Global Research

On Sunday, President Trump announced his intention to make those responsible for an alleged chemical weapons attack on Douma, including the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies, pay a “big price” for their continued disregard for international law. The next day U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley declared that

 “The United States is determined to see the monster who dropped chemical weapons on the Syrian people held to account.”

President Trump reinforced his call for action on Monday, noting that the United States would not sit back in the face of the alleged use of chemical weapons by Syria. “It will be met, and it will be met forcefully,” the president said, adding that those responsible for the attack will be held accountable, whether it was Syria, Russia, Iran or “all of them together.” Trump noted that a decision to use military force would be made “over the next 24 to 48 hours.”

The pronouncements of imminent military action by the United States are not made in a vacuum. Russia, which has considerable military forces deployed inside Syria, including advanced military aircraft and anti-aircraft missile batteries, has rejected the allegations of chemical weapons use by Syria as a “fabrication,” and promised that any attack on Syria would result in “serious repercussions.” Russian forces inside Syria have reportedly been placed on “full alert” as American naval vessels capable of launching cruise missiles have arrived off the Syrian coast.

The United States and Russia appear to be heading toward a direct military confrontation that, depending on the level of force used and the number, if any, casualties incurred by either side, carries with it the risk of a broader conflict. While Russian (and Syrian) claims of innocence regarding the alleged chemical weapons attack cannot be accepted at face value, the fact that the United States has not backed up its own claims with anything other than a recitation of accusations made by rebel groups opposed to the regime of Bashar al-Assad is problematic insofar as it shows a rush to judgement on matters of war. Given the potentially devastating consequences of any U.S.-Russian military clash over Syria, it would be better for all parties involved to wait for a full and thorough investigation of the alleged attack before any final decision on the use of force in response is made.

There are two versions of what happened in Douma, a suburb of Damascus home to between 80,000 and 150,000 people. The one relied upon by the United States is provided by rebel forces opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. According to the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), a non-profit organization comprised of various Syrian opposition groups funded by the Asfari Foundation and George Soros’ Open Societies Foundation, at approximately 12 p.m. the Syrian Air Force attacked the vicinity of the Saada Bakery using munitions believed to contain “poisonous gas.” The VDC cited eyewitness accounts from members of the Syrian Civil Defense, or “White Helmets,” who described the smell of chlorine and the presence of numerous bodies assessed to have succumbed from gas sourced to a Syrian “rocket.” Later, at 7 p.m., a second air strike struck an area near Martyr’s Square, again using munitions assessed by eyewitnesses to contain “poisonous gas.” Doctors from the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) described symptoms that indicated that a nerve agent had been used. Images of victims in the locations allegedly attacked were released by a rebel-affiliated social media entity known as the “Douma Revolution” and the “White Helmets.”

Douma is part of a larger district known as Eastern Ghouta which has, since 2012, been under the control of various militant organizations opposed to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In early February 2018, the Syrian Army, supported by the Russian Air Force, began operations to recapture the Eastern Ghouta district. The joint Syrian-Russian offensive was as brutal as it was effective—by March, Eastern Ghouta had been split into three pockets of resistance at a cost of more than 1,600 civilian dead. Two of the pockets capitulated under terms which had the opposition fighters and their families evacuated to rebel-held territory in the northern Syrian province of Idlib. Only Douma held out, where Salafist fighters from the “Army of Islam” (Jaish al-Islam) refused to surrender. On April 5, the situation had deteriorated inside Douma to the point that the rebel defenders had agreed to negotiations that would lead to their evacuation of Douma; the very next day, however, these discussions had broken down, and the Syrian military resumed its offensive. The air attacks described by the VDC occurred on the second day of the resumption of hostilities.

There is a competing narrative, however, provided by the Russian government and those sympathetic to its position. After the breakdown of negotiations between the Douma rebels and the Russian government on April 6, the story goes, the Syrian government offensive to liberate Douma resumed. The Douma rebels, faced with imminent defeat, fabricated the allegations of a chemical attack. Russia had warned of such a provocation back in March 2018, claiming the rebels were working in coordination with the United States to create the conditions for a massive American air attack against Syrian government infrastructure.

Shortly after the Syrian government resumed its offensive against Douma (and after the opposition forces publicized their allegations of Syrian government chemical weapons attacks), the rebel resistance inside Douma collapsed, with the fighters agreeing to be evacuated to Idlib. The Russian military was able to dispatch units to the sites of the alleged chemical weapons attacks and conduct a survey. According to the state-run Russian news, no evidence of a chemical weapons attack was discovered. Representatives of the Syrian Red Crescent who claim to have worked in Douma stated that they have seen no evidence of any chemical weapons use there, either.

Beyond providing a competing narrative, however, Russia has offered to open up Douma to inspectors from the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, for a full investigation. This offer was echoed by the Syrian government, which extended an official invitation for the OPCW to come to Douma. On April 10, the OPCW announced that it would be dispatching an inspection team “shortly” to carry out this work. The forensic technical investigatory capabilities of an OPCW inspection team are such that it would be able to detect the presence of any chemical agent used in Douma. While the investigation itself would take days to conduct and weeks to process, its conclusions would, under these circumstances, be conclusive as to the presence of any prohibited substance.

One major drawback to any OPCW investigation is its inability to assess responsibility for the presence of any banned substances detected. In prior investigations inside Syria, the OPCW was able to operate as part of the United Nations Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), an entity specifically empowered by Security Council resolution to make such determinations. The mandate of the JIM was not extended, however, after Russia expressed its displeasure over what it deemed to be the inaccurate and politicized findings regarding previous allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government. The United States has submitted a resolution to the Security Council demanding that a new investigatory body be formed that would be able to provide attribution for any chemical weapons attack inside Syria; whether Russia would veto such a resolution or allow it to be passed has yet to be seen.

The bottom line, however, is that the United States is threatening to go to war in Syria over allegations of chemical weapons usage for which no factual evidence has been provided. This act is occurring even as the possibility remains that verifiable forensic investigations would, at a minimum, confirm the presence of chemical weapons (thereby contradicting the Russian claims that no such evidence was detected by its troops), and if the Security Council passes a resolution allowing for a properly mandated investigation team, actual attribution could be assigned.

Moreover, President Trump’s rush to judgment on Syrian guilt is being done in a highly politicized environment, coming as it does on the heels of an FBI raid on the offices of the president’s personal attorney. In times such as this, a president is often attracted by the prospect of “looking presidential” in order to offset personal problems (one only need to look at President Clinton’s decision in August 1998, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, to launch cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan.)

If America is to place its military in harm’s way, it needs to be in support of a cause worthy of the sacrifice being asked of those who serve. Giving the OPCW time to carry out its investigation in Syria would allow a fact-based case to be made whether military force was justified or not, as well as support a determination of whether or not the risks associated with the use of force were warranted. Pulling the trigger void of such information, especially when Trump is distracted by personal political issues, is not something the American people, nor their representatives in Congress, should tolerate.

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

Featured image: Vladimir Chizov

Russia claims that the reported chemical attack in Syria last Sunday was staged by the “white helmets,” a US-funded NGO lauded by mainstream media for their humanitarian work, while long-suspected of performing less-than humanitarian deeds behind the curtain. 

Speaking with EuroNews, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, Vladimir Chizov, said

“Russian military specialists have visited this region, walked on those streets, entered those houses, talked to local doctors and visited the only functioning hospital in Douma, including its basement where reportedly the mountains of corpses pile up. There was not a single corpse and even not a single person who came in for treatment after the attack.”

“But we’ve seen them on the video!” responds EuroNews correspondent Andrei Beketov.

“There was no chemical attack in Douma, pure and simple,” responds Chizov. “We’ve seen another staged event. There are personnel, specifically trained – and you can guess by whom – amongst the so-called White Helmets, who were already caught in the act with staged videos.”

Russia said it sent experts in radiological, chemical and biological warfare – along with medics, in order to inspect the Eastern Ghouta city of Douma where the attack is said to have taken place.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that the experts “found no traces of the use of chemical agents,” following a search of the sites, adding “All these facts show… that no chemical weapons were used in the town of Douma, as it was claimed by the White Helmets.”

“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,” said the Russian Reconciliation Center.

In a statement to the UN Security Council on April 9, Russia’s UN Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia outlined Russia’s position on the timeline of the attack in Douma, as well as the Western response after the White Helmets reported that chemical agents were used:

On April 6, the new head of Jaysh al-Islam, following instructions of sponsors, derailed the evacuation of a party of fighters from Douma and resumed the rocket and mortar fire against residential areas in Damascus. The firing targeted [indistinct name of four areas]. According to official information, eight people died. 37 civilians were wounded. Unfortunately, we failed to see statements from Western capitals condemning the shelling of a historical district of Damascus. The following day, April 7, fighters accused the Syrian authorities of dropping barrel bombs with toxic substances. At the same time, diversions were being mixed up. It was either called sarin, chlorine, or a mix of toxic gases. Based on a well-known scheme, these rumors were immediately taken out by those who are financed by western capitalists; I am referring to NGOs and the White Helmets who are mendaciously acting under the cloak of health professionals. And these reports were also taken up and transferred to media outlets.

It behooves us once again to state that many of these dubious structures have a clear list of the email addresses of representatives of Security Council members, which shows that some of our colleagues, with a reckless approach towards their status, are leaking sensitive information to their protégés. Incidentally, all should recall the way that accidentally, the White Helmets put on the internet a video which showed preparations for staging a so-called victim of an alleged attack perpetrated by the Syrian army. 

Indeed, over the last several years, reports out of Syria have been criticized as being primarily of anti-Assad origin and unverified.

In a speech at the UN, pro-Assad Canadian journalist and RT contributor Eva Bartlett gave her account of what’s going on with reports out of Syria – calling western sources “compromised” and “not credible.”

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Theresa May told President Trump on Tuesday that Britain would require more evidence in last weekend’s suspected chemical attack before committing to a military strike against Syria, reports The Times.

The prime minister rejected a swift retaliation as inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) prepared to visit the Damascus suburb where at least 40 people were reported to have been killed by chlorine gas on Saturday. –The Times

May chaired a meeting of the national security council in London this week, where she spoke with Presidents Trump and Macron for the first time since the Douma chemical attack. It is reported that Trump, who’s had a remarkable change of heart on U.S. involvement in Syria since the election, did not ask the UK to join military strikes.

A No 10 read-out of her call with the US president stated that they agreed the international community “needed to respond” but stopped short of blaming the Syrian regime. “They agreed that reports of a chemical weapons attack in Syria were utterly reprehensible and if confirmed, represented further evidence of the Assad regime’s appalling cruelty against its own people and total disregard for its legal obligations not to use these weapons,” it said. –The Times

President Trump also appears to have backed off an imminent strike after promising Syria would “pay a big price,” and that the U.S. response would be decided by Wednesday. Trump reportedly canceled travel plans after reports emerged that Russian and Iranian involvement in Syria would complicate matters in the region.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense James Mattis has said that the U.S. is still assessing intelligence on the alleged chemical attack, saying in a statement “we’re still working on this.” In the same breath, Mattis said the United States is “ready” to provide military options for Syria. 

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.

We do not know how Yulia got to make the call. Having myself been admitted unconscious to hospital on several occasions, each time when I came to I found my mobile phone in my bedside cabinet. Yulia’s mobile phone plainly had been removed from her and not returned. Nor had she been given an official one – she specifically told her cousin that she could not call her back on that phone as she had it temporarily. The British government could have given her one to keep on which she could be called back, had they wished to help her.

The most probable explanation is that Yulia persuaded somebody else in the hospital to lend her a phone, without British officials realising. That would explain why the first instinct of the British state and its lackey media was to doubt the authenticity of the call. It would explain why she was able to contradict the official narrative on their health, and why she couldn’t get a return call. It would, more importantly, explain why her family has not been able to hear her voice since. Nor has anybody else.

It strikes me as inherently improbable that, when Yulia called her cousin as her first act the very moment she was able, she would now issue a formal statement through Scotland Yard forbidding her cousin to be in touch or visit. I simply do not believe this British Police statement:

“I was discharged from Salisbury District Hospital on the 9th April 2018. I was treated there with obvious clinical expertise and with such kindness, that I have found I missed the staff immediately.

“I have left my father in their care, and he is still seriously ill. I too am still suffering with the effects of the nerve agent used against us.

“I find myself in a totally different life than the ordinary one I left just over a month ago, and I am seeking to come to terms with my prospects, whilst also recovering from this attack on me.

“I have specially trained officers available to me, who are helping to take care of me and to explain the investigative processes that are being undertaken. I have access to friends and family, and I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance in any way they can. At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services, but, if I change my mind I know how to contact them.

“Most importantly, I am safe and feeling better as time goes by, but I am not yet strong enough to give a full interview to the media, as I one day hope to do. Until that time, I want to stress that no one speaks for me, or for my father, but ourselves. I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s.

“For the moment I do not wish to speak to the press or the media, and ask for their understanding and patience whilst I try to come to terms with my current situation.”

There is also the very serious question of the language it is written in. Yulia Skripal lived part of her childhood in the UK and speaks good English. But the above statement is in a particular type of formal, official English of a high level which only comes from a certain kind of native speaker.

“At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services” – wrote no native Russian speaker, ever.

Nor are the rhythms or idioms such as would in any way indicate a translation from Russian. Take

“I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being. Her opinions and assertions are not mine and they are not my father’s.”

Not only is this incredibly cold given her first impulse was to phone her cousin, the language is just wrong. It is not the English Yulia would write and it is awkward to translate into Russian, thus not a natural translation from it.

To put it plainly, as someone who has much experience of it, the English of the statement is precisely the English of an official in the UK security services and precisely not the English of somebody like Yulia Skripal or of a natural translation from Russian.

Yulia is, of course, in protective custody “for her own safety”. At the very best, she is being psychologically force-fed the story about the evil Russian government attempting to poison her with the doorknob, and she is being kept totally isolated from any influence that may reinforce any doubts she feels as to that story. There are much worse alternatives involving threat or the safety of her father. But even at the most benevolent reading of the British authorities’ actions, Yulia Skripal is being kept incommunicado, and under duress.

This is a dance of confused ends and mistrustful glances, mixed with occasional moments of misplaced adoration. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook fame has never been an empathetic sort and his testifying before the US Congress has done nothing to dispel that assessment.  That stands to reason: the least sociable of types, the most awkward of individuals in engaging with beings, creates the most networked social creation on the planet. In doing so, he becomes the president and promoter of surveillance capitalism, its chief priest and sovereign.

Across the spectrum, from the banal views of everyday citizenry, to information hungry political groups keen to mobilise through the forum, Facebook has been, in various ways, tolerated, even celebrated. 

There has been a treasured obliviousness, a deep ignorance and refusal to consider the implications of surrendered privacy in the market of surveillance capitalism. Over the corpse of privacy, the technological charge initiated by Facebook has been feted and embraced by alibis and accessories comprised of one huge body of users.

Much of this latest data trauma and insistence has occurred because people have suddenly fallen out of love with the FB.  Warnings by the noisy technocrati (Kim Dotcom, Julian Assange) that this surveillance machine ought to be boycotted have gained some traction.  That this has links with Russia, the victory of President Donald Trump in 2016, and the selling and passing on of consumer data that might, however improbably, have influenced that result, is all important.  It is impossible to have imagined this level of interest had the White House found itself ensnared by the Clinton junta.

This week’s Congressional hearings, ostensibly to tease through the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving the collection of personal, identifiable data of up to 87 million registered Facebook users, have yielded a certain bounty of confusion and indignation. Rather than suggesting attention to detail, genuine concern, and tangible responses, the proceedings have demonstrated a counterfeit interest.  Keeping apace of this judicious lack of awareness about the technology company is a certain creepy adulation that has afflicted the Zuckerberg-Congress show.

True, there were moments of reflective discomfort for Facebook’s founder before a joint session of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.  Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) was promising heat and rigour in a statement prior to proceedings.

“I’m glad Mr. Zuckerberg has agreed to face the music.  His company has shamelessly shredded the privacy rights of users.” 

There were moments of such promise. 

“Mr. Zuckerberg,” shot Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), “would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?”  

A pause followed.

“No.”  

Senator Durbin was unrelenting.

“If you’ve messaged anyone this week, would you share with us the names of the people you’ve messaged?”  

Zuckerberg’s response was cautious.  

“No, I would probably not choose to do that publicly here.”

Other senators seemed indifferent to the reasons they were there, avoiding their brief altogether. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) tried to squeeze a confession about of the Facebook CEO that his company was somehow biased against conservatives.  He also wondered whether the firing of Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus, was occasioned by a clash of political views.  On neither point would Zuckerberg budge.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) revealed his cursory knowledge of Facebook’s hoovering qualities in one striking question:

“So, how do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”  

Such situated ignorance gave Zuckerberg some breathing space, wriggle room for smug relief.  

“Senator, we run ads.”  

The response from Hatch was hardly one of disapproval.

“I see.  That’s great.”  

Capitalism, digital or otherwise, is good.

While there was the mandatory, rehearsed indignation and concern, Zuckerberg soon realised that he had something of a fan base amongst his interrogators.  Hardly a reason to be surprised: Facebook has become indispensable as a political bridge to constituents.  

“I’ve got 4,900 friends on my Facebook page,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) bored Zuckerberg with.  “I delete the haters and save room for family members and true friends on my personal page.”  

He professed to be “a proud member of Facebook, just got a post from my sister on this being National Sibling Day.”

Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) was crawling with admiration, the sort induced by starlets of their drooling admirers. 

“My son Charlie, who’s 13, is dedicated to Instagram, so he’d want to be sure I mention him while I was here with you.”  

Move over privacy, the love-in between Facebook and Congress is a pact of indestructible steel.

At stages, members of Congress quite forgot what the fuss was all about.  Before them was a demigod, a superlative American statement of innovation, supporter of STEM, warrior against disease.  This was a chance for them to bask in some reflected glory, not to mention pitching in for projects that might lure Facebook to various electorates.    

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) cast out a fishing hook with hope. 

“I hope you might commit to returning to Westchester County [place of Zuckerberg’s early days] perhaps to do a forum on this or other things. I hope you’ll consider that. We’ll be in touch with you but I know that Ardsley High School is very proud of you.”

Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) was angling for more infrastructure from the Lord God Zuckerberg.

“My state, I’m from West Virginia, and thank you for visiting and next time you visit, if you would please bring some fiber because we don’t have connectivity in – in our rural areas like we really need, and Facebook could really help us with that.”

Rep. Kevin Kramer (R-ND) suggested a prospective pool of future employees for the tech giant.  The company’s base could thereby be diversified. 

“Maybe even your next big investment of capital could be in some place like, let’s say Bismarck, North Dakota.”

The coup de grâce, the confession that seemed to implicate founder, company and interrogator, was the admission by Zuckerberg that his own data has been the subject of appropriation and use.  Everyone had found the “malicious third party”, those shady geniuses creating apps sporting personality quizzes.  (Aleksandr Kogan and Cambridge University researchers, no less!)  The irony of this went begging out the door, as did much credibility over the process of hauling Facebook’s founder before a body that long ago descended into murmurs, formalities and school child admiration.

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

Numerous experts have expressed doubt that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack.

The following is the article-amended version of Andrew Korybko’s Facebook post on why the hype about “World War III” is overblown and unfounded.

Many people on Facebook have fallen victim to the collective psychosis that’s sweeping social media and being pushed by the sensory overload (and a bit of emotive manipulation, if one may dare say) experienced by so many news updates about Syria at one time.

The latest one alleges that the Russian Ambassador to Lebanon said the following:

““If there is a strike by the Americans, then…the missiles will be downed and even the sources from which the missiles were fired,” Zasypkin told Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, speaking in Arabic. He also said a clash “should be ruled out and therefore we are ready to hold negotiations”.”

This was preceded by, in the case of Reuters, reminding everyone that he was also referencing this:

“The Russian military said on March 13 that it would respond to any U.S. strike on Syria, targeting any missiles and launchers involved in such an attack. Russia is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful ally.”

Notice that every “report” on his comments, which were said last night and aren’t “breaking news” this morning, include ellipses that leave out the middle part of his statement, and some don’t even include that he was referring to the 13 March declaration.

Well, what exactly is that, many might be wondering?

Here’s what Sputnik reported:

“Russian armed forces will respond if the lives of Russian servicemen in Syria are threatened, including in the event of a missile strike on Damascus, the Russian General Staff said.”

What this means is that the Russian Ambassador to Lebanon was just reiterating what has been said before, except the contemporary context leads one to think that it’s something new and is referring to any US missiles without exception, which isn’t true.

Like the author wrote in his latest article on the topic, “The Suspicious Timing Of The Latest Provocations In Syria“:

“First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council’s Committee on International Affairs Vladimir Jabarov made it clear last year when Trump first bombed Syria that “Russia has no intentions to use its Aerospace Forces against US missiles if Washington decides to carry out new strikes in Syria as it could lead to a large-scale war”. Bearing this in mind and reassessing what just happened, “Israel’s” feeble strike this morning can be read as a “test run” for identifying the true strength of Syria’s air defense units and to ensure that Moscow won’t interfere so long as “deconfliction mechanisms” are successfully employed to guarantee the safety of its Syrian-based servicemen, thus avoiding the “tripwire” that would necessitate a Russian military response no matter what.”

Altogether, Russia will not shoot down just any US missiles, but only those that threaten its servicemen, which didn’t happen last year when Trump let off his cruise missile salvo nor earlier this week when “Israel” hit Syria for the umpteenth time. The so-called “deconfliction mechanisms” work, that’s a fact, and everything that is hitting the media now is just for public consumption, nothing more, nothing less.

The US and its allies are likely using that aforesaid “mechanism” right now to coordinate their upcoming strike, just as they purportedly did before. Any supposed Russian “response” would likely be “superficial” and not “substantial” in the sense that it wouldn’t be geared towards setting off World War III, for better or for “worse” (with the latter being in reference to some apocalypse-obsessed Alt-Media folks).

Don’t fall for Alt-Media dogma and think that the world is about to end — it’s not, though there are some who want their audiences to think that for reasons that only they can account for when and if they’re publicly challenged. As a closing reference, any interested readers are welcome to check out the author’s analysis about “Alt-Media: Debunking The Dogma”.

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

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

The US tariff war against China and the new sanctions against Russia are signs of a trend that goes beyond current events.

To understand what it is, we should go back about thirty years ago. In 1991 the United States, winners of the Cold War and of the first war after the Cold War, waged in the Gulf, declared that “the United States remains the only state with truly global strength, reach and influence in every dimension – political, economic and military” and that “there is no substitute for American leadership ” in the world.

By relying on the dollar hegemony, on the global reach of its multinationals and its financial groups, on the control of international organizations (IMF, World Bank, WTO), the United States promotes “free trade” and “Free movement of capital” on a global scale, reducing or eliminating tariffs and rules. The other Western powers move in their wake.

The Russian Federation, in a profound crisis after the disintegration of the USSR, is considered by Washington as an easy land of conquest, to be dismembered to better control its great resources.  China, open to the market economy, also appears to be conquerable with US capital and products and exploitable as a large reservoir of low-cost labor.

Thirty years later, the “American dream” of the unchallenged domination of the world has vanished.

Russia, by putting up an internal front to defend national sovereignty, has overcome the crisis and regained the status of great power.

China, “the world’s factory” where also US multinationals produce, has become the world’s leading exporter of goods and makes increasing foreign investments. Today it challenges the technological supremacy of the United States.

The project of a new Silk Road – a road, rail and maritime network between China and Europe through 60 countries – places China at the forefront of the process of globalization, while the United States is perched erecting economic barriers.

Washington looks with growing concern at the economic and political partnership between Russia and China, which challenges the hegemony of the dollar.

Failing to oppose this process only through economic instruments, the United States resorts to the military ones. The putsch in Ukraine and the subsequent nuclear escalation in Europe, the strategic shift to Asia, the wars in Afghanistan and Syria, are part of the strategy with which the US and the other Western powers try to maintain the unipolar dominance in a world that is becoming multipolar.

However, this strategy is suffering a series of setbacks. Russia and China, under increasing military pressure, reacted by strengthening their strategic cooperation.

Russia has not been got on the ropes but, in a surprise move, intervened militarily in support of the Syrian State which, in the US / NATO plans, should have ended up like the Libyan State. In Afghanistan, US and NATO are mired in a war that has been going on for over 17 years.

As a reaction to these failures, the propaganda campaign is intensified to make Russia appear as a dangerous enemy, also using the false flag of chemical attacks in England and Syria.

The same technique was used in 2003 when, to justify the war against Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN the “evidence” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Powell, in 2016, had to admit the non-existence of such weapons. In 15 years, however, the war has caused over a million deaths.

Video: English Subtitles  (wait 1.06 minutes for the English subtitles)

Manlio Dinucci is a renowned Italian geographer, geopolitical analyst  and journalist. Manlio Dinucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Video produced by Pandora TV
 

The Russian based media Pravda reported on April 11, that “Russian warships kicked off naval exercises near the coast of Syria”. According to the Moscow Times, “The Russian Navy is reportedly scheduled to launch firing drills off the coast of Syria on April 11 (Wednesday) amid fears of an imminent U.S. airstrike against Syria following a suspected chemical attack”.

We are at a Dangerous crossroads: According to the report (which has not been addressed by the Western media):  on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump later directly warned Russia that missiles were “coming” to Syria after blaming Damascus for an alleged deadly gas attack in the town of Douma.”

Screenshot of Moscow Times, April 11, 2018

While, Pravda.ru’s report intimates that “Russia Closes Airspace above Syrian Coast”, there is however no official confirmation from the Russian Ministry of Defense other than a routine advisory pertaining to the conduct of war games off the Syrian coastline. According to Pravda.ru:  

The message contains coordinates of the closed area and states the fact of firing exercises. The area of the exercises located in international waters of the Mediterranean is adjacent to the sea border of Syria. It will be closed on April 11-12, April 17-19 and on April 25-26 from 10 to 18 Moscow time.

Russia currently has about 15 warships and logistics vessels of the Black Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, including Admiral Grigorovich and Admiral Essen frigates (they carry Caliber cruise missiles), as well as submarines.

These war games are conducted in response to ongoing US military threats directed against Syria, not to mention the ongoing deployment of US naval power in the Eastern Mediterranean.

It is also worth noting that according to the Daily Star (April 6, 2018)  Russian warships have also been conducting naval war games in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Latvia. See screenshot below

Who is Playing with Fire? Russia or US-NATO?  

According to Foreign Policy (April 9) ,

If U.S. President Donald Trump decides to take military action against the Syrian government in response to Saturday’s chemical weapons attack outside of Damascus, he would almost certainly have to approve a wider operation than the limited strikes he ordered just over a year ago. 

“In order for the administration to actually inflict enough pain on the [Bashar al-]Assad government to send the signal that Trump wants, the U.S. would have to hit a wider package of targets,” says Nicholas Heras, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “That would essentially cripple Assad’s military capabilities.”

Trump’s Chemical Weapons justification to bomb Syria is based on the presumption that President Assad is allegedly killing his own people is fabricated. This is a lie. Moreover, there is ample evidence that the U.S sponsored “rebels” (aka Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists) rather than the government of Bashar Al Assad are not only in possession of chemical weapons, they have been trained by the Pentagon.

According to CNN report by Barbara Starr dated September 2013:

Who is doing the training of terrorists in the use of chemical weapons?  From the horse’s mouth: CNN

Sources: U.S. helping underwrite Syrian rebel training on securing chemical weapons

For further details see Michel Chossudovsky Pentagon Trained Syria’s Al Qaeda “Rebels” in the Use of Chemical Weapons, Confirmed by CNN, Global Research, April 9, 2018

US Naval Deployments in the Eastern Mediterranean

According to the Washington Times, coinciding with the commencement of Russia’s war games off the Syrian coast, the US Navy has deployed several warships in the Eastern Mediterranean. including the  USS Ramage, USS Mahan, USS Gravely and USS Barry which are armed with ballistic missiles. (Washington Times, April 10, 2018)

These deployments of US Naval power are to be followed by the dispatch of the USS Truman Carrier Strike Group “accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy and the guided-missile destroyers USS Arleigh Burke, USS Bulkeley, USS Forrest Sherman and USS Farragut.” (Stars and Stripes, April 09, 2018).  The Carrier group has 6500 sailors as well as air force personnel.

US Missile and Gunboat Diplomacy.

Dangerous crossroads.

Failures of the anti-war movement.

Distortion and omissions of the mainstream media.

Spread the word.

Featured image is from Pravda.ru.

Chaos reigns in the United States, spreading to its closest allies. The war amongst Western elites is in full swing, manifesting itself from commercial wars to failed diplomacy, empty threats of war, corruption, and announced military withdrawals and attacks.

To sum up the last few weeks of international events, it is worth comparing the direction taken by the multipolar troika of Russia, China and Iran, and the one taken by the fading unipolar order led by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

We can analyze the respective changes taking place within the unipolar and multipolar camps, especially in the economic, commercial, diplomatic and military fields. The introduction by the US of duties on imports, applied to 1,300 products, including iron and aluminum, has triggered a chain of events, including the imposition of as many duties on various products exported by the US to China. The pressure on America’s European allies continues, against the protests of France and Germany. It seems that Europe is struggling to form a common front on many issues relating from foreign policy to trade. The Western elites continue its in-fighting, between the European Union (led by Berlin and Paris) and the UK and the US, clashing over agreements between London and Brussels and Washington and Brussels. The Trump tariff war aims to deliver a blow to America’s opponents, but it risks provoking strong responses, even from allies. Moreover, many analysts and economists have warned that this form of commercial warfare risks harming American workers the most.

A divided Europe finds itself dealing with an ever-increasing need to justify its defense and security package. The British, thanks to the artificial Russian threat – characterized by fake chemical attacks, hypothetical invasions of the Baltic countries, and the situation in Ukraine – continue to sustain an environment in which Europeans seek the protection of NATO, which includes Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Looking at this critically, the intent of Berlin, Paris, and especially London and Washington, is evidently to justify increased military spending to counter an alleged threat emanating from Moscow. All this comes down to increased sales of British, German, French and, above all, American weapons to NATO and EU countries. This only serves to continue the flow of money into the coffers of the elite, thanks to artificial tensions like the one generated between Russia and the UK over the poisoning of the former Russian spy in England.

If the unipolar world seems to have thrown to the wind the concept of diplomacy and adherence to international norms – with a flurry of expulsions of diplomats, false accusations, one-sided motions in the UN’s Security Council, and ignoring the basic rules of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) – in Asia, on the other side of the globe, diplomacy continues to bear fruit. Xi Jinping just met with Kim Jong-un, in the first of a series of meetings that could bring the North Korean leader to an initial meeting with Moon Jae-in, and later with Putin. We have heard from Washington only bellicose rhetoric directed against Pyongyang, even within the confines of the United Nations. In line with the ideological attitude of American exceptionalism, the American establishment appreciates Trump’s threats, but is quite naturally less enamored with the announcement of a meeting between the American president and the North Korean leader. According to America’s traditional ideology, no negotiations are to be entered into with geopolitical opponents and peer competitors, for the simple reason that Washington is not willing to negotiate or make any concession on any matter; the only way it knows how to engage in international relations is to impose its will by any means possible. In Syria, the example is clear, where indirect or direct military force has failed to remove Assad, and now Washington finds itself isolated, mainly diplomatically, with the Geneva II Conference on Syria now replaced by the agreement reached in Sochi, from which the United States excluded itself on account of not enjoying a leading position, thereby conceding this role to Ankara, Tehran and Moscow. This is a good example of how the Western elite’s strategic attempt to overthrow Assad and partition Syria has ran into the military reality on the ground, which includes the strength of alliances (especially between Iran, Russia and China), and the willingness of Moscow and Tehran to resolve the Syrian crisis by military and diplomatic means.

In economic terms, the revolution the petro-yuan represents becomes more and more real, this new medium of exchange set to sooner or later involve Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of crude oil, with China as its largest buyer. The Western elites will try to oppose by any means possible such an arrangement, given that the petrodollar is the basis American military power. But it is an inevitable process, which must necessarily be backed up with a military component in order to discourage the United States from behaving recklessly. Iraq and other countries have been on the receiving end of America’s imposition of its petrodollar hegemony militarily. For this and other reasons, mainly related to US ABM systems placed all around Russian borders, Putin has had to resort to a very public demonstration of the Russian Federation’s means of deterrence, advertising the existence of the country’s new hypersonic weapons.

As demonstrated by the recent meeting between the defense ministers of Russia and China, the multipolar strategy is now wide-ranging, relegating Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh to further digging themselves into the hole they have already dug themselves into (see recent events in Syria with Israel launching 8 missiles and Trump beating the drums of war). As General Wei Fenghe stated,

“We came to Moscow to let the Americans know about the close military ties between the armed forces of China and Russia.”

When these two military and economic powers unite their efforts, involving regional powers and mediating over various conflicts, it becomes clear that the challenge to Washington’s hegemony is progressively leading away from an international reality consisting of one superpower to one consisting of three to four powers that maintain an international balance via diplomatic, economic and military means.

The phase in which we currently live is turbulent and is essentially caused by a single factor that has two very strong thrusts. The acceleration of the dwindling of the unipolar phase is directly connected with the strategic and tactical errors of the American deep state and its main sponsors, like Israel and Saudi Arabia. At the same time, the opposing push comes from the multipolar environment, which tends to consolidate its sphere of influence via diplomatic and military means.

The goal for Moscow and Beijing is to present to the American and European elites a viable alternative that is shared among several actors. For the time being, the Euro-Atlantic establishment continues to consider itself capable of changing the course of events and preventing the drift towards multipolarity. Whether the Western oligarchy is a victim to its own propaganda or whether it simply wishes to avoid facing reality and is using every means available to postpone an epochal change, is difficult to determine; and this makes the future uncertain, and is therefore highly dangerous.

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This article was originally published on Strategic Culture Foundation.

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author.

Other listeners were not so sure. But In November, the Los Angeles Times editorial board, after expressing alarm at President  Trump’s bellicose statements and impulsive governing style, reminded readers that in a pre-election televised debate with Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump said:

“I would certainly not do first strike. I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over. At the same time, we have to be prepared. I can’t take anything off the table.”

On the other hand, while disregarding the president’s off the cuff remarks about the button – a search finds (Non-Proliferation Review, 2/2018) that the United States has long embraced calculated ambiguity over the conditions under which it might use nuclear weapons against adversaries.

The LA Times also drew attention to legislation introduced by two congressional Democrats that would prohibit the president — any president — from launching a nuclear first strike without a declaration of war by Congress explicitly endorsing such an attack.

The most recent, in November 2017, was the No First Use bill,  sponsored by Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA, image on the right), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, expressed in one sentence

“To make it the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first”.

GovTrack.us explains that the bill is in the first stage of the legislative process. It was introduced into Congress on November 15, 2017. It will typically be considered by committee next before it is possibly sent on to the House or Senate as a whole and m its progress tracked on their site.

Most readers, whatever their position on No First Use, will agree with the Los Angeles Times editorial board, which – though preferring a position of ambiguity – writes:

“We shudder to think about the human consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, even in self-defense, which is why we support arms-control agreements and efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. We also believe that, as a general matter, Congress needs to be more assertive in exercising oversight over the use of military force”.

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All images in this article are from Nuclear Industries.

Lost amidst the Alt-Media hysteria about the supposedly imminent commencement of World War III is the fact that any potential Russian military response to the US would show the world whether the S-400s can really stop Washington’s missiles, a “proof of concept” that neither Great Power might be willing to risk at this time and the fear of which might allow their present standoff in Syria to be “stably managed” in a relative sense.  

There are a lot of fast-moving events happening right now surrounding the latest Syrian Crisis, and it’s not the point of this article to review them all in detail, which is why the author recommends that the reader check out his previous analysis about “The Suspicious Timing Of The Latest Provocations In Syria” and his follow-up Facebook post from this morning about why the Alt-Media-driven hype about World War III is totally misplaced.

The US-Russian standoff has rhetorically escalated to the point where both Great Powers have to do something otherwise they’ll “lose face” and subsequent “prestige”, which is why the US looks ready to hit Syria while Russia may very well militarily respond, but neither of these actions are guaranteed to be “substantial” and could very likely just be “superficial” in order to keep their delicate “dance” going.

The US knows that endangering the lives of Russian servicemen would automatically trigger the tripwire that would necessitate Moscow undertaking a decisive military response, hence why this probably won’t happen and the so-called “deconfliction mechanisms” will be relied upon instead to prevent this “dark scenario” from materializing.

By the same token, Russia knows that shooting down the US missiles will enrage Trump and prompt his “deep state” to push him into escalating the crisis even further in order to avoid “embarrassment”, which is one argument as to why it might not militarily respond to this predictably forthcoming assault apart from the fact that it officially declared last year after the first one happened that it wouldn’t do if any new ones happened either.

That said, the Russian rhetoric on this matter has gotten to such a point – and been so widely misinterpreted by many – that there are very real expectations around the world for it to respond in one form or another otherwise it will be “humiliated” and considered “unreliable”, and this soft power-“constructivist” impression might actually end up influencing policy at the end of the day.

However, it doesn’t mean that Russia will intercept Trump and his allies’ cruise missiles with S-400 ones but just that it could react through diplomatic or economic means like Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairman and former Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Airborne Troops Vladimir Shamanov warned earlier this week.

Russia is also in a predicament when it comes to its possible response because anything less than a 100% success rate with the S-400s might diminish their hard-earned international reputation as the world’s best anti-air and anti-missile defensive weapons system, something that Moscow might not be willing to risk when considering that billions upon billions of dollars of future revenue is dependent on their sales, which become even more important in the context of existing sanctions.

Because of the dangerous escalatory risk that could occur if Russia’s S-400s take down all of Trump and his allies’ incoming munitions (something that Moscow said last year it wouldn’t do anyway), as well as the need to avoid any unexpected “flukes” that could result in anything less than a 100% or other similarly “convincing” showing of this defensive system’s first-ever battle-tested capabilities, Russia is unlikely to militarily respond to the US in any “significant” way.

Nor, for that matter, is the US expected to “significantly” change the balance of power in Syria through its supposedly imminent and potentially multilateral strike against the Arab Republic, meaning that both the US’ actions and Russia’s reaction will probably be “superficial” in order for both sides to “save face” and not risk having the other “embarrass” them by upstaging their real military capabilities.

Russia’s 100% deflection of the US and its allies’ best missiles would prove that the S-400 is the most effective system for preventing American-led aggression against any country in the world; conversely, anything less than that or similarly “unconvincing” (and brought about by some kind of unexpected and unusual occurrence) would make the world think whether rightly or wrongly that the S-400 doesn’t live up to its “hype” and is incapable of “saving” its customers.

Therefore, as paradoxical as it may sound, the US-Russian standoff in Syria might actually be “stably” managed (key word, used relatively) precisely because of the military competition between these parties’ offensive and defensive weapons respectively, with each of them knowing full well that anything other than an “ideal” performance by either of them – which is impossible for both sides to pull off given that they’d be challenging one another – would lead to a profound erosion of their soft power, which is a risk that neither of them might be willing to take.

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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.

Featured image is from Sputnik International.

President Trump is so pissed off by the Stormy affair that he is likely to prefer a good old war to another humiliation. This suits his enemies and friends (though not his voters) to a tee. He has a choice of doing a difficult manly act that needs all his courage, but which one? Should he put the well-being of his country at stake and brave Russian missiles, or risk the displeasure of the elites and sack Mueller? He is tempted to do the easy thing. Thus he has been maneuvered into deep waters by a powerful coalition of Brits and Jews, the same people who delivered you the last two world wars.

His attempt to make sense and drop the Syrian hot potato (“I strongly wish for the withdrawal of our forces from Syria”, he tweeted) has been rebuffed by the indomitable Mr Netanyahu. Don’t even think of doing it, the big man from Tel Aviv said to Donny in the tense telephone conversation. Don’t leave Syria, you still have to fight the Iranians and Russians. And don’t forget the Syrian kiddies, added the man still covered with the gore of 2,500 Palestinians shot on his orders last week. The Pentagon and US intelligence agencies take their orders directly from Tel Aviv, or via AIPAC; they are already preparing for an extended stay in Syria, despite Donny’s declarations.

The Jews went ballistic when they heard of Trump’s intention to leave Syria. The scribes of WaPo and NY Times condemned the step as playing into Russian hands. “Washington Post columnist and CNN commentator Catherine Rampell said that “Putin must be ecstatic” with Trump’s instructions to begin planning for withdrawal from the region. Forget the fact that it’d be odd for a president to base all of his foreign policy decisions on what would bother Russia — why isn’t Rampell focusing on how delightful it must be for American soldiers to finally reunite with their families, or how the resources this country has spent overseas can now be used domestically?”, – noted a media reporter. This was the cue for Mueller’s raid of Cohen’s office. The old fool has to be pushed, if he does not want to go by his own will, they decided.

America with its Puritan background is the only country where sexual mores are so strict that they lead to war. Clinton went to war in Yugoslavia because of a blow job, while Trump will possibly destroy the world because of a one-night stand.

An attack on Syria is likely to bring a Russian response. At the least, it will be a local conflagration, a joust, a trial of forces and wills. Who knows how it will end? This was been postponed in 2013, when the US armada sailed to Syria’s shores to avenge some other alleged chemical attack. I wrote about that fateful encounter, perhaps over-optimistically, in a piece called The Cape of Good Hope.

“It was touch and go, just as risky as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The chances for total war were high, as the steely wills of America and Eurasia had crossed in the Eastern Mediterranean. The most dramatic event of September 2013 was the high-noon stand-off near the Levantine shore, with five US destroyers pointing their Tomahawks towards Damascus and facing them – the Russian flotilla of eleven ships led by the carrier-killer Missile Cruiser Moskva and supported by Chinese warships. Apparently, two missiles were launched towards the Syrian coast, and both failed to reach their destination. (We shall return to these two missiles later).

After this strange incident, the pending shoot-out did not commence, as President Obama stood down and holstered his guns. This was preceded by an unexpected vote in the British Parliament. This venerable body declined the honour of joining the attack proposed by the US. This was the first time in two hundred years that the British parliament voted down a sensible proposition to start a war; usually the Brits can’t resist the temptation. This misadventure put paid to American hegemony , supremacy and exceptionalism. Manifest Destiny was over.”

As we see now, the high noon was been postponed by five years, and now it is being re-run. The British Prime Minister Theresa May decided she does not need parliament’s approval, President Trump decided he does not need an approval of Congress. So these brakes had been removed.

And now back to those two missiles of 2013. They were sent by the Israelis, whether they were trying to jump-start the shoot-out or just observed the clouds, as they claim. The missiles never reached its destination, shot down by the Russian ship-based sea-to-air defence system, or perhaps rendered useless by Russian GPS jammers.

Fast forward to 2018. On the night of April 10, in the small hours, the Syrian air field T-4 had been attacked by eight air-to-ground missiles; five were downed by the Syrian defence, three (or two) reached their goal and killed a few personnel. For a while, it was thought this was the American attack, but rather quickly, “Russia outed Israel”, as Haaretz reported. Israel tried to dissimulate, at first claiming they warned Putin and got his okay. When Putin’s spokesman denied that, they said they did it by the US request. Most probably they again tried to bring the confrontation to the fore.

Now, with the US Navy in place, with the support of England and France, the countdown to a confrontation has apparently started. The Russians are grimly preparing for the battle, whether a local one or the global one, and they expect it to begin any moment.

The road to this High Noon had led through the Skripal Affair, the diplomats’ expulsion and the Syrian battle for Eastern Ghouta, with an important side show provided by Israeli shenanigans.

The diplomats’ expulsion flabbergasted the Russians. For days they went around scratching their heads and looking for an answer: what do they want from us? What is the bottom line? Too many events that make little sense separately. Why did the US administration expel 60 Russian diplomats? Do they want to cut off diplomatic relations, or is it a first step to an attempt to remove Russia from the Security Council, or to cancel its veto rights? Does it mean the US has given up on diplomacy? (The answer “it’s war” didn’t come to their minds at that time).

The astonished Russians responded all right. They also expelled 60 diplomats, and they made it painful: all US diplomats engaged in the political department of the Moscow Embassy were on the non-grata list. The Political department consisted of three sections, dealing with foreign policy, internal Russian politics and military analysis; the most important centre of data collection, of liaison with Russian politicians, of military consequences, of Syria and Ukraine, of North Korea and China, experienced first-class intelligence officers and field hands – all gone, including their Political Officer Christopher Robinson (POL). The Russians expelled Maria Olson, the Embassy’s well-known spokesperson, and the Ambassador’s interpreter. They closed down St Petersburg Consulate, an important centre for connecting, influencing and interacting with the opposition in this ‘second capital’ of Russia. The US has lost many of its Moscow hands, people who knew Russia and had developed personal relations with important Russians. It will take a lot of time and effort for the US State Department and intelligence agencies to get back to the positions they had lost. The Brits who initiated the deportations also lost about fifty of their Moscow Embassy staff.

Surprisingly, the mass deportation of so many Russian diplomats had little effect on the Russian people, as this strike had been neutralised by another painful event, by the Kemerovo Mall blaze killing 64 cinema-goers including over 40 children. The blaze, even if it weren’t arson (it has not been proven yet) had triggered a massive onslaught of fake news and internet trolls on the people of Russia. A million underfed Ukrainians were deployed by the Western psywar on the web to tell the Russians that hundreds of their children had been incinerated, and that their authorities lie to them. This operation revealed the level of influence and integration the Western spy agencies have in Russia.

Kemerovo was a good choice for the operation: it is the only ethnic-Russian region ruled by an old-style local hero who had outlived his wits, the only region that reported indecently (and unrealistically) high support for Putin in the recent elections, a depressive region of mines and miners with a big potential for trouble.

Putin managed it rather well by coming personally and dealing with the situation hands on. He learned the ropes since 2000, when, at the dawn of his first presidential term, the Kursk submarine went down with all hands. Putin stayed away from the sailors’ families, and acted callous, people said. “It had sunk”, Putin replied to the question “What happened to Kursk?” (It is said USS Memphis had fired a torpedo at the submarine, causing the disaster, while the new president had been reluctant to aggravate relations with Clinton Administration). Now, in 2018, he was very good, full of empathy and consideration, conveying strength and decisiveness.

Whatever American agency carried out the psyop around Kemerovo, it was very successful, but its success undermined another operation, that of the Russian diplomats’ expulsion. The Russians did not pay it sufficient attention.

The alleged reason for the expulsion, the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter, made very little sense. Even if the old spy were bumped off by his erstwhile employers, such a reaction would be excessive by all means. He was not a Napoleon (poisoned by the Brits 200 years ago), not a prince of blood, not a great inventor nor a successful spy. He was a retired ex-spy, a wash-out. Anyway he didn’t die, he was just sick for a while. Perhaps he ate something in the pub that didn’t agree with him. This is the opinion of his niece, Victoria, who is the only person alive who had been in contact with the Skripals since their alleged hospitalisation.

This affair is so obscure that it beats Rashomon anytime. Russian reporters went around Salisbury and noticed many incongruences. It is not certain whether Skripals were poisoned at all, and where they are. Their pets survived the deadly poison, and they had to be destroyed. This piece of black Russian humour had been forwarded a lot around the net:

Skripal had been poisoned by a most powerful poison, 2 grams will kill half a country instantly! The Russians

– poisoned him in the restaurant

– no, on the bench

– no, in the car

– No, the door handle was smeared

– No, the suitcase was poisoned

– No, everything in the house was poisoned.

– Oh, and buckwheat was poisoned,

– but they did not die instantly, but walked around somewhere for four hours,

– but the policeman that discovered them almost died on the spot,

– but the poison was instantly identified,

– an antidote was instantly introduced, and Skripals and the policeman were saved;

– The policeman had been discharged next day!

– But they were in coma, and they will never recover!

– but no, the daughter had recovered fast!

– Oh, and dad is revived … a miracle!

– and they both are quickly recovering, your strongest poison is useless.

– the restaurant had been surrounded by police in spacesuits

– the park had been surrounded by police in spacesuits

– the house had surrounded by police in spacesuits

– they are in spacesuits, since the poison is deadly dangerous, but next to them are policemen without protection …

– The bench was cut down and removed: it’s such a terrible poison that the bench retained its toxic quality for two weeks;

– but the cat had survived in the poisoned house … the policeman had touched Skripal and nearly died, and the cat survived … and the guinea pigs would survive, but they were all forgotten, and died of hunger in the house;

– and their remains were immediately burned, as they are poisoned by the strongest poison;

– For two weeks they were poisoned by the strongest poison and survived, and now they had to be urgently cremated;

– Only guinea pigs died, the cat survived all this poison. It was stressful and hungry, so they killed it and cremated to make it certain nobody will find the secret etc etc.

The true hero of Skripal saga is the British ex-Ambassador Craig Murray, who followed the developments and unveiled many of its inconsistencies and outright lies. You may read his articles and twits to learn the details.

Julia Skripal took a daring step: she called her cousin Viktoria in Moscow. Their conversation is an amazing document. Julia says that she and her father are in good health; she doubts Viktoria will be allowed to visit her. Indeed, the British government refused to grant her visa. The feeling is that Julia is imprisoned.

I spoke with a retired Russian counter-intelligence officer who is familiar with the subject. He told me Russia never had a Novichok toxic substance: this name was given by counter-intelligence to A-232 in order to trace the leaks. It worked: a man called Vil Mirzayanov, an administrator in the chemical labs, leaked the Novichok story, and thus he was apprehended and arrested. A-232 had been produced in small amounts in 1990s, and some of it could be stolen and sold in these horrible years, when a full colonel of Russian intelligence had to moonlight as a taxi driver to supplement his measly $46 monthly salary. In those years, the poison could be indeed made available, and in one case it was used by criminals. Theoretically it is not impossible that some of this poison could have been saved and stored by some criminals; alternatively, it was available to the Americans who dismantled the labs in 1992. Anyway we have no independent proof that Skripals were poisoned by anything at all. If they survive, if the British and the American intelligence services don’t kill them, perhaps we shall know more. We can definitely exclude the possibility that Russian state agents would go to Britain to poison an old spy who had been pardoned by Russian president years ago. Even if he was active in producing Christopher Steele’s Trump (“Golden Rain”) file, the Russians would have no compelling reason to kill him at all, and in such an odd way in particular. “If we would kill him, he would stay killed”, concluded my interlocutor.

The details of Skripal case are very entertaining, but not necessary for our understanding. The case was used to install in minds the connection between chemical poisoning and Russia. It is unfair, for Russians destroyed all their chemical poisons under the eyes of Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors, but life is often unfair.

The connection between chemical poisoning and Russia had been prepared for the forthcoming event. Eastern Ghouta was an important and well entrenched location of the Syrian rebels. Being within easy reach from Central Damascus, it provided the rebels with a chance to seize power in the Syrian capital. As the Syrian army with Iranian and Russian support advanced into Eastern Ghouta, they learned of the rebel plans to stage a false flag chemical weapon attack, as they already had done a few times in past. President Putin warned of such a possibility at his joint (with President Erdogan and President Rouhani) press conference in Ankara last week, a few days before the alleged attack.

The attack had never occurred at all, but it was duly reported by the pro-Western media. Thus the game came to a close. Skripal Affair established the connection of Russia and chemical weapons, Eastern Ghouta allowed to use this connection in order to attack Russia.

We should not overestimate importance of these media events. The leading Western powers and their media refused to consider different explanations, refused an open inquiry, they went for jugular. Russia has been demonised in 2018, like Germany was demonised in 1940. It was a long and cautious labour. Have a look at this site theday.co.uk – it is a site for school children and their teachers. You’ll be amazed to discover its fervent hatred of Russia and Putin being pumped into hearts and heads of young generation. Such a long planning can’t be dependent on an event like poisoning of an ex-spy or even on the fall of a Syrian underground fortress.

The planners of a war on Russia have utilised fear of anti-Semitism for their purposes. I called this method Anti-semitism Weaponised. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has been blocked and contained by accusations of anti-Semitism. He was the only leader able to stop Britain’s descent into war with Russia. Other Labour MPs and activists have been attacked over alleged anti-Semitism issue, and – what a coincidence! – practically all of them were against demonising Russia; while Friends of Israel – whether Conservative or Labour – were viciously anti-Russian.

This is a correlation that will be discussed at another time, but it is far from obvious one. Russia has no anti-Semitism; the Russian president is friendly to Israel and to the powerful Jewish Chabad movement. Russia has no white nationalism, and little of the alt-right. However, this correlation exists. Shall we explain it by Jewish hatred of the Orthodox Church, as this Church (active in Russia, Greece, Palestine and Syria) hasn’t been Jewified. Or should we prefer a more simple explanation: Jews are well integrated into Western elites, and they promote and support the goals of these elites.

However, people who can withstand accusations of anti-Semitism are the strongest enemies of the ruling power; they stand against the war with Russia and against attack on Syria, as the Haaretz newspaper explained in an article called White Supremacists Defend Assad, Warn Trump: Don’t Let Israel Force You Into War With Syria . The article continues: “Alt-right calls Saturday’s chemical attack in Damascus suburb a false flag operation, claiming it’s an effort by Israel and ‘globalists’ to keep U.S. troops in Middle East” It quotes David Duke and other untouchables as the only people who reject Israeli narrative.

Not being a white supremacist (probably I do not qualify) I still applaud these brave men when they say and do the right thing. Sensitivity to anti-Semitism accusation is a strong vulnerability of character. Though people like Corbyn have their heart in the right place, they are weak on this point, and the enemy uses this weakness to neutralize them. There are people in the left that are not afraid of any accusation, but there aren’t many who are resistant to metum Judaeorum.

Let us hope and pray we shall survive the forthcoming cataclysm.

*

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Israel Shamir can be reached at [email protected]

Historically this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898. Then the Republican administration of President William McKinley stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to genocidal conditions.

Additionally, McKinley’s military and colonial expansion into the Pacific was also designed to secure America’s economic exploitation of China pursuant to the euphemistic rubric of the “open door” policy. But over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the so-called “Pacific” Ocean would ineluctably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and thus America’s precipitation into the ongoing Second World War. Today a century later the serial imperial aggressions launched, waged, and menaced by the neoconservative Republican Bush Junior administration then the neoliberal Democratic Obama administration and now the reactionary Trump administration threaten to set off World War III.

By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Junior administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim States and Peoples of Color living in Central Asia and the Middle East and Africa under the bogus pretexts of

(1) fighting a war against “international terrorism” or “Islamic fundamentalism”; and/or

(2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or

(3) the promotion of democracy; and/or

(4) self-styled humanitarian intervention and its avatar “responsibility to protect” (R2P).

Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundaments and energizers of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Junior/ Obama administrations targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America (e.g., the Pentagon’s reactivization of the U.S. Fourth Fleet in 2008), and Southeast Asia for further conquest and domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation (e.g., Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Djibouti). Today the U.S. Fourth Fleet threatens oil-rich Venezuela and Ecuador for sure along with Cuba.

Toward accomplishing that first objective, in 2007 the neoconservative Bush Junior administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, steal, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species. In 2011 Libya and the Libyans proved to be the first victims to succumb to AFRICOM under the neoliberal Obama administration, thus demonstrating the truly bi-partisan and non-partisan nature of U.S. imperial foreign policy decision-making. Let us put aside as beyond the scope of this paper the American conquest, extermination, and ethnic cleansing of the Indians from off the face of the continent of North America. Since America’s instigation of the Spanish-American War in 1898, U.S. foreign policy decision-making has been alternatively conducted by reactionary imperialists, conservative imperialists, and liberal imperialists for the past 120 years and counting.

Trump is just another White Racist Iron Fist for Judeo-Christian U.S. Imperialism and Capitalism smashing all over the world. Trump forthrightly and proudly admitted that the United States is in the Middle East in order to steal their oil. At least he was honest about it. Unlike his predecessors who lied about the matter going back to President George Bush Sr. with his War for Persian Gulf oil against Iraq in 1991. Just recently, President Trump publicly threatened illegal U.S. military intervention against oil-rich Venezuela. Q.E.D.

This world-girdling burst of U.S. imperialism at the start of humankind’s new millennium is what my teacher, mentor, and friend the late, great Professor Hans Morgenthau denominated “unlimited imperialism” in his seminal book Politics Among Nations 52-53 (4th ed. 1968):

The outstanding historic examples of unlimited imperialism are the expansionist policies of Alexander the Great, Rome, the Arabs in the seventh and eighth centuries, Napoleon I, and Hitler. They all have in common an urge toward expansion which knows no rational limits, feeds on its own successes and, if not stopped by a superior force, will go on to the confines of the political world. This urge will not be satisfied so long as there remains anywhere a possible object of domination–a politically organized group of men which by its very independence challenges the conqueror’s lust for power. It is, as we shall see, exactly the lack of moderation, the aspiration to conquer all that lends itself to conquest, characteristic of unlimited imperialism, which in the past has been the undoing of the imperialistic policies of this kind….

Since September 11, 2001, it is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon, and Hitler who have been in charge of conducting American foreign policy decision-making. The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity.

*

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois School of Law. Prof. Francis Boyle is a frequent contributor to Global Research

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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Unbelievably, it is not an exaggeration to say we stand on the brink of a full-blown war between East and West. It appears that America has finally decided that no matter what, Syria, backed by Russia either packs up and vacates or there will be a war. It is not possible that America will back down now given the scale of resources it is pushing up to the front lines, which reportedly includes multiple battleships armed with hundreds of cruise missiles and at least one nuclear-armed submarine.

Foreign Policy headlines with: “For a Second Strike on Syria, Trump Will Have to Go Big“. Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria who is now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and Yale University said:

“There are going to be people in the U.S. military who will want to strike really hard.”

 Another part of the article reads:

“Whether or not such a large-scale operation will lead the United States into a confrontation with Assad’s main patron, Russia, is less clear.”

The Washington Times reports

 “The Navy has sent four warships — USS Ramage, USS Mahan, USS Gravely and USS Barry — armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea amid violence in Syria. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military actions, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles as they did against Libya in 2011.”

SouthFront reports that:

“These four guided-missile destroyers together have up to 240 Tomahawk cruise missiles.  In total, the US Navy could have about 406 Tomahawks. Nuclear submarines are also deployed in the region.”

Star and Stripes reports an additional Navy battlegroup are departing the US this morning (11th April)  to join the other US destroyers:

“The aircraft carrier will be accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Normandy and the guided-missile destroyers USS Arleigh Burke, USS Bulkeley, USS Forrest Sherman and USS Farragut. The destroyers USS Jason Dunham and USS The Sullivans will join the strike group later, a Navy statement said. The strike group, carrying 6,500 sailors and Carrier Air Wing One, will cruise alongside the German frigate FGS Hessen. It remains unclear what the upcoming strike group deployment might entail.”

The Russian naval facility in Tartus is a leased military installation of the Russian Navy located on the northern edge of the seaport of the Syrian city of Tartus. According to CNN Turk, US destroyers were at a distance of 100 km from the port of Tartus, as of Monday.

According to Pravda, the Chairman of the State Duma Defence Committee Vladimir Shamanov said that the United States did not notify Russia of the approach of the group of US warships to the Russian naval base in Tartus.

“A group of ships of the US Navy has appeared at a distance of 150 miles from the Tartus region. It is common in international practice potential participants of events in the area should be notified accordingly in advance. We have not been notified, although we had legally ratified the agreement on two bases in Tartus and Khmeymim,” the official said.

Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzia said that the Americans would have to deal with  “serious consequences” should they attack Syria.

“We have repeatedly warned the American side about highly negative consequences that may follow if they apply weapons against the legitimate Syrian government, and especially if the use of these weapons – God forbid, affects our military men, who legally stay in Syria,” the Russian Ambassador to the UN said at a meeting of the UN Security Council.

Newsweek reports that:

“The Russian military has reportedly gone on high alert in anticipation of a potential U.S. attack on the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

Russian Beriev A-50 early-warning aircraft were deployed to the coast, according to Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency. The elite Black Sea Fleet has declared a state of alert, according to Al Jazeera.

Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967) and a past Fulbright scholar. Here is what some of he said just yesterday:

“The overriding issue of war or peace, survival of mankind or its utter destruction, is now being decided in Washington and NYC without so much as a ‘by your leave’ for the rest of us. 

To anyone watching the UN Security Council “debate” last night it is crystal clear we are in the last days before all hell breaks out. 

The wall of mutual contempt between Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya and US Ambassador Nikki Haley was on full display. Nebenzya took to pieces the entire argumentation of the US side regarding Douma and the ‘chemical attack.

He detailed the rebel caches of chemical weapons and equipment for their manufacture that Russian troops have found in the recently liberated territory of Eastern Ghouta and elsewhere. He spoke about the past provocations of faked chemical attacks including the one used to justify the US cruise missile launches on the Syrian air base at Sheirat a year ago. He linked the US training and support for terrorists in the fabrication of chemical arms to the faked nerve agent attack on the Skripals in the UK, which he described as a vaudeville act. He heaped scorn on Haley for her denying Russia the status of “friend,”  saying that the US has no friends, only sycophants, whereas Russia has genuine friends, and seeks nothing more in relations with the United States than civilized discourse. 

In response to this unprecedented denunciation of the USA and its policies of global hegemony, we heard from Nikki Haley the familiar story of how the UN Security Council could now either adopt a US resolution condemning the Assad regime, in effect, or  admit its total irrelevance while the US continued on its own unilateral path to resolving the Syrian question.”

In Britain, the Financial Times, The Telegraph, BBC and others report that Theresa May is set to join America, the big problem is that this has not debated in parliament. MPs have said it would be a ‘huge mistake’ for the PM to bow to pressure from the US and intervene in the Syrian conflict without their backing.

In the past, MPs have approved air strikes on Islamic State in Syria but not on Russian forces directly. That would be an entirely different matter.

Even the Daily Mail reports that

“As decisions on deploying armed forces come under a Royal prerogative, she (Theresa May) does not technically have to seek parliament’s permission before ordering airstrikes. While there is a precedent to gain the support of the fellow MPs before taking such drastic action, the move spectacularly backfired on David Cameron in 2013.“

In the meantime, the Mail also revealed that military chiefs had been instructed to prepare for a UK strike on Assad’s forces.

However, it is already known that British forces are already embedded with American troops in Syria, contrary to denials by Downing Street.

All it will take from here is one bullet fired at a Russian or US coalition soldier, one shell landing in the wrong place, one self-serving lunatic from the many factions in the theatre of the Syrian conflict to carry out what could be misinterpreted by another lunatic. America has clearly decided. France has decided. Britain is seemingly hesitating. Within days, Syria could determine the outcome of many things, not least, if East and West head into full-blown conflict, the outcome of which, could be far worse than we have ever seen in the Middle East before.

*

Featured image is from TruePublica.

Featured image: A field deployable hydrolysis system, designed to neutralize chemical weapons aboard the container ship MV Cape Ray, Jan. 2, 2014. (Source: US Department of Defense)

This article was originally published by the Ecologist on March 13, 2014.

On 12^th 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.

He has been as good as his word. The same cannot be said for the US and its boot-licking allies.

Three days earlier US Secretary of State John Kerry had threatened Syria with a military strike if the weapons stocks were not surrendered within a week, stating that President Assad “isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done.”

The same Kerry, incidentally, who as a Swiftboat commander had been avidly killing Vietnamese in the US onslaught on Vietnam as American ‘planes rained down 388,000 tons of chemical weapons on the Vietnamese people.

Hazardous – and no plan in place

The trigger-happy Kerry was right on the second count. It can’t be done for two reasons. First, extracting dangerous chemicals from a war zone is, to massively understate, a foolhardy and hazardous business.

Second, the ‘international community’ and the Nobel Peace Prize winning Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had no disposal plan in place, and not a clue what to do with the surrendered weapons.

As ever double standards and hypocrisy rule. The US has been slow to dismantle and destroy its own chemical arsenal. According to CNN in a report on 10^th October 2013:

“The United States estimates it will be at least another decade before it completes destruction of the remaining 10% of its chemical weapons, estimated at more than 3,100 tons.”

And Syria? “U.S. intelligence and other estimates put its chemical weapons stockpile at about 1,000 tons.” They are believed to be “stored in dozens of sites”.

A logistical nightmare

In the circumstances of a fierce civil war that creates a logistical nightmare and a massive danger to the public and those transporting them anywhere.

CNN also quotes Wade Mathews who had worked on “the U.S. project to destroy its chemical stockpile” who doubted that Syria could meet the deadlines. The US operation, he said,

“took billions of dollars, the cooperation of many levels of government – including the military – and a safe environment to make sure the destruction was done safely …

“We had a coordinated effort, we had a government that insisted that it be done safely and that the community was protected … I don’t think those things are in place in Syria.”

But where are they to be destroyed?

A Science Applications International Report explains that the residue from chemical weapons is highly unpleasant:

“Soluble forms present chemical hazards, primarily to the kidneys, while insoluble forms present hazards to the lungs from ionizing radiation … short term effects of high doses can result in death, while long term effects of low doses have been implicated in cancer.”

They declined, since the country had no experience in dealing with chemical weapons, the Foreign Ministry website stating that “Norway is not the most suitable location for this destruction.”

However Norway did offer the use of cargo ship to take the weapons to another destination.

So the prize goes to … Albania

The second country approached was Albania – a request which the country’s Prime Minister Edi Rama said also came direct from the United States.

The choice was a curious one. According to the Berlin-based Regional Anti-Corruption Initiative, Albania is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe and the most corrupt in the Balkans.

It plummeted from a woeful 95 out of the 176 countries monitored in 2011, to 113 in 2012 and 116 in 2013, on their Corruption Perception Index. In their end of year Report, the Initiative quotes Transparency International:

“In Albania corruption is registering a new physiognomy in a favorable political environment, with characteristics like a new systems for money laundering, financing of political parties from illegal activities, the capture of the state through the control of procurement and privatization, human and narcotics trafficking and the impunity of high State officials before the justice system and the law.”

A poor track record

In 2008 an explosion at an ammunition storage depot near Albania’s capital Tirana, killed 26 people, wounded 300 and damaged or destroyed 5,500 homes. The disaster was said by investigators to be caused by a burning cigarette – in a depository for 1,400 tons of explosives.

Worse, when Albania was pressured to destroy its own chemical weapons stocks, some tons left over from the Cold War: “The U.S. offered to pay for their destruction and later hired some private company which destroyed the weapon capability of the chemicals but otherwise left a horrendous mess.”

Hazardous waste was left in containers, on a concrete pad, inevitably they started to leak.

“In late 2007-early 2008, the US hired an environmental remediation firm, Savant Environmental, who determined the problem was worse than originally thought. Many of the containers were leaking salts of heavy metals, primarily arsenic, lead and mercury.”

Moreover, the conexes – large, steel-reinforced shipping containers – were not waterproof, thus lethally contaminated condensation and water leakage dissolved some of the contaminants which leaked onto the ground.

“Savant Environmental repackaged the waste and placed it in twenty shipping containers. There it sits, visible from space”, on the concrete pad – in the open.

But protests put an end to the matter

Quite reasonably in the circumstances, protestors against the weapons destruction took to the streets in thousands, some wearing gas masks and protective clothing, protests also took place in neighbouring Macedonia, with rallying outside the Albanian Embassy.

Albania finally rejected the weapons with Rana offering Washington a grovelling apology. But why was Albania even considered given its evident unsuitability?

It is surely coincidence that on 3^rd October last year, Tony ‘dodgy Iraq dossier’ Blair – also an enthusiastic backer of Washington and NATO in their Balkans blitz – was appointed as advisor to the Albanian government to help the impoverished country to get in to the EU.

Heaven forbid he might have advised that taking on lethal weapons no one else was prepared to touch, might tick quite a big approval box and made a call to someone somewhere in Washington. This is of course, entirely speculation.

However, as Pravda TV opined at the time, apart from the sorely needed financial boost:

 “It will increase the status and prestige of a poor country in Europe, Albania is in Europe’s backyard, in this case it will be going foreground.”

Italy, of course!

Belgium and France also declined an invitation to dispose of Syria’s weapons. Ralph Trapp, a consultant in disarming chemical weapons commented that “there remain very few candidates” for the task. “The hunt continues”, reported The Telegraph on 18^th November 2013.

The same article also reported that Russia had ruled itself out of the running since its chemical weapons destruction facilities were already working flat out destroying its own now defunct arsenal.

Finally Italy caved in allowing around 60 containers to be transferred from a Danish cargo ship to a US ship in the Italian port of Giola Tauro, in Calabria, with further consignments also expected to arrive.

The permission caused widespread demonstrations in Southern Italy, the government accused of secrecy and one demonstrator summing up the prevailing mood:

“They are telling us that the material carried is not dangerous, but in fact nobody knows what is inside those containers.”

Chaos at Giola Tauro … and organised crime

The Giola Tauro port, which accounts for half the Calabria region’s economy “has been in crisis since 2011”, with 400 workers on temporary redundancies – out of a total workforce of 1,300. Not too hard to arm twist, the cynic might think.

The port also suffers from allegations of being a: “major hub for cocaine shipments to Europe by the Calabria-based ‘Ndrangheta mafia.” However, Domenico Bagala, head of the Medcenter / Contship terminal where the operation is planned countered with:

“Since Gioia Tauro handles around a third of the containers arriving in Italy, it is normal that it has more containers that are seized … We operate in a difficult territory but we have hi-tech security measures in place.”

Calabria is, in fact, plagued by corruption and organized crime. A classfied cable from J. Patrick Truhn, US Consul General in Naples (2^ndFebruary 2008) obtained by Wikileaks revealed just how bad the situation really is.

The world’s most powerful criminal organisation

“If it were not part of Italy, Calabria would be a failed state. The ‘Ndrangheta organized crime syndicate controls vast portions of its territory and economy, and accounts for at least 3% of Italy’s GDP (probably much more) through drug trafficking, extortion and usury.”

“During a November 17-20 visit to all five provinces, virtually every interlocutor painted a picture of a region … throttled by the iron grip of Western Europe’s largest and most powerful organized crime syndicate, the ‘Ndrangheta.”

Moreover, records Wikipedia: “

The ‘Ndrangheta is the most powerful criminal organization in the world with a revenue that stands at around 53 billion Euros.”

It notes the group’s operations in nine countries, on four continents.

And of course, a major activity of organised crime – in Italy and elsewhere – is the illicit disposal of hazardous wastes. Arguably, a less ideal transit point than Calabria for a stockpile of chemical weapons would be hard to find.

Of special concern to Carmelo Cozza of the SUL trade union is the port’s neighbouring village of San Ferdinando which has protested the operation: “The schools are right next door!”

Syria’s stolen money

However, when it comes to dodgy dealings, organized crime could seemingly learn a thing or two from the EU. Large amounts of Syria’s financial assets, frozen by the European Union, have simply been spirited from accounts, in what the Syrian Foreign Ministry calls “a flagrant violation of law.”

Last month the EU endorsed the raiding of Syria’s financial assets frozen across Europe and the the transfer of funds to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)

A source in Syria’s Foreign Ministry described this as “a flagrant violation of the international law and the UN Charter and understandings reached by the executive board of the OPCW.”

He added:

“the European step violates the resolution of the OPCW executive board adopted on 15^th November 2013 which acknowledged Syria’s stance which was conveyed to the Organization, officially stating the inability to shoulder the financial costs of destroying the chemical weapons.”

He also condemned the theft of Syria’s money as a “swindle policy practiced by some influential countries inside the EU – at a time when they reject to release frozen assets to fund purchase of food and medicine which is considered the priority of the Syrian state.”

Meanwhile, he added,

“the EU allowed its members to arm the terrorist groups which are responsible for bloodshed in Syria”.

What next?

So, can things get worse in the black farce which is the chaotic, dangerous, disorganised disposal attempts of Syria’s chemical materials? Maybe they can.

First, the worst chemicals are to be processed by the US Navy in mid-Meditteranean using an untried, experimental method, as reported in the New York Times, 14^th February 2014:

“The most dangerous materials are to be neutralized at sea by the Cape Ray, an American naval vessel specially outfitted for that purpose, which departed its Norfolk, Va., home port on Jan. 27 for the Mediterranean.”

Next, the companies selected to destroy the chemicals are Finland’s Ekokem and the US subsidiary of the French giant Veolia.

The inclusion of Veolia as a suitable partner in the whole dodgy venture is in a class of its own. The company has long been involved in waste management and vast transport projects in the illegal settlements in Israel.

Veolia – violation of international norms

In November 2012 Professor Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights wrote to the North London Waste Authority, who were considering awarding £4.7 billion worth of contracts to Veolia. His letter detailed his concerns regarding the company’s compliance with international legal norms:

“I am writing to you in my capacity as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 to urge you not to select Veolia for public contracts due to its active involvement in Israel’s grave violations of international law.

“Due to its deep and ongoing complicity with Israeli violations of international law and the strength of concern of Palestinian, European and Israeli civil society about the role played by Veolia, I decided to select Veolia as one of the case studies to include in my report. I have attached the report for your consideration.

“Veolia is a signatory to the UN Global Compact, a set of principles regarding business conduct. Yet its wide ranging and active involvement in Israel’s settlement regime and persistent failure to exercise due diligence show utter disregard for the human rights related principles of the Global Compact.

“It is my view that Veolia’s violations of the UN Global Compact principles and its deep and protracted complicity with grave breaches of international law make it an inappropriate partner for any public institution, especially as a provider of public services.”

Professor Falk concludes:

“I urge you to follow the example set by public authorities and European banks that have chosen to disassociate themselves from Veolia and take the just and principled decision not to award Veolia any public service contracts. Such a measure would contribute to upholding the rule of law and advancing peace based on justice.”

So now a company is being awarded a contract to a UN body – the OPCW – in spite of being condemned by a distinguished UN legal expert and UN Special Rapporteur for its “deep and protracted complicity with grave breaches of international law” – including repeated violations of UN Security Council resolutions.

Israel now has WMD supremacy in the Middle East

The final anomaly is that the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons creates a significant power imbalance in the Middle East – in Israel’s favour, as possessor of a formidable chemical, biological and nuclear arsenal.

Israel being, incidentally, a non-signatory of both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Biological Weapons Convention, and a signatory but non-ratifier of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

It is acknowledged that Syria’s purpose in building up its chemical arsenal was a deterrent one, aimed at its hostile neighbour Israel. Syria’s rationale was that its chemical capability could inflict unacceptable losses on Israel in the event of an attack.

But now with the removal and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, Israel rules the Middle East supreme, its WMD capability intact. This was pointed out by Bob Rigg – former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, former senior editor for the OCPW and former Chair of the New Zealand National Consultative Committee on Disarmament:

“At present, Israel has a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Once the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons is complete, Israel will enjoy a near regional monopoly over a second weapon of mass destruction – chemical weapons. In addition to Israel, Egypt is the only regional power with a chemical weapons capability.”

He only forgot the mention that Israel also has a long-standing monopoly on biological WMD in the Middle East.

At all levels, law breakers rule supreme.

*

This article was originally published on The Ecologist on March 13, 2014.

Felicity Arbuthnot is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization and Associate Editor of Global Research.

Author’s Note and Update

In the light of recent developments and accusations directed against the Syrian government, it is important once more to set the record straight: the US supported rebels possess chemical weapons.  

The following article first published in December 2012 [scroll down] documents how the Pentagon  not only provided chemical weapons to Al Nusra, an affiliated Al Qaeda terrorist organization, but also provided  training to the rebels in the use of these weapons. 

While Washington  continues to point its finger at president Bashar al Assad, a United Nations independent commission of inquiry confirmed as early as May 2013 that the rebels rather than the government have chemical weapons in their possession and were using sarin nerve gas against the civilian population:

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

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, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and other human rights violations is separate from an investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria instigated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which has since stalled [discredited]. See “U.N. has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas: investigator,” Chicago Tribune, May, 5  2013, emphasis added)

Ironically, when the chemical weapons pretext was first launched by the Pentagon in August 2012, the accusations were not directed against President Bashar al Assad to the effect that he was underhandedly conniving to use WMD against Syrian civilians. Quite the opposite. According to the Pentagon, the operation was to ensure that Syria’s WMDs, which allegedly had been “left unguarded” in military bunkers around the country would not fall in the hands of opposition jihadist rebels who are fighting government forces:

Pentagon planners are more focused on protecting or destroying any Syrian stockpiles that are left unguarded and at risk [of] falling into the hands of rebel fighters or militias aligned with Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or other militant groups. ( U.S. has plans in place to secure Syria chemical arms – latimes.com, August 22, 2012

What the Pentagon was saying in August 2012, is that these WMD could fall in the hands of  the “pro-democracy” Al Qaeda rebels recruited and financed by several of America’s close allies including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, in liaison with Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In a twisted logic,  the Pentagon was to ensure that the rebels aligned with Al Qaeda would not acquire WMD, by actually training them in the use of chemical weapons:

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

And once these Al Qaeda rebels had been supplied and trained in the use of WMDs by military contractors hired by the Pentagon,  the Syrian government would then be held responsible for using the WMD against the Syrian people.

This in turn would provide a justification for a humanitarian R2P intervention to “protect” and come to the rescue of the Syrian people.

Believe it or not: that is the justification for waging a “humanitarian war” on Syria.

Michel Chossudovsky, May 7, 2013, minor updates and edits, September 12, 2015, April 11, 2018

The Syria Chemical Weapons Saga: The Staging of a US-NATO Sponsored Humanitarian Disaster?

by Michel Chossudovsky

December 12, 2012

Modeled on the Saddam Hussein WMD narrative, the propaganda ploy concerning the alleged threat of Syria’s chemical weapons has been building up over several months.

The Western media suggests –in chorus and without evidence– that  a “frustrated” and “desperate” president Bashar al Assad is planning to use deadly chemical weapons against his own people. Last week, U.S. officials revealed to NBC News that “Syria’s military has loaded nerve-gas chemicals into bombs and are awaiting final orders from al-Assad”.

Western governments are now accusing Syria of planning a diabolical scheme on the orders of the Syrian head of State. Meanwhile, the media hype has gone into full gear. Fake reports on Syria’s WMD are funneled into the news chain, reminiscent of the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The evolving media consensus is that  “the regime of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad appears to be entering its twilight”  and that the “international community” has a responsibility to come to the rescue of the Syrian people to prevent the occurrence of a humanitarian disaster.

“…Fears are growing in the West that Syria will unleash chemical weapons in a last-ditch act of desperation”

Recent reports that the embattled government of Syria has begun preparations for the use of chemical weapons [against the Syrian people] . After two years of civil war and more than 40,000 deaths, events in Syria may be heading to a bloody crescendo.  (WBUR, December 11, 2012)

Syria versus Iraq

Antiwar critics have largely underscored the similarities with the Iraq WMD ploy, which consisted in accusing the government of Saddam Hussein of possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). The alleged WMD threat was then used as a justification to invade Iraq in March 2003.

The WMD Iraq ploy was subsequently acknowledged in the wake of the invasion as an outright fabrication, with president George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair actually recognizing that it was a “big mistake”. In a recent statement Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu called  for ‘lying’ Blair and Bush to face trial in the Hague`s International Criminal Court

The Syria WMD saga is in marked contrast to that of Iraq. The objective is not to” justify” an all out humanitarian war on Syria, using chemical weapons as a pretext.

An examination of  allied military planning as well as the nature of US-NATO support to the opposition forces suggests a different course of action to that adopted in relation to Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011).

The purpose is indeed to demonize Bashar Al Assad but the objective at this stage is not the conduct of an all out “shock and awe” war on Syria, involving a full fledged air campaign. Such an action would, under present conditions, be a highly risky undertaking. Syria has advanced air defense capabilities, equipped with Russian Iskander missiles (see image) as well as significant ground forces. A Western military operation could also lead to a response from Russia, which has a naval base at the port city of Tartus in Southern Syria.

Moreover, Iranian forces from its revolutionary guards corps (IRGC) are present on the ground in Syria; Russian military advisers are involved in the training of the Syrian military.

In recent developments, Syria took delivery of the more advanced Russian Iskander missile system, the Mach 6-7,  in response to the deployment of US Made Patriot missiles in Turkey.  Syria already possesses the less advanced E-Series Iskander.  Syria is also equipped with the Russian ground to air defense missile system Pechora-2M.  (see video below)

Iskander Mach 6-7

Description

The Pechora-2M is a surface-to-air anti-aircraft short-range missile system designed for destruction of aircraft, cruise missiles, assault helicopters and other air targets at ground, low and medium altitudes.

Non-Conventional Warfare

At this juncture, despite US-NATO military superiority, an all out military operation, for the reasons mentioned above, is not contemplated.

Non-conventional warfare remains the chosen avenue. Reports confirm that NATO-led military operations would be largely in support of rebel forces, its command structure, communications systems, recruitment, training, the transfer to rebel forces of more advanced weapons. Part of this undertaking including the training of rebels is being carried by private mercenary companies.

A limited and selective air campaign in support of the rebels, using Syria’s chemical weapons bunker stockpiles as a pretext could be contemplated, but even this would be a risky undertaking given Syria’s air defense capabilities.

What was on the drawing board of a recent “Semi-Secret” Meeting in London, hosted by General Sir David Julian Richards, head of Britain’s Defense Staff  is a coordinated military agenda characterised by “air and naval support, plus military training for the opposition”.

The meeting in London included the participation of  the military chiefs of France, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE and the US. No further details were made public (See Felicity Arbuthnot,  Secret Meetings in London Plotting to Wage War on Syria without UN Authorization, Global Research, December 11, 2012

The thrust of this London gathering behind closed doors (reported on December 10, 2012) was to support a unified military command structure of opposition forces designed to “unify insurgent ranks” fighting government forces. In practice, this will require a renewed influx of mercenaries under the supervision of Western special forces which are already on the ground inside Syria.

Staging a Humanitarian Disaster?

The training component of  US-NATO action is of crucial importance. How does it relate to the Syria ‘chemical weapons’ issue?

The Western military alliance does not contemplate at this stage an all out war in response to Syria’s possession of chemical weapons. What is contemplated is the need to train the opposition rebels in the handling of chemical weapons.

This specialized training program which was confirmed is already ongoing, implemented with the support of specialized private mercenary and security companies on contract to the Pentagon:

“The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday. ( CNN Report, December 9, 2012)

What is unfolding is a diabolical scenario –which is an integral part of military planning– namely a situation where opposition terrorists advised by Western defense contractors are actually in possession of chemical weapons.

This is not a rebel training exercise in non-proliferation. While president Obama states that “you will be held accountable” if “you” (meaning the Syrian government) use chemical weapons, what is contemplated as part of this covert operation is the possession of chemical weapons by the US-NATO sponsored terrorists, namely “by our” Al Qaeda affiliated operatives,  including the Al Nusra Front (see image on right), which constitutes the most effective Western financed and trained fighting group, largely integrated by foreign mercenaries. In a bitter twist, Jabhat al-Nusra, a US sponsored “intelligence asset”, was recently put on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

The West claims that it is coming to the rescue of the Syrian people, whose lives are allegedly threatened by Bashar Al Assad.  The truth of the matter is that the Western military alliance is not only supporting the terrorists, including the Al Nusra Front, it is also making chemical weapons available to its proxy “opposition” rebel forces.

The next phase of this diabolical scenario is that the chemical weapons could be used by the US-NATO recruited “opposition” terrorists against civilians, which could potentially lead an entire nation into a humanitarian disaster.

The broader issue is: who is a threat to the Syrian people? The Syrian government of Bashar al Assad or the US-NATO-Israel military alliance which is recruting and training “opposition” terrorist forces.

The Syria Chemical Weapons Pretext: Background

The Syria Chemical Weapons Saga was launched last Summer. In  early August, the Pentagon announced that it would send “small teams of special operations troops” into Syria with a view to destroying Syria’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). These teams would in turn be supported by “precision air strikes”, namely air raids. An all out aerial attack was not contemplated. According to the Pentagon, the precision strikes were intended to “destroy the chemical weapons without dispersing them in the air”, a highly risky undertaking…

Ironically, at the outset of this diabolical plan, the US special forces incursion and air operation were not to be directed against the Syrian regime. In fact quite the opposite. The stated intent of the operation was to protect civilians against “opposition” rebels, rather than government forces.

No accusations were directed against President Bashar al Assad to the effect that he was underhandedly conniving to use WMD against Syrian civilians. According to the Pentagon, the operation was to ensure that Syria’s WMDs, which allegedly “are left unguarded” in military bunkers around the country do not fall in the hands of opposition jihadist rebels who are fighting government forces:

Pentagon planners are more focused on protecting or destroying any Syrian stockpiles that are left unguarded and at risk [of] falling into the hands of rebel fighters or militias aligned with Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or other militant groups. ( U.S. has plans in place to secure Syria chemical arms – latimes.com, August 22, 2012

What the Pentagon was saying in August [2012], was that these WMD could fall in the hands of  the “pro-democracy” freedom fighters recruited and financed by several of America’s close allies including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, in liaison with Washington and NATO headquarters in Brussels.

In essence, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was refuting his own lies. In August he acknowledged the terrorist threat, now he is accusing Bashar Al Assad. Tacitly acknowledged by Washington, the majority of the Syrian freedom fighters are not only foreign mercenaries, they also belong to extremist Islamist groups, which are on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

Israel is a partner in the Syria chemical weapons operation in liaison with NATO and the Pentagon.

Training Terrorists in the Use of Chemical Weapons

If the Obama administration were genuinely concerned in preventing these chemical weapons from falling “in the wrong hands” (as suggested by the Pentagon in August), why then are they now training “opposition rebels” –largely composed of Salafist and Al Qaeda affiliated fighters– to gain control over government stockpiles of chemical weapons?

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)

While the news report does not confirm the identity of the defense contractors, the official statements suggest a close contractual relationship to the Pentagon:

The US decision to hire unaccountable defense contractors to train Syrian rebels to handle stockpiles of chemical weapons seems dangerously irresponsible in the extreme, especially considering how inept Washington has so far been at making sure only trustworthy, secular rebels – to the extent they exist – receive their aid and the weapons that allies in the Gulf Arab states have been providing.

It also feeds accusations that the Syrian Foreign Ministry recently made that the US is working to frame the Syrian regime as having used or prepared for chemical warfare.

“What raises concerns about this news circulated by the media is our serious fear that some of the countries backing terrorism and terrorists might provide the armed terrorist groups with chemical weapons and claim that it was the Syrian government that used the weapons,” the letters said.”( John Glaser, Us Defense Contractors Training Syrian Rebels, Antiwar.com, December 10, 2012, See also CNN Report, December 9, 2012)

The central question is: what is the nature of this gruesome covert operation? Is the purpose of the US-NATO led operation to “prevent” or “encourage” the use of chemical weapons by the Free Syrian Army (FSA)?

The above report confirms that the US and NATO are training terrorists in the use of chemical weapons. Does this type of specialized training require the actual handling of toxic chemicals? In other words, is the Western military alliance, through its appointed defense contractors, making chemical weapons available to terrorists for training purposes?

Knowing that the Syrian insurgency is in large part made up of jihadists and Al Qaeda affiliated formations, this is hardly a means to “preventing” the actual use of chemical weapons against civilians. Moreover, amply documented, many of the “opposition” rebels who are receiving training in chemical weapons, have committed countless atrocities directed against Syrian civilians, including the massacres in Houla:

“Terrorist groups may resort to using chemical weapons against the Syrian people… after having gained control of a toxic chlorine factory [in Aleppo],” the foreign ministry said Saturday.” (Press TV, December 8, 2012)

It should be noted that the use of chemical weapons by opposition forces does not require that the rebels actually secure control over government stockpiles. Chemical weapons could easily be made available –from Western stockpiles– to the defense contractors involved in the specialized chemical weapons training programs.

Needless to say, the chemical weapons training and the involvement of private mercenary outfits on contract to NATO and the Pentagon, increase the risk; they create conditions which favor the use of chemical weapons by opposition forces, thereby potentially triggering a nationwide humanitarian disaster.

The US-NATO coalition has clarified at its “semi-secret” meeting in London (reported on December 10), however, that it does not contemplate “boots on the ground”. The special forces will be working with the opposition insurgency against government forces.

In the absence of an all out US-NATO military operation, the focus is on non-conventional warfare. In this context, one of  several diabolical “options on the table” would be to create conditions whereby chemical weapons “fall in the hands” of the terrorists thereby potentially triggering a nationwide humanitarian disaster.

While this option, were it to be carried out, would not require a US-NATO military intervention, the humanitarian catastrophe would set the stage for the collapse of the Syrian government, namely the long sought objective of “regime change”.

The Libya or Iraq model is not an option. The strategic choice of the Western military alliance points towards the possible staging of a humanitarian catastrophe?

In the logic of war propaganda and media disinformation, the deaths of civilians resulting from the use of chemical weapons would be blamed on President Bashar Al Assad, with a view to enforcing subsequent actions by the US-NATO military alliance.

We are not suggesting that this option will inevitably be carried out. What we are saying is that the option of chemical weapons in the hands of the rebels which could potentially trigger a humanitarian disaster is on the US-NATO drawing board.

How can we ensure that this gruesome and diabolical option be thwarted and definitively shelved?

The issue must be brought into the open. Public opinion must be mobilized against the US-NATO-Israel led war.

Denounce the Déjà Vu WMD lies.

Challenge the mainstream media consensus.

Reveal and refute the lies and fabrications concerning Syria’s chemical weapons program.

Spread the word, far and wide,

Bring the issue to the forefront of public debate, Confront the war criminals in high office.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) condemns the Canadian government’s silence on the Israeli massacres unfolding in Gaza. Since March 30th, Palestinians have held a series of peaceful demonstrations at Gaza’s border with Israel, calling for the right to return to their homeland. The Israeli military has reacted by unlawfully targeting Palestinian civilians. Over a week into the demonstrations, 27 Palestinians have been killed, and over a thousand injured by Israeli sharpshooters.

“Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have criticized Israel’s brutal and disproportionate response,” stated Thomas Woodley, president of CJPME. “Condemning Israel’s shooting of literally thousands of civilians by regular Israeli soldiers should be a ‘no brainer,’” continued Woodley.

CJPME points out that Israel’s shootings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza are also in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits targeting civilians. As a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention, Canada is sworn to uphold its tenets.

Amnesty International stated

“As the occupying power, Israel must uphold the rights of Palestinians to peaceful protest and freedom of expression. […] Lethal force must never be used against peaceful protesters.”

The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) condemned the violence in Gaza, reminding the world that “violence against civilians – in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza – could constitute crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.” The EU and UN have called for “independent” and “transparent” investigations into the violence.

Palestinians in Gaza have lived under a crippling Israeli-led international blockade for 12 years since the election of Hamas to power in 2006. The demonstrations in recent weeks have sought to bring world attention to the beleaguered territory and its citizens. The territory of Gaza is about the size of the island of Montreal, and Israel tightly controls all entry and exit from the territory. Even those who have a medical emergency, or who have scholarships to study abroad can be blocked by Israel. Israel also blocks or obstructs the flow of many civilian supplies into Gaza, including many construction supplies like wood, concrete and steel bars.

The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media…We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false.” – William Colby, Ronald Reagan’s Director of the CIA (1981)

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.” — Theodore Roosevelt, (1906)

“The rank and file is usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious. The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind… it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” – Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi “Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment”

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Joseph Goebbels

“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.” – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“The media is the most powerful entity on earth. Because they control the minds of the masses, they have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power…If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X

“The news media is full of propaganda, due to the corrupting influence of huge corporations that own them or advertise on them. The overall agenda is to convince the audience to be in favor of and vote for their own victimization and abuse, willingly and voluntarily…The majority of the human population has allowed itself to be deceived through ignorance, deception, stupidity, chronic apathy or a serious lack of curiosity and questioning, all somewhat bolstered by cynicism…Consumerism rules, and as long as their bellies are full and their heads are filled with mindless entertainment or other gratuitous distraction, people are happy (The Roman Empire’s “Bread and Circuses” theory of maintaining political control of the population. – ed. note). Genetic cloning is unnecessary. Cloning has already been done because of the effects of mass media brainwashing.” – Paul A. Philips

“There is abundant evidence of a major high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief.” — Mrs. Coretta Scott King (December 8, 1999), as she heard the jury trial verdict that followed a month of sworn testimony from over 70 witnesses in a widely un-reported civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee. The trial was shamefully boycotted by EVERY mainstream media outlet that you can think of, including the New York Times. The 12-person jury verdict unanimous exonerated the “patsy” James Earl Ray for any role in the assassination of MLK. The verdict did convict Loyd Jowers and “other parties known and unknown” for their parts in the vast US government conspiracy to assassinate King. The evidence brought forth by attorney William Pepper was so powerful, thorough and convincing that the jury only needed to deliberate for 59 minutes.

*

The US government’s disinformation campaign to shape the public’s view of important historical events never stops. Propaganda, disinformation and dirty tricks have been part of America even before certain colonial ruling elite’s pretended that the Pilgrims were being nice to – rather than plotting genocide against – the indigenous people at the mythical ”First Thanksgiving”. The “nice” Pilgrims were actually theologically-fascistic witch-believers who regarded the indigenous people as satanic sub-humans whose land could be stolen from them and whose women and children could be massacred with God’s blessings. These so-called Christians sincerely believed that the souls of the native American “subhumans” that had occupied America for 10,000 years could only be “saved” from eternal damnation by being forcibly baptized against their wills into the Christian religion. Sugar-coating the Pilgrim’s decidedly un-Christ-like natures was good for the image of the new nation whose economy would soon be built on the satanic enslavement of other equally” sub-human” black Africans who were about to be kidnapped, cruelly transported from their native lands and then bought and sold in the mythical “land of the free and the brave”.

Many of the widely-accepted myths about our allegedly “honorable” racist ancestors have intentionally obscured the fact that the vast majority of America’s proud slave-owning Founding Fathers were greedy for power and wealth. And yet these and similar myths about the goodness of America’s ruling classes continue to be knowingly taught to grade school students up to the present moment.

Many American myths over the past century involve the alleged “lone assassins” who murdered national leaders like President Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. These myths have been successfully perpetuated, thanks to a complicit mainstream media that is afraid to tell any of the many stories that refute the official stories that have been firmly established in the minds of the “rank and file” by powerful anti-democratic entities that include the CIA and the FBI, despite the overwhelming evidence that would prove in any legitimate court of law that those dramatic world-changing assassinations were indeed the result of high-level conspiracies involving deep state think tanks, disinformation campaigns, dirty tricks, death threats, the silencing of whistle-blowers and eye-witnesses, and with the essential help from the deep state-approved mainstream media. Documentable stories that totally refutes the official stories are often reported by eye-witnesses and reporters on Day One of the dramatic event. But the official cover-ups and revisionism usually only get their start in earnest on Day Two, usually because the Deep State hasn’t gotten their false stories coordinated and “revealed” to the newspapers of record and the major television networks that will then willingly join the cover-up starting on Day Two.)

The most recent egregious example of perpetuating the totally disproven “crazed lone-gunman” assassination myth (therefore making it “not a conspiracy”) occurred the day before the 50th anniversary of MLK’s assassination on April 3, 2018. On that date PBS aired its shameful “The Road to Memphis”, the American Experience documentary that “proved” that James Earl Ray was the assassin that killed Martin Luther King, Jr. As if Joseph Goebbels was behind the Big Lie, none of the facts about the 1999 jury trial that exonerated Ray from all charges of murder were mentioned.

Significantly, one of the most prominent people being interviewed on the documentary was Gerald Posner, a notorious writer who must be on the payroll of powerful Deep State entities because he always ignores facts that disproves his made-up assertions that the US government deep state entities have never conspired to use political assassinations as a tool to further their hidden agendas. The fascinating MLK/Ray assassination myth revolves around the courageous efforts of William Pepper and the hard work he and his team of investigators have done in uncovering the truth.

William Pepper was a photo-journalist who spent time in Vietnam documenting some of the atrocities our military was perpetrating there. His journalistic work shocked Martin Luther King’s humanity and inspired King to publicly speak out against the war in a major speech delivered at the Riverside Church in New York city on April 4, 1967, exactly one year prior to his murder.

Eventually Pepper came to recognize the falsity of the official “lone assassin” story after he had been given a chance to interview James Earl Ray in prison. Certain of Ray’s innocence, Pepper devoted the next several decades of his life working to exonerate him. Pepper went on to write Orders to Kill in 1995 while Ray was still alive. After successfully proving in a court of law (in 1999) that MLK’s assassination was a government conspiracy that posthumously absolved Ray of having played any role in the deed, he wrote about the evidence presented in that trial An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. The trial itself was boycotted and the dramatic results of the trial black-listed by every media entity that had been responsible for popularizing the Ray/King “lone assassin” myth, including the New York Times.

When a large amount of new testimony, previously hidden documents and additional witnesses came forward following the publication of An Act of State, Pepper wrote “The Plot to Kill King: The Truth About the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr in 2017. That third book about the MLK/Ray myth contains every document, new and old, that Pepper made use of in establishing his iron-clad case proving that Ray was innocent of all charges and that the MLK assassination was indeed a conspiracy.

Below are easily available internet sources documenting the above assertions:

1) Pepper’s C-SPAN BOOK-TV talk from 1-28-2003

2) Interview by James Corbett of the Corbett Report – February 2017

3) A 2-hour interview from No Lies Radio (May 21, 2016), discussing political assassinations (and their cover-ups), with emphasis on the three most important political assassinations of the 1960s (JFK, MLK and RFK, each of which eliminated the voices of heroic leaders that were economic, political and/or theological progressives, peacemakers and reformers who were also threats to America’s conservative, militaristic, pro-corporate, war-profiteering, imperialistic, Deep State ruling elites).

The panel on the No Lies Radio show consisted of the following 3 experts who have thoroughly researched and written about the 3 assassinations.

1) William Pepper has legally represented James Earl Ray and also Sirhan Sirhan, the also falsely accused “lone assassin” of RFK. (Recall that the gunshots that killed RFK entered the back of his head, whereas Sirhan was positioned in front of RFK). Pepper is also an expert on 9/11, including the Deep State conspiracy and cover-up of the proven controlled demolitions of the three World Trade Center towers on 0/11/01. His website can be found by googling williampepper.org.

2) Russ Baker is an investigative journalist who wrote Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty and America’s Invisible Government (whose central theme is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy). Baker’s website is at www.whowhatwhy.org.

3) Andrew Krieg, director of the Justice Integrity Project, wrote Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters and has written shorter works about both the JFK and RFK assassinations. Krieg’s website is at http://www.justice-integrity.org/.

And here are a couple of other very revealing lists of important assassinations in the history of the world:

• A Short List of 168 Assassinated or Murdered Peacemakers (in calendar order of their deaths)
• A representative list of 38, mostly unsolved, assassinations of American civil rights activists that occurred between 1954 and 1968

It doesn’t take any deep reading of the information in this article to come to the embarrassing conclusion that most of us naïve, trusting Americans have been bamboozled into tolerating, for far too long, “evil-doers in high places” just like the obedient “Good Germans” did prior to Germany’s takeover by the war-mongering, imperialist, racist, misogynist, tyrannical, anti-democratic, militaristic, right-wing Nazi Party. To see if there are connections between the politics of Nazi Germany and our current political situation if America today or during the MLK era, one only has to ask any knowledgeable member of this list of oppressed American groups: native Americans, African Americans, suffragettes, women’s rights, non-Caucasians, non-Christians, non-English speaking immigrants or anybody in the GLBTQ community.

Just examining the partial list of “evil-doers in high places” in this article will remind readers of some of the Deep Stare entities that have cunningly and secretly orchestrated the marginalization, demonization, silencing, disappearances, “suicidings” or psychological or physical assassinations of America’s most altruistic, progressive and peace-making leaders, not to mention the ongoing oppression of the world’s most discriminated-against people whose futures – or lack thereof – have depended on those leaders.

Real patriots who love their country (but not necessarily their leadership) and therefore are likely to refuse to submit to or obey their anti-democratic tyrants need to pay attention to what can be learned from this article, because the evil-doing institutions and their ruling elites are gradually accruing more and more wealth and more and more power that everybody knows won’t be used for the common good. Tyrants and their obedient followers can be identified by their repeated claims that anything, especially taxes, that is used for the common good is akin to communism.

Immediately below is the most concise article that I have found online articulating the established facts that William Pepper has so tirelessly gathered that proved the innocence of James Earl Ray. The article below was written for Global Research by Asad Ismi two years ago (type in ”Asad Ismi” at Global Research). The truly guilty conspirators who plotted and/or carried out King’s assassination include the Deep State operatives such as the afore-mentioned highly secretive conspiratorial groups such as the CIA, the infamous J Edgar Hoover, Hoover’s equally infamous and very racist FBI at the time, the Pentagon, the US military’s sniper squads, the racist Memphis Police Department, the Mafia, assorted war-profiteers, the mainstream media, and many elected and non-elected officials that exist at every level of government. For specific details, including many official documents, read William Pepper’s most recent book, “The Plot to Kill King: The Truth About the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Please pay close attention to what Mr Ismi and Mr Pepper have to say, for their truths can be easily generalized to apply to both past, present and future evil-doers that continue to be active in American politics and business today. American history and world history will be a whole lot more understandable if the lies and myths are exposed and the facts known.

The truth can make us free.

See also the recent Global Research Interview with William Pepper

The Plot to Kill Martin Luther King: “We All Knew He [Ray] Was Not the Shooter”. A Conversation with William Pepper on Global Research

William Pepper and Michael Welch, Global Research, April 7, 2018

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Who Killed Martin Luther King? The Cover-Up of the Century

By Asad Ismi – Global Research, First published on January 19, 2016

Excerpts

Click here to read the complete article by Asad Ismi

“The United States government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” — Martin Luther King

On December 8, 1999, a jury in Memphis, Tennessee, reached the verdict that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed as a result of a conspiracy involving the FBI, CIA, U.S. Army, Memphis police and the Mafia.

After a five-week trial which presented 70 witnesses, the jury (made up of six blacks and six whites) rejected the official position that the civil rights titan was shot by a lone assassin, James Earl Ray, who was jailed for 99 years for the crime and died in 1998. The verdict concluded a wrongful death civil lawsuit brought by the King family against Loyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill, a Memphis cafe located next to the scene of the shooting when it took place on April 4, 1968.

The jury found Jowers guilty as one part of a large conspiracy created by government agencies. Jowers admitted his role but insisted that he did not know the identity of the target.

Coretta Scott King, Martin’s widow, hailed the verdict as “a great victory for justice and truth.” She added: “there is abundant evidence of a major high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband and the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief.” Dexter King, one of Martin’s four children, said that his father was killed “because he challenged the establishment.” He called the official investigation into Martin’s murder, “the most incredible cover-up of the century.”

The case for conspiracy and the inadequacy of the lone assassin theory seem obvious. The state had no significant evidence implicating Ray. According to the official version, Ray shot King from the bathroom window of a rooming house located next to the Lorraine Motel where the civil rights leader was staying. King was on the motel’s second floor balcony at 6:01 pm on April 4, 1968, when a bullet struck his chin, knocking him to the ground. He died in hospital an hour later.

Click here to read the complete article by Asad Ismi

Who Killed Martin Luther King? The Cover-Up of the Century

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Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, the area’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns deal with the dangers of American fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, malnutrition, Big Pharma’s psychiatric drugging and over-vaccination regimens, and other movements that threaten the environment, prosperity, democracy, civility and the health and longevity of the planet and the populace. Many of his columns are archived at http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2; or at

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

April 10, 2018

Donald Trump is preparing to ignite the Middle East and move the world a big step closer to total war.  There is a very good chance the corporate mainstream media, accomplices in massive war crimes, will be announcing “breaking news” this evening or night that the U.S., in conjunction with its evil twin Israel that bombed a Syrian air base 24 hours ago, has launched a massive attack on Syria “justified” by a false flag chemical attack on Saturday.  That such an expanded and terribly dangerous escalation of the war against Syria, whose ultimate goal is Iran and Russia, should come as no surprise to anyone halfway sentient.  Open source intelligence has been available for at least 6 weeks that the world is facing a momentous point of no return unless somehow, against all odds, sane voices miraculously intervene to stop this push for world war, which could very well end with nuclear war.  But don’t count on it.

I am sick at heart at the thought of what is coming.  When will we ever learn?  What follows were warnings shouted out in the only places – alternative media sites devoted to truth – that care to prevent such carnage.  Imagine your own continuing timeline, if you can bear to do so.  Somehow, some way, we must find ways to awake those Americans asleep to the evils conjured up by their own government before it is too late.  I really don’t know how, but can’t resign myself to giving up, for if I do, I give up on humanity, the “humanity” Trump says so glibly is at stakeas he prepares to shed more blood.

February 21, 2018

The Trump and Netanyahu governments have a problem: How to start a greatly expanded Middle-Eastern war without having a justifiable reason for one.  No doubt they are working hard to solve this urgent problem.  If they can’t find a “justification” (which they can’t), they will have to create one (which they will).  Or perhaps they will find what they have already created.  Whatever the solution, we should feel confident that they are not sitting on their hands. History teaches those who care to learn that when aggressors place a gun on the wall in the first act of their play, it must go off in the final act.

These sinister players have signaled us quite clearly what they have in store.  All signs point toward an upcoming large-scale Israeli/U.S. attack on Lebanon and Syria, and all the sycophantic mainstream media are in the kitchen prepping for the feast.  Russia and Iran are the main course, with Lebanon and Syria, who will be devoured first, as the hors d’oeuvres.  As always, the media play along as if they don’t yet know what’s coming.  Everyone in the know knows what is, just not exactly when.  And the media wait with baited breath as they count down to the dramatic moment when they can report the incident that will compel the “innocent” to attack the “guilty.”

March 1, 2018

Last week I wrote that

“all signs point toward an upcoming large-scale Israeli/U.S. attack on Lebanon and Syria, and all the sycophantic mainstream media are in the kitchen prepping for the feast.  Russia and Iran are the main course, with Lebanon and Syria, who will be devoured first, as the hors d’oeuvres.” 

Those signs are growing more numerous by the day.

Israel’s mainstream newspapers, Haaretz, and the more conservative Jerusalem Post, both announce in headline news that Iran has built a new base in Syria with missiles capable of hitting Israel. One look at these newspapers with their talk of Israeli war preparations and the potential in assassinating the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah makes it very clear that an expanded Middle Eastern war is fast approaching.  Russia, Syria, and Iran are being demonized as mind control propaganda spews forth.  The mainstream corporate media in the United States and other countries are sure to follow.

March 14, 2018

Donald Trump’s days of playing the passive/aggressive host of a reality-television game show are coming to an end.  Either he fires all the apprentices who might slightly hesitate to wage a much larger world war and lets the bombs fly, or he will be replaced by one who will.  Signs are that he has learned what his job entails and the world will suffer more death and destruction as a result.

Now we have the British Prime Minister Theresa May accusing Russia of poisoning in England the double-agent Sergei Skripal and threatening Russia to give a “credible” explanation why they killed this man or else, a man who sold the identities of Russian agents to the UK for cash, putting them in serious danger.  Or else, she says,the UK “will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.”

Naturally she presented no evidence for Russian involvement, but the BBC, as is its wont, speculates on how the British may punish Russia, and the other corporate media chime in. But we are left to wonder where this is leading.  Could it be Syria?  Former British diplomat Craig Murray suggests it could be a false-flag setup aimed at raising Russiaphobia to hysterical proportions.  But to what end?

If we look to the United Nations and the accusations and threats flying from the mouth of the US Ambassador Nikki Haley, Obama’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s doppelganger in war lust, we see that the picture expands.  Haley threatened that the US will take unilateral action in Syria against Syrian and Russian forces if the UN didn’t adopt her resolution that would have allowed anti-government terrorists plenty of time to escape from East Ghouta.  She said, echoing words we have heard numerous times:

It is not the path we prefer, but it a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we are prepared to take again….When the international community fails to act, there are a Times when states are compelled to take their own action.

In response we have the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warning that another US strike on Syrian government forces would have serious consequences.  And the Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov saying,

We have reliable information about militants preparing to falsify a government chemical attack against civilians.  In several districts of Eastern Ghouta, a crowd was assembled with women, children, and old people, brought from other regions, who were to represent the victims of the chemical incident.

He added that “White Helmets” activists (proven to be financed by the US and UK) had already arrived at the scene with satellite video transmitters ready to film the scene and that the Russians had discovered a “laboratory for the production of chemical weapons in the village of Aftris which was liberated from terrorist.”  After the planned false-flag attack, the US was going to bomb government held districts in Damascus fulfilling Haley’s threat.

And here in the US, Col. Lawrence Wilkinson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff when Powell lied at the UN in 2003 to garner support for the criminal attack on Iraq, spoke to The Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018 conference ten days ago and said, speaking of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, that:

They’re both headed for war. Of that I’m convinced. They will use Iran’s allegedly existential (sic) to Israel presence in Syria which is becoming even more so from a military perspective every day, Hezbollah’s accumulation of some 150,000 missiles if we believe our intelligence agencies. The need to set Lebanon’s economy back yet again, that’s important. Look at what they’re deliberating right now with regard to the new very, very rich gas find in the Eastern Mediterranean with Israel claiming Section 9 and Lebanon claiming Section 9. Take that, Lebanon. We’re going to bomb you, then you’ll let us have it. And that will be their excuse.

Now Rex Tillerson is out as Secretary of State and the head of the CIA, the far more war minded Mike Pompeo slides naturally into the role. Musical chairs for the power elite. As Trump has said of Pompeo,

“We are on the same wavelength.”

Riding that same wavelength is Nikki Haley, a trio whose alliance bodes very poorly for Middle Eastern peace or for any rapprochement with Russia.  The game turns deadlier as the Presidential Apprentice learns the rules and the empire prepares to shed more innocent blood in an unholy alliance with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other “team players.”

But this time the game won’t be, in the words of another CIA liar, “a slam dunk.”  The opponents are ready this time.  The game has changed.

And in eastern Ukraine, the snow should be melting in the next 3-4 weeks.

March 24, 2018

Edward Curtin: False Flag Operations Will Start New War

Geopolitics & Empire
Edward Curtin: False Flag Operations Will Start New War #075

From RT.com – Published on April 9, 2018

Israeli missile strike ‘indirect response’ to Syrian Army’s success in E. Ghouta – Damascus

Sunday’s missile strike in Homs was Israel’s “indirect response” to the Syrian Army’s liberation of Eastern Ghouta, Damascus has said. Syria also called on the UN Security Council to condemn the act of “Israeli aggression.”

“The Israeli attack constitutes an indirect response to the success of the Syrian Arab Army in eliminating armed terrorist groups from the Damascus suburbs and other Syrian areas,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry wrote in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres obtained by Syria’s SANA news agency.

Read more.

2 Israeli warplanes carried out strikes on Syrian airbase – Russian MoD

“These groups helped to kill the Syrian people, abduct civilians and use them as human shields. Three thousand shells in just three months have led to the deaths of 155 citizens and wounded 865 civilians, mostly women and children.”

The letter states that there will be “serious repercussions” for Israel’s attack, reaffirming that Syria “will not hesitate to exercise its right to defend its territory, people and sovereignty in all the ways guaranteed by the Charter of the United Nations and the provisions of international humanitarian law and international law.”

The letter also called upon the UN Security Council to “condemn these blatant Israeli aggressions and to take resolute and immediate action to prevent the recurrence of such attacks.”

Israel has not commented on Sunday’s missile attack. The Russian military said on Monday that two Israeli F-15s had targeted a Syrian airbase in Homs on Sunday night. Five of the eight missiles launched were intercepted before they reached their target, according to the Russian military. Lebanon has confirmed that Israeli warplanes had breached its airspace.

The strike came just hours after US President Donald Trump vowed that there would be consequences for the Syrian government, following accusations that Damascus was responsible for an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Eastern Ghouta.

Trump surprised his military advisers last week after he said that he wanted to “get out” of Syria. Administration officials later clarified that there would be no immediate withdrawal but that Trump was opposed to keeping troops in the country long-term.

Moscow has warned that any military action taken in response to the unverified chemical attack would be “absolutely unacceptable” and could lead to “dire consequences.

*

April 9, 2018

Washington (CNN) – President Donald Trump said Monday he will make a decision as early as this evening on the US response to what he called an “atrocious” chemical weapons attack on civilians in Syria and warned that he will hold the responsible parties accountable.

“We cannot allow atrocities like that. Cannot allow it,” Trump told reporters on Monday during a Cabinet meeting as he warned that “nothing’s off the table.” “If it’s Russia, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out and we’ll know the answers quite soon”

The Syrian government and Russia have vehemently denied involvement in the attack and accused rebels in Douma of fabricating the chemical attack claims in order to hinder the army’s advances and provoke international military intervention.

 “I’d like to begin by condemning the heinous attack on innocent Syrians with banned chemical weapons,” Trump said. “It was an atrocious attack, it was horrible. You don’t see things like that as bad as the news is around the world, you just don’t see those images.”

“We are very concerned, when a thing like that can happen, this is about humanity. We’re talking about humanity. And it can’t be allowed to happen,” he added.

*

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely; is a frequent contributor to Global Research. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/.

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

While conflict theories and resolution processes advanced dramatically during the second half of the 20^th century, particularly thanks to the important work of several key scholars such as Professor Johan Galtung – see ‘Conflict Transformation by Peaceful Means (the Transcend Method)’ – significant gaps remain in the conflict literature on how to deal with particular conflict configurations. Notably, these include the following four.

First, existing conflict theory does not adequately explain, emphasize and teach how to respond in those circumstances in which parties cannot be brought to the table to deeply consider a conflict and the measures necessary to resolve it. This particularly applies in cases where one or more parties is violently defending (often using a combination of direct and structural violence) substantial interrelated (material and non-material) interests. The conflict between China and Tibet over the Chinese-occupied Tibetan plateau, the many conflicts between western corporations and indigenous peoples over exploitation of the natural environment, and the conflict between the global elite and ‘ordinary’ people over resource allocation in the global economy are obvious examples of a vast number of conflicts in this category. As one of the rare conflict theorists who addresses this question, Galtung notes that structural violence ‘is not only evil, it is obstinate and must be fought’, and his preferred strategy is nonviolent revolution. See The True Worlds: A Transnational Perspective p. 140. But how?

Second, existing conflict theory does not explain how to respond in those circumstances in which one or more parties to the conflict are insane. The conflict between Israel and Palestine over Israeli-occupied Palestine classically illustrates this problem, particularly notable in the insanity of Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. But it is also readily illustrated by the insanity of the current political/military leadership in the USA and the insanity of the political, military and Buddhist leaders in Myanmar engaged in a genocidal assault on the Rohingya. For a brief discussion of the meaning and cause of this insanity see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

As an aside, there is little point deluding ourselves that insanity is not a problem or even ‘diplomatically’ not mentioning the insanity (if this is indeed the case) of certain parties in particular conflicts. The truth enables us to fully understand a conflict so that we can develop and implement a strategy to deal with all aspects of that truth. Any conflict strategy that fails to accurately identify and address all key aspects of the conflict, including the insanity of any of the parties, will virtually certainly fail.

Third, and more fundamentally, existing conflict theory does not take adequate account of the critical role that several unconscious emotions play in driving conflict in virtually all contexts,often preventing its resolution. This particularly applies in the case of (but is not limited to) suppressed terror, self-hatred and anger which are often unconsciously projected as fear of, hatred for and anger at an opponent or even an innocent third-party (essentially because this individual/group feels ‘safe’ to the person who is projecting). See ‘The Psychology of Projection in Conflict’.

While any significant ongoing conflict would illustrate this point adequately, the incredibly complex and interrelated conflicts being conducted in the Middle East, the prevalent Islamophobia in some western countries, and the conflicts over governance and exploitation of resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo are superlative examples. Ignoring suppressed (and projected) emotions can stymie conflict resolution in any context, interpersonally and geopolitically, and it does so frequently.

Fourth, existing conflict theory pays little attention to the extinction-causing conflict being ongoingly generated by human over-consumption in the finite planetary biosphere (and currently resulting in 200 species extinctions daily) which is sometimes inadequately identified as a conflict caused by capitalism’s drive for unending economic growth in a finite environment.

So what can we do?

Well, to begin, in all four categories of cases mentioned above, I would use Gandhian nonviolent strategy to compel violent opponents to participate in a conflict transformation process such as Galtung’s. Why nonviolent and why Gandhian? Nonviolent because our intention is to process the conflict to achieve a higher level of need satisfaction for all parties and violence against any or all participants is inconsistent with that intention. But Gandhian nonviolence because only Gandhi’s version of nonviolence has this conflict intention built into it. See ‘Conception of Nonviolence’.

‘But isn’t this nonviolent strategy simply coercion by another name?’ you might ask. Well, according to the Norwegian philosopher, Professor Arne Naess, it is not. In his view, if a change of will follows the scrutiny of norms in the context of new information while one is ‘in a state of full mental and bodily powers’, this is an act of personal freedom under optimal conditions. Naess highlights this point with the following example: Suppose that one person carries another against their will into the streets where there is a riot and, as a result of what they see, the carried person changes some of their attitudes and opinions. Was the change coerced? According to Naess, while the person was coerced into seeing something that caused the change, the change itself was not coerced. The distinction is important, Naess argues, because satyagraha (Gandhian nonviolent struggle)  is incompatible with changes of attitudes or opinions that are coerced. See Gandhi and Group Conflict: An Exploration of Satyagraha pp. 91-92.

To elaborate this point: Unlike other conceptions of nonviolence, Gandhi’s nonviolence is based on certain premises, including the importance of the truth, the sanctity and unity of all life, and the unity of means and end, so his strategy is always conducted within the framework of his desired political, social, economic and ecological vision for society as a whole and not limited to the purpose of any immediate campaign. It is for this reason that Gandhi’s approach to strategy is so important. He is always taking into account the ultimate end of all nonviolent struggle – a just, peaceful and ecologically sustainable society of self-realized human beings – not just the outcome of this campaign. He wants each campaign to contribute to the ultimate aim, not undermine vital elements of the long-term and overarching struggle to create a world without violence.

Consequently, given his conception of nonviolence, Gandhi’s intention is to reach a conflict outcome that recognizes the sanctity and unity of all life which, obviously, includes the lives (but also the physical and emotional well-being) of his opponents. His nonviolent strategy is designed to compel participation in a conflict process but not to impose his preferred outcome unilaterally. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy and Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

This can apply in the geopolitical context or in relation to ordinary individuals ‘merely’ participating in the violence of overconsumption. Using nonviolent strategy to campaign on the climate catastrophe or other environmental issues can include mobilizing individuals and communities to emulate Gandhi’s asceticism in a modest way by participating in the fifteen-year strategy outlined in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which he inspired.

But even if we can use nonviolent strategy effectively to get the conflicting parties together, the reality is that suppressed and projected emotions – particularly fear, self-hatred and anger as mentioned above – or even outright insanity on the part of one or more parties may still make efforts to effectively transform the conflict impossible. So for conflict resolution to occur, we need individuals who are willing and able to participate with at least minimal goodwill in designing a superior conflict outcome beneficial to everyone concerned.

Hence, I would do one more thing in connection with this process. Prior to, and then also in parallel with, the ‘formal’ conflict process, I would provide opportunities for all individuals engaged in the process (or otherwise critical to it because of their ‘background’ role, perhaps as a leader not personally present at the formal conflict process) to explore in a private setting with a skilled ‘nisteler’ (who is outside the conflict process), the unconscious emotions that are driving their particular approach to the conflict. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’. The purpose of this nisteling is to allow each participant in the conflict process to bring a higher level of self-awareness to it. See ‘Human Intelligence or Human Awareness?’

I am not going to pretend that this would necessarily be possible, quick, easy or even work in every context. Insane individuals are obviously the last to know they have a psychological problem and the least likely to participate in a process designed to uncover and remove the roots of their insanity. However, those who are trapped in a dysfunctional psychological state short of insanity may be willing to avail themselves of the opportunity. In time, the value of this aspect of the conflict resolution process should become apparent, particularly because delusions and projections are exposed by the person themselves (as an outcome of the expertise of the person nisteling).

Obviously, I am emphasizing the psychological aspects of the conflict process because my own considerable experience as a nonviolent activist together with my research convinces me that understanding violence requires an understanding of the psychology that drives it. If you are interested, you can read about the psychology of violence, including the 23 psychological characteristics in the emotional profile of archetype perpetrators of violence, in the documents ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Ideally, I would like to see the concept of nistelers operating prior to, and then parallel with, focused attention on the conflict itself normalized as an inherent part of the conflict resolution process. Clearly, we need teams of people equipped to perform this service, a challenge in itself in the short-term.

If, however,conflicting parties cannot be convinced to participate in this process with reasonable goodwill, we can always revert to using nonviolent strategy to compel them to do so. And, if all attempts to conduct a reasonable conflict process fail (particularly in a circumstance in which insanity is the cause of this failure), to impose a nonviolent solution which nevertheless takes account of the insane’s party’s legitimate needs. (Yes, on just that one detail, I diverge from Gandhi.)

Having stated that, however, I acknowledge that only a rare individual has the capacity to think, plan and act strategically in tackling a violent conflict nonviolently, so considerable education in nonviolent strategy will be necessary and is a priority.

Given what is at stake, however – a superior strategy for tackling and resolving violent geopolitical conflicts including those (such as the threat of nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and decimation of the biosphere) that threaten human extinction – any resources devoted to improving our capacity to deliver this outcome would be well spent.

Provided, of course, that reducing (and ultimately eliminating) violence and resolving conflict is your aim.

In addition to the above, I would do something else more generally (that is, outside the conflict process).

Given that dysfunctional parenting is ultimately responsible for the behaviour of those individuals who generate and perpetuate violent conflicts, I would encourage all parents to consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ so that we start to produce a higher proportion of functional individuals who know how to powerfully resolve conflicts in their lives without resort to violence. If any parent feels unable to make this promise, then they have the option of tackling this problem at its source by ‘Putting Feelings First’.

If we do not dramatically and quickly improve our individual and collective capacity to resolve conflicts nonviolently, including when we are dealing with individuals who are insane, then one day relatively soon we will share the fate of those 200 species of life we drove to extinction today.

*

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

Among Global Research’s most popular articles in 2016. First published on August 14, 2016

Wikileaks head Julian Assange says he has proof that Hillary Clinton lied under oath while giving a public testimony following the 2013 Benghazi terrorist attack. Assange says Wikileaks has 1,700 emails proving Clinton’s statements that she was not involved or aware of any sale of weapons to Syrian “rebels” were a lie. In fact, Assange notes that the former Secretary of State was fully aware of the United States’ involvement in arming rebels in Libya in a bid to help them overtake Qaddafi. Ultimately, it is alleged that those same weapons then made their way to the Islamic State in Syria.

In a Democracy Now interview, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange claimed that the first batch of Hillary Clinton emails was only the beginning. Assange made the bold claims that his organization has more Clinton emails and that the next batch will be even more damning for the former Secretary of State and presidential hopeful. Wikileaks says that the emails contain proof that Hillary Clinton has lied under oath and that she was fully aware of weapons shipments to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State rebels.

The National Review points out that Wikileaks seems to be honing in on statements made by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton following the 2013 Benghazi terrorist attack. In a public testimony, Secretary Clinton claimed that she had no knowledge of weapons transfers to Libya, Turkey, or Syria in the months leading up to the terrorist attack. Clinton said “I don’t have any information on that” when pressed about her personal knowledge of the weapons transfers.

She claimed to have no knowledge of any transfers of weapons from Libya to Turkey, Syria, or any other countries.

It was Senator Rand Paul that asked Clinton the damning question when he pointed out that there were news reports of ships leaving Libya with weapons and asked Clinton if she was aware of these transfers. He specifically asked if she or the United States had been involved in “any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya.” In response to the question, Clinton tried to deflect by saying “nobody has ever raised that with me.” However, upon further pressing, Senator Paul asked directly if Clinton personally knew of any such transfers which she flatly denied.

It is important to note that Hillary Clinton was under oath when she answered the question from Senator Paul; therefore, if her statements were proven false it would mean she was guilty of lying under oath. Therefore, Julian Assange’s claims that he has numerous emails which implicate Clinton in the weapons transfer, it could mean that the presidential hopeful may need to do some serious damage control.

The contents of the emails have not yet been released, but many say they are expecting an “October surprise” from Wikileaks and that the latest leak will happen very soon. If Assange is telling the truth, the leak could prove extremely detrimental to Clinton’s presidential bid as she is already struggling with voter trust following the first batch of emails showing the DNC had favored Clinton during the primaries.

What do you think about Wikileaks’ claims that they have proof Hillary Clinton lied under oath? If they have the information, should they release it quickly as the November general election is quickly approaching?

A guerra dos impostos alfandegários dos EUA contra a China e as novas sanções contra a Rússia, são sinais de uma tendência que vai mais além dos acontecimentos actuais. Para compreender qual é, devemos recuar trinta anos.

Em 1991, os Estados Unidos, vencedores da Guerra Fria e da primeira guerra após a Guerra Fria, declararam ser “o único Estado com uma força, um prestígio e uma influência verdadeiramente global, em qualquer esfera –  seja ela  política, económica e militar” -”e que, no mundo “não existe nenhum substituto para a liderança americana”.

Confiando na hegemonia do dólar, no alcance global das suas multinacionais e dos seus grupos financeiros, sob controlo de organizações internacionais (FMI, Banco Mundial, OMC/WTO), os Estados Unidos promovem o “comércio livre” e a “livre circulação de capitais” à escala global, reduzindo ou eliminando impostos e regulamentações. As outras potências ocidentais movem-se no seu encalço.

A Federação Russa, em profunda crise após a desagregação da URSS, é considerada por Washington como um território fácil de conquistar, para ser desmembrada para melhor controlar seus grandes recursos. A China, que se abre à economia de mercado, também parece estar apta a ser conquistada com capital e produtos dos EUA e explorada como um grande reservatório de mão-de-obra barata. Trinta anos depois, o “sonho americano””do domínio incontestado do mundo, desvaneceu-se. A Rússia, organizou uma frente interna de defesa da soberania nacional, superou a crise recuperando o estatuto de grande potência. A China, a “fábrica do mundo” na qual produzem, também, as multinacionais dos EUA, tornou-se o maior exportador de mercadorias do mundo e faz, cada vez mais, investimentos no estrangeiro. Hoje desafia a supremacia tecnológica dos Estados Unidos.

O projeto de uma nova Rota da Seda – uma rede rodoviária, ferroviária e marítima entre a China e a Europa, através de 60 países – coloca a China na vanguarda do processo de globalização, enquanto os Estados Unidos se encerram, erguendo barreiras económicas. Washington olha com crescente preocupação, a parceria económica e política entre a Rússia e a China, que desafia a própria hegemonia do dólar.

Não conseguindo opor-se a este processo, apenas com expedientes económicos, os Estados Unidos usam os militares. O golpe na Ucrânia e a consequente escalada nuclear na Europa, a mudança de estratégia na Ásia, as guerras no Afeganistão e na Síria, fazem parte do plano pelo qual os EUA e as outras potências ocidentais tentam manter o domínio unipolar num mundo que se está a tornar multipolar. No entanto, esta técnica está a sofrer uma série de imprevistos  como num jogo de xadrez.

A Rússia e a China, submetidas à crescente pressão militar, reagiram fortalecendo a cooperação estratégica. A Rússia não só foi só encostada às cordas, mas, com um movimento de surpresa, interveio militarmente a apoiar o Estado sírio que, nos planos dos EUA/NATO, deveria ter terminado juntamente com o líbio. No Afeganistão, os EUA e a NATO estão atolados numa guerra que dura há mais de 17 anos.

Como reacção a esses fracassos, intensifica-se a campanha para fazer a Rússia parecer um inimigo perigoso, usando também o argumento de falsa bandeira dos ataques químicos na Inglaterra e na Síria. A mesma técnica foi usada em 2003, quando, para justificar a guerra contra o Iraque, o Secretário de Estado, Colin Powell apresentou à ONU, a “evidência” de que o Iraque possuía armas de destruição em massa.

O mesmo Powell, em 2016, teve de admitir a inexistência de tais armas. No entanto, durante 15 anos, a guerra causou mais de um milhão de mortes.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo em italiano :

In crisi l’impero americano d’Occidente

Il manifesto, 10 de Abril de 2018

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

La guerra dei dazi scatenata dagli Usa contro la Cina e le nuove sanzioni contro la Russia sono segnali di una tendenza che va oltre gli attuali eventi. Per comprendere quale sia, si deve risalire a una trentina di anni fa.

Nel 1991 gli Stati uniti, usciti vincitori dalla guerra fredda e dalla prima guerra del dopo guerra fredda, quella del Golfo, dichiarano di essere rimasti «il solo Stato con una forza, una portata e un’influenza in ogni dimensione – politica, economica e militare – realmente globali» e che nel mondo «non esiste alcun sostituto alla leadership americana». Fidando sull’egemonia del dollaro, sulla portata globale delle proprie multinazionali e dei propri gruppi finanziari, sul controllo delle organizzazioni internazionali (Fmi, Banca mondiale, Wto), gli Stati uniti promuovono il «libero commercio» e il «libero movimento di capitali» su scala globale, riducendo o eliminando dazi e regolamenti. Sulla loro scia si muovono le altre potenze dell’Occidente.

La Federazione Russa, in profonda crisi dopo la disgregazione dell’Urss, viene considerata da Washington facile terra di conquista, da smembrare per meglio controllarne le grandi risorse.

La Cina, apertasi all’economia di mercato, appare anch’essa conquistabile con i capitali e i prodotti statunitensi e sfruttabile quale grande serbatoio di manodopera a basso costo.

Trent’anni dopo, il «sogno americano» del dominio incontratato del mondo è svanito. La Russia, costituto un fronte interno a difesa della sovranità nazionale, ha superato la crisi riacquistando lo status di grande potenza.

La Cina, la «fabbrica del mondo» in cui producono anche multinazionali Usa, è divenuta il primo esportatore mondiale di merci ed effettua crescenti investimenti esteri. Oggi sfida la supremazia tecnologica degli Stati uniti. Il progetto di una nuova Via della Seta – una rete viaria, ferroviaria e marittima tra Cina ed Europa attraverso 60 paesi – pone la Cina all’avanguardia nel processo di globalizzazione, mentre gli Stati uniti si arroccano erigendo barriere economiche.

Washington guarda con crescente preoccupazione alla partnership economica e politica tra Russia e Cina, che sfida la stessa egemonia del dollaro. Non riuscendo a contrastare tale processo solo con strumenti economici, gli Stati uniti ricorrono a quelli militari. Il colpo di stato in Ucraina e la conseguente escalation anche nucleare in Europa, lo spostamento strategico in Asia, le guerre in Afghanistan e Siria, fanno parte della strategia con cui gli Usa e le altre potenze dell’Occidente cercano di mantenere il predominio unipolare in un mondo che sta divenendo multipolare.

Tale strategia sta però subendo un serie di scacchi. Russia e Cina, sottoposte a crescente pressione militare, hanno reagito rafforzando la cooperazione strategica.

La Russia non solo non è stata messa alle corde ma, con una mossa a sorpresa, è intervenuta militarmente a sostegno dello Stato siriano che, nei piani Usa/Nato, avrebbe dovuto fare la fine di quello libico. In Afghanistan, Usa e Nato sono impantanati in una guerra che dura da oltre 17 anni.

Come reazione a tali fallimenti, si intensifica la campagna per far apparire la Russia quale pericoloso nemico, usando anche la false flag degli attacchi chimici in Inghilterra e in Siria. La tecnica è la stessa usata nel 2003 quando, per giustificare la guerra contro l’Iraq, il segretario di stato Colin Powell presentò al l’Onu le «prove» che l’Iraq possedeva armi di distruzione di massa.

Lo stesso Powell, nel 2016, ha dovuto ammettere l’inesistenza di tali armi. In 15 anni, però, la guerra ha provocato oltre un milione di morti.

Manlio Dinucci

Genuine rifts are unfolding within US conservatism regarding the war with Syria, which could potentially lead to a shift in the Trump administration’s policy stance. 

Here’s a nice rant on Fox News by a man who has described himself as “the most right wing person I know” but who is slamming the bipartisan consensus on war and regime change in Syria.

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Thanks to Prof Graeme MacQueen for bringing this to the attention of Global Research.

It is coming clear these days that many university professors are increasingly fat-cat and lazy, not doing any research once they get tenure. It is a system-wide corruption of the academy, so entrenched that central administrations have only led the corruption in multiplying salaries and offices with no committed function to advancement of learning and dissemination of knowledge – the constitutional and statutory objective of the academy the best are devoted to everywhere.

This deep-structural degeneration is not confined to any one place or region. Regular contacts from other universities report a similar decadence. The solution is straightforward, but unspoken: (1) to require a condition of tenure performance equivalent every three years to the PhD degree that got the job in the first place and (2) to set a ceiling on all faculty salaries at $110,000 for faculty and, at most, a ministerial level for presidents. Now bizarrely top-heavy universities ignore this constitutional and statutory objective at will to fund the top over the bottom with no limit of extremes. This institutional degeneration is global in reach.

The solution to this corporate decadence is:  (1) to require a condition of tenure performance equivalent every three years to the PhD degree that got the job in the first place; and (2) to set a ceiling on all faculty salaries and administrative salaries at a ministerial level at most. In the past this would have been very generous remuneration for a far more robust research faculty, and today it would save taxpayers a huge amount while preventing the feeding frenzy at the top that has gone on without limit since the corporatization of the university began.

What is little noticed is the long plan. It is to defund the university and commodify all higher research; overpay tenured professors to buy them off; multiply central-admin salaries and office retinues to enforce the plan; and casualize 60% of the teaching for a new precariat of PhD’s paid a fraction of the salary of professors doing no more research than the bottom level are. No-one not lying today can or will deny it.

The Unasked Question

“How deep does the corruption of knowledge go?” is an unasked question.  Yet ever more hair-raising and ignored evidence regarding Canada’s liberal governance comes to light, led by Richard Sanders of Project Conversion.

It all began with mass immigration into Canada of Nazi loyalists from Ukraine to overwhelm the actively progressive smaller numbers of earlier Ukraine-Canadians. It now runs to the top of Canada in hate-Russia politics led by a Foreign Minister descended from a ‘freedom-loving’ grandfather who was, in fact, the lead Nazi propagandist from the Ukraine in World War 2.

I wonder how many of us you saw the very recent news clip where PM Trudeau was backing Chrystia Freeland (her Canadian name) on Russia “interfering in Canada’s democracy” (March 4  CBC news). Young Trudeau unbelievably proclaimed that this Russian interference in Canada’s democracy was proven by attacks on Minister ‘Freeland’ with “scurrilous falsehoods about her background” As well reported outside the Ottawa bubble, these “scurrilous attacks by Russia”  and “interferences in Canada’s democracy” were in fact reported by Canada’s establishment newspaper of record, the Globe and Mail as well as across the country in informed internet journals.

When the pleasant PM of Canada joins the Russia-hating propaganda unknowing of and concealing all the facts, it would be a grave mistake to ascribe this to merely his shallowness of knowledge. The deep concern arising among the informed is that all this hate-Russia propaganda is leading towards a more heinous outcome. Observe that the current hate-Russia atrocity story is based on the alleged poisoning of a Russia double agent. Few notice that the claims of evidence would be swiftly thrown out of a court of law; that the claims persist despite further reports of their concoction from British Porton Down laboratory of chemical weapons research itself; and that the whole hysteria has carried on at the headline level with no-one in Canada’s mass-media or government communications ever raising the issue of cui bono? as May’s Brexit government staggers from one failure and lie to the next, clearly desperate for the old Enemy distraction. Even the deaths of the double-agent spy victims was false news. One would be ignore-ant indeed not to see the convenient but criminal war preparations and propaganda unfolding again with NATO ever upping the ante of the war motions that never stop.

As always since 2000 and before, the US-led NATO war-making is based on demonstrably false pretexts, and is aimed at war for rich resources and territory by force of arms, big lies and horrific ruin of yet another formerly prosperous society with a well-developed, socially owned social infrastructure and huge natural resources for the taking – as in Yugoslavia, as in Iraq, as In Libya, and as in Ukraine since the fully documented US-and-neo-Nazi led mass-murderous coup of Ukraine’s elected federal government of 2014.

Yet ignore-ance can be so well dinned into the public mind by selected and repressed facts that people can be made to believe – even inside Science for Peace – that the uprising of the Russia-speaking East of Ukraine against the US-neo-Nazi coup was a Putin-made aggression, although he in fact refused the call of the newly forming republics to join Russia, thus preventing war. Still many people can be made to also believe that Russia’s traditional territory for two centuries, the Crimea, was forcefully seized in complete disconnection from the centuries past of Russia’s territory, as well as  total erasure of the mainly Russian-speaking Crimean people’s overwhelming and peaceful referendum in favour of this action after the US-orchestrated neo-Nazi coup and return of Nazi symbols, military insignia, and mass-murderous actions  had run amok – as in the police-allowed burning 137 people alive inside a trade-union building in Odessa.

Genocidal Bombing Again as ‘Peace and Freedom’

The stakes have kept getting higher since 2000 in selecting out all the facts, demonizing Russia as Ukrainian Nazi incubi still do, piling big-lie propaganda onto big-lie hate and propaganda as in the past with Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and the vast natural, agricultural and fossil fuel treasure to be taken by the new war in the making of NATO bombing as “freedom and humanitarian Intervention” against a “barbarous despot” and “enemy of peace”.

Attention must be paid to the staggering reverse projections auto-limned in corporate state and press propaganda as the war drums build towards the great rape and destruction of yet another poorer society and people – with living conditions better beyond compare before the blanket bombing by NATO in the name of “civilisation” begins yet again. The now near-20 years of proof that the hate-propaganda and bombing only achieves the Nazi-style destruction and war grab of everything the non-capitalist socialist society had before, is now ignored far longer than the Nazi interregnum itself.  Once again the horror is building step by step of absurd pretexts and cover-ups to destroy and take another, even larger society within Europe itself while  Russia and Trump are the feature bad news.

Now we even have the Foreign Minister in Canada proclaiming false news of hate and the Prime Minister willing to go along with whatever script he is given – behind which is a very powerful vote-bank and force of descended Nazi loyalists from Ukraine pulling strings across generations since 1945.

Together the war-mongers for profit and huge natural resources of other societies and peoples are cooking up what US-led EU-corporate NATO has been drumming for since its rapid movement East against all promises into the ex-USSR through Ukraine, now up to Russia’s borders in vast-kill military forces seeking to incite war with more ludicrous pretexts than ever. It all started when Russia rationally reacted to the mass-murderous neo-Nazi coup of 2014 that was set in motion to grab the whole of Russia-speaking Ukraine and Crimea in one fell swoop of ‘freedom’. Putin’s greatest crime here has been to defend Russian-speaking traditional territories from the new corporate globalist Lebensraum that destroys and devours whole societies alive one after the other.

Now NATO’s inside anti-Russia Foreign Minister is sufficiently fanatic to declare “Russia’s interference in Canada’s democracy” with PM Trudeau support. In fact, the  family background Foreign Minister ‘Chrystia Freeland’ (her Canadian name) was finally communicated to the public by the press of Canada after being covered up for so long.  One sees here just how far inside Canada’s governance the Ukraine-Nazi connections go, now even to the Foreign Minister telling the PM hate-Russia lies that he publicly repeats.

In spite of this hate-propaganda revel let loose in 2018 to finish the 2014 job of seizing Ukraine by war crimes, all of the long-concealed and evil-spelling facts have an up-side once people know them. They can lead to wake-up from collaboration with the greatest war-criminal machine in history, NATO, whose foreign intelligence on Russia from the beginning was 75% based on Nazi SS spy dossiers who escaped punishment to wealth and military position in exchange for this invaluable information and capacity to attack East from 1945 on.

Withdrawal from NATO the overdue Stand for Peace

Life-coherent reason might even recognise that Canada’s withdrawal from NATO is essential to protect world peace and prevent war, as well as to avoid support of and complicity in NATO’s post-2000 string of eco-genocidal wars of criminal aggression against defenceless societies without aerial combat capacities against saturation NATO bombing of their evolved social infrastructures and productive means of life.

Withdrawal from NATO is what Sweden, Austria, Finland,  and Ireland have already done, as well as Australia and New Zealand who do not want to join NATO because it will bomb anywhere under any pretext. Canada is moreover not  exposed to attack from any foreign enemy since it is already in NORAD that is ready to bomb any real or imagined threat to Canada, “chomping at the bit” reported a visiting cabinet minister to me.  By being in NATO, most deeply, Canada becomes an aggressor nation along with the US, the UK and France now all hardened to eco-genocidal wars for criminal corporate looting thousands of miles away from their borders – wars in which Canada already participates despite official claims to the contrary of ‘peace-maker’. Who connects them? Yugoslavia , Libya and Iraq and significantly Afghanistan have already been so attacked with Canada’s backroom assistance in this new century with sweeping concealment of the facts. All need to ask: GIVEN NATO’S ONGOING RECORD OF ECOGENOCIDE, WHY IS CANADA IN NATO?

Who Wants to Abet More War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity?

Not many people want to continue to aid and abet crimes against humanity and war crimes behind big lies launched against weaker nations with fabulous resources to loot. A former head of Canada’s armed forces, General Rick Hillier, has already explained the eco-genocidal bombing – here of Libya – without any official disagreement with his supreme crime adage: “We do it because we can”.  This has been exactly what we have been doing as Canada before and since, with even legendary Science for Peace fronting for NATO to cover up  the reality of Ukraine’s murderous overthrow of an elected federalist government with reverse accusation of Russia for the civil war thus caused.

Canada’s implicitly neo-nazi policy has already led us to aid and abetment of a war-criminal regime in Ukraine coming ever closer to another  case of genocide by UN definition. Yet knowledge always wins in the long run – even if the corruption of the university at the top looms ever deeper at the same time as the big-lie NATO war machine warms up for another US-UK-EU led criminal war of aggression in Ukraine “against Russia aggression” and “for peace”. This time the facts will not allow the ultimate crime and corruption to proceed. People increasingly understand that knowledge is the ultimate duty to humanity’s life future – once they see through the prism of now-Russia hate to enable more NATO transnational corporate wars for military despoliation and massive resource and market looting in strategic position for more country-size contracts for profit and wars to come for ever more.

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Prof. John McMurtry FRSC is the author of UNESCO’s Philosophy and World Problems and the Cancer Stage of Capitalism/From Crisis to Cure.

Leave your stepping stones behind there, something calls for you
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue

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Those are lyrics from the great Bob Dylan song It’s All Over Now Baby Blue (1965).  

How appropriate they are now in Amerika 2018. We have finally become a damaged empire due to a mega variety of reasons.  Foremost is the delusion of far too many of us that we a nation victimized by forces of terror outside of our influence. Well, anyone who takes the time to turn away from the narcotics of electronic gadgetry, 24 hour sports, sexual delights, addictive cigarettes, alcohol and other drugs of preference, along with mainstream media’s embedded- with- empire phony news, would see that (sadly) our nation is the role model for terrorism. As we float aimlessly into the narrow straights of both national and individual economic turmoil (even bankruptcy) the ‘movers and shakers’ of this empire laugh all the way from their well secured gated communities to their banks and investment houses.

Can this all not be a dream, contrary to what most Eastern philosophies teach? After all, could George Orwell have written a better story with a Reality Television star becoming president? As with those lemmings who thought the Gordon Gecko character in Oliver Stone‘s film Wall Street was sacrosanct in his belief that ‘Greed is good’, so too those with but ‘A pot to piss in’ followed almost religiously a billionaire so called populist demagogue who peddled the same crap. He did not ‘drain the swamp’, rather filling it with more super rich ‘Greed is good’ muck. Yet, it only shows how much our Amerikan populace can continue to take from an enema bag overloaded with…

We who love the country we grew up in, and see through this con job, signed off by the two halves of our Two Party political scam, have a civic duty to stand up and say ‘NO MORE!’ One afternoon a few short years ago, as my 85 year-old peace activist friend John and I stood outside our library holding signs to protest this Military Industrial Empire, a lady from Germany came up to us. She complimented us on our activism and made a cogent point:

“You Americans have so much to be angry with concerning this government and its phony wars. You have but two of you standing out here each week. If this was Germany and my country did what yours has done, there would be literally a thousand people out here with you.”

Well, it seems that my fellow citizens have become too comfortable living in this feudal society. Psychologists refer to this kind of mindset as that of enabling. How many Apple Annies must there be on the street corners of our nation before we all get wise?

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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].

Global Research shares timely, independent and vital information to readers across the globe.

We act as a global platform to let the voices of dissent, protest, and expert witnesses and academics be heard and disseminated internationally.

To sustain our goal, please consider making a donation to Global Research.

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The Suspicious Timing of the Latest Provocations in Syria. The U.S. is Planning a Major Strike

By Andrew Korybko, April 10, 2018

By now everyone is aware that “Israel” struck a Syrian base in the early hours of the morning [April 9] with several missiles in response to the latest false flag chemical weapons attack to occur in the country, but the timing of these provocations leaves a lot of unanswered questions that nobody seems willing to answer, let alone in the Alt-Media informational space.

Escalation: Is the Conflict in Syria Evolving Towards a Global War?

By South Front, April 10, 2018

So, is the US trying to figure out who is responsible? Indeed it would appear that Washington has already decided who is to blame and the only problem is to justify the upcoming aggression against Syria.

Could the Cold War Return with a Vengeance? Most Momentous Military Planning on Earth. Invitation to Disaster

By Michael T. Klare, April 10, 2018

Think of it as the most momentous military planning on Earth right now. Who’s even paying attention, given the eternal changing of the guard at the White House, as well as the latest in tweets, sexual revelations, and investigations of every sort? And yet it increasingly looks as if, thanks to current Pentagon planning, a twenty-first-century version of the Cold War (with dangerous new twists) has begun and hardly anyone has even noticed.

On the Threshold of War. “Entirety of Russian Military on High Alert”. Unconfirmed Reports

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, April 10, 2018

Tough man Trump, sitting next to the crazed warmonger Bolton, declared that the alleged chemical attack in Syria “will be met and it will be met forcefully. We can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed… we can’t let that happen in our world, especially because of the power of the US, we are able to stop it.”

Truth, Peace, Justice and the War on Syria: Lies, Fake Humanitarians, Fake Covers for War Crimes

By Mark Taliano, April 10, 2018

As we strive for Peace and Justice, all we have is the Truth.  The mechanisms of International Law will not deliver Justice in the foreseeable future since Western countries and their allies have been, and continue to commit Supreme International Crimes as policy with relative impunity.

Taking the World to the Brink of Annihilation

By Rick Sterling, April 10, 2018

Western neoconservatives and hawks are driving the international situation to increasing tension and danger. Not content with the destruction of Iraq and Libya based on false claims, they are now pressing for a direct US attack on Syria.

Emotional Propaganda 101: Chemical Attack in Syria Appears to be a False Flag to Justify Regime Change

By Steven MacMillan, April 09, 2018

The alleged chemical attack in Syria is a blatant display of how emotional propaganda is used to try and pull at the heartstrings of the general public in order to garner support for a military attack on Syria by the US and her allies.

No normal human being can accept to see his children suffer – consequently, they make good subjects for war propaganda. Thierry Meyssan takes a look at the use of children by the International Coalition during the war against Syria.

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Just as in all wars, the war against Syria has triggered an avalanche of propaganda. And the use of children is always a winning strategy.

So, at the beginning of the war, Qatar wanted to demonstrate that the Republic, far from serving the general interest, actually despised the People. The petro-dictatorship then broadcast, on its TV channel Al-Jazeera, the legend of the children of Deraa, supposedly tortured by the police. To illustrate the cruelty of its adversary, Qatar specified that their fingernails had been torn out. Of course, despite research, no journalist could find any trace of these children. The BBC broadcast an interview with two of them, but their nails were still intact.

Since the myth could not be proved, Qatar then launched a new story – that of a child, Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb (13 years old), who had allegedly been tortured and castrated by the «regime’s» police. This time, they provided a convincing image. Everyone could see that the body had no sex. However, the autopsy showed that the body had been poorly preserved, and that it had fermented and swollen. The stomach hid the child’s sex, which was still present.

At the end of 2013, the British took over the task of war propaganda. They had a long experience in that sector, and are considered to have invented modern propaganda during the first World War, with the Office of War Propaganda. One of the characteristics of their method is to rely on artists, because aesthetics tend to neutralise critical thinking. In 1914, they recruited the great authors of the time – like Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells and Rudyard Kipling – to publish texts which attributed imaginary crimes to their German enemy. Then they recruited the heads of their major newspapers to publish the imaginary information invented by the authors.

When the United States adopted the British method, in 1917, with the Committee on Public Information, they made a more precise study of the mechanisms of persuasion, with the help of star journalist Walter Lippmann and the inventor of modern publicity, Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew). But, persuaded of the power of science, they forgot about aesthetics.

At the beginning of 2014, the British MI6 created the company Innovative Communications & Strategies (InCoStrat) to whom we owe, for example, the magnificent logos of the armed groups, from the most «moderate» to the most «extremist». This company, which has offices in Washington and Istanbul, organised the campaign to convince the Europeans to offer sanctuary to 1 million refugees. It was this company that photographed young Aylan Kurdi, drowned on a Turkish beach, and managed, in two days, to have it published on the front page of the main Atlantist newspapers in all NATO countries as well as those of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Every year, before the war, a hundred people died from drowning on Turkish beaches, and no-one mentioned it. And above all, only the tabloids showed photographs of the corpses. But this photo was so well composed…

Since I noted that a body can not be washed up perpendicular to the waves, the photographer explained later that he had moved the corpse for the needs of the photo.

The photo of young Omran Daqneesh (5 years old), in an ambulance in West Aleppo, is thus accompanied by a video. The two supports enable the information to be exploited by both the written Press and the television. The scene is so dramatic that a news-reader from CNN could not stop herself from crying when she saw it. Of course, when we think about it, we notice that the child was not attended to by the medical personnel who gave him first aid, but by a group of extras, (the «White Helmets»), who placed him facing the cameras.

The British film directors care nothing about the child, whose only interest for them is as a feature in their images. According to Associated Press, the photograph was taken by Mahmoud Raslan, whom we can see in the video. According to his Facebook account, this man is a member of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zenki (supported by the CIA, who supplied the group with BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missiles). Still according to his Facebook account, and as confirmed by another video, it was Raslan who, on the 19 July 2016, personally cut the throat of a young Palestinian child, Abdullah Tayseer Al Issa (12 years old).

European laws lay down strict guidelines for the use of children in publicity. Clearly, these laws do not apply to war propaganda.

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Translation by Pete Kimberley

Thierry Meyssan is a political consultant, President-founder of the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network). Latest work in French – Sous nos Yeux. Du 11-Septembre à Donald Trump (Right Before our Eyes. From 9/11 to Donald Trump).

All images in this article are from the author.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Britain and Washington bear full responsibility for whatever harmed them – clearly not a military-grade nerve agent, as falsely claimed.

John Helmer calls himself “the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia,” a longstanding “Russian specialist.”

He called Salisbury Hospital where the Skripals are being treated a “secret rendition center for Yulia Skripal,” stressing:

Chief hospital administrator Cara Charles-Barks hasn’t explained if it obtained consent forms signed by the Skripals after they regained consciousness.

Without them, claims about respecting their privacy “are improper, according to the practice rules of the British National Health Service, and unlawful violations of their human rights, according to British and European law,” Helmer explained.

If attending physician to the Skripals Dr. Christine Blanshard falsified Yulia’s comments, or failed to get consent forms from both Skripals, she and the hospital administrator “can be called to account…in court,” Helmer added.

Yulia, and likely Sergey, are conscious able to speak. Yet they’re being held incommunicado – except for one brief monitored conversation between Yulia and her cousin Viktoria Skripal in Moscow.

British law requires hospitals treating patients to be accountable to their next of kin. For the Skripals, it’s Viktoria. Yet she was denied visa permission to visit her ill relatives for unacceptable reasons.

According to Helmer,

“evidence now accumulating is that the hospital is detaining and isolating the Skripals against their will, preventing contact with their family.”

Viktoria shares the same view, believing Yulia was told what to say during their brief conversation. She’s not able to speak freely or see anyone she chooses.

Her cell phone was disconnected, her call to Viktoria made on what she called a “temporary telephone.”

In a BBC translation, Yulia said “(e)verything is OK.” Her father Sergey is “all right.” He’s conscious and “resting…no one will give you a visa,” said in response to Viktoria saying she’d come to Salisbury to see them, adding in a disturbing way indicating her comments were monitored:

“That’s the situation at the moment. We’ll sort it out later…Later, we’ll get it sorted later. Everything’s fine. We’ll see later.”

“Everything’s fine, but we’ll see how it goes. We’ll decide later. You know what the situation is here. Everything is fine. Everything is solvable. Everyone is recovering and is alive.”

Is that how cousins speak to each other by phone or in person when one is ill, the other concerned about her health and well-being?

When people are hospitalized, visits from relatives are important to their well-being. Yulia is prevented from freely speaking publicly. Russia was denied consular access to her.

Viktoria was denied visa permission to visit her and Sergey.

According to Article 36 of a still valid 1968 Soviet Russia/UK treaty,

“(a) consular officer shall be entitled…to communicate with, interview and advise a national…and may render…every assistance,” including aid and legal advice.

“No restriction shall be placed by the receiving State upon the access (to) a national…or (any) communication” obstruction.

The treaty also allows the Russian embassy to designate Viktoria or another party to represent the hospitalized Skripals, required to let them meet unhindered.

Yet Salisbury hospital imposed a communication shutdown, clearly on orders from Whitehall and/or metropolitan police, the Skripals unable to communicate freely with anyone they choose.

The following statement attributed to Yulia makes no sense, allegedly saying

“I hope that you’ll respect my privacy and that of my family during the period of my convalescence.”

Viktoria is family. Why is she prevented from communicating freely with Yulia through her cell phone?

Helmer:

“Salisbury Hospital is in violation of British and international law. If this isn’t taken to court, it stinks.”

Indeed so! It’s unclear how strongly Russia is pushing this issue other than what’s been publicly reported.

If its citizens are being harmed, otherwise mistreated, or denied their rights, it’s Russia’s obligation to do everything possible to aid them in every way.

A Final Comment

On Tuesday, the BBC and other UK media reported Yulia Skripal was discharged from Salisbury hospital. Dr. Christine Blanshard said her father Sergey’s strength is “growing daily,” hopefully able to leave the hospital “in due course.”

It’s unclear where Yulia is, reportedly taken to a secure location. Russia’s embassy “congratulate(d) (Yulia) on her recovery,” adding: “(W)e need urgent proof that what is being done to her is done on her own free will.”

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

Nobody seems interested in asking why the terrorists didn’t use or allege to have used chemical weapons before they were on the brink of ultimate defeat, nor why “Israel” would wait until this very last moment to carry out a feeble airstrike on a single military base that changed nothing at all in terms of the war’s overall dynamics.

Why Wait?

By now everyone is aware that “Israel” struck a Syrian base in the early hours of the morning [April 9] with several missiles in response to the latest false flag chemical weapons attack to occur in the country, but the timing of these provocations leaves a lot of unanswered questions that nobody seems willing to answer, let alone in the Alt-Media informational space. The terrorists evidently had the chemical weapons in their possession the entire time but waited until they were on the brink of defeat before either using them or pretending to have done so, which defies conventional “logic” that suggests they would have “saved their own skin” through this scenario much sooner than at this desperate moment.

Instead, the Russian presidential election – which would have been the perfect time to stage such an operation for maximum destabilizing effect – came and went without a hitch, and the retreating “rebels” reportedly left behind incriminating chemical weapons laboratories in the Damascus suburbs that they could have either destroyed or utilized to stop the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) liberation advance. Nothing of the sort happened, nor did the US and its allies like “Israel” intervene to save their proxy forces. For all intents and purposes, they appear to have made a deliberate decision to hold off on this false flag provocation and its preplanned military follow-up aggressions even though it would have been more “opportune” for them to have staged everything weeks ago.

“The Understanding”

Should this interpretation be accurate – and thus far no information has emerged to contradict the narrative being presented in this analysis – then it would mean that something happened within the past week that served as a “deal-breaker” for triggering the present scenario at the very last moment that it could realistically be put into motion. Before attempting to answer what that might have been, it should be accepted that some kind of tacit “understanding” was indeed in play between Russia and its Western rivals and which was respected by both sides up until last week in indefinitely delaying the chemical weapons false flag chain reaction that’s currently unfolding, and which could have realistically occurred much earlier for maximum destabilizing effect.

Furthermore, Russia’s reaction to “Israel’s” latest bombing proves that it intends to continue its pattern of behavior in passively allowing Tel Aviv to carry out attacks against the Arab Republic so long as it’s supposedly doing so on an implied anti-Iranian basis, an unofficial ‘agreement’ that the author described in depth in his September 2017 analysis rhetorically questioning whether anyone still thinks that Russia and “Israel” aren’t allies. This time, just like every single other time that “Israel” struck Syria, Iranian and/or Hezbollah units were reportedly killed, thus adding credence to the speculative observation in explaining why Russia refused to proactively stop the most recent incoming attack. This, however, doesn’t mean that Russia wanted it to happen, but just that it accepted that it would.

The question once again returns to why “Israel” waited so long to stage what the Syrian Foreign Ministry officially said was Tel Aviv’s “indirect response to the success of the Syrian Arab Army in eliminating armed terrorist groups from the Damascus suburbs and other Syrian areas” when it could have done so much earlier knowing for a fact as it has for two and a half years already that Russia wouldn’t intervene. It also makes one wonder why the chemical weapons false flag happened so late when the terrorists were on the brink of defeat and not before then like “logic” would have otherwise dictated, given that they evidently had the means to do this the entire time and everything that’s followed was clearly choreographed well in advance.

The “Deal” That Never Was

While it can never be known for sure, the answer is probably what the author speculated in his analysis last night titled “Tick-Tock, Time’s Up: What Will Syria Do?”, during which the question was posed of whether or not everything is happening because of President Assad’s reported refusal to attend last week’s Tripartite meeting in Ankara. After all, that’s the only possible event that could have been the “deal-breaker” that got the US and its allies to change their mind this weekend by pulling out of whatever “gentlemen’s agreement” they could have had with Russia and stage the latest provocation at the last possible moment that they were realistically able to while they still had their assets in place.

To expand on this theory and channel a key point in the aforementioned analysis, Russia might have assured the US that it could guarantee President Assad’s attendance at the event as proof of his government’s sincere desire to make some kind of tangible progress in the Syrian peace process unlike the “dilly-dallying” that it’s suspected of doing in the past 15 months since the Russian-written “draft constitution” was first presented. Accepting the “legitimacy” of Turkish-backed proxy “rebels” in Idlib, Afrin, and Al-Bab would have implied the inevitable reversal of Damascus’ erstwhile insistence on retaining the constitutional unity of the state and its “compromise” in agreeing to “decentralization”, which could also resolve the country’s “Kurdish Question” as well.

In exchange for this “concession”, the US might have withdrawn its troops from Al-Tanf to east of the Euphrates, while Washington and Ankara would have “accepted” that Assad could remain in office. Pro-“Israeli” “rebels” would have probably still retained their occupied territory in southwestern Syria in de-facto expanding the Zionist occupation zone further inland, but that issue could have been “officially” addressed later, just like the US’ hopes that Damascus would remove Iranian and Hezbollah troops from the Arab Republic. All that each of the foreign powers involved in Syria aside from Iran needed to see at this moment was that President Assad would prove his “flexibility” in “compromising” on at least one issue during his “anticipated” trip to Ankara, but alas it wasn’t to be.

Hell Hath No Fury Like An Amero-Zionist Scorned

It can only be guessed whether or not – and if so, how – Russia might have convinced the US and its allies that President Assad would attend the Ankara Summit, but going with what would have been this game-changing idea for a moment, it would in retrospect explain why they delayed their false flag chemical weapons scenario for so long and only went forward with it after their expectations were crushed following the Syrian leader’s refusal to “play his role”. Should this have been the case, then “Israel’s” feeble missile strike would have just been a message to Moscow that it had better get Damascus to acquiesce to some kind of political “compromise” as soon as possible otherwise something much worse might be in store for the Arab Republic.

That might be why Trump just dramatically declared that “major decisions on Syria” would come in the next 24-48 hours (and which might be carried out jointly with France in de-facto making it a NATO operation) in order to put maximum pressure on Russia to force some tangible “concessions” from Syria, more than likely in the direction of a 2013-like “last minute solution” to avert a massive strike. This time, instead of surrendering its chemical weapons, it could potentially be “convinced” to sacrifice its alliance with Iran and Hezbollah by announcing that their services are no longer needed in the country following President Putin’s recent reaffirmation that Daesh has been militarily defeated. Truthfully, there isn’t anything else that Syria could probably do to prevent what might be to come.

First Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council’s Committee on International Affairs Vladimir Jabarov made it clear last year when Trump first bombed Syria that “Russia has no intentions to use its Aerospace Forces against US missiles if Washington decides to carry out new strikes in Syria as it could lead to a large-scale war”. Bearing this in mind and reassessing what just happened, “Israel’s” feeble strike this morning can be read as a “test run” for identifying the true strength of Syria’s air defense units and to ensure that Moscow won’t interfere so long as “deconfliction mechanisms” are successfully employed to guarantee the safety of its Syrian-based servicemen, thus avoiding the “tripwire” that would necessitate a Russian military response no matter what.

Concluding Thoughts

What all of this implies is that the next 24-48 hours will be absolutely pivotal for Syria’s survival as a state because the US is evidently planning a major strike against it after losing patience with President Assad’s lack of willingness to “compromise” during the 15-month-long Russian-led peace process, and the Pentagon believes that its “test run” last year and the one that “Israel” just pulled off earlier this morning prove that the Russian military won’t stand in its way by risking World War III to stop it. President Assad’s reported refusal to attend the latest Tripartite meeting in Ankara was the “last straw” that convinced them that they have nothing at all to gain by indefinitely delaying their planned chemical weapons false flag provocation and resultant follow-up aggressions any longer.

Presuming that the educated guesses presented in this analysis are accurate to a certain degree and more or less reflect the general course of events that led up to the present crisis, then the only foreseeable action that could avert the coming catastrophe in Syria is if Damascus acquiesces to Moscow’s “suggestions” in making immediate and tangible “concessions” towards the peace process in the direction of “decentralization” and the phased removal of Iranian & Hezbollah forces from the country. It’s difficult to think of anything else that could satiate the US and “Israel’s” desire for a larger war, one which Russia already declared last year that it wants no part of, but judging by what happened since 2013, this might only “buy more time” for Syria until its enemies demand something more from it again in the future.

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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.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

Washington and its allies use the Security Council as a sound stage platform for their imperial agenda – rule of law principles ignored, the UN Charter, other international law and America’s Constitution discarded.

Time and again the same or similar scenarios unfolded on the world stage, as well as in Washington and other key NATO capitals.

Facts don’t matter, only a pre-planned imperial agenda, naked aggression its defining feature. The die appears cast in Syria. Regime change is Washington’s long-sought objective.

Things appear heading toward something similar to US-led aggression on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, smashing these countries, eliminating their leadership, installing illegitimate pro-Western puppet regimes.

Russia wastes time and energy demanding an independent probe into the fake April 7 Douma incident.

Russian experts explaining no CW traces were found in the town, no residents ill or dead from toxic exposure, and a Kremlin press statement saying Putin stressed “the inadmissibility of provocations and speculations on” the alleged Douma incident fall on deaf ears in the West.

Facts are irrelevant. On Monday, Trump signaled what’s coming, the fake/staged Douma CW incident “will be met forcefully” in a day or two, he roared.

Before meeting with his war cabinet, he said

“(w)e’re making a decision as to what we do with respect to the horrible attack (sic) that was made near Damascus” – a decision to come “tonight (Monday) or very shortly thereafter,” adding:

“This is about humanity and it can not be allowed to happen.”

Make no mistake. This is about imperial ruthlessness!

Tass cited a Wall Street Journal report, saying one or more US guided missile destroyers moving into position off the Syrian coast, not there for war games, the real thing likely coming.

The fake Douma CW incident was staged to justify unjustifiable greater US-led aggression on Syria, its military forces the likely target.

During Monday’s Security Council session on Douma, Russian UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya’s remarks were ignored, saying:

“The leadership of the United States, of the United Kingdom and of France, without any justifications and without considering the consequences have engaged in a confrontational policy against Russia and Syria and they are prompting others to follow suit,” adding:

“The fake news on Saturday from Douma is geared toward drawing the attention of society away from the Skripal case, which was muddled up by London, and throwing on Russia completely unconfirmed accusations with the aim of pulling solidarity to build an anti-Russian alliance.”

Raging lunatic fringe hawk Nikki Haley barely stopped short of declaring war herself, roaring:

“I could hold up pictures of babies lying dead next to their mothers, in their diapers, all lying together, dead, ashen blue, open eyed and lifeless, white foam bubbling from their mouths and noses” – no matter the so-called images are fake, Haley ominously adding:

“We have reached the moment where the world must see justice done.”

“History will record this as the moment when the Security Council either discharged its duty or demonstrated its utter and complete failure to protect the people of Syria. Either way, the United States will respond.”

There you have it, another defining moment on the world staged ahead of almost certain US planned aggression – notably with lunatic fringe hawk John Bolton assuming his post as Trump’s national security advisor.

Russia has only one sensible option it’s chosen not to take so far – warning Washington it won’t tolerate US aggression on Syrian forces or its government.

Nebenzya should have announced the following on Monday:

If US-led warplanes attack Syrian positions, they’ll be downed. If US warships conduct similar operations, they’ll be targeted, damaged or sunk.

That’s the only language Washington understands. All else is wasted time and energy falling on deaf ears.

If Moscow doesn’t warn Washington in no uncertain terms, smashing Syria more than already could follow.

If the Syrian Arab Republic goes, Iran is next. Russia has a choice.

Challenge Washington in Syria or risk having to do it in the Islamic Republic, then its heartland – the ominous possibility of catastrophic nuclear war.

A Final Comment

AMN News reported Russia’s Black Sea Fleet “placed on high alert after a US (war)ship reportedly left Cyprus for Syrian waters.”

“According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, their Black Sea fleet is currently on a high level combat alert in preparation for a potential attack by the US” – nothing more known at this time.

Southfront reported sophisticated Russian air defense systems and “multirole” warplanes also placed on combat alert.

Things could be heading toward something far more serious regionally than occurred before – much more on this as events warrant.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

Only 100 captives detained for years by Jaysh al-Islam terror group were released yesterday as per a deal with the Syrian government.

With expectation to free up to 5 thousands captives, it turned out that only 200 of them remained alive throughout years of captivity.

Sources said that Jaysh al-Islam manipulated the Syrian government and Russian mediators by providing fake lists of the captives with the objective to secure a surrender deal whereby its militants can safely leave their bastion to the country’s north.

Thousands of the kidnapped were executed by their captors or died of illness, hunger or fatigue while forced to dig tunnels.

Hundreds of distressed families desperately waited for their kidnapped relatives at al-Fayhaa Stadium in Damascus as the last 2 buses carrying around 100 captives arrived at the overcrowded facility.

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All images in this article are from the author.

At the end of 2001, Argentina’s political and economic crisis was the main theme in Latin American news coverage. The economic recession that culminated in intense popular protests and the resignation of then-president Fernando de la Rúa also fostered a peculiar phenomenon: that of companies recuperated by their workers.

Since then, the formation of workers’ cooperatives to recuperate companies about to close their doors or which have already declared bankruptcy has occurred more frequently in the country, especially in the textile and metalworking sectors. However, in the last two years and for the first time, media outlets were the majority of companies recuperated in Argentina in the period, according to a survey of the Open Faculty Program of the University of Buenos Aires.

Between 2016 and 2017, at least six media were recuperated by their workers after they were closed or abandoned by their owners: the local newspapers La Nueva Mañana, in Córdoba; El Ciudadano of Rosario; La Portada, of Esquel; and El Correo, of Firmat; plus the newspaper Tiempo Argentino and online news site Infonews, both based in Buenos Aires. In the previous survey, referring to the period between 2010 and 2013, the Open Faculty Program registered the recuperation of only one media outlet.

For specialists and journalists of these outlets reviewed by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, this is a reconfiguration of the country’s media landscape that is connected to the relationship between media and governments, but also represents new paths for journalism in Argentina.

“Por Más Tiempo” (For More Time)

Social scientist Natalia Bauni, of the Social Observatory on Recuperated and Self-Managed Companies (Osera), also from the University of Buenos Aires, told the Knight Center that the central point of the recuperation of companies by their workers is the conservation of jobs.

“Far from having a revolutionary characteristic or being an attack on the system, it has as an important center the theme that they are all older, salaried workers, who found it practically impossible to insert themselves in the labour market,” Bauni said. “The cooperative was just a legal way to defend the work,” the social scientist said, citing the Argentine Bankruptcy Law, which provides for this type of recuperation of bankrupt companies.

Social anthropologist Andrés Ruggeri, director of the Open Faculty Program, recalled that before 2016 there were cases of media that were recuperated and administered by workers’ cooperatives, mostly in the interior of the country. Among them are Comercio y Justicia of Córdoba and El Diario de la Región in the Argentine Chaco, both refounded in 2002, the peak of the phenomenon of recuperated companies, and Revista Cítrica, which emerged after the end of the newspaper Crítica, in 2010.

In December of 2015, the country’s media panorama changed along with the political rupture with the election and inauguration of Mauricio Macri as president after 12 years of Kirchners in office, with Néstor (2003-2007) and Cristina Fernández (2008-2015).

Tiempo Argentino team

In May 2016, representatives of the Argentine Federation of Press Workers (FATPREN, for its acronym in Spanish) attended a meeting of the Committee on Freedom of Expression of the Chamber of Deputies and stated that, so far, the entity had registered about 2,500 layoffs in the sector. In November last year, there was a new meeting between deputies and representatives of communication workers in which the latter asked for a “labour emergency” to be declared in the sector for layoffs and media closures.

“It was in this panorama that the first company recuperated during the period of Macri appeared, precisely, a media outlet, the newspaper Tiempo Argentino,” Ruggeri said.

The case of Tiempo is emblematic of this recent phenomenon in the country. The newspaper was founded in 2010 by businessman Sergio Szpolski and was part of Grupo 23, owned by Szpolski and Matias Garfunkel. Composed of nine media outlets, including newspapers, radio stations, news sites and a TV channel, the group received the highest amount of official government advertising between July 2009 and July 2015 during the Fernández de Kirchner government, according to magazine Perfil.

With the change of government, as early as December 2015 the workers of Tiempo Argentino stopped receiving their salaries, Javier Borelli, journalist and president of the Cooperativa Por Más Tiempo, told the Knight Center.

“The newspaper was sustained in good part because the owner of the media outlet charged the previous government. When the previous government left, the owner stopped paying salaries and disappeared.”

In February 2016 the newspaper was no longer printed. After three months of unpaid work and attempts to contact the owner of the newspaper and understand the future of Tiempo Argentino, about 100 journalists decided to organize and occupy the newsroom “while we saw which way to get ahead,” he said. One decision was to produce a special print edition to be sold at the demonstration in Buenos Aires on March 24, the annual date in which Argentina recalls the 30,000 dead and disappeared by the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.

The journalists themselves went to the streets of the Argentine capital to sell the special copies and ask the public if there was interest in continuing to support Tiempo if the newspaper were recuperated by its workers. The 30,000 printed copies were sold and the public response was positive. “We decided then to take the money collected and share it among those who had not been paid in three months, and the rest was saved to make the first two editions of a cooperative newspaper,” Borelli said. The first edition of Tiempo Argentino as a cooperative owned newspaper was launched one month later in April 2016.

Three months later, with the newsroom still occupied by three journalists of the cooperative who guarded the place, a group of about 20 men invaded the building, which also housed Radio América, also part of Grupo 23. At night, they expelled the people they found there and destroyed work equipment from Tiempo‘s newsroom, La Nación reported. Businessman Mariano Martínez Rojas was accused of usurpation and damages for destruction at the building, La Nación reported. According to reports at the time, Martínez Rojas said he had purchased Tiempo Argentino and Radio América. However Tiempo Argentino reported in September the businessman was never “able to prove ownership of the media in the courts.” Still, other reports referred to him as the owner.

Attack at Tiempo Argentino

The incident was condemned by several Argentine and international organizations, including the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which asked the Argentine State to investigate the case. However, investigations have not progressed and the judicial case regarding the attack to date has not been tried, Borelli said. Martínez Rojas was detained by U.S. authorities in January 2018 in Miami, where he was a fugitive from allegations by the Argentine courts of extortion, threats and money laundering.

Tiempo‘s editorial staff then moved to another building and today there are 100 people, including journalists, designers, photographers and newspaper management staff.

“In some cases, they only dedicate themselves to functions that have nothing to do with journalism, and in some cases they have a double function. They continue writing for the newspaper, and at the same time they do the commercial relations, organize the work, different administrative tasks,” Borelli said.

The newspaper also stopped being printed every day and today it is published in print only on Sundays, when it has a circulation of 30 thousand copies.

“We consider that we have a digital newspaper from Monday to Saturday and a print edition on Sundays,” the journalist explained.

Since its establishment as a cooperative, Tiempo Argentino has sought to strengthen its relationship with readers by inviting them to help support the newspaper. According to Borelli, 70 per cent of Tiempo‘s income comes from contributions from readers, both those who buy or subscribe to the print newspaper on Sundays and those who have joined the newspaper and pay about 120 pesos a month (about $6 (US)). Another 20 per cent is accounted for by advertising sales and 10 per cent by activities carried out by the cooperative, such as journalism workshops and cultural events.

“Today we have almost 2,000 people that are members of the newspaper, additionally we have about 2,500 who are subscribers of the print newspaper,” said Borelli.

For him, in the last two years “the logic that readers also feel responsible for financing a media outlet and the understanding that the journalistic production is an expensive event, that it’s worth giving to produce information that is necessary, has seen a strong rise in Argentina.”

Business Responsibilities

Another Argentine media outlet recuperated by its workers as a cooperative in 2016 was Infonews, which became the first online news site recuperated in the country. Founded in 2008 as the news site of Grupo 23, Infonews gathered the material published in the group’s other media outlets – Tiempo Argentino among them – and also produced its own content with approximately 50 journalists and staff in the newsroom.

This was until February 2016, when workers stopped receiving their salaries, Daniel Jatimliansky, secretary of the Infonews workers’ cooperative, told the Knight Center. Unlike what happened with the group’s other media, in which there was no official closure by the owners, the company even announced the closure of the site in May 2016.

Infonews team

This is when workers started talking about forming a cooperative to recuperate the site, Jatimliansky said. “The emptying of Grupo 23 affected 800 colleagues. The dilemma was to go looking for work in a labour market with a lot of demand, little supply, that was increasingly precarious, or to try to sustain our labour sources,” the journalist said.

After talks with the company failed on the compensations due, the workers continued with the formation of the cooperative and put the site on air again in August 2016, now with approximately 20 professionals on the team. Like Tiempo, Infonews also has a membership program, whose contributions are the cooperative’s main source of income, coupled with the sale of advertising and editorial services.

For Jatimliansky, the scarce job offerings for communication professionals in Argentina today and the previous experience of other workers with the recuperation of companies makes this a viable alternative for the survival of media after the withdrawal of owners. He stresses, however, the responsibility of companies and the State in the situations experienced not only by Infonews and Tiempo Argentino, but also La Nueva Mañana, El Ciudadano and La Portada

“The closure of Grupo 23 was the spearhead that showed that it was easy to violate employer, salary and fiscal obligations without legal consequences,” Jatimliansky said. “While the recuperation of a media outlet and management in a cooperative manner may have a certain epic tone, the State has the obligation to prevent the closure of companies and to demand that employers comply with their obligations to workers.”

“The Crack”

Social scientist Natalia Bauni assesses that the recent phenomenon of recuperated media in Argentina is linked to a debate that was ignited during the previous government about a supposed deepening of the division between the governing sectors and the antikirchneristas, which became known as “la grieta” (the crack).

This division would also have been reflected in the media, with some considered to be pro-government – and which were also recipients of large amounts of official publicity, such as Grupo 23 – and others to be oppositionists, as reported by El País. With the rise of Mauricio Macri, the cut in the amount of state publicity seals the collapse or weakening of media considered kirchneristas. This amount is then directed toward media supposedly more aligned with Macri.

Tiempo Argentino Assembly

According to analysis from Chequeado, in 2015, the last year of the Fernández de Kirchner government, the five groups that most benefited by state advertising were 23, América, Indalo, Albavisíon and Clarín, which together received 33 per cent of the total amount distributed by the government. In 2016, the first year of the Macri administration, Grupo Clarín alone received 21 per cent of the total for that year, almost the sum directed to the following four groups: Telefónica, Indalo, América and La Nación.

“Public money that has always flowed to the media in a perverse way, now it has to be made to flow in a democratic and transparent way.”

“Public money cannot be used to build official journalism,” critiqued Fernando Ruiz, professor of journalism and democracy at Universidade Austral, in Buenos Aires, in conversation with the Knight Center. He argued, however, that the State should invest in the construction of quality journalism and that it encourage the self-sufficiency of media.

“This is not just another industry. It is a democratic institution. Therefore public money that has always flowed to the media in a perverse way, now it has to be made to flow in a democratic and transparent way,” he said.

For the professor, the cooperatives of journalists and the self-management of the media by its workers is beneficial to plurality in journalism and democracy.

“Freedom of expression in a country is very related with plurality in the forms of media ownership,” said Ruiz, who believes that society benefits when there is a “mix” between state, commercial and social ownership of media. “In this mixed ownership scheme, it is very difficult for important issues to remain outside the public debate.”

Jatimliansky, from Infonews, believes that the so-called “crack” in Argentine media actually indicates the plurality of voices and media that have been established in recent years. “There are visible editorial differences. When there was no talk of the “crack,” in reality there was an absence of diverse and divergent voices, at least in a massive way,” the journalist said.

One drawback of this idea of division is “the risk of stigmatization of some journalists and media,” Jatimliansky commented, adding that, for this reason, Infonews today clearly positions its journalism: “we fight for human rights and for gender freedom, we identify ourselves as working working men and working women, and we have a progressive and popular editorial line.”

In the case of Tiempo Argentino, even more identified with the former alignment of its former owner to the Fernández de Kirchner government, this stigmatization came with the newspaper’s classification as “kirchnerista.” “Today those of us that make Tiempo Argentino are the workers, we are not the previous owner, and our media is not a kirchnerista media,” said Javier Borelli. “Nor do we intend to bind our media to any political party, nor Kirchner, nor the left, nor any type.”

Crisis and Opportunity

Although they emerged from dramatic situations, the cooperatives of journalists dedicated to recuperating media open new paths for professionals and journalism, Borelli believes. According to him, the experience of Tiempo Argentino has been very interesting and innovative, both for journalists and for the media landscape in Argentina. “Somehow, Tiempo managed to prove that it was possible to make a media cooperative sustained by readers,” he said.

For Borelli, the experience of Tiempo “opens expectations at a time when many jobs are being lost and where information is limited by what the interests of the owners are. As it is a moment of crisis, it can also be a very interesting moment to explore other ways of doing journalism.”

Central to the new Tiempo, according to him, is the intention that “the values of journalism are again to inform society, put together coverage in which the need for human rights, in the eyes of the population and not necessarily the interests of the owners of the media, is central.”

In this sense, the objective of the workers of Tiempo Argentino for the next years is “to build a communications space in Latin America that privileges journalism and journalistic values over the business,” Borelli said. The idea is to promote a congress in 2018 in Buenos Aires of self-managed journalism, gathering experiences from all over the region of media managed by journalists.

“I think having a network that is linked from journalism and not the interests of their owners will allow another look at what is happening in the region,” he said.

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Carolina de Assis is a Brazilian journalist who lives in São Paulo. She holds a master’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from the GEMMA Programme – Università di Bologna (Italy) / Universiteit Utrecht (The Netherlands) and has worked as a news editor at Opera Mundi, a Brazilian international news website. Follow her on Twitter: @caroldeassis.

All images in this article are from the author.

As the situation in Syria continues to escalate, it looks like leaders of “the free world” are more interested in instigating a further escalation rather than to study the Douma “chemical attack” issue in a cool head manner.

On April 10, US President Donald Trump promised a “forceful” response to the alleged chemical attack Douma, located in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta.

“We’re making a decision as to what we do with respect to the horrible attack that was made near Damascus,” Trump told reporters.

“We have a lot of options militarily,” he said adding that a response would be decided “shortly”.

On April 9, Trump promised “major decisions” after the US figures out who was responsible for the alleged attack in Douma — Russia, or Syria, or Iran, or “all of them together.”

So, is the US trying to figure out who is responsible? Indeed it would appear that Washington has already decided who is to blame and the only problem is to justify the upcoming aggression against Syria.

During the recent UN Security Council meeting, US envoy Nikki Haley claimed that the US will act against the Assad government with or without a UN blessing.

“I could hold up pictures of all of this killing and suffering for the Council to see, but what would be the point? The monster who was responsible for these attacks has no conscience, not even to even be shocked by pictures of dead children.

The Russian regime, whose hands are all covered in the blood of Syrian children, cannot be ashamed by pictures of its victims. We’ve tried that before. We must not overlook Russia and Iran’s roles in enabling the Assad regime’s murderous destruction. Russia and Iran have military advisers at Assad’s airfields and operations centers. Russian officials are on the ground helping direct the regime’s “starve and surrender” campaign, and Iranian allied forces do much of the dirty work. When the Syrian military pummels civilians, they rely on the military hardware given by Russia.

…

We are beyond showing pictures of dead babies. We are beyond appeals to conscience. We have reached the moment when the world must see justice done. History will record this as the moment when the Security Council either discharged its duty or demonstrated its utter and complete failure to protect the people of Syria,” Haley said.

For Haley there is no doubt what “monster” is responsible for the alleged chemical attack in Douma. No proofs or investigation needed to confirm this.

Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) accusations have proven to be a useful propaganda tool. This tool is actively used in Syria.

According to circulating reports, the Pentagon has already provided Trump with military options, which could be implemented to punish Syria.

Reuters says one of the options is the so-called multinational response, i.e. full-scale invasion, which may involve France, the UK and some other US allies.

Israel is another power that actively fuels the conflict with public statements and even actions, like the April 9 strike on the T4 airbase. Tel Aviv, which  has for a long time been supporting anti-Assad forces in Syria, has only contributed to the increasing Iranian influence in the country. It needs extraordinary measures to contain the Iranian expansion. No doubt, the Israeli leadership sees Trump’s promise of “forceful” response as a good chance to gain an upper hand in the battle for Syria.

The question is how will Russia respond?

On April 9, experts of the Russian Defense Ministry visited the parts of Douma where the alleged chemical attack took place. According to the defense ministry’s statement, no traces of chemical weapons use were found. The Russian military also described photos of the chemical attack victims posted by the so-called White Helmets as fake.

Responding to Haley’s statement during the UNSC meeting, Russian representative Vassily Nebenzia called the accusations against Damascus “fake news”. Nebenzia once again warned the US and its allies of the possible “grave consequences” of a military action against Syria.

“Do you now understand what you have done?” Nebenzia repeated Putin’s question about the US-led reckless games in the Middle East. “No, you do not.”

“Everywhere you go, everything you touch, you leave behind only chaos. You try to fish in those murky waters, but the only thing you catch is mutants.”

“What [the] military misadventures of the West bring about is well known, as shown by the examples of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Nobody has vested you with the power to act like the world’s policeman, or to act like the prosecutor, judge, and executioner either,” he said.

Meanwhile, reports appeared that US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Donald Cook, armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles, was “harassed” by low-flying Russian warplanes in a clear signal of the growing tensions in the region.

Earlier the Russian Defense Ministry warned that it is ready to take actions against any “missiles” or “launchers” that will endanger its troops deployed across Syria.

Considering that any large-scale US military action against the Assad government will for sure put Russian troops in danger, Moscow will have to respond…

Last time the world powers were close to a military confrontation over Syria in April 2017. However, the US cruise missile strike on the Shayrat airbase appeared to be more a PR move than a real military action.

But what now?

The video below was originally released in November, 2016. It depicts the worst-case escalation scenario of the conflict in Syria. The recent events show that this analysis remains relevant to this day:

The Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Conflicting Parties told the media on Monday that Syrian doctors have said that they are not dealing with symptoms associated with chemical poisoning on patients.

“Syrian doctors in Douma have dismissed the rumors they had received patients suffering from chemical poisoning,” the center said.

“In an interview to the media doctor Yaser Abdel Majid, of the city hospital, said that they had never received patients with chemical poisoning either last weekend or since the beginning of hostilities in Syria,” the center continued.

The medics said that

“all those who had received their medical aid had ordinary injuries, fractures and fragmentation and gunshot wounds.”

Meanwhile ambulance driver Ahmed Saur also followed on from this report.

“On April 6-8 we had not a single patient suffering from chemical poisoning. Only ordinary war wounds,” he said.

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Featured image is from the author.

When the President of the United States forgets that he is no longer running the set of The Apprentice, with its faux callousness and elevated brutality, he can prove devastating to certain stocks.  Even in the land of the plutocrat and the capitalist, a bad word can signal the plummeting of value.  What is so unnerving about such a phenomenon is that it comes from the White House, a place normally inclined to worship the machinations of the US corporation and the sweet musings of Mammon.

Donald Trump’s verbal bashing of Amazon has been launched on a few fronts.  One was a rather personal target in the form of the company’s overlord Jeff Bezos.  Rather idiosyncratically, Trump insisted the United States Postal Service had been fashioned as something of a “Delivery Boy” thereby short changing US customers.  Amazon, he proclaimed, would pay.

At the end of March, he claimed that the

“US Post Office will lose $1.50 on average for each package it delivers for Amazon.  That amounts to billions of dollars.”

On April 5, while making remarks on Air Force One, he explained to reporters how,

“The Post Office is not doing well on Amazon, that I can tell you.  But we’re going to see what happens.”

True to form, he combined a range of grievances in one blustering tweet.

“I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election.  Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!”

Speculation was not far behind about another connection tying Bezos to Trump’s ire.  Move over the postal link, and focus, instead, on The Washington Post, which was acquired by Bezos in 2013 ending 80 years of control by the Graham family.  The paper has been rather terrier like in pursuing Trump, while Trump has been keen to leave no turn un-stoned on the part of the publication.

On April 8, Trump called the publication

“far more fiction than fact.  Story after story is made up garbage – more like a poorly written novel than good reporting.  Always quoting sources (not names), many of which don’t exist.”

The paper has been given that most splintered of accolades by the President: “The Fake News Washington Post” and deemed a lobbying extension of the Bezos empire.

“Amazon is not just on an even playing field.  They have a tremendous lobbying effort, in addition to having the Washington Post, which is, as far as I’m concerned, another lobbyist.”

In of itself, as is the nature of Trumpist insight, it should never be presumed that the wealthy owner of a paper would not use it as an outlet of self-directed opinion and favour.  The injudicious term here – lobbying – may well be something of a stretch, an elastic novelty, but the course of history has been influenced by many an irritatingly influential paper mogul.

William Randolph Hearst has a fairly flavoured notoriety on this point (“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”), not to mention a certain Australian-turned US citizen Rupert Murdoch, who has made everybody else’s business his own from hacking phones to influencing the rise and fall of governments.  Such paper and digital empires fuse the politics of the moment with the prejudices of the magnate. Bums, tits and readers duly translate into election victories and wars.

Publisher Frederick Ryan Jr, however, claims that Bezos is no tyrant over the publishing schedule.

 “Jeff has never intervened in a story.  He’s never critiqued a story. He’s not directed or proposed editorials or endorsements.”

A man in a hurry, indeed.

Not all of Trump’s blows fail to find their target.  On the issue of tax-avoidance, Amazon remains both tarnished and a master.  It has exploited regulatory loopholes with an eagle-eyed professionalism.  It courted US states on the subject of establishing a second headquarters, fielding the sorts of offers that would have made any tax officer scream blue murder (or theft).  In 2017, the company paid no US income tax upon $5.6 billion in domestic profits.  This was occasioned by a windfall of $789 million accrued from tax changes.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has been particularly keen in keeping an eye on Amazon’s tax performance, noting that over five previous years, Amazon forked out a humble tax rate of a mere 11.4 percent. Other retail organisations showed either less accountancy acumen or more principle in paying rates between 35 percent and 40 percent.

A wonder, then, that Trump did not thank Amazon for being such a sterling role model in undermining the US tax system, given his own previous self-congratulatory remarks praising a certain genius in evading the tax man. But if Trump can do it, no one else can, or should.

In current practice, TrumpStore.com has given its own little nod to the practices of Amazon, collecting sales taxes in a mere two states – Louisiana and Florida.  A Trump Organization spokesperson felt obliged to note that,

“Trumpstore.com has always, and will always continue to collect, report, and remit sales taxes in jurisdictions where it has an obligation to do so.”

The ongoing result of Trump’s Amazonian lashing has proven costly.  Talking about level playing fields is fine nonsense with a sprinkling of populism – Trump is genetically programmed against equality – but those in finance markets see it with differently tinted glasses.  The moment Twitter-in-Chief started his demonic magic, shares fell by almost 6 percent.  It was a round of devastation costing the company $53 billion.  Few tears, however, were shed. Even fewer will be shed for Bezos.

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

Think of it as the most momentous military planning on Earth right now. Who’s even paying attention, given the eternal changing of the guard at the White House, as well as the latest in tweets, sexual revelations, and investigations of every sort? And yet it increasingly looks as if, thanks to current Pentagon planning, a twenty-first-century version of the Cold War (with dangerous new twists) has begun and hardly anyone has even noticed. 

In 2006, when the Department of Defense spelled out its future security role, it saw only one overriding mission: its “Long War” against international terrorism. “With its allies and partners, the United States must be prepared to wage this war in many locations simultaneously and for some years to come,” the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review explained that year.  Twelve years later, the Pentagon has officially announced that that long war is drawing to a close — even though at least seven counterinsurgency conflicts still rage across the Greater Middle East and Africa — and a new long war has begun, a permanent campaign to contain China and Russia in Eurasia.

“Great power competition, not terrorism, has emerged as the central challenge to U.S. security and prosperity,” claimed Pentagon Comptroller David Norquist while releasing the Pentagon’s $686 billion budget request in January.  “It is increasingly apparent that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian values and, in the process, replace the free and open order that has enabled global security and prosperity since World War II.”

Of course, just how committed President Trump is to the preservation of that “free and open order” remains questionable given his determination to scuttle international treaties and ignite a global trade war. Similarly, whether China and Russia truly seek to undermine the existing world order or simply make it less American-centric is a question that deserves close attention, just not today.  The reason is simple enough. The screaming headline you should have seen in any paper (but haven’t) is this: the U.S. military has made up its mind about the future. It has committed itself and the nation to a three-front geopolitical struggle to resist Chinese and Russian advances in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Important as this strategic shift may be, you won’t hear about it from the president, a man lacking the attention span necessary for such long-range strategic thinking and one who views Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping as “frenemies” rather than die-hard adversaries. To fully appreciate the momentous changes occurring in U.S. military planning, it’s necessary to take a deep dive into the world of Pentagon scripture: budget documents and the annual “posture statements” of regional commanders already overseeing the implementation of that just-born three-front strategy.

The New Geopolitical Chessboard

This renewed emphasis on China and Russia in U.S. military planning reflects the way top military officials are now reassessing the global strategic equation, a process that began long before Donald Trump entered the White House. Although after 9/11, senior commanders fully embraced the “long war against terror” approach to the world, their enthusiasm for endless counterterror operations leading essentially nowhere in remote and sometimes strategically unimportant places began to wane in recent years as they watched China and Russia modernizing their military forces and using them to intimidate neighbors.

While the long war against terror did fuel a vast, ongoing expansion of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Forces (SOF) — now a secretive army of 70,000 nestled inside the larger military establishment — it provided surprisingly little purpose or real work for the military’s “heavy metal” units: the Army’s tank brigades, the Navy’s carrier battle groups, the Air Force’s bomber squadrons, and so forth. Yes, the Air Force in particular has played a major supporting role in recent operations in Iraq and Syria, but the regular military has largely been sidelined there and elsewhere by lightly equipped SOF forces and drones. Planning for a “real war” against a “peer competitor” (one with forces and weaponry resembling our own) was until recently given far lower priority than the country’s never-ending conflicts across the Greater Middle East and Africa.  This alarmed and even angered those in the regular military whose moment, it seems, has now finally arrived.

“Today, we are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding,” the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy declares.

“We are facing increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order” — a decline officially attributed for the first time not to al-Qaeda and ISIS, but to the aggressive behavior of China and Russia. Iran and North Korea are also identified as major threats, but of a distinctly secondary nature compared to the menace posed by the two great-power competitors.

Unsurprisingly enough, this shift will require not only greater spending on costly, high-tech military hardware but also a redrawing of the global strategic map to favor the regular military. During the long war on terror, geography and boundaries appeared less important, given that terrorist cells seemed capable of operating anyplace where order was breaking down. The U.S. military, convinced that it had to be equally agile, readied itself to deploy (often Special Operations forces) to remote battlefields across the planet, borders be damned.

On the new geopolitical map, however, America faces well-armed adversaries with every intention of protecting their borders, so U.S. forces are now being arrayed along an updated version of an older, more familiar three-front line of confrontation. In Asia, the U.S. and its key allies (South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia) are to face China across a line extending from the Korean peninsula to the waters of the East and South China Seas and the Indian Ocean. In Europe, the U.S. and its NATO allies will do the same for Russia on a front extending from Scandinavia and the Baltic Republics south to Romania and then east across the Black Sea to the Caucasus. Between these two theaters of contention lies the ever-turbulent Greater Middle East, with the United States and its two crucial allies there, Israel and Saudi Arabia, facing a Russian foothold in Syria and an increasingly assertive Iran, itself drawing closer to China and Russia.  From the Pentagon’s perspective, this is to be the defining strategic global map for the foreseeable future. Expect most upcoming major military investments and initiatives to focus on bolstering U.S. naval, air, and ground strength on its side of these lines, as well as on targeting Sino-Russian vulnerabilities across them.

There’s no better way to appreciate the dynamics of this altered strategic outlook than to dip into the annual “posture statements” of the heads of the Pentagon’s “unified combatant commands,” or combined Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine Corps headquarters, covering the territories surrounding China and Russia: Pacific Command (PACOM), with responsibility for all U.S. forces in Asia; European Command (EUCOM), covering U.S. forces from Scandinavia to the Caucasus; and Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees the Middle East and Central Asia where so many of the country’s counterterror wars are still underway.

The senior commanders of these meta-organizations are the most powerful U.S. officials in their “areas of responsibility” (AORs), exercising far more clout than any American ambassador stationed in the region (and often local heads of state as well). That makes their statements and the shopping lists of weaponry that invariably go with them of real significance for anyone who wants to grasp the Pentagon’s vision of America’s global military future.

The Indo-Pacific Front

Commanding PACOM is Admiral Harry Harris Jr., a long-time naval aviator. In his annual posture statement, delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 15th, Harris painted a grim picture of America’s strategic position in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea, he argued, China was emerging as a formidable threat to America’s vital interests.

“The People’s Liberation Army’s rapid evolution into a modern, high-tech fighting force continues to be both impressive and concerning,” he asserted. “PLA capabilities are progressing faster than any other nation in the world, benefitting from robust resourcing and prioritization.”

Most threatening, in his view, is Chinese progress in developing intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and advanced warships. Such missiles, he explained, could strike U.S. bases in Japan or on the island of Guam, while the expanding Chinese navy could challenge the U.S. Navy in seas off China’s coast and someday perhaps America’s command of the western Pacific.

“If this [shipbuilding] program continues,” he said, “China will surpass Russia as the world’s second largest navy by 2020, when measured in terms of submarines and frigate-class ships or larger.”

To counter such developments and contain Chinese influence requires, of course, spending yet more taxpayer dollars on advanced weapons systems, especially precision-guided missiles. Admiral Harris called for vastly increasing investment in such weaponry in order to overpower current and future Chinese capabilities and ensure U.S. military dominance of China’s air and sea space.

“In order to deter potential adversaries in the Indo-Pacific,” he declared, “we must build a more lethal force by investing in critical capabilities and harnessing innovation.”

His budgetary wish list was impressive. Above all, he spoke with great enthusiasm about new generations of aircraft and missiles — what are called, in Pentagonese, “anti-access/area-denial” systems — capable of striking Chinese IRBM batteries and other weapons systems intended to keep American forces safely away from Chinese territory. He also hinted that he wouldn’t mind having new nuclear-armed missiles for this purpose — missiles, he suggested, that could be launched from ships and planes and so would skirt the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, to which the U.S. is a signatory and which bans land-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles. (To give you a feel for the arcane language of Pentagon nuclear cognoscenti, here’s how he put it: “We must continue to expand Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty-compliant theater strike capabilities to effectively counter adversary anti-access/area-denial [A2/AD] capabilities and force preservation tactics.”)

Finally, to further strengthen the U.S. defense line in the region, Harris called for enhanced military ties with various allies and partners, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia. PACOM’s goal, he stated, is to “maintain a network of like-minded allies and partners to cultivate principled security networks, which reinforce the free and open international order.” Ideally, he added, this network will eventually encompass India, further extending the encirclement of China.

The European Theater

A similarly embattled future, even if populated by different actors in a different landscape, was offered by Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of EUCOM, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on March 8th. For him, Russia is the other China. As he put it in a bone-chilling description,

“Russia seeks to change the international order, fracture NATO, and undermine U.S. leadership in order to protect its regime, reassert dominance over its neighbors, and achieve greater influence around the globe… Russia has demonstrated its willingness and capability to intervene in countries along its periphery and to project power — especially in the Middle East.”

This, needless to say, is not the outlook we’re hearing from President Trump, who has long appeared reluctant to criticize Vladimir Putin or paint Russia as a full-fledged adversary. For American military and intelligence officials, however, Russia unquestionably poses the preeminent threat to U.S. security interests in Europe.  It is now being spoken of in a fashion that should bring back memories of the Cold War era.

“Our highest strategic priority,” Scaparrotti insisted, “is to deter Russia from engaging in further aggression and exercising malign influence over our allies and partners. [To this end,] we are… updating our operational plans to provide military response options to defend our European allies against Russian aggression.”

The cutting edge of EUCOM’s anti-Russian drive is the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), a project President Obama initiated in 2014 following the Russian seizure of Crimea. Originally known as the European Reassurance Initiative, the EDI is intended to bolster U.S. and NATO forces deployed in the “front-line states” — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland — facing Russia on NATO’s “Eastern Front.” According to the Pentagon wish list submitted in February, some $6.5 billion are to be allocated to the EDI in 2019. Most of those funds will be used to stockpile munitions in the front-line states, enhance Air Force basing infrastructure, conduct increased joint military exercises with allied forces, and rotate additional U.S.-based forces into the region. In addition, some $200 million will be devoted to a Pentagon “advise, train, and equip” mission in Ukraine.

Like his counterpart in the Pacific theater, General Scaparrotti also turns out to have an expensive wish list of future weaponry, including advanced planes, missiles, and other high-tech weapons that, he claims, will counter modernizing Russian forces. In addition, recognizing Russia’s proficiency in cyberwarfare, he’s calling for a substantial investment in cyber technology and, like Admiral Harris, he cryptically hinted at the need for increased investment in nuclear forces of a sort that might be “usable” on a future European battlefield.

Between East and West: Central Command

Overseeing a startling range of war-on-terror conflicts in the vast, increasingly unstable region stretching from PACOM’s western boundary to EUCOM’s eastern one is the U.S. Central Command. For most of its modern history, CENTCOM has been focused on counterterrorism and the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan in particular. Now, however, even as the previous long war continues, the Command is already beginning to position itself for a new Cold War-revisited version of perpetual struggle, a plan — to resurrect a dated term — to contain both China and Russia in the Greater Middle East.

In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CENTCOM commander Army General Joseph Votel concentrated on the status of U.S. operations against ISIS in Syria and against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but he also affirmed that the containment of China and Russia has become an integral part of CENTCOM’s future strategic mission:

“The recently published National Defense Strategy rightly identifies the resurgence of great power competition as our principal national security challenge and we see the effects of that competition throughout the region.”

Through its support of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its efforts to gain influence with other key actors in the region, Russia, Votel claimed, is playing an increasingly conspicuous role in Centcom’s AOR. China is also seeking to enhance its geopolitical clout both economically and through a small but growing military presence. Of particular concern, Votel asserted, is the Chinese-managed port at Gwadar in Pakistan on the Indian Ocean and a new Chinese base in Djibouti on the Red Sea, across from Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Such facilities, he claimed, contribute to China’s “military posture and force projection” in CENTCOM’s AOR and are signals of a challenging future for the U.S. military.

Under such circumstances, Votel testified, it is incumbent upon CENTCOM to join PACOM and EUCOM in resisting Chinese and Russian assertiveness.

“We have to be prepared to address these threats, not just in the areas in which they reside, but the areas in which they have influence.”

Without providing any details, he went on to say,

“We have developed… very good plans and processes for how we will do that.”

What that means is unclear at best, but despite Donald Trump’s campaign talk about a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria once ISIS and the Taliban are defeated, it seems increasingly clear that the U.S. military is preparing to station its forces in those (and possibly other) countries across CENTCOM’s region of responsibility indefinitely, fighting terrorism, of course, but also ensuring that there will be a permanent U.S. military presence in areas that could see intensifying geopolitical competition among the major powers.

An Invitation to Disaster

In relatively swift fashion, American military leaders have followed up their claim that the U.S. is in a new long war by sketching the outlines of a containment line that would stretch from the Korean Peninsula around Asia across the Middle East into parts of the former Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and finally to the Scandinavian countries. Under their plan, American military forces — reinforced by the armies of trusted allies — should garrison every segment of this line, a grandiose scheme to block hypothetical advances of Chinese and Russian influence that, in its global reach, should stagger the imagination. Much of future history could be shaped by such an outsized effort.

Questions for the future include whether this is either a sound strategic policy or truly sustainable. Attempting to contain China and Russia in such a manner will undoubtedly provoke countermoves, some undoubtedly difficult to resist, including cyber attacks and various kinds of economic warfare. And if you imagined that a war on terror across huge swaths of the planet represented a significant global overreach for a single power, just wait. Maintaining large and heavily-equipped forces on three extended fronts will also prove exceedingly costly and will certainly conflict with domestic spending priorities and possibly provoke a divisive debate over the reinstatement of the draft.

However, the real question — unasked in Washington at the moment — is: Why pursue such a policy in the first place? Are there not other ways to manage the rise of China and Russia’s provocative behavior? What appears particularly worrisome about this three-front strategy is its immense capacity for confrontation, miscalculation, escalation, and finally actual war rather than simply grandiose war planning.

At multiple points along this globe-spanning line — the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, Syria, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea, to name just a few — forces from the U.S. and China or Russia are already in significant contact, often jostling for position in a potentially hostile manner. At any moment, one of these encounters could provoke a firefight leading to unintended escalation and, in the end, possibly all-out combat. From there, almost anything could happen, even the use of nuclear weapons.  Clearly, officials in Washington should be thinking hard before committing Americans to a strategy that will make this increasingly likely and could turn what is still long-war planning into an actual long war with deadly consequences.

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Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at @mklare1.

President Macron announced Paris’ unprecedented decision after meeting with Kurdish leaders in the French capital last week, a move that was summarily denounced by Ankara as “crossing the line” and amounting to the Western European country supporting terrorism through what Turkey would ironically consider to be an “invasion” of Syria.

Intra-NATO conflicts are reaching a boiling point as the US, Greece, and now France all align themselves against Turkey’s regional interests in response to Ankara’s post-coup embrace of multipolarity, which has put tremendous pressure on President Erdogan to walk back his developing pivot or dangerously face the consequences. The Turkish leader has refused to back down and is now forced to confront the prospects of joint American-French support for what his government considers to be Kurdish terrorists, which will only deepen his desire to intensify his country’s strategic redirection eastward.

Not only that, but Turkey might asymmetrically counter France’s unfriendly military deployment through pro-Ankara proxy forces in northern Syria. Turkish media leaked the location of each place that France’s forces will supposedly be deployed to just like they did to the Americans last summer, which can be read as a tacit threat that both countries’ troops might now be targeted by armed groups sympathetic to Turkey in the incipient “Rojava Civil War” that’s unfolding in northern Syria. France’s plans to assist the US in this battlespace and potentially even replace it to a degree if Trump goes through on his intentions to withdraw from the country “very soon” might inevitably lead to Paris getting caught in a second Malian-like quagmire, albeit this time it would be fighting against actual rebels in what has now become a multisided “civil war within a civil war” and not against terrorists.

The fast-moving developments go to show that the old model of colonialism no longer works in post-colonial societies where former colonizers sought to exploit minority groups against the majority. The people of northeastern Syria will not allow their actual former colonizer to return to their country and use pro-Western Kurds as their proxy tool for suppressing the Arab majority. Furthermore, Turkey is cooperating with Russia via the Astana peace process and will likely reach an eventual “compromise” to at the very least nominally return the territories that its allied rebel groups control to the authority of the Syrian government, though probably after securing its geopolitical interests through the forthcoming UNSC-mandated “constitutional revision” that will probably lead to a degree of “decentralization”. France, however, has no such intentions in doing the same vis-à-vis its proxies and Russia, so it represents a much more dire threat to Syrian sovereignty than Turkey does at this moment.

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

As Donald Trump threatens that “Everybody is going to pay a price” for the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, having gathered his Generals, threatened Russia and Syria in the most chilling of terms, Russian military experts, having visited the allegedly affected places, have “found no trace” of chemical weapons:

“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.’

Read full RT report here.

Ahed Tamimi, 16, slapped an Israeli soldier, in her own yard, after her cousin was shot in the head. She’s detained for eight more months after a closed-door trial.[i] The soldier who shot her cousin, putting him in a coma, was not reprimanded.

As I write, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is again covering Malala Yousefsai. She was shot in the head in 2012 and made a hero. She was demanding her right to education.

Palestinian kids are shot every day for the same thing: demanding their rights. But Palestinian kids don’t exist. They don’t count. Most remarkable about Ahed Tamimi’s story is that we’ve heard it. [ii]

Colonization, Frantz Fanon argued, has logic. If you participate, even mentally, certain people don’t exist. You can kill them, or see them killed, without being bothered. You’re human. They’re not.

It raises a question, mostly ignored: How do you know the non-persons, the ones you’ve erased, so it doesn’t matter when they’re shot in the head? How do you know you don’t even see them: unarmed children, demanding human rights?

Ancient Chinese philosopher, Chuang Tzu, tells a story: The keeper tells the monkeys they’ll get three chestnuts in the morning and four at night. The monkeys are furious. So, the keeper offers four chestnuts in the morning and three at night. The monkeys are happy.[iii]

The end is the same: seven chestnuts. But the monkeys are on board: a better result. “Three in the morning” is famous. It is key to Taoist philosophy. Some say it is about thinking at two levels, or about equality, and balance: The monkeys’ perspective is included. The result is the same.

The story is supposedly about “two roads”. But it is not easy. Chuang Tzu’s anecdote is deeper than it seems to those who’ve been duped by a moribund liberal worldview. Chuang Tzu cared about what is lived. He valued simplicity and humility, but not for moral reasons. It was for truth.

We think better about the world, and live better in it, when we can feel our connection to it and to others. “Three in the morning” is not about thinking. It is about creation and loss.

The keeper recognizes the monkeys. He thinks they matter. Herein lies the challenge. Chuang Tzu, like the Buddha, and Marx and Lenin, knew knowing is a challenge, worth investigating. Chuang Tzu wasn’t an anti-imperialist, like Fanon. He was just smart. Realistic.

His focus is the existential, not just intellectual, grasp of reality. It’s a lost art, thanks to centuries of European intellectualist, individualist liberalism, more damaging than Trump.

When Ahed Tamimi is asked what would improve the lives of Palestinian kids, she says human solidarity, from across the world.[iv] She is a child who knows what many political scientists do not: A question about truth matters more than a future vision: How do you envision a future when you can’t even see the people that future is supposedly for?

Some say Ahed Tamimi inspires hope for the Palestinian cause. Jean Paul Sartre, following Fanon, calls resistance an act of self-creation. It is more urgent, and interesting, than hope.

Hope is belief: something to look forward to. It can be understood differently, and is in some traditions, but in happiness-obsessed “developed” societies, it is an opioid. It denies evidence. You hope because you don’t, and won’t, see what is there, in front of you. Antonio Gramsci called it lazy.

You sacrifice truth at an “alter of enthusiasm”. When cancer patients are urged to hope, it means: Believe in your own survival no matter what. Don’t see those who are dying around you. You’re not like them. Or so you should believe.

It ignores an important point. Marx knew it. His dialectical view is scientific. We get to truth through connection, with the world and its inhabitants. Felt connection. It is not always comfortable. Marx did not provide a model of the future society, but he showed how to discover truths.

It’s not through hope. I had a student come to me once in despair. She was in first year and had heard university authorities going on about success. She said, “I don’t know how to distinguish myself from 7 billion people on the planet”. It is how she’d understood “success”.

I tried to explain that it is more interesting to know how she is the same as all those people. Shared humanity. It is not what we teach. We hardly believe in it. Ahed Tamimi knows the power of connection, more sustainable and motivating than abstract hope. We can learn from her.

The Peruvian philosopher José Carlos Mariátequi, understanding imperialism, said “deliberation and votes” could not bring justice to Latin America. He admired enlightenment philosophers but knew they didn’t understand dehumanization. They want to count votes without admitting they don’t even see the people who might vote, let alone understand what they’d vote for if they existed.

It is not for nothing that Chuang Tzu is still seen by some as China’s greatest philosopher. Anyone who sees what he writes as simple misses the questions. But we can learn them from Ahed Tamimi, if we dare.

Or, we can learn from Ana Belén Montes, who has been silenced, in the US, for just this reason.[v] Please sign the petition here.

*

This article was originally published on CounterPunch.

Susan Babbitt is author of Humanism and Embodiment (Bloomsbury 2014).

Notes

[i] https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-interrogation-video-surfaces-of-palestinian-teen-activist-ahed-tamimi

[ii] “One story, two narratives” The Listening PostAljazeera March 3 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWEGUHpafsY

[iii] https://www.scribd.com/document/331816897/The-Way-of-Chuang-Tzu-by-Thomas-Merton-pdf

[iv] The Empire Files with Abby Martin (Telesur)Jan 10 2018

[v] http://www.prolibertad.org/ana-belen-montes. For more information, write to [email protected] or [email protected]

Featured image is by Romerito Pontes | CC BY 2.0.

Language has been a concern ever since humans created it and began using words to replace grunting, howling or shrieking. It’s much easier to be clear in communication when speaking, assuming the language is mutually understood, rather than simply gesturing or making barely intelligible noises. But when indicating difficulty in communicating with someone was once referred to as an experience like “talking to a wall”, present political discourse about immigrants and immigration among people who supposedly speak the same language has become divisive screeching in a “tower of babble”. This is a weapon for minority dominating powers who keep humans in a condition of confusion in order to continue ruling out any notion of a state of democracy, another concept widely confusing and misunderstood.

But let’s just stick to the words immigrant and immigration, which are as different as day and night or love and hate, and are a great cause of social division among people who desperately need unity before that division helps push an entire society into oblivion.

Confusion over those words has pushed many good people who passionately support immigrants into dispassionately supporting policies that strengthen the very immigration system they criticize. A majority of Americans still support the political economics they have lived in and under all of their lives, but they are as confused as social critics who in their desire to help other humans often work at cross purposes by strengthening an anti-social, anti-human, anti-environmental system that is helping destroy nature – and we who are a vital part of it – more quickly than ever before. Things have become so confused that many calling for “revolution” work hard to create a sanctuary for the system they seek to radically change. Or at least they do that based on another confusion of language that convinces some that “revolution” is exclusively personality based, involves identity-tribal-religious-ethnic groups, an alleged two party system in which both parties are owned by the rich, and other contradictions that manifest serious problems getting worse by the minute.

America is believed by many to be a nation of immigrants in that it was founded by people from Europe and grew peopled by new generations that came first from Europe, then Africa – in physical bondage and not just economic chains – then Asia, and more recently, from the southern part of North America, the name given to the continent settled by immigrants from Europe. The fabled tale of our nation’s birth and our seeming worship of immigration usually leaves out the near destruction of the humans who lived here before the invasion of settlers and immigrants who found better lives – mostly after suffering a great deal as most immigrants did and some still do – at the cost of ruining the lives of those they replaced. And all immigration under any circumstances has social costs that are absorbed by some far more than others.

Under the political economics of capitalism, which ruled when our nation was founded though it wasn’t called by that name yet, immigration profited many people greatly but meant a loss for sometimes far more. That reality has continued from its beginning with the replacement of the indigenous people by murder and ethnic cleansing to a more modern form which simply reduces some to lower standards of living while increasing profits for investors in capital’s market for cheap labor, the reason for the overwhelming majority of people who came here in the sixteenth century and continue to do so at the present moment.

Whenever there was a need for bodies to work the land – the peasants sent from England and later Germany at the nation’s beginnings – or work the mills and factories of the later industrial revolution – when the rest of Europe and China offered their unwanted or extraneous populations – the calls for new shipments went out and soon they were delivered.

While it was supremely difficult for immigrants to enter the country illegally in the past when oceans had to be crossed in becoming a newer, cheaper work force, it became a bit easier for workers from south of the American border who, often at great and even life threatening difficulty had to merely step over an invisible line to leave one nation and enter another. Since that line had been created more recently than mostly older European and Asian borders, there were mixed cultures on both sides and a sometimes-easier community to welcome new immigrants. Immediately arriving migrants from Mexico and Central America could find old communities that spoke the same language and were of related culture – with differences, of course, but none as wide as those between English speakers and Germans or Italians or the Irish of previous immigration waves – and this too made it possible to find quicker entrance and a degree of comfort and familiarity. Where previous groups took some time to settle in and find cultural comfort zones, the Latino influx of 20th and early 21st century was able to adapt more quickly, and with even more homeland pleasure for the profits they created as cheap labor. And with the new class of illegal immigrants, they become even cheaper and thus even more profitable for capital and its professional class servants.

Whether finding work in agriculture, factories, mills, or smaller businesses like restaurants or in domestic work, the Latinos became both a larger group of workers than ever imported in a short time, and a far more profitable one taking jobs at the lower and entry levels of the economy. Thus, the upper-middle and professional classes could also enjoy the replacement of domestic servants with cheaper help for house cleaning, childcare, landscaping and such, at lower cost than previously employed Americans. And again contradicting well intentioned people anxious to end racism and employment discrimination, those replaced Americans were mostly black, as is true of hotel workers who have become almost entirely Latino where once black Americans did the vacuuming, bed making and laundering for both hotel chains and independent smaller motels. This replicated past experience when the English immigrants were replaced by Germans and they were replaced by the Irish and they by central and southern Europeans. Each new group entered the nation poor, took the dirtiest jobs available, and with luck moved up the economic ladder to become more average working class and later and more recently a middle class citizens. This highlights more language confusion when America is supposedly a non-class society, which just happens to have a lower, middle and upper class. Oh well.

Or is it Orwell?

The point being that in almost entirely well intentioned support for immigrants, good people continued bad policy when, by creating alleged sanctuary for individuals suffering systemic problems, they actually create sanctuary for capital’s policies that replace one group of workers with another, thereby strengthening the system’s endless need for cheaper labor for its profits by creating greater loss among the often misguided majority. When those who profit directly from the import of cheap workers are joined by those who bear little or no social cost for that intervention, the policy is strengthened by a focus on humanism, which conveniently keeps capitalism out of the frame. Then, people are reduced to being labeled “racist” if/when they complain about immigration – as though immigrants were members of a different race than human, in keeping with a racist culture’s population subdued into believing such mythology – which completely excludes the personal and social cost of bringing a newer work force in to replace an older work force going out, and a tax paying public frequently receiving no profits at all while absorbing much greater loss.

The more recent wave of immigration meant entry-level employment for new workers, which were thus denied those Americans previously dependent on such work. If that wave of immigrants were professional class and English speaking, say from Canada, and Americans could get a lawyer, doctor or therapist for fifteen bucks and hour, a teacher, social worker or accountant for ten, many Americans might be thrilled and delighted but that would hardly be the case for all those professional class people reduced to near or real hardship if not destitution. Under such duress we might see “extremist” groups of lawyers or doctors with shaved heads and swastika tattoos parading the streets upon losing their homes, investments and facing such hardships. And rest assured that America’s bloated and near bursting penal colony numbers many members of a new “criminal class” who became such as entry level jobs vanished from their version of the American Dream, too often a nightmare upon waking to face reality.

A far better and socially just answer to our massive economic problem of worship of market forces instead of democracy would be to bring in immigrants from foreign countries the way we bring in relatives and neighbors whom we treat as such and not simply profit makers for us and burdens for others. A truly humane welcome would not see to it that they remain illegal as we give them driver’s licenses, educations – which frequently leave them speaking foreign languages and denied equal status to their neighbors and thus remaining at the lower paid end of the economy – but make them legal, as quickly as possible if we truly want them to stay here and become Americans. Anything less, whether directly supported by capital or ignorantly accepted by those who mean well but practice ill, continues a rotten system that abuses far more than one or another sector of the population but all of us who carry the burden of an out of control system that ultimately threatens all and not just some humans, whatever language we speak or culture we are taught to embrace.

*

Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears online at the blog Legalienate.

The reaction of Israelis to The Great March of Return depends on the “nationality” of the Israeli being referred to.

In Israel, there are Israeli citizens but no Israeli nationality – only “Jewish nationality” or “Palestinian Arab”, etc. (this is intentionally aimed at maintaining Israel as a Jewish State).

So, we have Palestinian-Arab MK Haneen Zoabi reacting to Israel’s massacres in Gaza as follows, and in the process expressing the feelings and reactions of Palestinian Israeli citizens as quoted in Forward and Y-netNews:

“We need to go on popular marches to remind the world of the siege. We need millions of Palestinians to march on Jerusalem. That is the aspiration. But we can’t do it, because the Israelis would kill them … Israel has turned from a racist country to a fascist one… Israel is not defending itself as it is claiming, the occupation and the siege are not an act of self defense, but rather one of terrorism … [the #GreatReturnMarch is] a march of peace, a peaceful act of popular struggle… We have popular resistance of women and children who want to put an end to the siege… Israel is opposed and kills Palestinians not because they endanger their soldiers. The children of Gaza don’t want to be killed quietly without receiving any recognition from the world. They are sending a message that we are under siege, and we need to do something, and that is to march and remind the world about the siege. Our problem is the silence of the international community… I don’t see what is violent about setting fire to a tire. Is burning a tire violence, while shooting at protesters not violence? Show me one Israeli who was hurt by these actions. Israel is only looking for an excuse to kill the Palestinians… Stop buying the Israeli propaganda… I am a Palestinian; they expect me to be loyal to the Zionists, while the only meaning of Zionism is to revoke my rights and to reject my identity.”

On the other hand, we have Israeli Jews reacting as described below by Nir Dvori, a reporter for the Israeli channel 2 news, in a photo tweet of Jews watching the mass murder of Gazan demonstrators by Israel’s snipers with the caption, “Best show in town. Residents of Nahal Oz on the bleachers”:

And here is Gideon Levy, Jewish Israeli journalist and author, in Haaretz describing an image captioned as “Israelis facing the Gaza border.\ Alex Levac” and expressing the sentiments of some liberal Israeli Jews:

A crocheted kippa, a head scarf and a guitar on the stone bench beneath the eucalyptus tree. A couple from Moshav BneiNetzarim, evacuees from the Gaza Strip. He’s singing a love song to her. And from here, too, Gaza is on the horizon. It doesn’t let go.

Diana Buttu’s reaction to the images shared by Nir Dvori and Alex Levac were as follows:

On Nir Dvori’s image/comment:

“This is sick. Israeli residents of Nahal Oz watch as snipers kill Palestinians.”

On Alex Levac’s image:

“Nothing to see here but people in prison being gunned down and gassed.”

Still other Israeli Jews, like Sabi Shaylan of Tel Aviv University, are incredulous and horrified. Shaylan posted this video clip with the following comment (computer translation from Hebrew):

To see and not believe. Aired a few minutes ago on channel 12-Snipers shooting Palestinians and unarmed men like ducks at the range of the men’s whinnies. The IDF is at its peak. One of the soldiers celebrates shooting in the head of one of the protesters. If there is an accurate definition of bloodthirsty expression, it is. If these aren’t war crimes, I don’t know what is.

Amer Zahr, a Palestinian-American comedian, speaker, writer, academic, and adjunct professor at University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, pointed out that Israeli Jews have yet to learn to understand Palestinians:

“Israel just can’t seem to understand us, despite our quite clear and consistent message. It can’t figure out, after decades of anguish, why we won’t just go away.”

Without both understanding and empathy toward those struggling for freedom and return to their homeland as per Res 194 from those whose government holds all the power, we are simply left with a hot and tragic mess.

As Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American performance poet, writer and organizer based in New York City, posted on Facebook, unfortunately, the reaction of most Israeli Jews to the Palestinian struggle for justice is, “Just shut up and die or disappear.”

A list of things Palestinians can’t do under any circumstance:

No armed resistance
No unarmed protests
No marches for rights
No direct action
No international criminal court
No UNESCO
No boycotts
No divestment
No international solidarity

Just shut up and die or disappear. That is the only option Israel finds suitable.

*

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

A federal grand jury should investigate the collapses of the World Trade Center Twin Towers during the 9/11 attacks, as well as WTC 7, according to a petition that an expert lawyers group plans to file on April 10 in New York City’s federal court.

The 54-page petition and its 57 exhibits detail the evidence that explosives were used to destroy the WTC buildings during the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. The non-profit Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry demands that the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York convene and submit the evidence in the petition to a grand jury.

The petition’s executive summary and full text are posted on the Lawyers’ Committee website, as of April 9.

“The failure of our government to diligently investigate this disturbing evidence that has emerged over the past sixteen years regarding what occurred at the World Trade Center on 9/11,” commented Executive Director Mick Harrison, “has contributed to the erosion of trust in our institutions.”

The WTC at the top of this column illustrates “ejections” or “squibs marked by arrows that, according to the petition-filers, provide evidence of explosion. So does molten steel, they say, which most logically could come from thermite or thermate, not from airplane fuel. The photo below shows examples of molten steel.

Molten Substance, World Trade Center 2, just prior to collapse on September 11, 2001
(Image by YouTube, Ben Reisman)   Permission   Details   DMCA

The lawyers, whose petition is supported by numerous 9/11 family members of victims and first responders, detailed evidence (see below) that they say requires a criminal investigation by prosecutors in the office led by Interim U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman.

President Trump and Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions in January named Berman to be the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Berman’s experience includes extensive work as a federal attorney, as well as two years as a law partner of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Giuliani became nationally famous, including selection as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year,” for his visible role after 9/11. But he is known also for having authorized the removal and disposal of WTC steel debris in heavily guarded shipments to China.

Petitioners have scheduled a press conference for 1 p.m. Tuesday on the steps of New York’s City Hall in Manhattan. Those who want to add their names to the petition can sign up online here. New names will be displayed on the next filing, which will supplement the one filed this week.

Thermie and Thermate samples
(Image by Niels H. Harrit)   Permission   Details   DMCA

First Major Criminal Probe

The petition seeks the first major criminal inquiry on the destruction of the Towers and WTC 7, which collapsed in near free-fall that afternoon even though it was not hit by any airplane. Official U.S. reports and the major media have blamed the attacks in New York and elsewhere on 19 airplane hijackers as well as overseas terrorists primarily linked to Al Qaeda.

The petition seeks a formal probe of the evidence, which it argues shows that pre-installed explosive devices caused the tower collapses, not two hijacked airplanes and related fires.

A grand jury can require document production and sworn statements by other suspects and witnesses.

Previous inquiries have generated considerable criticism. Former U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL), for example, has protested that The Senate-House Intelligence Committee Joint 9/11 Inquiry that he had co-chaired had been given an unrealistic deadline in 2002 that prevented completion of its work. Later, a 10-member national commission, known as The 9/11 Commission, issued a report in July 2004 that left many serious researchers and 9/11 victims’ family members complaining about many unanswered questions, especially after significant new evidence arose.

Civil litigation by victim’s families and others has been repeatedly stalled or otherwise sidetracked. Hurdles include sovereign immunity claims, lack of subpoena power, and settlements, which can prevent litigants from continuing to seek evidence.

Personal Perspective

The continuing importance of 9/11 issues and the strength of the accumulated evidence have prompted this editor to probe this topic in depth, most notably in a 2016 column “Experts Reject Planes, Fire As Cause For 9/11 WTC Collapses.” The column, timed for the 15^th anniversary of the attacks, began:

“Technical experts are mounting major challenges to official U.S. government accounts of how three World Trade Center skyscrapers collapsed in near-freefall after the 9/11 attacks 15 years ago.”

That article included links to the major U.S. government reports on the 9/11 attacks, as well as to an article by Europhysics News “15 Years Later: On the physics of high-rise building collapses.” The Europhysics report challenged U.S. government findings that the skyscrapers collapsed because of fire. The four co-authors noted that no other skyscrapers in world history have ever collapsed from fire.

Instead, the authors cited evidence that the falls resembled the physics involved in controlled demolition. Architects and Engineers For 9-11 Truth (AE911Truth) said the article has been downloaded nearly 700,000 times since August 2016 and “continues to rack up over 2,000 reads per week, keeping it at the top of Europhysics News’ ‘Most read articles.'”

Many researchers are focusing especially on the little-known collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (WTC7). That collapse is portrayed at the one-minute mark in the 40-minute C-SPAN video above featuring Richard Gage, AIA, the founder of AE911Truth. This spring his group announced that the 2014 interview on C-SPAN had reached one million views.

Regarding Building 7: The 47-story building, which was not hit by an airplane and was located north of WTC 1, collapsed in about 6.5 seconds in symmetrical fashion more than seven hours after the other buildings fell. The pattern so resembled controlled demolition that experts who have studied it are increasingly questioning the official causation, which U.S. authorities and the mainstream media ascribed only to the effects of jet fuel and office fires.

Strength of Evidence

More generally, these researchers have summarized studies by technical experts who have argued that the three steel-framed WTC towers could not have fallen in place because of airplane crashes and related fires. Professional critics of the official explanations of the buildings’ collapses include the now nearly three thousand licensed architects and engineers who are members of AE911Truth. Also, Ph.D. graduate students at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks for years have conducted technical studies under the leadership of the chairman of its Department of Engineering and Mines, Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey, PE, SE, who reported on interim findings in a 2016 video.

The strength of the evidence for controlled demolition, the lack of official answers to questions from experts, and the strong, continuing public interest in all matters relating to 9/11 keeps these issues alive even as time passes. So do the direct results of the 9/11 attack, which include the freedom-robbing civil rights restrictions of the 2001 Patriot Act and the Global War on Terror. The latter has prompted the U.S.-NATO wars against forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, plus vast loss of life and spending elsewhere.

Last month, 9/11 victims’ family members won a key courtroom victory in their civil suit against the Saudi Arabian government. A New York federal judge allowed the families’ suit to move forward despite defendants’ claim of sovereign immunity.

Tuesday’s Grand Jury Petition

Regarding the April 10 submission to the U.S. attorney, the petitioners note the legal obligation of citizens and authorities alike to report and investigate evidence of crimes. They cite major lines of evidence supporting causation by controlled demolition:

• Independent scientific laboratory analysis of WTC dust samples showing the presence of high-tech explosives and/or incendiaries in the form of thermite or thermate.
• Expert analysis of seismic evidence that explosions occurred at the WTC towers on 9/11 prior to the airplane impacts on the WTC Towers, and prior to the building collapses.
• Technical analysis of video evidence of the WTC building collapses.
• Firefighter reports of explosions, and of seeing “molten iron like in a foundry.” The petition states that the presence of molten iron would require temperatures higher than jet fuel and building contents could create when burned, but consistent with use of the high tech explosive and incendiary thermite or thermate.
• The presence of previously molten iron microspheres, which have been established by electron microscope analysis of WTC dust samples, by both government and independent scientists, is another phenomenon that would be scientifically impossible based on the burning of jet fuel and office contents alone.
• Video and eyewitness testimony of the ejection during the collapse of WTC 1 and 2 of heavy steel elements laterally from the buildings which would not be possible from a gravity collapse.
• Scientific analysis, eyewitness testimony, and government reports confirming sulfidation and high temperature corrosion of the steel found in the rubble after the collapse of the WTC towers and WTC 7, a phenomenon not expected in a jet fuel fire and gravity collapse but consistent with the use of thermate and high explosives.

After the Petition

Harrison, the executive director of the lawyers group, said that after the filing petitioners “intend to step back now for a reasonable time and be respectful of the confidential nature of Grand Jury proceedings, although we have offered to assist in the presentation of this evidence to a special grand jury.”

“We will report back to the public in due course,” Harrison continued, “as information becomes available, and in the meantime pursue, by other appropriate means, our mission of promoting transparency and accountability regarding 9/11 and addressing the many questions left unanswered by the 9/11 Commission report.”

These issues are likely to become heavily political if the past is any guide.

The website for the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York lists the fight against international and domestic terrorism at the very top of the duties for its some 220 assistant U.S. attorneys responsible for all major criminal and civil litigation. The Southern District encompasses Manhattan, the Bronx and the Westchester region.

That office was led in the late 1980s by Giuliani, who went on to win election as New York’s mayor for two terms, ending at the end of December 2001. Giuliani has kept a high profile opposing terrorists since then, including a 2004 presidential candidacy and strong support for Trump’s 2016 campaign. Since 2016, Giuliani has led the counter-terrorism practice of the law firm Greenberg Traurig.

Berman (image on the right), the interim U.S. Attorney who will receive the attorneys’ petition signed by 9/11 family members, was a law partner of Giuliani’s from 2016 until his Trump appointment in January. Berman must win U.S. Senate confirmation to receive the prestigious appointment beyond interim status.

Prodded especially by family members of 9/11 victims, Congress has shown strong support in recent years for two major investigative initiatives strongly resisted by powerful forces that prefer to keep the 9/11 probes closed. One such victory was release of the so-called “28-pages” that had been suppressed from the 2002 Joint House-Senate Intelligence Commission Inquiry report. The released material documented suspicious pre-9/11 relationships by Saudi Arabian entities with some of the 19 accused airplane hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals. The other victory was congressional passage in 2016 of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which narrowed the definition of sovereign immunity for civil court claims resulting from international terrorism.

Given the high U.S. political and geopolitical stakes, Tuesday’s petition tees up a remarkable, historic civic dialog on one of the most important events within the lifetime of most Americans.

In that spirit, the public as well as the media are invited to the press conference Tuesday on the steps of City Hall in lower Manhattan. Lawyers’ Committee Executive Director Harrison and other attorneys on the Committee’s board are also scheduled for discussion of the petition on several major radio programs, including “The Gary Null Show” at noon Eastern time on April 11 and Richard Hoagland’s “The Other Side of Midnight” at midnight Eastern time on April 14.

A grassroots organizing effort is underway also via the non-profit and non-partisan 9/11 Truth Action Project.

For anyone who worries that progress seems too slow on such issues as 9/11 accountability, the good news is that compelling 9/11 evidence is now in the right hands — the U.S. attorney’s office and yours, as members of the public.

Relevant documents can be easily accessed on the website of the Lawyers’ Committee.

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Andrew Kreig is an investigative reporter, attorney, author, business strategist, radio host, and longtime non-profit executive based in Washington, DC. His most recent book is “Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters,” the first book about the Obama administration’s second term. The book grew out of his work leading the Justice Integrity Project, a non-partisan legal reform group that investigates official misconduct. 

Featured image: Syrian soldiers are seen in the rebel-held Douma district in the Eastern Ghouta countryside, Syria, on March 28, 2018. (Source: Ammar Safarjalani / Global Look Press)

Most recent update:

There is no longer any doubt that the criminally insane government in Washington is driving the world to the last war. See this and this.

Update:

As Americans we must face the possibility that we have a criminally insane government in Washington that is leading the world to destruction.

A Russian Government Press Release:

False information is being planted about the alleged use of chlorine and other toxic agents by the Syrian government forces. The latest fake news about a chemical attack on Douma was reported yesterday. These reports are again referenced to the notorious White Helmets, which have been proved more than once to be working hand in glove with the terrorists, as well as to other pseudo-humanitarian organisations headquartered in the UK and the US.

We recently warned of the possibility of such dangerous provocations. The goal of these absolutely unsubstantiated lies is to protect the terrorists and the irreconcilable radical opposition that has rejected a political settlement, as well as to justify the possible use of force by external actors.

We have to say once again that military interference in Syria, where Russian forces have been deployed at the request of the legitimate government, under contrived and false pretexts is absolutely unacceptable and can lead to very grave consequences.

This is John Helmer’s interpretation of the warning:

“WHEN THE RULE OF LAW WAS DESTROYED IN SALISBURY, LONDON AND THE HAGUE, AND THE RULE OF FRAUD DECLARED IN WASHINGTON, THAT LEAVES ONLY THE RULE OF FORCE IN THE WORLD. THE STAVKA [the high command of the Russian armed forces] MET IN MOSCOW ON GOOD FRIDAY AND IS READY. THE FOREIGN MINISTRY ANNOUNCED ON SUNDAY “THE GRAVEST CONSEQUENCES”. THIS MEANS ONE AMERICAN SHOT AT A RUSSIAN SOLDIER, THEN WE ARE AT WAR. NOT INFOWAR, NOT CYBERWAR, NOT ECONOMIC WAR, NOT PROXY WAR. WORLD WAR.”

I hope that the situation is not this severe.

***

On the Threshold of War

“The Russian view is simple: the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been hopelessly zombified.” — The Saker

“The US generals, unlike the US politicians and media and US administration, are risk-averse if the outcome may be catastrophic.” — Gilbert Doctorow

Above are two of the three most intelligent and reliable Russian experts. The third is Professor Stephen Cohen, who worries, as I do, that an arrogant Washington drowning in hubris is provoking Russia to war.

The Saker has concluded that the Russians have concluded that it has been a mistake to put up with Washington’s lies, insults, and orchestrated events and have decided that if the dumbshit Americans attack Syria, Russia is going to take out the US forces involved.

Doctorow has concluded that as dumbshit as Washington is, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have more sense and will not go along with an attack on a Russian ally.

I hope that Doctorow is correct. However, with that crazed demented warmonger John Bolton sitting in the White House next to Trump, who enjoys the role of tough guy, I am more scared by The Saker’s reading than I am reasured by Doctorow’s.

There are reports, the validity of which I cannot confirm at this time, that the entirety of the Russian military has been put on high alert, not merely the Russian forces in Syria. See this for example.

Nikki Haley’s threats against Russia today in the UN do not support Doctorow’s hopes that reason will prevail in Washington. The crazed bitch said that the US will act against the “monster” Assad with or without the UN.

Tough man Trump, sitting next to the crazed warmonger Bolton, declared that the alleged chemical attack in Syria “will be met and it will be met forcefully. We can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed… we can’t let that happen in our world, especially because of the power of the US, we are able to stop it.”

There was NO chemical attack by Syria. I know that for an absolute 100% fact. I would bet my life on it. Yet here is the US president declaring a total non-fact to be something “we all witnessed.” Little wonder that the Russians have concluded that the West is ruled by a gang of thugs supported by an infinitely lying and hypocritical media while the general public in the West has been hopelessly zombified.

If Doctorow is not correct that a sane US Joint Chiefs of Staff will prevail over the crazed President and his National Security Adviser, we are headed for war.

It is a war that the US will not win.

Notice, dear readers, that there is no mention of this pending crisis in the Western media. Instead the media whether CNN or the BBC has as the lead news story the FBI’s raid on Trump’s lawyer.

Insouciant Americans is too mild, isn’t it. Clueless is the correct word.

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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.

A very lively meeting was held during the afternoon of March 31 in downtown Toronto with Professor Kiyul Chung of the 21st Century Institute based in Washington DC. Prof. Chung is also an Associate Professor at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang and at universities in China and Japan. Prof. Chung shared his thoughts about the upcoming third Inter-Korean Summit between Kim Jong Un, leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Moon Jae-in, President of the Republic of Korea (ROK) scheduled April 27 on south Korean territory in Panmunjom at the Demilitarized Zone that divides the Korean nation. He also gave his views on the planned DPRK-U.S. Summit set for May where Kim Jong Un will meet U.S. President Trump.

This public event was organized by the Korea Truth Commission (KTC) (Canadian Chapter) and the Korean Federation in Canada. Philip Fernandez, spokesperson of the KTC (Canadian Chapter), in his welcoming remarks noted that Prof. Chung had been in Toronto twice before. His first visit was in connection with organizing the Korea Truth Commission’s historic People’s International War Crimes Tribunal in New York City on June 23, 2001, in which a delegation of 60 Canadians took part. Fernandez also pointed out that at this People’s Tribunal, a panel of jurists from countries around the world, including Canada, found the U.S. administrations, from 1945 to the time of the tribunal, guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity that were committed against the peace-loving Korean people, before, during and after the Korean war, and called for financial compensation and an apology from the U.S.

The main point Prof. Chung made during his almost two-hour long presentation was that there is a sea change taking place on the Korean Peninsula. It has found expression recently in the joint Korean team at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, the subsequent meeting of south Korean officials with Kim Jong Un on March 3 and the plans for the upcoming Third Inter-Korean Summit on April 27, as well as the DPRK-U.S. Summit in May. He stated that a new situation has materialized whereby the DPRK has earned for itself a strong position from which it commands respect as an equal, sovereign country. Even the most hawkish political advisers to U.S. President Trump are forced to admit that there is no military solution to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula and that the only approach left is to hold direct talks with the DPRK, something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. He gave credit for this achievement to the DPRK’s uncompromising stand in defence of its right to self-determination, in the face of great difficulties, and its development of a strong deterrent to any aggression against its territory.

Prof. Chung pointed out that the attitude of the present south Korean government toward the DPRK has created the space for renewed initiatives toward co-operation between north and south. He noted that for the first time since the Second World War, a south Korean President has been brought to power by a mass movement of the people, with the election of President Moon Jae-in in an effort to rid themselves of the corrupt administration of Park Gyeun-hye. Prof. Chung said President Moon Jae-in has expressed his desire to re-establish relations between the DPRK and ROK in the first of his two terms in office — relations destroyed by the two most recent U.S.-installed puppet regimes of Lee Myung Bak and Park Gyeun-hye.

Prof. Chung attributed great significance to the meeting between President Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un when the latter visited Beijing from March 26 to 28. He noted that, in his opinion, based on the warm fraternal and historic reception that Kim Jong Un received in Beijing from President Xi, it can be concluded that the relationship between the two neighbouring peoples has reached a new stage. He observed that the recent situation where China has not taken a principled stand to defend and support the DPRK but instead contributed to its demonization is now a thing of the past and it intends to play a bigger role in ensuring peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.

In the question and answer session that followed the main presentation, Prof. Chung elaborated these points. He said that he is optimistic that the upcoming summits will create new opportunities for the Korean people to work together for their national aspiration for peace and reunification. He pointed out that in the March 3 meeting in Pyongyang between the envoy of President Moon and Kim Jong Un, the latter gave his assurance to President Moon that the DPRK has no intention of attacking the ROK and that he would do everything possible to move inter-Korean relations forward as one people and one nation.

Philip Fernandez informed the meeting of the continuing work of the KTC (Canadian Chapter), particularly circulating the Korea Peace Petition, and called on everyone to join this work at the upcoming pickets and to circulate the petition amongst their family and friends. He noted that close to 3,200 Torontonians have signed the peace petition, expressing their active sentiment for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Henry Na, the Toronto correspondent for MinPlus news in south Korea, informed that he is heading to Pyongyang to participate in the Pyongyang Marathon on April 8 and invited everyone to sign a large Unified Korea flag that he is planning to present to the people of the DPRK.

Prof. Chung thanked everyone for their participation. He hopes to be back in Canada at the end of May and a public meeting will be organized at that time so that he can update Torontonians on the results of the Inter-Korean summit as well as the DPRK-U.S. summit between Kim Jong Un and President Trump.

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All images in this article are from the author.

As we strive for Peace and Justice, all we have is the Truth.  The mechanisms of International Law will not deliver Justice in the foreseeable future since Western countries and their allies have been, and continue to commit Supreme International Crimes as policy with relative impunity.  Iraq[1] and Libya[2], for example, were destroyed, and the Western perpetrators flaunt their impunity for their crimes, beneath veils of lies, to this very day.

Western perpetrators of the current overseas holocaust continue to make a mockery of International Justice, as the corpses accumulate.

The lies about the war on Syria have been unprecedented. Western powers and their agencies have shown complete disdain for the truth, and for evidence-based facts.  Despite this, there still remains a reasonable expectation for Peace and some form of Justice. Syria has strong institutions, strong allies, and Syrians themselves have demonstrated remarkable resistance and tenacity in overcoming overwhelming odds.  Despite over 7 years of war, and terrorists from as many as 100 countries arrayed against her, Syria remains strong and ascendant.

Despite the lies, the fake “NGOs”, the fake humanitarians, and the fake covers for the most heinous crimes imaginable, the truth emerges every time areas are liberated.

The Truth is shouting at this very moment, for all who care to listen. As hostages are being released, “Repentance Jails” are emptying, and freed captives are rejoicing, real, primary source evidence is emerging, and it tells a story that contradicts State Department lies and MSM fabrications.

The lie of “Assad is gassing his own people” is also being dismantled, yet again, and as it is being dismantled the most recent chemical weapons “catalytic/false flag”[3] event, which culminated in Israel bombing Syria yet again, is also being dismantled and discredited for all who care about legitimate evidence and truth.

In the video documentary below, Tom Duggan shows us the mortars, the missiles, and the poison gas that Western-supported terrorists have been making and using against civilians in Damascus since 2012.[4]Western-supported terrorists have murdered some 11,000 innocent Damascus citizens and “permanently disabled” another 30,000 with these weapons of war.

These videos demonstrate the lie of the “humanitarian intervention” meme, and they demonstrate the contemptible criminality of our governments and our media as they continue to support terrorists whom they falsely claim to be fighting in their fraudulent “War On Terror.”

*

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

Notes

[1] Peter Singer, “Crime and No Punishment for the Iraq War.” Project Syndicate. 6 April, 2018. (https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/iraq-invasion-illegal-war-of-aggression-by-peter-singer-2018-04)

Accessed 9 April, 2018.

[2] Nafeez Ahmed,“War Crime: NATO Deliberately Destroyed Libya’s Water Infrastructure.” The Ecologist| Report. Truthout. 30 May, 2015. (http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30999-war-crime-nato-deliberately-destroyed-libya-s-water-infrastructure) Accessed 9 April, 2018.

[3] Stephen Lendman, “US or Israel Terror-Bombing of Syrian Airbase Follows False Flag Chemical Weapons Incident.” Global Research. 9 April, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-or-israel-terror-bombing-of-syrian-airbase-follows-false-flag-chemical-weapons-incident/5635386) Accessed 9 April, 2018.

[4] Vanessa Beeley. “2012-2018. #Damascus City. US/UK/EU/Qatar/KSA/Turkey/Israel financed, armed, promoted extremist factions #EasternGhouta fired 14,800 mortars into civilian areas of #Damascus. 11,000 martyrs, 1500 children, 30k permanently disabled. Western State media lionised their killers.” Twitter commentary.  Accessed 9 April, 2018.

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So many things unfolded in the last seven or so days that ridiculed almost every vitriolic claim Theresa May’s Government directed against Russia, and Putin personally, over the Skripal case, as well as bring us new information.

First let’s deal with this fact; Skripal’s daughter Yulia and her father Sergei have made a full recovery, when it was said they were at ‘death’s door’ itself a huge inconsistency contrary to the UK Government statements these past weeks – as well as the last announcement from Porton Down that proves beyond doubt Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson blatantly lied; all these and more changes this whole affair.

On the latter point above, to be specific, the Porton Down’s CEO Gary Aitkenhead on Tuesday stated it was of “a type” of Novichok, adding a caveat which was that his scientists cannot determine where the poison came from. This directly contradicts the May Government’s version of the so called facts.

An important point I add is if Porton Down established it was really military grade ‘Novichok’, it would have killed anyone in its vicinity in minutes. A question therefore is why is the CEO of Porton Down being, shall we say, economic with the truth? Is it due to political pressure from No.10 or some other Whitehall Department?

The British Conservative government popularity has tumbled; they therefore now are attacking the man who probably will be the next Prime Minister, Jeremy Corbyn, and probably with a Labour majority.

Polls in UK are being ‘manipulated to state otherwise, that the Conservatives are in the lead, much like what happened in America with Hillary Clinton.

Not wishing to bring levity to this important subject, it is unavoidable not to mention that the police removed one dead cat and two dead hamsters from Skripal’s home who were taken to Porton Down where they were immediately incinerated – no information was forthcoming if there were any forensic tests carried out on these animals, specifically if they ingested any type of poison. Why incinerate? Something to hide?

The reasons and speculations, true and not true, will be in newspapers and in the coming week’s real and fake news in the main stream Press and media.

The British Government has been caught in a huge number of lies maybe bigger than any others, we will in future discover, of this Century, not just by demonising and provoking irresponsibly a nuclear power but also because of their unprincipled stance to use this incident for domestic party political politics. Specifically by slandering the leader of the Conservative opposition in the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn accusing him of being a ‘Putin lackey’. An outrageous tactic and attack.

The Conservative Party have tremendously underestimated the degree of sophistication of the British electorate. This is the final straw for the British people.

The Conservative Government’s rush to judgement within hours of the Skripal event will be a major reason why they will loose the next General Election.

Also damning was the way the Government flip flopped in its story last week saying the ‘substance’, whatever it was, was most concentrated on the front door nob of the house. Then saying it might have been in breakfast cereal, both silly conclusions even for us laymen. We can expect more fabricated excuses, lies, as if as they make it up as they go along, day by day.

All humbug.

Though many countries, including America, expelled Russian diplomats, no Ambassadors it should be added, that ruse is also backfiring as most countries are reconsidering the veracity of the British Government’s statements. Importantly Germany has already changed their view.

A person with a great deal of experience in Russia, Sir Tony Brenton, (the UK’s Ambassador in Moscow in the aftermath of the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning), tried to give wise counsel to Mrs. May and the FCO but obviously to no avail.

An interesting aside is also last week voluntarily commenting on the alleged attack by Russia on the Skripal’s, the father of Litvinenko categorically stated that he too questioned the veracity of the British government’s claims about the Skripal poisoning. Even more intriguing is a rumour emanating from a French former security services individual that he has evidence that UK actors murdered Litvinenko. The plot thickens!

Also this past week, a very curious recording, contents wise, of a phone conversation surfaced that took place between Skripal’s daughter and Sergei’s niece in Moscow.

That was followed by an astoundingly stupid decision; the British Embassy in Moscow refused to grant a visa to UK to the niece.

What is the British Government hiding? Are the Skripal’s now prisoners in Britain?

The “organic chemistry” comment by Cornell professor Dave Collum is particularly insightful and important for an external observer. Those wishing to move beyond ‘the Russia motive’, may want to take a look at Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model and Thomas S. Kuhn’s paradigm shifts. Many Brits intuitively feel that this Skripal subject is as much to do with domestic British politics as anything else and that the path of ‘untruths’ chosen by Theresa May and Boris Johnson is motivated more by a desire to covertly and overtly as well as subliminally attack Corbyn, and to infer he to be an unpatriotic Brit, due to his growing popularity amongst the British electorate.

To add and complicate this subject even further here is more intrigue. There seems some connection to ‘the Steele Dossier’ and therefore American domestic politics.

It’s certainly a multi layered conundrum that will unfold slowly.

One conclusion which deserves extensive debate on another occasion is this. The Skripal lies will have a definite consequence; they will prove the undoing of the Conservative Party and their lose of power in the next election.

This brings new and important questions for Britain’s future relationship with America, and in fact all countries, as Jeremy Corbyn’s view of the world is diametrically opposite to Theresa May and in fact also to, in particular, all the Neocons warmongers in America. Corbyn has a very different position as regards the Palestinian Cause for one. Corbyn also has, what can best be described as an ambivalence towards NATO and its role.

To add an almost farcical note to the Skripal affair is this weekend the British Government announced it wants to send father and daughter to America. The Skripals’ allegedly being offered new identities, home in its believed Florida somewhere; money for life etc, or stay in Salisbury. I wonder which they will choose? It is being stated it is “for their own protection”.

How much more ridiculous can this affair get and how many more lies, revelations and disinformation can we expect in weeks to come?

We live, as they say, in interesting as well as dangerous times.

The fallout from the Salisbury nerve agent attack reminds us of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which was the most immediate catalyst – of many parallel narrative and sequences of events – that ultimately resulted in World War I. We are not alone in this reasoning, as one high-level retired Russian general warns the Salisbury poisoning could lead to the “last war in the history of mankind.”

Ret. Lieutenant-General Evgeny Buzhinsky — who served in the Russian Armed Forces for more than forty years — said relations between Russia and Washington could become “worse” than the climax of the Cold War and “end up in a very, very bad outcome” following the nerve gas attack in the United Kingdom.

More than 150 Russian diplomats have been expelled from 25 countries — including 23 from the United Kingdom since western nations accused Russia of being the sole actor responsible for using deadly chemical weapons on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in their Salisbury home.

Buzhinsky, who is now the senior vice president of the Russian Center for Policy Studies (PIR Center), told BBC Radio Today program:

“Please, when you say the world, you mean EU and United States and some other countries … you see it’s a cold war, it’s worse than the Cold War because if the situation will develop in the way this (is) now, I’m afraid that it will end up in a very, very bad outcome.”

Nicholas Robinson, a British presenter on the BBC’s Today program pressed Buzhinsky on what he meant by “worse than a cold war,” to which the Ret. Russian Lieutenant-General responded with this bombshell: today’s current situation is spiraling out of control and could develop into a “real war.”

Are we seeing a new Cold War? It's worse, says General Evgeny Buzhinsky, who served on the Russian general staff for many years #r4today pic.twitter.com/eRWqOYhXhK

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) April 3, 2018

The Daily Express shares a chilling transcript of Buzhinsky’s conversation on BBC:

He said: “Worse than a cold war is a real war. It will be the last war in the history of the mankind.”

“Not the Salisbury poisoning but all the actions.”

“You see the pressure from the United States, that you say the pressure is going to continue, what are you going to achieve? You are going to achieve the regime change, it’s useless. You don’t know Russians. The more external pressure, the more the society is solidified around the President.”

When asked how the dispute would lead to a real war, Mr Buzhinsky accused the UK of not wanting to discuss the Salisbury attack.

“Let’s start discussing,” he said. “You don’t want to discuss. You say Russia should change its behaviour, it’s not the kind of talk or compromise we need.

“Okay, you expelled diplomats. We expelled diplomats. You further expel, what is the next step? The breach of diplomatic relations.”

“After that, I said it may lead to nowhere. Actually, you are cornering Russia. To corner, Russia is a very dangerous thing.”

Mr Buzhinsky claimed it was “nonsense” Russia was behind the attack as President Vladimir Putin had no benefit out of the attack, which took place before the Russian Presidential election. The comments come after Mr Putin’s foreign minister accused Theresa May of “resorting to open lies”.

He said: “I believe that our Western partners, I mean primarily the United Kingdom, the United States and some countries that blindly follow them, have cast away all decency, they are resorting to open lies, blatant misinformation.”

Between cold, proxy and trade wars, as time moves on in the Trump era, it seems like the world has gone haywire.  While history tends not to repeat itself – but rather rhymes – the fatalistic opinion of a veteran Russian expert and observer such as Buzhinsky has to be taken seriously. We can only hope that his forecast for a “last war” is wrong.

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
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Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

To understand how the nine trends contribute to, or are associated with, systemic fragility it is necessary to define further what is meant by contribution. How do the nine trends differently cause fragility and therefore financial instability? What are the qualitative differences among the trends in the determination of systemic fragility? To begin with, some causal factors are precipitating a crisis. Other causal factors are best understood as enabling, both in the build up to the financial crash and in the immediate post-crash contraction. Still other causes are fundamental and originating in nature. And not only the nine trends but fragility itself becomes a cause of fragility, as the development of systemic fragility results in feedback effects described in more detail shortly.

Of the nine trends, those that qualify as ‘fundamental’ are the explosion of liquidity within the global economy since the 1970s, the accompanying escalation of debt, the relative shift to financial asset investing that follows as real investment slows and financial asset investing and speculation in financial securities rises, and the accelerating disparity between incomes of the several hundred thousand new finance capital elite and those of the hundreds of millions of wage earners.

The important ‘enabling’ trends and factors would include the restructuring of both financial and labor markets globally and the contribution of government policy (fiscal, monetary, and other)—as both restructuring and policy enable, encourage and assist the expansion of debt and stagnation of incomes.

‘Precipitating’ causes of financial instability events (market crashes, banking system crashes, severe credit crunches, major financial institution insolvency and bankruptcy events, wars, natural crises, etc.) are not among the nine trends. What precipitates, or sets in motion, a major financial crisis is typically associated with a major shift in investor-agents’ psychological mindset and expectations. Here the price system, especially the acceleration of financial asset price deflation, plays a close supporting role in that expectations shift by investors.

To briefly recapitulate the nine trends and their relationship to fragility and financial instability: the explosion of liquidity since the 1970s, attributable to central banks creation of ‘money credit’ plus internal changes in the financial structure that has increased ‘inside credit’ liquidity, has led to a corresponding excess growth of debt, especially private sector debt. The availability of debt has led to its general leveraging in the purchase of financial assets. Financial asset investment profitability has diverted money capital from real asset investment alternative opportunities. Excess liquidity has become far greater in any event that might be employed in real asset investment.

Fragility is a basic function of rising debt and slowing or declining growth of incomes required to pay for debt, plus a set of group variables that affect payment capabilities as well. Financial restructuring has produced a corresponding new structure comprised of shadow banks, deep shadow banks, and integration of commercial and shadow banks, an expanded global network of highly liquid markets for transacting financial assets, and proliferating forms of financial securities traded in these markets. This new structure and the unprecedented financial incomes it has generated for professional investors has created a new finance capital elite of no more than 200,000 very high net worth individuals. This new structure, the new elite, and the development of systemic fragility are components which must be included in the proper definition of ‘financialization’. Concurrent with the financial restructuring has been a fundamental restructuring of labor markets on the real side of the economy. Labor market restructuring has produced a stagnation and decline of real wages and therefore household consumption fragility from falling incomes and related rising household debt. This occurs simultaneously as financial restructuring has raised debt and financial fragility. These are long term secular trends. However, financial crises and consequent real economy contractions intensify the mutual effects of financial and consumption fragility on each other in the post-crash period and deep contraction period. Government fragility also rises long term secularly due to policies that reduce government income sources even as government subsidizes the private sector and government debt rises. Government debt accelerates with cyclical crises, financial instability and real contractions, as government transfers private debt to its own balance sheets as well. Systemic fragility renders government fiscal-monetary policies less effective as it negates multipliers and reduces elasticities of interest rates on consumption and investment. In crises and post crises periods, the mutual feedback effects between three forms of fragility intensify as well. Financial asset price volatility plays a key role in the growth of systemic fragility, in intensifying the financial and real crises when they erupt, and in reducing the effectiveness of traditional government fiscal-monetary policies from stabilizing the crises.

Measuring the Three Forms of Systemic Fragility

As already noted, the three forms of fragility are financial fragility that affects private sector investment, consumption fragility that impacts households, and government balance sheet fragility that has consequences for government policy effectiveness and government ability to prevent deeper than normal real economic contractions and to generate a sustained recovery from those deeper contractions.

The three forms of fragility may be aggregated to estimate systemic fragility. Since debt levels and liquidity are potentially measurable, each of the three forms of fragility should in theory be capable of producing a fragility index. Systemic fragility in turn should be capable of representation by means of an aggregated index based on the three indices. However, the aggregation of the three forms of fragility cannot be created by a simple addition of each of the three fragility forms. Systemic fragility is more than just the ‘sum of the parts’. The magnitude of systemic fragility is the product of the many, complex interactions and feedback effects that occur between the three forms of fragility. This feedback contribution makes the creation of a systemic fragility index more problematic.

Within each of the three forms of fragility the major determining variables are debt, income available for debt payments, and a group variable of elements that affect payment of debt from available incomes.

The debt and income variables include not only levels or magnitude of debt but the rate of change in levels and magnitudes. How thoroughly debt and income is defined is also important.

For example, forms of basic income with which to pay debt may include cash flow for financial institutions and businesses and wage income for households. While these are the basic definitions as per Minsky’s analysis of fragility, they are not sufficient.

For determining financial fragility, Minsky’s cash flow variable is too narrow a concept. The income variable influencing financial fragility should be defined as cash flow plus other forms of near liquid assets held by businesses that may in a crisis be relatively quickly converted to cash in order to make debt payments. Moreover, the rate of change in this broader income variable, and not just its level, should also be considered.

For households and consumption fragility, the proper income variable should be wage earning households’ real disposable income plus income in the form of transfer payments to these households. Both levels and rates of change of income are important. Since the vast majority (90% or more) of households’ income is from wages and transfer sources, adopting the real disposable income as the wage income variable is acceptable. However, insofar as the wealthiest households (especially the top 1% and the even more especial 0.1%) constitute a share of overall investor households whose income derives in part (rising with income level) from financial investment and capital gains incomes, a distinction might also be made between the two when assessing the development of consumption fragility.

And for government units, it is not just tax revenues that constitute ‘income’ but the ability to quickly sell bonds in markets as well. Another major factor related to government fragility is the ability of the national or federal government to essentially create substitute income quickly and when necessary in the form of printing of money that it can then ‘lend’ to itself when income from tax revenue and bond sales to private investors (and other governments) is insufficient. Since only national governments are legally allowed to ‘create income’ for themselves, it is probably important to distinguish between national government fragility and state-province-local government unit fragility, where in the case of the latter direct income creation is not an option.

Minsky’s approach is also undeveloped in assuming that financial fragility’s internal variables of debt and income operate for financial institutions (banks, shadow banks, etc.) in the same way as for other non-bank businesses. Insufficient distinction is made between the two, given that financial asset deflation impacts banks more severely and rapidly in a crash than it does non-bank business. Financial asset price collapse causes a collapse of bank cash flow + near liquid assets, and thus raises bank real debt much faster than for non-banks whose cash flow is affected negatively by falling real goods prices which decline much slower. This is a critical distinction. Minsky’s failure to account for it reflects his general underdevelopment of the two-price theory factor, as he himself acknowledges. Also undeveloped is the intermediate form of bank-nonbank business institution—i.e. the multinational corporation that today is a hybrid of bank and nonbank, or what we’ve called ‘deep shadow’ bank, where its business model is based on both real asset and significant financial asset investing activity. And then there is the related question of whether, and if so how, shadow banks in general are potentially more fragile than commercial banks and how is that explained by the basic variable duality of debt and income?

On the debt side of the fragility definition, the sources and kinds of debt incurred are probably important as well, not just the total debt levels or rates of change. For example, there are a number of different kinds of business debt (corporate bonds, paper, bank loans, etc.) that are important due to the terms and conditions associated with payments in the different instances. In the case of banks and financial institutions, bank fragility may be higher when there is a greater weight of ‘repurchase agreements or repos’ in their total debt portfolio while the proportion of junk bond debt to total debt impacts non-bank fragility. Similarly, composition of debt is important for consumer households (mortgage, credit card, student loan, payday loans, etc.) And even government debt, especially at the local government level where debt composed of derivatives like interest rate swaps is involved.

Here is where the third key variable defining fragility becomes important—i.e. what might be called the ‘terms and conditions’ of debt servicing (T&C variable) that interacts in important ways with both debt and income to jointly determine fragility.

Minsky’s view is undeveloped with regard to the T&C variable. T&C is a group variable that is composed of various elements that may exist in different combinations and ‘weights’ associated with a particular debt. T&C as a group variable may include elements such as the level of interest charged on the debt; the term structure of the debt (short term v. longer term debt); whether the debt interest payment is fixed or variable and thus subject to volatility in interest amount; penalties, fees and other charges on missed payments; provisions of the debt that define under what conditions default may occur when principal and/or interest is not paid on time; post-default obligations; time limits for defining default (30, 60, 90 days?); powers of the lender of the debt when default is declared; bankruptcy processing, and other provisions that are called ‘covenants’ that define payment options for the borrower; alternatives to payment (e.g. option to pay ‘in kind’), refinancing conditions, and so on.

The T&C variable is thus complex, and its composition and effects may vary considerably between different forms of debt (e.g. investment grade v. high yield ‘junk’ corporate bond debt, corporate commercial paper debt, securitized debt, national government sovereign (T-bond) debt, local government municipal debt, household installment, credit card, or student loans, leverage loans made by private equity shadow banks to businesses, and so on). The difficult to quantify character of the T&C variable makes estimating a fragility index for each of the three constituent forms of fragility especially difficult. But the T&C variable’s important and influence on fragility nonetheless increases greatly when a financial instability event is precipitated and a rapid change in financial asset price deflation occurs.

Thus within the three forms of fragility—financial, consumption, and government—that determine systemic fragility are three critical variables—debt, income, and terms and conditions of debt servicing. The interaction between debt, income and T&C variables determine what might be called a first approximation of the level of each form of (financial, consumption, government) fragility. But this would be a first approximation only, since the levels of fragility—and their aggregate summation as systemic fragility—are the consequence as well of the various feedback effects between the three fragility forms. And those feedback effects are enabled, in turn, by transmission mechanisms or processes that also constitute the equation of systemic fragility.

Fragility Feedback Effects

A major differentiation between the theory of systemic fragility introduced here, compared to other theories based on fragility as a determinant of financial instability, is the acknowledgement of what might be called ‘feedback effects’. The term is shorthand for the recognition that fragility is a dynamic and not a static concept. And that its development does not occur in a linear manner.

By ‘feedback’ and dynamic is meant that there exists a complex web of mutual determinants involved in the development of the aggregate condition called Systemic Fragility. Mutual causations between variables are at work, occurring at various levels.

As several examples have already indicated, there are mutual determinations between the three forms of fragility—financial, consumption, and government balance sheet. The internal variables of debt, income, and T&C also mutually impact each other—in some cases offsetting and reducing fragility and in other cases exacerbating it within each of the fragility forms. And there is a third, still more general level of interaction and determination—between financial asset and real asset investment as a consequence of growing fragility in general.

Within each form of fragility, the three variables involved—debt, income, and T&C—interact in various ways. For example, slowing or declining income with which to pay debt may result in higher debt, as a nonbank business resorts to borrowing more in order to service the debt. Or, its T&C may worsen as it rolls over the debt at a higher interest rate and/or shorter payback term, or with a loss of previously favorable ‘covenants’. Rising debt in turn reduces available income for investment, as more of future income must be assigned to paying the higher debt. When debt term expires, lower income flow and higher debt levels may result in debt refinancing on worse terms than previously, which reduce the ability to make future payments. There are various combinations of mutual interactions between debt, income, and T&C over time.

A similar scenario applies to consumption fragility. Declining consumer real disposable income and/or reduction in transfer payments may force households to take on more debt to maintain living standards. Debt levels rise, and in turn higher total interest and principal must be paid on the debt. That means less future real disposable income after the higher payments are made. The higher a consumer’s debt load and debt payments as a percent of disposable income, the worse the credit terms that consumer receives when borrowing. Higher indebtedness and lower income results in having to pay a higher interest rate for a home mortgage or auto loan. The quality of that indebtedness also affects payment terms. Excess credit card debt, for example, may force a household to resort to payday loans, obtainable only at excessive interest rates.

And within government units, especially local government, a fall-off in tax revenue affects a credit rating so that the municipality, school district, or other government agency is forced to pay higher interest rates on bond issues it offers. Higher interest payments due to more debt and higher rates means a reduction in future income. Income and debt mutually exacerbate each other, and government fragility rises.

Even national level governments may face similar difficulties. A good example is Greece.

In the Greek case, like many Euro periphery governments after 1999 and after the creation of the Euro currency, Greece borrowed heavily from northern European banks. Its sovereign debt levels rose steadily from 2000 to 2008. When the great recession in 2008-09 depressed Greece’s real economy, its tax revenue income declined. Its ability to finance past debt therefore was not possible. Northern European governments, and cross-government institutions, thereafter restructured and refinanced (rolled over and added to) Greek debt in 2010. That added further to the total debt levels to be paid. T&C were made more unattractive as well. As part of restructuring, Greece was forced to divert its tax income to pay for the higher debt. So its debt rose and its income available for the higher debt payments simultaneously declined. Debt and income decline were exacerbating each other and fragility growing for all three reasons, including deteriorating T&Cs. Government income diverted for debt payments, as a consequence of austerity policies, had the further effect of reducing Greek GDP, which further lowered tax income, and made Greece even more fragile. A second European recession in 2011-12 repeated the process, and debt was restructured a second time in 2012 with the same general effects. A third debt restructuring in 2015 is in progress. It too will raise debt levels, total debt payments due, and reduce Greece’s income from tax sources still further as Greek GDP collapses once again.

The possible feedback effects between the three key variables within each of the forms of fragility are numerous. The intensity of these interactions serves to raise the level of fragility within each form. Moreover, that intensity rises during and immediately after a financial instability event, which accelerates the development of fragility within each form.

Increasingly fragility within each form leads in turn to greater feedback effects between the three forms of fragility as well.

Several examples have been shown previously of how financial fragility may interact and intensify household consumption fragility—and vice-versa. When a financially precipitated recession occurs, interactions between forms of fragility intensify and the processes become generalized. A ‘race to the bottom’ then ensues, leading to generalized price reduction (goods deflation), labor cost cutting and more household consumption fragility.

In the case of the financial fragility of banks and financial institutions, this feeds back on both nonbank businesses and households, raising the fragility of both. This typically occurs as collapsing financial asset prices for banks results in a freezing up of bank lending, both to nonbank businesses and consumer households. With new loans frozen banks’ new income generation does not occur. They cannot sell financial securities, since no one wants to buy securities when financial asset prices are collapsing. Bank fragility then translates into nonbank fragility, as nonbank businesses, unable to obtain day to day business operating loans from banks, must resort to the cost cutting with the effects previously noted. In this way a nonbank business, that is not necessarily fragile to begin with, may be quickly forced into a fragility condition by the banking system and have to cut costs and/or take on more debt from other sources at less attractive rates and terms. The freezing up of bank lending has a similar effect on households. Bank layoffs mean declining income and rising fragility for employees associated with the banks. Nonbank cost cutting due to lack of bank loans produces the same effect for households. Bank financial asset price collapse may mean loss or reduction of pension retirement income to households. It also typically results in a decline in interest income earned by households. Mortgage refinancing as a means of increasing household income also dries up as banks freeze lending. There are various conduits by which bank fragility translates directly or indirectly (via nonbank fragility) to household income stagnation, decline, and therefore rising consumption fragility. Bank lending freeze up may also force households, like nonbank businesses, to seek credit elsewhere on worse T&C arrangements, also contributing to household consumption fragility.

Bank fragility also feeds back, directly and indirectly, on government balance sheet fragility. The freezing up of bank lending results in a decline in real investment and household consumption that slows economic growth and thus government tax revenue. Government also ends up spending more in recession situations (discretionary and non-discretionary spending typically rise). The combination of more spending and less tax income means rising budget deficits which must be ‘financed’ by raising more government debt. Thus government fragility rises due to both declining income and rising debt.

Government also transfers debt from the private sector—especially from banks and strategic nonbank businesses it bails out—following financial crashes and deep recessions. Government may buy the bad assets on bank balance sheets and transfer it to its own—either its central bank or to what is called a nationalized ‘bad bank’ which holds the various toxic assets until the government can resell them. Massive government direct loans, subsidies, and loan guarantees to strategic nonbank businesses may also occur. Banks’ ability to sell bad mortgage debt to government agencies also amounts to an offloading and transfer of debt, and fragility to an extent, to government. By enacting deep bank and business tax cuts, government indirectly also transfers private sector debt and fragility to itself. Banks and business income is raised as a consequence of less taxes to pay, while government income declines and thus its own fragility is raised.

Government units may also absorb debt from households in a similar fashion, in effect subsidizing mortgage refinancing for homeowners facing foreclosure or experiencing ‘negative equity’ value in the homes. However, this occurs far less than the much more numerous and generous debt transfer programs provided to banks, financial institutions and investors. More typical is government subsidizing household income, in effect reducing its own income, transferring debt and fragility to its own balance sheet. Secularly over the long term, but especially in post-financial crash crises, government may fund an increase in its transfer payments to households bolstering household income at the expense of its own deficits and debt. The rise in household consumption fragility is to an extent thus offset, while government’s own fragility from more spending, deficits and debt is in turn raised.

Thus far the examples of ‘feedback’ direction have been from financial fragility, and especially bank fragility, to household consumption fragility and even government balance sheet fragility. But consumption fragility may also ‘feedback’ on both financial and government fragility.

As household income stagnates or declines due to many of the labor market structural changes noted, there is less consumption and therefore less household demand for nonbank business goods and services. That may result in less business revenue and therefore less business income. This feedback effect may be reduced to the extent that households, despite declining income, do not reduce their consumption but instead take on more consumer debt to maintain consumption levels. However, there is a limit to how much extra debt households are able, or may want, to take on to maintain consumption. Household debt accumulation has upper limits.

Consumer debt reduces future disposable income, as more interest on the debt must be paid. Stagnating-declining household incomes (and fragility) feed back to both further nonbank financial fragility as well as more future household consumption fragility.

Consumption fragility also feeds government balance sheet fragility. Reductions in household income and/or rising debt have the consequence of less consumer spending. Less household spending means less sales tax revenue; that especially impacts local governments highly dependent on this particular form of tax revenue income. In the US economy, deep recession conditions are associated with significant loss of household incomes due to layoffs, wage cuts, etc., which may translate into mortgage failures, foreclosures, and falling local property values. That results in less property tax revenue income for local governments, raising their fragility. Dependent on local government and property tax revenues, Public Education services are then cut unless national governments spend more in order to maintain such services. In this manner, rising consumption fragility indirectly forces an increase in local government fragility via tax revenue income decline as well as national government fragility via more spending, deficits, debt and national government balance sheet fragility. Less household consumption impacts income tax—as well as local sales and property tax—revenues similarly. Less consumption means less business production and less hiring, both of which reduce taxable income that would otherwise accrue to governments. And there is a secondary, derivative effect on government fragility. Not only may government debt levels rise, as government has to borrow more in order to offset tax income loss, but the terms on which the additional debt is borrowed may raise debt costs as well. State and local governments running large budget deficits pay higher rates of interest for the municipal bond debt they sell in order to finance their high deficits due to tax income decline.

Financial fragility feeds into consumption fragility, and vice-versa. Financial and consumption fragility feed government balance sheet fragility in various ways. But the feedback direction may also occur from government balance sheet fragility to financial and household consumption fragility. This is where fiscal austerity policies play a particularly significant role. Austerity is about offloading actual, and/or potential, government debt onto households. Government balance sheet fragility is reduced at the expense of rising consumption fragility. Austerity means a deep reduction in government spending. That means more retained government income. But spending in the form of household transfer payments means less household disposable income. Less government spending means lower deficits and less debt to finance as well. Austerity also means government selling off public assets, which raises temporarily government income levels. But it forces households to turn to private, higher priced, alternatives to the once government provided services and programs. What were once perhaps free public services and goods must now be paid for by households, reducing their disposable income and raising household fragility. Austerity also means raising taxes and reducing government pensions and retirement payments, or national healthcare services or payments. All that raises government income or reduces government costs, while lowering household disposable income and raising household costs. In austerity, most of the tax increases are local government fee increases, sales taxes, and other ‘regressive’ taxation impacting median and below households the most. Occasionally, the tax hikes also affect investors and businesses. And the pension, retirement, and health care cuts are significantly directed at middle income households.

What the foregoing reflects is that there are numerous ways and ‘paths’ by which fragility in each of the three forms in turn ‘feeds back’ upon one or more of the other forms. Sometimes the feedback is direct—i.e. from government to households, or banks to nonbank businesses and households, or households to government or nonbank businesses. Sometimes it is transmitted via income declines, sometimes debt, or other times both simultaneously more or less. The feedbacks may also occur indirectly: i.e. rising financial fragility leading to consumption fragility and thereafter to government fragility as the latter responds. Or financial to government to households. Or many of the other possible combinations involving two or more.

But the major point is that feedback effects do occur. Fragility does not develop within each of the three forms independently of the other. It ‘accelerates’ overall as the intensity of the feedback effects grows during periods of financial instability events and subsequent deep and rapid decline in the real economy. There are not only ‘accelerator’ effects, but also what might be called ‘elasticities of response’ between the different forms of fragility feedbacks. Perhaps a minor change in financial fragility generates a significant feedback effect on consumption fragility—i.e. a big further rise in consumption fragility. But a rise in consumption fragility produces less of a significant change on financial fragility.

Transmission Mechanisms of Systemic Fragility

A final, but very important, topic to consider is the importance of ‘Transmission Mechanisms’ (TXMs) or processes with regard to fragility. This is an area that has been left particularly undeveloped in other analyses that attempt to explain the relationship between fragility, financial instability, and economic cycles.

Transmission mechanisms operate at several levels in the process of determination of systemic fragility. Feedback effects—i.e. mutual determinations—occur between the three internal variables—debt, income, T&Cs. At a higher level, between the three forms of fragility—financial, consumption, government balance sheet. And at the most general level between financial asset investment and real asset investment. All the mutual determinations require some kind of transmission mechanism between them.

At least three key transmission mechanisms appear essential to Systemic Fragility. They are: 1) the price system, 2) government policy, and 3) investor agents’ psychological expectations.

Price Systems as TXM

The neoclassical view is that there is only one price system and all prices behave the same—that is, all prices respond in the same way to supply and demand forces. Whether financial asset prices, goods & services prices (output prices), input prices (wages as price for labor, real capital goods, land), or money prices (interest rates) are involved, the response to supply and demand is similar. Supply interacting with demand adjusts prices to return the economy back to equilibrium. In other words, one price system thus fits all and the price system is the key to economic system stabilization.

This neoclassical view does not conform to reality, however. In the case of financial assets, demand plays a much greater role; the role of supply is almost negligible. With financial asset price inflation, demand induces still more demand, driving prices ever higher so long as prices continue to rise. Supply does not moderate asset price inflation. And financial asset prices ‘adjust’ rapidly and abruptly downward (i.e. deflate) only when investors conclude that further price appreciation is not possible and price stagnation or decline is imminent. It is thus a psychological perception or expectation of imminent price shifting that precipitates the reversal and price deflation, not supply side forces. The shift to deflation is unrelated to extra supply or rising costs, as in goods prices, since ‘cost of goods’ for producing financial securities is virtually negligible.

Financial asset price deflation is a mechanism within a form of fragility that intensifies and exacerbates the effect of one fragility variable upon another—i.e. debt on income, income on debt, T&C on debt, and so on. Take the example of growing financial fragility among banks. Financial asset deflation reduces bank income available to make bank debt payments to another bank from which it may have borrowed. When asset deflation begins, investors do not buy new assets from the bank. Bank revenue falls. Income from the sale of bank equity declines as well. This general income decline occurs, moreover, at a time when banks actually need to increase their income in order to cover the asset losses from falling asset prices as well as make payment on their own debt. Less income plus falling asset values plus rising real debt translate into an increase in bank financial fragility.

How then does this greater bank fragility transmit to another form of fragility, i.e. from financial to consumption and/or government fragility? Here again the price system serves as transmission mechanism, as financial asset deflation spills over into goods deflation and even to wage deflation thereafter. Here’s one scenario of bank to nonbank to household fragility transmission enabled by price systems:

Banks are capitalist businesses like any other, but they are also different in that they are the capitalist institutions that provide credit to the rest of the system. They function based on a ‘fractional reserve’ basis. When bank asset prices deflate and bank losses grow, banks stop lending to ensure they retain sufficient reserves. They hoard available income (cash assets) as much as possible in an asset deflation situation in order to offset losses. When financial asset deflation is moderate, banks respond with what’s called a moderate ‘credit crunch’ (lending interest rates escalate); when asset deflation is more serious, a ‘liquidity crunch’ occurs (bank lending dries up temporarily as banks impose administrative obstacles to prevent lending as well as raise lending rates); when banks default on a debt payment due it’s an even more serious scenario, a ‘solvency crisis’. An insolvent bank is a candidate for bankruptcy and court distribution of its remaining assets at auction.

The degree of bank financial asset collapse thus corresponds roughly to the degree of bank lending contraction. And as bank lending contracts, so too does the real economy. Nonbank businesses cannot obtain operating loans to keep their businesses going. Banks just won’t lend. Nonbanks are then forced to raise more revenue income by lowering their product prices and/or by reducing their labor prices (wages) to cut costs, or both. In this scenario, what starts as financial asset deflation for banks ‘transmits’ to the rest of the economy as nonbank businesses institute goods and/or wage deflation. That goods and wage deflation reduces income for nonbanks and for households, in turn raising their fragility. The transmission is from asset prices to goods prices to wage prices. But the process starts with financial assets.

An alternative to nonbanks lowering their goods and/or labor prices is to cut production and/or layoff workers. The production cuts and layoffs result in less government tax revenue and thus raises government fragility. The layoffs amount to an aggregate wage reduction, with the same effect on consumption fragility.

Transmission by price system can also occur in the opposite causal direction. Forces behind declining goods or labor prices unrelated to financial asset deflation can transmit nonbank or household fragility to banks and financial asset deflation. However, that reverse direction of causation does not typically precipitate financial asset deflation as often or as dramatically as the latter precipitates goods and wage deflation. That’s because financial asset prices are, by their nature, far more volatile for reasons stated. So what is more often observed is financial asset deflation transmitting financial fragility to nonbanks and consumption fragility to households.

Just as there are multiple ‘feedback’ effects between forms of fragility, so too are there multiple ways price systems can transmit income decline and debt rise, and thus fragility, between the three different forms of fragility. The steeper the asset price deflation that occurs after a financial crisis erupts, the more intense the transmission from one form of fragility to another. Also, the more fragile the other forms are when the crisis and asset deflation begins, the stronger the transmission from one fragility form to another. For fragility grows secularly and steadily over the long term, and then accelerates when a financial crisis erupts and the real economy contracts sharply in response to the crisis.

Government policy changes also function as transmission mechanisms, causing fragility to intensify among variables within a form of fragility as well as between forms of fragility. Here one might argue that government ‘prices’ serve as a transmission mechanism.

In the wake of a major financial instability event like a stock market crash or banking insolvency crisis, for example, the government central bank takes monetary action to pump massive liquidity into the banks to offset their financial asset collapse and losses. To do this the central bank drives down its lending rate to banks and bank-to-bank lending rates to zero, as has happened throughout the advanced economies since 2008 and continues now for the seventh year. Lowering the ‘price’ of money (i.e. interest rates) by government action lowers costs for banks and raises bank incomes by means of cost cutting. Banks can also rollover and refinance their previous debt by borrowing new debt at virtually no cost. That income support and debt interest (T&C) reduction together reduces banks’ fragility.

However, it also reduces income for households and raises therefore consumption fragility. Interest income previously earned by households from higher interest savings rates disappears. Households’ fixed income is reduced and consumption fragility thus rises due to the lower income. In effect, central bank zero interest monetary policy results in a de facto transfer of income from households to the banking sector. Households subsidize the banks. From a fragility analysis standpoint, it means fragility is transmitted from banks to households.

The lower interest rates also reduce central banks-government fragility by lowering the government’s debt financing costs. So both banks and governments like a zero interest policy. That’s one key reason why it has continued for so long and is favored over fiscal policy throughout the advanced economies still, after seven years. Greater reason, no doubt, is that keeping rates low for a long duration simply provides low-no cost liquidity with which to invest in accelerating financial asset prices or to use to leverage to finance expanding offshore real investments by multinational corporations. The purely economic reasons also provide geopolitical advantages as well. Low rates in order to stimulate the real economy are more a justification, and certainly a secondary objective.

The shift in government monetary and interest rate policy is a fragility transmission mechanism enabling feedback from one form (bank financial) to another form (household consumption). Or, it might be argued that the price for money is the transmission mechanism.

Another government price mechanism by which fragility is transmitted from one fragility form to another is government taxation—i.e. taxes as the ‘price’ for government services. By reducing taxes on banks or nonbank businesses, the government in effect frees up more income for business (reducing its fragility) while lowering its own tax revenue income and raising its own fragility. Lower tax revenue and income may have a ‘knock-on’ effect requiring the government to take on more debt to offset the business tax cut and government revenue income loss. So government debt rises, income declines, and its fragility rises as that of business falls. This amounts to a transfer of fragility from the business-bank side (i.e. financial fragility) to government balance sheet fragility.

Government might do the same for households. However, such parallel fragility transfer is often only token in magnitude and effect. More often since 2008, governments have responded with austerity, shifting its greater debt and lower income (fragility) due to bank and nonbank bailouts to households. In other words, austerity tax policy amounts to a transfer of debt/income and fragility from banks and nonbanks to households and consumers, through the medium of the government.

Other types of government policy may also serve as transmission mechanisms bringing about a shift of fragility from one of the three forms to the other by lowering debt/raising income in one form and lowering income/raising debt in another. For example, free trade policies raise business revenue income at the expense of households’ wage income. That means a shift of fragility from business to households, all things equal.

Government policies that aim at privatizing pensions and retirement systems, or privatizing and de-collectivizing (Obamacare in the US) health insurance systems, result in major cost savings for business that reduces their fragility, but also results in lower deferred wage incomes and benefits compensation for wage earning households.

The trend throughout the advanced economies in recent years is to implement what is called ‘labor market reforms,’ policy that aims at reducing unions, collective bargaining, and employment rights to help business cut costs and raise income. It also results in lower wage income. Fragility is offloaded from business and on-loaded to wage earning households.

A third transmission mechanism that increases fragility within a particular form, as well as between the three forms, is Investor-Agents Expectations.

Expectations among the global finance capital elite as to where financial asset prices are going in given markets are critical to the direct transmission of fragility between financial and consumption, and indirectly to government fragility as well. Consensus expectations among the elite as to whether financial asset prices in a given market are about to peak typically set in motion the selling of assets in that market. The selling then accelerates as second tier investors follow suit. Asset price deflation may thereafter turn into a rout, as ‘retail’ investors then provide further momentum and financial asset deflation accelerates. Members of the finance capital elite thus precipitate a reversal of asset price inflation.

This may occur by collusion between major shadow bank institutions or even commercial banking institutions. For example, in recent years evidence of such collusion has repeatedly appeared—as in the case of fixing of Libor interest rates and derivatives trading on London exchanges. Or it may occur as the result of more tacit signals by major buying or selling by well known traders of the big institutions, shadow or commercial. A pattern appears to repeat, where money capital and credit flows from shadow banks and big investors into a particular market, where the asset prices rise appreciably, then assets are sold in growing volume, financial profits are taken, and the global money parade moves on to another financial securities market.

One day it’s Asian stock and equity markets, then its corporate junk bonds, then Exchange Traded Funds, then oil commodity futures price changes, then it’s Japanese or Euro currency speculation as QE programs are about to be introduced. The sea of liquid capital awash in the global economy sloshes around from one highly liquid financial market to another, driving up asset prices as a tsunami of investor demand rushes in, taking profits as the price surge is about to ebb, leaving a field of economic destruction of the real economy in its wake. Financial asset bubbles build and then collapse, accelerating financial fragility. When the pullout occurs, financial losses negatively impact the availability of money capital and credit for nonbank businesses, raising fragility among nonbank enterprises and the households dependent on them for wage income. Investor-agents’ expectations alternately drive financial asset prices to bubble ranges, and then cause them to collapse as money is moved out again and sent elsewhere, almost instantaneously and electronically to other liquid markets which now have more asset price appreciation potential.

What results is stock markets appreciating to levels that have nothing to do with fundamental earnings of the companies in them, an unrelenting chasing of yield by investors in ever riskier markets, and a growing volatility of currency exchange rates—to name but a few of the more recent negative effects. What moves the markets in terms of major shifts and swings are not the common investor, but the major ‘institutional’ (read: shadow bank) investors who buy and sell in large blocks of securities.

Decisions of the big investors, the finance capital elite, are at the center of these major shifts in direction (up or down) involving financial securities prices. And their decisions are heavily influenced by their expectations as to where a given financial market’s price level is reaching a top or approaching a nadir. Investors outside this elite may trade once a shift in direction has occurred (thus making few profits or taking major losses for ‘getting in late’ and ‘getting out late’). But it is this global elite that drives the major shifts in asset prices, which is where the real money is made.

Their expectations and decisions have implications for financial fragility and its transmission to nonbanks, households and even government balance sheets.

*

This article was originally published on Kyklos Productions.

Dr. Jack Rasmus is the author of ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes: Monetary Policy and the Coming Depression’, Clarity Press, August 2017, and ‘Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy, Clarity, 2016. His forthcoming book later in 2018 is ‘Taxes, War & Austerity: Neoliberal Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and tweets at @drjackrasmus.

Introduction

Western neoconservatives and hawks are driving the international situation to increasing tension and danger. Not content with the destruction of Iraq and Libya based on false claims, they are now pressing for a direct US attack on Syria.

As a dangerous prelude, Israeli jets flying over Lebanese airspace fired missiles against the T4/Tiyas Airbase west of Palmyra.

This was Predicted

As reported at Tass, the Chief of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, predicted the current events almost a month ago. The report from March 13 says,

“Russia has hard facts about preparations for staging the use of chemical weapons against civilians by the government forces. After the provocation, the US plans to accuse Syria’s government forces of using chemical weapons … furnish the so-called ‘evidence’ … and Washington plans to deliver a missile and bomb strike against Damascus’ government districts.”

Gerasimov noted that Russian military advisors are staying in the Syrian Defense Ministry’s facilities in Damascus and “in the event of a threat to our military servicemen’s lives, Russia’s Armed Forces will take retaliatory measures to target both the missiles and their delivery vehicles.”

The situation is clearly dangerous with risk of sliding into international conflict and even WW3. If that happens, it would mean the demise of civilization. All of this so that the West can continue supporting the sectarian armed groups seeking to overthrow the Assad government … in violation of international law and the UN Charter.

The most powerful country in the world is now led by a real estate, hotel and entertainment mogul without political experience. Behind the scenes, there is a powerful foreign policy establishment determined to maintain and reclaim US unilateral “leadership” of the world. They don’t like the fact that the US is losing influence, prestige and power around the world. Israel and Saudi Arabia are especially upset that their plans for regional domination are failing.

East Ghouta, Damascus

East Ghouta is a district of farms and towns on the north-east outskirts of Damascus. For the past six years, various armed factions controlled the area. On a nearly daily basis, they launched mortar and hell cannon missile attacks into Damascus, killing many thousands. This author personally witnessed two such mortar attacks in April 2014.

By the end of March most of East Ghouta had been retaken by the government. With the peaceful evacuation of armed militants, civilians flooded into the humanitarian corridors and then government camps for the displaced. The campaign was proceeding quickly with minimal loss of life as the Russian Reconciliation officers negotiated agreements which allowed the militants to keep small weapons and be transported to Idlib in the north. Vanessa Beeley documented the situation including the happiness and relief of many civilians as they finally made it to safety. One described the feeling as “like being reborn”. Robert Fisk was on site and reported what he saw first hand in stories titled Watching on as Islamist fighters are evacuated from war-torn Eastern Ghouta and Western howls of outrage over the Ghouta siege ring hollow.

As reported at the Russian Reconciliation Centre, by the end of March, 105,857 civilians had moved into government controlled areas while 13,793 militants plus 23,433 family members had been transported north. Those who wanted to stay, including former fighters, were welcomed. They could rejoin Syrian society with the same rights and obligations as other Syrians.

The last remaining opposition stronghold was the town of Douma, controlled by the Saudi funded Jaish al Islam. Negotiations were prolonged because Jaish al Islam did not want to go to Idlib which is dominated by another militant opposition group, Jabhat al Nusra also known as Hayat Tahrir al Sham.

The Chemical Incident

On Saturday April 7 video and stories claiming a chemical weapons attack in Douma were broadcast. The video showed dozens of dead children. On Sunday the story grabbed western mainstream media headlines.  US President Trump quickly come to a conclusion:

“President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay”.

There has been no objective investigation. The media claims are based on statements and videos from members of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and White Helmets. Both organizations receive significant funding from the US government and call for Western intervention in Syria.

Chemical weapons have emerged as the quick and easy justification for aggression.  One year ago, in April 2017, it was the incident at Khan Shaykoun. That resulted in a US attack on a Syrian air base just days later. The subsequent investigation discovered that dozens of victims had shown up in hospitals in diverse locations and up to 100 kms away from the scene of crime BEFORE the event happened. Strangely, and indicating the investigation team bias, this red flag pointing to fraud was not investigated further. If it was just a few victims or just one location, it might be a mistake in time record-keeping. However in this case there were dozens of discrepancies in multiple locations, clearly raising the possibility of fraud.

Now we have the incident in Douma, at town on the outskirts of Damascus. The armed opposition is in retreat. They have tried to pressure the US and NATO to intervene directly since 2012. They have access to chemical weapons in East Ghouta and motive. They also have thousands of prisoners. This is the group which put hundreds of prisoners, primarily women and children, in cages on the streets of Douma.

Who Benefits?

The timing of the chemical weapons incidents is also noteworthy. As documented here, one year ago on 30 March 2017 Ambassador Haley said the US policy was no longer focused on getting Assad out. Five days later the chemical incident at Khan Sheikhoun happened, quickly followed by blaming the Syrian government, a US attack and a restoration of the demand that “Assad must go”. On March 29 Trump said that US forces will withdraw from Syria “very soon”. This was followed by outcries from the media and political establishment. Now, following the Saturday chemical weapons incident, the US is again threatening to intervene directly. The chemical weapons incidents have consistently resulted in the reversal of a proposed change in hostility toward Syria.

Neoconservatives and the supporters of ‘regime change’ foreign policy have various theories why the Assad government would perpetrate a chemical weapons attack. Senator John McCain says the Syrian President was “emboldened” by the previous Trump statement.

Juan Cole, an academic who promoted the assaults on Libya in 2011, has a different theory. He says

“Chemical weapons are used by desperate regimes that are either outnumbered by the enemy or are reluctant to take casualties in their militaries. Barrel-bombing Douma with chem seems to have appealed to the regime as a tactic for this reason. It had potential of frightening the Douma population into deserting the Army of Islam.”

In contrast with his theory, chemical weapons were used extensively by the US in Vietnam and Iraq when they were far from desperate. As evidenced in the flow of civilians into government held areas, most of the civilian population are happy to get away from the sectarian and violent Army of Islam (“Jaish al Islam”). Cole seems to be basing his theories on inaccurate western media coverage just as he did regarding Libya where sensational claims about a looming massacre in Benghazi were later shown to be fraudulent.

It’s clear who benefits from sensational media coverage about a chemical weapons incident: those who seek to demonize the Syrian government and President and want the US government to intervene militarily. Every time there is an incident, it is quickly accepted and used by the governments and organizations who have been seeking ‘regime change’ in Syria for many years.

Manipulating Public Opinion

The manipulation of western opinion about the Syrian conflict using fake events is not theory; it has been proven.  A good example is the fake kidnapping of NBC reporter Richard Engel in December 2012.  Engel and his media team were reportedly kidnapped and threatened with death by “shabiha” supporters of the Syrian president. After days in captivity the American team was supposedly rescued by Free Syrian Army “rebels” after a shootout. In 2015 it was confirmed this was a hoax perpetrated by the FSA and their American supporters. The entire charade was carried out by the “rebels”. The goal was to demonize the Assad government and its supporters, and to romanticize and increase support for the armed opposition. Neither Engel nor NBC confessed to the reality until it was about to be exposed years later, pointing to duplicity and collusion in the deception.

Four and half years ago, on 21 August 2013, the most famous chemical weapons incident occurred. The Syrian government was immediately accused of launching a sarin attack which killed hundreds of children and civilians. Over the next six months investigations were carried out. The conclusions of Seymour Hersh, Robert Parry and the research site whoghouta.com concluded that the attack was almost certainly NOT from the government but actually from one of the ‘rebel’ factions with support from Turkish intelligence services. Two Turkish parliamentary deputies held a press conference and publicly revealed some of the evidence. The intent then, as now, was to provide justification and provocation for the US and NATO to intervene directly.

Conclusion

Today there is the imminent possibility of a major attack based on the allegations of a clearly biased source. What ever happened to international law and legal due process? Why is violence being threatened before there is a serious objective investigation of the chemical incident? If the accusations against Syria are true, why not have a serious investigation, especially now that the area has been liberated today (9 April) and safe access can be provided?

The drums of war are pounding. After over one year of incessant Russia bashing and disinformation, is the public ready to go to war with Russia over Syria? Neoconservative hawks and their Israeli and Saudi allies seem to want this. Their plans and predictions for Iraq, Libya and Yemen were delusional fantasies with the price paid in blood by the people of those countries and in treasure by Americans as well. Sadly, there has not been any accountability for the media and political establishment that promoted and launched these wars. Now they want to escalate the aggression by attacking Syria, causing vastly more blood to flow and risking confrontation with a country which can fight back.

*

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at [email protected]

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A child could see through the fake “chemical attack” supposedly launched by Bashar al-Assad just as his troops defeated the jihadists and Trump said he wanted out of Syria. But our President can’t, which raises the question: is he as stupid or stupider than George W. Bush? Or is he crazy?

The bad news is: possibly both. And no, there is no good news.

It was 6 in the morning this Sunday when 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…”

We are expected to believe that the Assad regime committed a horrific atrocity against mostly women and children at the very moment when Syrian forces have decisively defeated the Islamist rebels and Trump declared he wanted US troops out of Syria. Days before this fake attack, the Russian Defense Ministry warned that a false flag provocation was in the making.

“Big price,” eh? The person paying that price is going to be Trump himself: his deplorables didn’t vote for him so we could establish an Islamic Sunni state in Syria, as John Bolton has long advocated. If he gets into a war – and the longer we stay in Syria, the bigger are the chances that we’ll be pulled into yet another quagmire – his presidency is doomed.

So let’s get down to brass tacks, as they used to say: doesn’t this prove I was wrong about Trump and his movement all along? Weren’t all the smarty-pants NeverTrumpers right from the very beginning?

I was very wrong to discount the role of character, personality, and intelligence: Trump is simply not fit to be President. The foreign policy he seemed to be promising, summed up in the slogan “America First,” was and is the right path for this country – but life is not about policies divorced from individuals. People like me – writers, journalists, and publicists – think in terms of ideas, but these cannot exist apart from the people who hold them, or pretend to hold them. Trump is a very imperfect vessel for a very good policy – and that is definitely an understatement.

Yet that has nothing to do with what I said and wrote about Trump’s various foreign policy pronouncements right up until very recently: as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, and exhaustively, the very fact that a successful presidential candidate criticized the Iraq war (“they lied”) and our policy of global intervention – e.g., questioned NATO’s existence – was and still is a great step forward. That Trump isn’t living up to his campaign promises and his post-election rhetoric is another matter entirely. The “deplorables” are in open rebellion against this new turn: Trump is losing his base.

So here’s the question: is he stupid, like George W. Bush, or is he crazy, in the tradition of, say, Richard M. Nixon?

The case for stupidity is fairly strong: after all, where’s the evidence that Assad launched a chemical attack? Like the series of fake “attacks” touted by the jihadist rebels over the years, this one lacks verification – but that doesn’t bother the War Party. Since when do they need evidence? Last time Trump fell for this routine it turned out that his own Secretary of Defense admitted – well after the US bombing raid – that there was “no evidence” that the Syrian government had launched a chemical attack. The same dodgy “proof” beleaguers the Skripal “poisoning” case in Britain – and, what a coincidence, the same villains are being blamed – Putin & Co. The idea that Assad had anything to gain from launching such an attack is not even worth refuting: he’d already won the war. So what would be the point? It isn’t hard to understand this, yet our President is clueless – or pretends to be.

The case for craziness – a real mental affliction – is even stronger, in my opinion. When President Obama was confronted with the same phony “attacks,” as reported by jihadist “activists” and “medics,” Trump urged him to stay out of it. Yet now that’s he’s in the Oval Office, he’s doing what he urged Obama not to do. This is the classic behavior pattern of a schizoid nutjob with multiple personalities: it’s “The Three Faces of the Donald,” and the big question is which one will emerge today?

Another issue I was apparently dead wrong about is the ascension of John Bolton as National Security Advisor: no big deal, I said. Wrong! I refuse to believe that Trump is caving in to the War Party on Syria just as Bolton gets the keys to his new office. And here’s another non-coincidence: this new turn comes just after Trump got into an argument with his generals over Syria. He wanted out: they insisted we stay. It didn’t take him long to find an excuse – this bogus “attack” – to cave.

So he’s not just stupid, and crazy – he’s also a coward. He refuses to confront the War Party head on, despite his campaign trail rhetoric. Just the other day he was telling crowds in Ohio how we were on the way out of Syria because “we have to take care of our own country.” The crowd cheered. Would he go back to that same audience and tell them we need to intervene in a country that’s been wracked by warfare for years, with no real hope of a peaceful settlement? Of course not.

He’s a Beta male masquerading as an Alpha.

The top three most powerful foreign lobbies in Washington are pushing the US to not only stay in Syria but to expand the role of US troops: the Saudis, who directly support the jihadist rebels, the Israelis, who have long sought to overthrow Assad, and the British, who are behind the maniacal anti-Russian propaganda campaign, starting with the shenanigans of Christopher Steele. Trump’s craven capitulation to these “allies” is yet more evidence of his cowardice under fire. And there’s no doubt that his blaming Russia – and naming Putin – as supposedly responsible for this “gas attack” is a ploy to get Robert Mueller off his back.

I have to say that the future looks grim. This puts Trump’s entire foreign policy agenda up for grabs, including the once-promising Korean peace initiative. Will he sabotage what might have been his greatest accomplishment – peace on the Korean peninsula?

It’s entirely possible.

We are now entering uncharted territory – although, come to think of it, that’s been true since Election Day, 2016. Hold on to your hats, folks, and get a grip on your nerves – because it’s going to be a long, scary ride.

*

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].

Washington’s recent trade actions are aimed foursquare at China, not at the EU or other trade partners. However, the aim is not to reduce China exports to the US. The aim is a fundamental opening up of the Chinese economy to the Washington free market liberal reforms that China has steadfastly resisted. In a sense, it is a new version of the Anglo-American Opium Wars of the 1840s using other means to open China. China’s vision of its economic sovereignty is at direct odds with that of Washington. Because of this Xi Jinping is not about to cave in and Trump’s latest threats of escalation risk a major destabilization of the precarious global financial system.

There exist basically two contradictory visions of the Chinese future economy and this is what the Washington attacks are about. One is to force China to open its economy on terms dictated by the West, especially by US multinationals. The second vision is one put in place during the first term of Xi Jinping aiming to transform China’s huge economy into the world’s leading technology nation over the coming seven years, a tall order but one Beijing takes deadly serious. It is also integral to the vision behind Xi Jinping’s Belt Road Initiative.

China 2030…

Washington is determined to push China to adhere to a document it produced in 2013 together with the World Bank during the time Robert Zoellick headed it. The document, China 2030, calls for China to complete radical market reforms. It states,

“It is imperative that China … develop a market-based system with sound foundations…while a vigorous private sector plays the more important role of driving growth.”

The report, cosigned then by the Chinese Finance Ministry and State Council, further declared that

“China’s strategy toward the world will need to be governed by a few key principles: open markets, fairness and equity, mutually beneficial cooperation, global inclusiveness and sustainable development.”

Referring to the current Washington strategy of imposing import tariffs on billions worth of Chinese products, Michael Pillsbury, a neo-conservative former Trump Transition adviser and China expert told the South China Morning Post,

“The endgame is that China complete its deep reforms of its economy as laid out in the joint report,” referring to the World Bank Zoellick China 2030 report.

…Versus Made in China: 2025

Notable about that report is that it was released at the very start of Xi Jinping’s presidency and can be said to be a product of an earlier China. Soon into office, Xi unveiled what is now his Belt Road Initiative, the ambitious multi-trillion industrial infrastructure project for high-speed rails and deep water ports that would create an integrated economic space across Eurasia including Russia, South Asia, the Middle East and parts of east Africa. Two years after Xi Jinping unveiled his new Economic Silk Road as it was initially called, his government released a quite different national economic strategy document to that of the World Bank. It is titled China 2025: Made in China.

The document calls for China to emerge from its initial stage as an economy assembling technologies for Apple or GM under license, to become self-sufficient in its own technology. The dramatic success of China mobile phone company Huawei to rival Apple or Samsung is a case in point. China 2025 is a strategy to support the development, much as was done in Germany after 1871 with “Made in Germany.” In the space of thirty years German manufactures went from a position of low quality to one of the highest quality standards. The Chinese are well aware of this model.

The China sanctions are being drawn up by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). The USTR first report, some 200 pages, explicitly goes after what it calls China’s unfair trade practices, accusing her of disregard for intellectual property rights, discrimination against foreign firms, and use of preferential industrial policies to “unfairly” bolster Chinese firms. That USTR report by name cites Made in China: 2025 as the offending strategy Trump tariffs aim to change.

China 2025 is the current blueprint to turn China into a world-class high-technology economy, exporting its own high-speed rail technology, aircraft, electric vehicles, robotics, AI technologies and countless other leading-edge technologies. It is in certain ways modelled on the 1950-1980 South Korea model in which the country moves in stages from labor-intensive industries and climb the value-added chain to high-tech industries with necessary state guidance. China, already facing the beginnings of a demographic imbalance knows she must develop this new industrial base model or face economic stagnation as it loses competitiveness. It’s about going from dependence on foreign technology and investments to becoming independent in key areas. Much of China 2025 is based on China’s careful study of the German “Industry 4.0” which seeks to marry German industrial production with the digital age. China:2025 seeks to achieve “self-sufficiency” through technology substitution, becoming a “manufacturing superpower” globally in critical high-tech industries.

“…stab at the heart of the snake”

The stakes in this latest confrontation from Washington are far too high to expect Xi Jinping to back down to US pressure and open its economy according to Washington demands. That would not only jeopardize China’s economic strategy. It would also cause Xi Jinping to seriously lose face, something he is not inclined to do. Headlines in recent Communist Party state media indicate the mood. The lead story in Peoples’ Daily declares,

“Bravely unsheathe the sword, have the courage to oppose, stab at the heart of the snake…” It continues, “a trade war will hurt America’s low-income consumers, industrial workers, and farmers…the main supporters of Trump.”

In effect, Washington and the latest trade salvos are intended to tell China to keep its place in the US-version of a globalized liberal world where the state is not allowed to play any significant role, one where decisive power is held by a multinational corporate elite. Xi Jinping, having just consolidated his position with no restrictions on his term and consolidating his role as no previous Chinese leader since Mao, is not about to revert to what China sees as bowing to foreign pressures on its economic sovereignty. Privately, as I have confirmed in numerous discussions in China in the years since the 2008 financial crisis, China views the United States as a declining hegemon, much like the British Empire after 1873. It is determined to prepare a multi-polar alternative to the post-1990 US “sole superpower.” Its close recent bonds with Russia include preparing gold-backed currencies, alternatives to the Western SWIFT, military defenses against any potential US threat in the South China Sea or elsewhere. Notable in this light the first trip abroad of new China Defense Minister Wei Fenghe was to meet his Russian counterpart and signal the close ties of the two Eurasian powers to Washington. The Chinese view the US as a former industrial power whose debt is out of control and whose “free market” model has manifestly failed America, let alone the world.

An April 3 editorial in the official Beijing Global Times suggests China has no intent to back down or revert to the World Bank agenda. It declares,

“Washington wanted to demonstrate its authority to the world, but unfortunately it gambled badly. The entire US elites have overestimated the strength and execution.” The editorial continues, “There is no way for the US to rebuild the hegemony that elites in Washington picture. As globalization and democracy have dented the foundation for that hegemony, the US lacks the strength, will and internal unity needed. In fact, the US has found it difficult to subdue Iran and North Korea, not to mention major countries like China. Washington cannot rule the world as an empire.”

China’s execution of its ambitious Belt Road Initiative has not been to date without mistakes. It’s the most far-reaching project in perhaps all world history to cooperate economically across more than 60 nations and cultures. It appears to be learning from mistakes and correcting them as the work develops. So far Washington has responded to direct invitations to participate by slamming the door and now imposing severe trade tariff sanctions to try to force China to back off from its state model of industrial policy.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this will not end in any victory for Trump or the US economy. The reaction of the bloated US stock markets to recent escalations suggest he risks popping the greatest speculative bubble in US stock market history, something that would trigger a financial crisis far worse than 2008. All of which suggests the old saying, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Trump has decided to launch not a trade war but a confrontation between Washington’s version of a US-run globalized economy versus China’s vision of national sovereign economic development. Today we see an increasing divide opening between nations such as China, Russia, Iran and several European countries such as Hungary or Austria who realize that the agenda of US-riven globalization spells disaster for their future. This divergence is the most significant tectonic fault line in world geopolitics and will define whether the world descends into a new depression or develops a model for growth and expansion centered around the infrastructure of China and Russia Eurasian cooperation.

The US economy is in no shape to win such a confrontation, nor will Xi Jinping back down. This could get very nasty. China is responding very carefully and in measured moves.

The latest Pentagon strategic policy document, 2018 National Defense Strategy, explicitly names China and Russia as the main threats to US “national security,” and accuses China of “predatory economics” (sic), of using to their advantage economic policies that use the rules of the system to advantage, as if the US didn’t. If Trump really escalates, China is clearly ready to do whatever necessary, even with economic pain, to defend its economic model, as defined in China: 2025.

*

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. 

F. William Engdahl is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The alleged chemical attack in Syria is a blatant display of how emotional propaganda is used to try and pull at the heartstrings of the general public in order to garner support for a military attack on Syria by the US and her allies.

Unless you are sociopathic, watching videos of children in distress who have allegedly been struck by a chemical agent (in an incident where women and children have also allegedly died) is going to upset you, yet it must be remembered that these videos are being used as propaganda instruments, intended to elicit an emotional response.

Whether these videos are authentic or not will need to be investigated, but even if this is a genuine incident, and innocent people have tragically died, why is the Syrian government immediately blamed? We know that there is evidence that militant opposition groups have used chemical weapons in Syria previously, yet this is never highlighted by much of the media in their reports of this latest incident.

Russian MOD Previously Warned of Chemical Weapons False Flag Attack

Last month, the Russian Defense Ministry warned that the US was training militants in Syria to stage a chemical weapons false flag attack as a basis for the US to launch airstrikes against the Syrian government:

“We have reliable information at our disposal that US instructors have trained a number of militant groups in the vicinity of the town of At-Tanf, to stage provocations involving chemical warfare agents in southern Syria. They are preparing a series of chemical munitions explosions. This fact will be used to blame the government forces. The provocations will be used as a pretext by the United States and its allies to launch strikes on military and government infrastructure in Syria.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the fresh allegations against the Syrian government as “fake news,” stating that these reports are just the latest installment in a “continuous series of fake news [reports] about the use of chlorine and other chemical agents by government forces.” The Syrian government has stated that “allegations of chemical use have become an unconvincing broken record.”

Trump Pushes Phony Narrative

In a series of tweets, US President Donald Trump pushed the narrative that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged attack:

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…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

….to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

If President Obama had crossed his stated Red Line In The Sand, the Syrian disaster would have ended long ago! Animal Assad would have been history!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 8, 2018

How can Trump be so sure that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack? To my knowledge, no serious investigation has taken place into the incident thus far.

Are we also just meant to believe that it is merely a coincidence that John Bolton, the war hawk and neoconservative, is set to formally begin his role tomorrow (April 9^th) as Trump’s new National Security Adviser. Even after the horror of the Iraq war that caused widespread death, destruction and destabilization, Bolton has repeatedly defended the war and the ousting of Saddam Hussein, believing that the war was a great accomplishment that achieved many US strategic objectives in the region.

Logic alone will tell you that the latest allegations against the Syrian government are based on lies, distortion and propaganda. The whole narrative makes absolutely no sense. In what way does this incident serve Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian government? Why would Assad, a man who has survived in power after seven years of incessant demonization coupled with foreign-backed warfare, order a chemical weapons attack when he knows that the enemies of Syria will jump on this as a justification for military operations aimed at regime change? Assad may be many things, but he is not suicidal.

*

Steven MacMillan is a freelance writer and editor of  The Analyst Report where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from OffGuardian.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: 

stephenlendman.org 

(Home – Stephen Lendman). 

Contact at [email protected].

In the wake of accusing Syria of using CWs in Douma, Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the allegation “fake news,” the latest “fabricated information,” adding:

“The goal of these false speculations, which are not substantiated by any facts, is to cover up terrorists and irreconcilable radical opposition, which opposes political settlement, and to simultaneously try to justify potential external military strikes.”

“It is necessary to once again caution that military intervention under false and fabricated pretexts in Syria, where the Russian servicemen stay at the request of the legitimate government, is absolutely unacceptable and may trigger the gravest consequences.”

Head of Russia’s reconciliation center in Syria Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko also refuted reports of CWs used in Douma, calling them fake news.

According to Syrian Arab Red Crescent Dr. Seif Aldin Hobia and other organization medical staff, no evidence suggests use of CWs in Douma. Reports suggesting otherwise are false.

Overnight Monday, Syria’s Homs province T-4 airbase was terror-bombed. According to AMN news,

“(a) large number of Syrian military personnel were killed or wounded this morning after several missiles struck the” base, citing a Syrian army source.

The attack was likely either carried out by the Pentagon or Israel. Syria’s army source believes the latter, AMN saying “20 missiles were fired from the Lebanese border.” The IDF launched earlier attacks on Syria from Lebanese airspace.

At least 8 incoming missiles were intercepted and destroyed overnight. Israel almost never admits responsibility for these type attacks.

Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television said (US-supported) ISIS terrorists attacked Sebaa-Bair in Homs province following the T-4 airbase terror-bombing – their fighters repelled.

Al-Mayadeen reported an Israeli reconnaissance plane overflying Syria’s T-4 airbase when the attack occurred.

Missiles also may have been fired from the Mediterranean Sea through Lebanese airspace toward their target – by US and/or Israeli warships.

The false flag Douma incident is the latest example of escalating conflict in Syria. Washington, Israel and their rogue allies reject diplomatic resolution.

Incidents like Douma suggest more of the same coming, anti-Syria hysteria fueled by inflammatory Trump tweets, similar neocon remarks, and Western media reports, backing the official narrative.

On Monday, John Bolton succeeds HR McMaster as Trump’s national security advisor.

On February 7, he tweeted:

“It should surprise no one that the Syrian government continues to develop new chemical weapons.”

“(Assad) has a record of killing (his) own people and the international community hasn’t done enough to deter this continuing behavior” – a bald-faced lie.

It doesn’t matter. With him as perhaps Trump’s most trusted geopolitical advisor, a lunatic fringe extremist, the worst ahead is likely in Syria and elsewhere.

*

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the CRG, Correspondent of Global Research based in Chicago.

“You can’t come into court to espouse a position that is heartless.”
– Senior US District Judge Nichlas G. Garaufis
US District Court for Eastern District of New York
September 26, 2017

Lawyers in all sorts of courts argue heartless positions every day without fear of reprimand from a judge, who may also be heartless. The admonition from Judge Garaufis is an anomaly filled with hope, not least because he was admonishing the Trump administration for its heartless immigration policy. Specifically, the judge was chiding lawyers from the US Department of Justice for the government’s rigid unwillingness to adjust their schedule ending the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), the program designed to provide justice to some 800,000 immigrants who were brought to the US as children and have grown up here to be as American as anyone else. Judge Garaufis pointed out that the government’s heartless action affected more than just the 800,000 young people, but also their families, employers, and communities.

As soon as the Trump administration announced its plan to end DACA, its defenders took the government to federal court. The National Immigration Law Center, attorneys general of sixteen states (including New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, California, and Vermont), and other plaintiffs sued the US to prevent the government from ending DACA. The National Immigration Law Center issued a statement September 5, condemning the administration’s attack on DACA:

This is a defining moment for our country. We are being called upon to choose which side of history we are on: Are we going to stand with young people who have grown up in our country and are striving to achieve their dreams? Or are we going to allow policymakers to erect barriers that block youth from contributing their best to this country, which is their home? … [Trump’s decision] is a morally bankrupt choice.”

In the courts it was a different story after the preliminary procedural activity. On January 9 (Nixon’s birthday) US District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction requiring the US to leave its DACA program in place until the issue had been fully litigated. On February 12, Judge Garaufis in Brooklyn issued a second nationwide injunction complementing the first. In response to the government’s objections, the judge wrote in his 55-page decision:

… the court finds that a nationwide injunction is warranted in these cases. First, it is hard to conceive of how the court would craft a narrower injunction that would adequately protect Plaintiffs’ interests. Plaintiffs include not only several individuals and a nonprofit organization, but also sixteen states and the District of Columbia…. Furthermore, there is a strong federal interest in the uniformity of federal immigration law…. Because the decision to rescind the DACA program has a “systemwide impact,” the court will preliminarily impose a “systemwide remedy.”

In that same opinion, preventing the Trump administration from carrying out mass deportations under DACA, the judge observed that:

“One might reasonably infer that a candidate who makes overtly bigoted statements on the campaign trail might be more likely to engage in similarly bigoted action in office.”

Before the Brooklyn court issued its injunction, the US had appealed the California injunction to the Supreme Court. When two federal district courts disagree, the Supreme is more likely to intervene to settle the differences. Here, two federal courts were in agreement. On February 26, the Supreme Court declined to hear the DACA case, allowing it to proceed in district court and, as needed, federal appellate court. The Supreme Court made no ruling or comment on the merits of the DACA case. The Supreme Court’s decision leaves DACA in place as the legal process proceeds, perhaps until it eventually reaches the Supreme Court on appeal at some unknown date in the future.

On March 29, in Brooklyn federal court, Judge Garaufis ruled against a US motion to dismiss the case. He rejected the US Justice Department argument that, just because the president repeatedly makes racially and culturally bigoted remarks – like calling Mexicans thugs, animals, and bad hombres – that doesn’t prove his actions against minorities are based on his bigotry.

Ruling that the suit against the government’s immigration plans, Batalla Vidal v. Baran et.al, can go forward, Judge Nicholas Garaufis wrote:

“Plaintiffs have alleged sufficient facts to raise a plausible inference that the DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] rescission was substantially motivated by unlawful discriminatory purpose.”

Or to put it in lay terms, the immigrant Dreamers, people who were brought here as children and have grown up as American as you or I, were and very likely still are targets of the president’s vitriolic hatred expressed at the start of his campaign when he called all Mexican immigrants criminals, drug dealers, rapists, and “some good people.”

Rejecting the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Garaufis wrote dryly:

“Although the use of racial slurs, epithets, or other racially charged language does not violate equal protection per se, it can be evidence that official action was motivated by unlawful discriminatory purposes.”

Again, in lay terms that means that when a known bigot does something obviously bigoted, then perhaps his bigoted action is derived from his expressed bigotry. Just maybe.

Judge Garaufis’s ruling should allow the case to go to trial and be determined by the evidence. As the judge wrote:

“The court does not see why it must or should bury its head in the sand when faced with overt expressions of prejudice. The court is aware of no authority holding that this rule does not apply simply because the speaker is, or is running to be, the President of the United States.”

Do we really want to be the kind of country needs its courts to enforce common human decency? That’s the kind of country America seems to be these days, and it’s taken a good deal of time to get here. At a time when the Congress is filled with quisling Republicans and feckless Democrats, it appears as a slightly hopeful sign when some courts put at least some check on the president’s cruel destructiveness. The people affected by DACA are very different from our president, not least because they were not born into a rich family of practicing racists. The president’s decidedly un-Christian burst of twitter spittle over Easter weekend offered no hope. “NO MORE DACA DEAL,” he spluttered all in caps before going on to claim a fever-dream “caravan” of immigrants swarming across the border was somehow true (along with others like “DACA is dead because the Democrats didn’t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon… No longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!”).

Bigotry is soul-destroying for everyone, as our bigot-in-chief in the White House demonstrates almost daily. To be a decent nation within the norms of common decency and the intent of the US Constitution, we must resist and reject bigotry in all its forms. But for hope to be realized, a lot more of us need to bring the callous politics of bipartisan cruelty to an end. There may or may not be light at the end of the tunnel for any of us. There is a hint of light at the end of the tunnel for DACA, but there may only be the Supreme Court at the end of the tunnel, a court where many parties have pleaded positions that are heartless and the court has affirmed their heartlessness.

*

This article was originally published on Reader Supported News.

William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Although Russia has warned the U.S. that another U.S. missile-assault against sovereign Syrian territory will be answered not only by Syria’s military but also by Russia’s, Andrew Korybko, who is an expert on geostrategy and especially on Russia’s strategic intentions, says that Russia would not follow through on that threat unless Russian soldiers get killed by the U.S. invasion. But, either way, nuclear war between the super-powers would be likely; and here is why:

The Russian statement, as published on April 8th at the site of Russian Television, was that any such U.S. invasion “would be ‘absolutely unacceptable’ and could lead to ‘dire consequences.’” Of course, if Russia, after such a statement, were to respond, to such an invasion by the U.S., with something less than “dire consequences,” then the U.S. invasion would have defeated Russia, in the Syrian battlefield, without so much as even having had any war there against Russian forces. This would, to put it mildly, be a watershed moment of Russia’s military capitulation to U.S. aggression against the Government of Syria — an ally of Russia, left unprotected in the lurch, when Russia’s assistance would have been the most needed. Also, since the U.N. would never authorize any such invasion, the U.S. would have destroyed there the U.N. itself, as being anything more than a talking-forum that’s backed up by nothing more than the whims of what then would incontestably be the lone superpower and the imperial master of the entire planet: the U.S. regime, which would then have shown (conspicuously displayed) that it can do anything anywhere and be unconcerned about any retaliatory consequences. Would the Russian people accept that outcome, their capitulation? If they do not, then would they accept the American dictators? If they do not, then would they accept their own elected Government? Or: would there become a second Russian revolution?

The full phrase that was used in the Russian Government’s original announcement was that they “warn that military intervention under flimsy pretexts fabrications regarding Syria, where, at the request of the legitimate Government are Russian servicemen, is absolutely unacceptable and could lead to the most severe consequences.” In that form, the warning could sound meaningless; but, that’s not the form in which the assertion was being broadcast to the global public. If the intention of the Russian Government there was to have some basis for alleging that Russia’s attempt to “warn” the U.S. was no real warning at all, then it would be mocked.

The implication of the warning as it had been stated in that original, was that only if there “are Russian servicemen” who become hit by the U.S. aggression against the sovereign Syrian Government, will it be the case that it “could lead to the most severe consequences.” If, however, “Russian servicemen” do become injured or, worse yet, killed, by the American invasion, how could Russia’s Government face its own people if it then failed to respond with “the most serious consequences”?

Korybko said that

“it’s unlikely that Russia will carry through on the conditional yet highly publicized and mostly misunderstood threat to shoot down any American missiles and/or target their launching pads (including ships), so Syria will probably have little choice but to finally follow Russia’s ‘suggestion’ of a ‘last-minute solution’ or face the wrathful American consequences for refusing.”

But what would happen if Syria does choose to stand firm? And what would happen if there “are Russian servicemen” who become injured or killed in that invasion? 

Perhaps the Russian Government wants to extricate itself from its role as Syria’s essential protector, but there seems to be little possibility that it could be done now, other than by jeopardizing its own standing not only internationally as an ally whose commitments can be trusted, but even among the Russian people who had elected it.

Consequently, “dire consequences,” or “the most severe consequences” to the U.S. invaders, would quite possibly result from that invasion; and, then, what step would the invader follow-up with? 

Likely would be a massed invasion by the U.S. military in conjunction with that of Israel, the Sauds, and whatever NATO members would want to be at the head of the line of vassals supplicating for favors afterward to the imperial master-regime in Washington. This would then clearly be likewise a war against both Russia and Iran, and perhaps China and North Korea would join it on Russia’s-Syria’s side. But, in any case, the likelihood of limiting this war to only the Syrian battlefield would then be very slim indeed; and the only question that would seriously remain would be: will the all-out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia be initiated by a sudden blitz all-out nuclear invasion of Russia by the U.S., or, instead, by a sudden blitz all-out nuclear invasion of the U.S. by Russia? Which side will strike the first? That’s important, because the nuclear exchange will be over within only 30 minutes, at most. The first to strike will have obliterated many of the opposite side’s weapons (blocked them from being used), and this will be decisive in determining the ‘winner’ and the loser’.

Whichever side strikes the first will likeliest suffer the lesser damage of the two, even if the entire globe gets effectively destroyed as a consequence. In military terms, ‘victory’ always goes to whichever side suffers the less damage than the other; ‘defeat’ goes to the side that suffers the more damage. That’s all. This is the military, after all. And, so, even if there really would not be any significant history afterward, there still would have been a ‘winner’ and a ‘loser’; and this seems now to be the chief question that is seriously open, at the present time: who will blitz-attack first?

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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.

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

The extremist government of Binyamin Netanyahu, (a politician under investigation for fraud and corruption), receives arms and money which total billions of dollars annually from the US, together with millions of pounds from the UK, which is the fuel that keeps the engine of the occupation running: the continuance of the blockade and the persecution of five million indigenous Arabs – both Muslim and Christian – who have been the majority people of the region continuously for over a thousand years.

Such support for the non-NATO, undeclared nuclear state of Israel directly violates UN Resolution 2334 that was passed without dissent by the Security Council on 23 December 2016.

That resolution states that Israel’s settlement activity constitutes a ‘flagrant violation’ of international law and has ‘no legal validity’. It demands that Israel stop such activity and fulfill its obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

To date, the demands of the UN Security Council backed by over 190 UN Member States have been ignored and treated with contempt by the government of Israel in the knowledge that Trump and May will continue arms supplies. It is an international disgrace that tragically devalues the authority of the United Nations to the detriment of the international community and the global movement for peace.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst from the UK; he is a frequent contributor to Global Research.