sponsorship of Summer Olympics of 2032. The famed North Korean Samjiyon Musical Group will visit Seoul in October.

Part 5. This section is the most controversial part, for it tackles the thorny issue of denuclearization. It has three sections. The first section says that North Korea will permanently dismantle the Dongchang-ri missile engine-test and launch platform under the verification of experts from relevant countries. The second sections says that the North will dismantle permanently the Yeongpean nuclear facilities as the US takes the corresponding measures in accordance with spirit of the June 12 US-DPRK joint statement. The third section states that the North and the South will closely cooperate in the process of pursuing complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Part 6. Chairman Kim will visit Seoul but Moon said if possible before the end of 2018. This means that the North will have to show expected progress in denuclearization before the end of 2018.

The joint declaration conveys some important messages. 

First, no matter what happens, the North and the South would be reunited, for it is the only way to survive as a nation and prosper together. The inter-Korea cooperation is not for the South’s philanthropic endeavour for the benefit of the North but for the common security and prosperity  

Second, both sides have made it clear that there should be no war on the Korean peninsula. This agreement has nothing to do the denuclearization of North Korea. In fact, the two leaders have declared the “End of the Korean War”. I think that Washington should pay attention to this part of the joint declaration. True, this could raise the question of the justification of the presence of GIs in South Korea. But it appears that the North could accept the presence of American forces on the Korean peninsula.

Third, the North and the South have declared a nuclear-free Korean peninsula. In other words, the North has reiterated in front of the South and, in fact, the world its firm intention of denuclearization. 

We must remember one thing; it is by no means easy for the ordinary North Koreans to accept the denuclearization, for they gave up so many things to produce nuclear weapons.

Yet, they “say”. Moon Jae-in told the crowd of 150,000 at the athletic and artistic show: «We shall have nuclear free county!» the whole crow shouted and clapped hands to show their agreement. The message is this; the North Korean people accepted denuclearization of the Korean peninsula; it means that they are ready to justify decades of sacrifices they had to endure for the development of nuclear arms; it means also that they no longer feel insecure even if they no longer have defensive nuclear arms. 

One thing  is sure is Kim’s strong desire to denuclearize his country. He would have even suggested that he would complete denuclearization before January 2021, the end of Trump’s first term.

If so, then, it is now up to Trump to do something.

It appears that Moon will give him something meaningful related to Kim’s plan of denuclearization, something which was discussed between Moon and Kim but something which has not been revealed because it is concerned with Trump-Kim relations. But, I have doubt about the usefulness of that something, because, Washington would say “It is wonderful, but not good enough!”.

The real question is whether Washington really wants denuclearization. It is probable that Trump wants it. But, it is more than possible that the Washington hardliners do not want nuclear free Korean peninsula, because the North-South tension is useful for weapon sales and the China containment strategy. There is another group that does not welcome peace on the Korean peninsula; it is the group of South Korean conservatives.

I have a message for these groups. There will be peace whether these war-promoting groups like it or not.

There will be peace on the Korean peninsula, because Moon and Kim have decided not to fight. More than 70% of South Koreans support such decision. There is another reason; the group of South Korea conservatives are now powerless. Remember this. For last 60 years, this group has been benefitting, perhaps, more than Washington military-security elite, from the North-South tension. But, we can forget them as threatening bunch

If there will be no more war, then there is no reason why the Washington elite should not accept Kim’s denuclearization plan. 

It is about the time for Washington military-security elite to give up its idea of taking advantage of the tension on the Korean peninsula and cooperate with Trump for the creation of permanent peace on the land of morning calm. 

Mr. President Trump, now, you have a good chance to produce and present a historical gift of peace to the humanity!

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ANNEX 

The two leaders assessed that remarkable achievements had been made since the historic Panmunjeom Declaration was signed, including the two Koreas engaging in close government-level dialogue and communication as well as in nongovernmental exchanges and cooperation in various areas, and taking significant steps toward easing military tensions.

The two leaders reaffirmed the principles of self-reliance and self-determination of the Korean people and agreed to consistently and continuously advance inter-Korean ties for reconciliation, cooperation, peace and joint prosperity. They also agreed to exert joint efforts to realize, through policies, the people’s aim and hope for improved inter-Korean ties to lead to unification.

The two leaders sincerely and extensively discussed issues on further boosting inter-Korean ties to a higher level through the thorough implementation of the Panmunjeom Declaration. They also shared the view that the Pyongyang summits will become a major turning point in history.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is co-director of the East Asia Observatory (OAE) – Study Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM), Quebec University-Montreal (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

On Saturday, a terrorist attack at a military parade in Ahvaz, Iran killed at least 29 individuals, around five dozen others injured, many seriously, military personnel and innocent civilians targeted.

Mostly civilians were harmed, including women and children, the death toll likely to rise.

The terrorist attack was reportedly carried out from outside the parade perimeter – from a park overlooking the observation platform.

According to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) spokesman General Abolfazl Shekarchi, four terrorists were involved in the incident, affiliated with the anti-Iranian (Arab separatist) Al-Ahwaz group, three killed, the other arrested but died of his wounds.

Both Ahwaz and ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. Shekarchi said terrorists involved were trained by the US (the CIA and/or special forces) and Israel’s Mossad in two Persian Gulf states, likely Saudi Arabia and the UAE if the report is accurate – both countries militantly hostile toward Iran, along with Washington and Israel.

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei called the criminal assault “the continuation of plots” hatched by Washington and their regional partners in high crimes, aiming to cause chaos and destabilize Iran.

His senior advisor on international affairs Ali Akbar Velayati promised a strong response.

So did President Hassan Rouhani, saying the response will be “crushing,” adding parties involved in “providing these terrorists with propaganda and intelligence support must be held accountable.”

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran will respond “swiftly and decisively,” adding “(t)errorists recruited, trained, armed, and paid by a foreign regime have attacked Ahvaz. Children and journalists (are) among casualties.”

Iran holds “regional terror sponsors” and their “US (and Israeli) masters” responsible for the attack.

Ahead of parade day, the terrorists hid AK-47 assault rifles in a park along the parade route, said Shekarchi.

The incident lasted about 10 minutes, attackers wearing military uniforms, according to reports. The event commemorated the anniversary of the Iran/Iraq war, beginning on September 22, 1980 – continuing until August 20, 1988. (The Carter administration allegedly backed it covertly. War continued throughout most of Reagan’s tenure, ending in stalemate, hundreds of thousands killed on both sides, countless others injured).

Incidents like Saturday’s are well-planned in advance. The Trump, Netanyahu, and Saudi regimes were silent about it. come.

A Final Comment

In response to Saturday’s terrorist attack, Vladimir Putin said the following to Rouhani:

“Please accept the deepest condolences regarding the tragic consequences of the raid by terrorists in Ahvaz. We are appalled by this bloody crime,” adding:

“We expect that everyone involved will face a deserved punishment. This event once again reminds us about the necessity of an uncompromising battle against terrorism in all of its manifestations.”

“I would like to confirm our readiness to continue building cooperation with Iranian partners in resisting this evil.”

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad made similar comments to Rouhani, condemning “in the strongest terms this cowardly and criminal terrorist act,” adding:

“I would like to affirm once more to you and to the friendly Iranian people that we are with you with all the power we have against these terrorist acts…”

A supportive Hezbollah statement said

“(t)his crime is a direct response to the major victories achieved by the resistance front in the region.”

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement denounced the “appalling” crime.

Two important political statements were made ahead of the attacks.

1.  Ahead of the terrorist attack on Friday, Mike Pompeo warned the Islamic Republic, saying the Trump regime “will not let Iran get away with using a proxy force to attack an American interest. Iran will be held accountable for those incidents.”

Amply documented, Washington, NATO, Israel, the Saudis, and their imperial partners are the world’s leading state sponsors of terrorism. (Al Qaeda, ISISI, et al)

Iran, Russia, Syria and Hezbollah are its committed adversaries, wanting the scourge of terrorism combatted and eliminated.

2. Also on Friday, ahead of the Ahvaz terrorist attack, Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif tweeted:

“It is true that there is a real threat to our region and to international peace and security. That threat is the Trump administration’s sense of entitlement to destabilize the world along with rogue accomplices in our region.”

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

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.

One of the reasons that truth is on the decline is that truth is becoming emotion-based, not evidence-based.

It is all about feelings. This seems to have begun with feminists, but teaching women to trust their feelings, that feelings are truth, couldn’t be kept just in the women’s locker room. It has spread into the men’s as well and is now also an affliction of some of the younger men.

I have learned this from readers’ emails. Some are puzzled by what seems to them to be a switch on my part from being for Putin to being against him. They want to know why I stopped liking him. In other words, they interpret my growing concern about his policy as an indication that I don’t like him anymore.

I am writing about Putin’s policy, not about my feelings for Putin. His policy of ignoring provocations made perfect sense for a while. It demonstrated to Europeans that Putin, unlike Washington, is level-headed and non-confrontational. Putin’s openess and responsible behavior was contrary to the image of “Russian threat” that Washington had put in European heads. The hope was that Europe would switch from being an enabler of Washington’s aggression to becoming an obstacle to it.

The problem with a policy of turning the other cheek is that it can encourage more provocations and that the provocations increase in intensity. The question I raised is about the policy, not about Putin. How long do you stick with a policy that is encouraging more provocations instead of achieving its intended goal?

There has been some movement from some European politicians toward a more responsible attitude toward Russia, but this might simply reflect disgust with Trump or be a ploy to encourage larger subsidies from Washington to buy them back into the fold. Is it enough movement to compensate for the ever more provocative and ever more insulting behavior of Washington and the British government toward Russia?

This is the question that I raise. It has nothing to do with my feelings for Putin. It is an expression of my concern that the intensifying provocations will result in nuclear war. Putin’s policy of mild or zero response has not resulted in Europe becoming a brake on Washington’s aggressive attitude toward Russia. Instead, Putin’s policy is inviting ever more intense provocations. Washington has now said that it is going to attack Syria if Syria attempts to liberate Idlib province. Washington is putting more sanctions on Russian elites, which will make them more hostile to Putin. Russian nationalists are becoming angry with Putin for failure to defend Russia’s honor. Putin’s policy does not seem to be a formula for success.

So the question is whether Putin should continue this policy.

I think that Putin has given the policy long enough and that he should have stopped the provocations several steps back by putting down a hard foot. This would have given the world the message that the idiot Americans and Europeans are driving the world to nuclear war. I believe that this would have sobered Europeans, part of the US Congress, and would have brought pressure from other countries on Washington to cool its jets. The only reason Washington gets away with murder is that the world permits it, and the world permits it because the world does not witness a powerful country standing up to Washington.

I might be wrong. Nevertheless, my question is in order. The Russian government, not me, needs to assess whether its policy is leading to the desired result or the opposite of the desired result.

Evidence and rational thought need to be at work, not feelings, not the material interests of the Atlanticist Integrationists and the Russian Jewish lobby that The Saker calls the Fifth column.

The question before President Putin and the Russian people is whether Russia can be a sovereign country independent of Washington’s control without going to war. My concern is that unless a hard Russian foot comes down quickly, the only alternatives are Russian surrender or nuclear war.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Rosenstein is part of Washington cabal, wanting Trump impeached and removed from office – for the wrong reasons. True enough, The Donald is bombastic, a racist, a serial liar and a misogynist.

Philosophy Professor Kate Manne says the later trait isn’t about male hostility or hatred toward women. It’s about wanting to control and punish them for challenging male dominance – “because they’re women in a man’s world, a historical patriarchy” in America and most other societies.

There’s plenty about Trump to criticize, mainly his endless wars of aggression, exclusive support for privileged interests, and advancing the nation toward totalitarian rule – major high crimes which his critics ignore.

Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, ‘dark forces” plotted against him, wanting him prevented from being elected.

Pre-inauguration, a slow-motion coup d’etat against him began, continuing throughout his tenure, wanting him impeached and removed from office, Pence a convenient puppet in waiting to replace him.

No president in US history was ever removed from office by impeachment.

Under the Constitution’s Article II, Section 4, impeachment and conviction require proving “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The Constitution’s Article I, Section 2 empowers House members to impeach a sitting president. Senate members alone are empowered to try them.

Like most of his predecessors, Trump is guilty of crimes of war and against humanity and other serious offenses – unmentioned by critics. No legal basis exists, however, for charging him with obstruction of justice.

No evidence suggests it. Nothing indicates he or his team colluded improperly or illegally with anyone in Russia.

Anything related to his private sex life isn’t an impeachable offense. Nor are his views on any issues – no matter how extreme, offensive and unacceptable.

Trump’s deputy AG Rosenstein is his sworn enemy – in cahoots with other forces in Washington, wanting him impeached and removed from office.

On Friday, the anti-Trump NYT said he

“suggested last year that he secretly record (the president) in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.”

It provides procedures for replacing the president or vice president in case of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation.

Abuse of power and other high crimes are impeachable offense, not unfitness, illness or emotional disorders.

Lincoln was elected president despite suffering from lifelong depression.

Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Chester Arthur, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK and Reagan were affected by illnesses during their tenure, hampering their ability to govern – none targeted for removal from office by impeachment, Kennedy removed by state-sponsored assassination.

Trump is accused of narcissism, likely applying to most seekers of high office in America and elsewhere. It’s not an impeachable offense.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment states:

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

No evidence suggests Trump is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Unlike many of his predecessors, he’s not too ill or otherwise unable to serve.

Claiming otherwise is all about plotting a coup to remove him from office. Section 4 was never invoked against sitting presidents unable to perform his duties because of illness, no matter how serious.

Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, James Garfield, William McKinley, and Warren Harding died in office – Section 4 never invoked to remove them from office before death.

Rosenstein is a fifth column threat to an elected president, ample just cause to remove him for coup plotting.

In cahoots with undemocratic Dems and special counsel Robert Mueller, he’s involved in the diabolical Russiagate witch-hunt to delegitimize Trump for the wrong reasons – waging political war to remove him from office, along with falsely accusing Russia of meddling in the US political process.

An administration member plotting against its leader should be sacked straightaway. Rosenstein opposed Trump’s summit with Putin to improve relations.

Forces in Washington, including the deputy AG, want them kept implacably hostile, serving the interests of the military, industrial, security, media complex.

World peace, stability, and cooperative relations with all nations defeat their diabolical aim for unchallenged global dominance by whatever it takes to achieve it – endless wars of aggression their favored strategy.

According to the Times,

“(n)one of Mr. Rosenstein’s proposals apparently came to fruition,” adding he told deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe “he might be able to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions and John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security and now the White House chief of staff, to mount an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment” against Trump.

“A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Mr. Rosenstein made it sarcastically.”

The Times claimed unnamed other DOJ officials said his proposal was serious, wanting the FBI involved in secretly wiretapping Trump.

Whether the Times-reported scenario is partly or entirely true or fabricated is unknown. Unnamed sources are always suspect.

Rosenstein denied the Times’ report. AG Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russiagate probe over legitimate contacts with Russia’s envoy to Washington Sergey Kislyak when serving as a US senator.

At the time, his spokeswoman Sarah Flores said he had over 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors in the past year, including from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, as well as Russia – part of his job as a Senate Armed Services Committee member.

Numerous other Republican and undemocratic Dems also met with Kislyak, Sessions alone unjustifiably criticized over nothing.

His recusal and national security advisor Michael Flynn ousting was all about bashing Trump and Russia.

Undemocratic Dems, other forces in Washington, hostile media  and Rosenstein’s hostility toward Trump are part of a plot to remove him from office for the wrong reasons.

Succeeding will drive another stake into the heart of the republic, things on a slippery slope toward full-blown tyranny.

The way things are going, whether Trump survives or is ousted, it’s just a matter of time.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

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.

The first trees have already been cut, the others marked with paint: 937 trees are now being cut down in the “protected” natural area of the San Rossore Regional Park between Pisa and Livorno. The slaughtered trees are the first “collateral damage” of the massive reorganization, begun these days, of the infrastructure of Camp Darby, which contains the largest U.S. arsenal in the world outside the United States.

Even if the U.S. command promises to replant more trees than those cut, the construction of a railway and other infrastructure, fragmenting the natural habitats, will upset a vast ecosystem.

The project involves the construction of a new railway section that will connect the station of Tombolo (on the Pisa-Livorno line) to a new loading and unloading terminal. The trains will cross the Canale dei Navicelli on a new rotating metal bridge. The loading and unloading terminal, almost 65 feet high, will consist of four 575-feet-long tracks capable of accommodating nine wagons each, for a total of 36 wagons.

The terminal will be joined to the ammunition storage area by large trucks. By means of trolleys handling containers, incoming weapons will be transferred from railway wagons to trucks and those departing from trucks to railway wagons. The terminal will allow the transit of two trains per day, which will connect the base to the port through the normal lines of the Italian state railways.

The reorganization of the infrastructure, which has just begun, is based on the plan to carry out the increased transit of weapons from Camp Darby. The current connection via canal and the base road with the port of Livorno and Pisa airport is no longer sufficient.

The United States continuously supplies the 125 bunkers of Camp Darby. over a million artillery bullets, bombs for aircraft and missiles, plus thousands of tanks, vehicles and other military equipment in these bunkers (according to approximate estimates).

Since March 2017, enormous ships have been calling at Livorno on a monthly basis. The ships unload and load weapons that are continuously transported to the ports of Aqaba in Jordan, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern ports. U.S. forces and allies use these weapons in the wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

You do not need to be a skilled technician to understand what the dangers are for the population of the Tuscany region. Moving thousands of high-powered explosive warheads continuously in a densely populated area involves obvious risks. Even though the project managers describe their strategy as taking into account “human health and public safety,” an accident with catastrophic consequences cannot be excluded.

Neither can anyone rule out the possibility of sabotage or a terrorist attack that could cause the explosion of an entire train loaded with bombs. This is confirmed by the fact that the plan provides for the construction of a second terminal which will be used for the operations of verification and inspection of the “suspect wagons.” Those are wagons on which a bomb could have been installed (for example, inside a container). Such a bomb, exploding on command, would cause a catastrophic chain reaction.

What have the authorities done about this danger? Instead of carrying out their duties to protect the citizens and the territory, the Region of Tuscany, the municipalities of Pisa and Livorno and the Park Authority have not only approved the strengthening of Camp Darby, but have contributed to carrying it out. The civil works carried out in recent years for real or alleged economic development projects (such as luxury shipbuilding) — in particular the works to improve the navigability of the Navicelli Canal and the rail links to the port of Livorno — are exactly those demanded for years by the command of Camp Darby.

Its most prominent representative, Colonel Berdy [U.S. Army Garrison Italy Commander Col. Erik M. Berdy], has been received in recent months with all the honours by the President of the Tuscan Regional Council, Eugenio Giani (Democratic Party), who has committed to promoting “integration between the U.S. military base of Camp Darby and the surrounding community,” by the mayor of Livorno, Filippo Nogarin (Five Star Movement) and that of Pisa, Michele Conti (League) who have expressed substantially the same position. The trees of the Park can be cut down and the bombs of Camp Darby can circulate on Italian territory, thanks to the mutual consent of the politicians of these three major parties.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Translated by John Catalinotto

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

The internationally recognized president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, transferred his military powers to the coalition’s commander in coinciding with his mysterious treatment trip to the United States, according to an official military document issued by the coalition’s leadership in Marib.

The document, was declared by commander of the Saudi coalition’s forces in Marib Al-Anzi, and addressed the Chief of Staff of Hadi Forces, which includes the orders of Hadi and the commander of coalition’s forces in Yemen Turky Al-Saud.

The document asks to take the directions of the field operations from the Commander of the coalition and shall be considered the directions of His Excellency President Abdurabo Mansour Hadi, according to the text of the document.

The document states that the mandate given by Hadi to the commander of the coalition’s forces backs to May, the same month in which a US agency revealed that Hadi would travel to the United States on a treatment trip for a long time, but it was delayed before the leaving of Hadi earlier this month suddenly to the United States.

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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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Flight MH17, Ukraine and the Civil War

By Prof. Kees van der Pijl, September 22, 2018

On the margins of D-Day celebrations in Normandy in June 2014, Poroshenko agreed with Putin to start talks on a ceasefire, for which a Russian emissary arrived in Kiev on the 8th. On 24 June the Russian Federation Council revoked the authority granted to Putin in March to deploy Russian troops in Ukraine. Moscow had already indicated it did not want the Donbass insurgency to lead to secession when it refused to honour a referendum on the issue.

The Gamification of Tyranny, The Surveillance State. America and China

By Kurt Nimmo, September 22, 2018

In China, the supposedly communist state—in fact, it is an advanced form of crony capitalist authoritarianism that Marx [and Mao] would have disapproved—is busy setting up a rating system for all citizens. According to a paper written by an academic at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon, scores are based on professional conduct, corruption, type of products bought, peers’ own scores, and tax evasion.

Can the Downing of Russia’s IL-20 be the Beginning of the End for Israeli Hubris?

By Askiah Adam, September 22, 2018

None of us would be cheering on a war that could easily be the absolutely final one if President Putin had not defused the situation while clearly signalling that he holds Israel accountable for downing the Russian IL-20 reconnaissance aircraft even though it was shot down by a Syrian missile. If he did not why would he have signed off on the Russian MOD’s statement which squarely placed the blame on Israel.  

The 9/11 Anniversary: Conspiracy Theory or Critical Thinking?

By Prof. Graeme McQueen, September 22, 2018

On the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that let loose so much international violence, the public has a right to ask what really happened on that day. Here are eight points to ponder.

Video: The New Iron Curtain. “The Russian Menace”

By Manlio Dinucci, September 22, 2018

Latvia is presently building a metal fence, 90 kilometres long and 2.5 metres high, along its frontier with Russia. It will be finished before the end of the year, and will be extended in 2019 along more than 190 kilometres of the frontier, for a planned cost of 17 million Euros.

Rio de Janeiro’s Rocinha Favela and the Future of Urbanism

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, September 21, 2018

It is believed at least 70,000 people live in Rocinha (some estimates suggest more than double that number), living in houses made from concrete and brick. It is officially described as a neighbourhood and has very basic sanitation, plumbing and electricity. Rocinha also has shops, hairdressers, banks, art galleries and many other businesses. The word favela itself is derived from a skin-irritating plant of the spurge family: removing these plants to live in these areas was not easy so the people called the hills after the plant.

Syrian Activist Nidal Rahawi Provides Rare Insight into the Deteriorating Conditions in the Northeastern Region

By Nidal Rahawi and Sarah Abed, September 21, 2018

In this exclusive interview Syrian Nationalist/Outspoken Activist/Artist Mr. Nidal Rahawi a Qamishli native and resident, provided us with crucial direct insight into the most recent tragic events that have taken place in his hometown in north eastern Syria.

Syria’s War for Peace

By Mark Taliano, September 21, 2018

There is a great deal of discussion about saving civilian lives in Syria, as there should be. Missing from the discussion, however, is the most important point. If Western policymakers were genuinely concerned about saving civilians, they would not have waged this Regime Change war in the first place.

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China will soon operate the Israeli port of Haifa if everything goes according to plan.

Haaretz reported on a conference late last month in Israel where the former navy chief of staff and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission Shaul Horev warned about China’s forthcoming management of the strategic port of Haifa. The deal was agreed to three and a half years ago by the Transportation Ministry and Port Authority without what the outlet claimed was the input of either the National Security Council or the navy itself, the latter of which is supposedly concerned because Israel’s submarine fleet is based next to the port. The impending implementation of the agreement has led to the usual fear mongering about “debt traps”, military implications, and oddly enough, even whether Israel is pivoting away from the US.

What’s clearly happening is that a faction of Israel’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies – or “deep state” – wants to join China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity while the other wants to retain Tel Aviv’s stalwart pro-American foreign policy by preventing this, hence the public friction over this issue. Unlike what many in the Alt-Media Community might imagine, Israel and China have become increasingly close over the past couple of years as Beijing has developed an interest in the so-called “Red-Med Railway” proposal of connecting the two bodies of water via a high-speed railway that could eventually complement the Suez Canal or possibly one day even become an alternative to it.

Israel’s agreement to allow China to expand and then subsequently manage the port of Haifa is indicative of an influential “deep state” faction’s desire to diversify Tel Aviv’s strategic dependence on the US by pragmatically cooperating with other rising Great Powers, such as what it’s been doing lately with Russia in Syria for example. Furthermore, it appears as though this faction envisions Israel fulfilling a similar role as its new partner India in the sense of “multi-aligning” between Great Powers, which could in theory allow it to leverage the newfound “competition” over its “loyalty” in order to extract better benefits from all sides, including the US.

Should the deal not be offset by any last-minute so-called “national security” concerns by the opposing “deep state” faction and its American allies, then Israel would basically be giving the Silk Road its best-ever international endorsement, which might also have been one of the reasons why China was even interested in this opportunity in the first place. There’s also the possibility, noted by Ber Cowen at The Times Of Israel, that China has long-term ambitions of controlling the East Mediterranean port of European access for Gulf resources following any future Palestinian peace deal that results in the Arab Monarchies officially recognizing Israel and building pipelines through it in order to save on upwards of 40% of the costs that they pay for transiting through the Suez Canal.

Whatever China’s intentions are – and they certainly don’t have anything to do with locking Israel into a “debt trap” or spying on its submarines – the controversy over this agreement nevertheless points to the fact that there are two geopolitically competing “deep state” factions in Israel that are now making their Haifa feud public because each of them believes for very different reasons that it could indeed be a game-changer if the deal ends up going through.

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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 the author.

Seth Anziska’s Preventing Palestine: A Political History From Camp David to Oslo is a deeply insightful and profoundly disturbing book that traces the tortuous path of Middle East peace-making during the past four decades. It was quite painful to read.

Having been a close observer and sometimes participant in many of the developments that have unfolded since the end of the 1973 War, Anziska opened old wounds while shedding new light on the painful events and acts of betrayal that have shaped recent Palestinian history.

Through all of the twists and turns of this period, the brutal wars and the diplomatic initiatives, the one constant that emerges is the Israeli determined refusal to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination and statehood and the self-serving acquiesce to their intransigence by successive American administrations and key Arab leaders.

The culprits are many. In Anziska’s telling of this history, we can find fault with most of the parties to the conflict—all of the US administrations that were involved during this period: Israeli Prime Ministers, whether from Labor or Likud; Egyptian Presidents Sadat and Mubarak; Lebanon’s Phalange Party; and, in the end, even the PLO’s Yasser Arafat.

Digging deep into the official records of the Israelis, Egyptians, Americans, Palestinians, and others who participated in the region’s wars and various diplomatic endeavors, Anziska mines government and research center archives unearthing revealing contemporaneous accounts, minutes of meetings, and official communiques—providing the story behind the story of events as they unfolded.

Especially fascinating were: the internal debates that took place in Israeli cabinet meetings and how, at times, they would don a diplomatic mask of accommodation, while clinging to their firm refusal to surrender sovereignty of Palestinian lands or recognize the existence of a Palestinian nation; the discussions that occurred between President Carter and his aides; the frustrations expressed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s various Foreign Ministers over his betrayal of the Palestinian cause; the way Israel’s Ariel Sharon rudely manhandled US emissaries and their cowering in the face of his belligerence; the way Israel’s Menachem Begin initially sought to pose as the savior of the Christians of Lebanon only to “turn on a dime” after they refused to sign a peace agreement on Israel’s terms; the insidious plotting of a Phalange leader with the Israelis to end the Palestinian presence in Lebanon; and the short-lived, but still worth noting, instances of frustration of US Presidents Carter and Reagan and Secretaries of State George Schultz and James Baker with the Israelis.

What emerges as key to the denial of Palestinian rights is the self-imposed paralysis of American decision-makers in the face of Israeli intransigence—resulting from successive administration’s fears of the domestic political fallout that might follow any pressure the United States might apply on Israel. Time and again, U.S. principals grew impatient with Israeli ploys and their hardline refusal to recognize and grant national rights to Palestinian, only to back down after advisers cautioned them of the political consequences that might result. There were no American “profiles in courage” emerging from Anziska’s book.

Carter, for example, began his term with a pledge to realize a “homeland” for the Palestinians. In line with his administration’s commitment to human rights, Carter was moved to end their suffering in exile and under occupation. The vehicle he envisioned to initiate the path toward this goal was an international all-party conference to end the Arab-Israeli conflict. Carter’s efforts were ultimately upended by a combination of: Israel’s refusal to participate in any forum that would question their claim of sovereignty over the Palestinian territories; Sadat’s resolve to achieve a separate Israeli-Egyptian peace without the Palestinians, despite his public pronouncements to the contrary; and the pressure from the American Jewish community, which caused sufficient enough discomfort within the White House to cause Carter to back away from pressing Israel to cede land or political rights to the Palestinians.

In the end, Carter acceded to the pressure and shepherded the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The agreement, shaped by largely by the Israelis, promised only future discussions on a vaguely worded plan for Palestinian “autonomy”—which in the Israeli lexicon meant that the Palestinians could realize control of their persons, but not control over land. The result, as Anziska notes was that at Camp David Sadat got the Sinai and Begin got the West Bank. And with Israel’s southern border secured, Begin was free to attempt to “wipe out” the PLO in Lebanon.

Throughout the next four decades the region witnessed the horrific Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon (together with the aerial bombardments that devastated Beirut and the massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps), two Palestinian uprisings, and repeated failed American efforts at peace-making. During this time, the US dithered, professing to want to solve the conflict, but refusing to apply the pressure needed to make it happen. As Anziska observes, throughout this entire period, the Israelis, while agreeing to negotiate, insisted on their exclusive sovereignty over the occupied territories and their “God given right” to settle in them. These were not topics they would discuss. In communiques, they repeatedly chided their American interlocutors rejecting the designation “occupied territories” and insisting on the terms “Judea and Samaria.” They also rejected the term “Palestinian people”, referring to them, instead, as “Arab inhabitants.”

As a result of this Israeli intransigence and the weak-kneed American response, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands only deepened. In 1977 there were about Israeli 5,000—8,000 settlers in the West Bank, by 1992 there were 100,000 settlers, and today the number exceeds 600,000.

Despite the euphoria that accompanied the September 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords, Anziska demonstrates the similarities between what Oslo provided for the Palestinians and the autonomy proposal offered by Menachem Begin at Camp David 15 years earlier. The supposed self-rule won by the Palestinians at Oslo was circumscribed by Israel’s insistence that it retain control over land, resources, security, and borders. Like Begin’s proposal at Camp David, there would be no Palestinian sovereignty and no truly independent state. Anziska cites many prominent Palestinians who called Arafat to task for his rush to sign what they termed a “flawed agreement.”

Menachem Begin, while adamantly rejecting a Palestinian state, at times,  spoke magnanimously of extending rights to the “Arab inhabitants in Judea and Samaria”—whom he saw as a “minority” living in Eretz Israel. Anziska quotes Begin saying, “What’s wrong with a Jewish majority living together with an Arab minority in peace, in human dignity, in equality of rights?”

Well, here we are in 2018, 40 years after Camp David. The Palestinian dream of an independent state is not only unrealized but is most likely unrealizable. With many Palestinians now favoring a one state solution, they may throw Begin’s words back at him and say, “There’s nothing wrong with that!” The problem for the Israelis, of course, is that the once “Arab minority” is now a majority and Israelis have only themselves to thank for digging this hole. By “Preventing Palestine”, they have given birth a new reality.

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James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute.

US President Donald Trump’s close ally and lawyer Rudy Giuliani spoke of “revolution” and the “overthrow” of Iran’s ruling clerics at a rally of anti-government Iranian Americans on Saturday as the administration continues its offensive against Tehran.

Giuliani spoke at the so-called 2018 Iran Uprising Summit in midtown Manhattan, hosted by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) – an umbrella bloc of opposition groups in exile that seeks an end to clerical rule in Iran – and the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an anti-government Iranian religious group that used to be on the US terror list.

“I don’t know when we’re going to overthrow them. It could be in a few days, months, a couple of years, but it’s going to happen. They’re going to be overthrown, the people of Iran have obviously had enough,” Giuliani told a cheering crowd.

“The sanctions are working. The currency is going to nothing … These are the conditions that lead to successful revolution, and, God willing, non-violent revolution.”

The end of Iran’s 39-year-old clerical establishment would not echo the chaos that followed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, thanks to the NCRI and Iran’s multi-skilled diaspora, Giuliani said in a 15-minute address.

The rally came after the Trump administration pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran in May and is ratcheting up sanctions which, officials say, are aimed at deterring Tehran’s military expansionism rather than topple its government.

‘Time for the mullahs ending’?

But some Iranian Americans see parallels to the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, and say that links between the Trump administration and the NCRI, which presents itself as an Iranian government-in-waiting, are worrying.

That is not least because of NCRI’s president-elect Maryam Rajavi, who also heads the highly controversial MEK, which has a background in leftist, Islamist-style violence and fosters cult-like devotion among its followers.

“Iran is in a critical moment, with the continued protests in Iran. The time for the mullahs is ending. It is also time for the world to recognize the legitimate demands of the Iranian people for a free republic based on the separation of religion and state,” Rajavi said.

In a recorded video message, she urged the US and the UN to sanction and pressure Iran, while laying out plans to tackle poverty, improve human rights and hold free elections in Iran within six months of the mullahs being toppled.

Rajavi and Giuliani addressed and roused the crowd at the New York Sheraton, backed by Iranian rock and classical music and other speeches from former US Gen James Jones and France’s former foreign minister Bernard Kouchner.

Some 1,500 smartly-dressed Iranian Americans rallied against the regime at the New York Sheraton (MEE/James Reinl)

They made no mention of an attack on a military parade of Revolutionary Guard troops and officials in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz on Saturday, in which at least 25 people were killed. Iranian leaders said US-backed Gulf states were behind the killings.

Trump supporters have spoken at NCRI events in the past, including National Security Adviser John Bolton, who, before taking his post, told the group’s members they would be ruling Iran before 2019 and their goal should be regime change.

This week, Trump is expected to heap more pressure on Iran in his speech before the UN General Assembly on Tuesday and at a Security Council meeting focused on Iran and illegals weapons flows on Thursday.

Iran has seen its rial plunge, economic turmoil and a wave of protests that has spread to 80 cities since December as US sanctions bite and additional curbs are expected to shrink Iran’s oil exports when they are imposed in November.

Ali Safavi, a card-carrying member of NCRI, said his group usually only holds a street rally during the UN’s annual meet of world leaders, but had raised its profile this year as US pressure is seeing the clerics’ grip on power weaken.

“The mullahs are on their last legs,” Safavi told Middle East Eye. Echoing Rajavi, he called for action by the UN and emphasized the secular, democratic credentials of the MEK, also known as the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI).

MEK: A controversial group

The MEK has an odd backstory. Its members joined the 1979 Islamic revolution but later broke from the ruling clerics. Based in Iraq since the early 1980s, their fighters clashed with US forces during the 2003 Iraq war, but have since renounced violence.

Many of its members remain stranded in Iraq as the group fell out of Baghdad’s favour after Saddam Hussein’s downfall. The European Union had the MEK on its list of banned “terrorist” organizations from 2002-09. The US classified the MEK as terrorists until 2012.

Rajavi and her husband, Massoud, run the group though the latter’s whereabouts are unknown. A 2009 report by the RAND Corporation noted how MEK members had to swear “an oath of devotion to the Rajavis”.

Researchers also described the MEK’s “authoritarian, cultic practices,” including “mandatory divorce and celibacy” for the group’s members and how devotion to the Rajavis replaced “love for spouses and family”.

Speaking with MEE outside the Sheraton, Sam Garshasp, an Iranian-American student who travelled from Michigan to attend the rally, referred to the strict membership rules he was ordered to follow.

“You have to be so straight, no play around, no joking. There are special rules, I’m not allowed to say it,” said Garshasp, who asked for his surname to be changed so other members would not be able to identify him.

The 21-year-old has lived in the US for five years. He wishes to see an end to clerical rule and backs Trump’s sanctions despite the hardship faced by relatives back home. He only backs the MEK with reservations.

“Are they going to make it better? And will they have our back? They have to start doing something so people can trust them and support them,” Garshasp told MEE.

The group has faced other criticisms. In 2011, a Christian Science Monitor investigation into the big hitters from across the political spectrum who speak at MEK events revealed some were paid tens of thousands of dollars to stump for the group.

The most recent public opinion survey commissioned by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans (PAAIA), a research and lobby group, showed how 402 Iranian-American respondents held less-favourable views of Rajavi than other Iranian political figures.

Only 7 percent of respondents had favourable views of Rajavi. That was similar to the 6 percent who felt positive about supreme leader Ali Khamenei, but much lower than the 55 percent who backed President Hassan Rouhani.

Only 1 percent of respondents backed Iran’s cleric-run system, while 8 percent wanted it reformed. Most Iranian Americans (55 percent) favoured a secular democratic government and 11 percent sought the return of a Shah-like monarch.

“The people of Iran despise the MEK,” Roxana Ganji, a California-based Iranian-American pro-democracy activist who has long called for the downfall of the mullahs but questions the MEK’s democratic and ethical credentials.

“By Giuliani and Bolton going there for speaking engagements and getting paid for it and being part of Mr Trump’s administration … gives people the idea that were going to replace a terrorist government with one that’s even worse,” Ganji told MEE.

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Featured image is from James Reinl/MEE.

”The Fascist State organizes the nation, but it leaves the individual adequate elbow room. It has curtailed useless or harmful liberties while preserving those which are essential. In such matters the individual cannot be the judge, but the State only. The Fascist” 

– Benito Mussolini [1]

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With a population of over 1.2 billion people, the Republic of India is considered the world’s most populous democracy. Yet, civil liberties and the power of the masses to direct their affairs in their own interest are being undermined if developments in recent years are any indication.

Beyond the increasing incidence of lynchings and mob violence targeting minorities, and the severe crack-downs on dissent, there is significant doubts being raised about the sanctity of the rule of law. A story surfacing in the fall of 2017 has cast suspicion on the ability of the courts to rule independently of political influence.

On December 1, 2014, a judge with the country’s Central Bureau of Investigation was reported to have died of natural causes. Judge Brijgopal Loya had been presiding over one of the nation’s most high profile cases, that of a murder implicating the president of the governing BJP party.

Two investigative reports published in November of 2017, brought to the fore doubts expressed by Loya’s family about the account of his death. These doubts were corroborated by documents accessed by the author highlighting irregularities in the overall depiction of events around Loya’s death. The family also detailed attempts at bribery and intimidation of the judge in the weeks leading up to his untimely death at the age of 48.

To date, the response of officialdom has been to try to discredit the report and downplay the revelations therein.

India is a significant power. One of the world’s largest economies and a member of the powerful BRICS alliance of nations with strategic links with both the U.S. and Russia. What does a significant deterioration of the India’s democratic rights mean within a larger geopolitical context.

These are the questions we will be exploring in a special recently broadcast live to air edition of the Global Research News Hour. Our special guest for the hour is the journalist who broke the story, Niranjan Takle. He will discuss the case, the betrayal of the journalistic community, the factors directing the BJP’s regressive agenda, the implications for foreign relations, and more.

Links to Mr. Takle’s 2017 stories can be found here:

“A family breaks its silence: Shocking details emerge in death of judge presiding over Sohrabuddin trial”

“Chief Justice Mohit Shah made an offer of Rs 100 crore to my brother for a favourable judgment in the Sohrabuddin case: Late Judge Loya’s Sister”.

Professor Radhika Desai, who is presenting Mr. Takle at his Winnipeg talk also joins us in this studio discussion.

Upcoming Canadian speaking events for Niranjan Takle:

Sunday, 23rd September

5-7 pm

Ryerson University, Room 358, Podium Building

350 Victoria Street (on north-west corner of Gould and Victoria)

Organized by India Civil Watch and Jamhoor

Supported by the Ryerson Faculty Association Equity Committee

info: [email protected]

Saturday, 29th September

4-6pm

at Alternatives

3720 Park Avenue

Montreal H2X 2J1

organized by: CERAS and India Civil Watch-Canada

info: [email protected]

Niranjan Takle is a journalist based in India. He has worked as a stringer and as a correspondent for CNN-IBN, and later as a bureau chief for Network 18’s Maharashtra (north). He worked for The Week from 2011 to 2017, only leaving after it refused to publish his story on the death of judge Loya. The Caravan published the story but has not as yet hired Takle on a permanent basis. He is currently unemployed and looking for work.

Dr. Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), and Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004). She is also active with Democracy, Equality and Secularism in South Asia (DESSA) which is hosting Mr. Takle’s Winnipeg talk Saturday Sept. 22 at 1:30pm at 765 Keewatin St.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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Global Research News Hour Episode 229

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Notes:

1. Benito Musselini (1932), ‘The Doctrine of Fascism’; http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm

A Letónia está a construir uma cerca de e 90 km de comprimento, com 2,5 metros de altura, ao longo da fronteira com a Rússia, que estará concluída até ao final do ano. A mesma será prolongada, em 2019, em mais de 190 km de fronteira, com um custo estimado de 17 milhões de euros.

Uma cerca semelhante, de 135 km de comprimento, acaba de ser construída pela Lituânia, na fronteira com o território russo de Kaliningrado.

A Estónia anunciou a próxima construção de uma cerca, sempre na fronteira com a Rússia, com 110 km de extensão e 2,5 metros de altura.Custo esperado em mais de 70 milhões de euros, para os quais o governo da Estónia solicitará um financiamento da União Europeia.
O objectivo das cercas, segundo as declarações desses governos, é “proteger as fronteiras externas da Europa e da NATO”. Excluindo a motivação de que eles devem estar “protegidos” dos fluxos migratórios maciços da Rússia, não resta senão outra: as fronteiras externas da União Europeia e da NATO devem estar “protegidas” da “ameaça russa”.Visto que a cerca construída pelos países bálticos ao longo da fronteira com a Rússia tem eficácia militar praticamente nula, o seu propósito é fundamentalmente ideológico: o do símbolo físico de que, para além da cerca, há um inimigo perigoso que nos ameaça. Isto faz parte da martelada “psyop” politico-mediática para justificar a escalada USA/NATO, na Europa, contra a Rússia.

Neste contexto, o Presidente da República, Sergio Mattarella, foi para à Letónia duas vezes, a primeira em Julho, num circuito de visitas aos países bálticos e à Geórgia.No almoço oficial, em Riga, o Presidente da República Italiana elogiou a Letónia por ter escolhido “a integração dentro da NATO e da União Europeia” e ter decidido “abraçar um modelo de sociedade aberta, baseado no respeito pelo Estado de direito, pela democracia, pela centralidade dos direitos do homem”.

Isto mesmo foi declarado ao Presidente da Letónia, Raymond Vejonis, o qual já tinha aprovado, em Abril, o Projecto de Lei que proíbe o ensino do russo na Letónia, um país cuja população é quase 30% da etnia russa e o russo é usado como língua principal de 40% dos habitantes. Uma medida contrária à liberdade de um povo que, ao proibir o bilinguismo reconhecido pela própria União Europeia, discrimina posteriormente a minoria russa, acusada de ser “a quinta coluna de Moscovo”.

Dois meses depois, em Setembro, o Presidente Mattarella voltou à Letónia para participar numa cimeira informal de Chefes de Estado da União Europeia, na qual o tema dos ataques informáticos da parte de “Estados com atitude hostil” foi tratado, entre outros. (Referência clara à Rússia).Após a cimeira, o Presidente da República foi para a base militar de Ᾱdaži, onde encontrou o contingente italiano enquadrado no Grupo de batalha, fixado pela NATO na Letónia, no âmbito da “presença avançada reforçada” nas fronteiras com a Rússia. “A vossa presença é um elemento que tranquiliza nossos amigos letões e de outros países bálticos”, disse o Presidente da República. Palavras que, essencialmente, alimentam a “psyop”, sugerindo a existência de uma ameaça para os países bálticos e para o resto da Europa, proveniente da Rússia.

Em 24 de Setembro, também chegará à Letónia,o Papa Francisco, em visita aos três países bálticos.Quem sabe se, repetindo que se devem “construir pontes e não muros”, ele também dirá algo sobre a nova cortina de ferro que, ao dividir a região europeia, prepara as mentes para a guerra.Ou, se em Riga, ao depor flores no “Monumento à Liberdade”, reivindicará a liberdade dos jovens letões russos de aprender e usar a sua própria língua.

Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 18 de Setembro de 2018

Artigo original em italiano :

La nuova cortina di ferro L’arte della guerra

Tradução : Luisa Vasconcellos

VIDEO Por PandoraTV :

Lettland baut einen 90 Kilometer langen, 2,5 Meter hohen Metallzaun entlang der Grenze zu Russland, der noch in diesem Jahr fertiggestellt wird. Im Jahr 2019 wird er über mehr als 190 Grenzkilometer mit geschätzten Kosten von 17 Millionen Euro erweitert.

Ein ähnlicher, 135 Kilometer langer Zaun, wird von Litauen an der Grenze zum russischen Gebiet Kaliningrad errichtet.

Estland kündigte den bevorstehenden Bau eines 110 km langen und 2,5 m hohen Zauns an der Grenze zu Russland an. Erwartete Kosten von über 70 Millionen Euro, für die die estnische Regierung EU-Mittel beantragen wird.

Der Zweck dieser Zäune ist, laut Regierungserklärungen, der “Schutz der Außengrenzen Europas und der NATO”. Der Beweggrund ausgenommen, dass diese vor massiven Migrationsströmen aus Russland “geschützt” werden sollen, bleibt nur der andere: Die Außengrenzen von EU und NATO müssen vor der “russischen Bedrohung” geschützt” werden.

Da der von den baltischen Ländern entlang der Grenze zu Russland errichtete Zaun praktisch keine militärische Wirksamkeit hat, ist sein Zweck grundsätzlich ideologisch: das greifbare Symbol, dass es jenseits des Zauns einen gefährlichen Feind gibt, der uns bedroht. Dies ist Teil der politischen und medialen PSYOPS [psychologische Operationen, Anm. d. Übers.], um die Eskalation von USA und NATO in Europa gegen Russland zu rechtfertigen.

In diesem Zusammenhang reiste der Präsident der Italienischen Republik, Sergio Mattarella, zweimal nach Lettland, erstmals im Juli auf einer Besuchsreise in die baltischen Länder und Georgien. Beim offiziellen Mittagessen in Riga lobte der Präsident der Italienischen Republik Lettland für die Wahl der “Integration in die NATO und die Europäische Union” und für die Entscheidung, “ein offenes Gesellschaftsmodell anzunehmen, das auf der Achtung der Rechtsstaatlichkeit, der Demokratie und der Zentralität der Menschenrechte beruht”.

Dies wurde dem lettischen Präsidenten Raymond Vejonis verkündet, der bereits im April den Gesetzentwurf zum Verbot des Russischunterrichts in Lettland gebilligt hatte, einem Land, dessen Bevölkerung aus fast 30% russischer Ethnie besteht und in dem 40% der Einwohner Russisch als Hauptsprache verwenden. Eine libertizide [stark bevormundende, Anm. d. Übers.] Maßnahme, die durch das Verbot der von der Europäischen Union selbst anerkannten Zweisprachigkeit die russische Minderheit weiter diskriminiert, der vorgeworfen wird, “die fünfte Säule Moskaus” zu sein.

Zwei Monate später, im September, kehrte Präsident Mattarella nach Lettland zurück, um an einem informellen Gipfel der Staatschefs der Europäischen Union teilzunehmen, bei dem die Frage der Cyberangriffe von “Staaten mit feindseliger Haltung” behandelt wurde (eindeutiger Hinweis auf Russland).

Nach dem Gipfel besuchte der Präsident der Republik den Militärstützpunkt Ᾱdaži, wo er das italienische Kontingent in der von der NATO in Lettland im Rahmen der “verstärkten Vorwärtspräsenz” an der Grenze zu Russland eingesetzten Kampfgruppe traf. “Ihre Anwesenheit hier ist ein Grundbaustein, der unsere lettischen Freunde und andere baltische Länder beruhigt”, sagte der Präsident der Republik. Worte, die im Wesentlichen die PSYOP nähren und die Existenz einer Bedrohung für die baltischen Länder und den Rest Europas durch Russland unterstellen.

Am 24. September wird auch Papst Franziskus Lettland besuchen, auf einer Reise durch die drei baltischen Länder. Wer weiß, ob er, indem er wiederholt, dass wir “Brücken bauen müssen anstatt  Mauern”, auch etwas über den neuen Eisernen Vorhang sagen wird, der durch die Spaltung der europäischen Region das Denken auf Krieg vorbereitet. Oder ob er in Riga, wenn er Blumen am  “Denkmal für die Freiheit” niederlegt, die Freiheit junger Letten einfordern wird, ihre eigene Sprache zu lernen und zu benutzen.

Manlio Dinucci

(il manifesto, 18. September 2018)

VIDEO :

Übersetzung: K.R.

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“As hemp makes a comeback in the U.S. after a decades-long ban on its cultivation, scientists are reporting that fibers from the plant can pack as much energy and power as graphene, long-touted as the model material for supercapacitors. …

Although hemp (cannabis sativa) and marijuana (cannabis sativa var. indica) come from a similar species of plant, they are very different and confusion has been caused by deliberate misinformation.”

Marco Torres, Global Research, August 19, 2014

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Abby Martin takes a look at the real reason why hemp is illegal in the US, the truth might surprise you. 

The above video was originally published in March 2013.

I primi sono giàstati tagliati, gli altri marchiati con la vernice: sono 937 gli alberi che vengono abbattuti nell’area naturale «protetta»del Parco Regionale di San Rossore tra Pisa e Livorno. Èil primo «danno collaterale»della  massiccia riorganizzazione, iniziata in questi giorni, delle infrastrutture di Camp Darby, il piùgrande arsenale Usa nel mondo fuori dalla madrepatria (v. il manifesto, 11 settembre). Anche se il comando Usa promette di ripiantare piùalberi di quelli tagliati, la costruzione di una ferrovia e altre infrastrutture, frammentando gli habitat naturali, sconvolgeràun vasto ecosistema.

Il progetto prevede la costruzione di un nuovo tronco ferroviario che collegheràla stazione di Tombolo (sulla linea Pisa-Livorno) a un nuovo terminal di carico e scarico, attraversando il Canale dei Navicelli su un nuovo ponte metallico girevole. Il terminal di carico e scarico, alto quasi 20 metri, comprenderàquattro binari lunghi 175 metri capaci di accogliere ciascuno nove vagoni per un totale di 36.

Il terminal saràcollegato all’area di stoccaggio delle munizioni (Ammunition Storage Area) con grandi autocarri. Per mezzo di carrelli movimentatori di container, le armi in arrivo verranno trasferite dai carri ferroviari agli autocarri e quelle in partenza dagli autocarri ai carri ferroviari. Il terminal permetteràil transito di due convogli ferroviari al giorno, che collegheranno la base al porto attraverso le normali linee delle Ferrovie dello Stato.

 Il piano di riorganizzazione delle infrastrutture, appena iniziato, èdovuto al fatto che, in seguito all’accresciuto transito di armi da Camp Darby, non basta piùil collegamento via canale e via strada della base col porto di Livorno e l’aeroporto di Pisa. Nei 125 bunker di Camp Darby, continuamente riforniti dagli Stati uniti, èstoccato (seondo stime approssimative) oltre un milione di proiettili di artiglieria, bombe per aerei e missili, cui si aggiungono migliaia di carrarmati, veicoli e altri materiali militari. Dal marzo 2017, enormi  navi fanno mensilmente scalo a Livorno, scaricando e caricando armi che vengono trasportate in continuazione nei porti di Aqaba in Giordania, Gedda in Arabia Saudita e altri scali mediorientali per essere usate dalle forze statunitesi e alleate nelle guerre in Siria, Iraq e Yemen.

Per capire quali siano i pericoli per la popolazione toscana non occorre essere tecnici specializzati. Movimentare in continuazione migliaia di testate esplosive di enorme potenza in un territorio densamente abitato comporta evidenti rischi. Anche se i responsabili del progetto lo definiscono strategico per «la salute dell’uomo e la pubblica sicurezza», non si puòescludere un incidente dalle conseguenze catastrofiche. Nési puòescludere un sabotaggio o un attacco terroristico per provocare l’esplosione di un intero convoglio ferroviario carico di bombe. Lo conferma il fatto che nel piano èprevista la realizzazione di un secondo terminal che saràadibito alle operazioni di verifica e ispezione dei «carri sospetti», ossia di quelli su cui potrebbe essere stata installata (ad esempio all’interno di un container) una bomba che, esplodendo a comando, provocherebbe una catastrofica reazione a catena.

Che cosa hanno fatto le istituzioni di fronte a tutto questo? Invece di svolgere le loro funzioni a tutela dei cittadini e del territorio, la Regione Toscana, i Comuni di Pisa e Livorno e l’Ente Parco hanno non solo approvato il potenziamento di Camp Darby, ma hanno contribuito alla sua realizzazione. Le opere civili realizzate negli ultimi anni per progetti di sviluppo economico veri o presunti (ad esempio la cantieristica di lusso) –in particolare i lavori per migliorare la navigabilitàdel Canale dei Navicelli e i collegamenti ferroviari del porto di Livorno –sono esattamente quelli richiesti da anni dal comando di Camp Darby. Il suo massimo rappresentante, il colonnello Berdy, èstato ricevuto negli ultimi mesi con tutti gli onori dal presidente del Consiglio regionale toscano Giani (Pd), che si è impegnato a promuovere «l’integrazione tra la base militare Usa di Camp Darby e la comunitàcircostante», dal sindaco di Livorno Nogarin (M5S) e da quello di Pisa Conti (Lega) che hanno espresso sostanzialmente la stessa posizione. Gli alberi del Parco possono essere tagliati e le bombe di Camp Darby possono circolare sul nostro territorio, grazie al consenso multipartisan. 

Manlio Dinucci

Many progressives call for Canada to “do more” around the world. The assumption is that this country is a force for good, a healer of humankind. But if we claim to be the “doctors without borders” of international relations, shouldn’t Canada swear to “first do no harm” like MDs before beginning practice? At a minimum shouldn’t the Left judge foreign policy decisions through the lens of the Hippocratic oath?

Libya illustrates the point. That North African nation looks set to miss a United Nations deadline to unify the country. An upsurge of militia violence in Tripoli and political wrangling makes it highly unlikely elections  planned for December will take place.

Seven years after the foreign backed war Libya remains divided between two main political factionsand hundreds of militias operate in the country of six million. Thousands have died in fighting since 2011.

The instability is not a surprise to Canadian military and political leaders who orchestrated Canada’s war on that country. Eight days before Canadian fighter jets began dropping bombs on Libya in 2011 military intelligence officers told Ottawa decision makers the country would likely descend into a lengthy civil war if foreign countries assisted rebels opposed to Muammar Gadhafi. An internal assessment obtained by the Ottawa Citizen noted,

“there is the increasing possibility that the situation in Libya will transform into a long-term tribal/civil war… This is particularly probable if opposition forces received military assistance from foreign militaries.”

A year and a half before the war a Canadian intelligence report described eastern Libya as an “epicentre of Islamist extremism” and said “extremist cells” operated in the anti-Gadhafi stronghold. In fact, during the bombing, notes Ottawa Citizenmilitary reporter David Pugliese,Canadian air force members privately joked they were part of “al-Qaida’s  air force”. Lo and behold hardline Jihadists were the major beneficiaries of the war, taking control of significant portions of the country.

A Canadian general oversaw NATO’s 2011 war, seven CF-18s participated in bombing runs and two Royal Canadian Navy vessels patrolled Libya’s coast. Ottawa defied the UN Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians by dispatching ground forces, delivering weaponry to the opposition and bombing in service of regime change. Additionally, Montréal-based private security firmGardaWorld aided the rebels in contravention of UN resolutions 1970 and 1973.

The NATO bombing campaign was justified based on exaggerations and outright lies about the Gaddafi regime’s human rights violations. Western media and politicians repeated the rebels’ outlandish (and racist) claims that sub-Saharan African mercenaries fuelled by Viagra given by Gaddafi, engaged in mass rape. Amnesty International’s senior crisis response adviser Donatella Rovera, who was in Libya for three months after the start of the uprising and Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, were unable to find any basis for these claims.

But, seduced by the need to “do something”, the NDP, Stephen Lewis, Walter Dorn and others associated with the Left supported the war on Libya. In my new book Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada I question the “do more” mantra and borrow from healthcare to offer a simple foreign policy principle: First Do No Harm. As in the medical industry, responsible practitioners of foreign policy should be mindful that the “treatments” offered often include “side effects” that can cause serious harm or even kill.

Leftists should err on the side of caution when aligning with official/dominant media policy, particularly when NATO’s war drums are beating. Just because the politicians and dominant media say we have to “do something” doesn’t make it so. Libya and the Sahel region of Africa would almost certainly be better off had a “first do no harm” policy won over the interventionists in 2011.

While a “do more” ethos spans the political divide, a “first do no harm” foreign policy is rooted in international law. The concept of self-determination is a core principle of the UN Charter and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.Peoples’ inalienable right to shape their own destiny is based on the truism that they are best situated to run their own affairs.

Alongside the right to self-determination, the UN and Organization of American States prohibit interfering in the internal affairs of another state without consent. Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter states that “nothing should authorize intervention in matters essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.”

A military intervention without UN approval is the “supreme international crime”. Created by the UN’s International Law Commission after World War II, the Nuremberg Principles describe aggression as the “supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”In other words, by committing an act of aggression against Libya in 2011 — notably bombing in service of regime change — Ottawa is responsible not only for rights violations it caused directly, but also those that flowed from its role in destabilizing that country and large swaths of Africa’s Sahel region.

If Canada is to truly be the “good doctor” of international relations it will be up to Left foreign policy practitioners to ensure that this country lives up to thatpart of the Hippocratic oath stating, “First do no harm”.

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Mike Pompeo’s certification earlier this month that the Saudi coalition was working to reduce harm to civilians in Yemen was an obvious sham. According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, Pompeo made the decision to lie for the Saudis and Emiratis because he feared it would hurt arms sales:

Mr. Pompeo overruled concerns from most of the State Department specialists involved in the debate who were worried about the rising civilian death toll in Yemen. Those who objected included specialists in the region and in military affairs. He sided with his legislative affairs team after they argued that suspending support could undercut plans to sell more than 120,000 precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to a classified State Department memo and people familiar with the debate.

Cutting off refueling to the coalition likely would make it extremely difficult to sell more weapons to the Saudis and Emiratis, but that is not a good reason to ignore evidence and expert advice and then lie to Congress. Opponents of the war have been trying to block arms sales to both countries for years, and this just gives them one more reason to keep trying. The U.S. should not be in the business of arming governments that we know will use them to commit war crimes, and that certainly applies to the Saudis and the UAE as long as the war on Yemen continues. The longer that the war drags on, and the more civilians that the coalition kills using U.S.-made weapons, the more politically toxic arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE will become. In the end, Pompeo’s decision to flout the law and lie to Congress will just make opposition to future arms sales that much more intense.

To their credit, most State Department officials were telling Pompeo that he shouldn’t do what he ended up doing:

The experts argued that certification would “provide no incentive for Saudi leadership to take our diplomatic messaging seriously,” and “damage the Department’s credibility with Congress,” according to portions of the memo shared with The Wall Street Journal.

The department’s experts were right on both counts, but they may have underestimated how much damage Pompeo has done with Congress by making such a transparently dishonest certification that flies in the face of all the available evidence. Unfortunately, the department experts still favored continued military assistance for the war anyway:

They urged Mr. Pompeo to instead tell Congress that he couldn’t certify that the Gulf nations were doing enough to minimize civilian casualties, but that the U.S. would continue to provide military support to the coalition because it is in America’s national security interest.

Here the experts couldn’t be more wrong. No U.S. interests are being served by enabling coalition war crimes and the mass starvation of innocent people. Our security is not threatened by the coalition’s enemies in Yemen. The only people in the country that pose any threat to the U.S. are the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) members that the coalition has been buying off and recruiting. The coalition’s war is not making the U.S. any safer, and it is actively harming what few interests we do have in the area.

USAID stands out as the only one involved in the process that had the right answer:

The U.S. Agency for International Development went even further and argued that the U.S. should halt military aid because “USAID does not believe that continued refueling support will improve either country’s approach to civilian casualties or human protections.”

There was never any chance that Pompeo was going to pay attention to this advice. This report just underscores why it is critical for Congress to do what the administration never will. Congress needs to vote for an end U.S. involvement in the war and to block all arms sales in order to pressure the Saudi coalition to stop their military campaign.

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Featured image is from Mark Taylor/Creative Commons.

As thousands of Detroiters have their water shut off over debt, neighbors are helping each other to access water without alerting Child and Family Services.

It’s north of 90 degrees and humid, and Rev. Roslyn Murray Bouier is sweating bullets at the Brightmoor Connection Food Pantry in Detroit as she directs more than a dozen volunteers unloading 84 cases of water from a U-Haul. It’s for Detroiters without running water.

People stand by, waiting for their turn. A mother with two young children picks up 10 cases. One woman who lives with her five grandchildren has a rash on her arms—perhaps from stress, perhaps from not having running water, perhaps both. The mother and the grandmother are terrified to talk with In These Times. They have reason: According to activists, Child Protective Services (CPS) often removes children from homes that don’t have water (although CPS, maintains that a water shutoff is never the sole reason for removal). Valerie Jean Blakely, an activist who helped organize her neighbors against a mass water shutoff, says that some parents keep their children home from school for fear they’ll let slip to teachers that they have no water and CPS will be called.

Bankrupt, Detroit implemented the shut-off policy in 2014. Since then, according to the nonprofit We the People of Detroit Community Research Collective, more than 100,000 households have had their water turned off. The shutoffs can begin fast, when a bill of just $150 is 30 days past due.

Detroit has both the highest poverty rate of any major U.S. city, at 36 percent, and among the highest water rates. According to a recent University of Michigan study, water bills in the Detroit metro area average $100 a month, about twice what federal affordability standards dictate.

The city offers a payment plan for those with past due bills to get their water back on, but many residents see it as a scam. Bouier says it requires payments as high as $200 a month, which may amount to half the paycheck of those on fixed incomes or who can only work part-time.

The city, meanwhile, has found the money to pay subcontractor Homrich—a wrecking company—$7.8 million to turn off Detroiters’ water over the next three years. Seventeen thousand homes were at risk shutoff this summer.

Lack of water, combined with the hot weather, poses health risks, especially for old people, children, the disabled and those who are pregnant, since dehydration contributes to miscarriage and birth defects. A study by the Icahn School of Medicine found that water-borne diseases, such as Hepatitis A, were more likely to occur on Detroit blocks that had experienced a water shutoff. The Detroit area is experiencing the worst Hepatitis A outbreak in the nation, which began in 2016.

The shutoffs have inspired massive local mobilization: Four emergency water stations like the one in Brightmoor have sprung up around the city. The stations take monetary and bottled water donations and annually distribute 130–150 tons of water. Volunteers even drop off water directly to the homes of those who are unable to pick it up. The drop-offs often happen at night, so nosy neighbors will be less likely to call CPS.

Detroiters are also helping each other informally. Those who have water can run foodgrade hoses to supply neighbors who don’t. Some without water simply do their own plumbing to bypass the water meter. A special tool can be used to (illegally) turn the water valve back on. Those with the tool lend it freely to neighbors.

The Michigan National Lawyers Guild reports that some people with illegal water hook-ups have been prosecuted for “malicious destruction of utility property,” a felony. Monica LewisPatrick, president and CEO of We The People of Detroit, calls for the “decriminalization of people’s access to water.”

Water isn’t meant to be “named and claimed,” she says. “Every living thing has a right to water.”

The water shutoffs are traumatic, says Blakely, but it has also brought people together. “You don’t just think about yourself, you think about everyone,” she says. “It’s awful beautiful. We come together through love and mutual aid, and make sure everyone has what they need.”

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Soldiers from eight military countries, including the US, are to join forces in Ukraine next month for the country’s largest aviation exercise to date.

The Starokostiantyniv airbase, located 240 kilometers from the capital Kiev, will host 950 employees from the US, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom, the Stars and Stripes reported on Wednesday.

According to the military newspaper, the exercises will train soldiers in sovereignty and air interdiction, air-ground integration, air mobility operations, aeromedical evaluation, cyber defense and other training.

The announcement of the exercises came after the Ukrainian government had spoken out on plans to create a new military base in the Azov Sea.

Kurt Volker, the US special representative for talks in Ukraine, said on Tuesday that “anywhere” where there are gaps in Ukrainian military capabilities, the US “are prepared to sit down and talk to Ukraine about their needs They can buy things through our foreign military sales.”

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but has shown interest in joining the Alliance, which has moved slowly eastward since the end of socialism in Eastern Europe. Ukraine’s interest in NATO has risen since 2014 when the pro-Western right-wing government came to power after then-President Viktor Yanukovich withdrew from the trade deal with the European Union in favor of a Russian alternative deal.

At the end of last month, US national security adviser John Bolton, upon returning from Kiev, told Reuters that Ukraine has advanced in its efforts to join NATO, however, there is much work to be done.

Bolton stressed to reporters that it is dangerous not to solve the crisis in Ukraine, referring to the vote of the Republic of Crimea in 2014 to join Russia and remain independent of Kiev. However, Putin has emphasized that the situation in Crimea is final and not open to negotiation.

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The July Offensive and NATO Monitoring 

On the margins of D-Day celebrations in Normandy in June 2014, Poroshenko agreed with Putin to start talks on a ceasefire, for which a Russian emissary arrived in Kiev on the 8th. On 24 June the Russian Federation Council revoked the authority granted to Putin in March to deploy Russian troops in Ukraine. Moscow had already indicated it did not want the Donbass insurgency to lead to secession when it refused to honour a referendum on the issue. It did recognise the results of the Ukrainian presidential election, leading to angry accusations by Strelkov and other commanders of the insurgency. Russia, however, was responding to an apparent EU willingness to give it a breathing space. After Kiev signed the economic Association Agreement with the EU on 27 June, implementation of the DCFTA [Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement] was postponed to 31 December 2015. 

However, when Poroshenko indicated he intended to prolong the ceasefire in the last days of June in spite of his post-election promise to ‘liquidate [the insurgents] in days’, a threatening demonstration in Kiev by the Donbass and Aidar battalions and Kolomoiskiy’s Dnipro 1 demanded the immediate resumption of the civil war. Interior minister Avakov’s Kiev-based paramilitary group 17+ Sotny  was also involved in the demonstrations. Their belligerence was echoed by the war party in the US and NATO. The American ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, lavished praise on the Kiev regime and warned Europe against caving in to ‘Russian aggression’; the EU fell in line on the 27th when it ‘called on Putin to take steps to de-escalate the violence in Ukraine’. The Polish president, Bronislaw Komorowski, even proposed suspending Russia’s UN veto power. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the West did not want the forces of compromise to prevail and gambled instead on a new offensive.

On the 30th of June, following a four-hour NSDC [National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine] meeting with Parubiy, Avakov, and others whose followers were demonstrating outside, Poroshenko declared that the ceasefire would be lifted and a new offensive launched. Valeriy Heletey, the new secretary of defence (his predecessor, Koval, was made deputy secretary of the NSDC) promised an imminent victory parade in Sebastopol. Alarmed by the prospect of a full-scale civil war, the German and French foreign ministers, Steinmeier and Fabius,  convened a last-minute meeting with their Russian and Kiev colleagues, Lavrov and P. Klimkin, in Berlin on 2 July, one day into the renewed hostilities. They reached a deal on a ceasefire, further negotiations, and OSCE control of the Ukrainian border—a provision especially threatening to the insurgency because it would cut off their supply lines. However, the US was again not represented and indignantly condemned the agreement as a ‘craven surrender to Russian aggression’. The State Department claimed that ‘Russia continues to provide [the insurgents] with heavy weapons, other military equipment and financing and continues to allow militants to enter Ukraine freely’. 

On 4 July, the ‘Breeze 2014’ NATO naval manoeuvres in the Black Sea, announced in May, commenced under the official auspices of Bulgaria. Besides the US, naval units from Britain, Romania and Turkey, Greece and Italy took part. Electronic warfare was a key component of the manoeuvres. Significantly, the French and Germans did not participate, although there were two French ships in the area, the frigate Surcouf and the signals intelligence ship, Dupuy de Lôme. In response to the NATO show of force, twenty ships of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet also began manoeuvres, including missile launches at practice targets. The alarm about an impending Russian invasion was sounded throughout, echoed by NATO command. Obviously the aim was to call for a major Western response should an event come about that signalled Russian and/or insurgent escalation, or might be construed as such. 

The new offensive went well for Kiev. Slavyansk, the gas hub where the revolt had started, was taken by its forces on 5 July. On the 7th, Artemivsk and Druzhkivka fell. On the 10th, Siversk, a village just east of Slavyansk and 100 kilometres northeast of Donetsk, was taken, suggesting a possible encirclement of the city. The next day, Poroshenko warned that the insurgents in Donetsk were in for ‘a nasty surprise’. Was this bluff or a provocation? With the NATO summit in Wales coming up in September, the trope of a ‘Russian invasion’ had become vital to the survival of the alliance after the Afghanistan debacle. Hence, the war party’s strategy, according to Mike Whitney, was to ‘lure Putin across the border and into the conflict, or the neocon plan [would fall] apart, which it will if they can’t demonise Putin as a “dangerous aggressor” who can’t be trusted as a business partner’. 

Above I already referred to the privatisation of US intelligence. Satellite surveillance is largely privatised to the DigitalGlobe corporation which had become the monopoly supplier after acquiring its one competitor, GeoEye, in 2013. It serves a range of customers including the Pentagon’s National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). Its high resolution surveillance over eastern Ukraine suggested a push through the Debaltsevo corridor in order to cut off Donetsk from Lugansk, and a southward flanking operation to allow an attack on the city of Donetsk from the rear. The maps of the areas covered were later made public by a Russian geography website, Neogeography.ru, as part of an analysis of the downing of Flight MH17. On 11 July, DigitalGlobe monitored sectors west of Donetsk and north of Druzhkivka, above the Druzhkivka-Artemivsk line captured by Kiev three days earlier. On the 12th, a wider area was surveyed, partly extending into Lugansk oblast. Apparently, a sector offering strategic depth and secure flanks was being mapped for a push towards Debaltsevo, which had already been the target of heavy fighting in May. Yet Moscow seemed unwilling to commit to the struggle directly, in spite of serious reverses for the insurgency. To cite Mike Whitney again (writing on 9 July): the United States ‘has a very small window to draw Putin into the fray, which is why we should expect another false flag incident…  Washington is going to have to do something really big and make it look like it was Moscow’s doing.’

This was published eight days before the MH17 disaster. Yet Breeze 2014, the ten-day NATO naval exercise begun on the 4th, ended without major incident. On the 14th, the US Navy’s AEGIS-class guided missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf, a type of ship equipped with AN/SPY 1 radar that can track long-distance targets, left the Black Sea in compliance with the Montreux Convention, which limits to 21 days the naval presence of countries not bordering it. After the departure of Vella Gulf, other NATO ships remained in the Black Sea and were there on the day of the downing of MH17; notably, the Italian flagship frigate ITS Aviere and a number of electronic surveillance ships and minesweepers of other NATO states (but apparently none belonging to the US Navy). 

The Breeze 2014 exercise in addition included ‘the use of electronic warfare and electronic intelligence aircraft such as the Boeing EA-18G Growler and the Boeing E3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS)’ and these elements were also part of exercises throughout the previous month. On the 5th of June, a dangerous loss of transponder signals (by which a civilian plane returns a radar signal to identify itself) from more than fifty passenger planes over south Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland, turned out to have been caused by an undeclared NATO exercise in Hungary, Newfip. When the same phenomenon occurred again later that month, causing delays and flight cancellations, the German government had to inquire with NATO Air Command in Ramstein whether electronic warfare exercises from 9 to 20 June in Italy had been responsible.

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Prof. Kees van der Pijl is fellow of the Centre for Global Political Economy and Emeritus Professor in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex.

Title: Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War (Prism of disaster)

Author: Kees van der Pijl

ISBN: 978-1-5261-3109-6

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Pages: 208

Price: £18.99

Click here to order.

Iran president Hassan Rouhani has vowed a “crushing response” after four gunmen attacked a military parade in the city of Ahwaz, killing at least 25 people, including soldiers and civilians.

The fighters opened fire on a large crowd of spectators watching the parade in the southwestern city and then attempted to attack the viewing stand for official dignitaries before being shot and wounded by security forces, the semi-official Fars news agency said.

The official state news agency IRNA said 53 people had also been wounded in Saturday’s attack and that many were in a critical condition.

“There are a number of non-military victims, including women and children who had come to watch the parade,” the agency quoted an unnamed official source as saying.

“The response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the smallest threat will be crushing,” Rouhani said in a statement on his official website.

“Those who give intelligence and propaganda support to these terrorists must answer for it.”

A video distributed to Iranian media showed soldiers at the parade, an annual event marking the start of the country’s 1980-88 war with Iraq, crawling on the ground as gunfire blazed in their direction.

“Three of the terrorists were killed on the spot and a fourth one who was injured died in hospital,” Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi, a senior spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, told state television.

At least eight members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard are among those killed, reports say. ISNA quoted Khuzestan province’s deputy governor Ali-Hossein Hosseinzadeh as saying:

“One of the martyrs is a journalist.”

Fars said the attack started at 9am local time (05:30 GMT), with witnesses saying it lasted about 10 minutes.

“Shooting began by several gunmen from behind the stand during the parade. There are several killed and injured,” a correspondent told state television.

The semi-official news agency Mehr said further shooting broke out as some of the attackers who managed to escape were being chased.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed condolences to Iran’s president following the attack, saying Moscow was ready to boost joint efforts in the fight against terrorism, Russia’s RIA news quoted the Kremlin as saying.

Different groups claim attack

Both the Islamic State (IS) and an anti-government Arab group have claimed responsibility for the attack.

A spokesperson for the Ahwaz National Resistance told the Reuters news agency it had undertaken the assault.

Yaghub Hur Totsari, a spokesman for one of the two groups that identify themselves as the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, said the Ahwaz National Resistance, an umbrella organization of armed movements, was behind the attack but did not specify which group.

Totsari identified one of the assailants by the initials AM, without elaborating.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said the Ahwaz National Resistance was “likely” behind the attack.

Iran's ambassador to the UK @baeidinejad condemns the London-based exiled television Iran International – run by a company owned by a Saudi national – for airing an interview with spokesperson of a separatist group behind today's terrorist attack in Iran: https://t.co/7W1Dg8JB9v

— Saeed Kamali Dehghan (@SaeedKD) September 22, 2018

Later on Saturday, IS claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the group’s Amaq news agency. The group provided no evidence for the claim, Reuters reported.

Writing on Twitter, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed “a foreign regime” backed by the United States for the attack.

“Terrorists recruited, trained, armed & paid by a foreign regime have attacked Ahvaz,” Zarif said in a tweet, adding: “Iran holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable for such attacks.

“Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defence of Iranian lives,” Zarif vowed, adding “children and journos” were “among casualties”.

An Iranian military spokesman said the gunmen were trained by two Gulf Arab states and had ties to the US and Israel.

“These terrorists … were trained and organised by two … Gulf countries,” Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi told the official news agency IRNA.

“They are not from Daesh [Islamic State] or other groups fighting [Iran’s] Islamic system … but they are linked to America and [Israel’s intelligence agency] Mossad.”

Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards official, has vowed retaliation for the attack.

“Enemies should not imagine that they can gain dignity with this sinister move. The Iranian people and the armed forces will respond to this,” he was quoted by IRNA as saying.Iran was holding similar parades in several cities including the capital Tehran and the port of Bandar Abbas on the Gulf.

State television blamed “takfiri elements,” a reference to Sunni fighters, for the attack.

Ahwaz is in the centre of Khuzestan province, where there have been sporadic protests by the Arab minority in mainly Shia Iran.

ISNA said an unnamed spokesman for the elite Revolutionary Guards security force blamed Arab nationalists backed by Saudi Arabia for the attack.

Tensions between traditional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia have surged in recent years, with the two countries supporting opposite sides in wars in Syria and Yemen and rival political parties in Iraq and Lebanon.

Attacks on the military are rare in Iran.

Last year, in the first deadly attack claimed by Islamic State in Tehran, 18 people were killed at the parliament and mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder and first leader of the Islamic Republic.

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Featured image is from Agencia EFE.

In part I of this article we spoke with Mr. Nidal Rahawi about life under Kurdish rule and some of the most recent tragic events that have taken place. In part II we will expand on the topic of education and the imposed Kurdish curriculum in north eastern Syria.

In an article I mentioned in Part I, Romancing Rojava: Rhetoric vs. Reality the educational program being enforced by the Kurdish self-administration in the north eastern region of Syria is explained in great detail and is a must read.

“The educational program of the Kurdish self-administration has played a role in garnering moral and political support, their policies assumed to be inherently and implicitly progressive. But there has been massive resistance to them among Assyrians across Hasakah. Until the assertion of self-administrative authority, the Syrian central government provided the curriculum for both governmental schools and private schools, such as those belonging to Churches in Hasakah. Teaching was in Arabic, with classical Syriac or spoken Assyrian permitted for use up to two hours a week in classes run by churches. Assyrian and Syriac were depicted by the state not as ethno-national languages belonging to a people but as the province of church education.

In 2015, the Kurdish self-administration released a new curriculum fully steeped in their own ideology. They sought to separate each ethnic group under their control (namely Kurds, Armenians, Arabs, and Assyrians) so that each community would learn the new curriculum in their own mother tongue. The subject of Arabic nationalism—previously a source of the retroactive absorption of Assyrian and non-Arab history into an Arab racial narrative—was cancelled, only to be supplanted by another geographically and historically expansive narrative of Kurdish ethno-centrism. An Assyrian source living in Qamishli told us: “We’ve merely been granted the right to learn about Kurdish history, from a Kurdish nationalist perspective, but in our own language.” This demonstrates the irony that Kurds, once subject to chauvinistic Arab nationalist educational curricula, are now acting as the enforcers of a similarly chauvinistic model over Assyrians and others. There is no dispute that all groups in Syria should have the right to be taught in schools in their own language, but this should not come saddled with the imposition of specific political and racial narratives.”

Closure Notice sent to schools by Kurdish self-administration

Below is the English translation of the above letter that was sent by the Kurdish self-administration to the Armenian Private schools. An almost identical letter was sent to other private Christian schools in the area as well, such as the Syriac Orthodox school.

To the Private Armenian School
Based on the two letters that came to us from the Joint Presidency of the Education Commission, Al-Jazira Region, No. 290 dated 7/7/2018, and the letter No. 297 dated 9/7/2018 with attached copy and includes :

1 – Lack of progress by the school for licensing within the legal period
2 – Violating the provisions of the law by teaching curricula that are not approved by the Commission and the fact that they have recently agreed to accept students from the first grade up to the third grade preparatory, therefore the letter is directed to close the school within a maximum period of 24 hours under the responsibility of legal accountability appropriately.

Dirk Investigation and Prosecution Commission
Dirk
7/8/2018

This news report gives a well summarized overview of what took place during the demonstration on August 28th due to the latest school closures.

Here are two videos that were sent exclusively to me by one of the protesters that took part in the demonstration on August 28th, to re-open the schools that were closed by the Kurdish militias.

Video Credit: Qamishli Demonstration Participant on August 28th, 2018

Qamishli Demonstration Participant on August 28th, 2018

As was mentioned in the Romancing Rojava Rhetoric vs. Reality article, “For the PYD, enforcing a new curriculum is part of a long-term process of entrenching themselves over a dominant demographic: this process is subject to contingencies and externalities, such as negotiations over their international legitimacy and how much they are recognized and supported internally by the Syrian state. But it is tasked with a clear political goal and backed by the YPG. For Assyrians, this is a process they are forced to partake in with no clear long-term benefit.”

In an article published by the Assyrian International News Agency AINA the split in opionion between the Kurds and non-Kurds in the area is highlighted, the article states “In the Church of the Virgin Mary in Qamishli, Father Saliba Abdallah says he is sceptical about the Kurdish education system. “Who recognises this curriculum internationally? Is there a state that actually recognises the reality of this region?” asks Abdallah. While Syria’s state diplomas are accredited and recognised elsewhere, Kurdish degrees likely wouldn’t be. “The legitimacy of our schools comes from the legitimacy of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic,” Abdallah says.”

In speaking with the locals it appears that the patience they have exhibited for the past three years has been exhausted and if need be they will take matters into their own hands. Whether it be demonstrations or other means they are worried that if they do not stand up to the changes being made by the Kurdish self administrations under compulsion that future generations will pay the price.

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Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. Focused on exposing the lies and propaganda in mainstream media news, as it relates to domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on the Middle East. Contributes to various radio shows, news publications, and forums. For media inquiries please email [email protected]. Her articles can also be seen at The Rabbit Hole. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Featured image is from the Mr. Rahawi via the author.

It looks like we’re headed for a brave new world where all citizens are rated on their loyalty to the state and are punished for wandering from its narrative. 

Call it the gamification of repression.

In China, the supposedly communist state—in fact, it is an advanced form of crony capitalist authoritarianism that Marx [and Mao] would have disapproved—is busy setting up a rating system for all citizens. According to a paper written by an academic at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon, scores are based on professional conduct, corruption, type of products bought, peers’ own scores, and tax evasion.

The author left something out, however. This social credit system will also be used to marginalize and stigmatize those who criticize the state.

China’s nominally communist government says the system and its massive database will allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.

In addition to scrutinizing online activity and acting on tips by snitches, the system will tap into China’s sprawling network of surveillance cameras, said to number around 200 million across the country. Facial recognition will ID individuals and follow their every move in search of behavior worthy of a low score. Those gaining a high score will be allowed access to credit facilities, cheaper public transport, and even shorter wait times for hospital services. They will also be banned from travel and decent employment.

Although the system isn’t slated to be fully rolled out until 2020, pilot projects are already being used to ensnare enemies of the state. For instance, the journalist Liu Hu received a negative score and was blacklisted for criticizing China’s political corruption. He is under house arrest, his social media accounts were shut down, and he is unable to travel. This is reminiscent of travel restrictions placed on dissidents in the Soviet Union.

If you think you’re free of this kind of tyranny because you live in America, think again.

Everybody knows the NSA and its contractors are collecting our most private and intimate information. Travel bans are enforced through no-fly lists and these are imposed on political activists as well as the innocent caught up in the surveillance system. You can lose your position at a university for thought considered unacceptable to a politically correct orthodoxy. The state intervenes when a business concern refuses to sell products to people the seller finds objectionable. In numerous ways, the state hinders, bans, and criminalizes behavior in parasitic fashion, the end result being overcrowded industrial prisons and a bounty in revenue generation through fines, assessments, penalties, and taxes.

Our social media accounts are scoured by the NSA, FBI, and the CIA for any sign of political misdeed. The state is able to monitor our behavior online in real-time. It has turned our cellphones into tracking devices. The tech giants often collaborate with the state and hand over our data without a constitutionally mandated search warrant. The data on our phones is surrendered at the border.

The latest signpost of ever encroaching corporatist-government fascism can be seen in the social media purge, which through evolution will ultimately remove all content from the internet deemed “extremist” by the state—and for the state that is everybody right or left who moves beyond permissible parameters set by the state.

Meanwhile, a huge internal security apparatus little different than what was used in the former Soviet Union is growing in size, arming itself to the teeth against the citizenry. It has deputized local law enforcement and showered it with all kinds of weapons, turning local police into armies controlled by the federal government.

Meanwhile, we are aghast at the behavior of China—or some of us are—and this is exploited to ramp up hostility toward China while buttressing Trump’s trade war. The ruling elite exploit the fear of China and Russia as part of an effort to check China’s move into a resource rich Africa and threaten Russia on its borders.

Most important is the project to derail China’s Belt and Road Initiative, aka the 21st-century Silk Road which poses a threat to neoliberal control of markets and the global economy. We are witnessing this being tested in the South China Sea and the China-Indochina Corridor as the US engages in provocative behavior against the Chinese navy.

Most believe we live in a democracy when in fact we live under a soft corporate-banker fascist police and surveillance state. I say “soft” because in the United States the government has mastered the art of control through media, not simply the corporate media, but also woven through the products of an entertainment industry that collaborates with the Pentagon and the CIA.

The state has done this for a very long time in America—from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to the FBI’s COINTELPRO and beyond. Technology has given the state the ability to covertly destroy its political enemies, whereas previously it took a lot of footwork.

Admittedly, this isn’t in-your-face like China’s social credit system, but the end result approaches what China is after—total control of the population and the removal of all serious political opponents challenging the state’s hegemonic rule.

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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.

“9/11 ushered in a generation of war and destruction. And yet, despite its importance, much of the event remains poorly understood. 9/11 Unmasked provides an authoritative and carefully argued exposition of key problems with the official narrative. Nearly 20 years on, it is high time mainstream journalists and academics addressed these issues.”  – Professor Piers Robinson, Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism, University of Sheffield

“Contemplate the truth of the gigantic criminal hoax that has betrayed the USA and the world.” – James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“The Consensus 9/11 Panel, on which I’ve served, harnesses to devastating effect the power of citizens to critically investigate the official narrative of 9/11.” – Dr. Graeme MacQueen, author of The 2001 Anthrax Deception

“The truth is out there hiding in “plane” sight: in videos, government reports, FOIA documents, and in the physical evidence. This book highlights many issues that the American people should know more about. We owe a debt of gratitude to these fine people for 17 years worth of continuing to seek the difficult truth about 9/11.” – Lorie Van Auken, widow of Kenneth Van Auken, who was killed at WTC 1 on 9/11, and member of the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 Commission

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David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth

9/11 Unmasked
An International Review Panel Investigation

Table of Contents

Introduction

I. The Destruction of the Twin Towers

II. The Destruction of WTC 7

III. The Attack on the Pentagon

IV. The 9/11 Flights

V. US Military Exercises On and Before 9/11

VI. The Military and Political Leaders

VII. Osama bin Laden and the Hijackers

VIII. The Phone Calls from the 9/11 Flights

IX. The Question of Insider Trading

Conclusion

Title: 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation

Author: David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth

ISBN: 9781623719746

Publisher: Interlink Books

Click here to order.

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None of us would be cheering on a war that could easily be the absolutely final one if President Putin had not defused the situation while clearly signalling that he holds Israel accountable for downing the Russian IL-20 reconnaissance aircraft even though it was shot down by a Syrian missile. If he did not why would he have signed off on the Russian MOD’s statement which squarely placed the blame on Israel.  

“The blame for the downing of the Russian plane and the deaths of its crew members lies squarely on the Israeli side,” the Minister Shoigu said. “The actions of the military were not in keeping with the spirit of the Russian-Israeli partnership, so we reserve the right to respond.”

Furthermore, in declaring that he will upgrade the safety of Russian military personnel in Syria and the security of the Russian military facilities, Putin says, “These will be the steps everyone will notice.” Are these just innocuous words meant to placate or is there more to them? Will these measures be so different or unexpected that it cannot be missed. Some three days after the incident it is reported that Russian boots on the ground are all over Syria making attacks on Syrian an Iranian positions difficult because the risk of hitting Russian soldiers are increased manifold.

Opinions vary, from Israel being able to do the most diabolical things with impunity, to others arguing that Russia’s Antlanticist fifth column is too strong for Putin to ignore, while still others say there will no doubt be some form of retribution. Retribution there will be once the initial Russian MOD position is verified. If nothing else Russia must save face. 

And how can it not be verified when the undeniable fact, difficult to even justify, is the 1 minute warning given to the Russians by the Israelis of the attack on Syria’s Latakia province. That miserable minute left no possibility for the IL-20 to take evasive action. Furthermore, the Russians are saying that the IL-20’s position cannot but show up on Israeli radar. 

Israel refuses to take the blame. One pro-Israel comment piece even put forward the preposterous suggestion that Syria may have purposely targeted the IL-20 so that Israel will be blamed. And what will Damascus do if Moscow, seeing through this deception, simply up stakes and went home? It is absurd to suggest that Syria, so close to victory, will resort to such stupidity. To what purpose?

That Putin merely stated the obvious, that Israel did not shoot the IL-20, is intended to resist what is a dangerous provocation. Having reserved the right to respond, more pertinent therefore, are the measures he will put in place to safeguard both Russian lives and bases in Syria. For instance, where once he was careful to take into consideration Israeli fears of being attacked by Syria now that will no longer be a priority. The S-300, or even the S-400, may yet find its way into Syria’s air defence system with even the possibility of Russian soldiers manning them to ensure that another friendly fire will not recur, what more enemy fire.

For, the rationale of Russian presence in Syria is war on terrorism unlike that of others who seek, at least, regime change if not a perpetual war. After all, the timing of the Israeli attacks on Latakia, reportedly timed to synchronise with that of a French frigate’s attack, was suspicious. And, the 1 minute grace period was surely intended to place the IL-20 where it was, to cover the Israeli F-16s firing on Latakia. That scenario coming so soon after the postponed Idlib assault by the Syrian Arab Army backed by Russian air cover hints at instigating a conflagration that will keep the war going regardless of whether it might lead ultimately to WW3.

While Moscow is intent on decimating the terrorists that, if not put down completely might come home to haunt them, it has no wish to commit a massacre of the civilian population of Idlib, the last remaining stronghold of the Jihadists in Syria. Hence the deal with Turkey acquiesced to by Damascus. The demilitarised zone agreed to will, if Turkey keeps its end of the bargain, disarm the Jihadists and the hardcore ones ultimately “disappeared”.

While Putin’s priority in Syria is the terrorist menace, he faces a much darker enemy because these terrorist are proxy armies trained and financed by the US and its allies. If initially it was a simple matter of eliminating rogue Islamists it has now become obvious that they are part and parcel of a bigger conspiracy by the US and its allies, who chose to weaponise Islam by birthing on an unsuspecting world Islamophobia aimed at manufacturing consent for Washington’s policy of perpetual war.

Israel is an irritant, albeit a major one, but Syria’s war cannot end for as long as the the US and its allies refuse to allow peace to return. While Tel Aviv is instrumental in keeping the fires of war burning with its persistent attacks on Syria on the make believe fear of Iranian ambitions, the greater challenge is to eliminate a proxy army which its sponsors keep regenerating. 

The Israel problem can be overcome. Despite all the talk that Tel Aviv is protected by both Moscow and Washington, Golan Heights is no longer a walkover. Russia is peace-keeper and given that Syria is a staunch ally and a victory over the terrorists — some sponsored by Israel — was hard fought for costing the lives of 15 Russian airmen crew of the IL-20, territorial violations is no longer a given. Coupled this with the unbeatable S-400 air defence system, say, Israel’s wings are forever clipped.

Can this cause the unravelling of the Zionist bully? Can it then be forced to the negotiating table with the Palestinians and a fair and just solution be achieved for a free Palestine? Could this be that which Putin promised will not go unnoticed? 

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Askiah Adam is Executive Director of the International Movement for a JUST World.

Latvia is presently building a metal fence, 90 kilometres long and 2.5 metres high, along its frontier with Russia. It will be finished before the end of the year, and will be extended in 2019 along more than 190 kilometres of the frontier, for a planned cost of 17 million Euros.

A similar 135 kilometre fence is being built by Lithuania along its frontier with the Russian territory of Kaliningrad.

Estonia has announced the impending construction of a wall, also along the frontier with Russia, 110 kilometres long and also 2.5 metres high. Planned cost – more than 70 million Euros, for which the Estonian government intends to ask for finance from the European Union.

The objective of these walls, according to goverment declarations, is to “protect the exterior frontiers of Europe and NATO”. If we leave aside for a moment the idea that they need to be “protected” from massive migratory flows from Russia, there is only one motive left – the exterior frontiers of the EU and NATO now need to be “protected” from the “Russian menace”.

Since the fences built by the Baltic countries along their frontiers with Russia have a military efficiency approaching zero, their objective must be fundamentally ideological – a physical symbol that just beyond the fence, there lurks a dangerous enemy who is threatening us.

In this context, the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, visited Latvia twice – the first time in July on the occasion of his tour of the Baltic countries and Georgia. Then, at the official dinner in Riga, he congratulated Latvia for having chosen “integration with NATO and the European Union” and for having decided to “adopt the model of an open society, founded on the respect of the rule of Law, democracy, and the central place of human rights”.

Source: PandoraTV

He addressed this comment to Latvian President Raymond Vējonis, who, in April, had already approved the project for a law forbidding the teaching of Russian in Latvia, a country whose population is composed of almost 30 % of ethnic Russians, and where Russian is the main language of 40 % of its citizens. A liberticide measure which, by forbidding multilingualism – which is recognised by the European Union itself – will later discriminate against the Russian minority, accused of being ” Russia’s fifth column”.

Two months later, in September, President Mattarella returned to Latvia to take part in an informal summit of the heads of state of the European Union, where, amongst other subjects, they dealt with the theme of cyber-attacks by “states which have a hostile attitude” (a clear reference to Russia).

After the summit,the President of the Republic visited the military base of Ᾱdaži, where he met with the Italian contingent included in the NATO battle group deployed in Latvia as part of the “advanced forward presence” at the frontiers with Russia. “Your presence is an element which reassures our friends from Latvia and the other Baltic states”, he declared – words which substantially bolster the psyop by suggesting that there exists a threat from Russia to the Baltic nations and the rest of Europe.

On 24 September, Pope Francis will also be arriving in Latvia on a visit to the three Baltic countries. We don’t yet know if, by repeating “we must build bridges, not walls”, he will have something to say about the new iron curtain which divides the European region and is preparing people’s minds for war. Or whether in Riga, laying flowers on the “Monument to Freedom”, he will demand the freedom for young Russian Latvians to learn and use their own language.

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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.

The US is looking to establish a permanent US military base in Poland. This is what President Donald Trump said on Tuesday following a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the White House. Sputnik discussed the potential establishment of a military base in Poland with Rick Rozoff – manager of the Stop NATO website.

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Sputnik: Why is the Polish government willing to have a US military base? Will it obtain the security guarantees it is looking for?

Rick Rozoff: Poland has no choice in the matter. I’m not trying to exculpate President Duda and others who are fanatically beholden to Washington and Brussels, but when they were incorporated into NATO as full members in 1999 these were the obligations, the sort of the obligations that the US Pentagon and NATO obligates, compels member states to do.

We should remember first of all, this may be the most radical example of we’re talking about, but within months of Poland being welcomed into NATO in 1999 NATO shifted from Germany something called Multinational Corps Northeast to Poland, and it became the Eastern most military command that NATO has.

Shortly thereafter they also put a NATO Joint Force Training Center in Poland in 2010 which, for the most part, coordinates activities of the NATO Response Force, which is a global force by the way.

There’s also, as of last year, NATO opened a Counter Intelligence Center of Excellence in Poland. About eight years ago the US moved a battery of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles into the city of Morag, which is only 25 miles from Russian territory, from Kaliningrad.

They are also now as of this year and next going to be moving in Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) interceptors. It may well be the case of Poland becoming the next nation to shoot down a Russian military plane.

Poland ordered 48 F-16’s shortly after joining NATO, which would give it one of the largest fleets of warplanes in the world. To believe any of this is for the self-defense of Poland is really straining credulity; it’s quite evidently part of US-NATO plans to extend its military hardware along Russia’s western border. This is maybe one of the more dramatic examples of it, but it’s part of a pattern that I just documented that goes back almost 20 years.

Sputnik: It’s interesting you’re giving these facts and figures. It’s mind-boggling, it’s breathtaking the amount of hardware, military hardware, that’s being pumped into Poland. I was having a discussion with an expert about the US geopolitical position, we were talking about the industrial military complex and that it’s probably more of a complex than it was in Eisenhower’s range and President Kennedy, would you agree with that assumption?

Rick Rozoff: Yes, right you are. Not only that, but the US has been luxuriating, if you will, triumphantly in what it considers its unipolar moment since the fragmentation of the Soviet Union and the breakup of the Warsaw Pact in 1991.

That’s given them the entire world to sell arms to, the entire world to wage war in, as we’re seeing. We’re talking about NATO in relation to Poland: they’ve waged wars in three continents since 1999, since the war against Yugoslavia; subsequent to that, of course, Afghanistan, Libya. None of those countries are anywhere near the area of responsibility of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, so what’s happened now, you’re correct, it’s the military-industrial complex and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization…and we must keep in mind that NATO is the world’s only military bloc, it’s the longest-lived military bloc in human history. It was formed in 1949. It went from 16 members at the end of the Cold War to 29 members, now that’s over a 75% increase. It now has members and partners, 70 of them, in all six inhabited continents.

This is what’s happened in the post-Cold War period. I’ve neglected to mention that the US moved in a brigade of Abrams tanks into Poland recently, and the Americans moved in Raptor warplanes. Poland is considering, by the way, updating one of those bases I just talked to you about. So it’s clear that with the expansion of NATO that began in 1999, everything, and I’m quoting, practically, the State Department officials in the United States, everything pushes into the East and the South.

The East I don’t even have to tell you, it’s the Russian border. You know, what we’re talking about in Poland has analogs in nations like Bulgaria and Romania where the US acquired seven major military bases. Three air bases, two of them fairly substantial, and after they joined NATO earlier in the century, and this seems to be the general plan, the question is who is going to call a stop to this.

Sputnik: That’s an interesting question, it’s also a rhetorical question, I don’t think anyone can answer it, even probably the elitists and the people running the industrial military complex. I think they’ve lost sight of what their endgame is by the sound of things. Obviously, Russia is seen as the threat, are they going to start pushing in and moving hardware into China’s border? What do you believe is the end game of the American strategy with regard to this? And is there going to be an end to it or is it just going to continue because of this thirst for arms sales and the requirement to build these armaments to keep these elitists in control and retain their revenue that these armaments being built gives them?

Rick Rozoff: You’ve summarized various factors quite accurately and insightfully. Notwithstanding the fact that the global arms trade is unconscionable, but lucrative, in that sense I suppose the US merchants of death would prefer not an all-out war but a continuation of military escalation that gives them a consistently predictable, profitable rate.

However, these are factors that are very dangerous by their very nature. It is easy to miscalculate; something occurs, as with the downing of the Russian surveillance aircraft a few days ago, that could create an international crisis. We have to remember they’re playing with fire, quite literally.

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Rock Rozoff is a frequent contributor to Global Research 

The views and opinions expressed by the speakers do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik where this article was originally published.

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On the first grim anniversary of Hurricane Maria making landfall, as Puerto Rico remains in tarp-strewn ruins, many survivors lack reliable power or water, and scores of the hundreds of thousands who fled now face homelessness, a determinedly amnesiac White House press release boasted that “President Donald J. Trump‘s Administration Has Helped Lead a Historic Recovery Effort in Puerto Rico” in “the largest and longest Federal response to a disaster in the history of the United States.” As part of that yuge effort, they sent Ben “I Am Also Under Investigation” Carson to Puerto Rico, where he failed to mention the 3,000 people who died, maybe because his boss think they’re faking it, but did offer the island $1.5 billion in recovery funds, or slightly below the $94.4 billion they have said they need to rebuild. He also bragged about “how we have pulled together as one, island and the mainland alike.”

Many disagreed with all this pulling together gibberish, including those on social media who vowed, “We will mourn…and we will vote,” Amnesty International, who projected the death toll on Trump’s hotel; and San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who furiously slammed Trump’s recovery effort as, in truth, “a historic failure…He can spin it any way he wants, but this is his Katrina.” Still, the clown leader didn’t notice because he was busy going to Las Vegas to rally his sheep, where his opening speaker was a batshit wingnut conspiracy theorist he had requested. After the crowd chanted “Lock her up!” and “Build that wall!” – yes, still – Trump said he is taking care of veterans “for the first time in a long time” and called Brett Kavanaugh “a fine fine person…one of the finest human beings you will ever have the privilege of knowing” and happily imagined when Dean Heller, the guy he was selling, would come to him and say, “Mr. President, stop winning so much. The people of Nevada can’t take it any longer.” Actually….Mr. President, none of us can take it any longer. Are we almost done?

Hey @realDonaldTrump!

You seem to be confused about the death toll of Hurricane Maria, so we put the number up on your hotel in Washington DC. Here's a reminder in case you forget.

We #StandWithPuertoRico.

Sincerely,

Amnesty pic.twitter.com/djkConYlHr

— AmnestyInternational (@amnesty) September 20, 2018

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Featured image is from the author.

An open letter to Jason Greenblatt, Assistant to the US President and Special Representative for International Negotiations

In June 2017, during the month of Ramadan, you unexpectedly attended an “Iftar” meal with some of the very sick Palestinian children and their families at Makassed Hospital in East Jerusalem. The Iftar, arranged by the Hospital in conjunction with Mr. Donald Blome, the American Consulate General in Jerusalem, was to be a message to East Jerusalem Hospitals and their vulnerable patients from Gaza and the West Bank, that nothing much has changed after President Trump has been installed at the helm, that the new US administration sympathises with their plight and will not abandon them.

Being the CEO of the Hospital at the time, I remember welcoming you but politely explaining how, as Palestinian citizens of Arab East Jerusalem, we felt about the continuous aggressive attempts to “Judaise” our part of the City and how our Arab tertiary-level Hospitals in East Jerusalem, including the Lutheran-run Augusta Victoria, the Catholic-run St. Joseph and St. John’s Eye Hospitals, were barely surviving in the midst of very difficult financial and political circumstances in order to continue to serve the very sick and vulnerable Palestinian patients who crossed the heartless Israeli checkpoints in order to get life-saving medical treatment at prices they can afford.

I also remember taking you on a tour to visit some medical departments. And when you went into the 30-bed Neonatal Unit and saw those little infants who weighed mostly under 1,000 grammes, you told us, with your eyes filling with tears, how that scene reminded you of the birth of your triplet children – Noah, Julia and Anna – who years ago were placed in a Neonatal Unit in a New York Hospital due to their tiny birth weight.

You seemed to be full of praise of the Hospital’s work especially with the very sick children who came from Gaza and “sort of” pledged to lobby on the Hospital’s behalf.

Alas…The tears we saw were those of crocodiles! For instead of your visit being a blessing for the Hospital and its patients, it turned out to be a curse! For one month after your visit, in July 2017, the Israeli forces brutally stormed Makassed Hospital including the Neonatal Unit you visited, wreaking havoc and claiming to be looking for a corpse of a young man they had shot dead outside of the Hospital gates. On that day, 21 July 2017, a massacre was avoided at the last minute when the heavily armed police, who turned the corridors of the Hospital into a battlefield, encountered families and friends of more than 100 youngsters injured while peacefully protesting at the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque – the third holiest shrine in Islam – against the installation of electronic gates at the Mosque’s entrances, a decision later rescinded by the Israeli Government for fear of a full-blown third Intifada.

Moreover, four months after your visit, I was denied entry to Israel, including East Jerusalem, although I (and both my parents and grandparents to the twentieth generation) were born and raised there. Unfortunately, Israel’s Law of Return only applies to Jews (including you of course) but not to the native Arab population of Palestine (Christians and Muslims) who made up more than 90 per cent of the population on the day Palestine was occupied by the British in December 1917. Unfortunately for us Palestinians, that is to say if you or any of your triplet children wish to live in Jerusalem although you were all born and lived in New York all your lives, you will be welcome with open arms but if I wish to return and live in my birthplace, the discriminatory laws of the State of Israel will deny me that “wish/right”.

And to add insult to injury, your esteemed Government recently decided to cancel the $25 million grant that were allocated to support the treatment of very sick and poor patients in six East Jerusalem Hospitals, denying many poor children their right to life, including the pre-mature babies who brought tears to your eyes!

For Makassed and the rest of East Jerusalem Hospitals, your visit was a bad omen… an empty gesture that was full of smiles and tears but you were really contemplating how to pursue your Government’s ruthless political agenda of aiming to bring the Palestinians to their knees even if you starve their pre-mature babies of intravenous injections!

Mr. Greenblatt, I would like to end my open letter with a word of advice to you and your President (and also to Messrs. Kushner, Friedman, Haley, Bolton and the other entourage): No amount of starvation and misery you impose on the Palestinian people will work! On the contrary, our reaction will be like a cat “entrapped in a corner” forced to defend its vulnerable kittens. Regardless of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem or cutting aid to our Hospitals, we will resist, defy and stand steadfast in defence of our usurped rights and stolen land. Please rest assured that your aggressive policies may have brought a silent response from a few leaders but the Arab people are dead against your “Deal of the Century” and will not succumb to your futile attempts that are based on the old colonial principle of “Divide and Rule”.

And standing with us will be all the peace – and justice – loving people in the world, including, in increasing numbers, many Jewish people living in the US, Israel, Europe and elsewhere, who are progressively being alienated from the American Machiavellian Mideast policies and the atrocious Israeli actions of killing unarmed civilian protesters in Gaza and the West Bank while passing a new racist Nation State Law.

For, in the end, Mr. Greenblatt, Palestine/Israel shall be a place where each of us may practice their beliefs without trodding on the rights and beliefs of others… a secular democratic state with equal rights and equal obligations for all its citizens regardless of race, religion, colour or creed. You may dismiss this as utopian but you must agree that this is the only plausible, just and democratic solution if no one is to be thrown in the desert or the sea!

Mr. Greenblatt, Please let the President know that we have existed in Palestine and Jerusalem for over 5,000 years and we do not intend to leave. The Palestinians today feel like Rocky Balboa after Round One… But it is still Round One!

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Dr. Rafiq Husseini is Former Coordinator of East Jerusalem Hospitals Network.

Decades of deceit have been thrown overboard with the new nuclear sales pitch, argues JIM GREEN. The new sales pitch openly links nuclear power to weapons and argues that weapons programs will be jeopardised unless greater subsidies are provided for the civil nuclear industry.

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In 2015, Nuclear Monitor published a detailed analysis of the many ways nuclear industry insiders and lobbyists trivialise and deny the connections between nuclear power – and the broader nuclear fuel cycle – and nuclear weapons proliferation.

Since then, the arguments have been turned upside down with prominent industry insiders and lobbyists openly acknowledging power-weapons connections. This remarkable about-turn has clear origins in the crisis facing nuclear power and the perceived need to secure increased subsidies to prevent reactors closing and to build new ones.

The new sales pitch openly links nuclear power to weapons and argues that weapons programs will be jeopardised unless greater subsidies are provided for the civil nuclear industry. The US Nuclear Energy Institute, for example, tried in mid-2017 to convince politicians in Washington that if the only reactor construction projects in the US ‒ in South Carolina and Georgia ‒ weren’t completed, it would stunt development of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

The Nuclear Energy Institute paper wasn’t publicly released. But in the second half of 2017, numerous nuclear insiders and lobbyists openly acknowledged power-weapons connections and called for additional subsidies for nuclear power. The most important of these initiatives was a paper by the Energy Futures Initiative ‒ a creation of Ernest Moniz, who served as energy secretary under President Barack Obama.

The uranium industry jumps on the bandwagon

Even the uranium industry has jumped on the bandwagon, with two US companies warning that reliance on foreign sources threatens national security and lodging a petition with the Department of Commerce calling for US utilities to be required to purchase a minimum 25 percent of their requirements from domestic mines.

Decades of deceit have been thrown overboard with the new sales pitch linking nuclear power and weapons. However there are still some hold-outs. Until recently, one nuclear lobbyist continuing to deny power-weapons connections was Michael Shellenberger from the ‘Environmental Progress’ pro-nuclear lobby group in the US.

Shellenberger told an IAEA conference last year that “nuclear energy prevents the spread of nuclear weapons”. And he claimed last year that “one of FOE-Greenpeace’s biggest lies about nuclear energy is that it leads to weapons” and that there is an “inverse relationship between energy and weapons”.

Shellenberger’s backflip

In two articles published in August, Shellenberger has done a 180-degree backflip on the power-weapons connections.

“[N]ational security, having a weapons option, is often the most important factor in a state pursuing peaceful nuclear energy”, Shellenberger now believes.

A recent analysis from Environmental Progress finds that of the 26 nations that are building or are committed to build nuclear power plants, 23 have nuclear weapons, had weapons, or have shown interest in acquiring weapons.

“While those 23 nations clearly have motives other than national security for pursuing nuclear energy,” Shellenberger writes, “gaining weapons latency appears to be the difference-maker. The flip side also appears true: nations that lack a need for weapons latency often decide not to build nuclear power plants … Recently, Vietnam and South Africa, neither of which face a significant security threat, decided against building nuclear plants …”

Here is the break-down of the 26 countries that are building or are committed to build nuclear power plants according to the Environmental Progress report:

• Thirteen nations had a weapons program, or have shown interest in acquiring a weapon: Argentina, Armenia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Iran, Japan, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, UAE.
• Seven nations have weapons (France, US, Britain, China, Russia, India and Pakistan), two had weapons as part of the Soviet Union (Ukraine and Belarus), and one (Slovakia) was part of a nation (Czechoslovakia) that sought a weapon.
• Poland, Hungary, and Finland are the only three nations (of the 26) for which Environmental Progress could find no evidence of weapons latency as a motivation.

Current patterns connecting the pursuit of power and weapons stretch back across the 60 years of civilian nuclear power. Shellenberger notes that “at least 20 nations sought nuclear power at least in part to give themselves the option of creating a nuclear weapon” ‒ Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, France, Italy, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Libya, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, West Germany, Yugoslavia.

Shellenberger points to research by Fuhrmann and Tkach which found that 31 nations had the capacity to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium, and that 71% of them created that capacity to give themselves weapons latency.

Nuclear weapons ‒ a force for peace?

So far, so good. The pursuit of nuclear power and weapons are often linked. That’s a powerful reason to eschew nuclear power, to strengthen the safeguards system, to tighten export controls, to restrict the spread of enrichment and reprocessing, and so on. But Shellenberger has a very different take on the issues.

Discussing the Fuhrmann and Tkach article (and studiously avoiding contrary literature), Shellenberger writes:

“What was the relationship between nuclear latency and military conflict? It was negative. “Nuclear latency appears to provide states with deterrence-related benefits,” they [Fuhrmann and Tkach] concluded, “that are distinct from actively pursuing nuclear bombs.”

“Why might this be? Arriving at an ultimate cause is difficult if not impossible, the authors note. But one obvious possibility is that the “latent nuclear powers may be able to deter conflict by (implicitly) threatening to ‘go nuclear’ following an attack.” …

“After over 60 years of national security driving nuclear power into the international system, we can now add “preventing war” to the list of nuclear energy’s superior characteristics. …

“As a lifelong peace activist and pro-nuclear environmentalist, I almost fell out of my chair when I discovered the paper by Fuhrmann and Tkach. All that most nations will need to deter military threats is nuclear power ‒ a bomb isn’t even required? Why in the world, I wondered, is this fact not being promoted as one of nuclear powers many benefits?

“The answer is that the nuclear industry and scientific community have tried, since Atoms for Peace began 65 years ago, to downplay any connection between the two ‒ and for an understandable reason: they don’t want the public to associate nuclear power plants with nuclear war.

“But in seeking to deny the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, the nuclear community today finds itself in the increasingly untenable position of having to deny these real world connections ‒ of motivations and means ‒ between the two. Worse, in denying the connection between energy and weapons, the nuclear community reinforces the widespread belief that nuclear weapons have made the world a more dangerous place when the opposite is the case. …

“Nuclear energy, without a doubt, is spreading and will continue to spread around the world, largely with national security as a motivation. The question is whether the nuclear industry will, alongside anti-nuclear activists, persist in stigmatizing weapons latency as a nuclear power “bug” rather than tout it as the epochal, peace-making feature it is.”

Deterrent effects

Shellenberger asks why the deterrent effect of nuclear power isn’t being promoted as one of its many benefits. Nuclear weapons can have a deterrent effect ‒ in a uniquely dangerous and potentially uniquely counterproductive manner ‒ but any correlation between latent nuclear weapons capabilities and reduced military conflict is just that, correlation not causation.

On the contrary, there is a history of military attacks on nuclear facilities to prevent their use in weapons programs (e.g. Israel’s attacks on nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007). Shellenberger points to the same problem, asking whether latency could “also be a threat to peace?” and noting Israeli and US threats to take pre-emptive action against Iran. He doesn’t offer an answer or explore the issue further.

Shellenberger argues that Iran should be encouraged to develop nuclear weapons. He cites long-term nuclear weapons proliferation enthusiast Kenneth Waltz, who claims that the “decades-long Middle East nuclear crisis … will end only when a balance of military power is restored”. He cites a German academic who argues that a nuclear-armed Germany “would stabilize NATO and the security of the Western World”. We “should be glad that North Korea acquired the bomb” according to Shellenberger. And on it goes ‒ his enthusiasm for nuclear weapons proliferation knows no bounds.

‘Shellenberger has gone down a rabbit hole’

Nuclear Monitor has previously exposed the litany of falsehoods in Shellenberger’s writings on nuclear and energy issues. In his most recent articles he exposes himself as an intellectual lightweight prepared to swing from one extreme of a debate to the other if that’s what it takes to build the case for additional subsidies for nuclear power.

A dangerous intellectual lightweight. Environmental Progress attorney Frank Jablonski writes:

“From Shellenberger’s article you would conclude that, for any “weak nation”, or for the “poor or weak” persons within such nations, things are bound to improve with acquisition of nuclear weapons. So, for humanitarian reasons, the imperialistic nations and hypocritical people standing in the way of that acquisition should get out of the way. No. The article’s contentions are falsified by … logical untenability, things it got wrong, and things it left out. While Shellenberger’s willingness to take controversial positions has often been valuable, a “contrarian” view is not always right just because it is contrarian.”

Sam Seitz, a student at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, argues that Shellenberger’s argument is “almost Trumpian in its incoherence”. He takes issue with Shellenberger’s claims that no nuclear powers have been invaded (“a pretty misleading statistic” and “wrong”); that battle deaths worldwide have declined by 95% (“fails to prove that nuclear weapons are responsible for this trend … as we are frequently reminded, correlation and causation are not equivalent”); that Indian and Pakistani deaths in two disputed territories declined sharply after Pakistan’s first nuclear weapons test in 1998 (“doesn’t account for non-nuclear factors like the role of outside mediation and domestic politics”); and that Nazi Germany invaded France because the French lacked a credible deterrent (“makes very little sense and conflates several things … also silly”).

Hostile response

Responding to Shellenberger’s more-the-merrier attitude towards nuclear weapons proliferation, pro-nuclear commentator Dan Yurman puts it bluntly:

“Here’s the problem. The more nations have nuclear weapons, the more dangerous the world will be. Sooner or later some tin pot dictator or religious zealot is likely to push a button and send us all to eternity.”

Shellenberger’s about-turn on power-weapons connections provoked a hostile response from Yurman:

“Shellenberger has crossed a red line for the global commercial nuclear industry, which has done everything in its power to avoid having the public conflate nuclear weapons with commercial nuclear energy. Worse, he’s given opponents of nuclear energy, like Greenpeace, a ready-made tool to attack the industry. …

“In the end he may have painted himself into a corner. Not only has he alienated some of his supporters on the commercial nuclear side of the house, but he also has energized the nonproliferation establishment, within governments and among NGOs, offering them a rich opportunity promote critical reviews of the risks of expanding nuclear energy as a solution to the challenge of climate change. …

“Shellenberger has gone down a rabbit hole with his two essays promoting the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Given all the great things he has done to promote commercial nuclear energy, it is a perplexing and disturbing development.

“It’s ok to be contrarian, but I fear he will pay a price for it with reduced support from some of his current supporters and he will face critical reviews from detractors of these essays. In the end public support and perception of the safety of nuclear energy may be diminished by these essays since they will lead to increased conflating of commercial nuclear energy with nuclear weapons. The fatal attraction of the power of nuclear weapons has lured another victim. It’s an ill-fated step backwards.”

Power-weapons connections

No doubt there will be more acknowledgements of power-weapons connections by nuclear industry insiders and lobbyists. As Shellenberger notes, the nuclear ‘community’ today finds itself in an increasingly untenable position denying the connections.

There is a degree of domestic support for nuclear weapons programs in weapons states … but few people support generalised nuclear weapons proliferation and few would swallow Shellenberger’s arguments including his call to shred the non-proliferation and disarmament system and to encourage weapons proliferation.

Understanding of the power-weapons connections, combined with opposition to nuclear weapons, is one of the motivations driving opposition to nuclear power. According to Shellenberger, the only two US states forcing the closure of nuclear plants, California and New York, also had the strongest nuclear disarmament movements.

There is some concern that claims that the civil nuclear industry is an important (or even necessary) underpinning of a weapons program will be successfully used to secure additional subsidies for troubled nuclear power programs (e.g. in the US, France and the UK). After all, nuclear insiders and lobbyists wouldn’t abandon their decades-long deceit about power-weapons connections if not for the possibility that their new argument will gain traction, among politicians if not the public.

The growing acknowledgement ‒ and public understanding ‒ of power-weapons connections might have consequences for nuclear power newcomer countries such as Saudi Arabia. Assuming that the starting point is opposition to a Saudi nuclear weapons program, heightened sensitivity might constrain nuclear exporters who would otherwise export to Saudi Arabia with minimalist safeguards and no serious attempt to check the regime’s weapons ambitions. Or it might not lead to that outcome ‒ as things stand, numerous nuclear exporters are scrambling for a share of the Saudi nuclear power program regardless of proliferation concerns.

More generally, a growing understanding of power-weapons connections might lead to a strengthening of the safeguards system along with other measures to firewall nuclear power from weapons. But again, that’s hypothetical and it is at best some way down the track ‒ there is no momentum in that direction.

And another hypothetical arising from the growing awareness about power-weapons connections: proliferation risks might be (and ought to be) factored in as a significant negative in comparative assessments of power generation options.

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Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter, where a longer version of this article was originally published.

Featured image: The Osirak research reactor site in Iraq after it was bombed by Israel in 1981. (Source: Creative Commons)

Painful sanctions on Iran have demonstrated the long reach of the U.S. Treasury, forcing much of the globe to fall in line and cut oil imports from Iran despite widespread disagreement over the policy. Yet, we are only in the first few chapters of what may ultimately be a long story that ends with the erosion of the power of the U.S. dollar.

The role of the greenback in the international financial system is the reason why the U.S. can prevent much of the world from buying oil from Iran. Oil is traded in dollars, and so much of international commerce is based in dollars. In fact, as much as 88 percent of all foreign exchange trades involve the greenback.

Moreover, multinational companies inevitably have some commercial ties to the U.S., so when faced with the choice of business with Iran or losing access to the U.S. financial system and the American market, the choice is an easy one.

That means that even if European governments, for instance, support importing oil from Iran, the dominance of the U.S.-based financial system leaves them with very few tools to do so. European policymakers have scrambled to try to maintain a relationship with Iran and have tried to convince Iran to stick with the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal – and Iran is still complying – but that doesn’t mean that European refiners, who are private companies, will run the risk of getting hit by U.S. sanctions by continuing to import oil from Iran. In fact, they began drastically cutting oil purchases from Iran months ago.

The dollar is supreme, it seems.

But that isn’t the end of the story. In several ways, the Trump administration is contributing to a growing threat to the dollar, even if that is hard to see right now. After all, the dollar has strengthened this year, U.S. GDP has grown faster than other industrialized economies, and the world has had to adhere to U.S. sanctions on a growing list of countries and entities, the most notable of which are Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

However, the “America first” foreign policy, the trade wars and seemingly arbitrary nature of tariffs, trans-Atlantic tension and other geopolitical rivalries are all factors that could push the dollar off of its perch. Related: The Altay Pipeline: A Geopolitical Game Changer

But it is the extensive use of sanctions that stands out as arguably the most important factor that may ultimately undermine the dominance of the U.S. dollar, some experts say. That is especially true in the case of Iran.

“In the Iran case, the United States is damaging sanctions as a tool of statecraft,” Kelsey Davenport, an Arms Control Association analyst, told the Washington Post in August. “The United States has put a lot of states between a rock and a hard place.”

The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said a few days ago in a speech that the euro should be elevated as a reserve currency in order to break European dependence on the U.S. dollar. Juncker noted that the EU paid for 80 percent of its energy imports in dollars even though only 2 percent of imports come from the U.S.

“There’s no logic at all in paying energy imports in dollar not euro,” an EU diplomat told Politico.

For instance, most dollar-denominated imports actually come from Russia and the Middle East. It speaks to the U.S.-oriented nature of the international financial system that a European refiner who wants oil from Iran, or Iraq, or Russia, has to buy that oil in U.S. dollars, and is subject to demands from Washington, even though no American entity has any role in that transaction.

Obviously, so long as European and American interests were aligned, that arrangement worked just fine. But their interests have diverged on a range of issues, including NATO, the Paris Climate agreement, and most significantly on the Iran nuclear deal.

The demands by the Trump administration that Europe cut imports from Iran to zero seems to have been the final straw. Some in Brussels are now calling for a departure from the Trans-Atlantic relationship.

The inability of Europe to blunt the impact of U.S. sanctions on Iran has demonstrated the dominance of the greenback, and has pushed European officials to look for solutions. Some have proposed a rival international payments system, others have suggested buying Iranian oil in euros. In August the EU announced an 18-million euro aid package for Iran.

Most recently, the EU – led by France, Germany and the UK – are working on setting up a “special purpose” financial company to help Iran skirt U.S. sanctions and continue selling its oil. The company would exist to process payments for transactions with Iran, bypassing the typical financing channels, as reported by Spiegel. The U.S. has a great deal of influence over and access to existing money-transfer systems.

There are plenty of reasons why this initiative may not get off the ground, or have only a limited impact. Private companies, for instance, would need to agree to play along and there is little evidence so far to suggest that European refiners are willing to take that risk. And the attempt to elevate the euro to the same status of the dollar will be extremely difficult, and would be a long-term project.

But a growing effort at elevating the euro, or conducting euro-denominated oil sales, combined with a smattering of other initiatives intended to weaken the influence of Washington’s financial dominance, could chip away at the dollar over time.

Meanwhile, earlier this year, for its own reasons, China launched a yuan-denominated oil contract based in Shanghai. The move was intended to bolster China’s currency, reduce foreign exchange risk, and in a broader sense, gain geopolitical and economic leverage at the expense of the dollar.

The dollar remains all-powerful, but the Trump administration’s aggressive use of sanctions, crystallized by its zero-tolerance sanctions campaign against Iran, could undermine the greenback over the long-term if more countries begin to look for workarounds.

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Nick Cunningham is a freelance writer on oil and gas, renewable energy, climate change, energy policy and geopolitics. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.

While a crisis has been prevented in Idlib through a deal between Russia and Turkey, the deal in itself also contains sufficient substance that brings America’s role in Syria down to zero. This becomes particularly evident when we compare the same kind of deals made regarding Aleppo in 2016 when the US was a party to it and its officials did sit across the table from their Russian counterparts. But the Idlib deal saw no US officials, marking the continuing exit of US influence from the region, particularly its role in influencing the Syrian end-game. With Idlib being the last major terrorist stronghold in Syria and with the US having no say in it, there is little gainsaying that the US will have little to no say on the final outcome of the war it had orchestrated 6 years ago.

While it is also a fact that America’s exit from Syria was partly due to its own reluctance and inability to deepen its military involvement, and its heavy reliance on proxy groups to serve the US interest, there remains little doubt about the importance of Russian military’s involvement in Syria as the deciding factor, defeating not only the “rebels” but also insulating Syria from the US influence.

The deal also means the final exit of all foreign funded “rebels”, which had been the main ground force for the advocates of “Assad must go.” As Erdogan confirmed,

“we will ensure that radical groups, which we will designate together with Russia, won’t be active in the relevant area.”

While western political pundits have been pointing out as to how this deal could fail like the many deals made in the past, this analysis does hardly take into account how Russia-Turkey relations have already changed into strong enough ties to fulfill these deals. Turkey and Russia are increasingly becoming trade and diplomatic partners, and Russia is building Turkey’s first nuclear reactor. On top of it is the fact that Turkey’s own relations with the US and EU countries aren’t strong enough to allow for greater protection of its interests in and outside Syria.

For the US, however, the deal means that there will not be any serious military escalation, certainly not serious enough to allow for another staged chemical attack and thus use that attack to launch yet another missile strike on Syria and use this trick as an excuse to increase the stakes and get a chance to have a seat on Sochi and Astana processes. As it stands, chance of having itself present in Syria is a lost game for the US.

With this deal, chances of direct military confrontation between Russia and Turkey or between Turkey and Syria have also significantly scaled down, allowing Russia to not only to keep Turkey on its own side of the war but also keep the Sochi and Astana processes intact. This way, Russia has made sure that Turkey finds no reason to normalize its relations with the West.

That the Sochi and Astana processes remain alive is evident from the fact that the deal has been called “Sochi deal” and the other member of the processes, Iran, has also hailed it as a great diplomatic success. Keeping these processes alive is significant for Russia not only because it gives Russia a very crucial diplomatic edge over its western competitors, but also because it legitimizes its presence in Syria to engage with Turkey and other countries, including Israel, to protect both Syrian and Russian interests.

And while the deal has already received support from countries like Germany and even received a cautious support from the UNO, Russia has nothing to lose out of it even if it fails. For one thing, majority of the tasks laid out in the deal fall on Turkish rather than Russian shoulders. The crucial question was of how to convince their respective partners of the deal.

While Russia has already convinced Syria, it remains to be seen how Turkey would convince the opposition armed groups, which include Islamist radicals of former Al-Nusra front now called Tahrir al-Sham, to withdraw from the province. And, even If Turkey fails to do so and instead ends up having to launch a military operation against the radicals, Turkey will still have to rely on Russia to obtain its permission to use Syria’s airspace for its fighter jets to do air strikes. During the Afrin operation, Moscow initially allowed the Turkish air force to operate above Afrin and then disallowed it.

Convincing or even forcing the rebels and the radicals is, therefore, a crucial task that Turkey has to perfume. If it succeeds in doing so, it will make Idlib’s return to Syria’s control relatively peaceful; if it fails, Turkey will hardly be in any position to ask for another deal, leaving the ground open for the Syrian and Russian military to clear Idlib through hard military means.

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Salman Rafi Sheikh is research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from the author.

The North Carolina Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that the historic flooding from Florence has killed about 3.4 million chickens and turkeys and 5,500 hogs.

“This was an unprecedented storm with flooding expected to exceed that from any other storms in recent memory. We know agricultural losses will be significant because the flooding has affected the top six agricultural counties in our state,” said agriculture commissioner Steve Troxler in a press release.

The footprint of flooding from this storm covers much of the same area hit by flooding from Hurricane Matthew in 2016, which only worsens the burden on these farmers.

When Matthew hit the state, it flooded more than 140 hog and poultry barns, more than a dozen open hog waste pits and thousands of acres of manure-saturated fields, the Environmental Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance reported.

Poultry is the number one agricultural industry in North Carolina, with a statewide economic impact of $36.6 billion a year, according to the North Carolina Poultry Federation.

Sanderson Farms, the third largest poultry producer in the country, issued a statement on Monday that 1.7 million of its broiler chickens “were destroyed as a result of flooding.” Sixty of its 880 broiler houses in North Carolina flooded and another six broiler houses experienced damage. Four breeder houses out of a total of 92 in the state flooded.

Additionally, Sanderson said about 30 Lumberton-area farms, housing approximately 211,000 chickens in each, have been isolated by flood waters. More chickens could die if the company is unable to reach those farms with feed trucks.

“Losses of live inventory could escalate if the company does not regain access to those farms,” the statement read.

The state is also the nation’s second leading producer of hogs, with more than 2,100 farms that raise about 9 million hogs each year, according to the North Carolina Pork Council.

The 5,500 hog deaths from Hurricane Florence have already exceeded the 2,800 killed during Hurricane Matthew, the industry trade group wrote in a statement Tuesday.

“Our farmers took extraordinary measures in advance of this storm, including moving thousands of animals out of harm’s way as the hurricane approached,” the statement read. “We do not expect the losses to increase significantly, though floodwaters continue to rise in some locations and circumstances may change.”

Animal rights group PETA called the animal deaths a “tragedy.”

“These millions of deaths were preventable, but as long as a market exists for animal flesh, some people will turn a profit at the expense of animals,” a spokesperson told EcoWatch in an email. “PETA urges everyone to take personal responsibility, not shrug this tragedy off, and actually help stop future suffering by going vegan so that animals are no longer forced to endure the many types of cruelty inherent in the meat industry.”

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) was similarly “heartbroken” over the deaths.

“HSUS is heartbroken by the reports of the catastrophic numbers of farmed animal deaths resulting from the flooding related to Hurricane Florence,” the organization told EcoWatch via email, adding that the animals “needlessly lost their lives.”

“Having an emergency plan, regardless of the numbers of animals at your home, facility, or farm, is the responsibility of the humane steward caring for their welfare,” HSUS added. “If the sheer number of animals makes evacuation extremely difficult or impossible, then a hard look needs to be taken at the number of animals being cared for and the opportunity for them to be considered in an emergency plan. The cost of not doing so, as we can see here, has a devastating impact on the community, the environment and the animals, and are further examples of why we need to reduce the reliance on these massive factory farms.”

Meanwhile, as of Tuesday, at least 77 pig waste lagoons have either breached or are at risk of breaching, the New York Times reported, citing data from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

North Carolina’s hog and other concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, produce almost 10 billion gallons of fecal waste a year, according to the Environmental Working Group and Waterkeeper Alliance. Flooded CAFOs could release a potent mix of pollutants that can potentially harm human health and the environment.

Waterkeeper Alliance has conducted overflights at some of the industrial sites and agricultural operations impacted by Florence and is investigating the possible hazards left in the storm’s wake.

“We’ve been working to address environmental hazards caused by industrial waste mismanagement in North Carolina for over two decades,” said Will Hendrick, Waterkeeper Alliance staff attorney and manager of the Pure Farms, Pure Waters campaign in a statement received by EcoWatch. “As defenders of the state’s rivers, lakes and streams, we’re committed to documenting conditions and alerting the public to threats to public health and environmental quality stemming from Hurricane Florence.”

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Featured image: A North Carolina concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, on Sept.18, 2018, Larry Baldwin / Crystal Coast Waterkeeper.

Foreign mercenaries, trained covertly at secret IDF camps in the Negev desert, are now leading the new assault on the Yemen port city of Hodeida, an assault that observers warns threatens to dramatically worsen Yemen’s already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

A new report from the Emirati news website Al-Khaleej Online has revealed that many of the mercenaries leading the assault against the Yemeni port city of Hodeida were trained in Israel by Israeli soldiers, shedding light on Israel’s covert role in the war in Yemen.

According to U.S. officials close to the House Intelligence Committee with knowledge of the operation, hundreds of mercenaries from various nationalities that fight on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Yemen had recently received “instance combat training” at training camps in the Negev desert that were created through a secret agreement was reached between the UAE and Israel. Mercenaries at the camp were trained under the “personal supervision” of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The camp’s creation was spearheaded by UAE Security Adviser Mohammed Dahlan, who has personally overseen the recent hiring of a fresh force of foreign mercenaries, the majority of whom are Colombian or Nepalese, to fight on the UAE’s behalf in Yemen.

Dahlan, a Palestinian, was a central figure in the U.S.-backed plot funded by the United Arab Emirates to arm and train militias to overthrow Hamas after they won Gaza elections in 2007. Dahlan has since lived in exile in the UAE where he has developed a close relationship to the Emirati royal family and now serves as one of their advisers. Dahlan also has close ties to Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

The report noted that Dahlan had personally visited the training camps in Israel on more than one occasion in order to supervise the training received by mercenaries from the IDF. Al-Khaleej’s sources also stated that Dahlan had chosen the Negev desert as the site for the camps due to the similarities the region shares with Yemen in terms of its climate, environment and tribal structure.

These mercenaries, trained at IDF-led camps in Israel and funded by the UAE, are now leading the renewed assault on the Yemeni port of Hodeida, which began earlier this week on Tuesday. The UAE/Saudi Arabia coalition had previously launched an assault in Hodeida in June but that effort failed to make headway despite the coalition’s superior firepower. The new assault was launched after the coalition recently succeeded in cutting off the main road between Hodeida and the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.

Over 90% of Yemen’s food is imported through Hodeida, prompting  the UN and several NGOs to warn that any disruption to food and fuel supplies coming through the Hodeida port “could cause starvation on an unprecedented scale” as the country’s humanitarian crisis – a direct consequence of the coalition’s actions – is now more dire than ever.

An Open Secret: Israel’s Covert Involvement in Yemen’s War

Notably, the revelation of the Israel-based UAE mercenary training camps is not the first indication of covert Israeli involvement in the Yemen conflict. Indeed, when the war first began in 2015, the coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE were known to use Israeli-made weapons.

In addition, paperwork seized by the Saudi Embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a that same year revealed that the U.S. was seeking to build a military base near Yemen’s Bab al-Mandab strait in order to “ensure the security of Israel,” suggesting a strong motive for the U.S.’ and Israel’s support for the coalition.

More recently, rumors about new Israel-Saudi weapons deals, including alleged plans to sell Saudi Arabia the Iron Dome missile defense system, have received press attention, suggesting that the covert sale of Israeli weapons to the Saudi-led coalition continues to the present.

Al-Khaleej Online had previously reported that Israel had covertly sold weapons and ammunition to the Saudis, including internationally prohibited weapons that have since been used in the coalition’s brutal bombing campaign in Yemen that consistently targets civilian infrastructure. Just last month, 43% of the coalition’s targets were civilian structures, despite the fact that the U.S. now directly aids the coalition in choosing its strike targets as part of an alleged effort to reduce civilian casualties in the war.

While Israeli involvement in the war in Yemen has thus far been covert, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated last month that he would consider sending Israeli troops to Yemen to fight on behalf of the Saudi-led coalition if the Yemeni resistance gained control over the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait, which serves as a chokepoint on Saudi oil exports and other important Red Sea commerce.

Given Israel’s support for countries involved in genocidal wars in the past and its own treatment of Palestinians, it is unlikely that Israel’s government would feel constrained by any moral dilemmas if it chose to formally join the coalition’s war in Yemen despite the humanitarian crisis that war has provoked.

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen, considered the worst in the world, has brought 17.8 million Yemenis to the brink of starvation including 5.2 million children. In addition, 66,000 children in Yemen die annually from preventable diseases due to the coalition’s blockade of Yemen which has also allowed the worst cholera outbreak in history to proliferate.

Despite the huge death toll that has resulted from the coalition blockade and airstrikes, the “mastermind” of the conflict, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, has vowed to continue to target Yemeni civilians, including women and children, in order to “leave a big impact on the consciousness of Yemenis [for] generations.”

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Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

Featured image: UAE has hired Colombian soldiers to fight its war in Yemen. (Source: author)

HHS lost track of another 1,500 immigrant children

For the second time this year, the Department of Health and Human Services has notified Congress that it cannot locate about 1,500 children taken into custody by immigration authorities and transferred to the jurisdiction of HHS to provide the needed care. HHS officials told Senate staffers that case managers could not locate 1,488 children when they called placement centers and foster families between April and June. The figure represents 13 percent of all unaccompanied children processed by the federal government during that period.

In April, HHS revealed that it had lost track of 1,475 children in late 2017, in a scenario reminiscent of the current one. These children too were unaccompanied minors placed with foster families or foster care agencies through the United States.

“The fact that HHS, which placed these unaccompanied minors with sponsors, doesn’t know the whereabouts of nearly 1,500 of them is very troubling,” Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, chairman of the Senate committee overseeing HHS, said, stating the obvious. “Many of these kids are vulnerable to trafficking and abuse, and to not take responsibility for their safety is unacceptable.”

An HHS spokesman claimed that most of the children had been placed with family members, and that these adult sponsors had not responded or could not be reached. Left unstated was that many of the “sponsors” are themselves undocumented immigrants, who could have been seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or have moved to avoid ICE persecution. An ICE official told the committee that 80 percent of the sponsors are themselves undocumented.

Portman and Democratic Senator Tom Carper are cosponsoring largely cosmetic legislation that would give HHS authority and legal responsibility for the welfare of these children even after they are released from custody. Currently the HHS can wash its hands of the children once it classifies them as “lost,” which could be nothing more than a disconnected telephone.

Funds diverted from AIDS and cancer research to jail immigrant children

A September 5 letter from HHS Secretary Alex Azar to Democratic Senator Patty Murray, obtained and made public by The Hill after its existence was reported by Yahoo News, reveals that the department is planning to reallocate about $180 million in health care funds to pay for the detention and processing of immigrant children. All detained immigrant children are transferred by immigration agencies to the jurisdiction of HHS.

Despite having this notification for more than two weeks, Murray’s office did not make any public announcement to alert the public and especially those opposed to the Trump administration’s persecution of immigrants.

HHS wants to divert $80 million from other refugee support programs, and research programs at the National Cancer Institution, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some $5.7 million would be diverted from the Ryan White HIV-AIDS program, which has already had $16 million diverted this year. NIH would lose the most, $87.3 million overall, while $16.7 million would be cut from CDC, $16.7 from Head Start, $9.8 million from Medicare and Medicare operations, $13.3 million from the National Cancer Institute, and $2.2 million from maternal and child health programs.

The number of children held by federal officials and transferred to HHS skyrocketed this spring, after the implementation of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which effectively means that all undocumented immigrants, including those claiming refugee status, are imprisoned and held in custody until their status is determined.

ICE held nearly 1,500 US citizens as “aliens”

A lengthy feature report in the Los Angeles Times Monday night revealed that Davino Watson, the American citizen held illegally in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement for 1,273 days, was far from the only citizen subjected to such horrific abuse of power. More than 1,480 people detained by ICE since 2012 have been released from custody after their citizenship claims were confirmed, according to agency figures.

The newspaper wrote:

“Victims include a landscaper snatched in a Home Depot parking lot in Rialto and held for days despite his son’s attempts to show agents the man’s U.S. passport; a New York resident locked up for more than three years fighting deportation efforts after a federal agent mistook his father for someone who wasn’t a U.S. citizen; and a Rhode Island housekeeper mistakenly targeted twice, resulting in her spending a night in prison the second time even though her husband had brought her U.S. passport to a court hearing.”

The Times investigation confirmed that there is no presumption of innocence for those detained by ICE, but rather the opposite, “a presumption that pervades U.S. immigration agencies and courts that those born outside the United States are not here legally unless electronic records show otherwise.” Several victims were arrested despite being in possession of their passports, and one was actually arrested on two different occasions, each time on suspicion of being undocumented.

Among the cases detailed was that of Sergio Carrillo, a 39-year-old landscaper born in Mexico, who became a citizen as a teenager in 1994 when his mother became a citizen. He has a certificate of citizenship and a passport, which would have been evident in any ICE search of federal databases. He was arrested in Rialto, California and held for nearly a week.

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Featured image is from public domain.

US marines have held eight days of unprecedented military exercises with US-backed militants in southern Syria in an attempt to send a “strong message” to Iran and Russia, a senior military official said.

Colonel Sean Ryan, a US military spokesman, described the drills as “a show of force,” saying that the Pentagon had notified Russia through “deconfliction” channels to prevent “miscommunication or escalate tension”.

“The exercise was conducted to reinforce our capabilities and ensure we are ready to respond to any threat to our forces within our area of operations,’” he noted.

The eight days of drills ended this week at the US military outpost in Tanf, located 24 km to the west from the al-Tanf border crossing between Syria and Iraq in Homs Governorate, said Colonel Muhanad al Talaa, the commander of the US-backed Maghawir al Thawra militant group.

He told Reuters the war games were the first such exercises with live-fire air and ground assault, involving hundreds of US troops and militants operating against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Thawra claimed the drills were meant to send what he described as “a strong message to Russia and Iran” that the Americans and the militants intended to stay and confront any threats to their presence.

The US presence in Tanf military base is illegal and lacks the permission of the Syrian government. Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran have repeatedly denounced the American military presence in Syria and called on the US to withdraw its marines from the base. However, the US has so far refused to pull its forces out, and even moved to deploy hundreds of more marines in Tanf earlier this month.

The new forces have reportedly joined “special operations troops already based in the garrison” and are going to participate in the drills amid an escalation of US-Russian tensions in Syria and Russia’s military exercises in the Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, the CNN cited several US military officials as saying last Friday that Russia had warned the Pentagon twice in the past weeks that its forces, together with Syrian troops, were prepared to wage an attack on terrorists in the area where dozens of US troops are stationed – including those in Tanf garrison.

Reacting to Moscow’s warnings, US military officials “bluntly warned Russia and Syria not to go forward with an attack within a 35-mile-wide security zone that the US maintains around Tanf,” Task & Purpose further reported.

The US illegally built the military outpost in early 2016 under the pretext of fighting Daesh terrorists, but it has declared a 55 km-radius “deconfliction zone” off-limits to others, providing a safe haven for at least 50,000 militants and their families in the Rukban camp that lies within it.

This is while US President Donald Trump had previously stated that he wanted American troops out of Syria as soon as possible and has also called for redirecting millions of dollars meant to help rebuild Syria to other military projects.

Russian and Iranian military forces are in Syria at the official request of the Syrian government. This is while the US has involved itself in the Syrian conflict through an overt campaign meant to train and support anti-Damascus terrorists.  The government of President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly denounced the American military presence in the country and called on Washington to end what it has described as an “uninvited aggression” against Syria.

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

This article first appeared on 7th August 2015 – Since this article was published, the stockpiling and distribution of nuclear weapons around the world has significantly worsened. The United States maintains an arsenal of about 1,650 active, ready to fire strategic nuclear warheads deployed on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs), and Strategic Bombers and some 180 tactical nuclear weapons at bomber bases in five European countries.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a major report in October 2017 that estimates the nuclear weapons spending plans President Donald Trump inherited from his predecessor will cost taxpayers $1.2 trillion between fiscal years 2017 and 2046. According to a projection by the Arms Control Association, America will, in fact, spend closer to $1.7 trillion.

The Trump administration, as outlined in its Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released on Feb. 2, 2018, intends to continue the modernization plan laid out by the Obama administration, and also develop several new nuclear weapons capabilities that will add to the price tag for nuclear forces

In response, other nuclear-armed states, notably Russia and China, are upgrading their arsenals and have tested, produced, and deployed more brand new systems than the United States over the past few years.

In the meantime, nuclear weapons are currently in use in the battlefield, which goes unreported.

A thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds (1,100 kg) can produce an explosive force comparable to the detonation of more than 1.2 million tons of TNT.^‪ A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate an entire city by blast, fire, and radiation. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of mass destruction, and their use and control has been a major focus of international relations policy since their debut.

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament.

Five states have signed up to NPT, the US, UK, Russia, France and China. Between them, they have declared 22,000 nuclear weapons in stock. These five Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) have made undertakings not to use their nuclear weapons against a non-NWS party except in response to a nuclear attack. India, Pakistan and N.Korea have also declared stocks of nuclear weapons. Israel is widely known to have nuclear weapons but does not declare it and has therefore not signed up to the NPT treaty.

As of 2009, only the US is known to have provided nuclear weapons for sharing. Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy and Turkey are still hosting U.S. nuclear weapons as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing policy. Canada and Greece withdrew and no longer participate.

However, the USA sticks to the old policy that goes back to 1945 – to monopolise the right to use nuclear weapons by making their non-proliferation part of international law in combination with new restrictive measures against others.

In his book Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War, Michel Chossudovsky tells us about the interconnection between the Pentagon and US corporations. The book says the US Congress okay’d the use of tactical nuclear weapons in non-conventional wars in 2003. According to congressmen, it was quite “safe for civilians”.

In intensive warfare conditions, up-to-date tactical nuclear weapons can create an illusion of their absence on the battlefield when used together with conventional weapons. For instance, according to Russian military experts, nuclear munitions of a new generation were used in Lebanon in 2006 during the operation against the Hezbollah.  The soil samples taken from craters had traces of enriched uranium. At the same time, there was no gamma radiation and isotope of caesium 137 resulting from radioactive decay. The radiation level was high inside the craters but went down approximately by half at the distance of just a few meters away.

According to U.S. military sources, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon against another country since 1945 took place approximately 11 miles east of Basra, Iraq sometime between February 2 and February 5, 1991.

By then, Iraq’s former capitol had been declared a “free fire on zone” – open to carpet-bombing by high-flying formations of eight-engine B-52s. “Basra is a military town in the true sense,” military spokesman General Richard Neal told the press. “The infrastructure, military infrastructure, is closely interwoven within the city of Basra itself.”

Though the soon-to-be fired General Neal claimed there were no civilians left in Basra, the city was actually sheltering some 800,000 terrified residents. In direct violation of Article 51 of the Geneva Protocols, which prohibits area bombing, the B-52s commenced saturation grid-bombing of the city. Mixing fuel-air bombs with shrapnel-spraying cluster bombs, the bombers levelled entire city blocks, the Los Angeles Times reported, leaving “bomb craters the size of football fields, and an untold number of casualties.” [Washington Post Feb 2/91; Los Angeles Times Feb 5/91]

With the city of Basra resounding to gigantic explosions and engulfed in “a hellish nighttime of fires and smoke so dense that witnesses say the sun hasn’t been clearly visible for several days at a time,” a 5-kiloton GB-400 nuclear bomb exploding 11 miles away under the desert attracted no notice.

Under the cover of massive Depleted Uranium tipped bombs that raised dirty mushroom clouds in thunderous explosions that rained radioactive dust over Jalalabad and nearby villages, the first nuclear bombs dropped since Basra in 1991 were detonated by American forces in Afghanistan beginning in March 2002.

Before their field tests were concluded, United States forces would explode four 5-kiloton GBU-400 nuclear bombs in Tora Bora and other mountainous regions of Afghanistan and was so powerful that it actually created an earthquake there.

The use of such lethal weapons by US military, which is a gross violation of the Geneva Convention, has been sanctioned by both US presidents Bush and Obama; thus they should be prosecuted for war crimes, as it is nothing less than a nuclear war.

The classification of DU munitions as weapons of indiscriminate effect is defined in the 1st Protocal additional to the Geneva Conventions. Their use is a war crime.

The US military contends that “mini-nukes” are “humanitarian bombs” which minimize “collateral damage”. According to scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon, they are “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground.”

The B61-11 is a bon fide thermonuclear bomb, a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the real sense of the word.

Military documents distinguish between the Nuclear Earth Penetrator (NEP) and the “mini-nuke”, which are nuclear weapons with a yield of less than 10 kilotons (two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb). The NEP can have a yield of up to a 1000 kilotons, or seventy times a Hiroshima bomb.

This distinction between mini-nukes and the NEP is in many regards misleading. In practice, there is no dividing line. We are broadly dealing with the same type of weaponry: the B61-11 has several “available yields”, ranging from “low yields” of less than one kiloton, to mid-range, and up to the 1000-kiloton bomb.

In all cases, the radioactive fallout is devastating. Moreover, the B61 series of thermonuclear weapons includes several models with distinct specifications: the B61-11, the B61-3, B61- 4, B61-7 and B61-10. Each of these bombs has several “available yields”.

The latest in the series, the B61-12 is classed by many as the most dangerous nuclear weapon ever due to it being the first guided missile with dial-in yields making proliferation a real threat.

What is contemplated for the theatre of war use is the “low yield” 10 kt bomb, two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb. What allows it to happen is the disinformation and propaganda issued that these weapons are somehow not really nuclear weapons – they are.

Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years and has thus earned the title “The silent killer that will never stop killing”.

These weapons are called ‘micro-nukes’ as if somehow that makes it better or legal. We know that tactical nuclear weapons or mini-nukes are part of the US-NATO arsenal and that they were cleared for use in the conventional war theatre by the US Senate in 2002. Rather bizarrely, these weapons can be used without the approval of the Commander in Chief.

As Prof. Chossudovsky from Global Research asserts “the “evidence” of a nuclear attack against Yemen (see video) remains unconfirmed, the use of mini-nukes against countries in the Middle East has been on the Pentagon’s drawing board for almost 20 years. In 1996 under the Clinton administration, the B61-11 tactical nuclear weapon was slated to be used by the US in an attack against Libya.”

Nuclear weapons will now proliferate as a direct result of American use. It is known that Israel enjoys the luxury of around 80 nuclear weapons, deliverable with great precision to any spot in Iran from land, air or sea. This is especially so considering it is not a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

As the conflict in Syria rages on, concerns emerge as a result of the use of depleted uranium shells (DU) in Iraq. This from bandepleteduranium.org – 1/2/2015 – Citizens of Raqqa in Northern Syria, are concerned over the long-term impact of the growing number of strikes by Coalition forces on their city and nearby villages.

In a report to the United Nations on DU, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned that: “in a post-conflict environment, the presence of depleted-uranium residues further increases the anxiety of local populations”. The collective experience of communities grappling with the public health and environmental legacy of conflict, and the known or suspected presence of radioactive materials, is a contagious cocktail that can have a lasting psychological impact on the memory of people. These concerns have now spread to Syria.

It appears that Israel has used DU rounds as widely reported in Jamraya, Syria. It is just a matter of time before we find out which other country has been contaminating Syria. So awful are these weapons the international community has tried, in vain, towards an outright ban of their future use.

The collapse of Russia’s relationship with the West in the last five years has ended hopes of further progress of non-proliferation as the super-powers intend on upgrading and increasing their weapons systems and nuclear arsenals.

Pakistan is now deploying short-range battlefield nuclear weapons designed to deter Indian tank columns. Only four months ago, General Khalid Kidwai, the former director of Pakistan’s powerful Strategic Plans Division, the country’s main nuclear planning body, declared that Pakistan’s nukes “are not seen as separate weapons”, but are “very much integrated” with conventional forces.

To recap – nuclear weapons, whether under the guise of ‘depleted uranium munitions, ‘mini-nukes, ‘bunker busters’ are quite simply nuclear weapons that leave a legacy of long-term death and destruction.

The UN used nuclear weapons in Libya HERE – The use of Depleted Uranium in Libya has been certified by a group of independent scientists.

Nuclear weapons use and it’s deadly effects HERE.  Nuclear weapons use in Iraq is already devastating families experiencing profound congenital birth defects HERE and HERE

NATO itself, refuses to cooperate with investigations of war crimes and indiscriminate use of illegal weapons systems HERE and HERE

Type “congenital birth defects nuclear weapons Iraq” into Google images for a truly horrific gallery of misery emerges.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

The Last Earth is a masterful weaving of personal stories into the full tapestry of a people, of individuals, torn from their homes and homeland. It is the kind of history not bound up in sequential dates, political theories, or geopolitical imperatives, but is the story of the people who are living the history.

From that it is a compelling read that moves the emotions through a range of feelings. A sadness derived from the suffering of the individual stories grouped to represent a whole people. Despair at the inhumanity and suffering imposed on individuals who simply wish to live a comfortable life – a comfort not represented by material goods and possessions, but by family, friends, hard work, and the land. Disbelief and incredulity – not so much an emotion as a numbness at the psychological and physical tortures endured by each individual, family, village as their lives are shattered, as they attempt to escape and rebuild, knowing they have no homeland, no Last Earth. A reflective melancholy when each story ends, wondering when the story really will end, when a personal peace, if ever, would arrive.

Is insanity an emotion? Where one group of people without care attempt to eliminate the presence of another? Where drunkenness, anger, pornography, violence, death threats, and cigarette burns and electric shock and other kinds of torture highlight the treatment under detention for lies coerced from collaborators? Where other people refuse to accept and understand the story itself, and those living the story often appear to not understand it? How does one understand the inhumanity – the insanity – of human savagery and human uncaring against itself?

At the same time the bond between individuals, the love of family, children, spouses, parents, and grandparents ranging over distances and time never fades, seldom loses hope. The ties to homeland, the soil, the rocks making the houses, walls, and enclosures, the gardens, pastures, are all held dear. Perseverance, stubbornness, directed anger, steadfastness sustain those bereft of loved ones, family, of homeland.

Seldom do I feel raw emotion when reading contemporary historical works, but the powerful writing style of Ramzy Baroud’s The Last Earth brought to the surface the emotion I try to suppress when advocating for a particular event or occurrence that strikes me deeply in one manner or another. The success of this book is in that emotion, an emotion wrapped around the tragic trajectories of individual lives caught up in a struggle imposed on them from the outside.

It is a must read for anyone caring to understand the tragedy and steadfastness of the Palestinian situation, while also being reflective of the larger human condition.

Title: The Last Earth. A Palestinian Story

Author: Ramzy Baroud

ISBN: 9780745337999

ISBN: 9780745338002

ISBN: 9781786802880

Click here to order.

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Jaysh al-Izza, one of the biggest Free Syrian Army groups in northwestern Syria has welcomed an implementation of the de-escalation zone agreement in Idlib, which was reached by Turkey and Russia earlier this month, the pro-opposition media outlet Enab Baladi reported on August 20.

In a released statement, the group also thanked to Turkey for preventing a military operation by the Syrian Army and its allies in the province of Idlib and nearby areas.

Jaysh al-Izza, which operates in northwestern and northern Hama, is widely known for being one of the key allies of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda). This may be an indication that Turkey has enough influence and willingness on militant groups in the area to force them to obey the demilitarized zone agreement, which is set to be fully imposed by October 20. However, the situation remains complicated.

During a weekly press briefing on September 20, Maria Zakharova warned that a threat of staged chemical attack in Idlib province is still high. According to Zakharova, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is supplying its allied militant groups with chemical agents with this purpose.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) killed 31 ISIS members and destroyed two vehicles, several mortars and five vehicle-borne improvised devices (VBIEDs) during their advance on ISIS positions near Baghuz al-Fawqani and Hajin in the Euphrates Valley.

Recently, the SDF established a full control of Baghuz and started advancing on the ISIS-held village of al-Fawqani al-Susah.

On September 19, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stated that a part of Israeli strikes on Syria was aimed at preventing the Syrian military from boosting their missile capabilities.

“Israel lies when it says that the purpose of the attack was weapons intended for Hezbollah. The Israeli aggression in Syria is intolerable and must be stopped immediately,” he said, adding that Hezbollah would remain in Syria until further notice

“The quietness of the fronts and less number of threats… will naturally affect the current numbers [of Hezbollah members],” Nasrallah said. “No one can force us out of Syria,” he added.

The movement leader further noted that Hezbollah would leave Syria only upon request from the Damascus government.

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The provocations that Putin invites are now escalating. Peter Ford, former British ambassador to Syria, points out that Washington has quickly taken advantage of Putin’s hesitancy in Syria to escalate the pretexts on which Washington will launch a military attack on the Syrian forces. Formerly Washington’s pretext was to be a false flag “chemical attack” that would be blamed on Syria.  Washington’s new pretext precludes the liberation of Idlib as Washington has declared that any attempted liberation of the province from Washington’s terrorist allies will result in a US military attack on Syria.  Indeed, even a refugee flow whether or not caused by a Syrian attack is deemed to be a “humanitarian issue” that justifies a US military attack on Syria. President Trump’s Special Envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, just announced that the United States will not tolerate an attack, period.  (See this) 

Clearly, the Syrian/Russian liberation of Idlib from Washington’s terrorists cannot now happen, unless Putin is willing to establish such air superiority over Syria, backed up by Russian weapons, that the US would be incapable of launching an attack.  Washington’s escalation of its provocations means that Putin would have to accept the risk of destroying any US attack forces that were sufficiently reckless to test the defenses.

Another puzzle is Putin’s decision to pacify Erdogan by substituting a demilitarized zone in Idlib instead of liberating the province. How did Putin and Erdogan reach the fantasy conclusion that the US and its terrorist allies in Idlib province would cooperate with their demilitarization plan?  Has Russian foreign policy dissolved into self-delusion? (See this) 

We are watching unfold my concern that the acceptance of provocations results in more provocations and that the provocations escalate in their danger.  What will Putin do now?  If he backs down again, he can expect a yet more dangerous provocation until the only choice becomes surrender or nuclear war.

Washington’s provocations would not have reached the current level of intensity if Putin had put his foot down several provocations ago.  Indeed, the entire Syrian crisis would have been over except for the repeated hesitations and premature withdrawals of Russian forces.

Does the Russian government not understand that Washington is conducting war against Russia, not against terrorists?

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The tragedy that transpired earlier this week over Latakia led to a lot of questions about what exactly happened on that fateful night, but answers won’t be forthcoming until the conclusion of the investigation. 

The whole world is already aware that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) mistakenly downed a Russian plane over Latakia when responding an Israeli attack against the city, one which the Russian Ministry of Defense said was carried out recklessly against the spirit of cooperation between the two countries because the aggressors’ jets used the Russian plane as cover to evade their target’s defenses, thereby making them responsible for the killing of 14 servicemen. Israel, while expressing “sorrow” and “regret”, nevertheless expectedly pinned the blame for what happened on Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran, putting forth the argument that the strike wouldn’t have happened in the first place had Iran not been about to imminently transfer arms to Hezbollah on Syrian territory that were ultimately destined for use against the self-proclaimed “Jewish State”. As for the Russian Ministry of Defense’s claims about Israeli recklessness, the IDF refuted them and said that it will fully cooperate with the Russian investigation into the matter.

About that, one of the first things that Russia will seek to establish is whether Israel is telling the truth, be it in full or only in part, because the Ministry of Defense spared no words in unambiguously laying the blame on them for the tragedy even though President Putin’s official remarks on the event were much milder. Relatedly, Russia will also have to determine the veracity of whatever evidence they’re handed by their Israeli counterparts, since the possibility exists that Tel Aviv might try to cover its tracks by faking flight data and other such details. It’s too early to say whether this will happen, though one must always keep in mind the Ministry of Defense’s stance on the issue and the evidence that it presented on Tuesday which Moscow claims is proof of Tel Aviv’s responsibility for the tragedy. Even if this is the case, as it does seem to be at this point, the investigation obviously wouldn’t stop there but would continue in order to obtain as comprehensive of an understanding as possible of the total context in which this took place.

Specifically, Russia needs to find out exactly why Israel carried out the attack that it did and whether it was assisted in some capacity by France, as was initially reported and has since given rise to actual conspiracy theories because that tangent of the story hasn’t been followed up on with any official commentary. If, as the narrative goes, France was the one that actually shot down the Russian spy plane, then it sounds implausible that Israel would tacitly take the blame for this by unprecedentedly acknowledging “sorrow” and “regret” for what happened, as Tel Aviv has hitherto shied away from ever expressing such sentiments about any ‘collateral damage’ that its military operations have wrought. Returning back the realm of reality but recognizing that the French conspiracy theory does have a certain logic to it (however farfetched it may be without any collaborating evidence other than hunches), attention will surely be paid to Iran’s suspected activities in Syria.

Unlike Israel, Russia doesn’t regard Hezbollah as a terrorist group, but it still passively facilitated over 200 of the former’s strikes against the latter and their Iranian partners in the past 18 months alone via the so-called “deconfliction mechanism” between Tel Aviv and Moscow, the same channel of communication that supposedly failed during the tragic night of 17 September. The Russian Ministry of Defense expressed shock that Israel would only present a minute’s notice prior to their attack, which caught Russia off guard and was supposedly the reason why its spy plane couldn’t leave the area of operations in time. Although President Putin did in fact accuse Israel of violating Syria’s sovereignty with these sorts of attacks, the Russian military never did anything to stop them and, as was written, passively facilitates them through the “deconfliction mechanism” aimed at preventing an inadvertent clash between the two.

Given the circumstances, this is pragmatic, but it’s obviously not fool-proof, as was seen. The point, however, is that Russia doesn’t have enough of a problem with Israel striking Hezbollah and Iran in Syria that it would risk war with another nuclear-armed military to stop it, and since Israel said that the whole tragedy was caused by Iran being on the brink of transferring arms to Hezbollah for future use against it, this claim will undoubtedly be investigated. At this point, it’s worthwhile to recall what President Putin told his Syrian counterpart during their surprise Sochi Summit in mid-May when he said that “We proceed from the assumption that…foreign armed forces will be withdrawing from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic”, which his Special Envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentiev soon thereafter confirmed does in fact “include the Americans, Turks, Hezbollah, and of course, the Iranians.”

If Russia discovers that there’s any truth to Israel’s claim that it was acting against an imminent Iranian arms shipment to Hezbollah, then it would enable Tel Aviv to weave the narrative that Tehran and its surrogate’s refusal to leave Syria after President Putin’s public hint in that direction is “more responsible” for prompting the circumstances that led to the latest tragedy than Israel’s reaction to this “provocation”. After all, Russia has been passively facilitating Israeli strikes against these same targets for almost exactly three years already, and Tel Aviv could claim that its failure to adequately notify Moscow of its operation was because it had received intelligence about this arms transfer at the very last minute and had to act right away in order to stop it. The so-called “Iranian trace” in this tragedy might even be larger than that too, which is why it’s another topic that will certainly be investigated.

For example, it’s acknowledged by Iran itself that it’s dispatched “advisors” to Syria, and considering that the Islamic Republic also has its own S-200s, it wouldn’t be unbelievable to imagine that it might have even sent some “advisors” for handling Syria’s systems as well. That’s why Russia will need to find out exactly who pulled the trigger, who advised/trained them both before and possibly during that fateful night, who gave the order, and whether there was any foreign presence involved (Iran). It’s not at all to imply that this friendly fire tragedy was actually a deliberate attack, but just that all facts pertaining to it must be known, and if Iranian’s indirect involvement is discovered, then it would obviously lead to Russia “actively encouraging” its Syrian partners to curtail that state’s involvement in the conflict just like President Putin implied should have already happened in mid-May.

As of now, however, everyone is bound to speculate on what may or may not have happened, but the full truth won’t come out until the conclusion of Russia’s investigation. Until then, there are way too many questions but not enough answers, which naturally gives rise to some of the storylines mentioned in this analysis. There’s no shame in engaging in guesswork, especially over something as high-profile as this week’s tragedy, though it needs to be recognized that many of these ideas are just plausible explanations at best and conspiracy theories at worst. Even so, they nonetheless point in the direction of the most pressing questions that need to be answered, such as the veracity of Israel’s claims and the possible indirect involvement of Iran, to say nothing of the mysterious allegations of French involvement that have since seem to have been swept under the rug.

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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.

Featured image is from South Front.

During a recent tour in Brazil, I visited the Rocinha Favela in Rio de Janeiro. Rocinha is the largest favela in Brazil and runs up a very steep hill near the centre of Rio. It is believed at least 70,000 people live in Rocinha (some estimates suggest more than double that number), living in houses made from concrete and brick. It is officially described as a neighbourhood and has very basic sanitation, plumbing and electricity. Rocinha also has shops, hairdressers, banks, art galleries and many other businesses. The word favela itself is derived from a skin-irritating plant of the spurge family: removing these plants to live in these areas was not easy so the people called the hills after the plant.

History

The favelas go back to the late 1800s when soldiers, brought in for a local war, had no place to live and so settled in the hills. After the end of slavery and the growth of city life many people moved to the cities and the favelas spread. A later industrialisation drive in the 1940s brought many more people to the cities and the favelas expanded dramatically. In the 1970s there were public housing projects but these too disintegrated into new favelas. As the drugs trade increased in the 1980s so too did the growth of gangs and gang warfare. In Rocinha, like many slums, it also has an ongoing conflict between police and drug dealers.

UPP and BOPE

The state began a war on the drug gangs in 2008 with the Pacifying Police Units (UPP) moving in, usually after an initial operation by BOPE (Special Police Operations Battalion) who scour the area for heavy weapons and drug caches. The main purpose of the UPP is to stop armed men from ruling the streets and end drug trafficking. However, there seems to be an uneasy peace between the UPP and the drug gangs. While walking through the narrow ‘streets’ of Rocinha, a man with a revolver pointed in the air walked through our group and twice we were asked to refrain from taking photographs as we walked past armed groups of men.

Image on the right: Cemented-over bullet holes

Cinema

If you look at any listicle of Brazil’s best films you will probably see two films, Elite Squad (2007)  and Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010) contained within. These films follow the actions of a BOPE squad in a the favelas and does so without pulling any punches. Different, conflicting elements of society are portrayed in both Elite Squad films. The BOPE and police are shown to have corrupt elements, ultimately manipulated by political figures. The middle class are shown in the discussions about the nature of power in university lectures (with particular emphasis on Michel Foucault) and the students are shown working in charitable organisations in the favelas with the nod from drug gang leaders. The main narrative of the films is the idea of corrupt police making financial deals with the drugs gangs – Elite Squad (2007), and changing to corrupt politicians making money by taxing the whole community after the drug gangs have been pushed out – Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010).

Image below: Overhanging wires on telegraph poles

Tourism

The global success of these two films have probably been one of the factors in encouraging tourism in the favelas. While the drug gangs generally do not appear to target tourists there have been incidents where tourists have been injured or killed by both the police and the drug gangs usually as the result of some accident or misunderstanding. In general tourism, like in many other places, is quick-fix solution for local businesses but does little in the way of any real social or economic development of the favela neighbourhoods.

While slums became common in Europe and the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries they are predominantly found in developing countries today. The Little Ireland slum in Manchester, for example, became a source for social scientist Friedrich Engels’ book titled The Condition of the Working Class in England published in Germany in 1845. According to the UN World Cities Report 2016: Urbanization and Development – Emerging Futures:

“The percentage of slum  dwellers in urban areas across all developing regions has reduced considerably since 1990, but the numbers have increased gradually since 2000 except for a steep rise of 72 million new slum dwellers in sub-saharan Africa.”

Also, according to one article on the world’s five biggest slums:

“Around a quarter of the world’s urban population lives in slums. And this figure is rising fast. The number of slum dwellers in developing countries increased from 689 million in 1990 to 880 million in 2014, according to the United Nations World Cities Report 2016.”

Image on the right: Favela mural

The biggest slums in the world today are: Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa (Population: 400,000), Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya (Population: 700,000), Dharavi, Mumbai, India (Population: 1 million), Ciudad Neza, Mexico City, Mexico (Population: 1.2 million), and Orangi Town, Karachi, Pakistan (Population: 2.4 million).

The development of industrialised farming has been one of the major reasons for the the flight from the land.  There is also the perceived view that economic opportunities are greater in the cities. Governments invest less in rural communities because of lower population densities and this creates a vicious cycle. In Ireland today, for example, friends of mine in rural areas still can’t get broadband speeds fast enough to play video clips on their computers and in August the government announced the closure of over 160 post offices nationwide. Meanwhile the urbanisation of Dublin has extended into neighbouring counties while pubs and shops in the rural areas close due to a lack of footfall. While the pressure on Dublin has not produced slums it has created huge increases in rents and a growing homelessness problem.

So what can be done about slums? There appears to be three main approaches to the question of the future of slums around the world today: (1) Renovation: top-down and bottom-up approaches, (2) Demolition for rehousing and rebuilding, and (3) Demolition for parkland.

Around the world slum upgrading has consisted of concrete paths, sanitation, safe drinking water, water drainage systems and public transport. The Brazilian state has done some top-down upgrading in the favelas putting in basic sanitation and social services but much more needs to be done with masses of wires on telegraph poles and cabling bundled along the side of the paths. However, with the global neo-liberal move towards privatisation of public housing there doesn’t seem to be much hope for governments doing serious renovation of slums in the near future. More importantly, in my opinion, has been the bottom-up slum upgrading, for example, in Orangi Town, Karachi in Pakistan where the residents installed sewers in 90% of 8,000 streets and lanes, digging them by hand themselves. This kind of community spirit builds solidarity which is more important for the residents in the long run in their struggle against uncaring states:

“In 1980, the development expert and entrepreneur, Akhtar Hameed Khan, observed how many communities were self-organising to fill the gap in services – from building homes and schools to water delivery – and launched the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP). Now globally renowned, the project has not only led the DIY sewerage projects which continue to expand to this day, but has built a network to manage a plethora of programmes that range from micro credit to water supply, to women’s savings schemes. OPP’s director Saleem Aleemuddin told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that when activists began working in the area in 1980, the lack of sanitation was the most “obvious” and “problematic” area for residents. While it took the OPP around six months to convince local residents to invest and pay for the installation of the first sewerage line on their street, it was not long before people were taking their lead and organising themselves. “Since the government gets almost nothing in revenue from the slum, it therefore pays the least interest to its [slum] developments too,” Aleemuddin said. “In fact, people in the town now consider the streets as part of their homes because they have invested in them and that’s why they maintain and clean the sewers too.””

Others argue that the slums should be seen as similar to the medieval towns and parts of cities preserved all over Europe:

“The tight-knit structure of settlements built in the Middle Ages serves as an important lesson on making modern developments compact and keeping key services easily accessible to the people using them.”

Thus, they argue, slums could be converted into a form of green, eco-friendly living areas such as Cambridge where people walk everywhere now instead of driving. However, it is more likely to become a form of gentrification as usually it is wealthier people who can afford to do the extensive and detailed building and repairs (not to mention the demands of state preservation policies in the case of medieval buildings).

Government plans for Rocinha

Demolition for rehousing and rebuilding

The demolition of slums for rehousing projects does not have a great history. It tended to shift the social problems of the slums to other parts of the city. In Ireland in the 1960s, Dublin’s slums had reached a breaking point as urbanisation and the collapse of slum houses put pressure on the government to move people out to suburban Ballymun into high-rise 15-storey flat complexes. However, by the 1980s Ballymun was seen as a social sink and had to be regenerated itself in the 2000s and the blocks demolished. Also, this strategy can be a cynical ploy as the flats built on the sites of the former slums are sold as properties on high-value city-centre land.

Demolition for parkland

A prime example of a slum demolition is the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong which eventually became the Kowloon Walled City Park. What started off as a Chinese military fort in the 1800s became one of the most densely populated slums in the world. It was extended upwards in the 1960s to become a city of over 30,000 people in 300 buildings occupying little more than 7 acres (2.8 ha). The residents were compensated (with some being forcibly evicted) and demolition was concluded in 1994. Today it is a 31,000 m2 (330,000 sq ft) park which was completed in August 1995.

In Brazil, this is always a possible future for the favelas in Rio. Not many realise that the sculpture of Christ the Redeemer on top of Corcovado mountain is in the middle of the Tijuca Forest – a massive reclamation project of land which had suffered from erosion and deforestation caused by intensive farming of sugar and coffee in the nineteenth century. The whole area was replanted with plants and trees of the rainforest and is one of the biggest urban forests in the world today.

Climate change and the future of urbanism

The future of slums around the world seems tied to a kind of trendy belief in the necessity of planning for an urban future. However, there are those that believe that an alternative to the constant growing urbanisation is to create a model that would attract a part of the urban population back to the rural environment. The potential for creating jobs in the agricultural sector in the future must be seen in the context of sustainable soil management and the difficulties that will be facing food production in future projected changes in temperature, ultraviolet radiation, soil moisture and pests which are expected to decrease food production.

Image on the right: Malcolm X mural

Governments would be better off to develop projects to modernise the rural areas with the type of facilities and services that can be obtained in the cities to attract people back to the land. Collapses in various crops or crop destruction around the world due to unexpected frosts, drought, hurricanes, floods etc can only be expected to increase, leading to food insecurity and the potential for global food price increases and food riots.

The very existence of a slum shows a government’s inability or reluctance to deal with mass population shifts. It reveals a fundamental structural problem in democratic processes and redistribution of tax wealth. For a government to allow a section its own citizens to live a Hobbesian existence exposes the rhetoric of a government for all. How can this be changed and slum issues be resolved? As the Orangi Town example above shows, solidarity and activism can solve practical problems efficiently even if it is letting the government off the hook of responsibility. As has been seen in the past, the social contract only operates when both government and people keep their sides of the bargain. When or if it breaks down the anger constantly bubbling underneath can spill over. While revolutionary changes around the world in the past, in general, are often attributed to their great leaders, the fact is that it is usually down to the most expropriated and alienated people in society to get the great social change juggernaut moving in the first place.

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

All images in this article are from the author.

Kosovo is today one of the most disputed territories in Europe and a real Balkan powder keg which can explode again at any time. It is a province within the Republic of Serbia, recognized as such by both Serbia’s constitution and the Resolution 1244 by the Security Council of the United Nations (the UNSC Resolution 1244, June 10^th, 1999). However, Kosovo parliament with a clear Albanian majority proclaimed the independence of Kosovo (without a referendum) in February 2008 that was recognized by the majority of the Western countries followed by their puppet clients all over the world (in reality, today around 90 states). Nevertheless, since Serbia received the status of a candidate-state for the full EU membership in March 2012, the intensive negotiations between Belgrade and Prishtina about the ultimate status of Kosovo are going on under the umbrella of EU and today they are, in fact, entering the final stage.

Kosovo is the birthplace of the first independent Serbian state in the Middle Ages, a center of Serbian state authorities, church, culture and civilization, and the location where Serbia fought a decisive battle (Kosovo Battle) in 1389 against the Muslim Ottoman invaders, protecting Christian Europe from the Orientalization and Islamization. What, in fact, the EU requires from Serbia in the current negotiations between Belgrade and Prishtina on the final status of the province is to recognize the independence of self-proclaimed Republic of Kosova for the very foggy promises about faster (in 2025) Serbia’s EU membership.

In order to make clear historiographical and political picture on the Kosovo issue, in the following paragraphs we are going to correct the basic Western misconceptions about Kosovo which are present in the mass media, popular literature but as well as in the academic publications even by the most prominent Western universities, institutes, and other organizations. In particular, the text is a critical contribution to one of the most misleading (quasi)academic publications on the Kosovo issue with a very bombastic title: Judah T., Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford University Press, Oxford−New York, 2008.

Basic Western misconceptions on the Kosovo issue and their corrections

1. Kosovo issue is a conflict between ethnic Albanians and ethnic Serbs over the territory

Wrong. It is a part of the conflict between Balkan Albanians and the surrounding populations, in Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, and Greece (for instance, clashes between Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia from 1991 onward including an open rebellion in 2001).

2. The issue is a fight of Albanians for their rights

Wrong. The crux of the matter lies at the biological level. The real rationale is a demographic explosion which is going on within the Albanian population for a century or so (rate of growth by Albanians four to five time faster than the average rate in other European countries) and the ensuing expansion for Lebensraum and the creation of a Greater Albania.

3. Southern Serbia’s province is called Kosovo

Wrong. It is Kosovo and Metohia, abbreviated KosMet. Kosovo itself is an abbreviation of Kosovo Polje, what in the Serbian language means Blackbird Field (in German Amselfeld). Metohia is a corrupted Greek name for Metohi, meaning dependency to the monastery, referring to the land bestowed by Serbian kings and other rulers to the monasteries and churches in KosMet like of Pecka Patrijarshija, Dechani, Grachanica, etc. (the 13−14 century). Therefore, Albanians are omitting the term Metohia from the name of the province in order to hide its historically Serbian character.

4. Ethnic Albanians at KosMet (Shqipetars in the following, as they call themselves) constitute a majority of 90% out of total KosMet’s population

Wrong. In the last reliable census carried out at KosMet in 1961, Shqipetars constituted 67% of the overall population, with (predominantly) Serbs and others sharing the rest. As for the subsequent censuses (1971, 1981, 1991), Shqipetars refused to take part in them. All figures quoted for the period after 1961 are estimates only.

5. Shqipetars are an autochthonous population at KosMet

Wrong. In the Middle Ages, KosMet was the central part of Serbian state, culture, and civilization. Shqipetars were a tiny minority (about 2%, according to the Ottoman census in 1455), nomadic herdsmen mostly. They came to KosMet from North and Central Albania mainly after the First Great Serb Migration in 1690 from KosMet to Vojvodina (at that time part of the Habsburg Empire), after an abortive uprising against the Ottoman rule in 1689. When KosMet was liberated from Ottoman rule in 1912, by Serbia, Serbs and Shqipetars shared equally the overall population there (50% versus50%). All original toponyms (place names) at KosMet were and are Slavonic-Serb, except for a very few of them (contrary to the case in Central and South Albania). The Albanians even do not have their own name for Kosovo that is coming from their own language and, therefore, they are using a modified Serbian origin (Kosova or Kosovë). The word Kos (as the foundation of the toponym) does not exist in the Albanian language. However, since 1999, many original toponyms in KosMet are deliberately Albanized or renamed in order to lose a Serbian character.

6. KosMet is an undeveloped, poor region

Wrong. It is the most fertile land in Serbia (apart from Vojvodina). The average DNP per family is the same as in the rest of Serbia. It is low only if counted per capita since the Shqipetars’ family has six times more children than Serbian family (and former Yugoslavia’s one, for that matter. We are referring to a proper family here, not to the so-called fis, extended Shqipetar family, which may comprise hundreds of members). In fact, accounting for the fact that proportionally more Shqipetars are working in West Europe, their incomes are not accounted for when estimating family earnings and KosMet appears better off than the rest of Serbia. That KosMet is a prosperous region can be verified by direct inspection at the spot. KosMet is the biggest coal reservoir in Europe.

7. The aim of Shqipetars is an independent Kosova

Wrong. It is a common goal of all Albanians to live in a single (unified) national state of (a Greater) Albania. The political program of a Greater Albania is designed in 1878 by the Albanian First Prizren League (1878−1881). This aim has been practically already achieved. KosMet has been practically annexed by Albania as there is no real border between KosMet and Albania. As for West Macedonia, it is a matter of the near future. The next step is Cameria, as South Epirus (today in Greece) is called by Albanians followed by East Montenegro.

8. The expulsion of Serbs from KosMet after June 1999 is an act of retaliation

Wrong. The process of Shqipetar’s committed ethnic cleansing of KosMet goes on for the last century and refers to all non-Shqipetars (Roma, Turks, Croats, etc). It is a clear case of well-planned ethnic cleansing whose rationale is an extreme xenophobia. As a matter of fact, Albania appears the purest ethnic state in Europe, 98%, with Greeks, Slavs, Jews, Roma, etc. banished in one or other way. After NATO’s occupation of KosMet in 1999, the ethnic “purity” has reached the figure of 97%.

9. KosMet used to be economically supported by the rest of former Yugoslavia

Wrong. Since Serbia’s contribution to the Yugoslav Federal Fund for the undeveloped regions matched exactly the amount donated by the Fund to KosMet, it was, in fact, Serbia which helped KosMet to construct the infrastructure, schools, the Prishtina University, hospitals, factories, mines, etc. Further, since the Shqipetar population consists mainly of children and teenagers, who used to get children allowance, it was another source of enormous income from the rest of Serbia, which had on average less than 1.5 children per family (as compared with 8 with Shqipetars).

10. There is no such an entity as a Greater Albania

Wrong. Although they are not publicized, the maps of that projected unified national state of all Albanians do appear occasionally in the Western press, either explicitly, or as the region with a predominant Albanian population. The point with the latter is that these regions exceed the (semi) official maps of the future united Albanian state, and even include regions without Albanian population at all.

11. Albanians are autochthonous Balkan population descending from the ancient Balkan Illyrian tribes

Wrong. They appear in the mid-11th century in the Balkan history and their origin appears uncertain (most probably they came to the Balkans from the Caucasus Albania via Sicily, according to one Byzantine sources, in 1043: Ataliota M. Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantine. Bonn: Weber, 1853). As for the claims of Illyrian heritage (which is more a political wishful thinking than a very historical fact), distinguished English linguist Potter wrote: “Some would associate it with extinct Illyrian, but with so doing they proceed from little known to the unknown”.

12. The rebellion and protests in South-East Serbia at Preshevo valley is due to Belgrade repression on the Shqipetar population there

Wrong. This region was not included into the KosMet (autonomous) region after the WWII, for the simple reason that Shqipetars were a tiny minority at that time there. Now, many villages, which were purely Serb, are inhabited exclusively by Shqipetars. The influx from KosMet, plus the enormous natural birth rate, made this population to be a majority in two of three rebellious counties. Due to this fast change in the ethnic structure, and due to the large percentage of young people not eligible for voting, Shqipetars’ representatives there are not proportional to the overall share of the population in the region. In fact, the Preshevo issue is a paradigm of the Albanian syndrome, as conspicuous at KosMet, and at Macedonia. First comes land occupation, then fight for the “political rights” and finally secession. It is the system which Henry Kissinger called “Domino Game” (referring to the Communist tactics in spreading over the borders). What Slobodan Miloshevic did at Kosmet in 1998 was much the same as J. B. Tito did in 1944−1945, after the Albanian rebellion of the Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA) at Drenica (February 1998), when the military rule had to be imposed in the province.

13. Shqipetars used to be friendly with their neighbors. They were protecting Orthodox monasteries there

Wrong. After the World War II, more than 250.000 non-Shqipetars moved from KosMet due to the “demographic pressure”, not to mention violence. After NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” in 1999 at least 200.000 (according to some claims up to 300.000) non-Shqipetars fled away from massacres (including and Muslim Turks, Muslim Gorani, Muslim Roma population, etc.). At the same time, more than 200.000 Albanians moved to KosMet after the WWII (most probably even more than 300.000), and about 300.000 after the expulsion of non-Shqipetars in 1999. As for the shrines, they are protected in the same manner as the synagogues in Germany by the NSDAP party members. Only from 1999 to 2001 about 100 monasteries and churches have been leveled to the ground at KosMet. The peak of KosMet Albanian organized ethnic cleansing and destruction of Serb Orthodox shrines came in March 2004 (the „March Pogrom“, March 17−19th, 2004). In sum, during the last 20 years, up to 150 Serbian shrines are ruined by local Muslim Albanians in KosMet followed by erecting of many new mosques as a part of the project to transform the province into the Islamic Caliphate of Kosovostan.

14. The “blood feud“ has been extinguished among Albanians

Wrong. It was much reduced during the communist regimes in the area (Albania, Montenegro, KosMet), but has been revived after the “democratic governments” have taken power in Albania. It is widely spread at KosMet, despite the opposite claims by the local politicians. In fact, the persecution and expulsion of non-Shqipetar population in 1999 was experienced by Shqipetars as a collective blood feud as it is, for instance, recognized by Shqipetar girl Rajmonda from KosMet in the British Channel 4 documentary movie „Why Rajmonda Lied“ (June 1999).

15. The KFOR holds control at KosMet and helps the region reestablish the order and law

Wrong. It has no control whatsoever over the local population, in particular the irregulars of the KLA, turned into mock police forces. The whole region, y compris North Albania (and Montenegro for that matter) is the European center for drug traffic and smuggling of arms, tobacco, humans, etc. There is no proper juridical system, no effective police, prisons, etc. What KFOR/EUFOR can do the most is to protect itself, but it is well aware that when Shqipetars conclude the UN/EU presence is a nuisance for them, international forces will be expelled easily. A single step from “protection force” to hostages would be sufficient, and everybody at the spot is aware of that.

16. Americans are siding with Albanians in the current Balkan affairs

Wrong. They are directly involved, at all levels, from financing, organizing, training, arms supplying, diplomatic supports, etc. Training camps at North Albania, KosMet, and Macedonia are lead by American instructors, who are engaged even at the front line, as several years ago the case with Arachinovo near Skopje illustrated, for instance.

17. The rationale for American interference into Albanian issue is a humanitarian concern for human rights in the area

Wrong. All events that lead to the violation of human rights and massacres were induced by Americans and (to a lesser extent) by Germans. Nothing of those would have happened had not the NATO (sic) intervened in the region. The USA is interested in the peace, not in the justice. Since Albanians do not appear convenient interlocutors for political discourse, Americans insist to the rest to submit to the Albanian demands, who have made their political goals their political rights! As a “collateral gain”, USA has an important stronghold in the region (like the military base Bondsteel at KosMet), a secure (sic) passage for the oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea, via Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania, to the Adriatic coast, etc. Another “collateral gain” is, of course, a free traffic of heroin from Afghanistan (occupied and controlled by the USA in 2001) through the area, right to American schools, colleges, etc. (among other destinations). It is a claim that even 90% of the West European drug market is controlled by Albanian narco-dealers.

18. It was Slobodan Miloshevic who was to blame for the NATO’s intervention in 1999

Wrong. It was a responsibility of the government of Serbia to protect the interest of the state of Yugoslavia (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – Serbia and Montenegro), in face of a violent rebellion. The manners these state affairs have been conducted, including all eventual misdeeds committed over civilians is a matter of humanitarian concern and should be cleared up at the Hague Tribunal (or other international tribunals for the war crimes). But it does not justify the bombing of Yugoslavia nor deprivation of a state to conduct its internal affairs. We have to keep in our minds the fact that the ideas of “Humanitarian Intervention” and “Right To Protect” (R2P) do not assume the act of a military intervention, at least not without a formal sanction by the UNSC.  KosMet issue is much older than Slobodan Miloshevic and much deeper than disputes over political rights and state borders. The affairs in Macedonia in 2001 (open Albanian rebellion against the central government in Skopje) clearly demonstrate this.

19. Former Yugoslavia disintegrated because of Slobodan Miloshevic

Wrong. His political (sic) manners only provided an excuse to Slovenia and Croatia for leaving Yugoslavia. The real rationale for this understandable decision was to leave the state that was burdened with the time bomb called KosMet, which the federal police hardly dismantled in 1981. And, of course, Slovenia and Croatia decided to leave Yugoslavia, a country in which they could not enjoy any more a privileged economic and political position as they used to have after the WWII. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the dispute between Montenegro and Serbia from 1999 to 2006.

20. It is the duty of the international community to help the Albanian issue settled down

Wrong. The international community does not comprehend the nature of the problem, for good reason, since it is not a political one, but a clash between a Middle Age (tribal) mentality and a (quasi) modern European standard of civilization. The only reasonable way towards a permanent and rational solution would be an agreement between Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece, and Albania, on mutual responsibilities and a civilized settling down of this Balkan affair, without interference from the outside, certainly not from the USA. If the USA wants to compete for a role of an arbiter, they should first qualify by helping a permanent settling down of the Palestinian issue in the Middle East.

21. Kosovo is a disputed territory claimed by Serbia and Albania, which both nationalities regard as central to their cultural identity

Wrong. Kosovo is not disputed land between Serbia and Albania as Albania’s officials never officially claimed this province to be included into Albania. It is disputed land just between Serbia’s authorities and Kosovo Albanian separatists. The Albanians never claimed Kosovo to be either central or very much important region to their cultural identity as it was never a reality in the Balkan history. Kosovo (KosMet) is central to Serbian cultural identity but for the Albanian cultural or/and national identity Kosovo (Kosova) was all the time just a periphery territory on which up to the beginning of the 18^th century Albanians have been a very tiny minority.

22. Kosovo is the site where the Albanian national hero Skanderbeg held back the armies of the Ottoman Empire in the 15^th century

Wrong. Skanderbeg (George Kastriot Skanderbeg) was not of the Albanian origin but of the Serb. His family coat of arms, that is today Albania’s coat of arms, was of the Serb feudal family but not of the Albanian one. The Albanians, therefore, simply appropriated the Serbian feudal family and their insignia as their own.

23. Kosovo was occupied by Serbia before WWI

Wrong. This is the biggest falsification of historical truth followed by a dirty political propaganda by the West. Serbia simply liberated her own land during the First Balkan War in 1912−1913 that was occupied by the Ottoman Empire since 1455. KosMet was up to the Ottoman occupation part of Serbia, even known as Serbia proper, but it was never part of Albania. In the mid-14^th century, Kosovo’s city of Prizren was Serbia’s capital, known as Serbian Jerusalem, and Kosovo’s town of Peć was a center of an independent Serbian Patriarchate. However, after the Balkan Wars in 1913, present-day territory of KosMet was divided between Serbia and Montenegro – West KosMet (Metohija) went to Montenegro and East KosMet (Kosovo) went to Serbia. Subsequently, if Kosovo was “occupied” before the WWI it was “occupied” by both Serbia and Montenegro but not only by Serbia.

24. Kosovo’s Albanians were repressed after WWII under the Serb-dominated secret police

Wrong. After the WWII the Yugoslav authorities forbade by the law to all expelled Kosovo’s Serbs (100.000) during the WWII, when KosMet was a part of Mussolini/Hitler’s established Greater Albania, to return back to their homes which were occupied by Albanians. It was repressed the Albanian policy of secessionism and the continuation of a terror against the Serbs but not Albanians as a nation or ethnic group in Kosovo. Moreover, the Yugoslav authorities after the WWII very welcomed Albanian migration from Albania to KosMet when around at least 200.000 Albania’s Albanians were settled in KosMet who were getting quickly a Yugoslav citizenship. Nevertheless, at that time, Kosovo’s Albanians enjoyed much more human and minority rights in comparison with, for instance, Croatia’s Serbs, Albania’s Slavs, and Greeks or Turkey’s Kurds. It was not recorded any single case that any Kosovo’s Albanian after the WWII emigrated to their motherland Albania where they would enjoy a complete set of protected national rights. The military bunkers build up by Albania’s authorities after 1945 on the border with Yugoslavia had the purpose not to protect Albania from the Yugoslav invasion but rather to stop the massive migration of Albania’s citizen to Yugoslavia.    

25. Kosovo’s prospects improved with the dismissal of the hardline Minister of the Interior of Yugoslav federal government in 1966, Aleksandar M. Rankovic, and its distinctiveness was recognized in the new constitution in 1974, which gave Kosovo an autonomous status

Wrong. By dismissal of Aleksandar M. Rankovic in 1966 (“Briuni plenum” of the communist party of Yugoslavia held in Croatia), it was deliberately opened the doors for the decomposition of Yugoslavia including and Kosovo separation from Serbia. The consequences of such anti-Serbian policy by the central government of Yugoslavia (occupied primarily by the Croats and Slovenes) was a new destructive constitution of Yugoslavia in 1974 according to which, KosMet de facto became a separate territory from Serbia. Autonomous status for KosMet was not given in 1974 but rather in 1945 – in 1974 the Albanian-run KosMet administration received tremendously higher level of autonomy that was, in fact, a republican status within Yugoslavia having its own parliament, government, police security forces, Academy of Sciences and Arts, press, University of Prishtina (with the Albanian language study programmes), constitution, and the presidency. Such a level of autonomy did not enjoy, for instance, any of autonomous regions in the USSR. Furthermore, under A. K. Rankovic’s authority, the Yugoslav security forces (OZNA) exterminated at least 70.000 civilians in Serbia immediately after the WWII that was 3,5 times higher grade in comparison to the number of killed Kosovo’s Serbs by Albanians during the WWII.

26. Soon after the death of Josip Broz Tito (May 1980), Kosovo’s Albanian population staged a series   of public protests against continued discrimination

Wrong. After the death of a Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito (1982−1980), who was of the Slovenian-Croatian origin and who was supporting Kosovo’s separation from Serbia, Kosovo’s Albanians were protesting for the purpose to separate this province from Serbia and Yugoslavia. Some of the protesters required Kosovo’s incorporation into Albania. However, at that time there were ethnic Serbs and Montenegrins who were discriminated by Kosovo’s administration (governed by the Albanians) followed by a massive exodus of the Serbs and Montenegrins from the province due to the Albanian-run policy of the terror.

27. Serbian minority in KosMet had decreased from around 30% in 1946 to 10% in 1991, as a result of higher Albanian birth rates and Serbian emigration to Central and North Serbia

Wrong. The last reliable population census in KosMet is of 1961 as censuses of 1971, 1981 and 1991 are arbitrary estimations by Yugoslav authorities as KosMet’s Albanians boycotted them in order to present the fake population structure of the province. Therefore, the Albanian majority in KosMet is estimated as higher as possible while the Serb minority is presented as lesser as possible. Albanian extremely high birth rate in KosMet after the WWII up to 1999 was primarily a product of political design to claim the province on the bases of ethnic rights. Today, when KosMet de facto is separated from Serbia, the birth rate of ethnic Albanians is the same as of the Serbs for the very reason that political necessity for the extremely high birth rate of the Albanians disappeared. After the WWII, the Serbs were leaving KosMet not because of the economic reasons but rather as they were discriminated, terrorized and/or brutally expelled from their homes by the local Albanians including and by the neighbors who were immediately appropriating their lands. It is true that many Serbs sold their homes and land to the Albanians but it was done under the pressure and even direct threatening of the physical extermination.

28. The KosMet’s autonomy was cancelled by S. Milošević in 1989 and, therefore, Albanians lost their minority rights        

Wrong. The autonomy was not canceled as it was just reduced from the political independence to the national-cultural rights in order to prevent further separation of the province from Serbia and to stop the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs. The level of autonomy which KosMet’s Albanians, as a national minority, enjoyed before 1989 in Serbia is not recorded in world history of the protection of the rights of national/ethnic minorities. However, for the matter of comparison, at the same period of time and even today, the Kurds of Turkey, the Corsicans of France or the Sardinians of Italy were/are not even recognized as ethnic minorities in their countries. The Albanians of Macedonia or Montenegro within ex-Yugoslavia did not enjoy any kind of national/ethnic territorial/political autonomy as it was also the case with the Serbs in Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina who could only dream to get the autonomy status enjoyed by KosMet’s Albanians in Serbia. To be honest, at the same time, there was no any migration of KosMet’s Albanians to Albania where they would enjoy a full scale of national rights, but it was rather the opposite way that Albania’s Albanians were coming (illegally) to KosMet where they were “oppressed” on national/ethnic basis.

29. The Kosovo War started in 1998 by ethnic Albanian revolt for the reason that Serbia oppressed KosMet’s Albanian rights as did not recognize elections in 1998

Wrong. The war started at the very beginning of 1998 as a consequence of Albanian-led terrorism actions against Serbia’s state authorities and non-Albanian civilians followed by counter-terrorism operations by Serbia’s security forces being in no connections with the elections which came later. Legitimate Serbia’s central authorities did not recognize the 1998 KosMet’s parliamentary and presidential elections as they were organized by Albanian-led underground provincial quasi-state authorities who boycotted previously organized legal elections by Serbia’s government. The illegally elected Albanian parliament in KosMet was dissolved by Serbia’s police in 1998 when “elected” quasi-President of Kosovo Ibrahim Rugova was sworn in the parliament of neighboring Albania. However, the core of the problem starts, in fact, when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) broke up but no agreement was achieved in changing of the borders. One-sided separation of some federal unites – republics was allowed to occur and that was the principle that was respected from the beginning till the end of the Yugoslav crisis. Since Kosovo enjoyed in SFRY the status of territorial-national autonomy within Serbia (likewise Vojvodina) the demands for independence have not be supported by the international community. However, encouraged with Slovenian, Croatian, Macedonian and Bosnian independence (internationally recognized) the greatest hard-liners within the Albanian national movement in KosoMet – followers of Redzep Cosja, a member of the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Art, championed Kosovo’s independence with a final task of joining Kosovo to Albania (the wish publicly confirmed in 1997 by Kosovo’s Albanian leader – Dr. Ibrahim Rugova). Actually, according to the idea and the things this line pleads for in politics, the mother state of Albania would gather together all “Albanian lands” or the territories populated by the Albanian inhabitants who are there in majority.

30. During the 1998−1999 Kosovo War, Serb army and police units did not fight only the rebellious Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), but also carried out programmes of ethnic cleansing and, therefore, the US-led NATO was obliged first to act and then to continue military actions against Serbia and Montenegro for the sake to prevent human (Albanian) catastrophe

Wrong. No single evidence that Serbian authorities had any plan or developed programme of ethnic cleansing of the ethnic Albanians in KosMet. That such plan and/or programme existed (the so-called “Horseshoe”) it was a dirty propaganda and fake news launched by German intelligence service later proven to be a pure lie (for instance by in 1999 a German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder). The NATO did not act in order to protect Albanian civilians from Serbian police and Yugoslav army but it intervened in order to save already heavily beaten terrorist KLA whose members fled to neighboring Albania and Macedonia and to pave a ground for its own occupation of KosMet after the war. The NATO’s airstrike campaign (March 24^th−June 10^th, 1999) was not a humanitarian intervention as it was rather a brutal military aggression (even using the rockets with forbidden depleted uranium) on a sovereign country by the breaking international law as it was done without any permission by the UN. If we can speak about humanitarian intervention in KosMet than it was rather the intervention by Serbia’s security forces and Yugoslav army in 1998 in order to prevent further ethnic cleansing of the Serbs by Albanian separatist KLA. Nevertheless, the Kosovo War and NATO’s aggression on Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) were permanently covered by the Western corporate mass media lies based on the false flags (for instance, the so-called “Rachak Massacre” in January 1999) and fake news. The fundamental lie was that KosMet’s Albanians are taking refugee (up to 700.000 according to CIA’s sources) in order to avoid massacres by Serbia’s security forces and Yugoslav army as, in fact, the refugee crises was inspired by two fundamental reasons: 1) the NATO’s airstrikes and massive bombardment, and 2) to present (fake) cases of Serbian alleged “ethnic cleansing” in order to win political propaganda in the Western mass media which supported Albanian case at the full extent. After the war, it became quite clear that the Western propaganda claims about 100.000 killed Albanians during the war was a lie as only the bodies of 3.000 victims are found of all nationalities and ethnic groups. Nevertheless, the Western propaganda did not report neither any single case of Serbian victims and refugees during the war or about criminal activities and war crimes committed by Albanian terrorist KLA that was well equipped, supported and financed by the NATO and especially the US (similar case was in Afghanistan in the 1980s with the Taliban rebels).

31. After the war, KosMet was occupied by the international community, sanctioned by the UN (KFOR) for the fundamental purpose to prevent violence between the Albanian majority and the Serb minority      

Wrong. KosMet was, in fact, occupied after the Kosovo War not by “international community” but exactly by five NATO’s member-states (France, USA, Germany, UK, and Italy) which each occupied different sectors of the province. Therefore, the US plan before the war was fully accomplished: the NATO occupied the province that was before evacuated by Serbian police and Yugoslav army leaving non-Albanian population at the mercy of the KLA which took the full scale of terror, expulsion, ethnic cleansing, and genocide on KosMet’s Serbs and to a certain degree on other non-Albanians. The mission of KFOR and later EULEX is not to bring stability, democracy, and prosperity to the province but rather to transform KosMet into the ethnically cleaned region of a Greater Albania. Finally, Kosovo is today one of the most ethnically homogeneous territories in Europe, a center of drug smuggling and human trafficking to Europe from the East and governed by the corrupted Albanian client politicians, former members of the KLA.

32. The best and most democratic solution of the Kosovo knot is to recognize Kosovo’s self-proclaimed independence from Serbia

Wrong. This is the worst solution of all possible combinations which already directly provoked a chain reaction by numerous separatist movements around the world. The first of them were of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in August 2008 followed by the Crimean separatists backed by Russia’s federal government who well exploited the case of “Kosovo precedent” for the re-inclusion of the Crimean Peninsula into Russia in 2014. The Catalan separatists proclaimed a formal independence from Spain in 2018 exploiting the Kosovo case too. As a matter of fact, the creation of independent Kosovo was a long-time option among the Yugoslav Albanians which was not rejected by the Western part of international community as thoroughly unacceptable. However, in this case, it should be respected the principle that the borders could be changed only by peaceful means and with the agreement of the parties concerned – the principle already adopted by the EU in the case of the bloody destruction of ex-Yugoslavia in 1991−1995. However, taking into consideration the public opinion as well as the opinion of the most important political factors in Serbia, who decisively were rejecting such possibility, the realization of this option was possible only by a war (the Kosovo War in 1998−1999) between Serbia’s central authorities and Kosovo’s Albanian extremists (KLA). Considering this reality, the moderate Albanian separatists from Kosovo advocated the strategy “step by step” (from the 1990s) by supporting the modality of achieving the status of republic or confederal unit under international protection, what would in the future open the possibility for a less painful secession. However, KosMet with the status of a highest autonomy (the “Hong Kong” or “Scandinavian” models) within Serbia can be also dangerous as there would be created a precedent that would encourage minority communities in other states which make a compact majority in some territory to follow the same way (Kurds in Turkey) – this would turn the ethnic issue into the global issue of security. The danger of creation of independent Kosovo does not only lie in the fact that the official Belgrade is opposing this idea (likewise, for instance, Cypriot government), but also in the danger that the newly-created state would strive to get united with the neighboring areas populated by the Albanians (South Serbia, West Macedonia, East Montenegro). Thus would, by itself, endanger the security and stability in the region.

Solution

Finally, the optimal solution for the Kosovo status is a “normal” autonomy within Serbia according to the international standards of protection of the rights of ethnic minorities but without any political-administrative prerogatives as it was the case in the SFRY from 1974 to 1989.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former University Professor, Director of Democracy Rooting Centre, Founder & Editor of POLICRATICUS-Electronic Magazine On Global Politics Since 2014 (www.global-politics.eu). Contact: [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

The original idea and first draft version of the text came from Prof. Petar V. Grujić (Zemun, Serbia).

The text is written according to the orthography of the American (US) English spelling.

In this exclusive interview Syrian Nationalist/Outspoken Activist/Artist Mr. Nidal Rahawi a Qamishli native and resident, provided us with crucial direct insight into the most recent tragic events that have taken place in his hometown in north eastern Syria. An Arabic version of this interview will be available on The Rabbit Hole.

Mr. Rahawi discussed how life has drastically changed under the illegal rule of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and their military wing the People’s Protection Units (YPG) which is the Syrian arm of the Turkish PKK who are considered a terrorist organization by the US, Turkey and other countries. The YPG was later rebranded into the Syrian Democratic Forces under the guidance and suggestion of US forces that wanted to distance their allies from the PKK association.

Mr. Rahawi spoke about the concerted effort by separatist Kurds and their western backers to establish Kurdish nationalist sovereignty in north eastern Syria.  In a must-read article titled Romancing Rojava: Rhetoric vs. Reality by Max J. Joseph and Mardean Isaac refer to this as the “Rojava Project”.

As I have noted in previous articles, Kurds as an ethnicity are not a homogenous or collective group and therefore should not be painted with a broad stroke paint brush. The focus of this and other articles has primarily been on the actions of Kurdish militias and their political councils not the people themselves, who are located around the world, nor the ones that live in the four countries that some Kurds inaccurately claim historically belongs to them (Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran). Some Kurds do not agree with the aspirations of their political or military leaders. It’s important to keep in mind that tribal identities and political interests often supersede a unifying national allegiance.

In Part I of this II part article, Mr. Rahawi explains what the past, present, and future may look like for Qamishli. Part II will discuss some of these items in more detail along with videos from the demonstration that took place on August 28th against the Kurdish militias latest wave of school closings.

***

Sarah Abed: It’s my understanding, that you are responsible for organizing a demonstration in Al Qamishli in northeastern Syria that took place on August 28th 2018. What prompted the demonstration? What was the outcome?

Nidal Rahawi: In fact, I was not behind the uprising, but the frustration that the people of Hasakah governorate in general and Christians in particular had felt, accumulated over the past six years because of the actions of the so-called (Kurdish) self-administration against citizens at all levels, and their takeover of the state institutions including schools, and shutting them down, was the main motive behind this demonstration, which was called upon by all the people of the city, especially the Christians.

This demonstration was after the Kurdish self-administration conducted an armed attack –  through members of the Syriac Union party that works under the cloak of the separatist plan – on the (Private) Christian Church Schools and shut them down. Afterwards, they deployed their gunmen in the yards of schools and churches from the inside on 28/8/2018. And then we the people of Qamishli city with representatives from the Arab Tay tribe arranged a sit-in in front of our churches and schools to get them back from these gangs, and we were led by some clerics and representatives of a number of religious communities such as the Syriacs and Evangelists.

But the initiative of these gangs to use live bullets in our face just because they saw us, despite the presence of clerics at the forefront of our march contributed to turning our sit-in into a real uprising, and we were able to get back our schools and churches and our inherited right which we have earned through generations.

(I’d like to make a quick note here that multiple local sources had notified me about Mr. Rahawi’s brave involvement in organizing the demonstration that took place on August 28th. As you will read later in the interview he references this demonstration again and his involvement) – Sarah Abed

Sarah Abed: What changes has the Kurdish PYD self-administration implemented in the area? Do they have the authority to make these changes and demands? Can you tell us more about the school closures, and what they are trying to achieve? How long has Kurdish self-administration prevented education in Arabic? Are state schools still open?

Nidal Rahawi: The changes implemented by the so-called “self-administration” in all the lands that they have seized, while taking advantage of the state’s preoccupation with other fronts, in addition to the endless support that they receive from the US administration, these changes have affected everything: such as changing the names of towns, villages and public utilities, rejecting all the licenses that belonged to citizens, and their properties and their activities, imposing taxes as they like, and even issuing a Military Service document of their own alongside the official requirements and daily life need … etc. in addition to the issuance of personal status laws that do not match the religious beliefs of the Syrian people.

Of course, all of this was imposed by the administration with the power of arms because it does not have a legitimate authority and the people did not and will not accept them – this is what was proven by the reality on the ground during the last (few) years of the war and until now, and most of their leaders are either Turks or Iraqis and this means that all the decisions they make against the citizens in our region are being issued by non-Syrians. The biggest evidence of this is the pictures of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan (Turkish), that they are putting in all the institutions they have seized, in addition to the PKK flag they carry everywhere. And even their curriculum, which they want to impose on schools, we note that the main purpose is to Kurdify the region and close any school that does not recognize this curriculum (which is unrecognized by anyone) and therefore we see that they closed all the schools of the state, perhaps there are no more than four or five schools that are still opening their doors within the security blocks of the state authority in the region. This is what the administration has done for three years now. This also applies to the private schools.

Sarah Abed:  Can you tell us about the ambush attack that took place on ِSeptember 8th, 2018 by the Asayish killing 14 Syrian Arab Army soldiers? Who are the Asayish? What do you think about the SDF’s apology? Do you think the Syrian government will react?

Nidal Rahawi: On the morning of 8 September, at around 9 am, three cars carrying members of the Syrian Arab Army moved towards a guard post at Zawra, which is located at the entrance to the city (Al Qamishli), in order to replace the members of rotation on this barrier controlled by the State, which was part of a daily routine that has been going on for a long time. But the Asayish forces had ambushed them in one of the streets of the city where the ambush had been set for them since 4:00 am, and they deployed the snipers on the roofs that are overlooking the road that the Army members will pass, and deployed gunmen in the corners of the streets, so they surprised the army members, stopped them and then started to shot at them directly while most of them were still inside their cars. It is not true what Asayish later reported, saying that the patrol was arresting civilians within the control area of ​​the Asayish belonging to the so-called self-management, this lie does not mislead anyone, especially us, the people of the region, because we know that the state can not enter these areas, and this was clear in the video clips that was photographed by the citizens. The evidence is that the operation took place on a public street that connects the city with the outside, also the pictures and video clips show that they did not have any medium weapons possessed by the murdered members.

Since the decline of the state control over a lot of Syrian territories as a result of the war, the Syrian branch of the PKK (Turkish Workers’ Party) began to expand its influence on the Syrian Jazeera (north eastern region) under the pretext of protecting the region from the Takfiri organizations. (They received a lot of support from the Syrian state before they turned on it to the favor of the American plan that suited their aspirations), so then their true intentions towards secession from Syria has appeared, and they began to create new names for the region, such as Rojava and the province of West Kurdistan, for the purpose of Kurdification. They also formed many militias, including the Asayish militia, which they recently changed its name to (Internal security). By the way, even the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, which were established with purely American support, are also under the control of the PYD, even if they try to cover it with some Arab members, and proof of that, as I said earlier, is the pictures of Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the (Turkish) PKK. This is why, we the people in the region do not buy these apologies from some of their factions every time another faction of them conducts an attack, and that is exactly what was happening when the Asayish were attacking us in Al Wusta neighborhood (which has a Christian majority) we had lost many martyrs as a result of their repeated assaults, while at the same time the rest of their factions were repeating the play of apology.

Of course, they are taking advantage of the circumstances and the preoccupation of the state, and the American support to continue these attacks on citizens and their personal properties, and on the state also, realizing that the state can not respond to them at this time because of priorities on other fronts and battles in the rest of the Syrian geography. The words of President Bashar were clear (about two months ago) when he said regarding the Syrian democratic forces “Qasad- SDF”: if they do not accept the dialogue, we will restore the entire Syrian territory with the US presence or without it.

Sarah Abed:  On September 8th, 2018 the Syriac Patriarch was interviewed on Al Mayadeen, what do you think of his statements?

Nidal Rahawi: Many disagreed about what was said in the speech of the Patriarch in that interview on the subject of the private schools, where despite that he was late to make any statement or position since the attack on schools in 28/8, they saw that his speech was not as important as the event and did not touch on the real injustice that occurred to Christians in general and the Syriac community in particular. But let me go to his interview that was published on 9/14 on the Facebook pages in a meeting with Christian youth in Damascus (as I believe). His speech was clear and unequivocal – stating he categorically rejected the curriculum that the Kurdish so-called Education Authority in the self-administration had imposed on them. He described their movement against the Christian schools as (attack and closure of churches and schools). He declared that the Christians and their churches were and will remain with the Syrian state as they have been since the beginning of the establishment of Syria (he said).

Sarah Abed: Can you describe to us what life was like in Al Qamishli before the war in 2011? How has life changed? Do you think at some point things will return to how they were prior to 2011?

Nidal Rahawi: I remember as a child that there was a description for Qamishli city as (Syrian Paris), and the history of this city is very modern dating back to the 1920s, where the first of its builders and residents were Syriac and Armenians (1923 – almost), thus they were able to paint the city with their culture, folklore, customs and lifestyle, the most important characteristic of which was joy, tolerance and the acceptance of other expatriates later, including Kurds.

Until 2011, the city was full of life in the same style as the big cities, despite its smallness. Everyone shared a very close social life without paying attention to differences of religion, ethnicity or sects. The relations between all of its inhabitants were brotherhood and common living relations, without any party trying to control the other or impose its wishes or dictates on it, especially Syriac, who we all know to be the indigenous people of this region.

Unfortunately, I do not think that things will return to what it was before 2011, even after the state regain control of the region, and this is because of the policy adopted by these gangs that claim democracy, the same policy practiced by the Zionist gangs in Palestine until they were able to pass a UN resolution that recognize them, this policy based on the forcible displacement of indigenous peoples and changing the demographic reality to make it easier for them to Kurdify the region after emptying it from its original inhabitants (Syriac).

The character of the city has now changed completely with a direct American help (and the Americans have several military bases in and around our city), they are not only seeing what these gangs are doing with the citizens and the city, but they directly manage, nurture and support them in all possible ways, including weapons of course.

With all this I do not expect the return of life to the city as it was before 2011.

Sarah Abed: We hear about many Christians fleeing your region, have you thought about leaving? What is your message to those that have fled? Do you think they will return at a later date? Have any returned already in your area? Do most people in your area support President Assad?

Nidal Rahawi: Yes, unfortunately most of the Christians emigrated (forcibly) and this was not because of ISIS, but because of the abuses committed by the so-called self-management against them by various means, including economically besieging them. For me, I did not think about leaving my city and my country, but I still defend our rights in our land and our presence with those who remain here. This is what I see as a duty for every Syrian citizen.

Many immigrants are contacting me, expressing their intention of return and their regret because they have left their homeland, complaining of the humiliation they have suffered in their expatriation, but the situation now and their own circumstances there do not allow them to return. Many of them now come home and return to their new countries, but unfortunately who returned and stayed here are very few, we can count them on the fingers of one hand.

In any case, this war contributed in one way or another to the emergence of the national sense and the spirit of citizenship, the spontaneous and sincere belonging of the homeland by most Syrians, especially the people here in the region and even those of them who left. Not only that, but this war has also established in the hearts of the majority a great affection and support for President Bashar al-Assad, which was already planted in their conscience before the war, he proved to his people that he was a strong and intelligent leader in choosing his alliances, and was able to stand up with our army in the face of this war, in which America and some of its agents conspired with it against us.

Sarah Abed: How has the war impacted you on a personal level? Has your life been threatened for speaking out and leading a demonstration? What precautions do you have to take to insure your safety? I heard that you had a restaurant and that it was a target of a terrorist act. Can you tell me what happened?

Nidal Rahawi: In fact, the issue of threatening my life by assault, kidnapping attempts, and murder attempts are nothing new or because of my involvement in the recent demonstration.  I’ve been living with these repeated attacks for three years now, since I was an investor of Domino restaurant that is located in Al Wusta neighborhood, and now I’m forced to refrain from doing any business after all of these treacherous attempts against me.

We in Al Wusta neighborhood, did not accept the to surrender our neighborhood or ourselves to the so-called (Kurdish) self-management, but we stayed defending the state authority and our Syrian flag, this is what bothered these separatists, with the Syriac Union Party, which had intended to give us to these gangs, so they started harassing us and annoying us through their militants (Asayish and members of the Syriac Union Party, whose Christian members do not exceed 15). We have often had to arm ourselves to confront them with the help of Sootoro, which was responsible for protecting Christians in Al Wusta neighborhood.

A lot of skirmishes happened between us and them without being able to get our steadfastness, and our insistence that we are Syrians and we will stay with the Syrian state, we lost some martyrs because of the attacks they were carrying out against us.

After they were sure that we will not bow to them, they resorted to other methods like explosive devices which they planted several times between our cafés, our restaurants and our gatherings, one of them was in New Year’s Eve (2015/2016), where Christians gathered to celebrate, in that night alone we lost nearly 25 martyrs, and then their terrorist attacks continued against us civilians and against our businesses, and of course including myself, through several attempts to kill me, specifically targeting my restaurant, this is because I was one of the most prominent resistors to them, and have been exposing their kurdification plans.  One time a head of an Asayish patrol, that was trying to attack us, said to us when he saw the large crowd of Christian civilians who had resisted them: “This is Rojava and you will leave, or we will burn Al Wusta with everyone in it.” This was the last time they harassed us. After that the terrorist attacks, which lasted for more than six months, began with several bombings – claiming that those who carried out these terrorist operations were ISIS. Of course, this lie did not mislead anyone in the city.

Sarah Abed: Do you think there is a political solution for the current situation in Al Hasakah governorate or will there be a military response from the SAA and the Syrian government?

Nidal Rahawi:  I believe that the possibility of a political solution for the situation in the province of Hasaka with these gangs has become very difficult because of their recent practices against the citizens and the state, especially in this last period after the army went to Idlib. Even if the state accepts any kind of political solution, I will still have to ask: How can I, as a citizen like the rest of the citizens and with all that we have suffered of terrorism by these gangs, accept a political solution?

Sarah Abed: In your opinion, what is the solution that Christians and Muslims wish?

Nidal Rahawi: In my opinion, the only solution that citizens can accept (that I’m aware of) is the return of the state and the restoration of its full authority over the facilities, as was the situation before 2011, without giving anything to these separatists except granting permits to the rest of the Kurds to establish their own schools, like other ethnic groups and sects.

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Make Art Not War

Mr. Rahawi risks his life every time he speaks out against the criminal and inhumane actions of Kurdish militias’ in his hometown. He has made it a point to explain how their illegal actions have negatively impacted the lives of the majority of Syrians in the region in many different ways. They have essentially made life in one of the most oil and agriculturally rich areas in the country almost unbearable. Unless a person is living under these dire circumstances it’s hard to imagine the amount of stress and trauma residents go through on a daily basis.  

Mr. Rahawi had mentioned during our phone call that he was an artist, but couldn’t go out much to buy supplies due to various reasons including availability and the risk involved in leaving his house.

Here are a few of his original paintings:

Painting created by and shared on Mr. Rahawi’s Facebook page.

I underestimated his artistic talent until I looked at his paintings on his Facebook page. It’s upsetting to think that such a talented artist can not pursue his passion especially during this depressive and stressful time of war.

Painting created by and shared on Mr. Rahawi’s Facebook page.

Painting created by and shared on Mr. Rahawi’s Facebook page.

A tragedy that not too many people are aware of is that the people being targeted the most whether it be by Kurdish militia’s or other terrorist factions in this particular area, are the indigenous people, the original inhabitants: the Assyrians and Arameans. These are the native people whose roots dig deep into the fertile Mesopotamia soil and will not be easily uprooted. Not only have they had to endure coordinated attempts to kick them out of their homes, steal their land, ransack their businesses but they have had to deal with cultural appropriation and historical revisionism which is at the center of the Kurdish imposed curriculum.  =

Many of the Syrians I have spoken to in the north eastern region over the past few years, have expressed the same frustration that Mr. Rahawi touched on. At this point, the remaining residents that have weathered the storm fully acknowledge that they need to fight for their right to exist and can only do so if they are united, just as we saw during the demonstration on August 28th, 2018.

In part II of this article, we will expand on the issues brought on by the unrecognized yet strictly imposed Kurdish self-administration curriculum on Kurdish and non-Kurdish children alike in the north eastern region of Syria.

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Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. Focused on exposing the lies and propaganda in mainstream media news, as it relates to domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on the Middle East. Contributes to various radio shows, news publications, and forums. For media inquiries please email [email protected]. Her articles can also be seen at The Rabbit Hole. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research

There is a great deal of discussion about saving civilian lives in Syria, as there should be. Missing from the discussion, however, is the most important point. If Western policymakers were genuinely concerned about saving civilians, they would not have waged this Regime Change war in the first place.

All of the death and destruction is a direct result of the West’s criminal regime change operations. Whereas the atrocity stories about President Assad are fake [1], the West’s crimes are in plain view every day. If Western media was honest, and Western politicians were honest, these truths would be foundational to any discussions about saving civilians in Syria.

Notwithstanding the above, diplomacy is still preferable to war, when possible, and this has resulted in a ceasefire in the Idlib region.  The ceasefire is a relief to surrounding towns which have regularly endured terrorist mortar attacks. The ceasefire agreement looks like this:

Notwithstanding the fact that Turkey has been a major supporter of terrorists throughout the war, if the ceasefire holds, then Turkey’s efforts in this case will be commendable.

Separately, the Netherlands, announced that it will end its support for al Qaeda-affiliated White Helmets.  The rationale for their decision should serve as a wake-up call to Western politicians:

• According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the supervision of the behavior of the rescue workers is ‘inadequate’. The organization that supervises, Mayday, based in the Netherlands, is closely intertwined with the White Helmets itself. In practice, donors do not understand the difference between the two organizations.
• Mayday wants to spend a maximum of 0.9% of its budget on supervision of the work of the White Helmets. ‘That is why there is a lack of independent supervision of the activities and results of the project.’
• The money for the White Helmets is transferred to the Syrian border in cash or enters the country via the hawala system. It is ‘problematic’ that Mayday does not know how much money is paid via which route. That is why there is a danger that money has fallen into the hands of armed groups. The cash flow can also indirectly be used for illegal trade. Systematic control of the money flow is missing.
• The White Helmets are active in areas where armed groups are in power that are considered ‘unacceptable’ for the Netherlands. Contact between the White Helmets and local administrators who work together with extremist organizations is inevitable. [2]

Step by step, Syria and its allies are winning this war against Western-supported terrorism. However, the death and destruction will not end until the West and its proxies are entirely removed from Syria. 

Whereas Syria and its allies seek to minimize the devastation to Syria and its peoples, the West’s Regime Change operations necessarily seek (and are achieving) the opposite. 

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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. Prof. Tim Anderson, “War Propaganda and the Dirty War on Syria.” Global Research. 2 December, 2015. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/war-propaganda-and-the-dirty-war-on-syria/5492175) Accessed 20 September, 2018.

2. Moon of Alabama. “The Dike Breaks – Netherland Ends Support For “White Helmets” Terrorist Propaganda.” 15 September, 2018.( http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/09/netherland-ends-support-for-white-helmets-terrorist-propaganda-scam.html) Accessed 20 September, 2018. 

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 

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Author: Mark Taliano

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A report in the state-run Zimbabwe Herald newspaper on September 20 says that the cholera outbreak which has killed over 30 people and sickened more than 7,00 has been contained in the capital of Harare.

This is one of the major issues facing the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) administration in the aftermath of national harmonized elections which return the ruling party to power. 

The elections held on July 30 were observed by various international and regional teams in line with the desires of President Emmerson Mnangagwa as it relates to efforts to create an atmosphere for the lifting of sanctions by the United States, Britain and the European Union (EU). However, irrespective of this openness towards the western capitalist states, the sanctions are remaining in force from London to Washington and on a more limited level in Brussels.

A declaration of a state of health emergency had been declared on September 11 resulting from the cholera epidemic as the hospitals, clinics and makeshift medical tents struggled to cope with the situation.  Additional cholera cases have been noted in Masvingo, Manicaland, Midlands and Mashonaland Central provinces.  Public health officials have traced the cases in other provinces back to Harare as the epicenter. 

Zimbabwe makeshift medical treatment tents set-up to address the cholera epidemic (Source: author)

Many people vividly remember the outbreak ten years ago in 2008-2009 when 4,200 people died and some 98,000 were infected. Although this outbreak is far less severe so far, the government wants to ensure that the medical situation stabilizes. 

On September 19 an inter-ministerial committee was established to work towards the eradication of the spreading sickness. The committee is being chaired by the Minister for National Housing, Public Works and Local Government, July Moyo.

There are other high-level officials involved in the committee including ministers Obadiah Moyo (Health and Child Care), Mthuli Ncube (Finance and Economic Development), Joram Gumbo (Energy and Power Development), Prisca Mupfumira (Environment, Tourism and Hospitality Industry), Perrance Shiri (Lands, Agriculture, Land, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement) and Monica Mutsvangwa (Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services). After a weekly meeting of the entire cabinet, a briefing will be given to the press to update the public about efforts to arrest the crisis. 

There has also been an alert placed on the Beitbridge District to guard against any potential for the disease to impact this important border-crossing area. People from throughout the Southern African Development Community (SADC) enter at Beitbridge from the neighboring Republic of South Africa and leave Zimbabwe from this location heading to other states throughout the region.

Containment methods being utilized by the government were spelled out in a Zimbabwe Herald article on September 20, saying:

“Government has so far mobilized $29 million out of $64.1 million required to fight cholera, amid indications that the outbreak has been contained with the number of patients visiting health institutions declining significantly from 500 to 100 per day. Addressing a joint Press conference of Health and Child Care Officials and members from the private sector, Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube said of the $29 million, Government had contributed $15.1 million while development partners and the private sector had contributed $13.3 million. He said resources mobilized to date were enough to cover the immediate requirement of $25.4 million to contain the outbreak.” 

Economic Development Key to Improving Social Conditions

Cholera is a highly-infectious bacterial disease spread through water which is contaminated by human waste. The infrastructural problems in Zimbabwe are a direct result of the nearly two decades of economic distress engendered by the western sanctions regime.

Broken ageing water pipes and ineffective waste disposal has created an unsanitary situation in the capital and surrounding suburbs. Tap water can be easily contaminated when pipes are malfunctioning leaving concentrated waste in residential areas.

To fix the problem it will take tens of millions of dollars which the government does not have and is unable to borrow due to the sanctions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are not willing to loan funds to Zimbabwe because both institutions are based in the Washington, D.C.

The opposition parties particularly the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC-A) has blamed the ZANU-PF national government for the problem. In turn the ZANU-PF party points the finger at the local municipal administrations which in the capital are dominated by the western-backed opposition forces. Such a political impasse does not bode well for the working and jobless population which is left with sewage and piles of garbage outside or near their residences.

In response the government has banned independent vendors who sell their goods on the streets in the capital to relieve congestion in the city. People are being encouraged to wash their hands on a regular basis. However, this too is problematic when there is so much contamination in the water supply.

The latest cholera epidemic is compounding the overall health crisis in the wake of the spread of typhoid fever in Gweru and other areas. Nearly 2,000 people have been treated for Typhoid just in this one area of Zimbabwe.

Typhoid as well is spread through contaminated water and food. The disease can be transmitted from one person to the next through the exchange of body fluid.

President Mnangagwa expressed his concerns over the current situation in a recent speech saying the government must devise a strategy to eliminate what he described as “medieval diseases” impacting the country. In order for these problems to be effectively addressed there must be a massive infrastructural improvement plan implemented to fix the water system and maintain regular garbage collection along with building adequate housing for people in urban environments.

Post-Elections Politics and Continuing Sanctions

As to be expected, the MDC-A opposition party which loss both the parliamentary and presidential elections has refused to accept the results of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) which were verified by the international observer teams monitoring the voting and tabulation process from late July through early August. Nelson Chamisa, the MDC-A leader and failed presidential candidate, appealed to the Zimbabwe Constitutional Court unsuccessfully. Mnangagwa was subsequently inaugurated and has appointed a new cabinet to what is being called the “Second Republic.”

In early September, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) met once again in Beijing where African Union (AU) member states were present. The Chinese government committed to supplying $60 billion in economic projects for the continent.

An article published by the government-sponsored Sunday Mail on September 9 by Business writer Tawanda Musarurwa said that Zimbabwe would be a leading beneficiary of the FOCAC resolutions. The report indicated that:

“With Chinese President Xi Jinping tabling a $60 billion facility for African countries, Zimbabwe has already lined up solid projects to access the funding and expedite their implementation. President Xi said the financing will be provided in the form of Government assistance as well as investment and financing by financial institutions and companies. Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Dr. Sibusiso Moyo said at least three projects have been lined up. These include the NetOne expansion project, Hwange 7 and 8 expansion, and upgrade of the Robert Mugabe International Airport.”

These pledges of support will be vital in Zimbabwe’s attempt at economic revitalization in the coming months. President Mnangagwa left the country on September 19 to participate in the 73^rd United Nations General Assembly sessions in New York. The head-of-state will utilize this opportunity as well to seek foreign investment for the Southern African state. 

With the sanctions against the country renewed by the U.S. Congress just days prior to the July 30 elections is a clear sign that Zimbabwe is being targeted for regime change. The imperialists want to overthrow the ZANU-PF party and institute an unbridled neo-colonial dispensation so that the legacy of the national liberation movement and its anti-imperialist foreign policy can be reversed. This has not happened and the ZANU-PF party is committed to maintaining its national sovereignty.

The Zimbabwe position was summed up in a commentary published on September 11 in the Herald. It emphasizes that the current hostile posture of Washington towards Harare is aimed at destabilization and state capture.

Assistant Editor Isodore Guvamombe stressed: “The sanctions are indeed about the U.S. proclivity for regime change in order to achieve its goal to change the power matrix in Zimbabwe from ZANU- PF to the opposition MDC Alliance that will be subservient to it and give U.S. access to our natural resources. ZANU-PF is a great afro-centric revolutionary party that has made it impossible for the U.S. to plunder Zimbabwe’s natural resources at the expense of the autochthons of this country. For that reason the U.S. has tried everything in its power to get rid of the ZANU-PF Government.” (Sept. 11)

Under such circumstances international solidarity by progressive forces around the world is needed. In New York City on September 22, the December 12^th Movement and the Friends of Zimbabwe scheduled a rally and demonstration beginning in Harlem and ending at the United Nations buildings. The aim is to welcome President Mnangagwa to the city and to push for the immediate lifting of sanctions.

These actions represent the fact that many Africans and people of African descent in the U.S. and across the world support Zimbabwe. The U.S. policy towards the ZANU-PF government is representative of the imperialist mode of operation and the desire to maintain hegemony by Washington and Wall Street over the majority of people throughout the world.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa and First Lady Auxilia at his inauguration after winning the July 30, 2018 national election.

Ever since the negotiations to form a coalition government in Germany earlier this year, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP—Socialist Equality Party) has warned that the grand coalition government comprised of the Christian Democratic Union, Christian Social Union and Social Democratic Party is the product of a conspiracy to implement far-right policies in line with the programme of the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD).

This right-wing conspiracy was revealed once again on Tuesday night.

In recent weeks, Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the German secret service, has been increasingly exposed as a supporter and adviser to the AfD. It emerged that he consulted with the AfD before issuing the BfV’s annual security report. Then, following the neo-fascist riot last month in Chemnitz, in which ultra-right demonstrators were videotaped hunting down and attacking people they presumed to be immigrants, Maaßen publicly defended the rioters and cast doubt on the authenticity of the damning videos.

This provoked mass protests demanding that Maaßen be forced to resign. Tens of thousands gathered in several cities to oppose the right-wing xenophobic agitation and the support given it by Maaßen and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, the leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU). In Chemnitz, 70,000 people took part in a “rock against the right wing” concert. Under these conditions, the Social Democrats (SPD) declared that Maaßen was no longer acceptable as BfV president and demanded he be fired.

However, Seehofer publicly backed Maaßen, declaring that his ministry was responsible for overseeing the secret service.

The coalition committee met Tuesday evening under the auspices of the three party leaders and agreed that Maaßen would be replaced as BfV president. However, far from being dismissed, he would be given a position as state secretary in Seehofer’s Interior Ministry.

Maaßen was not fired, he was given a promotion. He now holds a high position in the ministry that has powers of oversight and direction of the BfV. The coalition leaders declared that Maaßen would not be responsible for overseeing the BfV in his new post, but Seehofer made clear the worthlessness of this claim by stating repeatedly that he valued Maaßen’s work as a leading political official.

The indications are that Maaßen will function as Seehofer’s right-hand man. He will receive a much higher salary as a state secretary than he did as head of the BfV.

It remains unclear who will take over as head of the secret service. However, it is likely that a current state secretary in the Interior Ministry will move to the BfV to complete the musical chairs maneuver, removing the domestic intelligence service from the firing line and strengthening it.

The German government has responded to the protests against the AfD and its neo-fascist provocations by shifting further to the right. The grand coalition is integrating the hated secret service president and his pro-AfD policy more directly into the government and attempting to cover up the right-wing conspiracy that has long been under way in the BfV by installing a new leadership.

Unrest in Chemnitz

The SPD is playing a key role in this operation. With Maaßen’s promotion to state secretary, the SPD has demonstrated that its demand for his firing and its threat to withdraw from the coalition was pure theatre. The SPD is celebrating the elevation of Maaßen within the state apparatus as a victory.

In reality, it wanted to avoid a new election at all costs. This was due not only to its fear of losing further support, but also because it did not want to hold an election in a situation where tens of thousands of people are taking to the streets each weekend to protest against the far-right and a powerful mass opposition to the grand coalition’s right-wing policies is developing.

It was not for nothing that the SPD negotiated for months behind closed doors to bring about the coalition, thereby making the AfD the official opposition in parliament and granting it political legitimacy and greater prominence.

In almost all areas, the new government’s policies conform to the AfD’s right-wing extremist politics. The coalition agreed on the doubling of the defence budget to make it the largest military budget since World War II. Seehofer’s “masterplan,” adopted by the grand coalition, included a major expansion of deportation and internment camps for refugees. At the same time, the police state infrastructure is being strengthened.

The AfD has been fully integrated into parliamentary work by the SPD, in particular. As the new parliament was being constituted, the SPD demanded a “collegial” approach to the AfD. Stefan Brandner, a leading AfD politician, has the SPD to thank for his appointment as chairman of the parliamentary judicial committee. It was Thomas Oppermann, the SPD vice president of parliament, who proposed Brandner, a representative of the volkish-nationalist wing of the AfD and close ally of the right-wing extremist Björn Höcke.

The connection between the government and the AfD was clearest of all in the secret service. Maaßen met with leading AfD politicians on numerous occasions and discussed his agency’s plans with them, even though these plans were considered state secrets.

Brandner has confirmed that Maaßen spoke with him about this year’s secret service report. Neither the AfD, nor its neo-fascist wing, nor numerous other right-wing extremist groups are mentioned in the report. Instead, organizations that oppose the right-wing extremists are labeled “left-wing extremists.” For the first time, the SGP is declared to be “left-wing extremist” because of its opposition to capitalism and nationalism, according to the report.

Maaßen used the secret service to politically strengthen the AfD and the most right-wing circles in Germany. He is now being rewarded accordingly.

He took over as head of the BfV in the summer of 2012, when the intelligence agency was in deep crisis. Nine months earlier, news about the right-wing terrorist cell National Socialist Underground came to light. Many agents of the secret service were active in its milieu. The BfV subsequently shredded a large number of files. Heinz Fromm, Maaßen’s predecessor, was forced out as a result of the scandal.

Maaßen did not put a halt to ties with far-right extremist groups, but strengthened them. In early 2015, he filed criminal charges against two journalists from the blog Netzpolitik.org. He thus initiated a clampdown on freedom of speech while at the same time establishing close ties with the AfD.

It became clear this summer that the BfV was much more involved in the terrorist attack in Berlin in December 2016 than had previously been known. There is much to suggest that the attack was aimed at creating an atmosphere of fear at the beginning of an election year, so as to strengthen the AfD.

With its decision to promote Maaßen, the grand coalition is giving its backing to the right-wing networks in the secret service and leaving no doubt about the character of the current government.

The SGP therefore demands the dissolution of the BfV and the immediate holding of new elections. The vast majority of the population opposes the government’s right-wing policies, which were negotiated behind closed doors by the losers of last year’s election.

The SGP is doing everything in its power to mobilise the only social force capable of halting the right-wing, authoritarian and militarist policies of the ruling class and all of its parties—the international working class. This requires a socialist perspective.

Our demands are:

• Stop the conspiracy of the grand coalition, the state apparatus and right-wing extremists!
• No more war! Stop Germany’s return to a militarist great power policy!
• Dissolve the secret service! An immediate halt to the surveillance of the SGP and other left-wing organizations!
• Defend the right to asylum! No to the militarisation of the state! No to surveillance!
• End poverty and exploitation—for social equality! Expropriate the super-wealthy and place the banks and corporations under public ownership and democratic control!

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On Wednesday, President Donald Trump toured portions of North and South Carolina still reeling from the record-setting floods spawned by Hurricane Florence.

Trump carefully avoided the scenes of intense human suffering and destruction in the region, including thousands of homeless residents in impoverished areas still waiting for desperately needed aid. He avoided any mention of the hundreds of thousands still without power five days after the storm made landfall. He said nothing of the lack of flood insurance for the vast majority of devastated homeowners, or the failure of the government to make any preparations for a new storm following the catastrophic flooding unleashed just two years ago by Hurricane Matthew.

Instead, he staged a press event at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point near New Bern, North Carolina, a town ravaged by flood waters of the Neuse River, where he reprised the litany of empty promises and lies he gave out last year in a similar public relations visit to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Alongside Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Brock Long, various military and police officers and other notables, Trump boasted of the “incredible” response to the hurricane by his administration and state and local authorities. Hailing the “planning that went into this” as “beyond belief,” he promised the victims of the storm:

“We will never forget your loss. We will never leave your side. We’re with you all the way.”

Trump will have forgotten the workers whose lives have been turned upside down even before Air Force One takes off for Washington, and the corporate media and politicians will drop the issue soon after. No less than in Puerto Rico, Houston and Florida last year—and New Orleans 13 years ago—the victims of the storm will be left to fend for themselves with only token assistance from the government.

Following the mutual backslapping at the Marine air base, the press recorded Trump handing out box lunches to residents of a New Bern neighborhood that had been flooded. His real priorities emerged when he stopped to ask the CEO of Duke Energy about the conditions around Lake Norman, where the Trump National Golf Club-Charlotte is located.

President Donald Trump hands out prepackaged meals to people in cars at Temple Baptist Church in an area impacted by Hurricane Florence (Source: The Greenville News)

As of this writing, 37 people have lost their lives. Many hundreds more are homeless. A quarter of a million people have no electricity. More than 10,000 remain in shelters as several rivers have not yet crested. Long sections of major roadways remain impassable. Fourteen rivers in North Carolina have overflowed their banks; some of which are pouring livestock waste and coal ash downstream. Over one million poultry birds and five thousand hogs have drowned.

With each passing day, the storm reveals more clearly before the eyes of the world the rotten core of American capitalist society. Once again, a natural disaster—compounded by official negligence, callous indifference and the systematic downgrading of basic infrastructure—has revealed the reality of pervasive poverty and class oppression in the United States.

Trump is only the most grotesque expression of the moral depravity, backwardness and criminality of the ruling class as a whole. Its stranglehold over the economic levers of society at every point blocks the rational and humane mobilization of the resources—which exist in abundance—to mitigate the impact of natural disasters and make whole those who are victimized by them.

In Fayetteville, a large city on the Cape Fear River in central-eastern North Carolina, hundreds of residents remain in shelters and county officials have confirmed two deaths. The city has a poverty rate of 18.4 percent. One in four children lives in poverty.

In a statement to National Public Radio, Fayetteville resident Adrienne Murphy, 38, recalled the widespread displacement and food shortages after Hurricane Matthew and issued a message to Trump: “Next week is a long time—you have to act now!”

To the south is the flood-soaked city of Lumberton, where Interstate 95 remains partially closed. Robeson County, where the city is located, has a poverty rate of 27.8 percent, or double the national average. A staggering 70 percent of children in the county live below the poverty line. The Lumber River flooded severely in Hurricane Matthew, leaving over 1,500 residents displaced for months.

Robeson County drafted a “Resilient Redevelopment Plan” after Matthew, which included upgrades to the Lumber River levee and the construction of a floodgate where the levee opens for a railroad crossing controlled by the CSX railroad corporation. The aim was to avoid a repeat of the 2016 storm, when the river broke the levee and destroyed low-income neighborhoods of south and west Lumberton.

CSX refused to cooperate with county planners, and Governor Roy Cooper refused to acquire the property by declaring eminent domain.

In nearby Pembroke, also inundated by flood waters, 60 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. After Hurricane Matthew, the mayor sought to clear the area’s swamps and canals of fallen trees and debris to improve drainage, but the Army Corps of Engineers refused to take on the project.

In Wilmington’s Northside, a predominantly African-American neighborhood, the power remains out and residents are struggling to clean up and salvage what they can from the flood. Median income in the neighborhood is between $14,000 and $17,000 a year.

In South Carolina, a press release Wednesday from the state’s Emergency Management Division advised residents near the Big Pee Dee, Waccamaw, Little Pee Dee and Lynches rivers that flood waters would continue to crest over the weekend and into early next week. The state fire marshal had already assisted in 518 evacuations over the preceding 24 hours.

Two women died Tuesday night in rural South Carolina when a Horry County Sheriff’s van drove off of a flooded road. The victims were being transported pursuant to a court-ordered evacuation of facilities for the mentally ill. They were handcuffed and chained inside the van.

In a statement published September 2, 2005, entitled “Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath: From natural disaster to national humiliation,” the World Socialist Web Site editorial board wrote:

Hurricane Katrina has laid bare the awful truths of contemporary America—a country torn by the most intense class divisions, ruled by a corrupt plutocracy that possesses no sense of either social reality or public responsibility, in which millions of its citizens are deemed expendable and cannot depend on any social safety net or public assistance if disaster, in whatever form, strikes…

The storm that breached the levees of New Orleans has revealed all of the horrific implications of 25 years’ worth of uninterrupted social and political reaction.

The real results of the destruction of essential social services, the dismantling of government agencies entrusted with alleviating poverty and coping with disasters, and the ceaseless nostrums about the “free market” magically resolving the problems of modern society have been exposed before millions.

This was written before the 2008 Wall Street crash and Great Recession, which destroyed millions of jobs, led to the foreclosure and eviction of 9 million homeowners, and wiped out the life savings of millions of workers. Since then, the plundering of society by the financial oligarchy has intensified, first under Obama and now under Trump. The decay of infrastructure and levels of social desperation have only grown worse, alongside the record rise in stock prices and the fortunes of the top 5 percent.

What emerges from the unfolding disaster in the Carolinas is the failure of the capitalist system and the need for the working class to replace it with a system based on common ownership of the banks, corporations and natural resources, the expropriation of the wealth of the oligarchy, and the satisfaction of social need rather than private profit—that is, socialism.

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