Italy Rejects War. No War No Nato.

April 14th, 2018 by Comité No Guerra no Nato

This text was released prior to the April 13, 2018 bombing of Syria.

The announced US missile attack on Syria is likely to blow up a conflict of unpredictable outcomes.

The Syrian Arab Republic, a sovereign State member of the United Nations, has been subjected to a war of aggression since 2011. It is waged by the United States and the other NATO powers, by Israel and the Gulf monarchies.

For years, through an international network organized by the CIA, terrorist organizations, including ISIS, have been financed and armed to demolish the Syrian State from within, as already done with the Libyan State. However, the plan failed due to the Russian military intervention in support of the Syrian Arab Republic.

As a pretext for the announced missile attack, Washington blames the Syrian government for using chemical weapons without any evidence, ignoring the fact that Syria completed chemical disarmament under international control in 2014. There is evidence, however, that the Pentagon provided chemical weapons and related training to terrorist groups in Syria via contractors.

Whenever the US wants to attack a country, they build a false accusation to attack it: for example, in 1964 they staged the “Gulf of Tonkin incident” (which turned out to be false) to bomb North Vietnam; in 2003 they accused Iraq of possessing “weapons of mass destruction” (which proved to be non-existent) to attack and invade the country.

The announced US missile attack on Syria is in fact a sort of declaration of war on Russia, made by President Trump via Twitter: ” Get ready Russia, because our missiles will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ ”

Moscow’s response was calm, but at the same time determined: it warned that the Russian forces in Syria would shoot down the missiles. This creates the most serious state of tension from the end of the Cold War to the present.

In this new and even more dangerous phase of the US / NATO escalation against Russia, Italy is in the front row. The warships preparing to attack Syria depend on the US Naval Command in Europe, whose headquarters are in Naples-Capodichino. The Command is under the orders of the admiral who at the same time commands the joint NATO force with headquarters in Lago Patria (Naples). The war operation is supported by the US aeronaval base of Sigonella and the US Niscemi ground station of the Muos system of naval communications.

Italy must absolutely disengage from this war strategy, which violates our Constitution, in particular the principle established by Article 11: “Italy rejects war as an instrument of aggression against the freedom of other peoples and as a means for the settlement of international disputes”.

The presence of US military commands and bases on our national territory and Italy’s membership of NATO under US command deprive the Italian Republic of the ability to make independent choices of foreign and military policy, decided democratically on the basis of constitutional principles.

We again launch the call to fight for a sovereign and neutral Italy.

Committee No War No Nato (Italy)

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Few to No Anti-Bombing Voices as Trump Prepares to Escalate Syria War

April 14th, 2018 by Adam Johnson

The curators of American public opinion at the three most influential broadsheets in the United States have decided that dissent from the build-up to new airstrikes on Syria is not really an opinion worth hearing. Of 16 columns leveling an opinion about “fresh” airstrikes on the Syrian regime in the coming days, only two—both in the Washington Post (4/12/18, 4/12/18)—opposed the airstrikes. No New York Times or Wall Street Journal opinion piece came out against a renewed attack on Syria.

Ten expressly supported the airstrikes (three in the Times, five in the Post and two in the Journal), two did so by implication (both in the Times, both lamenting the US “doing nothing” in Syria), two were ambiguous and two were opposed to the airstrikes. A complete list of the columns can be reviewed here.

This is slightly less unanimous than the level of support Trump’s airstrikes on Syrian air bases received from the media last year, when only one out of 47 editorial boards failed to back the escalation (FAIR.org, 4/11/17).

On the issue of launching airstrikes against the Assad government, robust debate is nonexistent. Major publications take the bulk of the premises for war for granted—namely the US’s legal and moral right to wage it—and simply parse over the details (FAIR.org, 4/12/18). The Washington Post editorial board (4/9/18), unsatisfied with what they view as token airstrikes, calls for Trump to not just launch “a few cruise missiles,” but for a “concerted strategy” of open-ended “US military initiatives.” This, of course, includes additional permanent military bases scattered throughout Syria.

As Trump and leaders from France and Britain gear up for war in the coming days, if not hours, perhaps opinion editors could make a little more space for those who oppose the possible opening up of a whole new theater of war.

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Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org.

Featured image is from the author.

Are We Over the US/UK Fomented Crisis in Syria? Air Strikes Were a “Face Saver” for Trump?

April 14th, 2018 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

It appears from the very limited US missile attack, most of which were intercepted and destroyed by Syrian air defenses, that the US military prevailed over the crazed John Bolton and carefully avoided a strike that would have resulted in a Russian response. No significant Syrian site appears to have been targeted, and no Russians were endangered. (Source)

The US ambassador to Russia said that the US strikes were coordinated with Russia to avoid a great power confrontation. Russia Insider concludes that the exercise was a face-saver for Trump.

The main effect seems to be that Trump has further discredited himself and the US by violating the UN Charter and international law and committing an act of aggression, which is a war crime for which Nazi civilian and military officials were executed. Russia’s President Putin said that the wanton and illegal use of force by Washington has had “a devastating impact on the whole system of international relations” and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. China also condemned the illegal US attack.

How was the feared conflict between the US and Russia avoided? From what I have been able to learn, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff would not accept the risk of conflict with Russia. The reason is not that the Joint Chiefs are more moral, more caring about the deaths and injuries that would result, or less inclined to go to war based on lies. Their objection was based on the lack of protection US Navy ships have from the new Russian weapons systems. An attack that brought a Russian response could sink the US flotilla and present the US with a humiliating defeat that would discredit American military prowess.

Bolton’s position was that Putin is a pussy who, as in every previous case, will do nothing. Bolton’s position is that the Russians are so scared of US military might that they will not respond to any US attack on their forces and Syrian forces. The Russians, Bolton says, will do what they always do. They will whine about the crime to the UN, and the Western media will ignore them as always.

The US Secretary of War, Mattis, represented the Joint Chiefs opinion. What, Mattis asked, if the Russians have had enough and do what they are capable of and sink the US flotilla? Is Trump prepared to accept a defeat engineered by his National Security Adviser? Is Trump prepared for a possible wider conflict?

The Joint Chiefs would rather use the orchestrated “Syrian crisis” to argue for more money, not to go to war that could be terminable of their retirement plans. The Joint Chiefs can tell Congress:

“We couldn’t risk conflict with Russia over the use of chemical weapons in Syria because we were outgunned. We need more money.”

The older American generation will remember the fantasy “missile gap” of the Nixon/Kennedy presidential campaign that was used to boost US defense spending.

It would be a mistake for anyone to conclude that common sense has prevailed and the conflict has been resolved. What has prevailed is the Joint Chiefs’ fear of a defeat. The next crisis that Washington orchestrates will be on terms less favorable to Russian arms.

Bolton, the neoconservatives and the Israeli interest that they represent will go to work on Mattis and the dissenting generals. Leaks will appear in the presstitute media that are designed to discredit Mattis and to foment Trump’s distrust. The neoconservatives will advance military men more in line with the neoonservatives’ aggressiveness to positions on the Joint Chiefs.

Syria is not about any chemical weapons use. Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, reported that all chemical weapons had been removed from Syria.

“Never before has an entire arsenal of a category of weapons of mass destruction been removed from a country experiencing a state of internal armed conflict, and this has been accomplished within very demanding and tight time frames.”

Syria is not about dictatorship or building democracy. It is not about the alleged 70 victims of chemical weapons. It would take a complete idiot to believe that Washington and its European vassals, who have killed, maimed, orphaned, and displaced millions of Muslims in seven countries over the last 17 years to be so upset over the deaths of 70 Muslims that they are willing to risk war with Russia.

Syria and Iran are an issue, because Syria and Iran supply the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, with money and weapons. This support from Syria and Iran gives Hezbollah the capability of preventing Israel’s occupation and annexation of southern Lebanon, whose water resources Israel covets.

Twice the vaunted Israel Army has been chased out of Lebanon by Hezbollah. Israel’s military reputation cannot risk a third defeat by a mere militia, so Israel is using its control over US foreign policy and its rock solid alliance with the neoconservatives to use the US military to destabilize Syria and Iran as the US did to Iraq and Libya.

Additionally, there is the crazed neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony. The interests of Russia and China are in the way of US hegemony. Therefore, these two countries are defined as “threats.” Russia and China are not threats because they intend to attack the US, which neither has shown any indication of doing. They are threats because they are in opposition to US unilateralism which overrides their sovereignty. In other words, to be clear, the US cannot tolerate any country that has an independent foreign or economic policy.

That Russia and China have independent policies is the reason that they are “threats.”

It would be a mistake to conclude that diplomacy has prevailed and common sense has returned to Washington. Nothing could be further from the truth. The issue is not resolved. War remains on the horizon.

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This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

Trump’s Air Strikes against Syria. The More They Explain, the Less They Make Any Sense!

April 14th, 2018 by Massoud Nayeri

The night before the UN experts (OPCW) were scheduled to travel to Damascus for a fact-finding mission about the alleged chemical attack in Douma, the US launched military strikes against Syria. Apparently President Trump could not wait for the UN experts’ findings and had to order “strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad” on Friday night.

Considering just 12 hours before the strikes on Syria (in regard to the evidence of chemical weapons) General Mattis (Mad Dog) clearly stated that “we are still assessing the intelligence … we are still working on this…”. So the question remains how, by bypassing the UN experts, did the US, UK and France conclude that a military strike against Syria was in order in such a short time? Furthermore, if the US, UK and France were already aware of the “targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities” in Syria, why didn’t they ever bring this information to the UN to prevent the next “chemical” attack against innocent people?

In his war announcement, President Trump states that:

“The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread, and use of chemical weapons”.

In other words, the US President is telling us, after he launched 58 missile strikes against Syria last year which “destroyed 20 percent of the Syrian Air Force” his administration also knew about places in Syria which were the centers of “production …. of chemical weapons” but they were quiet about it and did not warn the world! It is already documented that

“On 23 June 2014, the last declared chemical weapons were shipped out of Syria for destruction. … The actual destruction operations, performed by a team of U.S. Army civilians and contractors, destroyed 600 metric tons of chemical agents in 42 days”.

Are the American, British and French Generals suffering from total amnesia?

The so-called “international” coalition is trying hard to assure everyone that the aim of the military strikes against Syria is not “regime change”; we are simply sending a message! They are bombing Syria because they are “against barbarism and brutality”.  Mr. Trump even jumps to the history and reminds us of “the evil” of chemical weapons in “World War I”, but he skips the fact that eight million tons of Napalm bombs were dropped over Vietnam or how the toxic chemical Agent Orange was used by the US military in that War. Of course Mr. Trump and his generals would not mention anything about the Israel’s repeated firing of white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza, burning innocent bodies of the school kids.

All wars of aggression start with big lies and fake news. Warmongers are irrational by nature; they wage their wars under false pretenses. Peace activists should expose these lies and unite with other democratic minded people locally, nationally and internationally. In achieving PEACE, national chauvinism has no place. Say no to all wars.

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Massoud Nayeri is a cartoonist based in the US. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

The Syrian “Show” Must Go On. US-led Strikes against Syria: A Carefully “Choreographed” Dance between US and Russia

April 14th, 2018 by Andrew Korybko

“The Dance”

What just happened this morning in Syria was nothing more than a carefully “choreographed” dance between the US and Russia that allowed both rivals to “save face” and avoid further escalating the situation.

The US launched over 100 cruise missiles at Syria together with its French and British allies, although the Russian Ministry of Defense reported that 71 of them were intercepted by the targeted country’s Soviet-era air-defense systems.

“Superficial” vs. “Substantial”

As predicted, the strike was mostly “superficial” and lacked the “substance” needed to escalate tensions further between the West and Russia over their Syrian proxy war, but so too was the response somewhat “superficial” as well.

It’s difficult to imagine how such decades-old defense systems downed so many state-of-the-art cruise missiles, especially when considering that Iraq’s similar systems were largely ineffective during the 2003 “shock and awe” campaign against comparatively more dated munitions.

It was widely reported in the run-up to this strike that the US intended to target certain facilities in Syria, and this “leak” was deliberately planned in order to “telegraph” the locations to Russia and its on-the-ground partners.

In addition, it has also been confirmed that the US and Russia were communicating this entire time through the so-called “deconfliction channel, so it’s very possible that Washington warned Moscow in advance of the exact targets that it planned to hit and maybe even when.

This would explain why Syria’s Soviet-era air-defense systems were surprisingly more effective against modern-day cruise missiles than Iraq’s exact same ones were 15 years earlier against much more dated weapons at the time.

“Military Statecraft”

Not only that, but this “choreographed” exercise of “military statecraft” allowed both Great Powers to “save face”, with the US being able to prove that it delivered on its threats while Russia can say that its Soviet-era systems indirectly defended Syria.

None of this is untrue either, and each party can therefore claim “victory” while defending themselves from their rival’s accusations that they actually suffered a crushing “soft power defeat” by dismissing such claims as nothing more than “propaganda”, a defense that’s very convincing to their respective publics given the New Cold War tensions and resultant distrust between both sides.

Taking this “show” of “military statecraft” even further, Russia has now suggested that it might sell S-300 missiles to Syria, which on the surface might sound like a “game-changing” development but upon further examination it can be argued that this is just another “soft power” move.

After all, if Syria’s Soviet-era air defenses were already so effective, then Damascus would have little need for anything more advanced, nor would many other countries in the world who have relatively newer defense systems.

The S-300 announcement should therefore be taken very cautiously since it implies that this morning’s events were just a “show” and that Syria’s old defense weapons are in practice pretty ineffective unless the military knows in advance what the targets will be (as is now proven) and potentially (as is speculated) when they’ll be hit.

Preserving The “Balance Of Power” With “Israel”

This sobering realization nevertheless is the reason why so many countries are still interested in Russia’s S-400 air-defense systems precisely because they promise to be exponentially more effective than their decades-older Soviet counterparts.

That said, Russia is reluctant to sell these units to Syria because it doesn’t want to upset the “balance of power” between the Arab Republic and Moscow’s “Israeli” ally, as that would undermine the 21st-century “balancing” act that forms the basis of Russia’s grand strategy by providing much too effective of a deterrent to any future “Israeli” strikes.

In redirecting the Syrian public’s attention away from this “politically inconvenient” — and arguably from Damascus’ perspective, “unpopular” — fact, it can be expected that Russia will resort to hard-hitting but eloquent rhetoric at the UN in denouncing the US’ naked and illegal aggression against a sovereign state that’s doing its utmost to fight terrorism on humanity’s behalf, though these moving words will be ineffective in getting the globalist body to do anything of tangible significance because of the certainty that the US will veto any Security Council resolution.

“Victory” For Everyone

Altogether, the “choreographed” dance that occurred this morning will be seen as more of a “victory” for Russia and Syria than for the US, though none of this means that the American-led aggression will stop anytime soon because the driving reason behind it still hasn’t been addressed.

The US and its allies want Iran & Hezbollah removed from Syria, and they can be expected to continue staging false flag chemical weapons and other provocations in order to invent the pretext for carrying out more “surgical strikes” in pressuring Damascus to request their “phased withdrawal”.

Russia has already proven and officially said through its diplomatic and military representatives that it will not intervene unless its its troops are endangered, which is unlikely to ever happen so long as the “deconfliction channels” continue to function as effectively as they have in ensuring that this tripwire for action isn’t triggered.

The Coming “Suggestions” For Compromise”

Regardless of the public’s personal feelings on this matter, Russia will not sacrifice its servicemen just for the sake of keeping Iran & Hezbollah in Syria when its military mandate has always strictly been to carry out anti-terrorist missions and never to protect either of those two or the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

Now that President Putin declared on several occasions that Daesh has been militarily defeated, Russia sees no reason to continue committing its military to Syria on the same scale as before, hence the large-scale withdrawal in December of last year and Moscow’s dedicated focus on advancing a so-called “political solution” to the conflict.

To that end, while the US and its allies’ strikes were totally uncoordinated with Russia despite Moscow being made indirectly (and possibly directly via the “deconfliction channel”) aware of where these missiles would hit and speculatively even when, there’s a chance that this morning’s events might actually advance Russia’s peacemaking objectives if they serve to pressure Damascus into “compromising” on its hitherto “obstinate” position in refusing to seriously countenance any of the proposals set forth in the Russian-written “draft constitution” that was first unveiled 18 months ago.

From the author’s personal interpretation of Russia’s developing attitude towards the peace process, Damascus’ “dilly dallying” risks unraveling the elaborating “balancing” act that Moscow is attempting as it seeks to “manage” the Mideast in the wake of the “vacuum” that was left by the US’ “Pivot to Asia”, so it may cynically hope that America’s aggression backfires on it by inadvertently stimulating the Russian-led peace process.

Even so, a “solution” would have to inevitably be found in removing the “trigger” for external aggression against Syria, which has always been predicated on “containing” Iran, but with the SAA and its Iranian & Hezbollah allies unable to conventionally (key word) counter and ultimately put a stop to US-led attacks while Russia & Turkey sit on the sidelines and refuse to get dragged into this dimension of the conflict, Moscow will more than likely “suggest” behind closed doors that Damascus “compromise” on this issue as well unless it “wants” the war to indefinitely drag on.

Concluding Thoughts

At this point there’s no telling whether the uncoordinated combination of US-led multilateral aggression and Russian “suggestions” about various “compromises” will succeed in changing Damascus’ calculations towards the “Resistance”, but all that’s known so far is that the Syrian “show” that’s evidently on display will continue to go on, with the ball being in President Assad’s court over how much longer the world will have to watch this multisided “military statecraft”.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

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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

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Major Western News Media Urge Trump to Kill Syrians, Risk World War III

April 14th, 2018 by Gregory Shupak

Western governments accuse the Syrian government of carrying out a chemical weapon attack in Douma, a suburb of Damascus. The World Health Organization says that, of 70 deceased persons they examined in the area, 43 had signs of being exposed to “highly toxic chemicals,” though whether the government carried out the attack has not been confirmed, and even the US—despite its public stance—was reportedly “still assessing the evidence of the attack” and “did not know which chemical was used, or whether it was launched by the Syrian government or forces supporting the government” (New York Times, 4/11/18).

President Donald Trump is threatening to escalate the Syrian war, as are France and the United Kingdom, while Israel apparently bombed Syria three days ago. In this context, major “liberal” media outlets are writing that Trump should attack Syria further.

Clamoring for Catastrophe

A New York Times editorial  (4/9/18) used rather weaselly language to call for more war on Syria. “The president should know by now that tough talk without a coherent strategy or follow-through is dangerous,” the paper wrote. Saying that Trump should “follow through” on his “tough talk” is a way of saying that he should carry out his threats against Syria and its allies. In the bizarro world where the paper evidently operates, it’s not dropping bombs that is “dangerous,” even though the bombs are presumably unsafe for the Syrians beneath them. Another air attack on Syria could provoke a wider war in the Middle East, as well as risk direct confrontation with Russia and possibly even China (National Interest, 4/4/18).

The editorial opened by saying that the world had “grown numb to the slaughter of civilians in Syria” until it saw pictures from Douma. The cognitive dissonance is astounding: The paper notes the emotional potency of pictures of dead and wounded Syrians while saying that the US should ratchet up the war in Syria, a move that is guaranteed—as we know from the results of US attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria itself—to produce victims who are just as dead and injured as the ones in the photos described.

A Guardian article by Simon Tisdall (4/9/18) article suffers from the same affliction. He demands Western military action and explains that this recommendation

means destroying Assad’s combat planes, bombers, helicopters and ground facilities from the air. It means challenging Assad’s and Russia’s control of Syrian airspace. It means taking out Iranian military bases and batteries in Syria if they are used to prosecute the war. And it means keeping up the pressure when they push back, which they will, until Putin, his Damascene partner-in-war-crimes, and Iran’s cocky Revolutionary Guard commanders get the message, feel the pain, count the escalating cost, and stop trying to kill civilians.

Even if one accepts that the US has the right to do such things, which it doesn’t, such actions cannot be undertaken without killing the very civilians that Tisdall claims he wants to save. The “destroying” and “taking out” he mentions happen through bombing. In Afghanistan, to take one of many possible comparisons, American bombing killed 1,000–1,300 civilians in the first three months alone, and that war will turn 17 in October.

The answer to Tisdall’s question, “Can we no longer distinguish between right and wrong?” is apparently that it is “right” to kill thousands of Syrians and provoke the governments of Syria, Russia and Iran. He laments the “merciless attacks” he attributes to the governments of Syria and Russia, leaving readers to conclude that when America inevitably kills further civilians in Syria, those attacks will be merciful.

The Washington Post (4/9/18) also encourages the US to risk World War III and  kill Syrians in what would almost certainly be enormous numbers, because “President Trump will deal another blow to US global leadership if he does not follow through” on his declaration “that Syria will pay a ‘big price’” for its alleged use of chemical weapons.

Crime Is Law

The New York Times contends that “if a Russian veto prevents Security Council action, then Mr. Trump needs to work with our allies, through NATO or otherwise.” Wars are illegal under international if they lack UN authorization, but the Times argues that the US should nonetheless ramp up its war on Syria without UN approval. (The reference to NATO incorrectly implies that NATO, a military alliance, has some kind of legal authority.) Yet in the next paragraph, the paper notes that “the use of poison gas,” which it accuses the Syrian government of doing, is “a war crime under international law.” Thus the editorial invokes international law to legitimize an attack on Syria immediately after urging the US to violate international law.

Tisdall also argues that the US needs to break international law so as to uphold international law, writing that “allied military intervention, better late than never,” would uphold “international law.” In other words, international law is vitally important, but it only applies to Washington’s enemies.

These articles rest on the assumption that the United States has a right to control Syria, and should kill Syrians and drive them from their homes to assert that right. The Post editorial says, “What’s really needed is a concerted strategy for protecting the vital American interests wrapped up in the multi-sided Syrian war.” The paper then wrote that

the reality Mr. Trump has not yet faced is that as long as the dictator he called “Animal Assad” remains in place, Syria’s wars will continue, breeding Islamist terrorists and propelling refugees toward Europe. Mr. Trump does have an advantage that Mr. Obama lacked: Thanks to the capture by US and allied forces of a large part of eastern Syria, the United States has the capacity to stabilize at least part of the country and has leverage in demanding an acceptable outcome to the war.

The first sentence of this paragraph indicates that the Post thinks the only “acceptable outcome to the war” is the overthrow of the Syrian government. The passage suffers not only from its unfounded assumption that the US has a right to decide who governs Syria and to enforce that with arms, but also from its failure to consider what will happen should Washington attempt to do so. An escalation of America’s war on Syria will almost certainly mean that “Syria’s wars will continue,” since the Syrian government and its partners from Iran, Russia, Iraq and Hezbollah can be expected to fight back against US efforts to dominate the country. In that scenario, refugees will indeed be “propel[led] toward Europe,” as they will if the US ousts the Syrian government and ushers in total social collapse, as it did in Libya (FAIR.org, 11/28/17). Thus what the paper purports to be worried about is virtually guaranteed to result from the course it recommends.

The Times, meanwhile, says that

to have any chance of success, any international retaliatory action must be part of a coherent diplomatic strategy for stabilizing Syria and putting a political settlement in place…. The conflict has allowed Russia, Iran, Turkey and the Islamic State, now degraded by an American-led coalition, to gain a foothold in Syria.

Notably absent from this list of actors are the United States and its proxy Israel, both of whom have “footholds” in Syria: The US controls “about one-third [of Syria], including most of its oil wealth” (New York Times, 3/8/18). Israel, meanwhile, has illegally annexed Syria’s Golan Heights, and has sought to expand its control of Syrian territory throughout the country’s war (FAIR.org, 2/21/18). These “footholds,” however, are supposedly legitimate, as would be any further “foothold” America and its partners would gain from escalating their war on Syria.

This style of coverage—enthusiastic about the moral need for violence but oblivious to its obvious consequences—inhibits the public’s capacity to make sense of the extremely dangerous moment in which we are living.

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Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.

Featured image is from the author.

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‘Whoever Is Controlling Washington Appears to Want War’ – Mark Taliano

April 14th, 2018 by Mark Taliano

“Smart missiles should fly toward terrorists, not legal governments”: Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman said in response to Donald Trump’s tweet. Radio Sputnik discussed Donald Trump’s warning to launch strikes against Syria with Mark Taliano, an independent investigative reporter and author of the book ‘Voices from Syria’.

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Sputnik: What are your thoughts on the recent comment made by Donald Trump about Russia getting ready for “smart” missiles that will be coming on Syria? What consequences can it have?

Mark Taliano: I am horrified by the actions of the West and I’ve been disgusted actually for seven-odd years, because the West, we, including Canada, we are the aggressors and we are the ones committing the spree of international crime and we are the ones supporting the terrorists. So we are in the wrong, we have no right to dictate to Russia who is legitimately in Syria, at the request of the Syrian government, and Russia, who is legitimately combating terrorism, unlike our government, which supports terrorism in Syria.

If Trump is threatening a missile strike… are you asking for my thoughts on this? First of all it’s based on a ridiculous false flag. If it weren’t for the MSM propaganda, any infant could figure that out, because the Syrian government doesn’t have chemical weapons and even if it did, it won’t use them because Syrian government and its allies are successful in clearing out the terrorists.

And every time that their victory is almost assured then we get a false flag, so that the West and its terrorist proxies can rearm and get a pause. So it is a false flag I can almost guarantee, and also I just wrote an article about Tom Dugan, who is in Syria right now. He visited an abandoned factory where they made missiles and mortars and it’s all on film and it’s in my last article — and all sorts of weapons that they get from the West; we know this, we’ve seen all the evidence, including chemical weapons. And the terrorists have a track record of actually using poison gas on civilians; they did it in Aleppo and there’s no reason why they wouldn’t do it anywhere else. And it’s the White Helmets which is the propaganda wing of Al-Qaeda and the terrorists.

At Khan Sheikhoun they were the ones who had custody of the crime site, so that was an obvious false flag as well. Seymour Hersh identified it as such, so did Ted Postol. But you can’t conduct a solid investigation unless you have a solid chain of custody and that was not the case then. Now will we have a solid chain of custody and a legitimate inspection this time? I’m going to suggest that the West will do anything to prevent that, because I am convinced that there is no substance to the allegation.

The West wants a big pretext to bomb.

Russia has said it will respond; it will shoot these missiles down in Syria. And I believe that they have said they will also attack the source of these missiles. They should, I mean these are incoming missiles, these are aggressor missiles; this is the West waging a war on the sovereign, UN-recognized country of Syria and its legitimate government. Nobody has the right to be injecting terrorists into a sovereign government and waging a regime change war, which they publicly announced in Canada as well, and levying illegal sanctions. Any country that is victimized in such a way has the right to self-defense, and it’s protected under international law.

The countries, on the other hand, including Israel who are launching missiles at Syria; this is not self-defense at all. These are committing a supreme international war crime, they do it with impunity, but that’s a separate issue. These are crimes against peace, crimes against humanity. So Russia apparently has advanced technology, so it could in theory shoot down the source of missiles, which could become very dangerous, really dangerous. I hope, everyone slows down and calms down, so I hope nothing happens for the sake of Syria and for all of us, because nuclear war cannot be contained. So I hope calmer heads prevail. I think all the bombastic announcements from Washington and from Trump are totally out of line. It’s a very tense situation and I hope calmer heads prevail.

Sputnik: Mr Taliano, Russia noted that a missiles strike by the United States can destroy all evidence of chemical weapons used in Syria. And earlier you said that the West is not interested in a fair investigation of the incident in Douma. Do you think that is why the United States and other Western powers so hastily put the blame on Damascus?

Mark Taliano: Unfortunately, whoever is controlling Washington appears to want war, even though some high ranking generals have said the war is over and that Syria won. Trump should be listening to all those people instead of warmongers like Pompeo or whoever else he appointed. If he is listening to a warmongering CIA person, then possibly the missile will try to eradicate any and all evidence, that’s possible. I’m sure Russia is very aware of that. I think Russia has the technology to disrupt incoming missiles, they’ve done it before.

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

Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than six years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and three years of US “peacemaking” airstrikes.

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. 

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Alleged Syria Chemical Weapons Attack: Intelligence Professionals Urge Trump to “Seek Evidence Required for Military Decision on Syria”

April 14th, 2018 by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT:  Evidence Required for Military Decision on Syria

[April 13, 2018]

Mr. President,

We the undersigned Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity join a number of other credible experts including former UK Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford (this recent interview on BBC Radio Scotland), former UN weapons inspectors and former military officers who are strongly recommending that you obtain and review actual evidence from the site of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria, before ordering any military action. VIPS has previously reported credible evidence indicating that anti-government forces in Syria have themselves produced and used toxic chemical agents.

Contradictory indications exist given that the video and images of victims in the locations purportedly affected by chemical weapons  came from rebel-affiliated entities known as the “Douma Revolution” and the “White Helmets” while Russian military units which later got physical access to the supposed sites and Syrian Red Crescent personnel working in the area reportedly found no indication of a chemical weapon attack.

A major question for us, as former intelligence officers with some knowledge of the operational use of misinformation and false flag actions, is what motive would the Syrian government have for making a chemical weapons attack on its own civilian population, especially at a time when it has growing popular support and is having increased military success.  Why would it risk Western ire?

Rebel fighters and their families were already being evacuated to Turkish occupied Jarabulus by air-conditioned bus. As described in more detail by Scott Ritter (here), only Salafist fighters from the “Army of Islam” (Jaish al-Islam) had refused to surrender at the time of the supposed attacks.

One must therefore consider the possibility that the supposed chlorine gas attack at Douma may have been a carefully constructed propaganda fraud. Such a fraud would have as its purpose the elicitation of precisely the kind of political pressure that now has you contemplating military action. In other words, Mr. President, this may be a bid to mousetrap you into a war that neither you nor your fellow Americans want nor need.

More expert opinion and investigation needs to be applied like that voiced by former U.N. weapons inspector in Syria, Åke Sellström, (translated from original Swedish):

 The attack may have come from Assad’s regime, but you may as well have other explanations. Toxic substances can be dispersed in many ways, for example through explosions or smoke.

– There are many poisonous substances in circulation during the battle.

If the UN were to investigate the attack, it is not enough to see recordings or hear testimony, says Sellström.

It is essential that the United States have complete and compelling evidence before taking any decisive action. We therefore strongly recommend that you await the findings of the OPCW team which is now on its way to Douma to investigate at the actual site of the alleged attack.  A competent, objective group of experts needs to conduct a thorough on-the-ground investigation and collect evidence that will either implicate the Government of Syria or exonerate it.

We have, as you have noted, been down this road before with the Iraq WMD debacle in 2003.  Let us not repeat this mistake. By launching a war in Syria, we will be entering a military and political morass involving Iran and Russia that could have fatal consequences for the entire planet, especially if any of the parties feel compelled to resort to nuclear weapons.

The American people neither want nor need another military intervention in the Middle East. History tells us that any initiative centered on the use of armed force to compel acceptable behavior will not be containable and will only propagate more violence. Please do not drain the US Treasury for a war that could lead to catastrophic and unprecedented loss of life and endanger the security of Americans everywhere.

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)

Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) and Division Director, State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Kathleen Christison, Senior Analyst on Middle East, CIA (ret.)

Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Graham E. Fuller,Vice-Chair, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

Larry C. Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter Terrorism officer

Michael S. Kearns, Captain,Wing Commander, RAAF (ret.); Intelligence Officer & ex-Master SERE Instructor

John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003

Clement J. Laniewski, LTC, USA (ret) (associate VIPS)

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

David MacMichael, Ph.D., former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA political analyst (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Peter Van Buren, US Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel, US Army (ret.), former Chief of Staff for Secretary of State; Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary (associate VIPS)

Sarah G. Wilton, CDR, USNR, (ret.); Defense Intelligence Agency (ret.)

Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)

Ann Wright, Colonel, US Army (ret.); also Foreign Service Officer who resigned in opposition to the US war on Iraq

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Video: UN Inspector Says Syrian Rebels Used Chemical Weapons, Not Assad. 2013 Attack

April 14th, 2018 by Carla del Ponte

“Testimony from victims now strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin Nerve Gas during a recent incident [2013] in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior UN diplomat said Monday. [May 2013]

Carla del Ponte, a member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent. But she said her panel had not yet seen any evidence of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons (CW), according to the BBC, she added that more investigation was needed.

Damascus is facing growing Western accusations that its forces used such weapons, which US President Obama has described as crossing a Red Line. But Ms. del Ponte’s remarks may serve to shift the focus of international concern. Ms. del Ponte, who in 1999 was appointed to head the UN was crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has sometimes been a controversial figure. She was removed from her Rwanda post by the UN Security Council in 2003, but she continued as the Chief prosecutor for the Yugoslav tribunal until 2008. Rebel Free Syrian Army spokesman Louay Almokdad denied that rebels had use chemical weapons (CW).

 

Russia Says It Has Proof Britain Was Behind Alleged Syria Chemical Attack

April 14th, 2018 by AFP

According to AFP:

The Russian Military today said it had proof that an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta was staged on orders from London.

Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the military had “proof that testifies to the direct participation of Britain in the organising of this provocation in Eastern Ghouta.”

He said Britain had told the White Helmets, who act as first responders in rebel-held areas, to fake the suspected chemical attack in the town of Douma.

London put “powerful pressure” on the civil defence organisation, Konashenkov said.

To read the complete AFP article click here 

 

Russia Claims to Have Located Witnesses to Staged ‘Chemical’ Event in Douma

April 14th, 2018 by Eric Zuesse

Russia’s Tass news agency claimed early on April 13th, prior to US led Air strikes, that Russian investigators have located and spoken with persons in the Syrian city of Douma who witnessed the staging of the videos that the U.S-and-UK-financed White Helmets group supplied, and which videos the U.S., French and UK Governments use to justify their planned invasion of Syria.

According to Tass’s report, two medical personnel who were on duty on 7 April when the alleged patients were being rushed into the emergency room, say that White Helmets personnel accompanied the alleged victims, and filmed them while bringing them in. According to Tass,

“When the patients were receiving first aid, unidentified people burst into the hospital, some were holding video cameras. These people started shouting, fanning hysteria. They carried hose and douched all present with water crying out that all of them had been exposed to poisonous agents.”

That is presumably describing the scene at 1:34 in the White Helmets video that was used by Qatari Government TV, Al Jazeera, on April 8th, in their report on the incident. Qatar’s royal family, the Thanis, are the main funders of the Muslim Brotherhood and have long called for the overthrow of Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, whose Government is strongly opposed to basing government upon any religious laws; Syria’s Government is founded strictly upon a secular Constitution instead. Though the Thanis, who own Qatar, are less fundamentalist than the Sauds, who own Saudi Arabia, both royal families have urged the U.S. and its other allies to overthrow the Assad government, and the White Helmets have been an important part of that allied effort.

The Tass report says that the White Helmets staged the event because “London” had told them that the Assad Government was planning to bomb in Douma during 3-6 April and that the ‘rebels’ should then film their people bringing in victims of a chemical attack there, so as to provide a basis for subsequent bombing by the UK, U.S., and allies, as an alleged humanitarian response.

The Tass account suggests but does not state that Russia’s Government has located also other witnesses, but ones who are not willing to become publicly identified — that only two are willing to be publicly identified if necessary in order to prevent an invasion.

The Tass account also implies that Russia has in its possession communications from the UK Government to the White Helmets, and will publish these communications unless the UK will back down without directly invading Syria.

No indication was given in the Tass report, to the effect that Russia has similarly acquired evidence against the U.S. Government in this matter.

If the UK Government denies the Russian allegations regarding this, then the burden of proof will be upon either the Russians or the Syrians to make public whatever evidence they have acquired backing up the Russian claims.

However, the UK and its allies haven’t, at least after the year 2000, publicly released any evidence prior to invading on the basis of secret information that they alleged to possess. Only decades later has anything substantial been made public, and only with crucial passages blacked-out, etc.; so, if Russia behaves the same way, then they will be able to claim that they are merely following what has by now become standard Western practice. Conceivably, World War III could be waged on that basis.

However, later in the day on April 13th, the names of the two willing witnesses were released, as reported by Russian Television:

The UK rejected the accusations, with British UN Ambassador Karen Pierce calling them “grotesque,” “a blatant lie” and “the worst piece of fake news we’ve yet seen from the Russian propaganda machine.”

One of the interviews published by the ministry showed a man who said his name was Halil Ajij, and who said he was a medical student working at Douma’s only operational hospital. This is how he described the origin of the footage:

“On April 8, a bomb hit a building. The upper floors were damaged and a fire broke at the lower floors. Victims of that bombing were brought to us. People from the upper floors had smoke poisoning. We treated them, based on their suffocation.”

Ajij said that a man unknown to him came and said there was a chemical attack and panic ensued. “Relatives of the victims started dousing each other with water. Other people, who didn’t seem to have medical training, started administering anti-asthma medicine to children. We didn’t see any patient with symptoms of a chemical weapons poisoning,” he said.

The first photos claiming to show the aftermath of the alleged chemical attack on April 7 were published online on the same day, and featured the bodies of many people, including children, some with foam around their mouths and noses. Footage from the hospital was released on Sunday, with the sources behind it claiming that it had been shot on Saturday.

[Major-General Igor] Konashenkov said Russia hoped that international monitors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is due to investigate the circumstances of the incident, will help establish the truth.

The OPCW investigators are due to arrive in Douma on Saturday, April 14th. If the planned invasion does not occur prior to their arrival, then the likelihood is that any such invasion will be postponed until after their report of findings is issued.

One may reasonably expect that, if the investigators are allowed by the U.S., UK, and allies, to complete their work (the U.N.’s WMD investigators were told on 17 March 2003 to abandon their work and leave Iraq so that they wouldn’t die in Bush-Blair’s invasion which occurred three days later), then extensive secret negotiations will be occurring behind the scenes, in order to determine whether a public resolution of this matter will be able to be reached that does not entail the alleged humanitarian invasion.

*

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Condemning the US-led Aggression on Syria: In Support of the Syrian People, International Law and True Peacemaking

April 14th, 2018 by Jan Oberg

1. The US-British-French attack on Syria on April 14, 2018 is a clear and indisputable case of aggression according to international law, and to the UN Charter in particular. And it lacks, like many unilateral wars before it, a UN Security Council mandate.

2. The presence in Syria of non-Syrian armed forces and facilities, of whatever kind, with the exception of Iranian and Russian forces and facilities which are there at the invitation of the Syrian government, is a case of aggression according to international law, including the UN Charter. Article 51 of that Charter states that every member of the UN has a right to self-defence when faced with aggression.

3. The war in and on Syria has never been predominantly a civil war but, rather, an international war, instigated by tens of thousands of Jihadi militants and terrorists who were supported, armed, trained and supplied by Saudi Arabia and some other Persian Gulf sheikhdoms and by the West.

Furthermore, it is a consequence of a series of underlying, decade-long conflicts in and around Syria and the larger region that have been exploited, misunderstood and misused by foreign powers, NATO members in particular. A solid conflict diagnosis upon which a prognosis and a treatment could be based was of no interest to those who run and profit from the MIMACs, Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complexes.

4. Even if one assumes that the government and president of Syria are the main/only culprits and the worst violaters of human rights on earth, the way that the Syrian conflict has been handled by Western governments over the past seven years has been outrageously wrong and counterproductive.

In this vicious conflict, around 400 000 people have been killed, half of the innocent civilians turned into internally displaced persons, and millions of refugees have fled to the West and neighbouring countries, and a large part of a country with a 7000-year history and culture has been destroyed and turned to rubble.

5. One example of these peace-preventive, violence-promoting policies is the decision by ”Friends of Syria” in Marrakesh, Morocco, on December 12, 2012 to oust Syria’s legitimate government by decree and set up a Syrian National Council of 300 people as the only legitimate representative of the Syrian people of 24 million without asking them.

6. Another example is the provision – in particular by Turkey, a NATO member, and other allies of the West such as the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia – in terms of money, weapons, ammunition, intelligence, secret forces on the ground to the benefit of anybody who belonged to what could be called RIOTs – Rebels, Insurgency, Opposition and Terrorist, the latter in particular. In this case the West has supported terrorism much more than fought it, with the possible exception of ISIS which has been largely defeated in Syria also thanks to the Russian military presence.

7. In this concrete case the given reason – or pretext – is an alleged chemical attack in Douma which was the last RIOT-held area in Ghouta. It happened after it had been liberated by government and assisting forces. Immediately after the alleged chemical attack, a Twitter message was posted, written (or perhaps not) by US President Trump himself, in which he points to the Syrian government – ”Animal Assad” – Russia and Iran as most likely responsible.

Conspicuously, this aggression on Syria takes place before there is a shred of evidence of what chemical weapons were used or who the perpetrator was. The OPCW – the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – team already dispatched has just begun its investigative work on the ground in Syria. In a lawful society, punishment should never precede fact-based conviction.

8. The perpetrators of this aggression on Syria have taken a huge risk – without any acceptance by the international community in whatever form or shape – that the violence will escalate and drag in other countries militarily – be it Saudi-Arabia, Israel, the Gulf States, Iran and even Russia and NATO member Turkey. Should Russia find that ”enough is enough” at this point, the risk is very high that the world will witness a conflagration in a region and a country that has already suffered far too much because of helter-skelter, colonialist, interventionist Western policies over the past century.

9. One must indeed wonder why this completely unacceptable and non-proportional attack is possible today without worldwide popular protests. It has to do with, among other factors, a mainly manufactured black-and-white media narrative as to what Syria is about. France has financed most of the RIOT media coverage from inside Syria for years.

The US and other NATO countries a series of public relation efforts as well as the documented fake “humanitarian” organisation, the White Helmets, who operates only in RIOT-controlled areas. They are connected mainly with the terrorist Al Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front. These rather Grey Helmets have provided Hollywood-style imagery and “facts” that aims to provoke foreign intervention (such as advocacy of a No-Fly Zone). White Helmets footage from Douma, too, that has been extensively used (but often blinded) by Western media to provide ”evidence” that serve as a pretext for this aggression – and it’s not for the first time.

10. Altogether, the uniformity in perspectives, the lack of source verification and independent research, the omitted and fake news since 2011, the systematic apportioning of guilt, as well as the simplifications of Syria and the Middle East as a conflict zone, easily represents the lowest level of professional mainstream media news coverage in recent times. It has been overwhelmingly war-promoting and excluded alternative – such as international law, conflict-resolution and peacemaking – perspectives more than any of the earlier major wars.

11. Finally, and most importantly, the West seems to lack any long-term strategy to deal with the Syrian crisis or with the Middle East as a whole. Instead, it lurches from one extreme to another. At one time, it supports the terrorists, and at other times it vows to destroy them. One day it declares President Assad to be the best safeguard against the terrorists, the next it works for his downfall. One day, it provides proof about the meddling of its Middle Eastern allies in terrorist operations in Syria and beyond, and the next day it cosies up with the same dictators who have been the biggest supporters of terrorism.

Above all, it has no plans about what would replace the current Syrian government if it is toppled. Would the divergent and warring RIOTerrorists be able to bring about any peace and stability to that war-torn country or would they just exacerbate the problem and result in greater terrorism?

What would the extension of that conflict to the rest of the Middle East achieve, and how would the world, and most particularly Europe, cope with the consequences of even greater instability in the region and millions of refugees that will pour out of the affected countries?

These and many other essentially important strategic questions have gone fundamentally unanswered in the rush to more war and bloodshed.

*

In summary, we do not know who exactly did what in Douma at this point. Only the perpetrators themselves do.

But irrespective of any judgment as to who committed the criminal attack in Douma, we Associates of The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, condemn in the strongest possible terms the dastardly attack in Douma as we do any other use of chemical attacks anywhere else, and we call for the punishment of the perpetrators when they are clearly identified.

Irresponsibly and non-rationally, this US-British-French attack increases markedly the risk of major war that is not based on any legality – not to mention legitimacy and moral considerations.

At the same time, TFF strongly condemns any military action and the rush to war before any independent investigation has been carried out. It believes that any military action reveals a tragic reduction in intellectual, moral and diplomatic strength.

We call for a speedy meeting of the leaders of the countries involved in the Syrian conflict, including all regional countries, to find a peaceful and lasting solution to this terrible tragedy that would ensure an immediate end to hostilities, the pacification of the country perhaps by a large U.N. peacekeeping mission followed by a U.N.-supervised election and the reconstruction of the country and the return of the refugees to their homes.

Modalities can be discussed, of course, but it is clear that a long-term solution requires some fundamentally new approaches based upon an understanding of the underlying conflicts and a reduction by all sides of the belief in military means as a road to peace.

It must be clear to all now, that after seven years of terrible bloodshed, the road to real peace in Syria has neither military means nor ends. That road will have to be built, instead, on self-reflection, conflict-resolution knowledge, dialogue and honesty as well as political good will.

This attack speaks volumes about a tragic, exceptionalist defiance of international law, an ethical and rhetorical decay and complete intellectual disarmament upon which its raw violence thrives.

The world must say stop to this type of irresponsible politics before it is too late!

Therefore, any military action – such as this – should cease. It will only make everything worse for all sides, the Syrian people in particular. The innocent citizens are the only ones we at TFF stand by – here as in all other conflicts we’ve engaged in over the last three decades.

This attack must be used constructively to learn the civilisational lesson of just how counterproductive and plain wrong it is to place militarism over and above policy-making based on analysis, moral considerations and comprehensive analysis.

The world must, therefore, now come together and redouble its efforts at finding a peaceful solutions to this conflict as well as other conflicts – in accordance with the UN Charter’s Article 1 which states that peace shall be established by peaceful means.

Peace first!

Farhang Jahanpour
TFF Board member

Annette Schiffmann
TFF Board member

John Scales Avery
TFF Associate

Christina Spannar
TFF founder

Jan Oberg
TFF director and founder

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US Launches Impotent Attack on Non-existent “Chemical Facilities”

April 14th, 2018 by Tony Cartalucci

The US, UK, and France announced strikes on what they call, “Syria’s chemical weapons program.” 

The use of stand-off weapons such as cruise missiles and air-to-ground missiles reflects the US and its allies’ fear of Syrian and Russia anti-aircraft defense systems.

The Syrian and Russian governments announced that 71 of over 100 missiles fired were intercepted, according to Russian media. Targets struck had already been evacuated or were not currently in use.

CNN in its article, “US, UK and France launch Syria strikes targeting Assad’s chemical weapons,” would claim:

The US, UK and France launched strikes against targets at three sites in Syria in the early hours of Saturday morning, following a week of threats of retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians in the Damascus enclave of Douma. 

“I ordered the United States armed forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapon capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,” Trump said late Friday at the White House.

Of course, the phrase, “associated with the chemical weapon capabilities” of Syria is intentionally ambiguous.

Considering that any attack on actual, currently active chemical weapon facilities in Syria would risk the spread of toxic chemicals over civilian areas – attacking such sites would contravene the entire supposed purpose of the US-led attack – protecting Syrian civilians from “chemical weapons.”

Considering that any attack on actual, currently active chemical weapon facilities in Syria would risk the spread of toxic chemicals over civilian areas – attacking such sites would contravene the entire supposed purpose of the US-led attack – protecting Syrian civilians from “chemical weapons.” 

The fear of even industrial chemical facilities being targeted by terrorists to spread clouds of deadly toxins over civilian populations has been a familiar theme throughout America’s supposed “War on Terror.”

The Washington Post in a December 2001 article titled, “Chemical Plants Are Feared as Targets,” would describe the possible impact of an explosion at a chemical plant in Tennessee, claiming:

If those chemicals had been released, as many as 60,000 people who live within reach of the ensuing vapor cloud could have faced death or serious injury, according to the plant’s worst-case estimate.

Obviously, US-led strikes on chemical facilities in Syria – had they existed – would have led to similarly catastrophic threats to the civilian population of Syria, calling into question both Washington’s credibility, and the alleged purpose behind this recent act of military aggression.

Popular Mechanics, a publication that eagerly promotes Pentagon endeavors around the globe, published an article on the eve of the US-led missile strikes titled, “These Are Syria’s Chemical Weapons. Here’s How To Destroy Them,” admitting:

Due to the very nature of chemical weapons, an explosive attack would spread lethal agents over a wide area, meaning more civilian casualties. 

Racing to Beat OPCW Investigation

The US-led attack came just before the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation into the Douma incident could begin. Just before the attack, Russia openly and directly accused the United Kingdom specifically of staging the Douma incident.

This has added further suspicion surrounding US-UK claims regarding Douma. Both the US and the UK notoriously lied to the world ahead of the disastrous 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. It would later turn out that claims of Iraq having “weapons of mass destruction,” including chemical weapons, were intentional, fabricated lies.

Washington’s Possible Options

Attempts to frame the Syrian government for using chemical weapons has become increasingly desperate and transparent. Future attempts are likely to result in even greater global diplomatic and public backlash, suspicion, and the further undermining of Western credibility.

It was clear that the supposed poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, UK was engineered as an attempt to undermine Russia’s credibility within the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) ahead of a vote on action against Syria regarding the yet-to-be staged chemical weapons attack in Douma, northeast of Damascus.

Although the likelihood of Russia being removed from the UNSC was remote, the West calculated that the political and diplomatic fallout they engineered would be enough to pressure Russia in Syria in the wake of the second staged chemical attack in Douma.

With this elaborate, but transparently baseless string of accusations being aimed at Syria and Russia now falling apart – falling short of simply withdrawing from Syria – the US and its allies have a limited number of options remaining for provoking a war it hopes can remove the Syrian government from power and reassert US hegemony over the Middle East.

US-based corporate-funded policy think-tank, the Brookings Institution in its 2009 paper,  “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF), in relation to provoking war with Iran, would note (emphasis added):

...it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

As many of Brookings’ recommendations for Iran have now been repeatedly used on Syria, this option may manifest itself in several ways.

Before and after this most recent and impotent strike on Syria, Israel has claimed of an impending Iranian attack on its territory. Such an attack would – again – serve only as a pretext for the US and its allies to intervene in Syria amid a war Syria and its Russian and Iranian allies have already won.

Israel may stage an attack on its own forces – or an attack on US, British, or French forces in the region may be staged. Unlike an alleged or staged chemical attack on civilians, staging a military attack on Western forces and their regional allies would allow an immediate and much larger military response.

What America’s Impotence Means for Syria and its Allies 

A desperate and declining empire is a dangerous empire. The US missile strikes were careful to avoid any targets near Russian positions. Russia simply expanding those positions and creating an increasingly overt presence between the US and the Syrian government would further diminish the options and impact regarding future US military aggression.

Russia’s ability to communicate clearly to US interests the finality of its commitment in Syria and the consequences of continued US military aggression in the region has already resulted in US hesitation.

Despite the scale of the recent US attack, it was clearly an attack made out of desperate frustration – an attempt to “fall forward” – tripping over its clumsy pretext while trying to advance its agenda. In the process, it has compromised its agenda further, and further dulled the propaganda tools it has overused in relation to its floundering proxy war in Syria.

Managing the eviction of the US from the Middle East will be a slow, arduous, and dangerous process that will require maximum patience and persistence. The Syrian government and its allies’ weathering of this recent attack once again proves that time is on their side and their collective discipline in the face of America’s increasingly reckless foreign policy will continue to confound and complicate US objectives.

Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran must continue this process, preparing for future provocations including staged attacks on Western forces in the region, while patiently and systematically evicting the US and its proxies from both Syrian territory, and from the region.

For the rest of the general public appalled by US military aggression and seeking ways to resist it – the continued support of, contribution to, and participation in the alternative media as well as the boycott and permanent replacement of the corporate special interests driving US foreign policy are viable options.

*

This article was originally published on Land Destroyer Report.

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Blind Assault: Trump Strikes Syria

April 14th, 2018 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

Feeling that some display of force was needed, US president Donald Trump issued orders on Friday to demonstrate some form of muscle, albeit exercised some thousands of miles away.  “A short time ago, I ordered the United States Armed Forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.”  The United Kingdom and France also mucked in.

What was it all in aid of?  There would be no redrawing of borders, no toppling of Assad, and even a possible aggravation of the security tangle that exists in a beleaguered country.  It all pointed to staged outrage resulting in indulgent punishment, an act of violent scolding at the end of missiles for a claimed chemical attack by Syrian government forces last weekend that left over 40 people dead.  In Trump’s words, “These are not the actions of a man.  They are the crimes of a monster.”

UK Prime Minister Theresa May eschewed notions that the assault was “about intervening in a civil war” let alone initiating some effort at regime change. “We would have preferred an alternative path. But on this occasion there is none.”

US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis insisted that the assaults were confined to “the chemical weapons-type targets.  We were not out to expand this; we were very precise and proportionate. But at the same time, it was a heavy strike.”

Earlier in the week, there had been muttering, concern, and retraction. Trump was giving an enormous heads-up to his Russian counterparts on Wednesday.  “Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart’!”  On Thursday, he cooled off.  “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place.  Could be very soon or not so soon at all!”

This did not stop some in the analyst’s arm chair from considering that caution and assessment had prevailed.  “The best thing that happened this week,” mused David Ignatius, “was that the policy process paused for a careful consideration of military options.”

Ignatius, with feelers deep in the Washington security establishment, praised Trump for his deferral of action to allow for “more study” before claiming that US planners had one fundamental problem: “how to calibrate military action this time so that it sends a clear deterrence message to Syria and Russia, without escalating the conflict.”

Certainly, Assad seemed to have been having things his own way.  The chemical attack supplied an ideal pretext to assert authority in the name of protecting international norms, a concept that has never sat well with Trump. (Norms, you ask?  What norms?)

Such strikes also seemed to be engagement on the cheap, with Trump having made it clear earlier this month that he wanted to be rid of the Syrian problem.  “I want to get out,” he explained to those in attendance at a news conference with Baltic leaders. “I want to bring our troops back home.”  His rationale was not complex: the “primary reason” for retaining a US presence was premised on the defeat of Islamic State militants, which was “almost completed”.

In expressing such views, Trump also reserved a few swipes against allies which have become a diplomatic staple, including the ever problematic Saudi Arabia.  “Saudi Arabia is very interested in our decision.  And I said, Well, you know, you want us to stay?  Maybe you’re going to have to pay.”

This raises a nice point, given Trump’s own words of disapproval directed against Teheran and Moscow in justifying the missile strike.  “The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep.  No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rogue states, brutal tyrants and murderous dictators.”

Within Congress, there has been automatic approval, even from the Democrats, papered over with concern that taking an issue with such an assault would make them seem quietist.  This is the age of macho and they must be seen to play along.

There were, however, qualifying pointers.  Nancy Pelosi, House Minority leader, made the apposite observation that, “One night of airstrikes is not a substitute for a clear, comprehensive Syria strategy.”  But not wanting to be left off the blood soaked wagon, Democrat Chuck Schumer deemed the airstrikes “appropriate” though “the administration has to be careful about not getting us into a greater and more involved war in Syria.” The response of being too late comes to mind.

The evaluations have yet to come in, be there the number of missiles that found their targets; those shot out of the sky (a Syrian claim has been made that 13 missiles were shot down by air defences near Al-Kiswa); and the issue of whether substantial infrastructure damage was inflicted.  Even the Syrian government’s own chemical arsenal has been deemed by France’s Emmanuel Macron to be “clandestine”, which is always a testing point on how best to assess success.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence was not even waiting, claiming that “initial indications are that the precision of the Storm Shadow weapons and meticulous target planning have resulted in a successful attack.”  But this is the platform of illusions, and this presidency, the product of dreams and nightmares, is a continuation of it.

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Trump’s Punitive Air Strikes against Syria. No Evidence that Assad was Behind the Alleged Chemical Weapons Attack

April 14th, 2018 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

On Friday night ET, in the early hours of the morning in Damascus, the US, UK and France launched airstrikes allegedly (yet to be verified) against three military targets, according to Trump’s TV address.

The attacks were intended to “punish Bashar Al Assad”  for an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma. “Assad is killing his own people” with chemical weapons. The strikes were scheduled to coincide with the arrival of the OPCW investigation team, which was scheduled to start its investigation into the alleged CW attack on April 14th. Will that investigation be allowed to proceed? According to Tony Cartalucci, there is Zero Evidence: 

To date, all supposed evidence comes from Western-funded militants and their auxiliaries including the US-European government-funded front, the so-called “Syria Civil Defense,” better known at the “White Helmets.” Unverified photographs and video of apparent victims have been the sole sources cited by the US.

It was a political lie from the start and then it became a media lie, which was used as an instrument of war propaganda.

The war criminals in high office blame the victims. Trump accuses Assad: “Persistent violations of international law”, by whom? What is the legality of Trump’s punitive bombing campaign?

 Britain and France joined the United States in the strikes in a coordinated operation that was intended to show Western resolve in the face of what the leaders of the three nations called persistent violations of international law. Mr. Trump characterized it as the beginning of a sustained effort to force Mr. Assad to stop using banned weapons, but only ordered a limited one-night operation that hit three targets.

“These are not the actions of a man,” Mr. Trump said of last weekend’s attack in a televised address from the White House Diplomatic Room. “They are crimes of a monster instead.” (Guardian, May 13, 2018)

It is worth noting that there were divisions within Trump’s war cabinet. According to an earlier statement, Defense Secretary Mattis was hesitant regarding the conduct of the air strikes.

Earlier on Friday, President Trump had intimated that “a final decision on possible military strikes against Syria … could happen “very soon or not so soon at all” following warnings by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis that “such an attack carried the risk of spinning out of control, suggesting caution ahead of a decision on how to respond to a [chemical weapons] attack against civilians last weekend [in Douma].”

Killing the Truth

Hours before the decision to strike Syria, there were hesitations. Acknowledged by the war cabinet, there was no firm evidence that the Syrian government was behind the chemical attack. The OPCW team arrived on the 13th to undertake this investigation. It was slated to start its work on the 14th. The air strikes have been instrumental in totally disrupting the conduct of the OPCW investigation.

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Breaking: Trump Strikes Syria. Pack of Lies. Killing the Truth. Statements of US President Trump and UK Prime Minister May

April 14th, 2018 by Global Research News

Official statements of President Donald Trump, April 13, 2018

What we are dealing with is a pack of lies.

Blaming the victims of US war crimes

My fellow Americans.

A short time ago I ordered the United States armed forces to launch precision strikes on targets associated with the chemical weapons capabilities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. A combined operation with the armed forces of France and the United Kingdom is now underway. We thank them both.

Tonight, I want to speak with you about why we have taken this action. One year ago, Assad launched a savage chemical weapons attack against his own innocent people. [LIE] The United States responded with 58 missile strikes that destroyed 20 percent of the Syrian air force. [This statement is bizarre, LIE]

Last Saturday the Assad regime again deployed chemical weapons to slaughter innocent civilians near the town of Douma [LIE] near Syrian capitol of Damascus. It was a pattern of chemical weapons use by that very terrible regime. The evil and despicable attack left mothers and fathers, infants and children thrashing in pain and gasping for air. These are not the actions of a man. They are crimes of a monster instead.

Following the horrors of World War I a century ago, civilized nations joined together to ban chemical warfare. Chemical weapons are uniquely dangerous, not only because they inflict gruesome suffering, but because even small amounts can unleash widespread devastation.

The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread, and use of chemical weapons. Establishing this deterrent is a vital national security interest of the United States. The combined American, British, and French response to these atrocities will integrate all instruments of our national power: military, economic, and diplomatic. We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.

I also have a message tonight for the two governments most responsible for supporting, equipping, and financing the criminal Assad regime. To Iran and to Russia, I ask: What kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children? The nations of the world can be judged by the friends they keep. No nation can succeed in the long run by promoting rouge states, brutal tyrants, and murderous dictators.

In 2013 President Putin and his government promised the world that they would guarantee the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons. Assad’s recent attack and today’s response are the direct result of Russia’s failure to keep that promise. Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path, or if it will join with civilized nations as a force for stability and peace.

Hopefully some day we’ll get along with Russia, and maybe even Iran — but maybe not. I will say this, the United States has a lot to offer, with the greatest and most powerful economy in the history of the world.

In Syria, the United States, with but a small force being used to eliminate what is left of ISIS [LIE, the ISIS is supported covertly by the US and its allies], is doing what is necessary to protect the American people. Over the last year, nearly 100 percent of the territory once controlled by the so-called ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq has been liberated and eliminated.[LIE]

The United States has also rebuilt our friendships across the Middle East. We have asked our partners to take greater responsibility for securing their home region, including contributing large amounts of money for the resources, equipment, and all of the anti-ISIS effort. Increased engagement from our friends including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, and others can ensure that Iran does not profit from the eradication of ISIS.

America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria, under no circumstances. As other nations step up their contributions, we look forward to the day when we can bring our warriors home, and great warriors they are. Looking around our very troubled world, Americans have no illusions. We cannot purge the world of evil or act everywhere there is tyranny. No amount of American blood or treasure can produce lasting peace, and security, in the Middle East.

It’s a troubled place. We will try to make it better, but it is a troubled place. The United States will be a partner and a friend, but the fate of the region lies in the hands of its own people. In the last century, we looked straight into the darkest places of the human soul. We saw the anguish that can be unleashed and the evil that can take hold. By the end of World War I, more than one million people had been killed or injured by chemical weapons. We never want to see that ghastly specter return. So today, the nations of Britain, France, and the United States of American have have marshalled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality.

Tonight I ask all Americans to say a prayer for our noble warriors and our allies as they carry out their missions. We pray that God will bring comfort to those suffering in Syria. We pray that God there guide the whole region of dignity and peace. We pray that God will continue to watch over and bless the United States of America. Thank you and good night. Thank you.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May Confirms that Britain is involved in a combined bombing operation with the US and France directed against Syria

Below is the Full Statement of PM May:

This evening I have authorised British armed forces to conduct co-ordinated and targeted strikes to degrade the Syrian Regime’s chemical weapons capability and deter their use.[LIE, Syria’s CM were decommissioned under the supervision of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons]

We are acting together with our American and French allies.

In Douma, last Saturday a chemical weapons attack killed up to 75 people, including young children, in circumstances of pure horror. [LIE]

The fact of this attack should surprise no-one.

The Syrian Regime has a history of using chemical weapons against its own people in the most cruel and abhorrent way.[LIES, ample evidence that the US-NATO rebels were trained in the use of CM, confirmed by CNN]

And a significant body of information including intelligence indicates the Syrian Regime is responsible for this latest attack.[LIE]

This persistent pattern of behaviour must be stopped – not just to protect innocent people in Syria from the horrific deaths and casualties caused by chemical weapons but also because we cannot allow the erosion of the international norm that prevents the use of these weapons.

We have sought to use every possible diplomatic channel to achieve this.

But our efforts have been repeatedly thwarted. Even this week the Russians vetoed a Resolution at the UN Security Council which would have established an independent investigation into the Douma attack. [LIE An investigation is ongoing under auspices of OPCW]

So there is no practicable alternative to the use of force to degrade and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Regime.

This is not about intervening in a civil war. It is not about regime change.

It is about a limited and targeted strike that does not further escalate tensions in the region and that does everything possible to prevent civilian casualties.

And while this action is specifically about deterring the Syrian Regime, it will also send a clear signal to anyone else who believes they can use chemical weapons with impunity. [LIE, US sponsored rebels use CW]

At this time, my thoughts are with our brave British servicemen and women – and our French and American partners – who are carrying out their duty with the greatest professionalism.

The speed with which we are acting is essential in co-operating with our partners to alleviate further humanitarian suffering and to maintain the vital security of our operations.

This is the first time as Prime Minister that I have had to take the decision to commit our armed forces in combat – and it is not a decision I have taken lightly.

I have done so because I judge this action to be in Britain’s national interest.

We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalised – within Syria, on the streets of the UK, or anywhere else in our world.

We would have preferred an alternative path. But on this occasion there is none.

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A Likely Path to Nuclear Annihilation?

April 13th, 2018 by Eric Zuesse

U.S. President Donald Trump asserted on the morning of April 12th, “Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!” This statement from him is interpreted here as constituting a public promise from him to start the overt phase of America’s invasion of sovereign Syrian territory, no longer just continue the prior phase, which has relied instead upon America’s proxy forces, which originally were the ones that were led by (U.S.-Saudi-Qatari-UAE supplied and armed) Al Qaeda in Syria, but increasingly now are Syria’s Kurds, which have taken control over a third of Syrian territory, in Syria’s northeast. This area includes the oil-producing region, from Deir Ezzor northward, and the conquest would cripple Syria’s economic future, so that U.S-Saudi control of the entire country would be only a matter of time.

On April 4th, Emily Burchfield, a program assistant at the Atlantic Council — NATO’s leading PR agency — headlined the following, in order to explain the U.S. military’s (i.e., NATO’s) objectives in Syria (and the whole headline-bloc is quoted here, because it succinctly states the article itself):

Analysis: Washington Still Has Work to Do in Former ISIS Territories

Before the U.S. pulls out of Syria, Washington needs to address a governance gap left in some former ISIS territories. Otherwise, marginalized Arab communities will likely ally with the Syrian government or extremist forces, writes Emily Burchfield of the Atlantic Council.

The U.S. military, in other words, cannot accept that “marginalized Arab communities” will “ally with the Syrian government.” Analogous within the United States itself would be if some foreign power refused to accept that “marginalized White communities” will “ally with the U.S. government.” In other words: this is clearly a military demand (a demand that came to be expressed here by a paid employee of NATO’s top PR agency, the Atlantic Council) to break up the country.

Whereas the prior U.S. President, Barack Obama, had tried everything short of all-out direct military invasion — as contrasted to indirect invasion by U.S. proxy armies of jihadist mercenaries — in order to conquer or at least to break up Syria, the current U.S. President, Trump, is resorting now to the direct military invasion route: he’s taking the path that Obama had declined to take.

Syria’s allies are Iran and Russia. These allies have enabled Syria to survive this long, and they all would be capitulating to the U.S. if they accepted the U.S. military invasion of Syria. For them to do that, would be for them to display, to the entire world, that the United States is their master. The U.S. Empire would, in effect, be official, no longer merely aspirational.

In the case of Russia, since it is the other nuclear super-power, this would be not just a surrender to the other nuclear super-power, but also Russia’s doing that without even waging a conventional-forces war against the U.S. Empire. That is extremely unlikely.

Consequently, Russia is probably now (on April 12th) coordinating with Iran, and with its allies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, a conventional-forces war against the invaders.

If that conventional-forces war inflicts more damage to U.S.-and-allied forces than they inflict against Syria, that would, in military terms, constitute a “military defeat” for the U.S.

This would leave the U.S. only two options:

Either accept that Russia is another nuclear super-power (which the U.S. Deep State has refused to accept), and end the previously subterranean war to conquer it that was started by George Herbert Walker Bush on the night of 24 February 1990, or else blitz-attack Russia itself in order to eliminate enough of Russia’s retaliatory weapons so as to ‘win’ the nuclear war — i.e., inflict even more destruction upon Russia than Russia would still possess and control the surviving weaponry to inflict against America in response.

*

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

9/11 Truth and Justice: Petition to Report Federal Crimes Concerning 9/11 to Special Grand Jury

April 13th, 2018 by The Lawyers' Committee for 9-11 Inquiry, Inc.

Click here to read the full petition.

Click here to become a signatory.

L’Italia ripudia la guerra   

April 13th, 2018 by Comitato No Nato No Guerra

L’annunciato attacco missilistico Usa alla Siria rischia di far esplodere nel Mediterraneo un conflitto dagli esiti imprevedibili.

La Repubblica Araba Siriana, Stato sovrano membro delle Nazioni Unite, èsoggetta dal 2011 a una guerra di aggressione. Essa viene condotta dagli Stati Uniti e dalle altre potenze della Nato, da Israele e dalle monarchie del Golfo.

Per anni, attraverso una rete internazionale organizzata dalla Cia, sono state finanziate e armate organizzazioni terroriste, compreso l’Isis, per demolire dall’interno lo Stato siriano, come giàfatto con quello libico. Il piano peròèfallito in seguito all’intervento militare russo a sostegno della Repubblica Araba Siriana.

Quale pretesto dell’annunciato attacco missilistico, Washington accusa senza alcuna prova il governo siriano di aver usato armi chimiche, ignorando il fatto che la Siria ha completato nel 2014 il disarmo chimico sotto controllo internazionale. Vi sono invece prove che il Pentagono ha fornito tramite contractor armi chimiche e relativo addestramento a gruppi terroristi in Siria.

Ogni volta che gli Usa vogliono aggredire un paese, costruiscono una falsa accusa per attaccarlo: ad esempio, nel 1964 inscenarono l’«incidente del Golfo del Tonchino»(rivelatosi poi falso) per bombardare il Nord Vietnam; nel 2003 accusarono l’Iraq di possedere  «armi di distruzione di massa»(rivelatesi poi inesistenti) per attaccare e invadere il paese.

L’annunciato attacco missilistico Usa alla Siria èin realtàuna sorta di dichiarazione di guerra alla Russia, fatta dal presidente Trump via Twitter: «La Russia si prepari, i nostri missili stanno arrivando, belli, nuovi e ‘intelligenti’!». La risposta di Mosca èstata pacata, ma allo stesso tempo decisa: ha avvertito che le forze russe in Siria abbatteranno i missili. Si crea un tal modo il piùgrave stato di tensione dalla fine della guerra fredda ad oggi.

In questa nuova e ancora piùpericolosa fase della escalation Usa/Nato contro la Russia, l’Italia èin prima fila. Le navi da guerra che si preparano ad attaccare la Siria dipendono dal Comando delle forze navali Usa in Europa,il cui quartier generale èa Napoli-Capodichino. Il Comando èagli ordini dell’ammiraglio che comanda allo stesso tempo la Forza congiunta Nato con quartier generale a Lago Patria (Napoli). L’operazione bellica èappoggiata dalla base aeronavale Usa di Sigonella e dalla stazione Usa di Niscemi del sistema Muos di trasmissioni navali.

L’Italia deve assolutamente sganciarsi da questa strategia di guerra, che viola  la nostra Costituzione,  in particolare il principio stabilito dall’Articolo 11: «L’Italia ripudia la guerra come strumento di offesa alla libertàdegli altri popoli e come mezzo di risoluzione delle controversie internazionali».

La presenza sul nostro territorio nazionale di comandi e basi militari statunitensi e l’appartenenza alla Nato sotto comando Usa privano la Repubblica Italiana della capacitàdi effettuare scelte autonome di politica estera e militare, decise democraticamente sulla base dei principi costituzionali.

Lanciamo di nuovo l’appello a lottare per un’Italia sovrana e neutrale.

Comitato No Guerra No Nato

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Who’s Who: American “Torture Apologists” Endorse Gina Haspel for CIA Director

April 13th, 2018 by Kevin Gosztola

An array of former intelligence and other government officials signed a letter to the Senate intelligence committee in support of Gina Haspel, the nominee for CIA director.

Haspel, who is currently the deputy CIA director, was briefly in charge of a black site prison in Thailand during President George W. Bush’s administration. She helped destroy evidence to cover up torture. Agency personnel nicknamed her “Bloody Gina.”

The officials signed on to the letter make up a veritable who’s who of individuals who escaped accountability for their actions in the Bush administration. They also include individuals who have developed a reputation as advocates for The Resistance™ to President Donald Trump.

It was signed by Jeremy Bash, Cofer Black, John Brennan, James Clapper, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, Henry Kissinger, Mike Morell, Mike Mukasey, John Negroponte, Leon Panetta, John Rizzo, Jose Rodriguez, George Tenet, Fran Townsend, and others.

“Ms. Haspel is a proven leader who inspires others and has what it takes to make tough calls in times of crisis. She is a true intelligence professional who brings care, integrity, and a commitment to the rule of law to her work every day,” the letter declares [PDF].

Nashiri.jpg

Her commitment to the “rule of law” includes approving the torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (image on the right), who was waterboarded at the CIA’s secret prison in Thailand when she was in charge.

Haspel also made the “tough call” to be a part of a CIA conspiracy to destroy videotapes showing the torture of Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, and as the chief of staff to National Clandestine Service chief Jose Rodriguez, she drafted a cable that approved the destruction. It even featured instructions on how to get rid of the tapes with an “industrial-strength shredder.”

The act inspired the Senate intelligence committee to pursue a study of the CIA’s torture program, which eventually led to a more than 6,000-page report documenting agency abuses.

The letter contends,

“It is truly telling that a broad spectrum of national security leaders from both Republican and Democratic administrations has voiced unequivocal support for her nomination,” and celebrates the bipartisan consensus around torture and holding officials accountable for war crimes.

“Given the nature of CIA’s mission, most of her achievements cannot be shared publicly,” the letter contends. “But we can tell you she has made vital contributions to the strength and security of our country and has dedicated her life to serving her fellow Americans.”

Records of her “achievements” or past actions could be declassified if the CIA had any respect for democracy.

In fact, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich urged CIA director Mike Pompeo to declassify certain information on Haspel so Americans were not kept in the dark when it came to her past. They contended the agency was violating an executive order on classified information, which prohibits keeping information hidden to conceal “violations of law” or to “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.”

That officials who were involved in the CIA torture program can recommend an official implicated in a crime to head the CIA is but another example of what happens and will continue to happen because there is no accountability for torture.

When Rodriguez oversaw the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, he played a key role in the adoption of torture techniques for use against terrorism detainees. He is a fervent torture advocate, who in a “60 Minutes” interview said he had to convince the agency to “put their big boy pants on” and authorize torture.

During the same interview, Rodriguez likened sleep deprivation to “jet lag” and muscle fatigue from stress positions to working out at the gym. He said the CIA is the “dark side.” When correspondent Lesley Stahl said, “So sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation. I mean, this is Orwellian stuff. The United States doesn’t do that,” Rodriguez replied, “Well we do.” And he insisted he had “no qualms” about committing acts that were once indisputably considered war crimes.

Mukasey, who was attorney general under Bush, defended the CIA after the torture report summary was released. He argued waterboarding is not torture because it “does not cause severe pain, and it does not cause long-term suffering.”

President Barack Obama released secret memos in 2009, which detailed torture techniques authorized against detainees. It included a memo by Stephen Bradbury that purported to answer CIA lawyer John Rizzo’s questions about whether techniques complied with international laws.

Screenshot from The Guardian

Mukasey and Hayden responded with a column in the Wall Street Journal that criticized Obama.

“Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies,” they contended.

From May 2006 to February 2009, Hayden misled or provided false information to the Senate intelligence committee on a regular basis. The torture report summary contains 37 pages of such examples, according to Human Rights First.

Hayden testified the “most serious injury” he knew about was “bruising as a result of shackling” and no detainee had died. (Gul Rahman died in CIA custody, and his estate won a settlement against contracted psychologists who were architects of torture.)

George Tenet was the CIA director from 1997 to 2004. Not only did he help the Bush administration lie America into a war in Iraq, but he also oversaw the institution and development of the torture program. Reports on interrogations of detainees were regularly sent to his desk. He had no objections. To this day, he defends the program and was part of an official rebuttal to the Senate torture report.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin proposed a 9/11-type commission on detainee abuse. In response, John Rizzo wrote an email on October 31, 2005, complaining about how it would “surface” the existence of torture tapes showing interrogations of Nashiri and Zubaydah.

“I think I need to be the skunk at the party again and see if the [CIA] director is willing to let us try one more time to get the right people downtown on board with the notion of our destroying the tapes.”

As documented by Human Rights First, Rizzo was aghast at President Bush when he made a statement on June 26, 2003, for the United Nations International Day in Support for Victims of Torture. Rizzo contacted the legal advisor to the National Security Council, John Bellinger, to say he was surprised and concerned. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said all prisoners were treated “humanely,” and Rizzo was worried “enhanced interrogations” might be discontinued.

Rizzo kept details about the torture of detainees from members of the National Security Council because he did not want Secretary of State Colin Powell to find out and “blow his stack.”

Several of the officials who signed the letter have records of exaggerating or lying about the alleged intelligence obtained through torture. Former director Porter Goss is one egregious offender.

One example involves Goss leaking classified information to NBC News’ “Dateline” program in 2005. The segment and accompanying online articles helped the CIA make that case that intelligence from CIA interrogations surpassed “any other intelligence on the subject of al Qaida and the construction of the network.” Articles said the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged 9/11 terrorism suspect, and Khallad bin Attash, which was not true.

This kind of fabrication to the press took place while the CIA was fighting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits in court. An attorney for the CIA noted that these disclosures to NBC made a legal declaration recently submitted “about the secrecy of the interrogation program a work of fiction.”

Cofer Black, who was the director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 1999 to May 2002, famously said after the 9/11 attacks the “gloves come off.” There is much that remains hidden from the public on his role in the rendition and torture of detainees. The CIA contends torture did not begin until Zubaydah was in custody in March 2002, and so the worst acts would have occurred when Black was no longer with the CIA (if the CIA is telling the truth). Yet, Black was involved in the official rebuttal to the Senate torture report that defended interrogations.

(Note: Black once worked for the mercenary company Blackwater in 2005, which obtained a contract to provide security for United States personnel in Iraq. The company was founded by Erik Prince and responsible for the Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in 2007, which killed 17 people and wounded 20 people.)

*

That brings us to those who support Haspel but often side with The Resistance™ to President Trump.

CIA Michael Morell.jpg

Mike Morell (image on the left), a former CIA director,  served as Tenet’s executive assistant when he was the head of the agency. Morell participated in the rebuttal to the Senate torture report and blasted its contents when the summary was released.

“Many of its main conclusions are simply not correct,” Morell told CBS News. “And much of the context of the times and much of the discussion that took place inside the executive branch and with the Congress about this program is not in this report.”

Morell endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, suggested Trump would threaten national security if elected, and criticized his “lack of respect for the rule of law.” But of course, he had no concerns about Trump potentially restarting the CIA’s infamous torture program.

Former director of national intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress when Wyden asked him if the NSA collected data on “millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.” He answered,

“Not wittingly. There are cases, where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.”

Yet, he has positioned himself as an opponent of Trump, taking a job with CNN as a regular commentator.

Clapper is not an ardent torture advocate like many others who signed the letter. He did not go along with Trump, when he said during his campaign that the U.S. should go back to waterboarding detainees. But then, how can Clapper endorse Haspel whose record is stained by waterboarding? Is it because he does not believe officials should face accountability?

Former CIA director Leon Panetta, who has appeared several times on NBC News and CBS since Trump’s election, is a vigorous opponent of Trump. He is no supporter of waterboarding.

“No one shouted out [Osama] bin Laden’s address when strapped to a waterboard,” he said.

However, he seems okay with some “unsavory techniques,” since he argues they led to the killing of bin Laden.

According to his memoir, while working under Obama, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told him, “The president wants to know who the fuck authorized this release to the committees,” after he provided documents on the Bush administration to the Senate intelligence committee for their report. Yet, apparently, there is some code that prevents him from opposing one of the CIA’s own, who was involved in criminal conduct.

Former CIA director John Brennan is an NBC and MSNBC contributor, who proclaimed on March 17,

“When the full extent of [Trump’s] venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, [he] will take [his] rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.”

But he did not shy away from defending the CIA following the torture report summary’s release, and he led the agency when it spied on Senate staffers involved in producing the report.

And then, there is Henry Kissinger, a well-seasoned war criminal. Kissinger supported the right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile [and Jorge Videla in Argentina], which tortured and killed thousands of people in secret detention camps. Many were dumped from planes into rivers. He encouraged these brutal acts.

Kissinger jeopardized efforts to end mass killings by the military dictatorship in Argentina in the 1970s.

His actions related to Cambodia led to destabilization that fueled the rise of the Khmer Rouge. He was responsible for at least three to four million deaths in Vietnam. He authorized the CIA’s training of the Shah’s brutal secret police, who carried out torture in Iran.

Of all the former officials, his support for “Bloody Gina” is the most understandable. It is also the most infuriating. Because if there were justice for American war criminals, he would have been tried long, long ago.

*

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof Press. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.”

For Decades Russia Has Been Forced to Respond to NATO Expansion

April 13th, 2018 by Shane Quinn

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in 1949 on the pretext of “containing Soviet influence”, has almost doubled in size within the past two decades alone. In 1998, NATO comprised 16 member states, but with repeated expansions up to Russia’s very borders, it now contains almost 30 countries.

Though seldom mentioned in mainstream discourse, NATO is a US-dominated organization, whose orders are issued from Washington and customarily obeyed. The US is by far the largest contributor to the alliance, spending more than all other member nations put together.

One of the critical reasons behind NATO’s formation almost 70 years ago, was to prevent Europe pursuing a path independent of America (a policy carefully concealed from the public). Among the first NATO signatories, were the former European imperial powers of France, Britain, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands. Now subservient to US domination, they would pose no threat to the great superpower, however unlikely the prospect may have been.

In the decades since, the European powers have meekly followed their master’s lead. Whether it be with regard the timid and servile attitude toward an increasingly expansionist Israel – or the provocative American-led policies directed at Russia, a country repeatedly invaded in the past, most recently by Hitler’s Germany.

Image result for joseph stalin

As the euphoria of victory in World War II dissipated, the USSR quickly replaced the Third Reich as the West’s public enemy number one. Previously, during the war years, the American and British leaders Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had affably called Joseph Stalin (image on the right), their Soviet counterpart, “Uncle Joe”. This despite the fact, just a few years before, Stalin had overseen a not inconsiderable level of bloodletting during the Great Purge.

Betraying a classic hallmark of Western hypocrisy, gone were any reservations relating to Stalin personally, or Russia, once they were undertaking a task of benefit to them. That is, Russia shouldering the vast majority of burden in defeating the most destructive regime in world history, Nazi Germany.

In war time, Roosevelt and Churchill willingly saw Stalin on more than one occasion, during world famous meetings that were mostly cordial. However, once his service to the West was performed, Stalin was no longer uncle but dictator – a pattern repeated later when the US and Britain heavily supported despots like the Shah, Suharto, Somoza, Pinochet, etc., before later often distancing themselves from them.

Upon Stalin’s death in March 1953, there was nothing to be heard from Churchill regarding the departed “Uncle Joe”. Churchill sent no condolences, made no comments, did not even post a sympathy card, despite having previously said that “Stalin never broke his word to me”.

The relationship between America and Britain toward the Soviet Union hardened during the presidency of Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman (1945-1953). As early as 1941 Truman, then a US senator, had said:

“If we see that Germany is winning [the war], we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible. Although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances”.

As a result of such hawkish views, it seems hardly surprising that NATO was formed during Truman’s presidency. He described NATO’s arrival as “a shield against aggression” whose aim it was “to promote and preserve peace throughout the world”.

In January 1949, following his successful re-election, Truman launched a tirade against Communism, asserting that the ideology “subjects the individual to arrest without lawful cause, punishment without trial”.

Truman’s criticisms were clearly directed at the USSR. Such pronouncements add weight to the later opinions of America’s political scientist, Samuel Huntington, who wrote in 1981 that the US has been conjuring the “misimpression that it is the Soviet Union you are fighting… ever since the Truman doctrine”.

Image result for mao zedong

Continuing his re-election speech, Truman assured that the US was going to “restore peace, stability, and freedom to the world”. Just months later, America suffered the immeasurable “loss of China” after forces loyal to Mao Zedong (image on the left) in mainland China routed the Kuomintang, US-backed forces.

Enraged at China’s exit from US control, Truman quickly denounced Zedong’s Communist Party as being “a cut throat organization” that will “never be recognized by us as the government of China”. It mattered little to Truman that Zedong enjoyed mass popular support, that had been building for years prior to his October 1949 takeover. Truman derogatorily labeled the revolutionary leader as “Mousie Dung”, keeping in line with his early disregard for the “Chinaman”.

Critics in the US described the Chinese revolution as “an avoidable catastrophe” – while hundreds of thousands of US sympathizers fled to Taiwan, an island about 400 miles east of Hong Kong. Truman’s belief that the US would be a force for “peace, stability and freedom” has, in the unfolding seven decades, proved dramatically misguided. Indeed, some of the most severe crimes occurred during Truman’s presidency.

Two years after his address, in 1951, the US Air Force was virtually leveling Korea in the east, while also releasing thousands of tons of napalm upon the country, a lethal incendiary fluid. The Koreans suffered an appalling loss of life during the war against their country, with the use of napalm upon civilian areas being banned as late as 1980.

Elsewhere, led by the US, the original signatories of NATO agreed that,

“An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”.

Policies like this increased the risk of conflict.

Discounted were views like those of US Senator Robert A. Taft, the eldest son of former president William Howard Taft (in office, 1909-1913). Senator Taft insisted that NATO was “not a peace program”, but in reality represented “a war program”.

In July 1949, Senator Taft further criticized the newly formed NATO by saying the military alliance could instigate “a third world war”, which “might easily destroy civilization on this earth”. Senator Taft was not a wild-eyed radical, but a conservative politician, and member of the Republican Party for many years. It is difficult to imagine such comments as his being uttered today from a Republican senator, or indeed a Democrat.

However, Senator Taft’s views hold as much resonance now as they did then. One can assume he would be aghast at NATO enlargement that has continued to Russia’s borders. In the post-Soviet Union era, almost a dozen countries all previously part of the USSR-led Warsaw Pact, are now members of NATO – including Latvia and Estonia along Russia’s frontiers.

The Warsaw Pact was formed in mid-July 1955, primarily to combat the growing threat of NATO, hardly an unreasonable strategy. NATO had been expanding as early as 1952 with the accession of Turkey and Greece. West Germany then joined NATO in early July 1955, just days before the Warsaw Pact’s creation.

As a result, NATO has produced a militarized domino effect throughout Europe, whereby Russia was compelled to react to renewed threats against her. In recent years, Vladimir Putin has intervened in Georgia and the Ukraine, both on Russia’s borders, to prevent those countries also “joining NATO”, as publicly announced at a 2008 NATO summit.

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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.

The Trump Regime Is Insane

April 13th, 2018 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Is it insane to push for war with Russia, a major nuclear power?

Is it insane to threaten Russia and bring false charges against her?

Is it insane to brag about killing “hundreds of Russians”? 

A normal person would answer “yes” to the three questions. So what does this tell us about Trump’s government as these insane actions are the principle practice of Trump’s government?

Does anyone doubt that Nikki Haley is insane?

Does anyone doubt that John Bolton is insane?

Does anyone doubt that Mike Pompeo is insane?

Does this mean that Trump is insane for appointing to the top positions insane people who foment war with a nuclear power?

Does this mean that Congress is insane for approving these appointments?

These are honest questions.

Assuming we avoid the Trump-promised Syrian showdown, how long before the insane Trump regime orchestrates another crisis?

The entire world should understand that because of the existence of the insane Trump regime, the continued existence of life on earth is very much in question.

People such as Stephen Cohn and myself, who were actively involved throughout the entirety of the Cold War, are astonished at the reckless and irresponsible behavior of the US government and its European vassals toward Russia. Nothing as irresponsible as what we have witnessed since the Clinton regime and which has worsened dramatically under the Obama and Trump regimes would have been imaginable during the Cold War. In this brief video, Stephen Cohen describes to Tucker Carlson the extreme danger of the present situation:

The failure of political leadership throughout the Western world is total. Such total failure is likely to prove deadly to life on earth.

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This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

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Tony Blair’s Deplorable Demand for War on Syria Proves We Must Wait for Evidence or End Up Repeating His Iraq Disaster

April 13th, 2018 by William J Richardson

The thunderous rumble of war drums is once more building across the Western world as military action in Syria looks ever more likely. And amid the booming, Tony Blair has once again crawled from the depths, slightly greyer than he was in 2003, to announce his thirst for war. 

In what strikes as an echo of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Blair appeared on Sky News to voice his support for military action in Syria in the wake of apparent chemical attacks allegedly carried out by the Assad regime on his own citizens.

In contrast to the Prime Minister Theresa May, who appears, uncharacteristically, to be waiting for substantial evidence before committing British troops to military action, Blair said:

“…on the assumption that the evidence that our military and our services has is the same as that of the US then I think if you don’t respond to the use of chemical weapons against civilians then obviously we’re, y’know, ignoring what the international community has said, which is that this is unacceptable…”

His appearance and incessant gluttony for ill-thought-through decisions views like a flashback to the announcement of the Iraq invasion in 2003.

It’s as though Blair didn’t learn the lessons of either the universal and bipartisan scorn for his Premiership or the Chilcot Report, which concluded, among other things, that:

  • The UK chose invasion of Iraq before peaceful options had been exhausted;
  • Blair deliberately exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein;
  • Britain’s intelligence agencies produced ‘flawed information’;
  • The Government had no post-invasion strategy; and
  • The Government did not try hard enough to keep a tally of Iraqi civilian casualties.

They are the actions of a spurned, sociopathic boyfriend in a 1990s Hollywood horror flick. “Please, War, have me back; I promise this time it’s different. This time there really ARE chemical weapons. This time we really DO need each other! I will never give up until you’re mine!”

Blair seems to be struck by rapturous, blissful ignorance of his legacy. There is still a great number of people in Britain who want to see Blair prosecuted for war crimes over Iraq, and yet the cheerily staccato former-statesman, with his approachable, plum-filled aplomb assumes he is safe in the cold light of day to once more call for the sending of our brave servicemen and women into the jaws of war.

The latest calls for war come following an alleged chemical attack on the town of Douma, in Syria, apparently carried out by Assad’s regime. Although Assad denies this.

With the use of chemical weapons and heart-aching YouTube videos of suffocating Syrians striking the moral chord among Western leaders, military action in Syria is looking more and more likely.

Now, the pieces are lining up on either side. Just weeks after the UK and its allies ramped up diplomatic tensions with Russia by expelling scores of diplomats, with the Kremlin doing the same, Russia has voiced its support for Syria.

And, in worryingly provocative rhetoric, Russia has warned that any airstrikes over Syria will be shot down by Russian forces and retaliatory action will be taken.

A warning that was hastily responded to by Donald Trump with his usual ‘I don’t care if I start World War III’ style bravado:

“Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!”

In what is looking more and more like a potential proxy war, with Syria serving as the 21st century ‘Vietnam’ on which Western and Russian forces can air their aggressions, Blair’s unwelcome voice is but one in the million, each drowning the other out as threats and macho tub-thumping replace cool calls for evidence, reason and assurance.

We are not beyond the days of tribal chaos, and, it appears perhaps more unfortunately, we are still not beyond the days of Blair mouthing off before engaging his brain.

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Featured image is from the author.

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The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA): Overcoming The Dominance of International Finance Capital

April 13th, 2018 by Abayomi Azikiwe

Featured image: Kwame Nkrumah speaking at podium

On the eve of the 55th anniversary of the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor of the African Union (AU), a large bloc of nation-states have signed a document entitled “Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in Kigali, Rwanda on March 20-21.

Some 44 governments out of the 55 member organization of the AU attended the conference chaired by Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

The AfCFTA has theoretically gone into effect with the ratification of the protocols by 22 AU governments. Other states are evaluating the agreement in order to bring it into line with its own internal legal and economic situations.

If the framework is ratified by all African nations, the AfCFTA will represent one of the largest economic zones globally. Altogether there will be 1.2 billion people covered by the agreement within 55 governments which are estimated to already encompass $4 trillion in investment and consumer spending.

When the OAU was founded in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 25, 1963, there were sharp differences over the political character and historical trajectory of continental unification. Progressive and revolutionary states such as the Republics of Ghana, Guinea, Algeria, Mali, Egypt and others wanted a more rapid pace leading to the formation of a United States of Africa. More moderate and conservative governments advocated for a gradualist and regional approach which would not threaten ties with former colonial and imperialist states and their institutions.

By October 1965, at an OAU summit in Accra, Ghana, President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah made a last ditch appeal to African states to immediately unite in order to stave off the entrenchment of neo-colonialism and to accelerate the elimination of white minority rule in non-liberated areas. Nkrumah was later removed from office just four months later in February 1966. His critique of the world capitalist system published for the OAU Summit in Accra entitled, “Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism,” infuriated the United States administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson which engineered the coup through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the State Department utilizing lower-ranking military officers and the police.

When discussions were held in 1999 in Sirte, Libya under the-then leadership of Col. Muammar Gaddafi, it was recognized by many that the unification process must take a qualitative leap towards creating a single currency, trading area and continental military force. The AU was officially established in 2002 in Durban, South Africa under the reign of President Thabo Mbeki. Nevertheless, the Gaddafi government was destroyed nine years later (2011) at the aegis of the same imperialist forces which had undermined Ghana in 1966.

With specific regard to the AfCFTA, one writer Landry Signe says:

“It creates a single continental market for goods and services as well as a customs union with free movement of capital and business travelers. The African Union agreed in January 2012 to develop the AfCFTA. It took eight rounds of negotiations, beginning in 2015 and lasting until December 2017, to reach agreement…. One of its central goals is to boost African economies by harmonizing trade liberalization across sub-regions and at the continental level. As a part of the AfCFTA, countries have committed to remove tariffs on 90 percent of goods. According to the U.N. Economic Commission on Africa, intra-African trade is likely to increase by 52.3 percent under the AfCFTA and will double upon the further removal of non-tariff barriers.” (Washington Post, March 29)

This concept of enhancing inter-African trade is essential in any project designed to build sustainable growth and genuine development. The legacies of the Atlantic Slave Trade and classical colonialism directed African resources and labor power out of the continent to Europe and North America.

The same article then goes on to note:

“The A.U. hopes to create a single common market embracing all countries in Africa. However, only 44 countries have signed the AfCFTA’s establishing framework to date. And just 30 nations have signed the Free Movement Protocol — signifying the free movement of people, right of residence and right of establishment…. The final critical steps for the African Union will be to persuade the remaining countries to join, to create a secretariat to coordinate the implementation and to provide enough resources to ensure the AfCFTA’s success.”

Problems Facing the AfCFTA

Two important states which have not ratified the agreement are the Republics of Nigeria and South Africa, two of the largest economies and population groups on the continent. Of the two, the current government led by President Muhammadu Buhari seems the most hesitant to throw their weight behind the AfCFTA. The Nigerian head-of-state did not attend the gathering in Kigali due to internal pressures.

Reports indicate that there was strong objection to signing the accord from both the Manufacturing Association of Nigeria (MAN) and the Nigerian Labor Council (NLC) where the two class camps were concerned that certain measures within AfCFTA would undermine local industries and bring about job losses. The Labor opposition believes that the reduction of trade tariffs by 90 percent would result in a large influx of consumer goods that could undermine local markets.

Also Nigeria wants to involve other industries in the national economy including agricultural producers in the rice and poultry sectors along with the Governor’s Forum. Other key elements to be involved in further consultations are the National Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) and Nigeria Customs Service and Nigeria Immigration Service.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu at AfCFTA in Kigali, Rwanda, March 20-21, 2018

South Africa has indicated as well that there needs to be more negotiations and evaluations by national interests. President Cyril Ramaphosa did attend the conference and pledged support in principal for the idea of a free trade zone in Africa.

Nevertheless, Ramaphosa emphasized in Rwanda:

“All that holds us back from signing the actual agreement is our own consultation process. We still need to consult at home, to consult in Cabinet, to consult our various partners at Nedlac [the body comprising government, business, labor and community organizations], but also to finally consult our parliamentarians, so we are really just going through what you would call the ‘clean-up process’.” (City Press, March 27)

More Formidable Impediments to the Realization of AfCFTA

Moreover, the real structural barriers to the implementation of such a trade agreement on the continent has more to do with imperatives of overcoming the dominance of international finance capital which still determines the exigencies of actual global value and exchange. There has been much written on the phenomenal growth in Africa during the first decade of the 21st century.

Yet with the decline of commodity prices in recent years, a considerable amount of this process of growth largely stemming from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), has swiftly eroded. The overproduction of oil and other energy resources initiated by the U.S. has taken its toll on the emerging economies. South Africa and Nigeria are said to be only barely recovering from recessions and other states such as Mozambique are being compelled to renegotiate the terms of its loans and bond issues.

All of this is occurring while huge findings of oil, natural gas and strategic minerals are underway all along the east coast of Africa. Within the Southern Africa region a treasure trove of additional mineral wealth is now known to exist.

What are the implications for these structural barriers to the realization of a workable free trade area for the AU member-states? How can the AfCFTA benefit the long term interests of workers, farmers and youth through the raising of their incomes, living standards and educational levels?

Rwanda President Paul Kagame at AfCFTA Summit in Kigali, March 20-21, 2018

Nkrumah pointed out in his writings surrounding the founding of the OAU in 1963 that the genesis of unification was not necessarily dependent upon a uniformity of social and economic systems. However, the consolidation of the objectives of Pan-Africanism is contingent upon the adoption of Socialist methods of planning and reorganization.

In an address to the Ghana Parliament on June 21, 1963 seeking the ratification of the OAU Charter of 1963, Nkrumah reiterates:

“the social organizations in our New Africa must embrace all sections of our people. The goals of our endeavors have always been to secure the material basis for increasing the economic and social wealth of our farmers, peasants and workers. Our revolution, therefore, must be identified with the organizations of the workers and our peasant population. We cannot succeed very much in our aims, if there should be conflict between the trade unions as the organization of the workers and our national Governments which are also serving the same interests. Our identical aims must make it possible for us to harmonize relations and work within a coordinated program for solving the problems that face Africa.

The All-African Trade Union Federation (AATUF) must therefore be in a position to mobilize the exploited masses of Africa for the final onslaught in the battle against imperialism and neo-colonialism. In the Independent States of Africa, AATUF has a vital role to play in evolving a trade union orientation which will enable the workers to play their full part in socialist construction.” (Source)

Therefore, the only viable option for a unified Africa is the movement towards Socialism. This orientation would preclude the military and intelligence intervention within AU member-states where today the advent of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) is encroaching under the guise of a “war against terrorism.”

Already much trepidation exists in states such as Ghana where the current conservative regime has enhanced its military relationship with Washington under the presidency of Donald Trump and all of which this implies. The best way to fight “terrorism” and imperialist militarism is to build an integrated All-African Union Government encompassing a uniform monetary system, industrial consolidation and a combined defense and peacekeeping force with the independent capacity to guard continental interests.

*

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author.

Criminally Insane US Government: Ten Days Before the End of the World? Analysis of the Possible Outcomes

April 13th, 2018 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The criminally insane governments of the US, UK, and France are sending a flotilla of missile ships, submarines, and an aircraft carrier to attack Syria in the face of Russian warnings. What is the likely outcome of this outrageous act of aggression based entirely on an orchestrated and transparent lie, an act of reckless aggression that is more irresponsible and more dangerous than anything done by the demonized Nazi regime in Germany?

There are no protests from European governments. There are no protesters in the streets of European and US cities. Congress has not reminded Trump that he has been given no authority by Congress to launch a military attack on a sovereign country that is likely to ignite a war, possibly World War 3. Everyone seems content with the prospect of the end of the world. The moronic American presstitutes are egging it on.

Here are possible outcomes:

(1) The Russians, trapped in the deluded belief that facts and evidence matter to the West and that common sense will prevail, accept the attacks. This outcome is the most dangerous of all, because this outcome will encourage more attacks until Russia is backed into a corner and has no alternative to a direct nuclear attack on the US.

(2) Russia takes the initiative in the brewing conflict and escorts the US missile ship, USS Donald Cook, out of attack range of Syria before the attack flotilla arrives and declares a perimeter line beyond which the Western flotilla becomes target for attack. This should force a showdown between Trump’s warmonger government and the US Congress that would challenge Trump’s ability to unilaterally commit the US to war.

(3) Russia escorts the Donald Cook away from the scene and simultaneously wipes out the military capabilities of Saudi Arabia and Israel, removing Washington’s ground-based allies in its attack on Syria, thus loading the odds in Russia’s favor, and making it clear that Russia is going to pre-empt attack, not respond to one.

(4) Russia, in the deluded belief that it must prove itself in the right, accepts the attack and its unpredictable damage before responding. This outcome is almost as bad as the first, as this lets the war start in contrast to options (2) and (3) which have some possibility of preventing a US/Russian confrontation by forcing common sense on the Americans.

(5) Senior German politicians inform Merkel that Britain and France’s support of the US strike on Syria could commit NATO to a war with Russia. Germany has had one devastating experience with the Russian military and does not need another. They could pressure Merkel to withdraw Germany from NATO. The resulting consternation/confusion would likely halt the US attack on Syria/Russia.

(6) The US Joint Chiefs of Staff could easily and honestly conclude that in the event of a Russian response to an attack on Syria, the entire flotilla could be lost, carrier included, inflicting a humiliating defeat on US arms, and that in view of this possibility, the Joint Chiefs recommend against the announced attack. Possibly this has occurred and explains Trump’s latest tweets, which suggest that doubts might have entered Trump’s mind.

Even if a hopeful outcome such as (5) and (6) occurs, we are left with the dangerous situation that some elements in the US and UK governments were able to orchestrate two events—the alleged Skripal poisoning and the alleged Assad chemical attack—and use the events to leverage unsupported accusations against Russia and Syria as justifications for an illegal military attack on a sovereign country. That such an outrageous orchestration is possible proves that there is no democracy or constraint on government in the US and UK.

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This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

Video: There Are Some ‘Problems’ with the Gas Cylinders Videos Used by the White Helmets as “Evidence” of Douma Attack

April 13th, 2018 by South Front

While horrible photos (link 18+) of people allegedly killed in the April 7 Douma attack rapidly became widely known after they had been released by the White Helmets, there was something ignored by the media.

Besides the photos of the dead bodies, Douma “media activists” also released videos showing two compressed gas cylinders, which had allegedly been used by “the Assad regime” to conduct the chemical attack on Douma.

These videos raise some questions.

Lets look at the compressed gas cylinder #1 (revealed on April 8):

This was the first video showing the alleged compressed gas cylinder used in the attack. It appeared on April 8, a day after the first reports about the attack (April 7).

This cylinder was allegedly dropped from some helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force, made a hole in the roof and appeared in some apartment inside the building.

There Are Some 'Problems' With Gas Cylinders Videos Used By White Helmets As Evidence Of Douma Attack

The question is why is the cylinder is undamaged after falling from hundreds of meters above and crashing into the roof? Another issue is that it looks like the cylinder was able to made a hole in the roof but failed to damage the bed.

There Are Some 'Problems' With Gas Cylinders Videos Used By White Helmets As Evidence Of Douma Attack

By the way this cylinder is closed.

There Are Some 'Problems' With Gas Cylinders Videos Used By White Helmets As Evidence Of Douma Attack

Another video from the same location:

Lets look at the compressed gas cylinder #2 (revealed on April 10):

This compressed gas cylinder was allegedly filmed on April 9 a roof of the building hit by the attack. However, the video was released by the White Helments on April 10, a day after Russian service members visited the parts of Douma where the alleged chemical attack took place. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, no traces of the chemical attack were found.

Let’s say this is an accident.

No doubts, the criticism faced by the “activists” after the first video was used to improve the second one. This time the cylinder appears to be a bit damaged.

So, the questions:

  1. Why the cylinder#1 is undamaged if it has been dropped by a helicopter? Why the cylinder#1 is closed?
  2. Why the bed under the cylinder#1 is undamaged?
  3. Why did the second video showing the cylinder#2 [which is damaged and even a bit burned] appear only on April 10, a day after the visit of the Russians to the area?

A person skeptical of “Assad chemical attack” reports by the White Helmets may say that the cylinder#1 videos were staged to confirm that the attack had been conducted by the Syrian Air Force. However, too much mistakes (like a lack of damage) were made. So, the organization had to make another “proper” video with the cylinder#2 to confirm its claims.

Everyone is free to decide for himself.

*

All images in this article are from South Front.

“Wag the Dog”: Who’s the Next Expedient Target For the US War Machine?

April 13th, 2018 by Seth Ferris

As the noose of impeachment closes tighter around Donald Trump neck, he is finding that running his mouth has limitations. Like Nixon before him, he is hoping that the world can be twisted to become what he says it is. The only question is whether he is capable of realising that no one is able to do that, no matter how many people they can fool at a given time.

But even while he continues promoting his typical politician’s fantasy world Trump will be trying to find some way out. It has emerged that the raid on his lawyers’ office, considered a great attack on himself, was actually conducted by legal staff handpicked by himself. So are they changing sides, or has Trump raided his own lawyers’ office to ensure any incriminating material is removed by his own people before Mueller can get it?

Wag the Dog

One of the oldest tricks a cornered, compromised and vulnerable politician uses is to start a war. When your domestic situation is intolerable you simply change the focus. Everyone rallies round the country and is commander-in-chief, even if no one trusts them the rest of the time, simply because they are the man or woman in the job. Or at least that’s the theory, provided you can sell the war to the public. It is not difficult, especially when you make good use of spin doctors.

Let’s not forget that Trump came into office promising he would end US involvement in expensive and needless foreign wars. This was taken as a sign that America was finally becoming a grown-up nation, able to live alongside others it disagreed with without demanding its ways be adopted in those countries, whilst denying the people of those same countries the American values they actually want.

But what has happened? The US is still fighting a lost cause in Syria for the sake of it, and is moving ever closer to conflict with North Korea. Maybe these are proxy conflicts with Russia, like the Spanish Civil War was a proxy conflict with Nazi Germany. But the fact the US is still happy to enter into them, when its president said it would not, demonstrates that any little country is still seen as fair game as long as the US can pursue what it considers its “national interest”, despite alienating billions of would-be friends by doing so.

So if Trump wants a way out, and the Deep State is happy to play along to get more funding to pursue its broader agendas, who is next? Global conflicts have a habit of breaking out over small, target countries. So where is Trump likely to look to rally his people round the flag? Who can expect to be the next target of a US “reconstruction effort” which, like so many before, is all about the US and not themselves?

Too obvious targets

There are certain consistent patterns to US foreign policy. One is supporting partner regimes no matter what they do, actively encouraging the same crimes they criticise their opponents for committing. There was no excuse for Soviet repression, but residents of murderous CIA-trained South and Central American dictatorships, which justified their actions by being “anti-Communist”, will tell you East Europeans weren’t the only ones who suffered in such a way.

Another is a willingness to achieve regime change by any means possible. US support for its chosen terrorists is nothing new. From the Taliban to the KLA in Kosovo it has always been happy to wreak havoc to protect populations from themselves. Even if that means directly assassinating the man at the top, so be it.

Russians always complain, with much justification, that their country is surrounded by US bases armed with missiles pointed at them. It would not be difficult to start a war with Russia by using these missiles. But it would be diplomatically impractical to try.

While Russia has always seen itself as needing protection, the US continues to build it up into a major threat, too big and powerful to confront with a good chance of winning. This is what has enabled Russia to build up its strength, despite the inherent weakness of its traditional autocratic system. But the US has also gained so much from promoting this view that it is not going to risk the exposure of actual conflict.

The target of any US attack would be a small country, further away, which the US public perceives to be “foreign” and “anti-American”. North Korea fits the bill here. But if the US wanted to go there it would have done so during the gap between it being bankrolled by the Soviet Union and being bankrolled by China. North Korea is too useful as a demonstration of what the US thinks is wrong with any country, and is only coming to strategic prominence now because it looks too much like the US for comfort. This is why it is being appeased, rather than attacked, for having a nuclear programme of doubtful utility.

Donald Trump has always supported Brexit, and is trying to get the EU to make a bigger contribution to NATO. He calls this making Europe pay its fair share. In fact it is a means of trying to separate the strategically important countries from the EU whilst ridding itself of the dependent hangers-on.

As long as the likes of Bulgaria have US bases, the EU can look after the rest of their needs if it chooses. Meanwhile bigger countries like the UK are being encouraged to choose the US over Europe, because the US is prepared to pay for what they can offer, be it bases, materials, energy or access to sea and air routes.

Related image

The promised new military base on Gibraltar is unnecessary, according to the UK which owns the territory and has steadily reduced its commitment there over the years. But the US needs it to control the Mediterranean. Controlling sea trade would increase US influence over the EU, whilst also giving non-members preferential treatment they would not otherwise enjoy. It is also easier to shoot down planes than sink ships nowadays, and the US has been using commercial shipping to transport military hardware since at least the Lusitania.

But the other advantage of having a larger base on Gibraltar, which might be British in name but in effect be an Eastern Europe-style “dual control” operation, is that it would reduce the need for the US to be so active at the other end of the Mediterranean. Of course it also needs to control the Bosporus to project its influence in the Black Sea region. But there it has to rely on an increasingly independent partner, Erdogan’s Turkey, which is going in the opposite direction to the UK – mixing with a better class of country, and thus allowing those other regional powers, such as Russia and Iran, more influence over its affairs.

Let them not sort it out themselves

Turkey is exactly the sort of country the US invades others for being: authoritarian, Muslim, supportive of allies the US regards as the wrong type of terrorist. Furthermore, it gets away with it. It would be easy to portray Turkey as a regressive state, even a member of NATO, which once upon a time wanted to join Europe. But now it is perceived as a threat to it, even though the US put it there for that purpose, and US protection has given it the means to strike out on its own.

However Turkey is unlikely to be directly attacked either. Who will trust the Balkan States, who would need to be involved, to do US bidding? They may be US allies, but are hardly being treated as such, so you can’t rely on them to repay US “loyalty” if push comes to shove.

No one cares about the former Eastern Bloc counties anymore, and cannot even remember the Warsaw Pact. Its former members are still struggling to shake off their Soviet-era images of repression and backwardness because the EU and the US wants them to remain like that. They also have their own agendas, with deep historical roots, and only went into the US camp to pursue these rather than because they wanted US or EU domination when they were trying to rebuild their nations. Not all are toeing the line, such as seen by the recent elections in Hungary—and elected three times in a row.

In an extremely divisive campaign, Orbán essentially focused on one single issue, warning against Hungary’s “downfall” at the hands of “immigrants.” It appears that a majority of Hungarian voters view him as the only guarantee against such a scenario. And this is but one country on the bad side of the US.

The same EU, and international financiers based in the same United States, are also doing their best to destroy Greece. This is being punished for adopting the same failed policies which led the world to financial crisis, by the same people who encouraged it to adopt those policies to show it was a serious, modern country. Consequently it is being deprived of the resources to fight any war, even if it were encouraged to do so. But is also unlikely to help the US pursue its plans through the so-called “coalition of the civilized,” which has recently become the US way of getting what it wants.

However, there is one point on which Greece and Turkey will never agree – Cyprus. Split into a self-proclaimed “Turkish Republic” in the north and the predominantly Greek south, neither side grants the other any recognition or legitimacy. Both sides blame the others’ patrons, Turkey and Greece, for the problems inflicted upon them and the actions they have taken. Both sides feel that their patrons are fraternising with the enemy to too great a degree, betraying their allies on the island for the sake of their own ambitions, which are still seen with suspicion by Turkey and Greece themselves.

With Greece unable to do anything about Cyprus because it’s functionally bankrupt and the EU is unwilling because it can’t risk losing to Turkey, only the US can maintain the status quo there. At one time conflict with Turkey would leave US bases in Turkey itself and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean vulnerable. But only if the US got control of Gibraltar… and that would put everything right again.

Yesterday, today and tomorrow

We don’t hear much about the frozen conflict in Cyprus now. But neither did we hear much about a number of countries caught up in the Arab Spring, before it happened. The longstanding anti-Gaddafi rhetoric was merely transferred to similar-sounding places, like Yemen, and used to explain events the US had planned long before. This was a better strategy than ramping up propaganda about places few American listeners would get enthusiastic about. It is all about arms sales, and Saudi has all those Petro Dollars to be brought back to the US, and for that, the US administration can turn a blind eye to human rights and an unjust war.

And it does not stop there: just look and see if there is any current rhetoric which could be used to justify an intervention in Cyprus or Lebanon? Just look at what Trump is saying about Jerusalem, and is he mad or he really believes himself. He is not presenting the change of US policy as a change of mind, but as the correction of a historic injustice. Apparently Jerusalem has always rightfully been the capital of Israel, and Trump is simply doing what is right by saying so, and beginning to treat it as such.

Intervening to restore Greek rule in the whole of Cyprus would be presented as restoring the legitimate government to its rightful place. Legally, that would be so. The Turkish invasion of 1974 which established the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” was just that, a military aggression against a sovereign state by a foreign power. Whatever the justice of the Turkish Cypriot community’s case, the US should be resisting such actions on principle, in the same way it resisted Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

If the US no longer needs Turkey so much because it has Gibraltar, through which it could prosecute and supply such a conflict, it will not tread with the caution the EU does against this suspicious “foreign” power. Without Gibraltar, it is unlikely to win such a conflict because it would need a lot of support from EU partners who have no intention of starting such a war. With it, and a compliant UK desperate to offset the effects of Brexit, it can take unilateral action whilst still maintaining that a “coalition of civilized countries” is involved, due to the legal justice of the cause.

“Fuck the EU” in Spades

If Erdogan loses Northern Cyprus, after all he has said about restoring the Ottoman Empire and being the regional bully boy, he will be dead meat at home, perhaps literally. Such a victory would also, in US envoy Victoria Nuland’s infamous words, “Fuck the EU”

If the US can walk into the Mediterranean and do what it likes, ostensibly on behalf of EU member Greece, when the EU has failed to do it for 40 years the EU will be seen as ineffectual and compromised, and the predicted post-Brexit referendum exodus of countries might actually happen.

Reconstructing Cyprus afterwards would make the post-war problems in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a cakewalk. But if you want to stay in power when you know what your enemies know, do you consider such things? No one is going to impeach Trump is he pulls this off, and few would trust him to behave responsibly at the best of times, let alone what he will live through when Robert Mueller presents his final report, he is already seeing red over the former FBI director’s latest antics.

My hole has to be your hole

The US is in a strong position to intervene in Cyprus if it can rely on different partners. Erdogan could only prevent it if he sent more troops to Northern Cyprus, all the excuse the US would need to move in. The huge Greek and Greek Cypriot Diaspora, much more vocal than the Turkish one, would be overjoyed and make Trump a national hero for evermore.

No one else will like it, but who will help Northern Cyprus? It has had since 1974 to win friends, but even today only Turkey recognises it as an independent state.

Furthermore, the whole of Cyprus was British until 1960. The UK may not agree with the action, but it will be presented as helping an old friend which now needs its former Empire. This will encourage other former British colonies to think the US might help them due to this historic “Special Relationship”. Trump may well decide he has more to gain than lose by constructing a bloc of Anglophile nations to counter those who don’t respect him.

It would be a very sad day for the world if conflict in Cyprus kicked off again. But Trump will not care if he can protect himself, and the more we hear about his deeds and his friends, the more he will need that protection to emerge from even less than one term with his assets and liberty intact.

*

Seth Ferris is an investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from the author.

The African Powder Keg: What Does the UAE Stand to Gain by Destabilizing Somalia?

April 13th, 2018 by Andrew Korybko

Recent events suggest that the UAE is trying to destabilize Somalia and throw it back into a multisided security crisis in order to trap Qatar’s Turkish ally in a quagmire and offset the Great Power rise of Egypt’s Ethiopian rival.

Most Things Come In Threes

Somalia has been shaken by three interconnected developments over the past few weeks which show that the UAE is dedicated to destabilizing the country in order to cynically advance its grand strategic interests in the region at Mogadishu’s expense. The Emirates controversially signed a deal with the breakaway region of Somaliland to build a naval base in the Gulf of Aden, shortly after which a political feud between the country’s President and Parliamentary Speaker erupted into an armed standoff that was fortuitously resolved before any shooting started. At the beginning of this week, the Somalian authorities seized nearly $10 million in cash from a UAE plane that was supposedly going to be disseminated within the country for yet-undisclosed purposes, which coincided with the Parliamentary Speaker’s resignation prior to a planned vote of confidence against him.

The African Powder Keg

Analyzing these three events altogether in the phased continuum that they occurred, it can be argued that the UAE is trying to destabilize Somalia as revenge for Mogadishu’s refusal to cut ties with Qatar and its agreement with Ankara to allow a Turkish military base in the country. Turkey is allied with Qatar, in which it also has a military base, and this has thus made it the UAE’s rival in the context of the ongoing Gulf Cold War that has already spread to the Horn of Africa region via two disputes that center on Ethiopia and Djibouti. The landlocked giant is at odds with Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that it’s constructing on the Blue Nile River and which Cairo claims will make the Arab state forever dependent on the upstream one in the future, while the tiny coastal country just kicked the UAE out and retook control of the largest port in the country. The regional dynamics are such that they could easily spill over into a regional war, thus making the contemporary Horn of Africa eerily similar in a structural sense to the pre-World War I Balkans.

Standing Up To “Little Sparta”

Somalia has thus far avoided being dragged in to the Gulf Cold War and probably thought that its “neutrality” in this dispute would prevent it from being destabilized as a proxy battleground between extra-regional powers, but it now looks like the UAE is making asymmetrically aggressive moves against the country in a bid to expand its newfound Gulf of Aden sphere of influence all throughout the region by removing any forces that stand in its way. To this end, Abu Dhabi sees President “Farmajo” as an obstacle because of his proud refusal to bow down before the Emirates by cutting off ties with Qatar and his agreement with UAE rival Turkey to build a military base along the Indian Ocean coast. This was an unacceptable display of sovereignty that the “Little Sparta” wannabe hegemon just couldn’t tolerate.

The Master Plan

Somaliland agrees to UAE naval base

Somaliland agrees to UAE naval base

The UAE staked out its claim to Somalia by reinforcing the de-facto “independence” of Somaliland through the recent naval base deal in the coastal port of Berbera, which expectedly prompted Somalian lawmakers to react with fury in Mogadishu despite their inability to stop this from happening. Then, “provoked” by the loud condemnation against it coming from the internationally recognized government, the UAE sought to exploit preexisting political fault lines within the state by provoking the recent crisis between the President and his Parliamentary Speaker. The next stage of the destabilization campaign is supposed to see the Emirates fund an anti-government “freedom/democracy movement” (hence the seized $9.6 million from the UAE plane) either led by the former speaker or allied with him in order to put pressure on the President to reconsider his government’s erstwhile refusal to cut ties with Qatar and allow Doha’s ally to set up a naval base outside the capital. If this initial Hybrid War provocation doesn’t succeed in its objectives, then it’s foreseeable that the UAE might go as far as setting off a renewed round of civil war within the country in order to trap its rivals in a quagmire.

Regional Shockwaves

The consequences of a renewed round of widespread and multisided (as in, more complex than just the government & its allies vs. Al Shabaab) warfare could easily trick Turkey into falling for the tempting “mission creep” scenario of bolstering its assistance to Ankara’s in-country partners to compensate for the African Union’s planned withdrawal by 2020. Not only that, but Al Shabaab and potentially even Daesh could take advantage of the country’s descent back into civil conflict in order to become a more dangerous regional threat, which could in turn prompt rising Great Power Ethiopia to once again militarily intervene.  That said, the regional leader is undergoing a sensitive “political transition” at the moment and its tense domestic situation might explode if any forthcoming Somalian conflict spills over into its borders and upsets its delicate ethno-political balance.

Concluding Thoughts

As cynical as it may sound, both of these “dark scenarios” would actually advance the UAE’s grand strategic objectives by drawing Qatar’s Turkish ally and its Somalian partners into a developing quagmire while destabilizing Ethiopia on GCC-subordinate Egypt’s behalf. The resultant chaos could create “windows of opportunity” for the UAE to expand its influence deeper into the Horn of Africa, as well as “justify” its military partnerships with Eritrea and Somaliland, to say nothing of any other states or future separatist regions that it might deploy to during this time. It’s of course way too early to say whether or not any of this will indeed come to pass, but it’s nevertheless important to be aware of what the UAE’s interests are vis-à-vis Somalia and how they could be promoted via the latest destabilizing events that Abu Dhabi is responsible for in this crucially positioned country. If the present downward trajectory isn’t soon averted, which it could be if prudency prevails, then Somalia might once again sink back into civil war, so it’s urgent that its citizens are informed of what’s happening and why so that they can work their hardest to prevent it.

*

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.

Who Wants a Hot War with Syria and Iran? Profits of the War Economy

April 13th, 2018 by Philip Giraldi

There is a vast industry in the United States that wants a hot war with Syria and Iran as well as increased confrontation with Russia and China. It is appropriate to refer to it as an industry because it has many components and is largely driven by money, much of which itself comes from Wall Street and major corporations that profit from war related business.

Some prefer to refer to this monster as the Military Industrial Complex, but since that phrase was coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961, it has grown enormously, developing a political dimension that includes a majority of congressmen who are addicted to receiving a tithe from the profits from the war economy to finance their own campaigns, permitting them to stay in office indefinitely and retire comfortably to a lobbying position or corporate directorship.

The defense industry also has spawned hundreds of so-called think-tanks whose sole business is promoting war. Some, like the neoconservative Institute for the Study of War, have a clear agenda, but the most powerful rely on euphemisms to conceal what they are doing. They include the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, both of which promote a hard-line foreign policy directed against Iran and Russia, to include intensified confrontation with both in Syria.

The national media, which also benefits from the same food chain, is also complicit in the process, knowing that the public can easily be deceived by pronouncements coming from alleged experts in Washington. Leading politicians like Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain lead the pack but there is no shortage of lesser known congressmen to also raise the cry about foreign threats to national security. Regarding developments in Syria, Graham advised last weekend that Trump must attack and destroy the Syrian Air Force or “look weak” while McCain said White House talk of pulling troops out of the country had “emboldened” al-Assad.

Unenlightened self-interest prevails in the White House over the formulation of policy, with the public interest completely lost from sight as high officials jockey in support of the agendas being promoted by those with money and access to those in power. There is no other explanation for the astonishing performance last weekend, which pushed the United States closer to a new war in spite of Trump’s earlier expressed claims that he wants to exit from Syria, a comment that he quickly backed away from under pressure from the Israelis and Congress.

But now we have a dubious narrative of a horrible new chemical weapon attack in Syria and the Israelis, who have spent the past two weeks shooting two thousand unarmed demonstrators, have attacked a Syrian airbase, killing 14, pretending that they care about civilian casualties when all they really want to do is jumpstart a seven-year war which has been winding down.

Anyone could see there was something not quite right about this latest “chemical attack,” supposedly implemented by Bashar al-Assad just as his troops are about to finish off the last rebels near Damascus. But Donald Trump apparently could not appreciate that the Syrian government had no motive to use chemical weapons, while the rebels, who control the space where the attack supposedly took place, have every reason to motivate an international coalition to attack the Syrian Army.

At 8 a.m. on Sunday morning the President of the United States sent out this tweet:

Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay…

Donald Trump could not have possibly known who staged the gas attack so soon after it occurred, but he felt compelled to tweet something anyway. And it was not as if other observers hadn’t suspected that a big lie was coming. Days before the staged attack, the Russian Defense Ministry warned that a false flag incident was being prepared.

One hour later, the Sunday morning talk shows in the US were full of reports about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons. No one contradicted that narrative and the news was soon headlined in the late editions of the Sunday newspapers. “Fake news” had won out again, in spite of a complete lack or evidence or credibility. This is completely crazy. There is something very wrong with what is going on currently in the United States.

*

Philip Giraldi, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

Featured image is from the author.

150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

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Israel Will ‘Disappear’ Assad if Iran Retaliates to Syria Base Attack

April 13th, 2018 by The New Arab

Tel Aviv will wipe out the Syrian leader and his regime if Iran acts on threats of retaliating against a recent suspected Israeli airstrike in Syria that killed Iranian soldiers.

A senior Israeli security official told local daily Maariv on Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would be “disappeared” in the wake of any Iranian retaliatory attack.

“If the Iranians act against Israel from Syrian territory, it will be Assad and his government that will pay the price,” the unnamed official said.

“The government, along with Assad himself, will simply disappear. We would recommend that Iran not act against us.”

The senior official also warned that Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah would suffer the same fate as Assad should Tehran retaliate against Israel.

“Nasrallah needs to understand that his fate will be no better than that of Assad. He will pay a very heavy price,” he said.

Iran, a strong ally of Assad, has threatened to respond to the airstrike on a Syrian military base on Monday that Syria, Russia and Iran blamed on Israel.

Seven Iranians were reportedly among the estimated 14 people killed in the missile strike, and a senior Iranian official visiting Damascus said the attack “will not remain unanswered.”

The Syrian air base was struck by missiles a little more than 24 hours after a chemical attack on the rebel-held town of Douma.

Iran is one of Assad’s strongest backers and has sent thousands of troops and allied militiamen to support his forces.

Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Wednesday that the Israeli military is on “high-alert” and has taken the retaliation threat from Iran “very seriously”.

“The northern border is on high alert amid concerns of a possible revenge attack by Iran or Hizballah,” it said, adding that Israel’s security cabinet will to convene over fear of Iranian revenge.

Israel has sought to avoid direct involvement in Syria’s seven-year civil war, but it acknowledges carrying out dozens of airstrikes there to stop what it says are advanced arms deliveries to its enemy Hizballah, the Lebanese Shia group that, along with Iran and Russia, is backing Assad’s regime.

150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

Pompeo: Russians ‘Met Their Match,’ US Killed Hundreds of Them in Syria

April 13th, 2018 by Jason Ditz

Is President Trump tough enough on Russia? For Secretary of State-nominee Mike Pompeo, the answer comes down to simple body count, as he bragged up recent killings of Russian citizens inside Syrian territory.

At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo boasted that

“the Russians met their match. A couple hundred Russians were killed,” referring to a US massacre of military contractors back in February.

Pompeo insisted these killings prove Trump’s toughness on Russia.

The comments threaten to make this incident a bigger diplomatic row. The February 7 incident came after the US claimed Kurds had come under attack. In reality, an artillery barrage landed half a kilometer from a Kurdish base, and the US reacted by killing in excess of 200 pro-Syrian government fighters, declaring the killings “self-defense.”

At the time, there were concerns Russian citizens were among the slain, and US officials ultimately said “scores” of the dead may have been Russian. Now, Pompeo appears to be insisting they were all Russians, and that the killings were about being “tough” of the Russian government.

Russia’s government denied any knowledge of the incident at the time, and it appears the slain were private contractors working for the Syrian government, and not in concert with Russia’s government itself. That makes targeting them on the basis of their nationality potentially even more problematic.

*

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Beyond the Bank of Canada. Litigation Directed against Ottawa Regarding the Mandate of the Bank of Canada

April 13th, 2018 by James Clayton

A few determined Canadians may have felt like something big was actually about to happen—before they spent more than five years in litigation with the Government of Canada.

Maybe they were a bit too hopeful.

The plaintiffs were basically claiming that the Bank of Canada is mandated under the Bank of Canada Act to provide interest-free loans for public projects undertaken by federal, provincial and municipal governments. But the Crown argued that the claim was frivolous. And, not surprisingly, the Supreme Court of Canada decided that it does not want to hear the case or the appeal.[1]

State-sanctioned monetary systems are instruments of control. Some individuals definitely benefit from this profitable scheme, but the rest of us might want to consider using alternative methods or media of exchange.

The reigning monarch of Canada, as the living embodiment of the Crown and legal personification of the state, gives to the Parliament of Canada the legislative authority over coinage, currency, legal tender, banking and interest.[2]

The Canadian dollar is the official monetary unit within the territorial boundaries of this place called Canada. The dollar is the common medium of exchange and the ubiquitous unit of measurement.

The Bank of Canada, the country’s central bank, opened in 1935 as a privately-owned institution and in 1938 it became a federal Crown corporation to regulate credit and currency in the best interests of the economic life of the nation.[3] The shares of the Bank of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mint are held by the federal Minister of Finance on behalf of Her Majesty in right of Canada.[4]

The Bank of Canada claims a monopoly on the production and distribution of bank notes, which are not backed by gold. Canada went off the gold standard in 1914, and then went back on it in 1926, but officially suspended the redemption of notes for gold in 1933.[5] Legal tender includes bank notes issued by the Bank of Canada as well as current coins issued by the Royal Canadian Mint that are intended for circulation in Canada.[6] And it’s expensive to produce all these notes[7] and coins, so it could actually save money for the country if it went cashless.

The central bank describes a broad measurement of money that includes cash and other so-called deposits. Money, according to the Bank of Canada, has taken many forms and can be anything that is widely accepted as a means of exchange, a unit of measurement, and a store of value for future use. The central bank indicates that money is based on a social agreement to recognize value, and the value of money depends on the confidence of those who use it, and it has value because it is widely accepted.[8] But the Bank declares that cryptocurrencies fall short of its own broad definition of money.[9]

Canadian money in the present system is credit that is generated by making digital accounting entries,[10] but it is systemically scarce because it is created as interest-bearing debt. Total aggregate debt, including principal and interest, is always more than the entire amount of money in existence at any one time.

The monetary system is designed to siphon and concentrate wealth, which drives unsustainable economic growth, contributes to involuntary unemployment, increases unnecessary competition instead cooperation, and keeps most of us in a collective state of perpetual debt—but the general assumption appears to be that all of this debt can eventually be paid off if we just cut expenses and work harder (and it doesn’t even seem to matter if the work is unenjoyable, unproductive or even downright destructive—as long as we’re paid to do it).

The Bank of Canada, which acts as banker and fiscal agent for the federal government,[11] conveniently believes there should be an independent monetary institution that allows for the separation of the power to create money from the power to spend money,[12] and the Bank’s main source of revenue is the interest earned on Government of Canada securities.[13] The central bank and chartered banks are authorized to create money for the federal government by buying its newly issued bonds and treasury bills.[14] [15]

Government obtains credit (money that has been created as interest-bearing debt) so that it may spend even more than it collects in taxes—and then passes its debt to taxpayers. Taxes are paid in Canadian dollars, and there is a very real threat of fines, incarceration or loss of property for not paying taxes, so most people probably feel compelled to use state-sanctioned money.

Between 1974 and 2011 Canadian taxpayers supposedly paid over one trillion dollars in compounded interest on the federal debt.[16] [17] In 2016/17 all levels of government (federal, provincial and municipal) in Canada collectively spent $61.2 billion on interest payments.[18]

The chartered banks and other financial institutions in Canada also create money by providing credit and so-called loans for the public.[19] [20] Financial institutions get to lend our own credit back to us and charge interest for it.[21]

Most of the money in Canada is created by the six largest banks in the country—in collusion with the state and its government, central bank and mint. Legal tender notes and coins, which are merely tangible tokens of credit, are distributed to the financial institutions to satisfy public demand for cash.[22]

Between 1992 and 1994, the federal government phased out statutory non-interest-bearing reserve requirements for chartered banks in Canada.[23] The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions was created in 1987 to supervise federally regulated deposit-taking institutions and implement capital adequacy requirements,[24] which are developed at a global level by the Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland.[25]

The Bank of Canada indirectly manages the rate of money growth by influencing short-term interest rates and manipulating the price of credit,[26] which influences decisions to borrow and spend and affects demand for goods and services.

New money is often put into circulation without necessarily bringing more goods and services to the market, which can lead to monetary inflation and price inflation.[27] Inflation is like a hidden tax. But the Bank of Canada would have us believe that Canadian money is a reliable store of value—even though there has clearly been a substantial decrease in the domestic purchasing power of the dollar and a steady erosion of the value of savings since the central bank was established.[28]

The majority of people in Canada presumably believe that the Bank of Canada is our central bank and state-sanctioned money is our money. But the Bank of Canada is not serving our best interests, so why would we want to revive it? The Canadian dollar is not a benign medium of exchange or a reliable store of value, so why do we keep using it?

It’s probably a safe bet that the vast majority of people haven’t considered using anything besides state-sanctioned national currencies and aren’t even aware of any alternatives.

There may be growing concern regarding the monetary system, but clearly there are different opinions. There definitely isn’t agreement on the form, function, creation, supply, value or even necessity of money. This certainly adds to the confusion and it’s doubtful that we’ll actually reach a consensus on the nature of the problem or the solution, but there doesn’t necessarily need to be uniformity of opinion.

Barter will always be one way to directly swap goods and services, but it isn’t convenient on a large scale. Scarce commodities can still be used as a tangible medium of exchange, if you happen to have some gold or silver.

Some people want an official medium of exchange and a central bank, with third-party regulation and control of the creation, allocation and pricing of currency and credit. But many people are now comfortable using decentralized digital currencies.

Other individuals may want to create and issue their own credit instruments as a promise that they are willing and able to settle debts by providing their goods or services. New money can be created when new goods and services are brought to the market, which could avoid the problems of inflation. Only the issuer should be obliged to accept and redeem their IOU—at face value (and possibly upon demand).[29]

Some people might choose to form mutual credit clearing associations to mediate transactions and facilitate the reciprocal exchange of value.[30] Basically all this requires is an ongoing record of account balances—sales and purchases, credits and debits. Goods and services pay for other goods and services. This would allow people to temporarily purchase more than they have sold—if they are willing and able to bring an equal value of their own labour, services, goods and assets into the market. An essential feature of this system is that members can provide sufficient interest-free credit to each other—for a specified time with certain conditions. Surplus and saved credits (from sales) can be invested and/or loaned out, especially for larger projects.

Mutually agreeable terms, fees and rates can be negotiated for loans and credit. Numerous commodities and other assets can be used to store value and as units of account to measure value, and diverse items can be used as intermediary instruments in trade. Different forms of money can circulate in the market if people are willing to use them, and diverse payment systems and trading arrangements can operate concurrently to transfer value and ownership.

We don’t need to bother trying to revive or abolish the Bank of Canada, and we don’t need to nationalize the financial institutions, but we also do not need to rely on central banks or chartered banks to control and allocate credit and currency. If we are dissatisfied with the monetary system than we might want to stop using state-sanctioned money and begin to experiment with various methods and media of exchange, without pushing our preferences on anyone else or trying to force other people to participate in our trading arrangements; and perhaps we can then begin to withdraw from a monetary system that seems to be designed to confiscate wealth by trapping most of us in a collective state of perpetual debt.

*

James Clayton is a writer and community currency advocate. He lives in Ontario, Canada.

Notes

[1] http://www.comer.org/content/SupremeCourtDecision_4May17.htm

[2] http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/FullText.html

[3] http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/b-2/FullText.html

[4] http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/b-2/FullText.html

[5] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/dollar_book.pdf

[6] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/upcoming-changes-to-legal-tender-status-for-older-bank-notes/

[7] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/annualreport2017.pdf#currency

[8] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/what_is_money.pdf

[9] https://globalnews.ca/news/3919008/bitcoin-gamble-investment-bank-of-canada-poloz/

[10] https://lop.parl.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2015-51-e.html?cat=economics#a3

[11] http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/bank-of-canada/

[12] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/about/

[13] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/quarterly_financial_report_third_quarter_2017.pdf

[14] https://lop.parl.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2015-51-e.html?cat=economics#a3

[15] https://lop.parl.ca/content/lop/ResearchPublications/2015-51-e.pdf

[16] https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/04/17/Liberate-Bank-of-Canada/

[17] http://qualicuminstitute.ca/federal-debt/

[18] E-mail from Charles Lammam, Director-Fiscal Studies, The Fraser Institute

[19] https://lop.parl.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2015-51-e.html?cat=economics#a3

[20] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/canada_money_supply.pdf

[21] https://beyondmoney.net/2013/04/22/do-banks-create-money-out-of-nothing/

[22] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/core-functions/currency/

[23] https://www.banqueducanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/tr81.pdf

[24] http://www.osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/osfi-bsif/Pages/hst.aspx

[25] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bis.asp

[26] http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/monetary-policy/

[27] Thomas H. Greco, Jr., The End of Money and the Future of Civilization (Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009), 63.

[28] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/appendixa.pdf

[29] Thomas H. Greco, Jr., Money. Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender (Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2001), chapter 12.

[30] Thomas H. Greco, Jr., The End of Money and the Future of Civilization (Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2009), chapter 12.

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American Officials Continue to Make Laughing Stocks of Themselves

April 13th, 2018 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Here is “Mad Dog” Mattis, the US Secretary of War, stating that he has no evidence that there was a chemical weapons attack in Syria last week, but that he personally believes that there was one.

I remember when a person who claimed to believe something for which there was no evidence was either a religious fanatic or an ideologue. No serious person would express a conviction when there was no evidence to support it.

This raises questions as to Mattis’ fitness for office. He is prepared to lead the US into war with Russia based on nothing but his belief. This is insanity.

Even a low grade moron, which appears to be above the intelligence level of the current US Secretary of War, understands that Syria would not, within a few hours of its liberation of the Syrian people of Douma, have used chemical weapons against the civilian population for which its soldiers were dying in order to liberate.

According to RT, the Organization for the prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is on its way to inspect the site. I had read that the US had vetoed allowing an investigation. According to RT, the OPCW is only permitted by Washinton to determine whether any chemical weapons were used, not, if they were, by who. If the OPCW can be pressured to say evidence of chemical weapons use was found, Washington will seize on that as proof that Syria did it.

As the former head of the OPCW has made clear, the organization is not independent of Washington’s control. It is supposed to be independent but is not. Jose Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat who was Director-General of the OPCW reports that he was ordered to resign by John Bolton, the dangerous neoconservative warmonger who is currently National Secruity Adviser to President Trump. Bustani pointed out to Bolton that he was appointed by the OPCW member states, not by the US, and refused to resign. Here is Bolton’s reply: “OK, so there will be retaliation. Prepare to accept the consequences. We know where your kids are.”

This is American diplomacy at work. It is based entirely on lies, bribes, threats, coercion, murder. Remember the State Department official who told the president of Pakistan, do as I say now or we will bomb you into the stone age?

Bolton had Bustani voted out. The members of the OPCW preferred their Washington subsidies to being an honest organization.

It makes no sense for Russia to rely on “international organizations” that are under Washington’s control.

It makes no sense for Russia to rely on common sense in the West. There is no common sense anywhere in the West. If the West had common sense, the West would not be sending a flotilla to attack Russian and Syrian forces.

It makes no sense for Russia to speak about their “American partners.” No such partner exists. Russia has only American enemies.

The neoconservatives who control US foreign policy have stated it clearly in their declaration that the principle goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of Russia and any other country that could serve as a constraint on US unilateralism. The neoconservatives have made it abundantly clear that Russia has to go. It is dangerous for Russia to disregard such a clear warning. Yet when I am interviewed by Russian media, the journalists are perplexed by “neoconservative.” What is that, they ask.

How can it be that Russian journalists are unaware that the powerful interest group whose most warmonger member, John Bolton, sits as Trump’s right-hand man, has marked Russia for vassalage, conquest, or annihilation? A country this uninformed hasn’t much survival potential.

*

This article was originally published on Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

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

U.S Public Furious at ‘Our’ Government’s Intended Invasion of Syria

April 13th, 2018 by Eric Zuesse

The American public — even the strongest supporters of Donald Trump — is outraged that Trump of America, and Macron of France, and May of UK, intend a military invasion of Syria, in order to ‘punish Assad for’ a chemical attack that he might not even have done, and which might not even have happened at all as the invaders allege it to have happened.

Risking nuclear war against Russia, Syria’s ally, on such flimsy basis, is considered, it seems, treasonous, even by Trump’s voting-base.
For example, the Breitbart news-site is associated with Trump’s campaign since the very start of Trump’s efforts to win the U.S. Presidency, and its articles typically receive thousands or even tens of thousands of reader-comments. One of its lead stories on April 11th was “May Readies UK for Syria Strikes, Defies Strong Public Opposition” and it reports the polled two-to-one opposition by Brits against Prime Minister May’s decision to join the U.S. invasion; and if one clicks “Sort by Best” the top reader-comment — the one that received the highest net number of up-votes — is:

EmilyEnso 

May Readies UK for Syria Strikes, Defies Strong Public Opposition

I have just rung up my MP’s office to express my opposition and outrage at what will certainly be a war criime should Britain go ahead with bombing the Syrians and killing yet more innocent people.

It is a criminal and unjustifiable act using a completely bogus sham as an excuse.

I hope everyone else will do the same, alternatively E mail and urgently..

My MP, incidently, is a Tory.

So, an overwhelmingly U.S. readership is most-strongly liking an anti-Trump, anti-May, comment.

Another strongly pro-Trump readership is at the infowars site, and a main story there on April 11th was “REPORT: U.S. SET TO TARGET 70 DIFFERENT SITES IN SYRIA: Including ones at which Russian troops are stationed,” and the top reader-comment, and responses to it there, are even more informative about the passionate repudiation of Trump — and now of the U.S. Government itself — because of this:

JG687 • a day ago

This is a total disaster. i would have voted for Hillary Clinton if I wanted this foreign policy. All due to what was almost certainly a false flag gas attack. Trump, the war advocates have played you like a fiddle.
• 11  

LOL123  JG687 • a day ago

I wouldn’t have voted for Hillary under any circumstances, but I get it. 
“The City” in London has spoken to which our federal reserve and petro dollars are connected to…. War is what they need for profits and status quo.
China is installing permanent bases in Pakistan… Add that to the mix.
• 4  

Billy Brown  LOL123 • 19 hours ago

the right was never more united and ready to act with her getting in on the table. was good times 

Big-D  LOL123 • a day ago

& China is now in talks with Vanuatu close to Australia to establish a “Permanent Military Presents”.

333888999  JG687 • a day ago

No participant in the Tyranny that goes back at least to Elder Bush, through Clinton/Bush?Obama has been arrested. Now we know why!!
• 2  

Mark Right  JG687 • a day ago

Really,whats the point in voting ?
• 1  

Mark Right  JG687 • a day ago

Clinton was going to War with Russia as soon as she got it,she said multiple times ! So we lived a year and a bit longer !!! Nice talking to you ,next time we either will be dying or dead and if a afterlife,well I am screwed again !!
• 1  

And these are core pro-Trump sites. Of course, anti-Trump sites are likely to be even more opposed to the U.S. Government than the pro-Trump ones are.

Therefore: it is now clear that the U.S. — like its allied Governments (such as UK) — is a dictatorship, which ignores even the most passionate of the public’s priorities (in this case avoiding World War III — especially avoiding the precipitation of it on dubious or even bogus pretenses). 

If, somehow, history continues much beyond this moment in time, then perhaps the main question will be: How did The West come to be controlled by fascists who are obsessed to conquer not only all of Russia’s allies but also Russia itself? Did the spirit of Hitler and Mussolini become ultimately triumphant after FDR died, and how did this gradual takeover by fascism — this defeat of the spirit of FDR, and of the U.N. that he created — actually happen?

*

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

List Price: $22.95

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Douma “Chemical Attack”: Syrian Government Gives Free Access to OPCW Experts

April 13th, 2018 by RT News

An advance team of four experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have arrived in Syria, at the invitation of the Syrian and Russian governments. A second team arrives today (13th April) and all are to start work tomorrow, Saturday 14th April.

They are to investigate claims of an attack using chemical weapons on 7th April, which the US, UK and France, from thousands of miles away, immediately accused the Syrian government of carrying out. This in spite of the fact that, unlike the US, UK and Israel, all Syria’s chemical weaponry – much sold to them by Western countries – were shipped out of the country in 2013, under OPCW supervision with other international observers present.

The OPCW team has been told:

“they can go anywhere they want in Douma.”

“We will facilitate the arrival of the team to anywhere they want, in Douma, to check whether or not there was use of chemical substances,” said Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s envoy to the UN in New York. …

(Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, April 13, 2018)

…

Syria and Russia both requested an FFM team to be dispatched after opposition groups claimed that the Syrian army executed a chemical weapons attack there, alleging there were scores of deaths and hundreds of casualties.

Both countries have claimed that the incident was “staged” with the purpose of galvanizing Western rebel backers after the US earlier announced that it was planning to pull out of Syria, and they say that there may not have been any chemical use at all.

In a television interview on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “that chemical weapons were used [in Douma] at least with chlorine, and that they were used by the regime of Bashar al-Assad,” but he did not disclose the nature of the evidence.

A day earlier, the US said that it was “still assessing intelligence” and that it was “confident” that Damascus was involved.

The FFM experts, whose mission was set up in 2014, are not entitled to place responsibility for the incident on either side, but they are expected to say if and what chemicals were used, and how they were disseminated.

Read full RT report here.

U.S. Walks Back Claim that Syrian Government Carried Out Chemical Weapons Attack

April 13th, 2018 by Washington's Blog

While Trump blamed the Syrian government for the alleged recent chemical weapons attack, U.S. officials made it clear today that we don’t yet know what happened.

The New York Times reports:

“We are continuing to assess intelligence and are engaged in conversations with our partners and allies,” [White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee] Sanders said in a statement.

***

The Trump administration has not yet confirmed the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.

Reuters notes:

“I believe there was a chemical attack and we are looking for the actual evidence,” [Secretary of Defense] Mattis told lawmakers, adding he wanted inspectors in Syria “probably within the week.”

In a separate article, Reuters writes:

The United States is still assessing intelligence about last weekend’s suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Wednesday, striking a cautious tone hours after President Donald Trump threatened missile strikes.

Asked if he had seen enough evidence to blame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces for the attack, Mattis said: “We’re still assessing the intelligence — ourselves and our allies. We’re still working on this.” He did not elaborate.

And see this.

*

This article was originally published on Washington’s Blog.

Video: The 2018 Elections and Democracy in Revolutionary Cuba

April 13th, 2018 by Juan Carlos Rodriguez Diaz

On March 11, 2018, over 7 million Cubans went to the polls to elect a new National Assembly of People’s Power. The election of the National Assembly is one step in the process which will culminate in mid-April with the vote by the National Assembly for the country’s new State Council, and soon after, they will elect Cuba’s new President. Two distinguished Cubans embarked on a tour of nine Canadian cities in late march and early April of 2018 to help break down the mechanics of the Cuban democratic system and address related questions from audiences nationwide. This event was organized by the Canadian Network on Cuba and various partner organizations across Canada.

JUAN CARLOS RODRÍGUEZ DÍAZ is a Member of Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power, a Historian of the City of Pinar del Rio and Professor at the Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca University. His translator is YAMIL MARTÍNEZ MARRERO, Director of the Canada Desk of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples.

Michael Welch of Global Research TV had a chance to interview the visiting dignitaries during the Winnipeg leg of the tour. The video was recorded and prepared by Winnipeg-based community videographer Paul S. Graham.

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Selected Articles: Poison Gas – Weapon of Choice for “False News”

April 12th, 2018 by Global Research News

Global Research is a small team that believes in the power of information and analysis to bring about far-reaching societal change including a world without war.

Truth in media is a powerful instrument. As long as we keep probing, asking questions, challenging media disinformation to find real understanding, then we are in a better position to participate in creating a better world in which truth and accountability trump greed and corruption.

*     *     *

Poison Gas – Weapon of Choice for “False News”

By Peter Koenig, April 12, 2018

The recent fake gas attack on Douma outside of Damascus, has allegedly killed 80 to 120 people, mostly women and children. Of course, that sells best in the propaganda theatre – women and children. But there is not proof, none whatsoever.

False Flag in Syria Sets Stage for Wider War

By Tony Cartalucci, April 12, 2018

The US rush to conflict attempts to sidestep any meaningful investigation into the attack, fitting a larger pattern of Washington and its allies using baseless chemical weapon allegations for wars of aggression stretching back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Trigger-Happy Trump and Syria: “The Worst Case Scenario Is Now Our Reality.”

By Felicity Arbuthnot, April 12, 2018

The discredited White Helmets – a “rescue” group only operating in areas held by “rebels” who routinely decapitate, including children, set fire to people and commit numerous unspeakable acts – have produced a video of an apparent chemical attack on 7th April.

The Most Important U.N. Security Council Vote Ever? Alleged Syria Chemical Weapons Attack and US-NATO Plans to Invade Syria

By Eric Zuesse, April 12, 2018

On Tuesday, April 10th, the U.S. and France were sending missiles, ships, planes and soldiers for an invasion of Syria, which is defended by Russia; and two alternative draft proposals were presented to the U.N. Security Council for authorizing an expert investigation to be done into the alleged April 7th chemical attack in Douma in Syria, which alleged event the U.S. and France allege to be the justification for their planned invasion. 

US Government Backs Dangerous New Genetic Manipulation of Plants and Animals

By F. William Engdahl, April 12, 2018

The Trump Administration is backing a new technology for the genetic manipulation of plants and even animals with no intend to supervise or regulate against possible dangers. If left unchecked, it could open a Pandora’s Box of dangers to human health for generations. 

Yulia Skripal Is Plainly Incommunicado and Under Duress

By Craig Murray, April 12, 2018

Only the Russians have allowed us to hear the actual voice of Yulia Skripal, in that recorded conversation with her cousin. So the one thing we know for certain is that, at the very first opportunity she had, she called back to her cousin in Russia to let her know what is going on. If you can recall, until the Russians released that phone call, the British authorities were still telling lies that Sergei was in a coma and Yulia herself in a serious condition.

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Reversing the Tide: Truth in Media

April 12th, 2018 by Global Research News

Mainstream media fiction has reached new heights.

Public opinion is duped into endorsing the repeal of civil liberties in the name of “national security” as well as the conduct of “humanitarian wars” with a view to promoting “democracy” and achieving a lasting “World peace”.

Without media disinformation and war propaganda, which offensively pervade the global news chain, the legitimacy of the US-NATO military agenda would collapse like a deck of cards.

Despite relentless efforts by the independent alternative media to convey unbiased analysis and honest news reporting, the outright lies and fabrications of the mainstream media continue to thrive.

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

We cannot do this alone, to reverse the tide we need your help. We remind you that Global Research operates exclusively through the support of its readers, and does not accept funding from public or private sources. Please consider making a donation and/or becoming a Global Research Member. 

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9/11 Inquiry: Lawyers and Victims’ Families File Petition for Federal Grand Jury Investigation

April 12th, 2018 by Ted Walter

Yesterday morning, attorneys from the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, together with more than a dozen family members of 9/11 victims, filed a petition with the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman, demanding that he present evidence of unprosecuted federal crimes at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, to a special grand jury.

According to the 52-page petition, which is accompanied by 57 exhibits, federal statute requires the U.S. Department of Justice to relay citizen reports of federal crimes to a special grand jury. The unprosecuted crime alleged to have taken place on 9/11 is the bombing of a place of public use or a government facility — as prohibited under the federal bombing statute or 18 U.S.C. § 2332f — as well as a conspiracy to commit, or the aiding and abetting of, said offense.

The petition states,

“The Lawyers’ Committee has reviewed the relevant available evidence . . . and has reached a consensus that there is not just substantial or persuasive evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted crimes related to the use of pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries . . . on 9/11, but there is actually conclusive evidence that such federal crimes were committed.”

Dave Meiswinkle LC

David Meiswinkle, Esq., of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, at a press conference on the steps of New York City Hall, holds the petition just filed with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

A federal grand jury has broad powers to investigate the alleged crimes and to return an indictment for signature and prosecution by the U.S. Attorney. The petition notes,

“If any crime ever warranted a full special grand jury inquiry, the mass murder of thousands on our nation’s soil on 9/11 clearly does.”

Lawyers’ Committee Executive Director Mick Harrison expressed “cautious optimism” that the U.S. Attorney would fulfill his mandatory duty to present the reported evidence to a grand jury, his optimism based on the fact that the law offers the U.S. Attorney no discretion in whether to do so. However, in the event the U.S. Attorney does not bring forth the evidence to a grand jury, Mr. Harrison said, the petitioners reserve the option of bringing a mandamus action in federal court. A mandamus action, if successful, would compel the U.S. Attorney to fulfill his legal obligation.

For the time being, the Lawyers’ Committee will let the process run its course.

“We intend to step back now for a reasonable time and be respectful of the confidential nature of the grand jury proceedings, although we have offered to assist in the presentation of this evidence to a special grand jury,” Mr. Harrison commented.

This will not be the first time that interim U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman has dealt with crimes that intersected with U.S. national security matters. According to The New York Times,

“In 1987, Mr. Berman was hired by Lawrence E. Walsh to serve in the independent counsel’s office in Washington, which was then investigating the Iran-contra affair.”

The newspaper reported that Mr. Berman “helped convict Thomas G. Clines, a former senior operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, on tax fraud charges related to the Iran-contra affair.”

Bob McIlvaine GJpetition

Bob McIlvaine, one of 15 victims’ family members who signed the petition to the U.S. Attorney, speaks at the April 10th press conference at New York City Hall following the filing of the petition.

However, any expectation that Mr. Berman will make good on his duty to present the reported evidence to a grand jury must be tempered by the fact that, immediately prior to his appointment as U.S. Attorney, he was a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, whose role in destroying physical evidence of the crimes in question is well-documented. Still, the mandatory nature of the law and the redress available through a mandamus action mean it is well worth the attempt to put the evidence in front of a grand jury, in the opinion of the Lawyers’ Committee.

The Culmination of Hard Work and Collaboration with AE911Truth

The voluminous and detailed petition filed by the Lawyers’ Committee and backed by more than a dozen 9/11 family members is the culmination of years of hard work and collaboration. It all began when several attorneys who signed the AE911Truth petition started working together in 2014 and later decided to form this organization.

On the 15th anniversary of 9/11, AE911Truth and the Lawyers’ Committee held a two-day symposium called Justice In Focus at New York City’s Cooper Union. There, several expert witnesses affiliated with AE911Truth testified before a distinguished panel of attorneys representing the Lawyers’ Committee, including the late Ferdinando Imposimato, Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy.

Today, that testimony makes up a significant portion of the 52-page petition and 57 exhibits filed with the U.S. Attorney. Videos of the Justice In Focus symposium can be viewed in AE911Truth’s video gallery. The above-mentioned expert testimony is in the video titled “Sunday Morning Events” as well as in the videos of Dr. Leroy Hulsey and Dr. Graeme MacQueen.

JIF testimony

Legal panelists evaluate the evidence given by more than a dozen AE911Truth technical and building professionals, who testified at the September 2016 Justice In Focus symposium.

In the year and a half since that landmark event, AE911Truth has collaborated with the Lawyers’ Committee on developing civil litigation strategies for pursuing 9/11 Justice. Most recently, AE911Truth provided technical feedback on the petition to the U.S. Attorney and conducted outreach on behalf of the Lawyers’ Committee to mobilize victims’ family members to sign the petition.

AE911Truth will follow with great interest any developments related to the pending grand jury petition and report on them as news becomes available.

In the meantime, the Lawyers’ Committee is inviting all members of the public to add their names to the grand jury petition. We heartily encourage all supporters of 9/11 Truth and Justice to visit the Lawyers’ Committee website and sign the petition, so that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York will know that thousands of people are watching.

The petition can be read at LawyersCommitteefor9-11Inquiry.org.

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Lavrov, Erdogan, and Afrin: Masterful Perception Management in Action

April 12th, 2018 by Andrew Korybko

The curious episode earlier this week of President Erdogan rebuffing Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s request to return Afrin to Damascus’ control was nothing more than a brilliant display of perception management by the Moscow diplomat and confirms his reputation as being one of the most skillful practitioners of this art in history.

The Seeds Of Scandal

The world’s been so focused on the US-Russian standoff in Syria throughout the entire week that most people outside of the Arab Republic missed the curious exchange between Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Turkish President Erdogan over Afrin, but that’s mostly because it was objectively a “non-event” in the first place and nothing more than a brilliant display of perception management mostly intended for the Syrian domestic audience anyhow. What happened was that Lavrov curiously announced on the same day that Russia once again sat back and passively allowed “Israel” to bomb Syria that Moscow believes that Ankara should hand Afrin back to Damascus’ control, which would restore the democratically elected and legitimate country’s sovereignty over the formerly “federalist”-infested region. Moreover, he also said that “Erdogan has never said that Turkey wants to occupy Afrin”, which totally contradicted the prevailing Alt-Media dogma that Ankara was supposedly preparing to annex the area as part of some “Neo-Ottoman” plot.

It’s unbelievable that one of the most seasoned diplomats in history, one who has extensive years-long experience working with the Turkish leader and has obviously been briefed multiple times by the Russian intelligence services on his psychological profile, would seriously think President Erdogan would do what he asked, let alone after having been visibly “called out” in public despite the priceless soft power boost that he gave him by reassuring the world that Ankara harbors no intentions of occupying Afrin. As could have been expected, President Erdogan responded negatively by saying that

“Lavrov’s approach is not correct (because) we know better than anyone to which side Afrin should be transferred (so) when the time comes, we will give Afrin to its inhabitants.”

This was widely interpreted in the pro-Syrian Alt-Media Community as a crushing blow to Russian prestige and evidence of the weaponized conspiracy theory that Turkey is supposedly moments away from “backstabbing” Russia again and therefore can’t ever be trusted.

The Russian-Turkish Tango

Should Russia have really believed that this was the case and sincerely felt offended by President Erdogan’s rebuke, then its witty spokeswoman Maria Zakharova would have surely responded, though interestingly enough, there was silence from Moscow’s side and the issue wasn’t returned to. It’s unrealistic to imagine that Russia “accepted the loss” and decided to, as the UK Defense Minister rudely urged last month, “go away and shut up”, so another explanation must be presented. It’s here where careful consideration of Russia’s current strategy comes into play and allows one to appreciate the mastery behind what just happened, but it can’t be properly understood without looking at the background context. The first thing to keep in mind is that Russia is cooperating closely with Turkey over the creation of so-called “de-escalation zones” in Syria that the author warned last May could easily end up turning into unofficial “zones/spheres of influence” in the country.

Image result for erdogan + lavrov

This emerging outcome isn’t coincidental either, but is probably exactly what Russia and Turkey planned together as part of the speculated Great Power “compromise” that underpins the basis of their fast-moving rapprochement that began with Ankara’s multipolar pivot after the failed pro-American coup attempt in summer 2016. Objectively speaking, a large and strong Great Power like Turkey is much more important to Russia’s overall geostrategic calculus than a small and weak war-torn state such as Syria, which means that Moscow might have concluded that it’s better to “balance” regional affairs between these two neighboring Mideast states by giving a tacit “preference” to Ankara’s ambitions over Damascus’. In practice, this takes the form of Russia “passively facilitating” Turkey’s anti-terrorist interventions in northern Syria and subsequent establishment of FSA proxy “spheres of influence” by at the very least not doing anything to stop them, to say nothing of the potential coordination between these two Great Powers in each instance.

The Anger Over Afrin

Returning back to Afrin, there’s no way that Turkey would have been able to commence “Operation Olive Branch” without Russian backing, which Ankara even acknowledged on several occasions, though this Neo-Realist move on the “19th-Century Great Power Chessboard” is unpalatable to many Syrians who can’t stomach the thought of their top military partner cooperating with the country that’s responsible for bringing so much death and destruction to their land. This “populist” perception is based on a lack of awareness when it comes to the larger dynamics of Great Power politics and the strictly anti-terrorist military mandate that Russia agreed to when it was invited into Syria, and knowledge about these two factors would prove that Moscow has no obligation nor intention to protect the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and that there are reasonable arguments that could be made in explaining why it works with Ankara inside the Arab Republic.

Nevertheless, some Syrians oppose the Russian-Turkish Strategic Partnership in principle and rely on their international Alt-Media supporters to channel their grievances to a larger audience, albeit in an indirect and “plausibly deniable” way that doesn’t reflect negatively on their country at large due to the perceived sensitivities of this issue. Russia is clearly aware of this given its world-renowned expertise in intelligence collection and analysis, and it understands the danger of demagogic voices (some of whom might be foreign-backed or based abroad) manipulating this emotional issue in order to produce a nasty anti-Russian reaction in Syria with time, hence why it prudently prefers to publicly downplay any talk about this topic especially when it deals with very controversial issues such as Turkey’s two anti-terrorist interventions into northern Syria. The Afrin issue has been very touchy for many because of the sheer volume of fake news that was spread about it in Alt-Media which resultantly advanced false narratives and engineered their attendant false expectations in Syrian society.

Perception Management Multitasking

After the enormous “disappointment” that Syrians collectively experienced once it was revealed without a doubt that most of what they had read about Turkey’s “imminent defeat” in Afrin was false and following Ankara’s somewhat provocative “braggadocio” about Russia’s role in their victory, Russia wisely realized that it would be best for it to publicly take steps to distance itself from this affair in order to avoid enflaming what Moscow feared might have been growing anti-Russian sentiment in society in response to Alt-Media’s fake news fiasco. Concurrently with this, Russia was also aware of just how much Syrians loathe its strategic partnership with “Israel”, especially given that the Arab Republic proudly includes in its constitutional preamble that “Syria has occupied an important political position as it is the beating heart of Arabism, the forefront of confrontation with the Zionist enemy and the bedrock of resistance against colonial hegemony on the Arab world and its capabilities and wealth.”

As “luck” would have it, “Israel’s” bombing mission on Monday morning provided the “perfect opportunity” for Russia to “kill two birds with one stone”, in that it decided to make what can be described as a “pro-Syrian” statement about Turkey’s military presence in Afrin in order to “deflect” attention away from Moscow’s “passive allowance” of Tel Aviv’s latest attack. In order to ensure that the characteristically capricious President Erdogan didn’t “overreact”, Lavrov began his statement by denying the fake news allegations about the Turkish leader’s falsely reported threats to “occupy” the region and then proceeded to “suggest” that he return it to Damascus’ control, an eventuality that he knew fully well wouldn’t happen because of Ankara’s previous public statements on the matter. As could have been predicted, President Erdogan rejected this proposal, and the exchange between the two world figures captivated the attention of mostly only Syrians and their pro-government supporters abroad.

Concluding Thoughts

What would have ordinarily been a routine exchange of statements was warped into a “scandalous” episode by the Alt-Media Community, which gleefully propagated the interpretation that Turkey “told Russia off” and that the fear mongered “second backstabbing” was just around the corner. Instead of Syrians indulging in the demagogic “populist” narrative of “Russia betraying Syria” by facilitating Turkey’s operation in Afrin and “passively allowing” “Israel’s” latest strike (which isn’t Moscow’s responsibility to stop anyhow), society’s attention was “constructively” “diverted” to this skillful display of perception management. Russia respects that Syrian society “isn’t ready” to “understand” its Great Power diplomacy with both of those actors and that its previous attempts to have media “surrogates” explain it have been largely futile, so it opted for the “safest” choice in simply “distracting” them instead, which has actually been convincingly effective judging by a review of pro-government chatter in the English-language social media space that reveals a widespread belief that Turkey “got  the best” of Russia in this (“choreographed”) exchange.

Looking beyond this success, Russia will probably have to repeat its tried-and-tested method of perception management in Syria very soon again in the near future if what reliable Russian journalist and high-level analyst Maxim Suchkov reported earlier this morning on Twitter is true. This well-connected member of the country’s expert community told the world in a series of tweets that Syria’s hated foe, “Israeli” “Prime Minister” Benjamin Netanyahu, is “playing (an) important intermediary role [between] Putin & Trump now (an option Russia has long been favoring)”, and the possible de-escalation that these mediation efforts may have yielded would essentially shatter all manner of “political correctness” by provocatively implying that “Netanyahu saved the world” in offsetting the “apocalyptic” “World War III” nightmare that most of Alt-Media has psychotically fear mongered about all week. However Lavrov does it, it can be expected that he’ll creatively come up with another Afrin-like “solution” for “placating” Syrian society and staving off the dangerous scenario of anti-Russian demagogues exploiting this “inconvenient” possibility.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

“Ground Control to Major Trump”: America’s Attacks and Invasions. “War is Good for Business”

April 12th, 2018 by Philip A Farruggio

Those who remember the late David Bowies 1969 song Space Oddity can recall the lyrics ‘Ground Control to Major Tom’. Well, almost 50 years later we have what this writer refers to as a ‘War Oddity’.

L. Fletcher Prouty wrote his 1972 book The Secret Team, whereupon he covered his inside witness to how a secret element of our CIA actually ran foreign policies and wars. What I found interesting was his take on the whole Vietnam debacle. In the book Prouty made a cogent point on how this Military Industrial Complex (later renamed by yours truly as the Military Industrial Empire) needed what they called the Vietnam War  to fulfill their thirst for profit making military hardware and supplies. Prouty notes that American businesses were all but knocked out of the lucrative defense contract arena by the end of Eisenhower’s last term, due to the sudden and abrupt swing to ballistic missiles and space during the late 1950s. He goes on to explain that by sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the ground in Vietnam and its environs increased the need for more WW2 type munitions and bombers and helicopters… and of course plenty of bombs. The Navy needed those shallow water boats to use on the rivers. To parrot the late General Smedley Butler from his  1935 essay ‘War is a Racket’, many corporate interests made fortunes each time our nation goes to what they sell us as ‘War’.

Fifty years and nothing has changed… and never will! We know from all the audits done from our (illegal and of course immoral) attacks and invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, how many segments of this Military Industrial Empire made fortunes. Remembering back to Vietnam, each time a Bell Corp. made Helicopter got destroyed, and 5000 were during that time, Bell made from $ 1-2 million per unit of replacement. Of course, to ship over 500,000 troops, clothe house and feed them for their usual one year tour of duty (or sooner if they were killed) some contractors made out like General Butler alluded. We had Iraq War 1 and then Iraq War 2, invading Afghanistan and occupy both countries for decades… what a racket! So, when Trump gets his orders to proceed with new ‘fields of endeavors’ i.e.: Syria (?) more fortunes will be made.. on top of those already seen by the manufacturers of the Apache Helicopter (fully equipped at 56 million dollars), drone aircraft and missiles. Remember folks that this obscene military spending comes out of the pockets of you and me taxpayer… at well over 50 % of our federal tax dollars!!

Whoever coined the phrase ‘War is hell’ was only referring to the suckers on its receiving end, and the poor grunts who we send over to kill and be killed in illegal and immoral actions! It is actually Paradise for those who profit from it.

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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House,  Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected].

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Strategy of U.S. Anti-Russia Sanctions Becomes Clearer: Serving American Billionaires

April 12th, 2018 by Eric Zuesse

On Friday, April 6th, Reuters headlined “Russian businessmen, officials on new U.S. sanctions list”, and opened: “The United States on Friday imposed major sanctions against 24 Russians, striking at allies of President Vladimir Putin over Moscow’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other ‘malign activity’. Below are the most prominent businessmen targeted along with their main assets and connections as well as extracts from the U.S. Treasury statement.”

As that Reuters list makes even clearer than before, U.S. economic sanctions against Russia are focused against mainly the following four categories of targets in Russia:

1. Russian competitors to America’s largest international oil companies. These specific U.S. firms were listed, on March 27th, in an excellent article by Antonia Juhasz in Pacific Standard magazine, “INSIDE THE TAX BILL’S $25 BILLION OIL COMPANY BONANZA: A Pacific Standard analysis shows the oil and gas industry is among the tax bill’s greatest financial beneficiaries.” There, they were listed in rank order. For example: the largest such firm, Exxon/Mobil, was given $5.9 billion in “2017 Tax Act Savings,” and the second-largest, Philipps 66, won $2.7 billion in it. The latest round of anti-Russia sanctions focuses clearly against these international U.S. oil firms’ Russian competitors. 

However, previous rounds of U.S. sanctions have especially focused against:

2. Russian competitors of Lockheed Martin and other international U.S. weapons-firms — Russian manufacturers that are selling, to foreign governments, military aircraft, missiles, and other military equipment, on the international markets: competing military products. The competitive purpose of these sanctions is to boost not U.S. international oil-firms, but U.S. international weapons-firms.

3. Russian banks that lend to those firms. Some of these banks have also other close ties to those firms.

4. Russian Government officials, and billionaires, who cooperate with Russia’s elected President, Vladimir Putin. Putin refuses to allow suppliers to the Russian military to be controlled (such as are the military suppliers to America’s Government) by private investors (and especially not by foreigners); he wants the weapons-manufacturers to represent the state, not the state to represent the weapons-manufacturers; i.e., he refuses to privatize Russia’s weapons-producers, and he instead insists that all firms that supply Russia’s military be controlled by Russia’s elected Government, not by any private investors. (By contrast, The West relies almost entirely upon privately owned weapons-makers.) He also prohibits foreign interests from controlling Russia’s natural resources such as oil firms, mining, and land-ownership, and this explicitly applies even to agricultural land. However, most important are Russia’s Strategic Sectors Law (otherwise known as “Strategic Investment Law”), which defines as a “Strategic Entity” and thus subject strictly to control only by the Russian Government and citizenry, four categories: Defense, Natural Resources, Media, and Monopolies. Russia’s refusal to allow U.S. billionaires to buy control over these — to buy control over the Government — is, to a large extent, being punished by the U.S. anti-Russia sanctions. 

Focusing on the latest round: The Reuters article lists the specific main targets of the new sanctions. These targets are, as described by the U.S. Treasury Department, and as quoted by Reuters:

“Oleg Deripaska is being designated … for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.”

“Viktor Vekselberg is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.”

“Kirill Shamalov is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.”

“Andrei Skoch is being designated for being an official of the Government of the Russian Federation.”

“Suleiman Kerimov is being designated for being an official of the Government of the Russian Federation.”

“Vladimir Bogdanov is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.”

“Igor Rotenberg is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.”

Those are the ones that the Reuters article specifically listed. In addition, there are:

DESIGNATED RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

Andrey Akimov, chairman of the board at Gazprombank

Andrey Kostin, president of VTB bank

*Alexey Miller, chief executive of Gazprom

Mikhail Fradkov, president of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies

Sergey Fursenko, member of the board of directors of Gazprom Neft

Oleg Govorun, head of the Presidential Directorate for Social and Economic Cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States Member Countries

Image result for Gazprom

Gazprom is Russia’s oil-and-gas giant; and, likewise in accord with Putin’s demand that national-security industry remain under state-control instead of control by private investors, its controlling investor is the Russian Government. However, a few individuals are listed who are simply Russian Government officials, presumably likewise more cooperative, with carrying out the intentions of the elected President, than the U.S. and its allied governments consider to be acceptable.

Clearly, the special focus of these sanctions is on supporting U.S. international oil firms competing against Russian international oil firms. 

On January 26th, Reuters bannered “U.S. hits Russian deputy minister and energy firms with sanctions”, and opened: 

The United States added Russian officials and energy firms to a sanctions blacklist on Friday, days before details of further possible penalties against Moscow are due to be released.

…

A Treasury Department spokesperson said the department is “actively working” on reports required under the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Terrorism Act” and aimed to release them consistent with timelines in the legislation.

Trump or his Treasury Secretary were actually responding to pressure from “Democrats” and unnamed others; but, when the final statement from the Treasury was issued on January 29th (and largely ignored by the press), it turned out that no new sanctions were issued, against anyone. The billionaires’ lobbyists had achieved nothing more than to provide (via the anti-Russia verbiage from members of Congress) to the American public, yet more anti-Russia indoctrination in support of America’s war against Russia; but, this time, no real action was taken by the President against Russia. 

On 28 December 2017, the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor, which does work for the CIA and for major U.S. corporations, had headlined, “Russia Won’t Sit Still for Additional U.S. Sanctions”, and summarized prior U.S. economic sanctions against Russia:

Since the Soviet period, the United States has targeted Russia with numerous sanctions. The primary ones currently in effect were instituted over human rights violations and the conflict in Ukraine. In late 2012, the United States expanded its Soviet-era sanctions over human rights and approved the Magnitsky Act to punish those deemed responsible for the death of Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky, a whistleblower who investigated Kremlin abuses and a tax-fraud scheme. The act penalizes dozens of people believed to be involved in the case, but the measure has evolved into a platform for the United States and its allies to punish Russia for a much wider scope of human rights abuses. 

The Ukraine sanctions imposed by the United States (and, to a lesser extent, by the European Union, Canada, Australia and Japan) stem from Russian involvement in the conflict there and includes the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russian support of the previous government, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the annexation of Crimea. Those penalties include:

• Limits on debt issuance to Russia’s six largest banks, four primary state oil firms and four state defense firms.

• Sanctions on Russia’s energy industry, prohibiting U.S. firms from providing, exporting or re-exporting goods and technology related to deep-water, Arctic offshore and shale oil and natural gas projects in Russia.

• Bans on subjects receiving dual-use goods by Russia’s primary state defense companies.

• Sanctions (travel and asset freezes) against hundreds of Russian entities and individuals. 

That was a fair summary; but, because Stratfor derives some of its income from the CIA, it stated as being facts, instead of as being lies, that “Sergei Magnitsky [was] a whistleblower who investigated Kremlin abuses and a tax-fraud scheme,” even though Magnitsky actually was never a “whistleblower,” and he was, to the exact contrary, assisting an American hedge-fund operator to illegally avoid $230 million in taxes that were due to the Russian Government and which tax-fraud had been reported not by Magnitsky as any ‘whistleblower’ but instead by, essentially, a bookkeeper, who was afraid of being prosecuted if she didn’t report to the police this tax-evasion that she was working on. Furthermore, Stratfor’s “to punish those deemed responsible for the death of” Magnitsky also is a lie, because the only person who so “deemed” was the American tax-fraudster who had employed Magnitsky. That employer accused Russia’s police of beating to death in prison this criminal suspect, Magnitsky, and he used, as ‘documentation’ for his charges, fake ‘translations’into English of the police documents, and these ‘translations’ were taken at face-value by U.S. and EU officials, who couldn’t read Russian, and who wanted to cooperate with, instead of to resist, the U.S. Barack Obama Administration and the UK David Cameron Administration. 

Image result for Stratfor

Furthermore, Stratfor, when it refers to “human rights violations and the conflict in Ukraine,” is actually referring instead to “the most blatant coup in history”, as the head of Stratfor put it when describing what the Obama regime referred to as the ‘revolution’ that in February 2014 had overthrown Ukraine’s democratically elected Government and that then began an ethnic-cleansing campaign to get rid of the residents in the areas that had voted over 75% for the President whom the U.S.-run operation had overthrown. In fact, U.S. think-tanks criticized Obama for providing insufficient assistance to the newly installed Ukrainian regime’s firebombings of the places where over 90% of the residents had voted for the now-ousted Ukrainian President. And that was entirely typical. This is a sort of ‘philanthropy’ that America’s billionaires receive ‘charitable’ tax-writeoffs for funding (donating to). No matter how aggressive a U.S. President may be against Russia, America’s aristocracy (through their ‘philanthropies’ etc.) complain that it’s not aggressive enough — America’s Government must do yet more, in order to ‘support human rights’ abroad.

So, that’s what America’s anti-Russian sanctions are all about: serving America’s billionaires.

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This article was originally published on Strategic Culture Foundation.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Featured image is from SCF.

Iraqis’ Diet Fifteen Years After the Invasion. Travelling Through Baghdad

April 12th, 2018 by Barbara Nimri Aziz

Some Iraqis might assert that today everything is available in their country. That’s true to a degree; if you exclude self-sufficiency. And trust.

Traveling throughout Baghdad and into the south I recognized the same models of vehicles one finds in the US, along with some Chinese-made trucks. We pick up tasty BBQ chicken from street vendors. Fresh vegetables and fruits, shoes and garments and cosmetics of all varieties and qualities are available; furniture and linens and toys for any age are plentiful, as are electronic goods. Communication by FaceBook and Whatsapp are unregulated. YouTube is heavily used.

You have fast food bistros serving salads and french fries. Pizza is popular, and a few upscale family restaurants moored on the banks of the Tigris are well patronized. You can linger at wifi-connected coffee shops, and find bars and discos open until early morning. Fresh baked fish and roasted chicken plates can be delivered to office or home.

To all appearances the Iraqi economy is just fine, if you observe only consumption habits.

A simple, more accurate way to judge economic conditions is to turn from the sparkling facades of Chevrolet show rooms and decline a pizza lunch to instead stroll through a local supermarket.

Doing so in Iraq, I am reminded what I found 20 years ago inside a Palestinian food store in Al-Bireh village nearby Ramallah. Two-liter soda bottles stacked outside the shop were not only for American teenagers visiting their grandmothers. Soda had become everyone’s preferred beverage. Those columns of orange and green bottles may add color to the street and signal modern tastes and available surplus cash. At what cost?

Leaning closer to examine the labels, I see they’re in Hebrew. With no attempt to camouflage their origin, Israeli products are exported for Palestinian consumption. Inside the shop I note how canned and packaged foods likewise originate in Israel. Why should I be shocked therefore when I find Al-Bireh’s lebaan, yogurt, labeled in Hebrew? Lebaan, the staple of Arab breakfast enjoyed with olives, sliced cucumber and tomato, and unleavened bread, is (was!) the traditional produce of Arab herders and farmers throughout our history. Olives are the last surviving sign of Palestinian agriculture, and this industry too is in decline.

The fate of Palestine’s olive industry is paralleled by Iraq’s date production. Iraq’s legendary 40 million date palms, provenance of California’s successful date production, once Iraq’s primary and unsurpassed export after crude oil, are wasting away today.

Which brings us back to Iraqis’ diet and my visit a few weeks ago to a Baghdad supermarket. I pause on the residential street in Karrada’s middle class neighborhood where I stay, to slip into a food store. Here too the shop’s entrance is constrained by stacks of bottled soda. Pepsi seems the most abundant brand; others with names I do not recognize are plentiful too. Moving into the entranceway, both sides are piled with boxes and trays displaying generous supplies of chips and cookies (labeled in English and Arabic, or English only).

Inside the store, I saunter along one isle perusing canned and bottled items. Pickled olives and mayonnaise, salad dressings, tang and apple juice, cheeses, olive oil, pasta, canned tuna and tea– almost all of them imported. Not Israel here, but Spain, Turkey, Columbia, China, Thailand, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia supply Iraqis with most of their food. Foreign company names appear on all packaged food items I examine. Moreover, prices here (where 1,300 Iraqi dinar = one dollar) differ little from US supermarket rates. The cost of a ‘Pringles’ package or a can of tuna in Baghdad, for example, is what I pay in the U.S.

When we turn to fresh produce, fruits and vegetables, the situation is even more alarming. Here too most produce is imported. Even oranges (in this land of orange trees). Beets and cabbage are marked ‘Iraqi’, but pomegranate, okra, eggplant, bananas, cucumber and other greens are from Jordan, Turkey and beyond. The nicest looking tomatoes (a staple in Iraqi dishes) are foreign produced.

Why these imports when Iraq is still largely rural? Foreign produce is less expensive than that grown by Iraq’s farmers, I’m told. Why? Because they are priced to undercut Iraqi production. Why? Because import licenses are awarded to foreign suppliers. And why is this? Because ministry personnel who negotiate these contracts receive handsome kickbacks. This, at the same time, when: a) electricity supply in Iraq is so weak and unreliable that local production is impossible, and b) ministries responsible for agriculture and manufacturing don’t function in the interests of Iraqi producers. Iraq’s once thriving agricultural base is woefully neglected and derelict.

These conditions are a direct result of government policy and a heavily corrupt bureaucracy. In the case of the bankrupt Palestinian economy, declining production and joblessness are to a large degree imposed by the occupier, Israel, implemented through a compliant Palestinian bureaucracy, oversupplied with wage earners whose disposable income supports a consumption economy and reliance on imports.

In Iraq, the US government still wields enormous influence on Iraq’s administration. From the start of its occupation of Iraq, the U.S. has thwarted attempts to rebuild the nation’s electricity grid and build and install machinery essential to a functioning manufacturing base.

(Significantly, some energy is available to ensure that communications function so that Iraqis can access television and their phone apps. Most homes and small businesses augment a patchy, inadequate government electrical supply with batteries and generators, imported of course.)

These conditions, in both Palestine and Iraq, are bald ‘disaster capitalism’. They exhibit what Naomi Klein identifies in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her influential 2007 study was followed in 2015 by Disaster Capitalism, offering irrefutable evidence of these insidious foreign-directed processes which enrich outside powers while directing responsibility onto incompetent corrupt local governments.

At every level, from reliance on underwear for its soldiers to pharmaceuticals to tangy beverages, Iraq’s decline into a consumer nation is unarguably the policy of outside powers. It works with a compliant merchant class of suppliers, happy to take a narrow slice while its foreign partners enjoy the prime cuts. It’s a process well know to every Iraqi.

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BN Aziz recently returned from a two week visit in Iraq. Swimming up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq, based on her work in Iraq between 1989 and 2003, is published by University of Florida Press, 2007.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Washington’s False Flag: United Nations Confirmed that US Supported Syrian “Rebels” Were Using Chemical Weapons

April 12th, 2018 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Image Head of UN Mission Carla del Ponte

This article was first published in April 2017

Washington is Lying.

The Media is Lying.

The Chemical Weapons Attack is being used as a “False Flag”, a pretext and a justification to wage an illegal war of aggression. 

The United Nations in a 2013 report confirms that Syrian opposition “rebels” (supported by Washington) “may have used chemical weapons against [Syrian] government forces.”

The UN report refutes Washington’s allegations that the government of Bashar al Assad was using chemical weapons against his own people. 

What the UN mission findings confirm is that the US sponsored opposition “rebels” largely composed of Al Qaeda affiliated groups, financed and supported by the Western military alliance were responsible for these 2013 chemical weapons attacks.

Moreover, as confirmed in an earlier report, the Al Qaeda rebels were being trained in the use of chemical weapons by specialists on contract to the Pentagon.

Washington (which supports the opposition rebels in the use of chemical weapons) rather than Damascus is responsible for extensive crimes against humanity.

 

According to the United Nations 2013 mission led by Carla del Ponte:

“evidence from casualties and medical staff indicated that rebel forces in the civil war had used the deadly nerve agent sarin.

‘Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals, and there are strong, concrete suspicions, but not yet incontrovertible proof, of the use of sarin gas,’ said Del Ponte in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

‘This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.’

Last night, the UN commission looking into allegations of war crimes in Syria tried to row back on the comments by its human rights investigator, pointing out that conclusive evidence had not been discovered.

However, the White House said it was likely that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, not the rebels, were behind any chemical weapons use. …

Sarin has been classed as a weapon of mass destruction due to its potency and is banned under international law.

US President Barack Obama has said that the use or deployment of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a ‘red line’ that could lead to foreign military intervention. …

The comments by Ms Del Ponte, a member of the U.N. panel probing alleged war crimes in Syria, contradict claims by Britain and the U.S. that intelligence reports showed Syrian soldiers had used chemical weapons.

She said that the United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law. (See Daily Mail Online, May 6, 2013))

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Germany Together with 190 Other UN Member States, Have No Intention of Attacking Syria. Why Has Britain?

April 12th, 2018 by Hans Stehling

Does the Conservative government of Theresa May imagine that Britain, in 2018, with just one tenth the armed forces of America, is still a global military power?

Does it imagine that the UK has millions to throwaway on a military adventure when our National Health Service is on the point of collapse through lack of funding? When the sick lie on trolleys in hospital through lack of beds? Where our cancer treatment record is still the worst in Europe?

Where our roads are so full of potholes that we are more like a banana republic?

Where the government has cut welfare payments for the sick and disabled?

Where crime and murder in our cities is rising due to cuts in police numbers?

Where knife attacks in London are at a record high?

Where public spending is at an all-time low due to massive government debt?

Yet this Prime Minister, with no military experience whatsoever is prepared to commit the United Kingdom to war? The electorate would not sanction it and neither must Parliament.

  • TOTAL BRITISH ARMED FORCES  =      147,000 (2018)
  • TOTAL AMERICAN ARMED FORCES =   1,430,000 (2018)

Britain has just one (1) outdated, Trident submarine at sea at any one time. Israel has a fleet of four (4) state-of-the-art, German built, Dolphin Class, nuclear-armed submarines with cruise missiles currently assumed active in the Mediterranean and the Gulf.

It is clear that the British Prime Minister is under the covert influence of a political lobby that acts not in British interests but of those whose agenda is to effect regime change, not in Syria but in Iran.  And that puts the UK on a collision course with both the European Union and the UN Security Council.

Theresa May must not be allowed to take military action against Syria upon the request of the erratic Trump administration or under pressure from the unelected CFI Lobby or any other political pressure group.  The consequences could prove disastrous for Britain, and for Europe.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst from the UK; a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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US Attack on Syria Is Futile but Serves a Purpose

April 12th, 2018 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

The United Nations Security Council turned down a compromise resolution on Syria, proposed by Sweden and seconded by Russia seeking investigation on the alleged chemical attack in Douma. Five countries supported the resolution with two permanent members – United States and Britain – opposing it. Earlier, a resolution on the same lines which was supported by Russia and China was also opposed by the US and Britain.

This is a significant political and diplomatic victory for Russia insofar as only two other countries joined the US and Britain to oppose the Swedish resolution. Six countries abstained.

The big question is whether this development portends an impending US attack on Syria, bypassing the UN. The UN has refused to confirm there has been any attack at all. Russia and Syrian government insist there has been no attack and have approached the Organization for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for an international investigation. The good thing is that the OPCW is deputing two teams of experts to go to Douma later this week. Russia has offered to give them full security protection.

So Trump has a major decision to make. Logically, punishment follows a crime that has been committed and it seems no crime has been committed. This appears to be a false flag operation – that is, a fabrication with a view to trigger a sequence of events. That was how the US invaded Iraq in 2003 and it is an established fact today that Saddam Hussein did not have any program to develop weapons of mass destruction, as then US Secretary of State Colin Power had misled the UN Security Council. (Powell later admitted that he was misled by his own administration.)

One difference in the present case is that Trump has been on record that he wants the American military presence in Syria to end. That stance and the present threat to launch an attack on Syria are contradictory. Because, a US attack on Syria will have serious repercussions, including possibly a showdown with Russia, which would mean a US drawdown in Syria may not be possible in a conceivable future.

Perhaps, Trump is indulging in doublespeak and the backdrop could be the criticality that has arisen over Robert Mueller’s investigation into his collusion with Russia, which has now dramatically expanded in scope. The FBI raid on the office of Trump’s attorney in the White House is a very serious development. Trump is just inches away from being implicated in the charges against him levelled by porn star Stormy Daniels. The CNN says, “There could be dark and unprecedented times ahead.”

A US attack on Syria can distract attention from the stormy controversy that may arise if at this point Trump axes Mueller and derails the investigation against him. There are precedents when beleaguered American presidents resorted to diversionary tactic. Bill Clinton fired cruise missiles at Kandahar when the scandal over Monica Lewinsky peaked and he was facing the prospect of impeachment.

A US That brings us back to the alleged chemical attack in Douma last weekend. Who would have staged a false flag operation? The finger of suspicion points toward Israel’s role. Israel is desperately keen that the US should have a permanent military presence in Syria. To that end, Israel is fuelling tensions that will take matters to a point that a US withdrawal from Syria somehow gets stalled. This is also the impression conveyed by DebkaFile, the Israeli website with links to the intelligence, which specializes in disinformation tactic.

The coincidental Israeli attack on a Syrian air base on Sunday had all the hallmarks of a deliberate act of provocation. Four Iranian military advisors were killed in the Israeli raid. Israel must be hoping against hope that the Iranians will retaliate, leading to a flare-up where the US would get pitted against Iran at some point. Such subterfuges are typical of Israel’s strategy. The point is, Israelis lacks the capacity on its own to tackle the challenge of the expanding Iranian influence in next-door Syria.

Trump has reportedly cancelled a planned trip to Latin America. The New York Times has reported that Trump is weighing “more robust” military strikes against Syria. No doubt, tensions are rising. To my mind, however, Trump may not order an attack on Syria. Maybe it’s wishful thinking — frankly, I am a man of peace and am terrified of war — but I’ll explain why there is reason to believe still that sanity will ultimately prevail in Washington.

First, a US attack on the Syrian regime at this stage of the 7-year old war doesn’t make sense insofar as it cannot stop President Bashar Al-Assad on his tracks from attaining total victory. Bashar’s victory is a fait accompli. Period.

On the other hand, in order for the Syrian regime to be degraded to a point — like in Libya for example — and deposed from power, there has to be a massive western military intervention, including deployment of ground forces in tens of thousands. That seems improbable, given the level of disenchantment in Europe regarding Trump. So, the US has to go alone — at best with the (British) poodle. In such an enterprise, what does US hope to gain? Again, the chaos that follows will be beyond imagination.

Indeed, the risk of escalation is exceedingly high and that is not in the interests of Trump’s ‘America First’. By the way, hey, what about the “trade war” with China? What about the meet with Kim Jong Un? What about Afghanistan? What about Yemen? Above all, will another Middle Eastern war go down well in the US opinion? Will the US Congress support an attack on Syria when American interests are not directly facing threat?

Finally, the US cannot afford to overlook the explicit – and repeated – Russian warnings at various levels that an American attack on Syria will have grave consequences. Trump would know Vladimir Putin is “smart” and means business when he says something to the effect that Russia will ensure that what happened in Libya does not repeat. (TASS)

However, the Syrian conflict is approaching yet another new flashpoint. Make no mistake, Israel will have to pay a price for the killing of the Iranian 4 military advisors. The powerful Iranian statesman, Ali Akbar Velayati has explicitly stated as much. Indeed, Israel is going to be in real fix if Trump now decides not to attack Syria.

Poison Gas – Weapon of Choice for “False News”

April 12th, 2018 by Peter Koenig

Featured image: Photograph of men in Khan Sheikdoun in Syria, allegedly inside a crater where a sarin-gas bomb landed. (Source: Consortiumnews)

Poison gas is not only deadly, it often provokes a slow suffocating death. That, perpetrated on innocent children, is particularly cruel. But when such poison gas attacks are mere false flags, or by the new term, “false news”, and are used to provoke war, perhaps an all annihilating war, then humanity has turned to what it never should have become – a lowly-lowly herd of brainless zombies. Is that what we have become – brainless, greedy, selfish beings, no sense of solidarity, no respect for other beings; I am not even talking about humans, but any living being.

Poison gas, the weapon of choice for fear. Poisoning in Salisbury of the former Russian double-agent, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, visiting her dad from Moscow. Poisoning with a nerve gas, called Novichok that was allegedly made in Russia. In the meantime, we know that nerve gas made in the former Soviet Union, now non-existent in Russia, was military grade and deadly. The gas used for the alleged attack was not deadly. We also know by now that the UK – all of their highest officials, from PM May down the ladder, lied so miserably that they will have a hard time recovering. It will backfire. The foreign secretary, Johnson boy, pretended their secret bio-gas / bio-weapon laboratory Porton Down, just 13 km down the road from Salisbury, where the pair was allegedly found unconscious on a park bench, assured him the gas was made in Russia. Alas, it was a miserable lie. The laboratory’s chief chemists testified later to the media that they could not be sure that the substance was made in Russia. No, of course not.

In fact, Porton Down, working in close collaboration with the CIA, is a highly sophisticated chemical warfare facility that can easily make the gas themselves – at the grades they please, deadly or not so deadly, if it should serve a “false news” purpose – which this did. In the meantime, as reported today by RT, the entire case has been deconstructed. The components of Novichok are easy to come by, and almost every decent lab can make the poison gas, tailored to its needs.

Were father and daughter indeed poisoned? – This is a legitimate question. Who has seen them since the alleged poisoning occurred on 28 March? – They disappeared from the public eye. Apparently, they are both recovering, Yulia having been released from hospital a few days ago, but has not been seen by anyone in public, nor been able to talk to the media, lest she could say “something” the public is not allowed to know. She is being kept in a secret place. Her father is also recovering and may be released soon – released from where? – Is this all a farce?

An aunt talked to Yulia from Moscow, where she noticed that Yulia was not free to talk. The aunt wanted to visit her niece in the UK but was obviously denied a visa.

Where are father and daughter? – Washington has “offered” them a new home and new identity in the US, to avoid further poisoning attempts… how ridiculous! A blind man or woman must see that this is another farce, or more correctly, an outright abduction. The two won’t have a chance to resist. They are just taken away – not to talk anymore to anyone ever. – That’s the way the story goes. The lies are protected, and the “Russia did it” syndrome will prevail – prevail in the dumb folded public, in the herd of pigs that we all have become, as Goebbels would say.

And the saga continues. The saga to drum up war. That’s the purpose of it all. Nothing else – Russia, the evil nation, led by an evil leader, must be subdued and conquered. But the empire needs the public for their support. And the empire is almost there. It disposes of a vicious media corporate army – that lies flagrantly about anything that money can buy. It’s like spitting in the face of the world, and nobody seems to care, or worse, even to notice.

On the other side of the Mediterranean is Syria. A vast and noble country, Syria, with a leader who truly loves his people and country, a leader who has despite a foreign induced war – not civil war – a proxy war, instigated and funded by Washington and its vassal allies in Europe and the Middle East; Syria, a highly educated socialist country that has shared the benefit of her resources, free education, free medical services, free basic infrastructure, with her people. This Syria must fall. Such strength cannot be tolerated by the all-dominating west. Like Iraq and Libya, also socialist countries once-upon-a-time, and like Syria, secular Muslim nations, sharing their countries wealth with the people, such countries must fall.

According to Pentagon planners and those Zion-neofascist think tanks that designed the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), as the chief instrument of US foreign policy, we know since Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied commander and Chief of NATO in Europe (1997-2000) talked to Democracy Now in 2007, saying that within 5 years seven countries must fall, one of them is Syria.

Since 2011, the Syrian people have been bombarded by US and NATO and Saudi funded terrorists, causing tens of thousands of deaths, and millions of refugees. Now, even more blatantly, US bases are vying to occupying the northern third of Syria, totally illegally, but nobody says beep. Not even the UN.

The recent fake gas attack on Douma outside of Damascus, has allegedly killed 80 to 120 people, mostly women and children. Of course, that sells best in the propaganda theatre – women and children. But there is not proof, none whatsoever. To the contrary. People living in Douma say they haven’t heard of any nerve gas attack. Strangely, like last time, the infamous White Helmets discovered the gas victims, including a gas canister-like bomb laying on a bed, having been shot through the roof of a house… a totally unprofessionally staged event. As Russian military quickly discovered and reported. They called on an independent investigation, one that could not be bought and corrupted by Washington. President Assad invited a team of investigators to inspect the scene.

Instead of heeding this invitation, Trump, the bully, calls Mr. Assad an “animal” and a “monster”, twittering his brainless aggressions throughout the world. Tell you what, Mr. Trump, Bashar al-Assad is a far better human being than you are a monster. You and your dark handlers don’t even deserve being called human. Mr. Assad has regard and respect for his people, attempts to protect them and has so far succeeded with the help of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, recovering the last bits of Syrian territory from the terrorist, except of course, the northern part, where the chief terrorist and the world’s only rogue state has installed itself, the US of A. –  Why in the world would Mr. Assad choose to gas his own people? Especially, when he is winning the war? – People, ask yourself, cui bono (who benefits?) and the answer is simple: The western aggressors, who seek a reason to mass bomb Syria into even more rubble, causing even more death and destitution. And making a shitload of money – as war usually does. That’s who.

While you, Donald, and those monsters that direct you from behind the scenes, have no, but absolutely no respect for your own people, for any people on this globe, for that matter, not even for your kind, for your greed-no-end kind of elite, as you bring the world to the brink of an all-destructive, all killing annihilating war.

Since the other fake event, 9/11, we are, of course, already in a “soft version” of WWIII, but that’s not enough, the United States needs a hard war, so badly it doesn’t shy away from destroying itself. That’s how blinded your own propaganda has made you Americans, you generals, you corporate “leaders” (sic-sic) – and all you Congress puppets. That is the sheer truth. You better read this and wake up. Otherwise your dead sentence is hastened by your own greed and ignorance.

Both Russia and the US drafted each a Security Council Resolution – which of course are both not approved, with Nikki Haley lambasting Russia, accusing them of being responsible for the countless deaths in Syria – pointing again to the children and women, making up the majority. Again, it sells best in the world of psychological propaganda, while evil Nikki Haley knows very well who has caused all these deaths by the millions, destitution and refugees by the millions, tens of millions throughout the Middle East and the world – her own country, directly or through NATO, the European puppets allies and proxy wars, paid and funded by Washington and by elbow-twisting her vassals.

On 9 April – UNSC – while Nikki Haley, repeats and over-repeats her lies and fake accusations, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Mr. Vassily Nebenzia (image on the right), listens. And then in a twenty-minute statement of sheer intelligence, he dismantles all the lies, and lays bare the truth, about all the fakeness being played out internationally. The depth with which he addresses the assembly is concise and so brilliant, none of his UK, French and German counterparts could have ever come close to a statement of this magnitude and excellence. Even Ms. Haley can’t help glancing over ever-so often to Vassily Nebenzia, as he speaks. Her eyes reveal some kind of hidden admiration for what he says. After all, she can’t be as dumb as she is paid for to look and sound.

By now anybody who dares not just reading and listening to the mainstream presstitute “fake news”, but has the courage to dig into the truth news, RT, TeleSur, CGTN, PressTV – and a few others, or websites like Global Research, The Saker Blog, ICH, NEO, Greanville Post CounterCurrent, Dissident Voice and many other trustworthy sources – knows about the lies and the only, but the very only purpose these false flags cum false news serve: Provoking a war with Russia, subjugating and dividing Syria, and the Middle East and the US becoming the hegemonic masters of the universe.

For the simple reason, and hardly anybody talks or writes about it – the US economy is based on war, is based on weapon manufacturing and international banking which finances weapon manufacturing and the exploitation of mineral resources coveted by weapon manufacturing.

The entire war industry with all its associated civil services and industries, of banking, electronics, aviation, mining…. makes up more than half of the US GDP – but of course, it’s never broken down that way. The chosen people will control the world. Well, they do already – financially at least the western part of our globe. But it’s not enough. They will not stop, before they bury themselves in their own-dug graves, or rather in one massive mass-grave. But, please, do take all your fakeness, from money, to lies, to hypocrisy and more lies and coercion and sanctions and blackmail with you – never to surface again. And give peace a chance – for those who survive your (almost) terminal assault on humanity.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog; and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Syrian Army Captures British Military Men in Eastern Ghouta. Failed US-Israeli Plot to Launch Ground Assault on Damascus

April 12th, 2018 by Fars News Agency

We bring to the attention of our readers this report by Fars News largely based on Middle East news sources, which remain to be fully corroborated.

A number of British military men were held captive by the Syrian army in Eastern Ghouta of Damascus, media reports disclosed on Wednesday, saying that they had infiltrated the region for the last month US plot to attack Damascus in collaboration with terrorists and NATO forces that failed.

The Arabic-language al-Mayadeen news channel’s correspondent in Moscow reported that a number of British forces have been captured during the military operations in Eastern Ghouta.

Earlier reports had disclosed last month that foreign military forces were deployed in Eastern Ghouta of Damascus to launch a ground assault against Damascus in cooperation with the US.

The US and Israel planned to launch attacks on Damascus from several fronts in collaboration with the NATO and Jordan, but the plot failed after the Syrian army scored rapid, major victories in Eastern Ghouta.

Informed sources disclosed that the US and Israel intended to support the terrorists in Eastern Ghouta by airstrikes so that they could capture vast areas of Damascus to pave the ground for the Syrian government’s collapse.

“After the plot was disclosed, the Syrian-Russian military commanders started operations in Eastern Ghouta to repel it,” the sources said.

After the failure of the plot in March, the US and Turkey sought to rescue the foreign militants trapped in Eastern Ghouta of Damascus and take them to Idlib as they were facing the Syrian army’s rapid advances in the region.

After the army’s expanding march in Eastern Ghouta and failure of the US-Israeli plot to conduct an effective offensive on Damascus, the US command center rushed to evacuate allied militants and agents operating for Israel, Jordan and NATO from the region.

Informed sources then said although the Turkish officials said they were ready to help evacuation of al-Nusra Front (Tahrir al-Sham Hay’at or the Levant Liberation Board) terrorists from Eastern Ghouta to take them to Idlib, this seemed to be a cover as they really meant to rescue their special foreign forces that were among the ranks of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra in Syria. 

“Therefore, the US has ordered Jeish al-Islam, Faylaq al-Rahman and other terrorist groups to allow evacuation of civilians from Eastern Ghouta to army-held regions in a bid to provide the ground for these foreign agents to also leave Ghouta in disguise and enable the Turkish intelligence service to send them to specified regions in al-Tanf and Northern Syria which are under the control of the US troops,” they said.

Yet, the US operations room in al-Tanf base ordered end of all operations by the aforementioned allied forces after the terrorists were defeated in Eastern Ghouta and the collapse of the two towns of al-Nashabiyeh and al-Mohammadiyeh on the first days of the Syrian army’s offensives in Eastern Ghouta.

Also the US CENTCOM urged withdrawal of allied forces from Eastern Ghouta to Arabayn, Zamalka and Douma before dividing Ghouta into three areas to pave the ground for their withdrawal from Ghouta region.

Militants allied to the US troops in Eastern Syria had revealed in March that the US planned to stage the attack in a different region further to the East between the provinces of Homs and Deir Ezzur.

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Featured image is from Fars News Agency.

False Flag in Syria Sets Stage for Wider War

April 12th, 2018 by Tony Cartalucci

The US threatened war within hours of an alleged chemical weapons attack taking place in Douma, northeast of Damascus.

The US rush to conflict attempts to sidestep any meaningful investigation into the attack, fitting a larger pattern of Washington and its allies using baseless chemical weapon allegations for wars of aggression stretching back to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

US accusations and threats of war come at a pivotal moment in Syria’s now 7 year conflict in which the Syrian government has finally liberated all territory around the capital from foreign-sponsored militants.

Zero Evidence

To date, all supposed evidence comes from Western-funded militants and their auxiliaries including the US-European government-funded front, the so-called “Syria Civil Defense,” better known at the “White Helmets.” Unverified photographs and video of apparent victims have been the sole sources cited by the US.

The World Health Organization, in a recent statement attempting to bolster these accusations, claims that up to 500 patients appear to have been exposed to chemical poisoning, but would cite its “Health Cluster partners,” the Daily Beast would report.

However, according to WHO’s own website, these partners include Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which in turn, according to MSF’s own website trains and supports the White Helmets. MSF has repeatedly admitted throughout the Syrian conflict that it does not have a presence on the ground in conflict areas and merely provides material support to groups that do.

The White Helmets have been repeatedly caught in the past fabricating evidence and staging scenes for propaganda value. In fact, all evidence suggests the entire purpose of the White Helmets is the production of propaganda.

This culminated in 2016 when the organization inadvertently revealed their theatrical methods during a protest in multiple European cities. They applied red paint and flour to their bodies and posed as victims for European media outlets and local bystanders. The scenes were indistinguishable from daily clips uploaded by White Helmet members allegedly carrying out emergency services in militant-held territory in Syria.

Absent from virtually all of their videos are scenes of actual injuries – open wounds, crushed or severed limbs, burns etc. Videos also lack any context, and are often heavily edited.

One Year Ago – Similar Lies

Previous allegations of the Khan Shaykhun chemical weapon attack the US cited in 2017 ahead of cruise missile strikes on Syria’s Shayrat Airbase, were also baseless.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism (OPCW-UN JIM) report on the alleged attack would admit that no investigators even visited the scene of the attack.

The UN in a news article regarding the report would even claim (emphasis added):

Although it was too dangerous to visit Umm Hawh and Khan Shaykum, the panel considered that sufficient information had been gathered to come to a solid conclusion.

Evidence instead consisted of interviews with alleged witnesses and physical evidence passed to investigators from possible suspects – since even the report itself admitted the possibility of the incident being staged to implicate the Syrian government. The report itself would also cite an absence of a chain of custody for evidence it received, diminishing their probative value. 

Normalizing military aggression based on allegations of chemical attacks in which onsite investigations are not conducted produces the perfect conditions to stage incidents and rush to war.

The US rush to war without even awaiting an incomplete and questionable investigation as carried out by the OPCW-UN JIM in 2017 – indicates that the United States is not interested in, and possibly even attempting to obstruct the truth.

Zero Motivation

Syria and Russia have been conducting security operations around Damascus with particular care, fully acknowledging the level of international scrutiny the Syrian conflict is under, including the conduct of the Syrian government and its allies.

Humanitarian corridors were opened to allow civilians to flee areas where fighting was taking place. Once defeated, remaining militants were even allowed to board buses and escape north to the Syrian-Turkish border.

Not only are the chemical weapons cited by the US ineffective relative to the conventional weapons Syria and its allies have in their possession, the use of chemical weapons in military operations against an all but defeated enemy – considering the political costs of doing so – would be inexplicable.

The US government and the Western media have resorted to assigning essentially cartoon villain motivations to the Syrian government in an effort to explain why – on the verge of victory in Syria – the Syrian government would risk justifying a long sought after US military intervention against Damascus itself.

The US is already illegally operating in and around Syrian territory. This includes the occupation of Syrian territory by US troops east of the Euphrates River. The US has already conducted multiple air strikes on Syrian government targets. In addition to the strike on Shayrat Airbase in 2017, US airpower has repeatedly attacked Syrian troops operating near US positions.

The Grand Finale 

Making it even more inexplicable for Syria’s government to have deployed chemical weapons at this of all junctures – was the recent announcement by US President Donald Trump of interest in withdrawing US troops from Syria.

While some interpreted his announcement as genuine, and suggest the likely staged chemical attack in Douma, Syria was an attempt to draw the US back in, a much more likely scenario is that President Trump simply lied to provide the US with plausible deniability ahead of a premeditated chemical weapons incident the US itself planned.

US policy papers have provided the framework for just such a scheme.

In the 2009 Brookings Institution policy paper titled, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF), everything from supporting terrorists in a proxy war to staged provocations and full-scale war were planned in excruciating detail.

Included among the US policy think-tank’s schemes was the description of a deception similar to the one likely playing out in Syria.

The paper would state (emphasis added):

…any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context—both to ensure the logistical support the operation would require and to minimize the blowback from it. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer—one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.

For Syria, the “offer” was a US withdrawal and Damascus and its neighbors “given” the responsibility to humanely end the conflict and stabilize the region. The “rejection” inviting the US to intervene is the staged chemical attacks in Douma the US is now citing.

Regarding staged provocations, the Brookings paper mentions them as well, claiming (emphasis added):

...it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)

Nothing could be more “outrageous” or “deadly” than using chemical weapons on civilians.

“The Israel Approach”

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In the immediate aftermath of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria, Israel launched missiles into Syrian territory, striking Tiyas (T4) Military Airbase.

The same Brookings policy paper would also make specific mention of how this tactic would fit into a wider strategy of drawing a nation further into direct war with the United States itself.

The paper would state  that (emphasis added):

…the most salient advantage this option has over that of an American air campaign is the possibility that Israel alone would be blamed for the attack. If this proves true, then the United States might not have to deal with Iranian retaliation or the diplomatic backlash that would accompany an American military operation against Iran. It could allow Washington to have its cake (delay Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon) and eat it, too (avoid undermining many other U.S. regional diplomatic initiatives).

The report also states (emphasis added):

It would presumably be easier to convince Israel to mount the attack than it would be to generate domestic political support for another war in the Middle East (let alone the diplomatic support from a region that is extremely wary of new American military adventures). 

The same report would also state (emphasis added):

However, as noted in the previous chapter, the airstrikes themselves are really just the start of this policy. Again, the Iranians would doubtless rebuild their nuclear sites. They would probably retaliate against Israel, and they might retaliate against the United States, too (which might create a pretext for American airstrikes or even an invasion).

Clearly these options laid out for Iran in 2009 have been repeatedly used instead against Syria. Among this most recent and unprecedented juncture, these ploys are being used again, in rapid succession and ultimately toward US-led regime change.

America’s Motivation 

The US – since the end of the Cold War – has established a unipolar international order that serves the interests of US corporations and financial institutions and those of Washington’s allies. In a bid to preserve its primacy, the US has pursued a policy of encircling and containing potential competitors – most notably Russia and China. It has done this through economic pressure, covert regime change, overt military invasion and occupation, or usually a combination of all three.

Reordering Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Central and Southeast Asia over the past two decades was meant to provide America with a united front of client states to wield against a reemerging Russia and a rising China before eventually folding both into its international order as well.However, these efforts have mostly failed. Technology has bridged gaps in economic and military power the US and Europe had previously exploited to achieve centuries of global hegemony over the global East and South.

The US now finds itself mired in a protracted conflict – so far unsuccessful in not only toppling the Syrian government, but also floundering on secondary objectives aimed at Balkanizing the country.

While a US withdrawal from Syria on its own terms will all but admit the end of American hegemony in the Middle East, should it remain and still fail – it will not only accelerate the emergence of a multipolar world order – but one in which the US finds itself an impotent pariah.

US Options 

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The US – clearly having failed to sell its case to the global public – may simply launch a limited strike as it did in 2017. The strikes will do little to change the trajectory of American foreign policy objectives and their ultimate failure in Syria. The operation – likely to kill Syrians and even possibly Russians and Iranians – will tentatively provide the US with an opportunity to save face in the wake of its recent and increasingly reckless bluster. 

Syria and its allies will likely weather the attacks – if limited – as they have before, attempting to avoid the desired, wider confrontation the US seeks and letting the clock run out on Washington’s failed proxy war.However, US policymakers may believe that the window of opportunity for the US to reassert itself as global hegemon has yet to close. It may calculate that its desire to carry out a direct military intervention in Syria to finally achieve regime change is greater than Russia and Iran’s willingness to risk direct war with the US to stop it.The US may also be reckless enough to calculate that a limited confrontation directly with Russian assets in Syria would allow Washington to reassert itself in a much more dramatic way – with Russia not willing to escalate the conflict beyond the region. The US may even be willing to sacrifice US warships, aircraft, and ground bases during the ensuing conflict to achieve this goal – believing Russia will limit retaliation to the immediate theater of conflict.However the possibility of these incredibly risky options spiraling out of control and quickly involving Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, and beyond would hopefully make such opinions all but inconceivable – even for increasingly desperate US policymakers.

Syria and its allies have attempted to provide the US with multiple, graceful exits from its failed proxy war. However, it is not the need to save face that now drives US persistence in Syria – it is the fact that withdrawing from Syria now will signify to the world an accelerated, irreversible decline of the American Empire.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.

All images in this article are from the author.

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Is the US Trying to Turn Zambia into the “African Sri Lanka”?

April 12th, 2018 by Andrew Korybko

The recent Mainstream Media speculation about the true state of Zambia’s debt might be manipulated by the US to craft the weaponized infowar narrative that the country’s becoming the “African Sri Lanka”, a misleading perception that would be designed to enflame anti-Chinese sentiment as a prelude to the Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” making decisive inroads in this geostrategically crucial Silk Road transit state.

“Pulling A Mozambique”

The South-Central African state of Zambia is in the news for supposedly having much larger debts than it publicly claims, which are being used as the basis for the IMF to delay extending another loan to it until it restructures its existing debt to China and comes clean about exactly how much it owes and to whom. Neighboring Mozambique has been embroiled in scandal over the past year after it emerged that it owed much more than it previously claimed, and the prevailing narrative now is that Zambia might be “pulling a Mozambique” by basically doing the same thing. Whether true or not, it’s prevented Lusaka from clinching the $1.3 billion “bailout” loan that it’s been seeking, thus unexpectedly throwing it into a state of macroeconomic uncertainty which will inevitably compound its existing political problems with time.

Political And Economic Sensitivities

The country has been in the throes of an off-and-on again low-intensity Hybrid War ever since President Edgar Lungu’s razor-thin victory in the summer 2016 polls, which have since seen him even impose a short-term state of emergency last year in response to a disputed incident that his government claims was proof of the opposition’s intent to overthrow him. Whatever the truth may be, the fact is that Zambia’s political situation is very sensitive right now and any economic reverberations or “credible” speculations thereof from this “Mozambican-like” scandal could embolden the opposition to recommence its destabilization activities. Furthermore, the Zambian economy is already at risk of volatility because of how dependent it is on commodity exports, especially copper, so the government could potentially be facing a serious crisis in the coming weeks if this issue isn’t soon resolved.

The First Modern-Day Silk Road

That said, a “no-strings-attached” “solution” might be presented by China in potentially loaning Zambia the money that the IMF won’t, though this might be exactly the outcome that the US is anticipating from what might end up being nothing more than a “fake news” crisis. Zambia and China enjoy very close ties that were first forged during the middle of the Old Cold War when the People’s Republic built its first-ever Silk Road in the modern era. The TAZARA megaproject is a portmanteau of Tanzania-Zambia Railway Authority and was designed to relieve the landlocked country’s economic isolation by connecting its copious copper reserves with the Chinese marketplace. Since then, China’s role in the Zambian economy has only deepened, though it hasn’t been without controversy, especially over the past decade when former President Michael Sata was still alive.

“King Cobra”

This one-term leader served from 2011-2014 but was the main opposition figure for roughly the ten years before then, during which time he earned the nickname of “King Cobra” for the vitriol that he would spew at his opponents, which was sometimes even directed against China. He accused his country’s long-standing strategic partner of vicious neo-colonial exploitation because of how its economic and environmental practices were perceived, and his rhetoric was so harsh at one time that China even threatened to cut off relations with Zambia if he won the 2006 election. His victory in 2011 sent chills through Zambia’s Chinese community because of his hostile attitude towards their country, but he didn’t undertake any radical measures like some people expected and therefore retained the strategic partnership between the two states until his untimely death in 2014.

Lungu’s Lack Of “Wiggle Room”

At that time, Lungu was chosen in a special election to continue serving the remainder of Sata’s term, after which he was elected for his own in 2016. Both were decried as “fraudulent” by the opposition, who have since been agitating to reverse their results by any means that they can, including by filing an impeachment proceeding against him late last month. Given the very narrow margin by which he won the vote almost two years ago, Lungu has very little “wiggle room” and understands the high-pressure predicament that any forthcoming economic crisis could politically put him in, to say nothing of what might happen if the neighboring Congo collapses as a result of its much more violent Hybrid War. It’s under these circumstances that Lungu might solicit China for a loan if one won’t soon be forthcoming from the IMF.

Silk Road Significance

Zambia’s growing economic dependence on China would complement its counterpart’s strategic dependence on it in the framework of Beijing’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity that envisions the landlocked South-Central African country becoming a Laotian-like “land-linked” one in forming the key inland junction bridging an array of transnational infrastructure corridors. The country’s logistical significance in connecting both coasts of the continent can best be explained by the below map that outlines the main megaprojects involved:

Africa map

*Red: TAZARA *Green: TAZARA-Katanga-Benguela/TAZARA-North West Railroad-Benguela *Pink: Walvis Bay Corridor *Blue: Zambia-Zimbabwe-South Africa railroad network *Purple: ZaMM (Zambia-Malawi-Mozambique)

Nevertheless, the tightening of relations between these two historic partners would surely be seized upon by the opposition to allege – likely per the “advice” of the US or after mimicking its narratives – that Zambia is becoming the “African Sri Lanka” because of the speculative risk that it could fall into a massive “debt trap” from which it would could only “escape” after “surrendering” its physical Silk Road assets. Suffice to say, this unfounded but fear mongering storyline might be all that it takes for the political demagogues to marshal a critical mass of “protesters” (rioters) and destabilize the state.

The Indo-Japanese Switcheroo

The “constructive chaos” that the US has become infamous for employing could cynically be wielded to deprive China of its irreplaceable transit state in the South-Central African Silk Road by virtue of indefinitely destabilizing Zambia, but a far more “forward-focused” strategy than simply spoiling China’s connectivity vision would  be to replace it with its Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” competitor. The interlinked megaprojects that Beijing has a stake in could still proceed and continue to be invested in by China even if the present government is replaced by another Sata-like one as a possible result of this manufactured crisis, but the difference would be that any unfriendliness by the state towards China (even if just rhetorical to satisfy a campaign promise) would by default lead to growing relations with Beijing’s Indo-Japanese “Lead From Behind” rivals.

These could take the form of both Great Powers jointly financing the remainder of these megaprojects or even seeking to displace China entirely in some or all of them if this strategy is taken to its extreme. The furthest that it could go is if a veritably anti-Chinese government comes to power in Zambia and “nationalizes” Beijing’s investments or creates such “legal” difficulties to its operations there that it’s forced to sell its companies and retreat from the market. That, though, is unlikely to happen right away and without some form of struggling that could possibly see China “calling in its debts” and inadvertently fulfilling the “neo-colonial role” that it’s been accused of, thus potentially turning the Indo-Japanese “switcheroo” scenario into a fait accompli. The whole point of putting this multifaceted pressure on China is to get it to overreact and fall for this trap.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s too early to assess the veracity of the reports about Zambia’s purportedly massive secret debt, but there’s a high likelihood that this scandal – whether real or imagined – will grow to have anti-Chinese implications on one way or another, whether by blaming Beijing for the existence of off-the-books loans if they’re eventually proven or by claiming that China is engaging in naked “neo-colonialism” if it loans the country even more money in the event that the IMF refuses. Both possible narratives share a common basis in advancing the weaponized infowar storyline that China is turning Zambia into an “African Sri Lanka” by “capturing” it in a “disastrous” “debt trap” irrespective of the infrastructural dividends that it has to show for it. In addition, this could be exploited to enflame already high anti-Chinese sentiment in the country and therefore threaten the government.

The US is anticipating that the end result of any sustainable pressure campaign against the authorities will be Zambia’s geostrategic “rebalancing” towards the Indo-Japanese “Asia-Africa Growth Corridor” in order to offset its supposed “dependency” on China’s New Silk Road. This outcome could be advanced whether or not President Lungu remains in office because he could either make such a move as a symbolic “concession” to the opposition or an anti-Chinese government that potentially replaces him could do so to an even more extreme degree.

Both India and Japan are already gearing up to make inroads in this geostrategically crucial transit state, and the developing combination of political and economic crises might be taken advantage of by them to improve their future standing in the state.  Whether Zambia manages to artfully “balance” between these two “blocs” remains to be seen, but what’s undoubtable is that the country is becoming more important than ever in the New Cold War.

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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.

An Appeal to James Mattis on the Supposed Chlorine Attack in Syria

April 12th, 2018 by Colonel W. Patrick Lang

I beseech you, sir, to consider the possibility that the supposed chlorine gas attack at Douma, Syria may have been a carefully constructed propaganda fraud on the part of the rebels encircled in Douma.  Such a fraud would have as its purpose the elicitation of exactly the kind of response that we are seeing in the Western media.  The rebels have been defeated in East Ghouta. Their fighters and families are being evacuated to Turkish occupied Jarabulus by air-conditioned bus.  How would it benefit the Syrian government to make such an attack in this situation?

I hope that you will determine the exact facts of what occurred at Douma before any action is taken.

I recommend that you send someone competent to Syria to make an on the ground investigation.

W. Patrick Lang, Colonel (Ret.)  US Army

The Red Cross Recognizes Israel’s “Legitimate Security Concerns” to Keep the Gaza Concentration Camp Sealed

April 12th, 2018 by Norman Finkelstein

Featured image: The ICRC in Gaza. (Source: CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Mohamed Zarandah)

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is concerned about the human toll of the violence on the border of Gaza and Israel, in particular, the high number of casualties.

On 30 March, following the violent events which took place in Gaza at multiple locations along the border fence with Israel, approximately 1500 people required medical assistance, with approximately 800 injuries resulting from the use of live ammunition.

“The human toll demonstrates the importance for all sides to take all possible precautions to minimise exposure to harm and casualties among the civilian population,” said Fabrice Edouard, acting head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Gaza. “We recognize Israel’s security concerns, yet it is imperative that lethal force only be used as a last resort and when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”

The ICRC takes note of the strong emergency response of Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), also made possible through the continued ICRC facilitation with all parties of its ambulance and personnel movements.

The ICRC also provides material and technical support to the PRCS and hospitals in Gaza in their emergency response.

“The influx of casualties is also straining an over-burdened and under-resourced medical system,”  Edouard added.

To date, the ICRC has donated urgent surgical equipment, drugs and disposables, and mobility devices required for the comprehensive treatment of more than 800 patients.

As part of its work, the ICRC  acts as a neutral intermediary and maintains a confidential dialogue with all relevant authorities and security forces to try to minimise the impact of violence on civilians and preserve a humanitarian space where health care workers can operate safely.

Trigger-Happy Trump and Syria: “The Worst Case Scenario Is Now Our Reality.”

April 12th, 2018 by Felicity Arbuthnot

As all becomes ever more rapidly surreal it seems that, barring a miracle, Draft Dodger in Chief, Donald Trump might trigger a world war, over an incident in Syria which is entirely evidence free.

The discredited White Helmets – a “rescue” group only operating in areas held by “rebels” who routinely decapitate, including children, set fire to people and commit numerous unspeakable acts – have produced a video of an apparent chemical attack on 7th April.

The “White Helmets” are funded in millions by the UK Foreign Office, the US, Canada and various other Western governments. Coupled with this is: A UK government £5.3 million media activists programme included training Syrian independent journalists and activists, including for reporting of “White Helmets” activities across Twitter and Facebook. (See Foreign and Commonwealth Office: “Providing non-humanitarian assistance in Syria”, Updated 1 December 2015.)

No wonder every seemingly staged “rescue” always has a few convenient camera people handy, recording the “victims.” The duty of first responders of course, is to also protect the victim at all cost, in their vulnerable state, from public view.

The latest camera friendly crisis is yet another “chemical weapons attack” which the US, UK and usual suspects are blaming on the Syrian government. However this is such a worn and discredited theme, were it not for trigger-happy Trump and his band of war obsessed mongers, it would simply be dismissed out of hand. For the US both supplying chemical weapons to the “moderate head choppers” and the discrediting of the endless attempts to pin chemical attack on the government, see Professor Michel Chossudovsky’s meticulous documentations. (1) See also Robert Stuart’s impressive, minute unraveling of the propaganda which was “Saving Syria’s Children.” (2)

It also seems to have escaped the Trumposphere that in 2013, Syria surrendered all stocks of chemical weapons, under the auspices of the UN Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons and international observers and participants.

I wrote at the time:

“On 12th September 2013 Syria’s President al-Assad committed to surrender Syria’s chemical weapons, with the caveats that the United States must stop threatening his country and supplying weapons to the terrorists.” (Weapons disposal detail, 3.)

“Why do you need the attribution mechanism, if you’ve already named the perpetrators before any investigation?” asked Russia’s Ambassador to the UN this week, referring to blatant accusations against Damascus coming from the US and its allies.

It is worth noting that those dealing with patients suffering the effects of a chemical weapons attack need specific protective clothing. Pictures have been shown of an allegedly affected toddler being sprayed with water, held and sprayed by people in jeans, t-shirts and without even plastic gloves.

Strangely at the site of an alleged chemical attack at Khan Sheikhun on 5th April 2017, just two days over a year before the latest allegations, pictures not only emerged of first responders with no protective clothing, gloves, but of the White Helmets in flip flops and casual clothing “gathering soil samples” from areas allegedly hit by the weapons.

In Douma the Russian military have been rather more professional, with the Russian Embassy in South Africa Tweeting:

An accompanying correspondent wrote:

At the UN, on Monday, 9th April – ironically the fifteenth anniversary of the toppling of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, marking the destruction of Iraq on pack of lies – Steffan de Mistura, Special Envoy for Syria, stated regarding the attack that:

“… the United Nations was not in a position to verify those reports” (of a chemical weapons attack.)

The UK and France were predictably hawkish with the Russian Ambassador responding factually:

“ … that Washington, D.C., and those blindly following it – namely London and Paris – were deliberately stoking international tensions and engaging in a confrontational policy against the Russian Federation and Syria without any justification.

“The United States and its partners did not understand the potential consequences of their reckless geopolitical experiment in the Middle East, he said, emphasizing that Western capitals were taking up rumours spread by non-governmental organizations, the White Helmets and the media. The use of sarin or chlorine gas in Douma had not been confirmed, he stressed, calling for a prompt investigation and for Western politicians to scale down their rhetoric.

“Syria’s representative agreed that the lies of some permanent Council Members had fuelled conflicts, including in Viet Nam, the Korean Peninsula and Iraq. Now they sought to defeat Syria.

“Emphasizing that the United States, United Kingdom and France were eager to hold Council meetings on the basis of fabricated information, he recalled that the Syrian Government had warned the Council, OPCW and the Joint Investigative Mechanism on many occasions about terrorist groups possessing chlorine and sarin. The White Helmets would fabricate evidence and Hollywood-like scenes intended to stir incitement against Syria and its allies. The Syrian military had no chemical weapons, having destroyed them under United States auspices, he stressed.” (4) Emphasis mine.

Of course in this new equivalent of the “forty five minute to destruction” lie (Tony Blair’s government’s infamous September 2002 dossier of fairy tales which massively contributed to Iraq’s destruction) who should pop up but Tony Blair, urging Prime Minister May to join strikes on Syria without even putting it to a Parliamentary vote.

He said that there was no need for her to ask her MPs as reprisals were likely to be “air action, rather than ground force action.” Work that one out. And Blair, who if justice existed, should be answering for his part in Nuremberg’s “supreme international crime” at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, was “Middle East Peace Envoy.”

The British and Americans of course, on Syrian land, in sea or air space are in the country entirely illegally.

President Assad has immediately invited the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to Syria to investigate, as did the Russians, the US are fighting their visit. Doesn’t take much thinking about. According to the OPCW website, they are leaving “shortly.”

However, in this truly terrifying scenario the world is facing not the ruthless horrors of the Bush family, or of the Clintons, Jimmy Carter’s threats to the Middle East, Nixon’s criminality. No, we have Donald Trump.

In “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, twenty seven eminent psychiatrists and mental health experts put their careers on the line, flagging up their clinical assessments, arguing that in Mr. Trump’s case they had a moral and civil “duty to warn.”

Each chapter is more concerning than the last. But perhaps in the present circumstances it is apt to quote John D. Gartner, Ph.D, clinical psychologist, who taught at the Department of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University Medical School for twenty eight years. In a chapter entitled: “Donald Trump is A) Mad B) Bad C)All of the Above”, he cites a colleague’s assessment of Trump’s grasp on reality:

“He cannot be contained because he is psychologically off the chain. With each passing week he displays the classic symptoms of medium grade mania in more disturbing forms …

“Trump’s first hypomanic crash resulted in only a few bankruptcies, but while he is President the consequences could be on a scale so vast it’s difficult to even contemplate:

“ … exhibiting malignant narcissism … His worsening hypomania is making him increasingly more irrational, grandiose, paranoid, aggressive, irritable, impulsive … He evinces the most destructive and dangerous collection of psychiatric symptoms possible for a leader. The worst case scenario is now our reality.” He warns of the consequences being “most likely catastrophic.”

Professor Gartner ends the chapter defending the authors of the book for breaking the rules by going public:

“History will not be kind to a profession that aided the rise of an American Hitler through its silence.”

It would be hard to dispute this chilling assessment having read how lightly Trump takes a possible world war in a Tweet today:

 

Now Trump’s right hand man is John Bolton, arch hawk, advocate of regime change in Iran, North Korea, Syria, supporter of the horrors of Libya and Iraq.

But of course, for someone possibly in a parallel universe, incinerating a nation or the planet would be a great diversion from Trump’s troubles at home and the raid on his lawyer’s office and seizure of countless possibly incriminating documents.

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Veteran War Correspondent Felicity Arbuthnot is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization and Associate Editor of Global Research.

Notes

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-syria-chemical-weapons-saga-the-staging-of-a-us-nato-sponsored-humanitarian-disaster/5315273

2. https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com

3. https://theecologist.org/2014/mar/13/syrias-chemical-weapons-lawbreakers-rule-supreme

4. https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sc13284.doc.htm

Featured image is from PravdaReport.

The Most Important U.N. Security Council Vote Ever? Alleged Syria Chemical Weapons Attack and US-NATO Plans to Invade Syria

April 12th, 2018 by Eric Zuesse

On Tuesday, April 10th, the U.S. and France were sending missiles, ships, planes and soldiers for an invasion of Syria, which is defended by Russia; and two alternative draft proposals were presented to the U.N. Security Council for authorizing an expert investigation to be done into the alleged April 7th chemical attack in Douma in Syria, which alleged event the U.S. and France allege to be the justification for their planned invasion. 

One proposal, from the United States, would have sidelined the existing official investigative agency for chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and set up a brand new “independent mechanism of investigation to determinate accountability” for the chemical-weapon attack that the U.S. and its allies allege to have happened but for which no evidence had been presented (other than alleged videos of it that were taken and spread by the White Helmets branch of Al Qaeda in Syria and which group the U.S. and its allies praise for helping injured ‘rebels’ and their associates). Russia vetoed the U.S. proposal because by the time such a new organization would be set up and officially accuse the Syrian and Russian Governments for the presumed chemical attack, the war between the U.S. and Russia would probably already be long past, and so the U.S. proposal couldn’t possibly prevent the U.S.-led invasion of Syria, anyway. Russia had been hoping to prevent an attack for long enough so that the OPCW, which was due to leave for Syria on April 10th, could get to Douma in order to examine to find any residues of a chemical weapons attack there, if such even existed, but the U.S. and its allies wanted to invade without there being any such investigation preceding the invasion.

After that vote on the American draft, came the vote on the alternative draft-resolution:

“The Council then failed to adopt the draft resolution submitted by the Russian Federation by a recorded vote of 6 in favour (Bolivia, China, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Russian Federation) to 7 against (France, Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States), with 2 abstentions (Côte d’Ivoire, Kuwait).”

As regards whether or not there had actually been a chemical attack in Douma, the only public information (other than the video that was produced by the White Helmets), was a news report published on April 9th by Russia, which is likely to be as much ignored by Americans as news-reports by the U.S. are ignored by Russians, and it was headlined “No trace of chemical weapons at alleged attack site in Douma – Russian military”, and it stated:

The Russian military has found no trace of chemical weapons use after searching parts of Syria’s Douma allegedly targeted by an “attack.” Photos of victims posted by the White Helmets are fake, Russia’s Defense Ministry said.

Experts in radiological, chemical and biological warfare, as well as medics, on Monday inspected the parts of the Eastern Ghouta city of Douma, where an alleged chemical attack supposedly took place on Saturday, the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria said in a statement.

The specialists “found no traces of the use of chemical agents” after searching the sites, the statement said. The center’s medical specialists also visited a local hospital but found no patients that showed signs of chemical weapons poisoning. “All these facts show… that no chemical weapons were used in the town of Douma, as it was claimed by the White Helmets,” the statement said, referring to the controversial “civil defense” group that was among the first to report about the alleged attack.

Then, late on April 10th, Russian Television headlined “Europe air traffic control issues alert over ‘possible air strikes on Syria within 72 hours’”, and the U.S. and France were set for a full-force invasion, which was expected to target especially “Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Hama, Deir ez Zor, and Rakka. In particular, it is planned to strike the area of the Russian military base in Tartus.”

Some people expect these attacks to be met by counterattacks from Syria, Russia, Hezbollah, and Iran, but some expect them to be so defeated in Syria, as to surrender, and for Russia also not to launch nuclear attacks against the invaders for having started WW III on the basis of unexamined accusations.

In any case, the question can be considered, even before the outcome is known (and if the world still exists after that), as to whether the U.S. and its allies are invading upon even shabbier ‘evidence’ than it had invaded Iraq in 2003. In domestic matters, the comparable situation exists when a lynch mob seeks to kill a seized person without any investigatory process at all, but only upon the allegation by the mob saying that the person who is being lynched is ‘guilty’. However, when this is done in international matters, and the attackers are calling themselves ‘democracies’, the situation is even worse than merely a domestic lynching. And this could factor into the Russian Government’s decision as to how to respond to these invasions of its ally.

The present situation could be even more dangerous than was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NationalTurk.

US Government Backs Dangerous New Genetic Manipulation of Plants and Animals

April 12th, 2018 by F. William Engdahl

The Trump Administration is backing a new technology for the genetic manipulation of plants and even animals with no intend to supervise or regulate against possible dangers. If left unchecked, it could open a Pandora’s Box of dangers to human health for generations. Yet very little debate is taking place on this dramatic development. Here are some things to consider.

The new development is being called “genome editing,” or simply gene editing. It’s being promoted as a “new, improved” method of altering genetic expression of plants and even animals and humans. In 2015 London TED conference geneticist Jennifer Doudna presented what is known as CRISPR-Cas9. This is an acronym for “Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats.” It’s a revolutionary and highly controversial gene-editing platform using a bacterially-derived protein, Cas9. It supposedly allows genetic engineers to target and break the DNA double strand at a precise location within a given genome for the first time. 

Genetic Editing Proliferation

In effect CRISPR is a highly precise way to alter genes, genes in plants, in animals and even humans. Quite different from the older Monsanto “gene cannon” or other techniques of changing a plant’s genetics by bombarding it with a foreign substance to (hopefully) make the soybean or GMO corn resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer, a highly sophisticated and highly costly procedure that is patentable and that is so complex as to be limited to a handful of company actors around the world, gene editing is relatively cheap, kits available for around $500. And relatively easy to use. As one analyst described it,

CRISPR is “a very precise not to mention extraordinarily cheap and easy to use tool which can locate, cut, deactivate, activate or rewrite any sequence of DNA that they want in a living cell.” 

Note the words, “cheap and easy to use…can locate, cut, deactivate or rewrite any sequence of DNA that they want…”

And the cost of buying CRISPR and related genome editing materials is alarmingly cheap ranging from several hundred dollars to several thousand. The equipment is available online from scientific equipment makers and on one site an ad reads,

“CRISPR-Cas9 editing made easy:…Our easy-to-use, optimized, and validated solutions span the entire cell engineering workflow, making genome editing accessible to anyone at any level. “ As one critic put it, “anyone can buy some CAS9 for a few hundred bucks, any halfway decent lab can use it to alter the DNA of anything…”

National Security Issue

DARPA, the Pentagon R&D arm is spending millions on developing gene editing. In 2016 James Clapper, Obama Administration Director of National Intelligence added gene editing to the list of threats posed by “weapons of mass destruction and proliferation.” In July, 2017 the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded $65 million in four-year contracts to seven teams of scientists to study gene-editing technologies. The commitment officially made DARPA the world’s largest government funder of “gene drive” research.

Gene Drive is the next major development in the new gene editing world. The idea of gene drive is to force a genetic modification to spread through an entire population in just a few generations. One of the leading gene drive researchers, Omar Akbari at University of California Riverside gets DARPA gene drive research money. He works with what is supposedly the world’s deadliest creature: the Aedes aegypti mosquito. His work involves gene editing the deadly mosquito, re-engineering them with “self-destruct switches.”

This sounds noble, a boon to mankind saving maybe a million lives annually. Like selling earlier GMO “golden rice” as a solution to infant blindness, gene editing however is not as perfect as it is made out to be. The scientist who first suggested developing gene drives in gene editing, Harvard biologist Kevin Esvelt has published a paper warning that development of gene editing in conjunction with turbocharged gene drive technologies have alarming potential to go awry. He notes how often CRISPR messes up and the likelihood of protective mutations arising, making even benign gene drives ruthlessly aggressive. He stresses,

“Just a few engineered organisms could irrevocably alter an ecosystem.” 

His computer gene drive simulations calculate that a resulting edited gene “can spread to 99 percent of a population in as few as 10 generations, and persist for more than 200 generations.”

It takes little imagination to conceive a scenario in which malevolent actors intent on wreaking destruction unleash destructive gene edited plants or animals, or even humans. Earlier GMO was so complex and costly it was limited to a very few actors who grabbed patents on their GMO seeds. Now with gene editing readily available and becoming widespread, Pandora’s Box is being opened wide.

USDA Gov Gives Green Light

Rather than approach such a potentially disruptive technology as gene editing with utmost caution and control, the US Government, and US Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, are opting for no regulation, a laissez faire permissiveness that treats the resulting gene edited plants as identical to conventional plants, therefore needing no special regulation. In a March 28 Press Release, Purdue stated,

“USDA does not regulate or have any plans to regulate plants that could otherwise have been developed through traditional breeding techniques…This includes a set of new techniques that are increasingly being used by plant breeders to produce new plant varieties that are indistinguishable from those developed through traditional breeding methods…such as genome editing…”

So we have at the same time the US intelligence community treating gene edited organisms and related technologies as potential weapons of mass destruction, while at the very same time the agencies of the US Government responsible for food safety, the USDA, EPA and FDA seem content to turn a blind eye to all. As critics have noted, “We might be able to wipe out entire species on a whim …We might be able to do that — to any species — that we’ve decided we’d rather not deal with anymore …” Even “undesirable” groups of human beings?

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO.

International Law Experts Say Military Attack on Syria Would be Illegal

April 12th, 2018 by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

We are practitioners and professors of international law. Under international law, military strikes by the United States of America and its allies against the Syrian Arab Republic, unless conducted in self-defense or with United Nations Security Council approval, are illegal and constitute acts of aggression.

The unlawful killing of any human being without legal justification, under every legal system, is murder. And an act of violence committed by one government against another government, without lawful justification, amounts to the crime of aggression: the supreme international crime which carries with it the evil of every other international crime, as noted by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946.

The use of military force by a state can be used in self-defense after an armed attack by another state, or, with the approval of the United Nations Security Council. At present, neither instance would apply to a U.S. strike against Syria. 

We understand the urge to act to protect innocent civilians. We strongly condemn any and all violence against civilians, whoever the perpetrators. But responding to unlawful violence with more unlawful violence, bypassing existing legal mechanisms, is a road to a lawless world. It is a road that leads to Hell.

Accordingly, we urge the United States and its allies to refrain from illegal conduct against Syria. We must point out that for the last several years, as is now common knowledge, the United States has armed rebels/insurgents to overthrow the current government of Syria. This is illegal under international law. In 1986, in The Nicaragua Case, the International Court of Justice reprimanded the United States for arming and supporting contra militias and combatants, and for mining Nicaragua’s harbors, as acts which violated the U.N. Charter and international law. Perhaps the Syrian crisis would look differently today if the United States and its allies had consistently respected law for the last several years. They have not.

We take pains to note what should be obvious: our demand that the United States and its allies immediately comport themselves with their international legal obligations is not a justification, excuse, or some type of free pass on the investigation and accountability for international legal violations committed by other actors who may be involved in this sad affair. But our point is a simple one: the only way to resolve the Syrian crisis is through commitment to well-settled principles of international legal norms. We urge the United States to abide by its commitment to the rule of international law and to seek to resolve its disputes through peaceful means. These means include recourse to the use of established and legitimate institutions designed to maintain international peace and security, such as the U.N. Security Council or the International Court of Justice. Unilateral action is a sign of weakness; recourse to the law is a sign of strength. The United States must walk back from becoming the very monster it now seeks to destroy.

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Inder Comar, Executive Director, Just Atonement Inc.

Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, Research Professor of Law, University of Makeni, UN Representative of International-Lawyers.org

Dr. Ryan Alford, Associate Professor, Bora Laskin Faculty of Law, Lakehead University

Abdeen Jabara, Civil Rights Attorney and Co-Founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita, Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Ramsey Clark, 66th Attorney-General of the United States

Jeanne Mirer, President, International Association of Democratic Lawyers

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When Your Bank Fails, Don’t Walk… Run!

April 12th, 2018 by Brett Redmayne-Titley

So. The US economy is just fine. The post-recession 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation has cured all. Banks have lots of cash. Congress is your friend and that certain-to-pass Tax Cut and Jobs bill will finally allow you, your family and America to… MAGA.

Really?!

“I’m sorry, Sir. We are unable to cash this check,” were the ominous words delivered to me by a fresh-faced, none-too-friendly, Wells Fargo Bank manager. He had just kept me waiting ten minutes while in consultation about my requested transaction. Returning to his cubicle he sat down quickly, now looking at me intently through narrowed eyes.

Three feet away, between us and in front of him, were three forms of my personal identification face up. However, he gazed down glowering at two personal checks also laying before him, written to me by a client and drawn on his bank. Not being a “Wells” customer I had expected a shake-down, hence the multiple forms of ID.

These two checks totalled a seemingly paltry sum of almost US$8,000.00. Not expecting this much difficulty I insisted on a reason, to which he now looked up from considering the two checks and replied,

“I’m sorry, but the bank does not have sufficient funds on-hand to cash these checks.”

Really?!

Naturally, like the majority of incorrectly indoctrinated US bank depositors I assumed that, as is traditional with banks, this one would have lots and lots of cash.

Au Contraire.

Unapologetically he informed me that he was “sorry” but he could only cash one of the checks at this time. Both checks were for about the same amount. I inquired if this was a new bank policy and was told that the bank simply did not have enough cash on hand, and, “no”, I could not come back at the end of the day after the bank had received the day’s cash deposits. However, if I went to a larger Wells branch they might be able to handle both checks.

Image result for Wells Fargo

This rather unique news seemed worth of delving into further, so I declined his opening offer and left with my two onerous withdrawals. Being away from home, I decided to wait and stop by my home town’s main Wells Fargo branch office.    For anyone following the factual and very dire condition of the world’s economy and its bank’s magnificent set of past, pending, future -and unpunished-financial crimes, my sojourn into the realm of Kafka would become a very cautionary tale.

Oh, those evil banks. The shadowy corporatist denizens of New York, London, and Brussels, all guilty of a staggering set of every-expanding frauds couched in the beneficent language of greedy short-term materialistic gain. Financial “crimes of the decade,” like the Savings and Loan meltdown, the Enron Collapse, and the Great Recession are nowadays reported almost monthly. With metered US justice amounting only to a monetary fine for the offending criminal bank- usually a small fraction of the money it previously stole, hypothecated, leveraged or manipulated- and with criminal prosecution no longer a possibility, these criminals continue to shovel trillions- not billions- into off-shore, non-tax paying accounts of the already uber-rich. There is never enough.

Just in time for Christmas, Americans received the “Tax Cut and Jobs Bill 2017” that, of course, contains not one word about jobs, but sounds so good to the ignorant who are still transfixed on the false mantra of MAGA.

LIBOR, FOREX, COMEX, which used high-speed program securities trading combined with insider manipulation, were the first serious examples of recent bank frauds. Since the Great Recession magically became the Great Recovery, Wachovia and HSBC banks plead guilty to laundering money for Mexican drug cartels dictators, and terrorists. Wells Fargo and Bank of America were also guilty of defrauding 10’s of thousands of homeowners of the properties during the “robo-signing” scandal; that was a scandal…until Wells and BA paid the mortdita and all returned to business as usual. Example: In July 2017 it was revealed that more than 800,000 customers who had taken out car loans with Wells Fargo were charged for auto insurance they did not need.  Barely a month later, Wells was forced to disclose that the number of bogus accounts that had been created was actually 3.5 million, a nearly 70 percent increase over the bank’s initial estimate. Why not? When the predictable result will be a small percentage fine, and keep the rest. Now that’s MAGA!

If the individual retail- Mom and Pop- investor actually had a choice of where to put their cash money, then no one with better than a fifth-grade education would put a penny into the major stock markets. However, the goal of the many banking manipulations have had one goal: eliminate financial investment choices to one- stocks.

One choice, Gold and silver, the previous historical champion alternative in preserving one’s wealth, was deliberately eliminated from short-term, private investment. The banks, issued and sold massive amounts of worthless certificate gold and derivative gold (not bullion), and the same in silver, at a current ratio of 272 paper instruments to one measly ounce of real physical gold. All this has been leveraged against real precious metals, and next used to influence the price of gold-down- by selling huge tranches of these ostensibly worthless gold contracts (1 contract=100 paper ounces) within seconds when the spot price of gold begins to rise. The banks have done this so often that gold has not risen to levels it would likely reach without this manipulation. This has driven massive liquidity that would have gone to precious metals towards stocks. This is likely evidenced by the advent of the meteoric rise in the price of BitCoin, one that-like gold- escapes the bank’s control and a super-inflated stock market.

Similarly, thanks to the economic trickery that has been three rounds of Quantitative Easing, the other two conventional options; the bond market and personal bank savings accounts have been manipulated to also produce a very low rate of return, driving these cash funds to stocks. It is this entire package of criminality- providing  no other place for liquidity to go- that has performed as the plot to push a surging world stock market to obscene levels that have no basis in factually based accounting or economic methods… or history.

Banks Are Ready for the Next Crash- You’re Not!

The banks know the next crash is coming. Like 2007, they have set in motion the next great(est) recession. Predator banks know that most people, thanks to the aforementioned financial control, media omission and an inferior education system, are “stupid,” especially regarding the nuances of financial fraud. As the majority of Americans and Europeans live in the illusion that their financial institutions will protect their savings, they miss their bank’s greedy preparations for the next stock market crash slithering through the halls of their Parliament or Congress. This already completed legislation states in plain English, and the language of endemic corruption, that your bank intends to steal your money directly from your savings account. And…your government will let them do this to you.

30,000 pages make up the Dodd-Frank post-recession legislation, authored by the banks in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The Dodd-Frank legislation was touted as eliminating the massive bail-outs the US gave virtually every ill-defined too big to fail worldwide bank and US corporation in 2008-9. In reality, Dodd-Frank was as much a fraud against Americans as LIBOR or COMEX manipulation, etc., al.

Title II of the media-acclaimed 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act provides the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) with new powers and methods to again guarantee- first and foremost- the massively leveraged derivatives trade once this massive leverage plummets as it did with AIG in 2007-09. However, that collapse was singular. The next will include all banking sectors.

The bank’s paid-for politicians made sure a post-crash congress did not regulate derivatives via Dodd-Frank, and thereby encouraged a further increase in this financial casino betting, despite it being the root cause of the original problem. Thanks to Dodd-Frank and it’s predecessor, the 2005 Bankruptcy Act, Congress made sure these new fraudulent bets on stock market manipulation would surely be paid. But, not to worry; there would be no more “Bail Outs.” Next time, these banks would use their depositor’s savings, including yours. Meet: the “Bail-In.”

Really?!

All Americans recall the massive “Bail-Outs” of 2007-9 and how their corporately controlled Federal Reserve Bank and an equally controlled US Congress threw several trillions of US taxpayer dollars at US banks, dozens of foreign banks, and any corporation with enough political pull to be defined as “Too Big To Fail” (TBTF). In the aftermath a year later, the banks understood that Americans and European citizens had lost enthusiasm for any future government Bail-Out, most preferring instead that any institution suffering self-inflicted financial duress should enjoy the fruits of their crimes next time, via the reality of formal bankruptcy proceedings.

The will or financial safety of the public is, of course, no concern to criminal corporations, and so easily circumvented via congress and the president. So, the banksters have redefined their criminality using two newly defined methods, both rebranded to be far more palatable to the public.

Currently,“Too Big to Fail,” (TBTF) has a very fraudulent and elitist connotation just like, “Bail-Out.” To millions across the world who have lost their homes, pension funds, retirement plans, and dreams, this decade-old moniker for financial oppression and fraud has now been conveniently re-branded. The bailed-out TBTF banks now have a far more magnificent definition: TBTFs are now, “Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions” (G-SIFI).

This sounds so much better.

But, “Bail-Out”? No… No. Would you not prefer a “Bail-In”? Not if you know the details.“Bail-Outs,” may have also lost their flavour but in the new world of the G-SIFI, the next one is actually just a “Bail-In,” away.

Yes, Bail-Ins, the new “systemically” correct term for publicly guaranteed bank fraud are already named as such in new national policies and laws, appearing in multiple countries. These finance laws, such as Dodd-Frank and its pending UK and European Union version, make upcoming Bail-Ins legal. These Bail-Ins allow failing G-SIFI banks to legally convert the funds of “unsecured creditors”(that’s you) into bank capital (that’s them). This includes include “secured” creditors, like state and local government funds.

Really?!

With this in mind, I entered the main branch of Wells Fargo. The two checks in hand. On the way in I was greeted warmly, one after the other, by three more fresh-faced and eager proteges, all smartly uniformed to match the Wells décor, and who proffered, “Good morning, Sir!,” again, and again… and again. Certainly, these little fish were not in possession of authority enough to cash my mammoth checks, so I asked for bigger game, the Branch Manager.

Thus, I explained my plight to a very lovely lass who predicted she, “would be glad to help me.”

“Cheryl,” patiently explained that I had come to the right place and she would be glad to cash both checks. Regarding my previous polite banking experience, she admitted that it was indeed bank policy to have limits on the availability of cash for withdrawals and that different branches had different limits. This was the main branch so my request here was meritorious. Further, she admitted that whatever daily cash coming into the branches in the form of deposits was not available for withdrawal, but was sent from the main branch for daily accounting at a central point common to all area Wells bank branches. Only a prescribed amount of cash was provided with each bank for daily customer cash withdrawals.

Really?!

“A couple of times your current request,” was her cautious response to my question about her branch’s limits on check cashing. Not to be put-off, I asked about a hypothetical US$25,000 check. She admitted this would be beyond her branches authority. “But,” she smiled, “Today, you’ve come to the right place.”

The financial law firm Davis Polk estimates the final length of Dodd-Frank, the single longest bill ever passed by the US government, is over 30,000 pages. Before passage, the six largest banks in the US spent $29.4 million lobbying Congress in 2010 and flooded Capitol Hill with about 3,000 lobbyists prior to Obama predictably signing its final unread version.    No US congressman or senator had read it. But, the bank’s congressional minions were told to vote for it. And dutifully they did.

The major cause of the upcoming financial meltdown, as with the pre-2008 conditions, is globally systemic gambling against national economies; called derivatives. Derivatives are sold as a kind of betting insurance for managing fraudulent banking profits and risk. So, why fix systemic banking fraud when the final result allowed these same banks to make even more money in the aftermath of the national and personal financial destruction they originated in the first recession?

Instead, thanks to Dodd-Frank, derivatives suddenly have “super-priority” status in any bankruptcy. The Bank for International Settlements quoted global OTC derivatives at $632 trillion as of December 2012. Naked Capitalism states that $230 trillion in worthless derivatives are on the books of US banks alone. Applied to Dodd-Frank this means that all these bad bank bets on derivatives will be paid-off first… before you may have your savings cash. If there’s actually any cash left once you get to the teller’s counter.

Normally in a capital liquidation or bankruptcy proceeding, secured creditors such as a banks personal depositors are paid off first because these are hard assets, not investments, and thus normally have a mandated priority. Under these new “Bail-In” Dodd-Frank mandates, your government has re-prioritized your bank’s exposure and your cash deposit. Derivatives and other similar banking high-risk ventures are now more highly protected than bank depositor’s savings. In the 2013 example of Cyprus, Germany and the ECB also made depositors inferior to other bank holdings leaving depositors with, after many months, a small fraction of their deposits.

And then came Greece.

Selling the lie while using the language of Dodd-Frank, we are told by media whores that banks will not be given taxpayer bailouts next time. True. The preamble to the Dodd-Frank Act claims,

“to protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts.”

But how, then, to Bail-In the G-SIFIs without another taxpayer Bail-Out? No problem.

Enter the FDIC and another new banking term, “cross-border bank resolution.” As the sole US agency required to pay back depositors who lose savings up to $250,000, FDIC is armed with a paltry US$25 billion war chest to pay depositors. Under Dodd-Frank, the FDIC will be the mechanism to replace deposits lost or squandered by bank fraud. The public, however, has an estimated total US cash deposits of US$7.36 trillion so, once the banks steal your savings, FDIC will be just a little bit short of funds.  How to fix this mathematical shortfall?  With, of course, more of your money via emergency taxes or a massive new round of Quantitative Easing(QE). Either way, by the time this happens your money is long gone. And it gets worse.

Really?!

Say, “Goodbye” to your Savings- Two Greedy Methods

“It’s [FDIC] already indicated that they will confiscate [savings] funds…”. -US congressman Ron Paul

On December 10, 2012, a joint strategy paper was drafted by the Bank of England (BOE) in conjunction with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) titled, “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” Here the plot to steal depositor savings is clearly laid out.

The report’s “Executive Summary” states,

“… the authorities in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) have been working together to develop resolution strategies…These strategies have been designed to enable [financial institutions] to be resolved without threatening financial stability and without putting public funds at risk.”

Sounds good until you read the fine print, ie., whose risk are they actually protecting.

While claiming to protect taxpayers, Title II of Dodd-Frank gives the FDIC an enforcement arm, the Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA) which is similar to its British counterpart the Prudent Regulation Authority (PRA). Both now have the authority to punish the personal depositors of failing banking institutions by arbitrarily making their savings deposits subordinate- actually tertiary- to bank claims for the replacement value their derivatives. Before Dodd-Frank savings deposits were legally senior and primary to these same claims in a routine bankruptcy.

With the US banks holding only $7 trillion in personal cash savings deposits compared to $230 trillion is US derivative obligations, FDIC’s $25 billion will not be enough. The creators of Dodd-Frank knew this before it was signed. As John Butler points out in an April 4, 2012, article in Financial Sense,

“Do you see the sleight-of-hand at work here? Under the guise of protecting taxpayers, depositors… are to be arbitrary, subordinated… when in fact they are legally senior to those claims…Remember, its stated purpose [Dodd-Frank] is to solve the problem… namely the existence of insolvent TBTF institutions that were “highly leveraged with numerous and dispersed financial operations, extensive off-balance-sheet activities, and opaque financial statements.”

Oh, but bank depositors can rest easy in the knowledge that replacing their savings will not come out of their pockets via another bank Bail-Out. Thanks to Dodd-Frank, the first line of defence will allow Congress to instead replace personal savings with a government paid for $7 trillion bail-in to FDIC to “replace” these savings.

But, that’s the good choice.

Worse, Dodd-Frank gives new powers to FDIC and its OLA that allow an even more powerful and draconian resolution: any deposited funds in a bank, from $1 to $250,000 (the FDIC limit), and everything above, can instead be converted to bank stock! FDIC has provisions so this can be done, via OLA, quite literally overnight.

Really?!

An FDIC report released in 2012 ago reads:

“An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company [meaning the depositor’s cash] into equity [or stock].

Additionally, per April 24, 2012, IMF report, conversion of bank debt to stock is an essential element of Bail-Ins included in Dodd-Frank.

“The contribution of new capital will come from debt conversion and/or issuance of new equity, with an elimination or significant dilution of the pre-bail in shareholders. …Some measures might be necessary to reduce the risk of a ‘death spiral’ in share prices.”

Really?!

For affected depositors to retrieve the value of what was formerly the depositor’s account balance, the stock must next be sold. When Lehman Brothers failed, unsecured creditors (depositors are now unsecured creditors) got eight cents on the dollar.

This type of conversion of deposits into equity already had another test-run during the bankruptcy reorganization of Bankia and four other Spanish banks in 2013. The conditions of a July 2012 Memorandum of Understanding resulted in over 1 million small depositors becoming stockholders in Bankia when they were sold without their permission- “preferences” (preferred stock) in exchange for their missing deposits. Following the conversion, the preferences were converted into common stock originally valued at EU 2.0 per share, then further devalued to EU 0.1 after the March restructuring of Bankia.

Canada has also stated they are planning a similar “Bail-In” program. The Canadian government released a document titled the Economic Action Plan 2013 which says, “the Government proposes to implement a “Bail-In” regime for systemically important banks.”

However, don’t be getting cute by hiding your cash, precious metals, or passport in a bank safe deposit box. There are no longer safe either. Dodd-Frank took care of that, too.

Under Dodd-Frank the FDIC, using the auspices of Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) can legally, without a warrant, enter the bank vault, have the manager secretly open any and/or all safe deposit boxes and inventory, or seize the contents. Further, if the manager is honest enough to inform the depositor of the illegal incursion he is subject to criminal charges and termination from bank employ. Independent reports reveal that all of America’s safe deposit boxes have already been invaded and inventoried for future confiscation.

This already happened in Greece. Depositors who removed their jewellery or precious metals were met at the bank’s door by security, a metal detector and confiscation.

Really?!

The power of the now remaining G-SIFI banks and FDIC was further evident when, cash finally in hand, I headed to my bank, JP Morgan Chase, right next door to Wells Fargo. The manager confirmed that the cash withdrawal policy at Chase was in keeping with that at Wells; very little cash available on demand. I posed a slight untruth and inquired as to what I should do about my upcoming need for $50,000 in hard cash. No, her bank would not do that on demand, but arrangements could be made to have the cash transferred to her bank. That would only take “about two days.” Of course, I would need to fill out a few forms.

What a Difference a Congress Makes!

With the American and UK public again on the hook-by law- for the anticipated loss of the banks a distressed depositor might think the plot to defraud them now complete. Au Contraire.

In its rush to transfer further wealth upwards to off-shore bank accounts, US president Trump and his recently re-aligned republican bootlickers have left no stone unturned. First, Trump issued a memorandum that sets in motion his plan to scale back the provisions of Dodd-Frank and repeal the Fiduciary Rule.

It should be noted that the only voice of economic reason at the White House, Former Fed Chairman, Paul Volker, divorced himself from this growing scandal of basic mathematics very publicly. As head of Obama’s recession inspired, President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, Volker ran into the headwinds of fiscal insanity for too long, resigning in January of 2011 in disgust. His departure thus coincided with the renewal of the litany of criminal financial manipulation already discussed here. And now…

The House approved legislation on Feb. 2, 2017, to erase a number of core financial regulations put in place by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, as Republicans moved a step closer to delivering on their promises to eliminate rules that they claim have strangled small businesses and stagnated the economy. Said Trump,

 “I have so many people, friends of mine, with nice businesses, they can’t borrow money, because the banks just won’t let them borrow because of the rules and regulations and Dodd-Frank.”

Poor banks.

Never mind, of course, that these poor banks are holding derivative exposure thirty-five times the total cash deposits of US savers…nor that their ill-gotten riches- such as the UBS, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, RBS multi-billion dollar frauds- were taken off-calendar in Federal court for approx. 15% of the total crime. The banks kept the rest.

And they want more?!

“We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank,” Trump said further defining the mantra of MAGA. This will likely see the deterioration of the newly created Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) since these agencies curb further excessive risk-taking and the existence of too-big-to-fail institutions on Wall Street.

Well, depositors, your extreme caution is required. The wording of these new, bank inspired sets of legislation is silently waiting to be used by many nations to prioritize banks before their citizen’s. When the time comes, the race to the bank will be a short-lived event indeed.

With this in mind, I stepped into the bright sunshine outside the walls of JP Morgan/Chase bank, all but $ 100.00 of my day’s take stuffed deep- and securely- in my pocket. It’s final outcome no one’s business but my own.

However, for almost everyone else? Well… when YOUR bank fails, don’t walk-run!  YOU do not want to be second in line.

Really!

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 150 in-depth articles over the past seven years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, KXL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk

Lights, Action and War Propaganda: Al-Jazeera Releases White Helmets Video on Alleged Chemical Attack in Douma After Trump Says “It’s Time” for U.S. Forces to Leave Syria

April 12th, 2018 by Timothy Alexander Guzman

Al-Jazeera (who was recently forced to register as a propaganda agent of the Qatari government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in the U.S.) looks like they want to get on the good side of the Washington establishment has released a video on what it seems to be a staged chemical weapons attack in the Eastern Ghouta city of Douma. According to an Al-Jazeera report who was the first to release the video of the alleged chemical attack said the following:

A chemical attack in Douma, the last rebel-held stronghold near Syria’s capital, Damascus, has killed at least 70 people and affected hundreds, rescue workers have told Al Jazeera. The White Helmets, a group of rescuers operating in opposition-held areas in Syria, said on Saturday that most of the fatalities were women and children. 

“Seventy people suffocated to death and hundreds are still suffocating,” Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets, told Al Jazeera, adding that the death toll was expected to rise as many people were in critical condition. Al-Saleh said that chlorine gas and an unidentified but stronger gas were dropped on Douma. “White Helmet volunteers are trying to help the people but all that we can do is evacuate them to another area by foot because most of the vehicles and centres went out of service” 

It does seem that The White Helmets has staged another fake video blaming the Assad government for the chemical attack in Douma and in an important note, has never blamed the U.S. backed rebels (or should be properly be called terrorists) in any past chemical attacks on civilians.  Sputnik news.com made a good point on the White Helmets and the victims of the recent chemical attack in the video

“However, the rescuers appeared to be so focused on accusing President Bashar al-Assad of dropping a chemical bomb on Douma that they forgot to put on gas masks or protective suits themselves.”

RT News reported:

The Russian military has found no trace of chemical weapons use after searching parts of Syria’s Douma allegedly targeted by an “attack.” Photos of victims posted by the White Helmets are fake, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. Experts in radiological, chemical and biological warfare, as well as medics, on Monday inspected the parts of the Eastern Ghouta city of Douma, where an alleged chemical attack supposedly took place on Saturday, the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria said in a statement.

The specialists “found no traces of the use of chemical agents” after searching the sites, the statement said. The center’s medical specialists also visited a local hospital but found no patients that showed signs of chemical weapons poisoning. “All these facts show… that no chemical weapons were used in the town of Douma, as it was claimed by the White Helmets,” the statement said, referring to the controversial “civil defense” group that was among the first to report about the alleged attack. “All the accusations brought by the White Helmets, as well as their photos… allegedly showing the victims of the chemical attack, are nothing more than a yet another piece of fake news and an attempt to disrupt the ceasefire,” the Reconciliation Center said

What was interesting is was what happened earlier this month when U.S. President Donald Trump made a comment on the U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria when he said

“So we’re going to be making a decision. We’ve had a tremendous military success against ISIS as you know. It is close to 100% as I just said. And we’ll be making a decision as to what we do in the very near future. We’ll be consulting also with the groups of our people and groups of our allies.”

Trump went on to say that “

I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home. I want to start rebuilding our nation.”

Then the alleged chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta city of Douma happens and Trump changes his tone.

Trump was just tweeting nonsense because he is clearly not in charge when it comes to foreign policy. According to CNN

 “Spokesperson Heather Nauert said that she had not seen the comments but was not aware of any plan for the US to pull out.”

According to CNBC, another mainstream media (MSM) business news television channel “Trump wants to ‘get out’ of Syria, but US military and national security advisors say ISIS isn’t defeated yet” regarding Trump’s statement on pulling U.S. troops out of Syria:

Contrary to Trump’s statements, Brett McGurk, the U.S. special envoy for the global coalition against ISIS, told a forum Tuesday that the U.S. mission in Syria was far from over. “We are in Syria to fight ISIS. That is our mission, and our mission isn’t over, and we are going to complete that mission,” McGurk said 

CNBC also mentioned Army Gen. Joseph Votel who had practically the same answer on Trump’s statement:

Echoing those sentiments, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, who oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East as the head of Central Command, said that while the presence of ISIS in the region had diminished, “it is not gone.” 

Votel estimated that more than 90 percent of the terror group’s territory had been recovered by U.S.-backed forces. He added that the next step for the approximately 2,000 U.S.troops in Syria would be to help stabilize the region. “The hard part, I think, is in front of us, and that is stabilizing these areas, consolidating our gains, getting people back into their homes,” Votel said alongside McGurk 

The Hill reported on Trump’s meeting with his national security team ‘Trump clashes with military in Syria pullout push’ which shows how much power the president has over his military advisers:

On Tuesday, he reiterated, “I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home.”  Later on Tuesday, Trump met with his national security team. By Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that “the United States and our partners remain committed to eliminating the small ISIS presence in Syria that our forces have not already eradicated.” 

Still, Sanders said the military mission “is coming to a rapid end, with ISIS being almost completely destroyed.” The Pentagon on Thursday asserted that plans for Syria haven’t changed, denying that Trump set a six-month timeline during the meeting with his national security team. 

“The president has actually been very good in not giving us a specific timeline, so that’s a tool that we can use to our effect as we move forward,” Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, director of the Joint Staff, said during a briefing. “We’ve always thought that as we reach finality against ISIS in Syria, we’re going to adjust the level of our presence there. So in that sense, nothing actually has changed.” But before Trump’s proclamation, military and diplomatic officials had spoken for months about the need for a long-term military commitment in Syria 

Now, another chemical attack has taken place in the Eastern Ghouta town of Douma, an enclave that was held by U.S. supported rebels (who are affiliated with members from ISIS and other terrorist networks) as CNN reported:

US President Donald Trump warned Sunday of a “big price to pay” in Syria after a suspected chemical attack on the last rebel-held town in Eastern Ghouta left scores dead and injured. Dozens of Syrians were killed and hundreds of others were affected by the attack on Douma, on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, rescue workers and an aid group said Sunday. 

Anti-government activists claimed Syrian military helicopters dropped barrel bombs filled with chemicals on the town on Saturday night, suffocating some residents and sending others into violent convulsions

Trump tweeted

“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price…”

Trump is now following the Pentagon’s script with the familiar accusations of Assad has gassed his people when Syrian forces are gaining ground against US -backed rebels in Eastern Ghouta. The Butcher of Damascus must be at it again. He never learns.  Assad is a mad man, a crazed psychopath who gasses his own people after he gains control over disputed territories and on the way to victory. It’s ludicrous, in fact it is ridiculous to believe Washington and the MSM’s manufactured propaganda to oust Assad.

Russia and Syria Knew that a chemical attack was going to be carried out by the terrorists was Inevitable. What is interesting about trump’s tweet is how he Capped the word “CHEMICAL” attack in Syria, code word for Washington, Israel (we should never forget Israel’s role) and the MSM to accuse Assad of another chemical attack on his people to the international community in a push for war. France and the UK are already on board to join U.S. forces to remove Assad by force. Sputnik News reported back on March 19th that the Russian government was warned by a resident from Eastern Ghouta that terrorists were planning a chemical attack in the near future:

The Russian Center for Syrian reconciliation said Monday it had received information that terrorists in Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta were preparing a possible provocation involving the use of chemical warfare agents. According to the center’s commander Maj. Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko, a resident of Eastern Ghouta called the center’s “hotline” on Monday to report that Nusra Front* militants had installed on a roof of a building and tested a turbine, placing tightly sealed containers with poisonous substances nearby. 

“The caller said he believed that terrorists can use these preparations to disperse toxic substances in residential areas, which will lead to a large number of casualties among the local residents. The mass poisoning of civilians will be used to accuse the government troops of the use of chemical weapons against peaceful citizens,” Yevtushenko stressed 

The Syrian Government responded to the chemical attacks that took place in Douma:

Foreign Ministry: Allegations of using chemical weapons unconvincing stereotype

A source at Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said on Sunday that allegations of using chemical weapons have become an unconvincing stereotype, except for some countries which traffic with the blood of civilians and support terrorism in Syria.

Every time the Syrian Arab Army advances in combatting terrorism, the allegations of using chemical weapons emerge as a pretext to prolong the presence of terrorists in Douma, the source added.

“The pretext of using chemicals in Ghouta was pre-planned and there is documented and confirmed information about this against which the Syrian state has previously warned,” the source said. A number of misleading media outlets and those that speak by the name of terrorist organizations have launched a campaign to accuse the Syrian Arab Army of using chemical weapons during operations against terrorists in Duma, followed by a US-led Western political campaign to justify any hostile moves against Syria aimed at supporting terrorists and preventing them from collapsing

Then the State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert quickly released a statement blaming the Assad government and Russia without any proven evidence (only a video provided by Al-Jazeera starring the discredited White Helmets who are closely associated with terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Jebbah al-Nusra). The State Department made sure to add Assad’s history of allegedly “using chemical weapons against his own people” mantra in the statement:

We continue to closely follow disturbing reports on April 7 regarding another alleged chemical weapons attack, this time targeting a hospital in Douma, Syria. Reports from a number of contacts and medical personnel on the ground indicate a potentially high number of casualties, including among families hiding in shelters. These reports, if confirmed, are horrifying and demand an immediate response by the international community.

The United States continues to use all efforts available to hold those who use chemical weapons, in Syria and otherwise, accountable. The regime’s history of using chemical weapons against its own people is not in dispute, and in fact nearly one year ago on April 4, 2017, Assad’s forces conducted a sarin gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun, which killed approximately 100 Syrians.

The Assad regime and its backers must be held accountable and any further attacks prevented immediately. Russia, with its unwavering support for the regime, ultimately bears responsibility for these brutal attacks, targeting of countless civilians, and the suffocation of Syria’s most vulnerable communities with chemical weapons. By shielding its ally Syria, Russia has breached its commitments to the United Nations as a framework guarantor. It has betrayed the Chemical Weapons Convention and UN Security Council Resolution 2118. Russia’s protection of the Assad regime and failure to stop the use of chemical weapons in Syria calls into question its commitment to resolving the overall crisis and to larger non-proliferation priorities.

The United States calls on Russia to end this unmitigated support immediately and work with the international community to prevent further, barbaric chemical weapons attacks

The Rush to Judgment on Behalf of the Military-Industrial Complex

Trump was scheduled to meet with his war cabinet and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is also meeting to discuss Syria in New York. According to The Daily Mail ‘Trump will decide whether to strike Syria after emergency UN Security Council meeting and top-brass military briefing about chemical weapons attack’ reported on what several lawmakers in Washington had recently said concerning the alleged chemical attack in Douma:

Sen. Lindsay Graham this morning said that Assad should be classified as a war criminal, and Trump ought to totally destroy his air force. ‘The world is watching the president, Iran is watching the president, Russia is watching the president and North Korea’s watching the president,’ the GOP lawmaker who has Trump’s ear said. ‘This president has a chance to do exactly the opposite of Obama: send a strong signal that there’s a new sheriff in town and America’s back’ 

Both Democrats and Republicans including the outspoken warmonger, Senator John McCain who called for the continued U.S. occupation suggesting that Trump should not to pull out of Syria according to The Daily Mail article:

After the weekend chemical attack, lawmakers from both parties were urging Trump not to immediately vacate Syria. Top GOP legislators were demanding new military action. 

‘The President responded decisively when Assad used chemical weapons last year. He should do so again, and demonstrate that Assad will pay a price for his war crimes,’ Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain said. McCain tore into Trump on Sunday for sending mixed signals on Syria that he said ‘emboldened’ Assad and his allies.   

‘President Trump last week signaled to the world that the United States would prematurely withdraw from Syria. Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers have heard him, and emboldened by American inaction, Assad has reportedly launched another chemical attack against innocent men, women and children,’ McCain charged. ‘Initial accounts show dozens of innocent civilians, including children, have been targeted by this vicious bombardment designed to burn and choke the human body and leave victims writhing in unspeakable pain.’  McCain said Assad’s brutal regime had killed more than half a million of its people and turned another 11 million into refugees 

The Syrian Opposition has Launched Chemical Attacks in the Past with Help from the U.S., But This Time, it was a Staged Attack

Trump was never going to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria because it is a key Iranian ally in the region. The U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia and other Western allies want to remove Assad and destabilize Syria so that the military can focus on a future conflict against Iran. Now the Trump White house is considering airstrikes against the Assad government according to CNN:

Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that he wouldn’t rule out anything in regards to how to respond to another reported chemical weapons attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.  While speaking to reporters Monday, Mattis blasted Russia over its role to oversee the removal of chemical weapons from Syria due to a past agreement struck in 2013. The latest attack over the weekend reportedly killed dozens of people in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus.

“Can you rule out taking action, launching airstrikes against Assad, Mr. Secretary?” a reporter asked.  “I don’t rule out anything right now,” Mattis said

Earlier today, Trump tweeted

“Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it! “

So Assad enjoys killing his people with gas?

Will Trump move forward with a military strike against the Assad government? How will Syria, Iran and Russia respond if Trump and his war cabinet decide to launch another missile strike against the Syrian government? Last year Trump ordered 59 tomahawk missile strikes inside Syria that targeted airfield were the Syrian government allegedly had launched the chemical attack on in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel-held area last April. TASS, the Russian News Agency reported on what Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had said during Monday’s press conference:

Russia advocates a fair investigation into the alleged chemical attacks in Syria, and is strongly against assigning anyone the blame without finding any proof, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during Monday’s press conference.  “We are in total support of a fair and immediate investigation, when they ask for it. However, when the investigation is intended to come at a predetermined point – that is, it was done by Assad with Putin’s support – there are no grounds for a serious discussion,” he noted. 

“We had already commented on this situation before it became a reality,” the top diplomat stressed. “Our military currently in Syria and the Syrian government have warned countless times that a serious provocation is being concocted, aimed at blaming Damascus for using chemical weapons against civilians” 

Is Washington and the MSM listening? No. Why? They knew what was going to happen because they have given the terrorists all the necessary weapons and supplies over the years to carry out such attacks. In April 2017, Professor Michel Chossudovsky, the editor of Global Research published ‘Pentagon Trained Syria’s Al Qaeda “Rebels” in the Use of Chemical Weapons, Confirmed by CNN’ pointing out who was actually training the U.S. backed rebels in the use of chemical weapons:

In a twisted logic, the Pentagon’s mandate was to ensure that the rebels aligned with Al Qaeda would not acquire or use WMD, by actually training them in the use of chemical weapons (sounds contradictory):

Moreover, in an earlier report dated December 9 2012, CNN confirms that:

“The training [in chemical weapons], which is taking place in Jordan and Turkey, involves how to monitor and secure stockpiles and handle weapons sites and materials, according to the sources. Some of the contractors are on the ground in Syria working with the rebels to monitor some of the sites, according to one of the officials. 

The nationality of the trainers was not disclosed, though the officials cautioned against assuming all are American. (CNN, December 09, 2012, emphasis added) 

The CNN story ‘Sources: U.S. helping underwrite Syrian rebel training on securing chemical weapons’ also points to Jordan ‘s participation in the training exercise:

One of the aims, the sources said, is to try to get real time surveillance of the sites because the international community would not have time to prevent the use of the weapons otherwise. The program could explain how U.S. intelligence was able to learn what U.S. officials said was evidence the Assad government is mixing precursors for chemical weapons and loading those compounds into bombs. The intelligence, one U.S. official told CNN last week, came not just from satellite surveillance, but also from information provided by people. The official would not say whether the human intelligence came from telephone intercepts, defectors or people inside Syria.

The U.S. military is also working with neighboring Jordan’s military to train for the potential need to secure chemical weapons sites. But U.S. troops cannot train rebel forces because the United States has only authorized nonlethal aid for the opposition

So CNN states that “U.S. troops cannot train rebel forces because the United States has only authorized nonlethal aid for the opposition”? That was a lie. The Israeli-based newspaper, Haaretz, admitted years later in a June 7th, 2014 article titled ‘U.S. Admits Supplying Lethal Aid to Syrian Rebels’ that Washington was in fact providing lethal and non-lethal support to the Syrian rebels:

“Washington is providing both “lethal and non-lethal” support to members of the Syrian opposition, U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said on Friday, according to Saudi-owned TV channel al-Arabiya.” Susan Rice’s spokesperson at the time, Caitlin Hayden “later declined to say whether Rice’s openness on U.S. assistance reflected a new policy initiative. “We’re not in a position to detail all of our assistance, but as we’ve made clear, we provide both military and non-military assistance to the opposition,” Hayden said. 

The U.S. backed terrorists now operating in Syria have the means to conduct a false-flag attack, however, this time the chemical Weapons attack was a staged event.

Syria will be Trump’s War

The fake chemical attack on the Eastern Ghouta city of Douma is being used as a staging ground to blame President Bashar al-Assad (who does not have no political motive to attack “his own people”) especially when the Syrian army is gaining momentum in defeating ISIS and other terrorist groups. Russia has warned the international community last month that a false flag chemical attack was going to happen and it did, but it was a fake chemical attack staged by the Oscar-wining “White Helmets.” The Trump administration and the Military-Industrial complex never had any intention of withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria. The main objective is to remove Assad, then in coordination with Israel, Hezbollah and then Lebanon before moving on to the main adversary, Iran. The Trump administration’s main course of action against Syria is the continued support of its rebel forces and giving Israel the green light to carry-out missile strikes to further destabilize Syria. It will lead to World War III. Humanity is in the cross hairs.

Trump and his war cabinet look like they have already decided a plan of action against Syria, because at this point in time, peace seems out of the question. Peace was never on the table for the ruling American Empire. A US-Israeli led war is for the geopolitical control over the Middle East and its abundant natural resources. It will also allow Israel to expand its territory beyond its borders also known as The Yinon Plan which is an Israeli strategic plan to become the regional superpower through what we can call “the balkanization” of its Arab neighbors and turning them into weak states that cannot defend themselves against Israel’s military power which has nuclear weapons in its arsenal.

If Syria and the rest of their neighbors are destabilized, it will make it much easier for Israel’s military to control and dominate the Middle East politically and militarily. The U.S. and Israel along with Saudi Arabia want to control the Middle East and that won’t happen until Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Iran are taken out of the equation but with Russia and China in the picture, it will be practically impossible to achieve.  The long war has practically begun.

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This article was originally published on Silent Crow News.

Timothy Alexander Guzman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

Syria Chemical Weapons False Flag: Repeating Baseless Claims Is Not “Mounting Evidence”

April 12th, 2018 by Tony Cartalucci

To date, all supposed evidence regarding recent allegations of a chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, northeast of the capital Damascus, comes from Western-funded militants and their auxiliaries including the US-European government-funded front, the so-called “Syria Civil Defense,” better known at the “White Helmets.”

Unverified photographs and video of apparent victims have been the sole sources cited by the US.

WHO “Authority” Used to Bolster Original Unverified Reports, Not Add New Evidence  

The World Health Organization, in a recent statement attempting to bolster these accusations, claims that up to 500 patients appear to have been exposed to chemical poisoning, but would cite its “Health Cluster partners,” the Daily Beast would report.

The Guardian in its article, “Syria: 500 Douma patients had chemical attack symptoms, reports say,” would attempt to claim:

The report from the WHO’s partners in Syria adds to mounting evidence of the use of toxic gas in the attack, which killed at least 42 people and has raised the prospect of American airstrikes against forces loyal to the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

However, according to WHO’s own website, these partners include Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which in turn, according to MSF’s own website trains and supports the White Helmets. MSF has repeatedly admitted throughout the Syrian conflict that it does not have a presence on the ground in conflict areas and merely provides material support to groups that do.

Thus, contrary to the Guardian’s claims, the report from WHO’s partners in Syria does not “add to mounting evidence,” it is simply repeating the same, initial and still unverified claims made by the White Helmets.

The White Helmets have been repeatedly caught in the past fabricating evidence and staging scenes for propaganda value. In fact, all evidence suggests the entire purpose of the White Helmets is the production of propaganda.

This culminated in 2016 when the organization inadvertently revealed their theatrical methods during a protest in multiple European cities. They applied red paint and flour to their bodies and posed as victims for European media outlets and local bystanders. The scenes were indistinguishable from daily clips uploaded by White Helmet members allegedly carrying out emergency services in militant-held territory in Syria.

Absent from virtually all of their videos are scenes of actual injuries – open wounds, crushed or severed limbs, burns etc. Videos also lack any context, and are often heavily edited.

Real Evidence Requires a Real, Onsite Investigation 

Readers should recall that accusations of chemical weapon attacks last year that led to a US cruise missile barrage against Syrian government targets, were also never confirmed.

The investigation carried out by the The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism (OPCW-UN JIM) report on the alleged attack would admit that no investigators even visited the scene of the attack.

The UN in a news article regarding the report would even claim (emphasis added):

Although it was too dangerous to visit Umm Hawh and Khan Shaykum, the panel considered that sufficient information had been gathered to come to a solid conclusion.

The report – while assigning blame to the Syrian government – admits it could not confirm a Syrian aircraft dropped the supposed munition allegedly used in the attack – and that munition fragments passed to investigators lacked a chain of custody, negating its probative value.

As for Western media claims regarding “mounting evidence” regarding the most recent attempt to accuse the Syrian government of using “chemical weapons,” no additional – or credible – evidence can “mount” until investigators arrive on the ground.

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This article was originally published on Land Destroyer Report.

Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.