Global Research

Today, the victories of athletes and the large-scale use of doping are inextricably linked in the modern world of elite sport. Although the 20th century was marked by the struggle for the spirit of fair play, then in the 21st century doping scandals are discussed more often than the outstanding records of prominent athletes. The use of prohibited substances and fight against doping turned into the main problem in the world of sports.

Daily training, physical stress, constant injuries, strict diet and special regime inevitably lead to permanent diseases. For example, bi-athletes, skiers and swimmers often have problems with the respiratory system. Figure-skaters, gymnasts and cyclists have their own weak spot: the spine. Runners, football and tennis players suffer from knee and elbow injuries.

The career of a professional athlete is not long. By the age of thirty many of them have to stop competing for medical reasons. It is also worth mentioning that athletes receive numerous injuries during the training process and at competitions. After that a long recovery period is required in order to prepare the body again for new achievements. Thus, today, elite sport is difficult to imagine without strong drugs that help athletes to cope with their diseases and injuries. Therapeutic Use Exemptions have appeared under this pretext.

However, the road to hell is paved with good intentions so many athletes started using this loophole extensively for their own mercenary purposes.

If you can’t breathe, you may get permission for banned salbutamol. Do you have inflammation or a ligament sprain? Here is the TUE for corticosteroids like dexamethasone or betamethasone.

On the one hand, everything seems quite logical: the athlete needs treatment if he is sick. However, it seems confusing when a number of athletes from one particular country are diagnosed with the same illness as if these exact health problems are required to join the national team.

Skiers from Norway are a striking example. Surprisingly the vast majority of them suffer from asthma. ‘Wheezy Vikings’ legally take prohibited salbutamol, which opens airways to and from the lungs and helps to cope with their disease whether it is real or fictitious. Besides, salbutamol significantly increases endurance and speed. These side effects do not seem to disturb the Norwegians.

In the summer 2016, the Norwegian skier Martin Sundby was found guilty of exceeding the permissible level of salbutamol. According to arbitral ward of the CAS,

“the athlete may have erred by taking a dose of salbutamol close to 10 times higher than the one allowed”.

However, even such a tremendous overdose resulted only in two months of suspension.

Anyway, in order not to be caught doping you just need to legitimate the use of doping. For this reason the number of cheating athletes is less important than the number of athletes who receive prohibited aid on a legal basis.

In August 2016, the American-based Business Insider published a piece on correlation between the number of clean athletes in various countries and those who violate anti-doping rules. The top 5 cheaters included Greece, Canada, South Korea, Sweden and Poland.

Does it mean that the problem of doping is the most acute in these countries? It may, but knowing the realities it is unlikely. It is more reasonable to assume that national teams of these countries don’t include athletes with ‘convenient’ chronic diseases.

For example, these teams don’t include a multiple champion from the USA Simone Biles, who is forced to take drugs since childhood due to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and thereby improve her dexterity and coordination, which are vitally important in gymnastics.

These teams don’t include Serena Williams either. Her muscle mass gained with the help of hormonal steroids is a pipe dream for many male tennis players.

It is also worth noting that, despite the large scandal as well as the huge number of sanctions against Russian athletes, Russia is just the sixth in this list. This indicates that anti-doping rules violation take place in that country indeed but the scale is far from what is reported by the world mass media.

Today, it can’t be denied that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and International Olympic Committee (IOC) are doing their work and even achieving certain results, but at the same time one cannot help but notice that these organizations are prejudiced to some extent. In the face of increased attention to the upcoming Olympic Games in Pyeongchang sports officials seem to be blind to such obvious things as manipulation of anti-doping rules and the excessive number of approved TUEs. There is only one possible explanation of such a criminal failure to act: the sports officials simply have no wish to stir up a hornets’ nest.

World sports officials don’t want to recognize the fact that prominent athletes and multiple Olympic champions who have become heroes and role models for millions of fans are cheaters who have been deluding the whole world. Therefore, today the respected gentlemen from Montreal and Lausanne have no other choice but to keep on their alleged anti-doping activity and observe the outrageous lawlessness with eyes wide shut.

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Roy Harper is a former member of staff of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). He is now committed to writing analysis about sports and politics.

Turkey has urged the US to “immediately withdraw” from Manbij in northern Syria, Saturday, sparking expectations that Turkish forces will imminently attack the town as part of its “Olive Branch” offensive against Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) militia. 

Hours earlier, Ankara claimed the US pledged to stop arming the YPG, amid strained ties between the two allies during Turkey’s offensive in Kurdish northern Syria.

“It’s necessary for them [US] to immediately withdraw from Manbij,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

Erdogan declared on Friday his intention to expand the offensive first to the town on Manbij, and subsequently all the way to the Iraqi border.

Washington also fears Turkey’s offensive will impact the US-led coalition’s fight against the Islamic State group in the region.One of the major issues marring relations between the two countries was the US supplying the YPG with weapons for its fight against IS, which the US has done since May 2017.

The 50,000-strong YPG has been a key ally of the US in eradicating the jihadi group from northern Syria, as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

With the support of the US-led coalition’s air power and special forces, the SDF led the battle last year against IS during which the militants lost their de facto capital of Raqqa.

During Friday’s phone call between McMaster and Kalin, officials cited Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns” over Kurdish control of northern Syria, and the pair agreed to coordinate closely in order to prevent misunderstandings, the presidency said in a statement.

The call came just days after Washington and Ankara bitterly contested each other’s accounts of a telephone conversation between Erdogan and US President Donald Trump.

A White House statement said Trump urged Turkey to “limit its military actions” in Afrin.

However, this was contested by a Turkish official who said that Erdogan had told his US counterpart of his intention to target Manbij.

Furthermore, Turkish officials said in November that Trump had promised to stop supplying arms to the YPG but said such action was never taken.

Ankara designates the YPG is a “terrorist” offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is proscribed as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.

The PKK has waged an over three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state in order to obtain autonomy, which was met with brutal and bloody crackdowns, resulting in about 40,000 people being killed since the 1980s.

Although many admire Turkey’s ardent support of the Syrian opposition and their rights in the face of the tyrannical Assad regime, many have called in to question Turkey’s ruthless treatment of the Kurds.

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Featured image is from The New Arab.

Turkish soldiers have been seen wearing a patch of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on their uniforms while operating in Syria’s northwest canton of Afrin where they leading a coalition of militants against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). 

This comes as a Syrian MP has claimed that their are very few Turkish soldiers actually involved in operations against the YPG. Details can be read here.

It must be remembered that this means Turkish soldiers are wearing a patch of a flag that has on innumerable occasions been displayed needs to the like of ISIS and Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra.

The Economist magazine, the influential London weekly described by Karl Marx over 150 years ago as the “European organ” of the “aristocracy of finance,” has devoted its latest issue to discussing “The Next War” and “The Growing Threat of Great Power Conflict.” Its lead editorial opens with a chilling warning:

In the past 25 years war has claimed too many lives. Yet even as civil and religious strife have raged in Syria, central Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, a devastating clash between the world’s great powers has remained almost unimaginable.

No longer … powerful, long-term shifts in geopolitics and the proliferation of new technologies are eroding the extraordinary military dominance that America and its allies have enjoyed. Conflict on a scale and intensity not seen since the second world war is once again plausible. The world is not prepared.

The Economist envisages a dystopian, violent future, with the American military deploying to intimidate or destroy purported challenges to its dominance everywhere.

The Economist predicts that in the next 20 years “climate change, population growth and sectarian or ethnic conflict” are likely to ensure that much of the world descends into “intrastate or civil wars.” Such conflicts will increasingly be fought at “close quarters, block by block” in cities ringed by “slums” and populated by millions of people. The future for large sections of humanity is the carnage that was witnessed during last year’s murderous battles over the Iraqi city of Mosul and the Syrian city of Aleppo.

But more chilling are the series of scenarios it outlines for a major escalation in tensions between the United States and Russia and China, presented as Washington’s strategic adversaries, which at any moment threaten to spiral into a nuclear holocaust.

In July of 2016, Mehring Books published David North’s A Quarter Century of War, which noted:

Beginning with the first Persian Gulf conflict of 1990-91, the United States has been at war continuously for a quarter century. While using propaganda catchphrases, such as defense of human rights and War on Terror, to conceal the real aims of its interventions in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa, as well as its confrontation with Russia and China, the United States has been engaged in a struggle for global hegemony. As the US seeks to counteract its economic weakness and worsening domestic social tensions, its relentless escalation of military operations threatens to erupt into a full-scale world war, between nuclear-armed states.

Less than two years later, much of this assessment has been echoed by one of the most significant political organs of Anglo-American capitalism. But the conclusions drawn by the Economist, speaking as the unalloyed representative of financial and corporate oligarchs whose wealth is bound up with American imperialist global dominance, are the exact opposite of North’s stated aim of helping build a “new antiwar movement.”

Rather, the Economist urges the United States to develop the “hard power” to defend itself against “determined and able challengers,” presenting the sociopathic argument that peace is best safeguarded by America’s ability to utterly destroy its adversaries.

The premise of the special report is that urgent action must be taken by the United States to stem the decline of its hegemony. It asserts that if the Chinese and Russian ruling classes are permitted to realise their ambition of dominant influence in their own regions, the “plausible” consequence will be a “devastating clash between the world’s great powers”—a world war fought with nuclear weapons.

China and Russia, its editorial in the January 27 edition declares, “are now revisionist states that want to challenge the status quo and look at their regions as spheres of influence to be dominated. For China, that means East Asia; for Russia, eastern Europe and Central Asia.”

The conclusion advanced by the Economist is that America must end “20 years of strategic drift” under successive administrations, which has allegedly “played into the hands of Russia and China.” In a series of articles, its special report advocates that the US spend staggering sums on new nuclear weapons and conventional weapons systems, including robotic and artificial intelligence (AI) technology, to ensure that it retains the military superiority that has, until now, inspired “fear in its foes.”

It warns: “The pressing danger is of war on the Korean peninsula, perhaps this year … Tens of thousands of people would perish, many more if nukes were used.”

The US military is ready to launch such a war. It has B-2 and B-52 nuclear-capable bombers forward deployed at Guam, and hundreds of jet fighters and an armada of warships in other Pacific bases. There is ample reason to believe that the confrontation Washington has provoked with North Korea, through its demand that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons program, is a massive rehearsal for a future nuclear stand-off with China.

The Economist opines that “a war to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons seems a more speculative prospect for now, but could become more likely a few years hence.”

It asserts that the US is threatened by the so-called “grey zone” in which China, Russia, Iran and other countries are seeking to “exploit” American “vulnerabilities” in parts of the world without provoking an open conflict. It gives as examples Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Iran’s political influence in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

US imperialist meddling, however, is considered entirely legitimate by the Economist. In Syria, the US has overseen seven years of civil war for regime-change to overthrow the Russian- and Iranian-backed government. Washington’s announcement this month that it intends to effectively occupy one third of the country and assemble a 30,000-strong proxy army from Kurdish and Islamist militias has created conditions for direct clashes not only with Iran and Russia, but also with its nominal NATO ally Turkey.

Predictably, amid the frenzied moves in the US and internationally to impose state control and censorship over the Internet, the journal accuses Russia of seeking to “undermine faith in Western institutions and encourage populist movements by meddling in elections and using bots and trolls on social media to fan grievances and prejudice.”

Technology companies, it insists, must be even more integrated with the military, while Internet corporations must work with the state apparatus to suppress access to oppositional views, on the fraudulent pretext of combatting “influence operations” and the “mass manipulation of public opinion.”

It notes in passing that for the American government, which already runs annual budget deficits approaching $700 billion, “finding the money will be another problem.”

The truth is that the subordination of every aspect of society to war preparations will be paid for by the ongoing destruction of the living standards and conditions of the American working class, combined with the elimination of its democratic rights and repression of opposition.

In an unintended echo of George Orwell’s “Newspeak,” the Economist concludes that “a strong America”—armed to the teeth and permanently threatening its rivals with obliteration—is the “best guarantor of world peace.”

The most chilling aspect of the report, however, is that it is pessimistic about its own prognosis for US imperialism succeeding in intimidating its rivals into submission. The very development of an ever more aggressive military stance toward China and Russia raises, not lessens, the likelihood of war.

“The greatest danger,” it states, “lies in miscalculation through a failure to understand an adversary’s intentions, leading to an unplanned escalation that runs out of control.”

What is being referred to is escalation to a nuclear holocaust. The article quotes Tom Plant, an analyst at the RUSI think tank:

“For both Russia and the US, nukes have retained their primacy. You only have to look at how they are spending their money.”

The US is upgrading its entire nuclear arsenal over the coming decades at a cost of $1.2 trillion. Russia is upgrading its nuclear-capable missiles, bombers and submarines. China is rapidly expanding the size and capability of its far smaller nuclear forces, as are Britain and France. Discussions are underway in ruling circles in Germany, Japan and even Australia on acquiring nuclear weapons so they can resist the nuclear-armed states.

The madness of a nuclear arms race in the 21st century arises inexorably from the contradictions of the capitalist system. The struggle among rival nation-states for global geostrategic and economic dominance is the inevitable outcome of capitalism’s intractable crisis and the ferocious conflict for control over markets and resources.

The epoch of world war, wrote the Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, is the epoch of world socialist revolution. The overthrow of the capitalist system, which gives rise to the war danger, is an urgent necessity for the survival of human civilization.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and its sections are working to build an international anti-war workers’ movement fighting for socialism. The open discussion on the prospect of nuclear war in the pages of journals like the Economist should motivate all serious workers and young people to join our struggle.

Britain’s war on free speech continues and it continues to get darker with every step of classic playbook style mission creep. Having legislated against protests (without police permission) or protests in many public areas and legislated to spy and surveil the entire population is some grand Stasi style wet dream, the next jack boot to come crashing down on the face of civil society is the crushing of free speech.

It started with using tax incentives to ensure left-leaning, anti-war and free speech, civil liberty, human rights websites and blogs were censored by the global tech giants. Then, more legislation arrives, usually in the guise of ‘national security.’ Of course, a bogey man is required to blame and as the governments own track record on curtailing home grown terrorists is not so good, we’ve gone back to that good old reliable foe from the Cold War, you know, that country that has not once attacked Britain – Red Russia.

The entire mainstream media – bar none has gone with the story that a new intelligence unit tasked with preventing the spread of so-called “fake news” by foreign states is to be created. Not one has questioned the limitations of this this so-called National Security Communications Unit.

The Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, is expected to provide further details about the National Security Communications Unit soon. Williamson himself has been relentlessly mocked all around the world for suggesting Russia could cause “thousands and thousands and thousands” of deaths by crippling British infrastructure in some sort of infantile rant, or as we would call it – FAKE NEWS. Many have accused Williamson of losing his grip on reality. Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Mr Williamson’s comments were worthy of a Monty Python sketch.

Williamson told The Telegraph, who actually went ahead and printed it:

“The plan for the Russians won’t be for landing craft to appear in the South Bay in Scarborough, and off Brighton Beach. They are going to be thinking: ‘How can we just cause so much pain to Britain?’ Damage its economy, rip its infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths, but actually have an element of creating total chaos within the country. It is a “real threat”, he added.

In the meantime, Williamson is accused of using national security and the press as some sort of diversionary tactic to move the gaze away from his own dodgy behaviour.

“Sources close to a company that employed Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, as a managing director say he attended a meeting to discuss his future after office colleagues became aware of his relationship with a junior colleague” – reported The Guardian.

Apparently, Williamson said he decided to leave the company to save his marriage. That isn’t the issue. The issue is that we have a Defence Secretary prepared to deceive the general public using the national press as a shield for his own unethical antics.

Of course, there is no greater a conceivable threat from Russia than from any other country. Russia has not threatened the United Kingdom.

Britain, like America is turning its back on the global disaster it is responsible for in the Middle East and now needs to refocus on another adversary and Russia is it. This is why you have not seen so much in the press about the continued atrocities of ISIS, the ongoing destruction of Libya, the fall of Kabul and much more.

Apparently, the new unit will be staffed with professionals from Britain’s intelligence and security agencies, but will also rely on contributions from external experts in cybersecurity, communications and public relations, no doubt the same organisations that are robbing a largely unaware population of their private data – with impunity. The unit will also include a “rapid response unit” that will be tasked with countering “fake news” in real time, according to The Times.

The move follows a similar development in the United States. In December of 2016, the then President Barack Obama very quietly signed a new law that designated $160 million to set up a government centre for “countering foreign propaganda and disinformation”.

Wearechange.org reported at the time that:

“This bill will “criminalise ‘fake news and propaganda’ on the web,” a key piece of legislation meant to crack down on free speech and independent media. In Layman’s terms, the act will allow the government to crack down with impunity against any media outlet it deems “propaganda.” The next piece of the legislation will provide substantial amounts of money to fund “counter propaganda,” to make sure the government’s approved stories drown out alternative media and journalists who question the status quo.”

Snopes, one of the so-called fact-checkers in the U.S. went to some lengths to explain why this wearechange report was itself both false and therefore fake news in its opinion. And then Snopes was proved wrong.

That law was then used as cover to immediately attack websites that went against the so-called national narrative of U.S. government policy – both domestic and foreign. Huge numbers of websites have complained of censorship. Many well known independent left-leaning outlets immediately reported massive falls in visitor numbers as their websites were deliberately hidden from search engines results and censored by social media.

TruePublica warned in December 2016 that:

“Fake news and propaganda driven by government’s and corporations is of course, nothing new. Brexit and the American election have brought the subject into sharp focus more recently as the political class have been unexpectedly losing important desired outcomes. Consequently, in Britain, controversial laws will be introduced to stem free speech, which, over the passage of time will be used to halt any individual, website or news outlet from reporting against the government narrative, with so-called ‘fake news’ eventually being outlawed.”

On Wednesday it was announced in London that the British Secretary of Defence, Gavin Williamson, will be providing further details about the National Security Communications Unit in a speech to the House of Commons “within the next few days”.

This announcement will mark yet another piece of serious censorship in the UK. And as we reported just a few months back – the UK has fallen two places to 40th out of 180 countries, down 12 places in the past five years alone for freedom of the press. We lag well behind countries such as Ghana (26th), Namibia (24th) and Surinam (20th). At this rate, Tonga and even Botswana will be ahead of Britain in just two years time!

OpenRightsGroup accused the government last year that “Government Gives Itself Power To Block Websites Leading To ‘Massive Censorship’ through the Digital Rights Act 2017. They were on the mark and said at the time that:

“That’s the point we are making. The power in the Digital Economy Bill (now Act) will create a mechanism to block literally millions of websites; the only real restraint is the amount of cash that MPs are willing to pour into the organisation.”

The National Security Communications Unit is in fact that cash they were referring to. Not only has your privacy, personal security and freedoms been sacrificed on the alter of a false narrative via ‘national security’ – so has your right to free speech.

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

Journalism lost one of its most valuable investigators when Robert Parry died from pancreatic cancer on January 27, at the age of  68. He was the first reporter to reveal Oliver North’s operation in the White House basement (AP, 6/10/1985), and the co-author of the first report on Contra drug-smuggling (AP, 12/21/1985). He did some of the most important work investigating the 1980 Reagan campaign’s efforts to delay the return of US hostages held in Iran, a scandal known as the October Surprise.

After breaking his first big stories with the Associated Press, Bob moved on to Newsweek and then later PBS‘s Frontline. Frustrated with the limits and compromises of corporate media—he was once told that a story on Contra financial skullduggery had to be watered down because Newsweekowner Katharine Graham was having Henry Kissinger as a weekend guest (Media Beat, 4/23/98)—Bob launched his own online outlet, Consortium News.

“He was a pioneer in bringing maverick journalism to the Internet,” FAIR founder Jeff Cohen wrote after Bob’s death. “Bob was a refugee from mainstream media who, like Izzy Stone, went on to build an uncensored and uncensorable outlet.”

Bob believed deeply in journalism, both as a vital force for shaping the world and as a moral imperative. In a moving tribute to his father, Nat Parry (Consortium News, 1/29/18) wrote that one of his earliest memories

was of my dad about to leave on assignment in the early 1980s to the war zones of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and the heartfelt good-bye that he wished to me and my siblings. He warned us that he was going to a very dangerous place and that there was a possibility that he might not come back.

I remember asking him why he had to go, why he couldn’t just stay at home with us. He replied that it was important to go to these places and tell the truth about what was happening there. He mentioned that children my age were being killed in these wars and that somebody had to tell their stories. I remember asking, “Kids like me?” He replied, “Yes, kids just like you.”

FAIR was blessed to have Bob not just as an inspiration and ally but as an occasional contributor. As a practitioner of journalism at its best, his insights into what happened when journalism went wrong were always valuable. In gratitude and fond memory, we offer some excerpts from a small part of an enduring body of work.

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Even Nixon, the grand strategist, could never have guessed how well his plans would have worked out a quarter century later—and how much of his chip-on-the-shoulder paranoia would still resonate today in a powerful conservative press establishment.

In the 25 years since Nixon started “pushing” this project, the conservatives have constructed a truly intimidating media machine. It ranges from nationwide radio talk shows by Rush Limbaugh and scores of Limbaugh-wannabes, to dozens of attack magazines, newspapers, newsletters and right-wing opinion columns, to national cable television networks propagating hard-line conservative values and viewpoints, to documentary producers who specialize in slick character assassination, to mega-buck publishing houses that add footnotes to white-supremacist theories anti a veneer of respectability to journalistic fabrications, and even to narrowly focused organizations that exist simply to hurt the surviving mainstream journalists who still won’t toe the line.

This conservative media machine now rivals—and may well surpass—the power and the influence of the old-line press. Both directly and indirectly, this right-wing media machine holds sway over much of the national agenda, deciding which ideas and individuals are accepted and which are marginalized.

—”The Rise of the Right-Wing Media Machine” (Extra!, 3–4/1995)

The [Wall Street] Journal editorial page, of course, was not alone in missing or misreporting aspects of Iran-Contra–connected investigations, nor in exaggerating the Whitewater affair. But the Journal’s editorial page stands out as a master of journalistic hypocrisy in the two controversies. On Iran/Contra, the Journal exploited its national influence to hamper and harass investigators and journalists examining serious crimes, including—by the Journal’s own belated admission—drug-trafficking, money-laundering and obstruction of justice. On Whitewater, conversely, the editorial page has served as the principal sounding board for baseless rumors.

—”Hast Seen the Whitewater Whale?” (Extra!, 9–10/1995)

Image on the right: Colin Powell touring the conquered nation of Panama.

[Colin] Powell’s justification for the cold-blooded murder of unarmed Vietnamese civilians is chilling. It is not only “brutal”—no need for a question mark—to murder an unarmed civilian in the manner Powell described; it is a war crime. Further, the killing is not excused by the fact that American soldiers, including Powell’s friends, were dying in combat. The death of American soldiers was exactly the rationale used by Lt. William Calley for the slaughter of hundreds of Vietnamese villagers, including babies, in My Lai.

The Powell memoirs offer similar defenses for the practice of applying Zippo lighters to the hooches of Vietnamese civilians during his first tour in Vietnam, as an adviser to South Vietnam’s army, in 1963. But when journalists who yearned for Colin Powell read his memoirs, they took almost no note of Powell’s stunning lack of compassion when civilians were dying: whether Vietnamese, Nicaraguan, Panamanian or Iraqi.

—”Powell Media Mania,” with Norman Solomon (Extra!, 1–2/1996)

When Gary Webb revived the Contra/cocaine issue in August 1996 with a 20,000-word, three-part series entitled “Dark Alliance” (8/18–20/1996), editors at major newspapers already had a powerful self-interest to slap down a story that they had disparaged for the past decade.

The challenge to their earlier judgments was doubly painful because the [San Jose] Mercury News’ sophisticated website ensured that Webb’s series made a big splash on the Internet, which was just emerging as a threat to the traditional news media. Also, the African-American community was furious at the possibility that U.S. government policies had contributed to the crack-cocaine epidemic.

In other words, the mostly white, male editors at the major newspapers saw their preeminence in judging news challenged by an upstart regional newspaper, the Internet and common American citizens who also happened to be black. So even as the CIA was prepared to conduct a relatively thorough and honest investigation, the major newspapers seemed more eager to protect their reputations and their turf.

—”America’s Debt to Gary Webb” (Extra!, 3–4/05)

Tactical retreats by “humbled” pro-war columnists focused on US ineptness in waging the war, not on the illegality, immorality and insanity of invading a major Arab country that wasn’t threatening the United States. By failing to expand the criticism of Bush beyond success or failure, the mainstream US news media continued to embrace implicitly Bush’s assertion of a special American right to attack wherever and whenever the president says.

It was still out of bounds to discuss how the Iraq invasion violated the Nuremberg principle against aggressive war and the United Nations Charter, which bars attacking another country except in cases of self-defense or with the approval of the UN Security Council. To one extent or another, nearly all major US news outlets had bought into the imperial neoconservative vision of an all-powerful United States that operates outside of international law.

—”Journalists ‘Humbled’ but Unrepentant,” with Sam and Nat Parry (Extra!, 11–12/07)

Ultimately, the GOP cover-up strategy proved highly effective, as Democrats grew timid and neoconservative journalists—then emerging as a powerful force in the Washington media—took the lead in decrying the October Surprise allegations as a “myth.” The Republicans benefited, too, from a Washington press corps that had grown weary of the complex Iran/Contra scandal. Careerist reporters in the mainstream press had learned that the route to advancement lay more in “debunking” such complicated national security scandals than in pursuing them.

—”Debunking the Debunkers of the October Surprise” (Extra!, 3/13)

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Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org, the website of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. Since 1990, he has edited Extra!, FAIR’s print publication, now a monthly newsletter. He is the co-author of Way Things Aren’t: Rush Limbaugh’s Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the ’90s. Naureckas was born in Libertyville, Illinois, in 1964, and graduated from Stanford University in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He has worked as an investigative reporter for the newspaper In These Times, where he covered the Iran/Contra scandal, and was managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere, a newsletter on Latin America. Since 1997 he has been married to Janine Jackson, FAIR’s program director. You can follow him on Twitter at @JNaureckas.

All images in this article are from the author.

Featured image: The photo above was taken soon after the Mt Polley tailings pond failure. It pictures what was once the tiny, 6 foot wide Hazeltine Creek near its mouth at Quesnel Lake . Photo courtesy of Clayoquot Action, Tofino, BC (www.clayoquotaction.org)

Requesting honest information from the Minnesota DNR, the Minnesota PCA and the US Forest Service regarding the latest PolyMet project permit application:

Please respond to the concerned folks to which this email has been cc’ed, all the details of the permit that the foreign corporation Glencore has submitted to the MNDNR, MNPCA, or US Forest Service concerning the establishment and maintenance of their enormously dangerous, potentially catastrophic, toxic tailings lagoon, an entity that seems to have been conveniently ignored by the media cheerleaders and even you regulatory entities.

I don’t recall seeing any permit application published for the eventual 250 foot high earthen dams that will hold back for eternity the tens of millions of cubic meters of poisonous liquid sludge that the copper/nickel/sulfuric acid mine will inevitably produce (and need to be stored).

Anybody with any awareness of the risks of the toxic metal and sulfuric acid recognizes that the tailings lagoon MUST be the center of discussion. So far it is rarely mentioned in the occasional news bulletins.

Every copper/nickel liquid tailings pond holds the 99.8% mine waste plus the liquids that is used to pipe the dissolved powder from the processing plant to the pond.

Every copper/nickel sulfide mine in the history of mining has leaked/leached poisons into the groundwater, onto adjacent lands and into the downstream environment. This happens at all copper mine sites that are located in watery environments such as northern Minnesota.

Just read the history of the first ancient copper/sulfide mine at Rio Tinto, Spain. Hundreds of years after these ancient mines closed, the mine area, including the downstream areas is still uninhabitable, the water is undrinkable and the downstream area is essentially incompatible with life. The pH of the immediate downstream rivers remains at 2.5 even hundreds of years after the mine was closed!

I invite everybody concerned to read the article that I wrote a few years ago about the Rio Tinto mining corporation’s oldest copper mine in Rio Tinto river area of Spain. It has been published on many websites around the world. The article is titled: “Rio Tinto (the River, the Mine and the Corporation): Still Polluting After All These Years”. The article is posted here.

An impressive rendering of another article that I wrote about the inevitable and eternal toxicity of copper mining can be found here.

The Transcend Media version has many important videos about copper mining dangers, plus links to eyewitness accounts of the Mount Polley disaster, which could easily foreshadow what might easily happen to the St Louis River and downstream environs if copper mining in northeast Minnesota is allowed to proceed.

Click on the youtube videos linked at the Transcend website. If any honest person with an open mind studies those videos with any thoroughness – he or she will have no option but to join the resistance movement.

Earthen dams are obviously highly susceptible to dissolving or bursting or over-topping in any number of scenarios, particularly when one of the increasingly common deluges of rain happens in the vicinity of the dam, a likelihood increasingly likely in the current – and future – global climate change realities.

If allowed to be built, the PolyMet and all the future copper/sulfide tailings pond’s containment dams will be an eternal threat to the existence of human life, wildlife, fish, plant life and assorted water-drinkers downstream.

Copper mining waste sludge ponds have to be built close enough to the mine processing plants, so that the very sabotageable pipelines are able pump the waste products quickly and efficiently. The foreign multinational mining megacorporations Glencore and Antofagasta will be responsible for the entire process, but will severely restrict access to the sites.

The public will face seriously-enforced “Danger: No Trespassing” warning signs everywhere in the area. Secrecy will abound, because there will be so much (illegal?) activity that needs to be hidden from the public. (Antofagasta, by the way, is the Chilean owner of the Twin Metals copper mine that has been proposed for an area abutting a fresh water lake that is adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness!!)

The inevitable leakage (sudden or gradual) of those waste dumps represents the worst case scenario for NE Minnesota’s future, for, if and when they burst, dissolve, collapse or otherwise lea, trillions of dollars worth of Minnesota’s priceless environment will be poisoned and lost forever.

PolyMet/Glencore must be forced to thoroughly address those concerns, but they will find it very difficult to do without lying to us potential victims of their plans. They will have to lie because many of us know about the true (and often hidden) history of copper mining.

Neither of the two aforementioned multinational mining corporations (and neither of the two foreign (Canadian) Penny Stock mining companies that started the permitting process for their multinational senior mining companies) want us Minnesotans to think about tailings ponds. For some very good reasons.

Neither mining company will be able to afford putting into an escrow account the hundreds of billions (perhaps trillions?) of dollars that it will take to remediate what is obviously irremediable at any price. How do you place a price tag on an irretrievably polluted St Louis River and Lake Superior and the drinking water resources that will be forever poisoned and thus to dangerous to drink?

And we have yet to hear from those hundreds of millions of Downstreamers that rely on the water and the habitat surrounding the five Great Lakes. They deserve to weigh in on the debate. In fact they probably deserve full veto power over this dangerous scheme.

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Gary G. Kohls, MD is the author of the Duluth Reader’s Duty to Warn weekly columns and a down-winder, down-streamer from Duluth, MN

The “Southern Resistance Forces” made impressive progress in their quest to restore South Yemen’s independence after they ousted Hadi’s government from its interim headquarters in Aden, which was formerly the capital of the Cold War-era state, and of the many historical precedents that speak to its favor, perhaps the one most closely aligned with the cause of “al-Hirak” is actually Crimea’s.

Strategic Context

The Second Exile:

The news just broke that the “Southern Resistance Forces” (SRF), the armed wing of the “Southern Transitional Council” (STC), the political branch of the “Southern Movement” that’s colloquially referred to as “al-Hirak”), just liberated the former South Yemeni capital of Aden from Hadi’s government following three days of intense clashes in the internationally recognized authorities’ interim headquarters. The latest reports indicate that a few dozen representatives are trapped in the presidential palace and that the Prime Minister is getting ready to flee just like President Hadi did back in 2015 when the North Yemeni-originating Houthi militants attacked the Southern city in the days before the Saudi-led intervention.

South vs South:

There’s practically no way that Hadi’s Administration will ever regain legitimacy in any part of the nominally unified country after being forcibly removed from its Northern and now Southern halves, with the latest events made all the more symbolic because the twice-ousted government is ironically led by a native Southerner. That doesn’t mean that he was beloved by his native people, however, since he turned against their separatist cause during the 1994 civil war and was consequently rewarded by recently slain former President Saleh as Yemen’s Vice-President. Following the theater-wide “Arab Spring” Color Revolution, Saleh was pressured into stepping down and was replaced by Hadi, who failed to solve the state’s endemic corruption and actually exacerbated the African-like tribal conflicts in this peninsular country.

Northern Coup:

The end result was that the North Yemeni-originating Houthi militants rose up to overthrow his government in partnership with Saleh’s forces, thereby nullifying the constitutional order in the state and sending the President fleeing to the former South Yemeni capital of Aden, from whence he ran to Saudi Arabia in urgently seeking the GCC leader’s military help as the Houthis threatened to seize control of the entire country.  The subsequent multisided civil-international war has killed thousands and over a million people have since contracted cholera, and many more are on the verge of starvation due to the coalition’s constant bombardment of Houthi positions in what was once the independent country of North Yemen.

Simmering Stalemate:

The resultant stalemate over the past couple of years, however, showed the Southerners that the coalition wasn’t powerful enough to reinstate Hadi’s rule throughout the country, thus opening up the opportunity for them to more assertively push the weakened government into concessions in an attempt to reassert their regional rights in the face of what they have long alleged is Northern oppression and even occupation. Fed up with the worsening situation in Aden as Hadi’s authorities began to turn the remaining “state” apparatus against them, especially following the removal of pro-Hirak former Aden governor Aidarus al-Zoubaidi in April 2017 and his establishment soon thereafter of the “Southern Transitional Council” (STC), Southerners demanded that the Saudi-based President replace his entire government or risk an imminent uprising.

The Southern Revolution:

Last Sunday, the day that the ultimatum was set to expire, Hadi banned all public demonstrations and ordered his troops to fire on STC supporters who traveled to Aden from all across South Yemen to join the planned protests. Considering that Yemen is the world’s second most heavily-armed country behind the US, people had their guns nearby just in case something went wrong, which it clearly did when the military started killing the protesters who violated Hadi’s decree, thus prompting them to take up their weapons out of self-defense and strategically go on the offensive in an ambitious attempt to liberate their capital. Reportedly armed and trained by the UAE, the SRF made easy work out of Hadi’s ragtag Saudi-supported fighters and instantly brought the Southern cause back to the world’s attention.

The Crimean Comparison

At this moment in time, the Southerners are seeking international support for the restoration of their independence since they want to return to the community of nations like they previously were for decades and not remain de-facto recognized solely by their UAE ally. Although many arguments and historical precedents can be referenced in their favor, one of the most intriguing is the comparison that South Yemen has to Crimea.

“Region-States”:

Both identity-separate territories were merged with a neighboring one to which they had no serious affiliation with beforehand apart being located in the same geographic region. “Yemen” is actually the name of a region that extends beyond its eponymous country to parts of southern Saudi Arabia and a sliver of western Oman, just as “Ukraine” literally translates to “frontier” and refers to the historical Polish-Russian borderland. Each of their respective people came to acquire a regional identity over the years, with Yemenis having achieved this many centuries before the Ukrainians did, but local differences still persisted. Just as people in the western Ukrainian region of Galicia are different than those in the country’s former autonomous republic of Crimea, so too are North Yemen’s distinct from South Yemen’s, with each subsection of this larger region having its own internal variations as well.

Decades-Long Discontent:

Crimea was joined to Ukraine by order of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, while South Yemen agreed to unite with North Yemen in 1990 and their combined populations overwhelmingly supported the new state’s constitution. The problem, however, was that Yemeni President Saleh allegedly took advantage of the Southerners’ post-communist naiveté to plunder the comparatively wealthier country and carry out a “deep state” coup in forcibly replacing all of its local leaders with Northerners. This prompted the brief 1994 civil war that the separatists ended up losing and which subsequently led to native Southerner Hadi being made Saleh’s Vice-President after decisively turning against his former countrymen during that conflict. Altogether, it can be argued that the Crimeans didn’t want to be part of a post-Cold War Ukraine just as much as the South Yemeni people didn’t want to be part of a unified Yemen that had gone dangerously wrong and whose Northern-led government had run seriously amuck.

Anti-Constitutional Triggers:

The trigger for Crimea’s secession from Ukraine was the 2014 pro-American coup that destroyed the constitutional legitimacy of this unnaturally created “region-state”, after which its Russian-majority population opted to implement democratic measures to vote for independence and then reunification with their historic Russian homeland in response to the fascist violence that they feared they’d be subjected to by the coup authorities. Although having unfolded over the course of three years and not three weeks like the Crimeans’ cause did, the South Yemenis have followed a similar path. Already dissatisfied with what they largely viewed as Northern occupation and collective punishment following their failed 1994 secessionist attempt, they saw a chance to revive their fortunes after the 2015 success of the Houthi coup in Sanaa and consequent dissolution of the state’s constitutional authority.

Pragmatic Patience:

Nevertheless, Hadi still remained the internationally recognized President of Yemen and his return to power was militarily supported by most of the GCC countries and Egypt, thus forcing al-Hirak to tactically align itself with these forces as they proved their loyalty to the anti-Houthi cause and bided their time while waiting for the right moment to rise up again. The reason why Southerners are so strongly against the Houthis is because they view them as the complete antithesis of all that they themselves stand for. Whereas the Houthis are North Yemeni Shiite-Zaidi tribesmen aligned with Iran and fighting to impose what some fear would be a shadow form of right-wing Islamic governance over the entirety of unified Yemen, al-Hirak and its supporters are mostly South Yemeni secular or Sunni city folk aligned with the UAE and fighting to restore their left-wing Cold War-era government in South Yemen only.

The Sudden Strike:

Realizing that Hadi would never reassert his power over North Yemen in spite of the substantial Saudi-backed militant assistance that he’s received over the years, the Southerners sought to exploit this weakness in agitating for more rights, though the internationally recognized leader stepped up his suppression of them and ultimately ordered his troops to fire on unarmed protesters who assembled to protest him over the weekend in violation of the government’s anti-democratic decree. That moment can be seen in hindsight as the second and ultimately fatal blow to the legitimacy of the united Yemeni state, with the 2015 Houthi takeover of Sanaa being the first. Having gone on the offensive out of self-defense just like the Crimeans did, the South Yemenis have already de-facto restored their sovereignty and only need to carry out the referendum that they tentatively planned for later this year in order to give their resurrected state international legitimacy.

Prospective Solutions

Recognition Struggle:

It appears extremely unlikely that Saudi Arabia will break with its UAE ally and unilaterally dispatch its forces to fight the Southern secessionists, especially considering that Riyadh can’t even defeat the Houthis in North Yemen, to say nothing of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed’s mentorship over his much younger Saudi counterpart and the “father”-like influence that he wields over the coalition’s official leader. This means that South Yemen will for all intents and purposes be de-facto independent the moment that Hadi’s Prime Minister evacuates the region and his remaining officials in the presidential palace surrender to the SRF or are also flown out of the country, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into international recognition no matter how legitimate its cause may be. The fact of the matter is that most of the world is reluctant to change established state borders out of fear that it could bring about “Balkanization”, with Kosovo and South Sudan being the main exceptions this century primarily because their secessions were US-backed.

Multipolar Node On The New Silk Road:

That’s not necessarily the case with South Yemen’s, however, no matter how closely allied the UAE is with the US, but that also doesn’t automatically translate into al-Hirak’s cause being detrimental to America’s grand strategic interests either. Even so, this potential overlap shouldn’t be assumed to be exclusively to the UAE and/or the US’ advantage, since it’s very possible that it could play out to the benefit of the Multipolar World Order as well, not least because of South Yemen’s ultra-strategic location at the transcontinental crossroads of West Asia & East Africa as well as connecting Europe with South Asia via the Gulf of Aden, Bab el Mandeb, and Red Sea. These geographic credentials endow South Yemen with the possibility of becoming a crucial node on China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, as was described by the author more in depth in his December 2017 analysis about how “South Yemen Will Regain Independence If It Follows These Six Steps”.

Independence Referendum:

To concisely summarize the most relevant points from that policy proposal, South Yemen should carry out its planned independence referendum as soon as possible and then seek the neutral mediation of a third-party such as Russia in order to generate international support for its secessionism from unified Yemen. Moscow is being mentioned not just because the author previously forecast that the Eurasian Great Power could extend its “balancing” influence to the furthest corner of the Arabian Peninsula and therefore the southwestern extremity of the supercontinent, but that Foreign Minister Lavrov himself announced his country’s willingness to do so between the Houthis and Hadi during a meeting with his Yemeni counterpart just a week before South Yemen’s liberation occurred, and the Russian Foreign Ministry later added earlier this week that its offer applies to the situation in South Yemen as well.

Russian Mediation:

Russia’s suggestion to broker talks between al-Hirak and Hadi also comes after Summer Ahmed, a US-based representative of the Southern Transitional Council, told the author in the course of an interview on his Trendstorm radio program hosted by Russia’s publicly financed international media outlet Sputnik that the STC would welcome the country’s mediating efforts in the event that the situation deteriorated, which it eventually did. Moscow’s possible diplomatic intervention would be entirely neutral because it has interests in both North and South Yemen. For example, Russian doctors operated on former President Saleh two months before his assassination and his son just met with the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister. Although Ahmed Abdullah Saleh might never forgive the Houthis for killing his father, the late President’s General People’s Congress (GPC) is still allied with the mountainous militants, potentially providing an avenue of indirect Russian influence into North Yemen. On the other side of the country, South Yemen was the Soviet Union’s closet Arab ally and the only Muslim country to ever formally have a communist government.

Win-Win Deal-Making:

Russia is therefore best equipped to handle the delicate negotiations over what appears to be unified Yemen’s impending re-division into its two constituent but historically and culturally separate halves, with a period of “Identity Federalism” potentially preceding the final “divorce”. In addition, Russia’s fast-moving rapprochement with Saudi Arabia and its excellent ties with both the UAE and Iran make it so that Moscow could help “balance” the “loss of face” that Riyadh is destined to experience after the political loss of its Hadi ally with the geostrategic benefits that Abu Dhabi and Tehran are poised to receive by the re-independence of South Yemen and North Yemen respectively. In addition, this solution could naturally lead to the end of the War on Yemen and both of its peoples’ suffering, returning these two formerly sovereign states back to the pre-1990 status quo and allowing them the chance that they need to redevelop their economies and rebuild their national institutions.

Concluding Thoughts

Hadi is no longer a symbolically relevant factor in the national equation, the Houthis have no hope whatsoever of conquering all of Yemen, and the Southerners have just de-facto restored their Cold War-era country’s independence, meaning that the entire reason for the Saudi-led military intervention has collapsed and the superficially unified country is now ruled by two distinct governments in its constituent halves that are once again at irreconcilable odds with one another. The only logical path forward for all actors under these conditions is to accept this state of affairs and formalize them in terms of international law, which might require a transitional period that sees North and South Yemen each holding their own UN-supervised independence referenda and going through the formal procedures of their institutional disengagement with one another, hence the option of implementing a broad system of “Identity Federalism” between the two parts during this time.

Russia is the only Great Power capable of acting as a neutral mediator between all parties and ensuring a fair solution for everyone, which is why efforts should be made by both the North Yemeni GPC and the South Yemeni STC to actively invite Moscow to participate in and potentially even lead this process. Russia can help the Saudis’ “save face” while simultaneously “balancing” the UAE’s interests in South Yemen with Iran’s own in North Yemen, the latter of which could require a second deeper level of “balancing” by elevating the GPC to the level of an internationally recognized political force in this part of the country in order to get around the coalition’s unwillingness to deal with the group’s Houthi allies. There’s no perfect way to handle this seemingly intractable diplomatic situation, but Russia is nevertheless best suited for confronting this challenge, which is why it must get involved to some capacity or another.

The end result of Moscow’s mediating efforts should be North and South Yemen’s agreement to a UN-backed plan for re-dividing the nominally unified country into its two historical parts, after which Russia can work to expand its influence throughout both of them, though with much higher odds of success with its former Soviet-era South Yemeni ally. North Yemen could possibly become the “New Eritrea” in that it’s treated as a “rogue state” and “isolated” by its neighbors, with the scenario arising that some “mild” form of the coalition’s blockade could still be illegally imposed upon it out of its members’ fear that the newly independent country could become a bastion of Iranian influence. While undesirable from a humanitarian perspective, it might still be “better” than what its people are presently suffering under prior to the UN’s Russian-encouraged prospective involvement.

While North Yemen will probably continue to languish in externally enforced poverty and famine, South Yemen contrarily stands the chance to become a vital part of the New Silk Road with all of the prosperity that it promises.

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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.

The television network RT asked me for a comment around the recent visit to Raqqa done by the USAID program chief together with the CENTCOM Commander. [1]

Before addressing the humanitarian situation in Raqqa associated with the reconstruction issue (80 percent of Raqqa dwellings remain “inhabitable”, according to the UN), I will focus on the current U.S. geopolitics in the area, against the backdrop of the U.S. emerging ‘Plan B’ on Syria. So far, the implementation of this new design has signified the virtual occupation of nearly a third of Syria’s territory. A hallmark of the situation consisting in the illegal occupation of Syrian territory by U.S. troops.

The first project of the US on Syria aimed to obtain a regime change. It was pretty much a “default” policy applied by the US in the Middle East at the times of the Obama / Hillary Clinton administration. Partly of its mechanism has been described by Senator Dick Clark (an excerpt of Senator Clark’s declarations is found in the video here below. Click on the image for the excerpt-footage).

The strategy of “regime change”, which can we call “U.S. Plan A on Syria”, failed.

The Syrian government –with help of its allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah- instead continues victorious and unabated in its pursuit to retake the full sovereignty of its nation’s territory.

From a humanitarian angle, the failure of the said Plan A conveyed disastrous consequences. The number of fatalities due to the war in Syria have reached 400,000. To that, a massive displacement of refugees has to be added.

Furthermore, viewed in geopolitical and military terms, the strategy of establishing, funding, arming and training a miscellaneous jihadist opposition was also a setback, or even backfiring – as it ended fostering the combat capability of ISIS forces, through US armament which made its way to ISIS hands. (See The Hill report in the box below).

The optimism which emerged when Donald Trump became the U.S. president was of brief duration. The hope about a possible stop of US interference in Syria, based on Trump’s declarations while he was still a candidate, vanished when President Trump announced that he had delegated to the Pentagon and his Defense Minister Mattis, the tasks of profiling and give expression to U.S. military actions abroad. [2]

Unlike the situation during the Obama administration, it is now up to the Pentagon to decide specific targets and scope of military operations.

However, from a human rights perspective, the new Pentagon’s ‘free hands’ status has conveyed a high toll of civilian casualties as result of the extensive bombing by the US in Syria.

Anticipating the humanitarian catastrophe in the Syrian areas subjected by the US-led coalition’s bombardment, The New York Times reported in April 2017 that the US military had already increased the civilian casualties in Somalia and Yemen as the result of Pentagon’s new “free” doctrine. [3]

80% of Raqqa was left “uninhabitable” – UN

As a result of this new “rules of engagement” in the US bombing, the civilian population of Raqqa and areas around in northern Syria have suffered huge casualties.

New data processed by Airwars regarding non-combatant deaths caused by the US-led coalition during 2017, result in figures up to “6,102 civilians estimated killed”. [4] The organization remarks that the civilian fatalities of 2017 represent 65% of all civilian deaths caused by the Coalition, that have been recorded by Airwars since 2014.

This statistically significant increasing in the epidemiology of fatalities among civilians in areas bombarded by the US-led coalition, shows the impact of the new Trump doctrine of giving “free hand” to the military (which now assess by themselves the risk of civilian casualties resulting from their operations).

In Raqqa alone, during the lasted Coalition campaign to recapture the city from ISIS, the balance was an estimate of 1,800 civilian casualties. [5] And according to a UN report, 80% of Raqqa was left “uninhabitable” ensuing the battle. [6]

The priorities in “reconstructing” the battered city and territory around are instead militarily

The recent visit to Raqqa by the head of the USAID program, Mr Mark Green, accompanied by the chief of the U.S. Central Command, General Joseph Votel, was interpreted in some media as an on-site assessment for a future reconstruction plan of Raqqa –to be done by the U.S. government. It was otherwise noted that the visit constituted “the most senior U.S. civilian official of the Trump administration” in Raqqa, after the defeat of ISIS. [1]

In fact, the media reports on the visit focused mainly on declarations by the General Joseph Votel, who emerged as the central gestalt of the delegation.

What the western media failed to mention, is that three days before the visit of Votel and Green it was known that the US military had initiated the reconstruction of the formerly Syrian Air-force base at al-Tabqa, located near Raqqa. So, the exploration-visit in Raqqa and surrounding areas may have mainly been relevant to construction/reconstruction assessments of the said usurped military airbase in al-Tanf, which is legal property of Syria.

The Al-Tabqah Military Airbase (photo below) is not the only military compound that the US has unilaterally decided to establish. The other military base is situated in al-Tanf, near the border with Iraq. [7]

Regarding the kind of projects that USAID would be prone to support in the area, those will be definitely tied to the current US geopolitical project. That is what USAID is all about.

Propaganda-wise, the ‘Plan B’ geopolitical project rests on two premises which are under construction. One is the collapse of the peace talks in Geneva (and the corresponding boycott of the Sochi meeting) – see down below. The other premise is an expected international support for a direct military intervention in Syria (nearly, a deepening of the operations that have already started) motivated in staged “chemical attacks” massacres. [8]

One pivotal element in the staging of those “chemical-attack” false flags is the presence of “White Helmets” in those territories. The White Helmets and other “humanitarian” organizations financed by the U.S. have been the channels for delivering the “testimonies” from the staged scenarios.

The point being that USAID is one main financing source of the White Helmets and similar ‘humanitarian’ organizations operating in the propaganda campaign against Syria. [9] Naturally, a similar initiative implemented by USAID in the Syrian zones now under direct US military control or influence, can be expected.

One other classical role of USAID in that kind of ‘reconstruction’ endeavours has been the fostering and/or coordination of U.S. corporate investments profiting in such war-related areas –wars in which the US has had the initiative in bolstering. [10] And of course, the boost in exports of US products, even if this have resulted in detriment of the economic development of the ‘helped’ regions. [11]

Meanwhile in Washington. The US ‘Plan B’ on Syria is officially announced

Map from Anadolu Agency, published in Orient Net [18]

David M. Satterfield, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, is a representative voice of the Trump administration. Among other tasks, he was entrusted to lead the US delegation to the peace talks on Syria in Kazakhstan, September 2017. [12] So, when he is now declaring at the US Congress that the US has already an “alternative plan” in case the peace talks on Syria would not prosper, we have to attribute hos message a great relevance. Satterfield’s declarations are to be held as the tip of the iceberg regarding the US Plan B on Syria.

The Moon of Alabama reports: [13]

“Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, David Satterfield, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, outlined US goals in Syria as finishing off IS, stabilizing northeastern Syria and countering Iranian influence.”

The problem with Donald Trump is not that he is imbecilic and inept—it is that he has surrendered total power to the oligarchic and military elites. They get what they want. They do what they want. Although the president is a one-man wrecking crew aimed at democratic norms and institutions, although he has turned the United States into a laughingstock around the globe, our national crisis is embodied not in Trump but the corporate state’s now unfettered pillage.

Trump, who has no inclination or ability to govern, has handed the machinery of government over to the bankers, corporate executives, right-wing think tanks, intelligence chiefs and generals. They are eradicating the few regulations and laws that inhibited a naked kleptocracy. They are dynamiting the institutions, including the State Department, that served interests other than corporate profit and are stacking the courts with right-wing, corporate-controlled ideologues. Trump provides the daily entertainment; the elites handle the business of looting, exploiting and destroying.

Once democratic institutions are hollowed out, a process begun before the election of Trump, despotism is inevitable. The press is shackled. Corruption and theft take place on a massive scale. The rights and needs of citizens are irrelevant. Dissent is criminalized. Militarized police monitor, seize and detain Americans without probable cause. The rituals of democracy become farce. This is the road we are traveling. It is a road that leads to internal collapse and tyranny, and we are very far down it.

The elites’ moral and intellectual vacuum produced Trump. They too are con artists. They are slicker than he at selling the lies and more adept at disguising their greed through absurd ideologies such as neoliberalism and globalization, but they belong to the same criminal class and share many of the pathologies that characterize Trump. The grotesque visage of Trump is the true face of politicians such as George W. Bush, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Clintons and Obama, unlike Bush and Trump, are self-aware and therefore cynical, but all lack a moral compass. As Michael Wolff writes in “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” the president has “no scruples.” He lives “outside the rules” and is “contemptuous of them.” And this makes him identical to those he has replaced, not different.

“A close Trump friend who was also a good Bill Clinton friend found them eerily similar—except that Clinton had a respectable front and Trump did not,” Wolff writes.

Trump, backed by the most retrograde elements of corporate capitalism, including Robert and Rebekah Mercer, Sheldon Adelson and Carl Icahn, is the fool who prances at the front of our death march. As natural resources become scarce and the wealth of the empire evaporates, a shackled population will be forced to work harder for less. State revenues will be squandered in grandiose projects and futile wars in an attempt to return the empire to a mythical golden age. The decision to slash corporate tax rates for the rich while increasing an already bloated military budget by $54 billion is typical of decayed civilizations. Empires expand beyond their capacity to sustain themselves and then go bankrupt. The Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Khmer, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires all imploded in a similar fashion. The lessons of history are clear. But the illiterate charlatans who seize power in the dying days of empire know nothing of history. They are driven by a primal and inchoate lust for wealth, one that is never satisfied no matter how many billions they possess.

The elites in dying cultures turn everything into a commodity. Human beings are commodities. The natural world is a commodity. Government and democratic institutions are commodities. All are mined and wrecked for profit. Nothing has an intrinsic value. Nothing is sacred. The relentless and suicidal drive to accumulate greater and greater wealth by destroying the systems that sustain life is idolatry. It ignores the biblical injunction that idols always begin by demanding human sacrifice and end by demanding self-sacrifice. The elites are not only building our funeral pyre, they are building their own.

The elites, lacking a vision beyond satiating their own greed, revel in the intoxicating power to destroy. They confuse destruction with creation. They are agents of what Sigmund Freud calls the death instinct. They find in acts of national self-immolation a godlike power. They denigrate empathy, intellectual curiosity, artistic expression and the common good, virtues that sustain life. They celebrate a hyper-individualism embodied in celebrity, wealth, hedonism, manipulation and the ability to dominate others. They know nothing of the past. They do not think about the future. Those around them are temporarily useful to their aims and must be flattered and rewarded but in the end are ruthlessly cast aside. There is no human connection. This emotional numbness lies at the core of Trump’s personality.

“[Stephen] Bannon described Trump as a simple machine,” Wolff writes. “The On switch was full of flattery, the Off switch full of calumny. The flattery was dripping, slavish, cast in ultimate superlatives, and entirely disconnected from reality: so-and-so was the best, the most incredible, the ne plus ultra, the eternal. The calumny was angry, bitter, resentful, ever a casting out and closing of the iron door.”

The elites in a dying culture confuse what economist Karl Polanyi calls “real” and “fictitious” commodities. A commodity is a product manufactured for sale. The ecosystem, labor and money, therefore, are not commodities. Once these fictitious commodities are treated as real ones for exploitation and manipulation, Polanyi writes, human society devours itself. Workers become dehumanized cogs. Currency and trade are manipulated by speculators, wreaking havoc with the economy and leading to financial collapse. The natural world is turned into a toxic wasteland. The elites, as the society breaks down, retreat into protected enclaves where they have access to security and services denied to the wider population. They last longer than those outside their gates, but the tsunami of destruction they orchestrate does not spare them.

As long as Trump serves the interests of the elites he will remain president. If, for some reason, he is unable to serve these interests he will disappear. Wolff notes in the book that after his election there was “a surprising and sudden business and Wall Street affinity for Trump.” He went on:

“An antiregulatory White House and the promise of tax reform outweighed the prospect of disruptive tweeting and other forms of Trump chaos; besides, the market had not stopped climbing since November 9, the day after the election.”

The Russia investigation—launched when Robert Mueller became special counsel in May and which appears to be focused on money laundering, fraud and shady business practices, things that have always characterized Trump’s financial empire—is unlikely to unseat the president. He will not be impeached for mental incompetence, over the emoluments clause or for obstruction of justice, although he is guilty on all these counts. He is useful to those who hold real power in the corporate state, however much they would like to domesticate him.

Trump’s bizarre ramblings and behavior also serve a useful purpose. They are a colorful diversion from the razing of democratic institutions. As cable news networks feed us stories of his trysts with a porn actress and outlandish tweets, the real work of the elites is being carried out largely away from public view. The courts are stacked with Federalist Society judges, the fossil fuel industry is plundering public lands and the coastlines and ripping up regulations that protected us from its poisons, and the Pentagon, given carte blanche, is engaged in an orgy of militarism with a trillion-dollar-a-year budget and about 800 military bases in scores of countries around the world.

Trump, as Wolff describes him in the book, is clueless about what he has unleashed. He is uninterested in and bored by the complexities of governance and policy. The faster Trump finds a member of the oligarchy or the military to take a job off his hands the happier he becomes. This suits his desires. It suits the desires of those who manage the corporate state. For the president there is only one real concern, the tumultuous Trump White House reality show and how it plays out on television. He is a creature solely concerned with image, or more exactly his image. Nothing else matters.

“For each of his enemies—and, actually, for each of his friends—the issue for him came down, in many ways, to their personal press plan,” Wolff writes of the president. “Trump assumed everybody wanted his or her fifteen minutes and that everybody had a press strategy for when they got them. If you couldn’t get press directly for yourself, you became a leaker. There was no happenstance news, in Trump’s view. All news was manipulated and designed, planned and planted. All news was to some extent fake—he understood that very well, because he himself had faked it so many times in his career. This was why he had so naturally cottoned to the ‘fake news’ label. ‘I’ve made stuff up forever, and they always print it,’ he bragged.”

Yes, the elites wish Trump would act more presidential. It would help the brand. But all attempts by the elites to make Trump conform to the outward norms embraced by most public officials have failed. Trump will not be reformed by criticism from the establishment. Republican Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, who denounced Trump, saw their approval ratings plummet and have decided not to run for re-election. Trump may have public approval of only 39 percent overall, but among Republicans the figure is 78 percent. And I don’t think those numbers will decrease.

The inability of the political establishment and the press to moderate or reform Trump’s egregious behavior is rooted in their loss of credibility. The press, along with political and intellectual elites, spent decades championing economic and political policies that solidified corporate power and betrayed and impoverished American workers. The hypocrisy and mendacity of the elites left them despised and distrusted by the victims of deindustrialization and austerity programs. The attempt to restore civility to public discourse and competency to political office is, therefore, fruitless. Liberal and establishment institutions, including the leadership of the two main political parties, academia and the press, squandered their moral authority. And the dogged refusal by the elites to address the engine of discontent—social inequality—ensures that they will remain ineffectual. They lay down the asphalt for the buffoonery of Trump and the coming tyranny.

*

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best selling author, former professor at Princeton University, activist and ordained Presbyterian minister.

Featured image is by Mr. Fish.

Facebook plans to have its users rank news sites’ “reliability”.

This decision is in reaction to the 18-month-long “fake news” scandal and is being promoted as the most “fair and balanced solution” to the issue. The idea is that the community at large would determine which sites are credible and which aren’t, and the lowest-ranking ones would somehow be penalized, possibly by appearing even less on users’ newsfeeds. Facebook said that they don’t want to make this decision themselves for ethical reasons so they’re instead leaving it up to others to do so for it, believing that this is somehow a “democratic” approach to the problem. In reality, however, Facebook is only just encouraging “mob rule” because it’s probable that there will be a partisan split among Mainstream Media outlets that leads to inconclusive results for its experiment, thus putting the onus back on the company to make the executive decision for resolving this problem.

Another peculiarity about this initiative is that actual “fake news” is pretty easy to spot and not all that popular on Facebook anyhow. Anytime a story refers to alien-possessed individuals, devil-worshipping politicians, and ethno-supremacist conspiracy theories, it’s flat-out “fake news”, no question about it, but people still click on them regardless for whatever their personal reasons may be, whether they’re curious or just looking for a laugh. That being said, what Facebook is likely referring to as “fake news” in this context probably doesn’t fall under those examples, but is instead a euphemism for editorial positions and analytical interpretations that the company and some of its users don’t agree with.

Take for example a news item about the US’ relationship with the Syrian Kurds. So-called and by-the-book “real news” would simply regurgitate a few facts surrounded by an extremely broad backdrop without explaining the story’s overall importance, as that would technically be venturing into the somewhat subjective realm, though no story is 100% pure journalism without a touch – however indirect and subtle – of analysis. That same story might be reported positively as the US issuing a statement of support for its Kurdish allies, for example, while another outlet might take the critical angle that this is implicit evidence that Washington is planning to de-facto partition Syria. Both articles might produce polarized reactions and accusations that they’re “fake news”, when in reality they’re just different interpretations of the same news event, and there’s nothing wrong or unethical about that.

Facebook’s experiment, however, isn’t able to capture that, as it’s only going to ask users about a site’s “reliability”, which essentially is an opinion survey asking people if they agree with the editorial angle most commonly taken by the platform in question. If a critical mass of individuals disagrees with RT or Sputnik’s approach, for instance, then the company will list them as “unreliable” and possibly suppress their reach on people’s newsfeeds, all because of the “mob rule” that it initiated. Accordingly, the most probable outcome of this endeavor will be that Facebook uses the pseudo-scientific “evidence” that it manipulatively produced in order to “prove” that Alternative Media is “unreliable” and therefore “justifiably” subject to de-facto censorship against it.

*

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.

In an act of insane escalation of provocations against Russia, Washington has produced a list of 210 top Russian government officials and important business executives who are “gangsters,” “members of Putin’s gang,” “threats,” “people deserving to be sanctioned,” or however the Western presstitutes care to explain the list. The absurd list includes the Prime Minister of Russia, the Foreign Minister, the Defense Minister, and executives of Gazprom, Rosneft, and Bank Rossiya. In other words, the suggestion is that the entirety of Russian political and business leadership is corrupt.

The Russians do not seem to understand the purpose of the list. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the government sees the list as an attempt to interfere in the Russian presidential election. There is no doubt that Washington would like to reduce Putin’s public support so that Washington can use the Western-funded NGOs operating in Russia to present American stooges as Russia’s true voices. However, it is unlikely that the Russian people are stupid enough to fall for such a trick.

Washington’s list has three purposes:

1) To undercut Russian diplomacy by presenting the top echelons of Russia as gangsters.

2) To present Russia as a military threat as per the ridiculous announcement by British defense minister Gavin Williamson on January 26 that Russia intends to rip British “infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths,” and create “total chaos within the country.”

3) To shift American and European attention away from the coming release of the House Intelligence Committee’s report that proves Russiagate is a conspiracy between the FBI, the Obama Department of Justice and the Democratic National Committee against President Trump. Washington’s Russian list will give the presstitutes something else to talk about instead of the act of treason committed against the President of the United States. Expect to hear nothing from the presstitutes except that the House Intelligence Committee report is only a political effort to shield Trump from accountability.

There is likely a fourth reason for the list. Israel wants Washington’s pressure on Russia, because Russia has so far prevented Israel’s use of the US military to create the same chaos in Syria and Iran as has been created in Iraq and Libya. Israel wants Syria and Iran destabilized because they support Hezbollah, which prevents Israel from occupying the water resources of southern Lebanon. The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which requires the list, passed the House and Senate by a vote of 517-5. Normally, such unanimous foreign policy votes are associated with demands from the Israel Lobby.

The Russian government and the Russian people need to understand that Washington considers Russia to be a threat because Russia is not under Washington’s thumb. The Zionist neoconservatives control US foreign policy. Their ideology is world hegemony. They do not use diplomacy. They rely on disinformation, threats, and violence. Therefore, there is no American diplomacy with which Putin and Lavrov can engage.

Putin, being a responsible political leader of a great power, does not respond to provocation with provocation. He ignores the insults and continues to wait for the West to come to its senses.

But what if the West does not come to its senses?

For the West to come to its senses requires the complete overthrow of the Zionist neoconservatives and/or the breakup of NATO. The overthrow of the neoconservatives would require a rival foreign policy voice, and that voice is very weak as it is shut off from the media, the think tanks, and the universities. The breakup of NATO would require European political figures to give up their Washington subsidies and the career advancement that Washington provides.

As I write the Atlantic Council is holding a members and press call in for a discussion with Atlantic Council members Amb. Daniel Fried and Anders Aslund. The Atlantic Council is a neoconservative propaganda agency. The purpose of the “discussion” is to further undermine US-Russian relations.

The Russian government faces a difficult situation. The foreign policy of the US, and thereby of the Western world, is controlled by neoconservatives who are determined to present Russia in the most threatening light. Russian diplomacy can do nothing to change this. The non-provocative and responsible Russian response has the effect of encouraging more provocations from Washington. At some point Russian passivity might convince the neoconservatives that they can successfully attack Russia. Alternatively, the continual provocations might convince Russia that the country is targeted for attack, thereby causing a Russian pre-emptive action.

Everyone in the world should realize the threat of nuclear war that is inherrent in Washington’s policy toward Russia, and everyone in the world should understand that the only threat that Russia poses is to Washington’s unilateralism.

*

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

The anonymous anti-Russia lobby group PropOrNot has stunned social media users with an outrageous attack on the memory of Robert Parry, the crusading journalist who died last weekend.

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In the second article of my three part series, I addressed how we got to the current state of this financial chaos. In this last article, I explain where we are heading and how cryptocurrency could be the last chance to create a sustainable economic system.

Where to go from here?

If trust and sustainability were the two conditions that allowed for the transition from physical gold to paper currency, it is from this basis that we must start to analyze where we are going and what effects the next economic crisis could have.

In 2008, confidence in central banks saved the global economy. But as Mario Draghi said, the bazooka of quantitative easing was fired and a second hit during a crisis would have proved ineffective. The reason is complex and must be clearly explained. Most people are paid in a currency deposited in the bank, because that is where one keeps one’s currency, able to withdraw it at any time. But in the event of an economic crisis, priority is given to the banks, whatever remaining liquidity being for the customers. The reason why there was no bank run in 2008, which would have led to the collapse of the global banking system, lies in the trust that ordinary people continued to place in the financial system, courtesy of what the corporate-controlled media told them.

The problem concerns the next financial crisis and how the world population will react. The path already seems to be traced, especially in geopolitical terms. Countries like China and Russia have created their own alternative banking and financial system to escape dollar sanctions; but they have also begun to de-dollarize by accumulating gold and using different payment methods to the US currency. In the same way, the desire to escape from a centrally controlled financial system, and the attendant need to remain anonymous, has produced a technological evolution known as cryptocurrency, much as the need to quickly communicate and globally exchange data in real time produced the Internet. Both evolutions find common roots in the American security services. The Internet stems from a DARPA project, and blockchain was outlined in NSA documents back in 1996.

It is easy to imagine that governments and central banks have been caught flat footed by the birth of the cryptocurrencies, but it would be better not to underestimate nations that have been ruling the world for decades and have their finger on the pulse. Although Washington’s aggressive foreign policy has accelerated de-dollarization, one must consider the reason why cryptocurrencies have not been declared illegal.

Let us go back for a moment to the devastating effects of the loss of the gold standard. Looking at a chart, it is easy to see how the start of world debt coincided with the end of the dollar being linked to gold. This has led to an increase in inflation, calmed only by false economic data and a powerful financial manipulation by central banks in collusion with each other. Purchasing power has plummeted and the average person has as a result become impoverished.

When the ordinary person is overwhelmed by debts and sees his purchasing power steadily declining over the years, while continuously being told by the media that the exact opposite is happening, dissatisfaction and frustration increases to a point of passing a tipping point. In the US in 2008, the burden of the bailout fell on the shoulders of ordinary citizens. Once bitten, twice shy. People are placing less and less trust in the media and the banks.

From Gold to Money to Crypto.

In this sense, we can perhaps understand why bitcoin and blockchain technology have been able to prosper in complete freedom. It is conceivable that the project reflects an evolving world in which paper money disappears in favor of the digital one. How this transition could take place, and why some nations devoted to de-dollarization will find themselves in a privileged position compared to economies entirely tied to the dollar is a matter open to debate. The possible economic-shift must be considered real and probable for the sustainability of many nations, accompanied by the inevitable technological change and the need to anchor the global economy back to real values. The natural passage is a return to physical gold or to virtual gold, precisely the block chain and the value we bring with it.

We should not underestimate the power of central banks and their plans to invent their own cryptocurrency as a mean to perpetuate their Ponzi scheme. What will make the main difference in the future is what backs up these virtual currencies. For example, Russia and China have accumulated many tons of gold and diversified their assets, dumping USD in exchange for tangible goods. A Crypto-Yuan or Ruble will eventually be valued more than an empty crypto-dollar without any counter-value. In a not to long distant future, Yuan and Ruble will be backed with gold or other financial assets like bitcoin while new virtual currencies will continue to perpetuate their empty value as with fiat currency. No surprise that with the next financial crisis, fiat money will pour into gold and crypto market looking for a safe haven from the devaluing dollar.

In the next couple of years we can expect central banks such as those of the US, Europe and Japan develop their own crypto-currency and start pushing conversion from fiat money into their crypto, advancing their project of keeping the system centralized. We should not exclude drastic measures, such as banning non-state-actor cryptos, from governments when central banks start realizing having lost their competitive edge on currency manipulation.

The last straw will be related to US military power trying to enforce the use of USD. In a scenario of steady economic and military decline of power, the US will find itself unable to force certain countries to use their currency, therefore losing its main weapon to create chaos in the world to advance its geopolitical goals. Without the dollar as the main world reserve currency, Washington will be forced to reconcile with the rest of the world, understanding that the unipolar moment is over and the neoliberal hegemonic planes to rule the world are forever gone.

*

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

Federico Pieraccini is an independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies.

It could be truly comical, if it were not to be so dangerous for millions of people living all over the world. The Empire, once mighty, ruthless and frightening is now jumping around like a dog infected with rabies; it is salivating, barking loudly, its tale is stiff between its legs.

It snaps left and right, and periodically it is even trying to bite a piece of Moon off. But the Moon is far, too far, even for the best armed and the most aggressive country on Earth.

Iran is much closer, and so are North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Russia, China, Pakistan and other nations that have managed to land themselves on that proverbial shit list of the neo-colonialist World Order,manufactured by the West.

The General Manager of what the West likes to define as the “Free World”, is increasingly behaving like a hooligan and racist, insulting African countries which have survived both genocide and the slave trade, and which have been, for centuries, colonized, plundered and enslaved first by various European ‘enlightened’ states, and later by the coordinated efforts of the Western governments and multi-national corporations.

He is also offending and intimidating millions of Latin Americans; people of the Western Hemisphere who have been, for ages, falling under the infamous ‘Monroe Doctrine’ of U.S. foreign policy. The summary of that Doctrine has been basically this: do as we say and what is in the interests of the West, or we’ll overthrow your governments, murder your leaders or even directly invade your shores. Now ‘illegal immigrants’ from these countries are most likely going to have to leave the United States. Because they are poor (logically they are, after centuries of oppression and terror from the North), because they are not white, and because they are ‘uneducated’, or in summary, because they are not ‘Norwegians’ (the Manager would prefer Norwegian migrants).

Insulting people and nations is one thing, but bringing the world near a nuclear war is something quite different.

Increasingly it appears that the possibility of a new and horrid conflict (or conflicts) is nothing hypothetical. It is an absolutely realistic scenario, a great possibility, considering both the state of mind of the Manager, and even, progressively, the state of mind of the Western public, who seem to be totally out of touch with their position in the world and even with their own history.

In the meantime, a gruesome war dog is jumping all over, pointing in different directions, ready to bite, to devour, to bring to an end life itself on our Planet.

Who will be its first victim?

Is anyone ready to yield to a brutal force, to surrender out of fear, to accept the morbid, repulsive fate of conquered and broken nations like Afghanistan, Libya or Iraq?

Would any government be so insane as to allow the West to ‘liberate’ its people?

I don’t think so; not anymore. All the examples are just too horrid. It is better to fight a war, to fight for one’s freedom, than to become a colony, a broken, humiliated and usurped land. I saw what they have done to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to the Democratic Republic of Congo. I saw and I wanted to puke from what I witnessed, but instead wrote an 800-page accusation, from all over the world, called “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”.

The West has already run out of credit. There is no trust in it left. The entire world knows perfectly well what it is like to be colonized and controlled by both Europe and the United States.

The dog of war is searching for some weak point, where its fangs can begin tearing flesh apart. But suddenly, it seems that there is none. All points are hardened, tough.

Russia and China are standing firm and tall, their diplomats literally humiliating their counterparts from Western Empire by composed, powerfully sophisticated and refined behavior. But the militaries of both peaceful but mighty nations have recently been on constant alert: ready to defend their own people, and humanity.

Iran and North Korea are not yielding either. Syria is beginning to rebuild, despite the fact that the subversion, armed and supported from abroad, has not yet been fully defeated. Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia are still there, standing upright, definitely not on their knees.

Suddenly, no one is ready to surrender. This is the first time in history that the Empire has faced such scorn from the rest of the world.

The more solid is determination of various countries not to allow themselves to get colonized, the more insane is the St. Vitus Dance of the West becomes.

The unwillingness to lose great privileges as well as the ‘ruling position’ of the world (including the ‘right’ to tell the rest of the world what is ‘correct’ and what is not) is also clearly embedded in the positions of various European and North American pseudo-left-wing publications, movements and parties: they were always ready to shed tears over the fate of the poor and oppressed people anywhere in the world, or ‘fight against war/for peace’, but they have been greatly allergic to those non-white nations that have been bravely proclaiming their right to march on their own path, or practically: to choose their own political and economic systems, as well as their way of life.

Imperialism, chauvinism and the cultural superiority complexes of the West have many different forms and shades. Almost no individual there is immune to these ills, if one doesn’t count those very few pure men and women who could be defined as internationalists. There are some of them even in the U.S., in the U.K. or France, but not many; not many at all.

In the past, those countries that were on the hit list of the Empire could only count on themselves. Lately, this has changed dramatically: now they can also count on each other.

And that is why the Empire is going to lose! There is already a global coalition against its terror. It is still forming and defining itself, but it is already strong.

The Empire knows that it will lose; it knows it intuitively, but it is still in denial.

It may still ruin dozens of millions of human lives, before it is over. Most likely, it will. But the era of darkness, of those monstrous centuries of colonialism, will soon be ended.

*

The citizens of the West should finally think about their own history. They should do some serious learning, educating themselves. Most of them are fully ignorant, including those holding various degrees. What have their countries done to Russia, to China, to Iran to Korea, in fact to the entire Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and to what is now called Latin America?

The atrocious history of the West is flowing into present, and if the course is not dramatically changed, it will keep flowing into the future.

Accumulatively, we are talking about hundreds of millions of human lives destroyed by the West throughout its colonialist and imperialist reign. Some statisticians are already talking about 1 billion.

This cannot be taken back, but the trend can be stopped.

The West has absolutely zero moral mandate to tell any country of the world how to behave. The world, despite the systematic brainwashing, is beginning to realize it.

If the West continues to bully its former and present victims, things will only backfire.

Europe, North America and their allies (partners in crime) should simply sit on their backsides, weep and throw ashes on their heads, in shame and grieve over the horrors they put our planet through, for several centuries.

Instead the West is running around, barking, showing fangs, shitting itself out of fear that it may lose its control over the world and could finally be forced to play by the international rules.

It doesn’t even occur to it that it should, instead, get quickly admitted to a mental institution for particularly violent and sadistic patients.

Its Manager is not an anomaly. He was put there, ‘where he is’, by the people. Many of his dreams and desires are identical to those of the masses.

In the West, he is not the first Manager of this sort, and he is not the worst. He is part of that long tradition of tyrants. And this tradition has to stop, very soon, in order for our Planet to survive.

These are brutal, dangerous and testing times. The ill, aggressive monster should not be allowed to totally destroy the world. Those who are already standing, should never surrender. Others should join. The survival of our civilization is at stake!

*

This article was originally published by New Eastern Outlook.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

Responses from European Central Bank (ECB) President, Mario Draghi, and European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, to questioning by Greek MEP Nikos Chountis have revealed that the ECB and national central banks have been reaping super-profits from Greek bonds over the course of the economic crisis. In effect, the ECB and the national central banks have been behaving like a vulture fund, rather than monetary authorities that safeguard the sustainability of financial markets.

GUE/NGL is seeking to put this issue on the European Parliament’s agenda for its October plenary session (23/10 – 26/10) so that we get proper answers and establish the full extent of this scandal.

The story

From 2010, the ECB and the national central banks of the Eurozone (collectively known as the Eurosystem), started implementing the Securities Markets Program (SMP), in order to ease the pressure against sovereign debt interest rates in financial markets. At the end of the programme, in September 2012, the ECB alone owned €218bn of sovereign debt, from Ireland (€14.2bn), Greece (€33.9bn), Spain (€44.3bn), Italy (€102.8bn) and Portugal (€22.8bn). We say “alone”, because between 2010 and 2012, the national central banks of the Eurozone also purchased an unknown amount of Eurozone sovereign debt.

See Commissioner Moscovici’s answer to questions on this issue here.

The important issue here is that both ECB and national central banks purchased sovereign debt in prices that were lower than the nominal value of the bonds. Namely, they had bought, for example, a Greek bond that would pay 100 euros in 4 years, for 70 euros. Thus, their profit is extraordinary, since they are gaining, not only from the interest paid, but also from the difference between buying price and nominal price.

In 2012 the Greek Government and the Troika decided to haircut all the Greek bonds that were held by the private sector (Private Sector Involvement – PSI), that is, held by Foreign Banks, mostly French and German, and many private and public entities in Greece, such as:

• Greek banks, which afterwards were recapitalized by the loans Greece received by EFSF and ESM,
• Greek Pension Funds, that today are unable to give decent pensions and consequently all the pro-austerity governments “were obliged” to introduce pension cuts and increases in contributions,
• State Owned Enterprises, which have deteriorated in financial terms.

However, the Greek bonds that the ECB and the national central banks owned were excluded by the PSI haircut, thus reducing the effectiveness of the debt haircut.

During the 2012 negotiations, the Eurogroup stated that if Greece is a “good student” and implements the 2nd adjustment programme, on the one hand, and Greek debt continues to be unsustainable into the future, on the other, the ECB and the national central banks (via the Member-States) will return these profits to Greece.

What is the picture today?

The following table summarises how much the ECB and national central banks have gained, and how much Greece has received all these years:

The Total Profits column adds the next two columns (SMP + ANFA), while the Refunds column shows what Greece has received back from SMP/ANFA profits, particularly, as Commissioner Moscovici said, from the Greek Central Bank.

From the Table above it is clear that the Eurosystem (the ECB and the national central banks of those countries that have adopted the euro) has speculated against Greece, by buying cheap Greek Bonds, months before the official PSI haircut and at the same time safeguarding the exclusion of those bonds from the haircut.

Will Greece get these “super-profits” back?

Unfortunately, it will be difficult for Greece to get these profits back.

First of all, the profits for the years 2015 and 2016 are completely lost, as a “penalty measure” for the 2015 NO referendum. You can find another of Moscovici’s answers to a written question that validates that here.

Secondly, the Eurogroup Summit (June 2017) presented the medium-term measures for Greek debt, that is the measures that ESM will take if and only if (a) Greece implements the 3rd Program completely and (b) in 2018 the IMF/ECB/Commission evaluate Greek debt as unsustainable. One of these measures is the transfer of 2014 SMP Profits (€1.8bn) and SMP/ANFA Profits from 2017 (€3.5bn) into an ESM Segregated Account, as a buffer for the Greek budget.

To sum up…

The issue of SMP/ANFA profits is a big political and economic scandal. The EU institutions knew from 2011 that Greek Bonds will be written off considerably. Nevertheless, the ECB and national central banks purchased Greek bonds, at very low prices, and received super-profits from interest payments and capital gains. These super-profits, instead of helping the Greek economy and the Greek budget, are being used as a political tool for the implementation of austerity and neoliberal policies in Greece.

Next step?

This has to stop! Measures need to be put in place to ensure this can never happen again. Ultimately, the money must be returned to Greece. As a first step, the GUE/NGL is seeking to put this issue on the European Parliament’s agenda so that the Commission answers to MEPs. A wider debate on the role and the functioning of the ECB during the crisis must also urgently be held.

The Iraq of today is associated with horrific violence, a refugee crisis and widespread poverty. The images we see flashed across the news show nothing but terror and misery.

But it hasn’t always been this way.

Modern-day Iraq lies in the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization where mankind flourished as it developed seed cultivation and its first farming techniques — all nourished by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Generations of people have tilled the soil there since 8,000 BC, developing the seeds that grew into the many types of wheat seen around the world today.

But centuries of cultivation turned to dust in 2003, when former President George W. Bush invaded the country, planting seeds of war that would be sown for years to come.

Unfortunately, the United States took more than figurative seeds to Iraq.

While about two million civilians were killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the war is still ingrained in the U.S. psyche as a humanitarian effort to save the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator.

But what it actually did was pave the way for foreign corporations to descend upon the country and turn a profit on the chaos.

Invasion and Exploitation — Foreign Corporations File Into Iraq

Following the U.S.’ bombing of Iraq and its capture of Saddam Hussein, the Coalition Provisional Authority was established to serve as the country’s temporary government.

Paul Bremer

The CPA was headed by Paul Bremer, the former managing director of Kissinger Associates, an influential consulting firm founded by Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state and war criminal.

It quickly became clear that toppling Saddam wasn’t the U.S.’ only goal. The powers taking control of the Iraqi government were also seeking control of the country’s agriculture industry.

In 2004, Bremer put the “100 Orders” into effect. They were “binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people that create penal consequences or have a direct bearing on the way Iraqis are regulated, including changes to Iraqi law.”

In other words, Iraqis were told, “Follow our orders or die.”

One order, in particular, had a crippling effect on Iraq’s centuries-long farming and seed cultivation traditions.

Order 81 — the Patents, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law — gave those who hold patents on certain plant varieties absolute rights over the use of their seeds in Iraq for 20 years.

The order also facilitated the introduction and domination of imported, high-priced corporate-developed seeds, mainly from the U.S. These seeds do not reproduce or produce yields without prescribed chemical fertilizer and pesticide inputs.

This created a major dilemma for Iraqi farmers, as Najma Sadeque wrote in 2012:

“It meant that the majority of farmers who had never spent money on seed and inputs that came free from nature, would henceforth have to heavily invest in corporate inputs and equipment — or go into debt to obtain them, or accept lowered profits, or give up farming altogether.”

Meanwhile, the country’s national seed bank — located, unfortunately, in the infamous city of Abu Ghraib — was destroyed during the 2003 U.S. invasion and subsequent looting, making it another casualty of the Iraq War.

Farmers Forced to Pay Fees for Seeds for the first time

Today, because of Order 81, Iraqi farmers who choose to plant patented seeds that come from multinational agribusiness monopolies have to sign agreements that force them to pay a “technology fee” and an annual licensing fee.

If an Iraqi farmer saves seeds to replant in the future — as farmers around the world have done for centuries — they are subject to substantial fines from the seed supplier.

Ultimately, Order 81 and the actions taken by companies like Monsanto and Cargill have ensured that while Iraqis may no longer be under the thumb of Saddam Hussein, they’re trapped in a modern colonial struggle against an occupying force that seeks to control their livelihoods, their food supply and their cultural traditions.

Perhaps this should come as no surprise, considering Bremer’s ties to Kissinger. It was Kissinger who reportedly once said:

“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”

This type of control over agriculture and food production is a weapon of war and a tool of the oppressor. The U.S. has been using food aid and its role in global food production to advance its own interests since World War I.

Under the postwar trade regime, especially during the Nixon administration, trade pacts like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade emerged to advance a new global agribusiness export agenda.

Within a decade, the global food cartel was controlled by the U.S.-NATO empire’s most elite families. They started buying up all of the world’s major sources of food and seeds. This is why just a few companies — including Monsanto and Cargill — dominate the world’s grain and cereal supplies.

It’s also why these companies descended on Iraq once the Coalition Provisional Authority created an opening, destroying a once-flourishing agriculture industry. In the process, they destroyed the independence of Iraqi farmers and forced the Iraqi people to rely on foreign corporations for even basic sustenance.

Here to talk more about the struggles of the Iraqi agriculture sector during and after the Iraq War and what the Iraqi government is doing to rebuild the industry, is Dr. Nakd Altameemi.

Dr. Altameemi started his career at Iraq’s Ministry of Agriculture, eventually serving as director general of both Iraq’s State Board for Seed Testing and Certification and the Mesopotamia Seed Company. From 2008 to 2015, he joined the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as a consultant.

Two days after we reported that Turkey valiantly demanded that US forces vacate military bases in the Syrian district of Manbij, when Turkey’s foreign minister Melet Cavusoglu also said that Ankara is calling upon the US to cease any and all support to Syrian Kurdish forces and militias, not surprisingly the US refused, and on Monday a top American general said that US troops will not pull out from the northern Syrian city of Manbij, rebuffing Ankara demands to withdraw from the city and risking a potential confrontation between the two NATO allies.

Speaking on CNN, General Joseph Votel, head of the United States Central Command, said that withdrawing US forces from the strategically important city is “not something we are looking into.”

Last week Turkish troops crossed into Syria in an push to drive US-backed Kurds out of Afrin. As part of the Turkish offensive, which is grotesquely code-named ‘Operation Olive Branch’, president Erdogan warned that the offensive could soon target “terrorists” in Manbij, some 100km east of Afrin.

“With the Olive Branch operation, we have once again thwarted the game of those sneaky forces whose interests in the region are different,” Erdogan said in a speech to provincial leaders in Ankara last week. “Starting in Manbij, we will continue to thwart their game.”

But not if the US is still there, unless for the first time in history we are about to witness war between two NATO members. And the US has no intention of moving.

Colonel Ryan Dillon, spokesperson for the US-led coalition, told Kurdish media on Sunday that American forces would continue to support their Kurdish allies – despite Erdogan’s threats.

kesman remarked last week that the operation “risks conflict between Turkish and American forces” in Syria. In an unprecedented step, last week the Turkish presidency went so far as to correct the White House readout of the phone conversation between Trump and Erdogan, explicitly accusing Trump of lying.

The Afrin campaign follows Erdogan’s vow to “strangle” the US-backed Border Security Force (BSF) in Syria. As discussed previously, the US-led coalition announced in January that it would help create the 30,000-strong BSF, half of which would be comprised of the Kurdish-dominated SDF.

Meanwhile, confirming that Turkey has no intention of backing down, and if anything will keep pressing on assuring an armed confrontation with the US is inevitable, Jenan Moussa with Arabic Al Aan TV, reports that “a huge story is developing right now.” Namely, that a big Turkish army convoy including APCs drove thru HTS controlled Idlib in Syria heading towards AlEis, a rebel controlled frontline with Syrian gov forces &allies. Turkish army convoy was escorted whole time by Al-Qaeda linked HTS group.”

1/ Huge story developing right now. Big Turkish army convoy including APCs drove thru HTS controlled Idlib in Syria heading towards AlEis, a rebel controlled frontline with Syrian gov forces &allies. Turkish army convoy was escorted whole time by AlQaeda linked HTS group. @akhbar pic.twitter.com/1cdRYwu8xC

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) January 29, 2018

4/ I just made this map. Have a look at it in order to better understand the situation. The Turkish army convoy has stopped around Kafr Halab. The Russians are bombing &Syrian regime is shelling area around Al-Qammari. The convoy is intended for Al-Eiss so it can't pass. @akhbar pic.twitter.com/XzkdudigKR

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) January 29, 2018

5/ Here is another video of the Turkish army convoy when it was still driving earlier through Idlib before the Russians started bombing the route. I am just sharing it so you know how big this convoy is. @akhbar pic.twitter.com/iaOBR8Se0Q

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) January 29, 2018

And some additional starting details, according to Moussa, who notes that Russian planes were in the sky as the Turkish convoy drove through HTS controlled Idlib province. They even bombed 15 KMs away from the convoy. “So big question now: Is the Turkish convey moving with the approval or in defiance of the Russians?”

For now the answer appears to be no:

Seems for now the Russians are not going to allow the Turkish army convoy to pass. I am hearing from one source on the ground that the convoy will go back in the direction of Turkey. I am in touch with sources on the ground in Idleb & will update as news develops.

Due to nearby Russian bombing &Syrian shelling, witnesses on the ground now say that the Turkish military convoy has basically turned off its lights and is waiting in the area. We are trying to find out if they will turn back or continue advancing despite warnings.

Will Erdogan be crazy enough to start a regional battle against both the US and Russia at the same time on Syrian soil, or will Russia flip and side with Turkey in its “defensive offensive” yet as it careens to a military confrontation with US troops? We expect to find out in the immediate future.

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All images in this article are from the author.

The Latin America Seeds Collective has just released a 40-minute film (‘Seeds: Common or Corporate Property?) which documents the resistance of peasant farmers to the corporate takeover of their agriculture. 

The film describes how seed has been central to agriculture for 10,000 years. Farmers have been saving, exchanging and developing seeds for millennia. Seeds have been handed down from generation to generation. Peasant farmers have been the custodians of seeds, knowledge and land. 

This is how it was until the 20^th century when corporations took these seeds, hybridised them, genetically modified them, patented them and fashioned them to serve the needs of industrial agriculture with its monocultures and chemical inputs.

To serve the interests of these corporations by marginalising indigenous agriculture, a number of treaties and agreement over breeders’ rights and intellectual property have been enacted to prevent peasant farmers from freely improving, sharing or replanting their traditional seeds. Since this began, thousands of seed varieties have been lost and corporate seeds have increasingly dominated agriculture.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that globally just 20 cultivated plant species account for 90 percent of all the plant-based food consumed by humans. This narrow genetic base of the global food system has put food security at serious risk.

To move farmers away from using native seeds and to get them to plant corporate seeds, the film describes how seed ‘certification’ rules and laws are brought into being by national governments on behalf of commercial seed giants like Monsanto. In Costa Rica, the battle to overturn restrictions on seeds was lost with the signing of a free trade agreement with the US, although this flouted the country’s seed biodiversity laws.

Seed laws in Brazil created a corporate property regime for seeds which effectively marginalised all indigenous seeds that were locally adapted over generations. This regime attempted to stop farmers from using or breeding their own seeds.

It was an attempt to privatise seed. The privatisation of something that is a common heritage. The privatisation and appropriation of inter-generational knowledge embodied by seeds whose germplasm is ‘tweaked’ (or stolen) by corporations who then claim ownership.

In the film, an interviewee claims that if corporate seeds end up in a peasants’ field, the corporation can take the entire crop. It is a way of getting rid of the small farmer as agribusiness corporations strive to take control of the entire global food chain.

However, the film is as much about resistance as it is about corporate imperialism. No matter how well organised small farmers become, they might not be able to win the battle on their own. The struggle has to be taken to cities to raise awareness among consumers about how food is being appropriated by transnational corporations without their consent or knowledge. Without involving consumers, they become an ignorant link which merely serves to perpetuate the chain of corporate control.

The film moves from country to country in South America to highlight how farmers and social movements are fighting back to regain or retain control. Corporate control over seeds is also an attack on the survival of communities and their traditions. Seeds are integral to identity because in rural communities, people are acutely aware that they are ‘all children of the seed’. Their lives have been tied to planting, harvesting, seeds, soil and the seasons for thousands of years.

Corporate control is also an attack on biodiversity and – as we see the world over – on the integrity of soil, water, food, diets and health as well as on the integrity of international institutions, governments and officials which have too often been corrupted by powerful transnational corporations.  

The film highlights the fight back against the ‘Monsanto law’ (GM corn) in Guatemala. It shows how movements are resisting regulations and seed certification laws designed to eradicate traditional seeds by allowing only ‘stable’, ‘uniform’ and ‘novel’ seeds on the market (read corporate seeds). These are the only ‘regulated’ seeds allowed: registered and certified. It is a cynical way of eradicating indigenous farming practices at the behest of corporations.

As part of the resistance, farmers are organising seed exchanges, seed fairs, public markets and seed banks. They want to ensure that seeds for different altitudes, different soils and different nutritional needs remain available.

In Brazil, the film describes how previous governments supported peasant agriculture and agroecology by developing supply chains with public sector schools and hospitals (Food Acquisition Programme). This secured good prices and brought farmers together. It came about by social movements applying pressure on the government to act.

The federal government also brought native seeds and distributed them to farmers across the country, which was important for combatting the advance of the corporations as many farmers had lost access to native seeds.

Governments are under immense pressure via lop-sided trade deals, strings-attached loans and corporate-backed seed regimes to comply with the demands of agribusiness conglomerates and to fit in with their supply chains. However, when farmers organise into effective social movements, administrators are compelled to take on board the needs of local cultivators.

It indicates what can be achieved when policy makers support traditional cultivators. And it is essential that they do because, unlike industrial agriculture, peasant farmers throughout the world have been genuine custodians of both seed, the environment and the land.

President Trump disembarked from the helicopter at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Here, preceded by the brass players of the orchestra of Friborg, he announced that «The world is witnessing the resurgence of a strong and prosperous America», thanks to the tax cuts and reforms implemented by his administration on the principle of «America First», that is puting America in the first place.

This «does not mean America alone: ​​when the United States grows, so does the world». But, he added, «we cannot have free and open trade if some countries exploit the system at the expense of others». The reference is especially clear to China and Russia, accused of «distorting global markets» through «industrial subsidies and a pervasive state-led economic planning».

The crux of the question consequently emerges. The United States is still the world leading economic power, especially thanks to the capitals they use to dominate the global financial market, the multinationals which they exploit resources with in every continent, their owned technological patents, the pervasive role of their multimedia groups influencing people’ opinions and ways on a planetary scale.

Their economic supremacy (including the dollar), however, is being increasingly endangered by new States and social actors emerging. First of all China: its gross national income rose up to the second world place after the US. China is the «factory of the world» in which also many large US groups produce. It has therefore become the world leading exporter of goods. In return, China is increasing investments both in the US and in the EU, and in Africa, Asia and Latin America (in these areas on infrastructures above all).

The most ambitious project, launched by China in 2013 and shared by Russia, is that of the New Silk Road: a land (road and rail) and maritime network connecting China to Europe through Central and Western Asia and through Russia. If the project (which does not include military components) is accomplished according to the original idea, it would reshape the geopolitical architecture of the whole Eurasia, creating a new network of economic and political relations between the States of the continent.

The globalization that United States promoted, confident of dominating it, now turns against them. The increasing of 50% on duties for washing machines and solar panels, set by the Trump administration to affect China’s and South Korea’s export, are not a sign of strength but weakness.

Losing ground on the economic globalization level, United States is focusing on military globalization: «We are making historic investments in the American military – announced Trump in Davos – because we cannot have prosperity without security».

The US already has bases and other military installations in over 70 countries, especially around Russia and China. There are more than 170 countries where US troops are deployed. European powers of NATO join in this strategy, despite having contrasts of interest with the US, and line up under US leadership when it comes to defending the economic and political order dominated by the West.

This is the scenario of the increasingly dangerous US / NATO escalation in Europe against Russia, represented as the enemy threatening us from the East. Any debate on the European Union and on the Euro ignoring this issue, means playing a game with rigged cards in front of the voters, as they do in the current electoral campaign.

Article in Italian :

«America First» armata sulle nostre teste

il manifesto, 30 January, 2018

Il presidente Trump è sbarcato dall’elicottero al Forum economico mondiale di Davos. Qui, preceduto dai suonatori di ottoni dell’orchestra di Friburgo, ha annunciato che «il mondo sta assistendo alla rinascita di una forte e prosperosa America», grazie alle riduzioni di tasse e riforme attuate dalla sua amministrazione in base al principio «America First», ossia quello di mettere l’America al primo posto.

Ciò «non significa America da sola: quando gli Stati uniti crescono, cresce tutto il mondo». Ma, ha aggiunto, «non possiamo avere un commercio libero e aperto se alcuni paesi sfruttano il sistema a spese di altri». Chiaro il riferimento soprattutto alla Cina e alla Russia, accusate di «distorcere i mercati globali» attraverso «sussidi industriali e una pervasiva pianificazione economica a guida statale».

Emerge così il nodo della questione. Gli Stati uniti sono ancora la prima potenza economica del mondo, soprattutto grazie ai capitali con cui dominano il mercato finanziario globale, alle multinazionali con cui sfruttano risorse di ogni continente, ai brevetti tecnologici in loro possesso, al ruolo pervasivo dei loro gruppi multimediali che influenzano le opinioni e i gusti della gente su scala planetaria.

La loro supremazia economica (compresa quella del dollaro) viene però messa sempre più in pericolo dall’emergere di nuovi soggetti statuali e sociali. Anzitutto la Cina: salita come reddito nazionale lordo al secondo posto mondiale dopo gli Usa, essa è la «fabbrica del mondo» in cui producono anche molti grandi gruppi statunitensi. È quindi divenuta il primo esportatore mondiale di merci. A sua volta essa effettua crescenti investimenti sia negli Usa e nella Ue, sia in Africa, Asia e America Latina (qui soprattutto in infrastrutture). Il progetto più ambizioso, varato dalla Cina nel 2013 e condiviso dalla Russia, è quello di una nuova Via della Seta: una rete terrestre (viaria e ferroviaria) e marittima che collega la Cina all’Europa attraverso l’Asia Centrale e Occidentale e attraverso la Russia.

Se fosse realizzato secondo l’idea originaria, il progetto, che non include componenti militari, rimodellerebbe l’architettura geopolitica dell’intera Eurasia, creando una nuova rete di rapporti economici e pol, itici tra gli stati del continente.

Quella globalizzazione che gli Stati uniti hanno promosso, fiduciosi di poterla dominare, si ritorce ora contro di loro. I dazi fino al 50% su lavatrici e pannelli solari, stabiliti dall’amministrazione Trump per colpire le esportazioni di Cina e Corea del Sud, sono una prova non di forza ma di debolezza. Perdendo terreno sul piano della globalizzione economica, gli Stati uniti puntano sulla globalizzazione militare: «Stiamo facendo investimenti storici nel militare americano – ha annunciato Trump a Davos – poiché non possiamo avere prosperità senza sicurezza». Gli Usa hanno già oggi basi e altre installazioni militari in oltre 70 paesi, soprattutto attorno alla Russia e alla Cina. I paesi in cui sono dispiegate truppe Usa sono oltre 170. In tale strategia sono affiancati dalle potenze europee della Nato, le quali, pur avendo con gli Usa contrasti di interesse, si schierano sotto la leadership statunitense quando si tratta di difendere l’ordine economico e politico dominato dall’Occidente.

Questo è lo scenario in cui si inserisce la sempre più pericolosa escalation Usa/Nato in Europa contro la Russia, presentata come il nemico che ci minaccia da Est. Dibattere di Unione europea ed euro indipendentemente da tutto questo, come si fa nell’attuale campagna elettorale, significa giocare di fronte agli elettori una partita con carte truccate.

Manlio Dinucci

The Trump administration has drawn Turkey deeper into the Syrian conflict by announcing a policy that threatens Turkey’s national security. Washington’s gaffe has pitted one NATO ally against the other while undermining hopes for a speedy end to the seven year-long war.

Here’s what’s going on: On January 18, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced the creation of a 30,000-man Border Security Force (BSF) to occupy East Syria. Two days later, January 20, the Turkish Army launched a ground and air offensive against Kurdish troops in the Afrin canton in Northwest Syria.

The media has tried to downplay the connection between the two events, but the cause-and-effect relationship is pretty clear.  Tillerson’s  provocation triggered the Turkish invasion and another bloody phase to the needlessly-protracted conflict.  Washington’s screwup has made a bad situation even worse.

A five-year-old child could have figured out that Turkey wasn’t going to sit-back and let the US establish a Kurdish state on its border without putting up a fight. Keep in mind, the US plans to defend this new protectorate with  a 30,000-man proxy-army comprised of mostly Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units or YPG.  The Turks, however, believe the YPG is connected to the terror-listed PKK which  has prosecuted a scorched earth campaign against the Turkish state for decades. That’s why Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not allow these groups to dig in along Turkey’s southern border, they constitute a serious threat to Turkey’s security. Just imagine if Hezbollah decided to set up military encampments along the Mexican border. How long do you think it would take before Trump blew those camps to kingdom come? Not long, I’d wager.

So why did Tillerson think Erdogan would respond differently?

There’s only one explanation: Tillerson must be so blinded by hubris that he couldn’t figure out what Erdogan’s reaction would be.  He must have thought that,  “Whatever Uncle Sam says, goes.” Only it doesn’t work like that anymore. The US has lost its ability to shape events in the Middle East, particularly in Syria where its jihadist proxies have been rolled back on nearly every front. The US simply doesn’t have sufficient forces on the ground to determine the outcome, nor is it respected as an honest broker, a dependable ally or a reliable steward of regional security.  The US is just one of many armed-factions struggling to gain the upper hand in an increasingly fractious and combustible battlespace.  Simply put,  Washington is losing the war quite dramatically due in large part to the emergence of a new coalition  (Russia-Syria-Iran-Hezbollah) that has made great strides in Syria and that is committed to preserve the Old World Order, a system that is built on the principles of national sovereignty, self determination and non intervention. Washington opposes this system and is doing everything in its power dismantle it by redrawing borders, toppling elected leaders, and installing its own stooges to execute its diktats. Tillerson’s blunder will only make Washington’s task all the more difficult by drawing Turkey into the fray in an effort to quash Uncle Sam’s Kurdish proxies.

In an effort to add insult to injury,  Tillerson didn’t even have the decency to discuss the matter with Erdogan– his NATO ally– before making the announcement! Can you imagine how furious Erdogan must have been?   Shouldn’t the president of Turkey expect better treatment from his so-called friends in Washington who use Turkish air fields to  supply their ground troops and to carry out their bombing raids in Syria? But instead of gratitude, he gets a big kick in the teeth with the announcement that the US is hopping into bed with his mortal enemies, the Kurds. Check out this excerpt from Wednesday’s Turkish daily, The Hurriyet, which  provides a bit of background on the story:

“It is beyond any doubt that the U.S. military and administration knew that the People’s Protection Units (YPG)…had organic ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Washington officially recognizes as a terrorist group….The YPG is the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which is the political wing of the PKK in Syria. They share the same leadership…the same budget, the same arsenal, the same chain of command from the Kandil Mountains in Iraq, and the same pool of militants. So the PYD/YPG is actually not a “PKK-affiliated” group, it is a sub-geographical unit of the same organization….

Knowing that the YPG and the PKK are effectively equal, and legally not wanting to appear to be giving arms to a terrorist organization, the U.S. military already asked the YPG to “change the brand” back in 2015. U.S.

Special Forces Commander General Raymond Thomas said during an Aspen Security Forum presentation on July 22, 2017 that he had personally proposed the name change to the YPG.

“With about a day’s notice [the YPG] declared that it was now the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF],” Thomas said to laughter from the audience. “I thought it was a stroke of brilliance to put ‘democracy’ in there somewhere. It gave them a little bit of credibility.” (Hurriyet)

Ha, ha, ha. Isn’t that funny? One day you’re a terrorist, and the next day you’re not depending on whether Washington can use you or not. Is it any wonder why Erdogan is so pissed off?

So now a messy situation gets even messier. Now the US has to choose between its own proxy army (The Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces) and a NATO ally that occupies the critical crossroads between Asia and Europe. Washington’s plan to pivot to Asia by controlling vital resources and capital flowing between the continents depends largely on its ability to keep regional leaders within its orbit. That means Washington needs Erdogan in their camp which, for the time being, he is not.

Apparently, there have been phone calls between Presidents Trump and Erdogan, but early accounts saying that Trump scolded Erdogan have already been disproven. In fact, Trump and his fellows have been bending-over-backwards to make amends for Tillerson’s foolish slip-up. According to the Hurriyet:

“The readout issued by the White House does not accurately reflect the content of President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan’s phone call with President [Donald] Trump,”…“President Trump did not share any ‘concerns [about] escalating violence’ with regard to the ongoing military operation in Afrin.”…The Turkish sources also stressed that Trump did not use the words “destructive and false rhetoric coming from Turkey.”…

Erdoğan reiterated that the People’s Protection Units (YPG) must withdraw to the East of the Euphrates River and pledged the protection of Manbij by the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA)…

“In response to President Erdoğan’s call on the United States to end the delivery of weapons to the [Democratic Union Party] PYD-YPG, President Trump said that his country no longer supplied the group with weapons and pledged not to resume the weapons delivery in the future,” the sources added.” (Hurriyet)

If this report can be trusted, (Turkish media is no more reliable than US media) then it is Erdogan who is issuing the demands not Trump.  Erdogan insists that all YPG units be redeployed east of the Euphrates and that all US weapons shipments to Washington’s Kurdish proxies stop immediately. We should know soon enough whether Washington is following Erdogan’s orders or not.

So far, the only clear winner in this latest conflagration has been Vladimir Putin, the levelheaded pragmatist who hews to Napoleon’s directive to “Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.”

Putin gave Erdogan the green light to conduct “Operation Olive Branch” in order to pave the way for an eventual Syrian takeover of the Northwestern portion of the country up to the Turkish border.  Moscow removed its troops from the Afrin quarter (where the current fighting is taking place) but not before it presented the Kurds with the option of conceding control of the area to the central government in Damascus. The Kurds rejected that offer and elected to fight instead. Here’s an account of what happened:

Nearly a week ago, [a] meeting between Russian officials and Kurdish leaders took place. Moscow suggested Syrian State becomes only entity in charge of the northern border. The Kurds refused. It was immediately after that that the Turkish Generals were invited to Moscow. Having the Syrian State in control of its Northern Border wasn’t the only Russian demand. The other was that the Kurds hand back the oil fields in Deir al Zor. The Kurds refused suggesting that the US won’t allow that anyway.

Putin has repeatedly expressed concern about US supplies of advanced weapons that had been given to the Kurdish SDF. According to the military website South Front:

“Uncontrolled deliveries of modern weapons, including reportedly the deliveries of the man-portable air defense systems, by the Pentagon to the pro-US forces in northern Syria, have contributed to the rapid escalation of tensions in the region and resulted in the launch of a special operation by the Turkish troops.” (SouthFront)

Erdogan’s demand that Trump stop the flow of weapons to the SDF will benefit Russia and its allies on the ground even more than they will benefit Turkey. It’s another win-win situation for Putin.

The split between the NATO allies seems to work in Putin’s favor as well, although, to his credit, he has not tried to exploit the situation. Putin ascribes to the notion that relations between nations are not that different than relations between people, they must be built on a solid foundation of trust which gradually grows as each party proves they are steady, reliable partners who can be counted on to honor their commitments and keep their word. Putin’s honesty, even-handedness and reliability have greatly enhanced Russia’s power in the region and his influence in settling global disputes.  That is particularly evident in Syria where Moscow is at the center of all decision-making.

As we noted earlier, Washington has made every effort to patch up relations with Turkey and put the current foofaraw behind them. The White House has issued a number of servile statements acknowledging Turkey’s “legitimate security concerns” and their “commitment to work with Turkey as a NATO ally.” And there’s no doubt that the administration’s charm offensive will probably succeed in bringing the narcissistic and mercurial Erdogan back into the fold. But for how long?

At present, Erdogan is still entertains illusions of cobbling together a second Ottoman empire overseen by the Grand Sultan Tayyip himself, but when he finally comes to his senses and realizes the threat that Washington poses to Turkish independence and sovereignty,  he may reconsider and throw his lot with Putin.

In any event, Washington has clearly tipped its hand revealing its amended strategy for Syria, a plan that abandons the pretext of a “war on terror” and focuses almost-exclusively on military remedies to the “great power” confrontation outlined in Trump’s new National Defense Strategy. Washington is fully committed to building an opposition proxy-army in its east Syria enclave that can fend off loyalist troops, launch destabilizing attacks on the regime, and eventually, effect the political changes that help to achieve its imperial ambitions.

Tillerson’s announcement may have prompted some unexpected apologies and back-tracking, but the policy remains the same. Washington will persist in its effort to divide the country and remove Assad until an opposing force prevents it from doing so.  And, that day could be sooner than many people imagine.

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Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is by davitydave | CC BY 2.0

The assassination of Kosovo’s Serb leader Oliver Ivanović on January 16^th, 2018 in the northern (the Serb) part of the divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica once again put on the agenda both the issue of contested land of Kosovo and Serbia’s policy toward the West, in particular, the EU.

The Western (the USA/EU) client Serbia’s government is quite long time under the direct pressure from Brussels to recognize an independence of the narco-mafia Kosovo’s quasi-state in exchange for joining  the EU but not before 2025.

It is only a question of time that a Western colony of Serbia has to finally declare its position towards Kosovo’s independence. All pro-Western bots and trolls in Serbia, already publicly announced their official position in regard to this question: Serbia’s Government has to finally inform the Serbian nation that Kosovo is no longer an integral part of Serbia and therefore the recognition of Kosovo’s independence by Belgrade is only way towards a “prosperous” Euro future of the country that is within the EU (and the NATO’s pact as well). The fundamental Western quisling in Belgrade – president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić (of the Bosnian origin from a Nazi-Croat district of Bugojno) recently clearly informed the nation not to be surprised if Serbia has to recognize the independence of Kosovo in order to join “Europe” (why Switzerland, Andorra, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Norway or Iceland are not in “Europe” he did not explain).

In the following paragraphs, the most important features of the “Kosovo Question” are going to be presented for the better understanding of the present political situation in which the Serb nation is questioned by the Western “democracies” upon both its own national identity and national pride.

Prelude

The southeastern province of the Republic of Serbia – under the administrative title of Kosovo-Metochia (in the English only Kosovo), was at the very end of the 20^th century in the center of international relations and global politics due to the NATO’s 78 days of “humanitarian” military intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the FRY composed by Serbia and Montenegro) in 1999 (March 24^th–June 10^th). As it was not approved and verified by the General Assembly or the Security Council of the United Nations, the US-led operation “Merciful Angel” opened among the academicians a fundamental question of the purpose and nature of the “humanitarian” interventions in the world like it was previously in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995, Rwanda in 1994 or Somalia in 1991−1995. More precisely, it provoked dilemmas of the misusing ethical, legal and political aspects of armed “humanitarian” interventions as the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) for the very reason that it became finally obvious in 2008 that the NATO’s “humanitarian” military intervention in 1999 was primarily aimed to lay the foundation for Kosovo’s independence and its separation from Serbia with transformation of the province into the US−EU’s political-economic colony, what Kosovo, in fact, today is [see more in Hannes Hofbauer, Eksperiment Kosovo: Povratak kolonijalizma, Beograd: Albatros Plus, 2009].

Kosovo as contested land between the Serbs and the Albanians

The province of Kosovo-Metochia (Kosova in the Albanian) is a landlocked territory in Central Balkans having borders with Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (the FYROM), Central Serbia and Montenegro. It is almost of the same size as Montenegro but having more than four times Montenegro’s population [Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Central and Southeast European Politics since 1989, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 359]. The province, as historically contested land between the Serbs and the Albanians, did not, does not and will not have an equal significance for these two nations. For the Albanians, Kosovo was all the time just a provincial land populated by them without any cultural or historical importance except for the single historical event that the first Albanian nationalistic political league was proclaimed in the town of Prizren in Metochia (West Kosovo) in 1878 and existed only till 1881. However, both Kosovo as a province and the town of Prizren were chosen to host the First (pan-Albanian) Prizren League only for the very propaganda reason – to emphasize allegedly predominantly the “Albanian” character of both Kosovo and Prizren regardless to the very fact that at that time the Serbs were a majority of population either in Kosovo or in Prizren. Kosovo was never part of Albania and the Albanians from Albania had no important cultural, political or economic links with Kosovo’s Albanians regardless the fact that the overwhelming majority of Kosovo’s Albanians originally came from North Albania after the First Great Serbian Migration from Kosovo in 1690.

However, quite contrary to the Albanian case, Kosovo-Metochia is the focal point of the Serbian nationhood, statehood, traditions, customs, history, culture, church and above all of the ethnonational identity. It was exactly Kosovo-Metochia to be the central administrative-cultural part of medieval Serbia with the capital in Prizren. The administrative centre of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the medieval and later on the Ottoman-time was also in Kosovo-Metochia in the town of Peć (Ipek in the Turkish; Pejë in the Albanian). Before Muslim Kosovo’s Albanians started to demolish the Serbian Christian Orthodox churches and monasteries from June 1999 onward, there were around 1.500 Serbian Christian shrines in this province. Kosovo-Metochia is even today called by the Serbs as the “Serbian Holy Land” while the town of Prizren is known for the Serbs as the “Serbian Jerusalem” and the “Imperial Town” (Tsarigrad) in which there was an imperial court of the Emperor Stefan Dušan of Serbia (1346−1355) [see more in Миладин Стевановић, Душаново царство, Београд: Књига-комерц, 2001]. The Serbs, differently to the Albanians, have a plenty of national folk songs and legends about Kosovo-Metochia, especially in regard to the Kosovo Battle of 1389 in which they lost state independence to the Ottoman Turks. For the Serbs, Kosovo-Metochia is the “cradle of the Serbs” and real “Serbia proper” while for the Albanians, Kosovo is just a peripheral province of their nationhood and culture.

Prizren – A Serbian Orthodox Church (built in 1306) of Holy Virgin of Ljevish. However, the Albanian propaganda is presenting this church as all other (Serbian) Christian Orthodox churches in Kosovo-Metochia either as the Byzantine or even as the Albanian. In March 2004 the church was set on fire and seriously damaged by local (Muslim) Albanians. The church is proclaimed as the UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2006 (Source: author)

Nevertheless, there is nothing similar in the Albanian case in regards to Kosovo. For instance, there is no single Albanian church or monastery in this province from the medieval time or any important monument as the witness of the Albanian ethnic presence in the province before the time of the administration by the Ottoman Sultanate. Even the Muslim mosques from the Ottoman time (1455−1912) claimed by the Albanians to belong to the Albanian national heritage, were, in fact, built by the Ottoman authorities but not by ethnic Albanians. The Albanian national folk songs are not mentioning the medieval Kosovo that is one of the crucial evidence that they simply have nothing in common with the pre-Ottoman Kosovo. All Kosovo’s place-names (toponyms) are of the Slavic (the Serb) origin but not of the Albanian. The Albanians during the last 50 years are just renaming or adapting the original place-names according to their vocabulary what is making a wrong impression that the province is authentically the Albanian. We have not right to forget the very fact that the word Kosovo is of the Slavic (the Serb) origin meaning a kind of eagle (kos) while the same word means simply nothing in the Albanian language. Finally, in the Serbian tradition, Kosovo-Metochia was always a part of the “Old Serbia” while in the Albanian tradition Kosovo was never called as any kind of Albania.

The province became contested land between the Serbs and the Albanians when the later started to migrate from North Albania to Kosovo-Metochia after 1690 with getting a privileged status as the Muslims by the Ottoman authorities. A Muslim Albanian terror against the Christian Serbs at the Ottoman time resulted in the Albanisation of the province to such extent that the ethnic structure of Kosovo-Metochia became drastically changed in the 20^th century. A very high Muslim Albanian birthrate played an important role in the process of Kosovo’s Albanisation too. Therefore, after the WWII the ethnic breakdown of the Albanians in the province was around 67 percent. The new and primarily anti-Serb communist authorities of socialist Yugoslavia legally forbade to some 100.000 WWII Serb refugees from Kosovo-Metochia to return to their homes back after the collapse of the Greater Albania in 1945 of which Kosovo was an integral part. A Croat-Slovenian communist dictator of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito (1892−1980), granted to the province of Kosovo-Metochia a considerable political autonomous status in 1974 with a separate government, Provincial Assembly, president, Academy of Sciences, security forces, independent University of Prishtina and even military defense system for the fundamental political reason to prepare Kosovo’s independence after the death of his Titoslavia. Therefore, Kosovo-Metochia in socialist Yugoslavia was just formally part of Serbia as the province was from a political-administrative point of view an independent as all Yugoslav republics.

A fully Albanian-governed Kosovo from 1974 to 1989 resulted in both destruction of the Christian (the Serb) cultural monuments and continuation of mass expulsion of the ethnic Serbs and Montenegrins from the province to such extent that according to some estimations there were around 200.000 Serbs and Montenegrins expelled from the province after the WWII up to the abolition of political autonomy of the province (in fact, independence) by Serbia’s authority in 1989 with the legal and legitimate verification by the provincial assembly of Kosovo-Metochia and the reintegration of Kosovo-Metochia into Serbia. At the same time, there were around 300.000 Albanians who illegally came to live in Kosovo-Metochia from Albania after 1945. Consequently, according to the official census, in 1991 there was only 10 percent of the Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo-Metochia, 87 percent of the Albanians and 3 percent of others. In one word, during one century of time, the Serbian population of Kosovo-Metochia from 65−70 percent fell down to 10 percent (according to the first Ottoman census in 1455, there was only 2 percent of the Albanians in Kosovo-Metochia) [see more in Р. Самарџић et al, Косово и Метохија у српској историји, Београд: Друштво за чување споменика и неговање традиција ослободилачких ратова Србије до 1918. године у Београду−Српска књижевна задруга, 1989; Д. Т. Батаковић, Косово и Метохија: Историја и идеологија, Београд: Чигоја штампа, 2007].

Fighting Kosovo’s Albanian political terrorism and territorial secession

The revocation of Kosovo’s political autonomy in 1989 by Serbia’s central government in Belgrade was aimed primarily to stop further ethnic Albanian terror against the Serbs and Montenegrins and to prevent secession of the province from Serbia with the final aim to restore the WWII Greater Albania and legalize the Albanian ethnic cleansing of all non-Albanian population what practically happened in Kosovo after mid-June 1999 when the NATO’s troops occupied the province and brought to the power a classical terrorist political-military organization – Kosovo’s Liberation Army (the KLA). Nevertheless, the Western mainstream media, as well as academia, presented Serbia’s fighting Kosovo’s Albanian political terrorism and territorial secession after 1989 as Belgrade policy of discrimination against the Albanian population which became deprived of political and economic rights and opportunities [typical examples of such approach are, for instance, propaganda and shameful books based on the falsification of historical facts and a partisan interpretation of political events Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, New York: HarperPerennial, 1999; and Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Central and Southeast European Politics since 1989, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010]. The fact was that such “discrimination” was primarily a result of the Albanian policy of boycotting Serbia’s state institutions and even job opportunities offered to them in order to present their living conditions in Kosovo as the governmental-sponsored minority rights oppression.

The Serbian Orthodox Church Samodrezha (second half of the 14^th century) demolished by the (Muslim) Albanian mob in March 2004 (Source: author)

In the Western mainstream mass media and even in academic writings, Dr Ibrahim Rugova, a political leader of Kosovo’s Albanians in the 1990s, was described as a person who led a non-violent resistance movement against alleged Milošević’s policy of ethnic discrimination of Kosovo’s Albanians. I. Rugova was even called as a “Balkans Gandhi”. In the 1990s there were established in Kosovo-Metochia the Albanian parallel and illegal social, educational and political structures and institutions as a state within the state. The Albanians under the leadership of Rugova even three times proclaimed the independence of Kosovo. However, these proclamations of independence were at that time totally ignored by the West and the rest of the world. Therefore, Rugova-led Kosovo’s Albanian national-political movement failed to promote and advance Kosovo’s Albanian struggle for secession from Serbia and independence of the province with the final political task to incorporate it into a Greater Albania. I. Rugova himself, coming from the Muslim Albanian Kosovo’s clan that originally migrated to Kosovo from Albania, was active in political writings on the “Kosovo Question” as a way to present the Albanian viewpoint on the problem to the Western audience and, therefore, as a former French student, he published his crucial political writing in the French language in 1994.

One of the crucial questions in regard to the Kosovo problem in the 1990s is why the Western “democracies” did not recognize self-proclaimed Kosovo’s independence? The fact was that the “Kosovo Question” was absolutely ignored by the US-designed Dayton Accords of 1995 which were dealing only with the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina. A part of the answer is probably laying in the fact that Rugova-led Albanian secession movement was, in essence, illegal and even terrorist. It is known that Rugova himself was a sponsor of a terrorist party’s militia which was responsible for violent actions against Serbia’s authorities and non-Albanian ethnic groups in Kosovo. For instance, in July 1988, from the graves of the village of Grace’s graveyard (between Priština and Vučitrn) were excavated and taken to pieces the bodies of two Serbian babies of the Petrović’s family. Nevertheless, as a response to Rugova’s unsuccessful independence policy, it was established the notorious KLA which by 1997 openly advocated a full-scale of terror against everything that was the Serbian in Kosovo.

The KLA had two main open political aims:

• To get an independence for Kosovo from Serbia with a possibility to include the province into a Greater Albania.
• To ethnically clean the province from all non-Albanians especially from the Serbs and Montenegrins.

However, the hidden task of the KLA was to wage an Islamic Holy War (the Jihad) against the Christianity in Kosovo by committing the Islamic terror similarly to the case of the present-day Islamic State (the ISIS/ISIL) in the Middle East. Surely, the KLA was and is a part of the policy of radicalization of the Islam at the Balkans after 1991 following the pattern of the governmental (Islamic) Party of Democratic Action (Stranka demokratske akcije – the SDA) in Bosnia-Herzegovina presided by Alija Izetbegović who was a member of Islamic SS Handžar Division in the WWII and the author of a radical Islamic Declaration in 1970.

That the KLA was established as a terrorist organization is even confirmed by the Western scholars and the US administration too. About the focal point of Kosovo’s War in 1998−1999 we can read in the following sentence:

“Aware that it lacked popular support, and was weak compared to the Serbian authorities, the KLA deliberately provoked Serbian police and Interior Ministry attacks on Albanian civilians, with the aim of garnering international support, specifically military intervention” [T. B. Seybolt, Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Conditions for Success and Failure, Oxford−New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, 79].

Epilogue

It was true that the KLA realized very well that the more Albanian civilians were killed as a matter of the KLA’s “hit-and-run” guerrilla warfare strategy, the Western (the NATO’s) military intervention against the FRY was becoming a reality. In other words, the KLA with his commander-in-chief Hashim Thaci (today president of Kosovo and still on the Interpol list of the wanted criminals) were quite aware that any armed action against Serbia’s authorities and the Serbian civilians would bring retaliation against the Kosovo Albanian civilians as the KLA was using them in fact as a “human shield”. That was, in fact, the price which the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had to pay for their “independence” under the KLA’s governance after the war. That was the same strategy used by Croatia’s government and Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslim authorities in the process of divorce from Yugoslavia in the 1990s [see more in Jelena Guskova, Istorija jugoslovenske krize 1990−2000, 1−2, Beograd: ИГАМ, 2003].

However, as the violence in Kosovo escalated in 1998 the EU’s authorities and the US’s government began to support diplomatically the Albanian course – a policy which brought Serbia’s government and the leadership of the KLA to the ceasefire and withdrawal of certain Serbian police detachments and the Yugoslav military troops from Kosovo followed by the deployment of the “international” (the Western) monitors (the Kosovo Verification Mission, the KVM) under the formal authority of the OSCE. However, it was, in fact, informal deployment of the NATO’s troops in Kosovo. The KVM was authorized by the UN’s Security Council Resolution 1199 on September 23^rd, 1998. That was the beginning of a real territorial-administrative secession of Kosovo-Metochia from Serbia sponsored by the West for the only and very reason that Serbia did not want to join the NATO and to sell her economic infrastructure to the Western companies according to the “transition” pattern of the Central and South-East European countries after the Cold War. The punishment came in the face of the Western-sponsored KLA.

Today, the Western gangsters of NATO, the EU and the USA need from Serbia only a formal verification of the results of their dirty policy in Kosovo-Metochia – an official recognition of the “independence” of the Republic of Kosovo. Nevertheless, behind Kosovo’s secession from Serbia are both economic and geopolitical goals of primarily American Balkans policy. Firstly, the Americans build up in Kosovo one of their biggest military camps all over the world – Bondsteel. Secondly, the greatest part of Kosovo’s natural resources and economic infrastructure are under direct control and exploitation by the US companies including and a private company of General Wesley Clark – the NATO’s chief commander who bombed Serbia and Montenegro in 1999. Finally, why the West occupied Kosovo-Metochia in June 1999 and put it under direct their control one can understood from the very fact that this province has 45 percent of the lignite reserves in Europe [Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), Central and Southeast European Politics since 1989, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 359].

*

Dr. Vladislav B. Satirovic is Founder & Director of the Private Research Centre “The Global Politics” (www.global-politics.eu), Ovsishte, Serbia. Personal web platform: www.global-politics.eu/sotirovic. Contact: [email protected].

In the ravaged streets of Gaza and the shrinking hills of the West bank, Palestinians- in desperation- scream his name. On the walls of the twelve Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon his name is spray painted-in hope- beneath yellow flags baring the logo of Hamas. In prayer services across Palestine his name is invoked, begging for his return, the return of Palestine and… salvation from the increasing horrors of occupation.

This man, their champion- who fought for all Palestinians and won- to them, seems now their only hope. But he is missing in action. Barely three years ago, this man was the most dangerous man in Palestine. For he did for Palestine what no other has done. Where then, today, when needed most, is the “Lion of Palestine?” Where is… Mohammed Deif?

“Without an army for the people, there is nothing for the people.” -Mao Tse-tung (“On Guerrilla Warfare”)

During the 2014 invasion of Gaza by Israel – with massive US military support- and thus confronted with two of the most militaristic expansionist global powers, Gazans and a horrified world looked on in hand-wringing anguish. After watching for weeks as Israel destroyed civilian Palestinian property and innocent lives in the thousands, this same world breathed a long overdue sigh of relief when Hamas, as the only military on earth to defend Gaza, commanded these villains of inhumanity to their knees: the negotiating table in Cairo.

The iron-fisted leader of Hamas, Mohammed Deif, was then closer than ever before to a final victory of the autonomy for Gaza and a national victory for the nation of Palestine, and… for the civilized world.

But next, Israeli influence, Arab nations’ hypocrisy, Palestinian Authority (PA) treachery and US coercion f…ed the whole thing up!

Again, this week Israeli warplanes returned to indiscriminately targeting Gaza civilians. At the same time, Israeli soldiers switched from tear gas to live ammo to quell the spirits of Palestinians who do not accept the theft of their rightful capital, Jerusalem. Post-war funds for rebuilding Gaza have been diverted at Israeli request. Water supplies have been cut off repeatedly, as has electricity. Their land is seized regularly and replaced with more and more illegal settlements. All borders are closed. Medical supplies scarce. Disease routine. Poverty endemic. Apartheid rampant. Genocide obvious!

And the leaders of the world do nothing?!

So, where is this champion of Palestine? As his people chant, his name echoing off the remaining grey concrete walls left standing in a razed Gaza, there is a desperation in their cries. Will not someone help them? Will not someone protect them? Where is this military genius?  When needed most…where is  Mohammed Deif!

The Israeli controlled media, having few facts about Mohammed Deif, much less any willingness to expand on the reasons for Israeli’s 2014 direct military defeat, tries to vilify Mohammed Deif with vague general terms like “shadowy,” and “relatively unknown.” A myopic press misses the most important and accurate description of this life-long champion of the Palestinian people; “military scholar,” one whose definition translates as: student of guerrilla warfare- the tactics that once brought Israel to its knees.

Historically this effective military strategy has given freedom and nationalism to many oppressed peoples. Guerrilla warfare has built nations. What would today’s South Africa be without the armed resistance within the African National Congress (ANC)? Would Ireland have gained its autonomy from Britain without the Irish Republican Army (IRA)?

Would Israel be a nation?

With the skill of Mao ridding China of the Japanese from 1937-1945 or Che Guevara’s victorious popular uprisings in Cuba of 1954-59, Mohammed Deif had, in 2014, by similar necessity, made his mentors very proud indeed. Palestine has been under the barbaric oppression of Israeli hypocrisy, an oppression that long ago crossed the lines of inhumanity. Right through Gaza.

Hence, the historical need for Hamas.

Guerrilla warfare, however, is more than guns and bloodshed. Designed to terminally conquer oppression, victory requires a chess game that transcends mere military strategy into political cunning. Mohammed Deif, while presumably hiding in an unknown bunker deep under Gaza, can reflect on losing his wife and daughter to an Israeli tank shell with his name on it. He had once, as predicted by history and the practices of Mao and Guevara, turned the horror of a month-long legend of Israeli blood-lust in Gaza into what was, in the immediate aftermath of the war, a strong political negotiating position for all of Palestine.

But that was too long ago.

Proof of this once bitter-sweet victory was easily shown in the 2014 war’s ultimate cease fire; one  that was finally called for by Israel after the US vetoed two similar UNSC resolutions. This could be seen at that time on any TV appearance by Israeli Prime Minister, BiBi Netanyahu, when this seventy-two hour cease fire finally began. Due to unexpectedly large Israeli troop casualties and, like his nation, drawn, tired, and confused on the facts, BiBi and his arrogant sneer was conspicuously missing. His brash confidence was also missing, then relegated to the bottom of his own desk’s trash can along with the shreds of that week’s sudden and shocking Israeli press revelations:  1600 wounded Israeli soldiers to go with at least sixty-four dead.

Worse, for this man who personally began this month’s long barbarity, that morning’s Israeli public approval poll regarding his most recent series of war crimes had plummeted to 60%- not because of his resultant horrors, but because of his failing to meet Israeli expectations of finally completing their demand for genocide. Even BiBi’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning Washington puppet, then US president Obama, was also dangling wildly on his own puppet strings in the fierce wind of public worldwide outrage.

Oh, the “sorrows of empire!” What more can a war criminal do?

For Israel, these Hamas military and political victories at the time further emboldened worldwide opposition to Zionist expansion. Throughout Palestine and across the world, the consciousness of the world further wakened to the threat of Israel, with the horrific images of Gaza now firmly, and forever, in their mind. The BDS movement skyrocketed accordingly.

Mohammed Deif had shown national leadership in what seemed a  victory for Hamas and for Gaza. And for the nation of Palestine.

For that Mohammed Deif was- too long ago- the most dangerous man in Palestine.

“The guerrilla fighter is the Jesuit of warfare.” – Che Guevara (“Guerrilla Warfare”)

Two of the most successful and renowned revolutionaries of the 20th century also authored the two most read books about guerrilla warfare. In his 1937 manifesto, On Guerrilla Warfare, Mao observed that,

“without the support of the people, the guerrilla is a fish out of water, and it cannot survive.”

In agreement, Guevara states in, Guerrilla Warfare, that, the guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people and, “must have a moral conduct that shows him to be a true priest of the reform to which he aspires.”

Indeed.

Mohammed Deif was born in 1965 into the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza. Deif’s family was originally from the pre-1948 Palestinian village of Kochva near present-day Ashkelon which was razed to make way for Israel. Due to the wholesale eviction of Palestinians from Palestine to the many long-term refugee camps, Mohammed Deif was born into a prison.

He is the personification of Palestine.

As a teenager, he joined up with the Muslim Brotherhood and was active in student politics at Gaza’s Islamic University. At the outbreak of the first intifada, Deif joined the ranks of Hamas’ militia. He was arrested by Israel in May 1989, and sentenced to sixteen months in prison.

Released in 1991, Deif went straight to the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, where he met his mentor, Yahya “the engineer” Ayyash, who headed the brigades until his assassination in 1996. Known for his bomb-making skills, Ayyash taught these skills and the necessity of military tactics to Mohammed Deif while the later continued to rise in the command structure of Hamas.

According to Israel’s DebkaFiles.com, in 1994 the Hamas cells under his command kidnapped and killed three Israeli soldiers, Nachshon Wachsman, Aryeh Frankenthal and Shahar Simani.

When the Israelis assassinated Ayyash using an explosive mobile phone, Deif masterminded a series of lethal bomb attacks on Israeli civilians in February and March of 1996, in which fifty-eight Israelis were killed in one week.

Muhammad Deif then went underground. Photos of him since are extremely rare with none seen in the last decade.

Of course, the Israelis tried to kill him. They failed five times, increasing his legend, and earning the nickname, “the cat with nine lives.” The sixth time, they killed his wife and daughter.

On August 22, 2001, Deif and his deputy, Adnan al-Awal escaped a targeted assassination attempt. On September 26, 2002, an IDF Apache helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at Deif’s car as he returned home from a visit of condolence in the Sheikh Rawan district of Gaza. He survived.

The IDF tried again in August 2003, bombing the top floor of an apartment building where the Hamas military leadership, including al-Awal, Haniyeh, Deif and the movements spiritual leader Ahmad Yassin were meeting. The men were on the building’s bottom floor and escaped with light injuries.

The Israeli assassination attempts have reportedly left him in need of continued medical care. When he travelled, Mohammed Deif went with a heavy escort of two separate teams of security agents whom he personally selects and trusts. Apparently, he is also a master of disguise and has reportedly moved about Gaza on his own without detection. Since there are no recent pictures of him, this may work well for him and shows the kind of brass he brought to his leadership of Hamas.

Only two top Hamas figures know where he is and only one, former Gaza Prime Minister Haniyeh is thought to have been able to have direct contact with him. Though rarely seen, Deif controls Hamas’ political and military assets with a tight grip. The Hamas military council and general staff wait for his blessing before taking any measures. The same deference is shown by the Hamas external politburo chief Khaled Meshaal; Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh; and the chief of the al-Qassam Brigades, Marwan Issa.

The true power of Mohammed Deif within the internal political structure of Hamas was clearly shown in the highly secretive 2012-2013 elections for Hamas’ governing body, the Shura Council. Despite the attempt by Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal to secure seats for his own loyalists, Deif prevailed, gaining further support and new seats for his hand-picked supporters instead.

So, where is Mohammed Deif now?

“In order to get rid of the gun, it is necessary to take up the gun.” -Mao.

Guerrilla Warfare is a method of war that can be traced back as far as the 3rd century B.C. when Fabius Maximus successfully utilized this form of warfare against Hannibal’s much larger forces during the Second Punic War. Ever since then, the tactics of guerra de guerrillas, or Guerrilla Warfare, have been used, again and again, often proving victorious, throughout history.

Mao Tse-Tung’s use and theory of Guerrilla Warfare was used and adapted by Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap who led the victories over two great countries with nothing more than an ill-equipped insurgent army and the will to fight and resist. And tunnels. Miles and miles of tunnels. Why? For their country.

In Mexico, sub-commander, “Marcos,” led his Guerrillas out of the hills of Chiapas, in the 1994 “Zapatista uprising” to deliver blow after blow against an oppressive Mexican army. He too brought the oppressors to the negotiating table… and peace to Chiapas. For his people.

Reportedly Marcos carried with him at all times these two most important bibles of military craft that had already served history- and nations-so well.

Hamas was created in 1992 under the direction of Yahya Ayyash becoming the only Palestinian socio-political organization to offer the many missing social services needed by Gazans; while maintaining the dedication to regaining the nation of Palestine. A classified US Congressional report grudgingly admits that, “its [Hamas] social services wing have been very popular and important among Palestinians.”

The primary task of Hamas, beyond popular support, is to build a coherent military organization to support and enforce the political goals of Hamas in Palestine. Hamas military defence forces in Gaza are the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades named after an influential Sunni Islamic preacher in the times of the British Mandate of Palestine, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. In 1930 al-Qassam organized and established the Black Hand, an anti-Zionist and anti-British militant organization. Prior to his death in 1935, he had recruited, enlisted and provided military training to upwards of eight hundred men. The Black Hand was the precursor to Hamas.

Under the training and tactics chosen by Mohammed Deif, Hamas has become a formidable army in the mould of Hezbollah, which thrashed their own Israeli opposition into a cease-fire in Lebanon in 2006. Likewise, Hamas’ strength is in its ability to carry out quickly complex lethal mobile attacks.

As required by the texts of Mao and Guevara, the brigades can count on a huge pool of individuals seeking to join their ranks. Hamas reportedly receives some aid from Iran (10% of its budget by some estimates) but apparently derives most of its financing from Palestinian expatriates around the world, private sympathizers in Arab states, and legitimate businesses in Palestinian controlled areas. Foreign sympathizers supply the militants with weapons smuggled in using tunnels. Hamas engineers provide the fighters with effective homemade weapons such as the al-Bana, the Batar, the Yasin and the Qassam rocket.

In July 2006, the Al-Qassam Brigades staged the operation which led to the capture of Israeli soldier,Gilad Shalit. This turned out to be a perfectly executed plan by Hamas as the negotiations for Shalit’s safe release equalled the release of 1027 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

“War is the continuation of politics by other means.” -Carl von Clausewitz

Mao declares that Guerrilla war strategies are pursued, to achieve purely political goals. He continues to emphasize that, “the simple-minded militarists must be made to realize the relationship that exists between politics and military affairs.”

Indeed. Such as the fraudulent Cairo peace talks. Signalling defeat, militarily, Israel asked for an extension of the war’s initial seventy-two hour cease fire. Mohammed Deif’s military victory was the necessary precursor to the ultimate goal of political victory; freedom for Gaza. However, this short-term victory was turned into defeat by others who next turned victory into defeat…politically!

Hamas had inflicted severe damage to the overwhelming might of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and the Israeli economy. Then Israeli people were shocked to reality at the news of the 1600 plus severely injured IDF soldiers.(Reports indicate that the official Israeli death toll, which was stated to be sixty-four, was a low-ball fabrication). Hence, it was no wonder that IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz went so far as to declare, “now [the IDF] move into a period of rehabilitation.”

Israel’s war, Operation Protective Edge, in Gaza cost the Israeli economy some $1.44 billion, its central bank governor Karnit Flug said. His assessment was that it would reach up to around 0.5 percent of GDP, which is up to 5 billion shekels, he told Israel Channel Ten television at the time.

Worse, after all that, the IDF admitted, “Hamas is still standing and left with most of its military infrastructure unscathed, provides it [volunteers]with the core of a regular Palestinian army, which the Islamists did not have before the launch of Operation Defensive Edge on July 7.”

Predictably, the ranks of Hamas and the Al-Qassam Brigades are swelling.

Indeed. Your new-born child, or your mother, or your brother, or your sister, grandmother, brother, aunt, uncle, or just your entire family has been blown to bits by an unapologetic demon that celebrates, very publicly its genocide. What does a man do who has lost everything?

Reluctantly, faced with no remaining choice other than surrender and therefore nothing to lose, that man, he  picks up a gun.

Press TV, in interviews with Gazans during the weeks after the war, reported that despite the destruction of the Gaza Strip by Israeli horrors, Palestinians remain loyal to the resistance movement, and to Hamas.

The toll on Gazans shocked the consciousness of a world that has also witnessed too much of the Israeli regime’s war crimes, before and after. The total 2014 war carnage alone: over 2100 Palestinians dead, more than four-hundred-thirty of them children.

Hence, worldwide condemnation of Israel continues to grow.

The post-war, August 9, 2014, worldwide day of protest in favour of Gaza, Palestine, and a return to humanity saw millions join mass protests in cities in virtually every nation on earth. Outrage against Israel is global and growing with each new atrocity. The pictures don’t lie.

In London, Lindsey German, convenor of Stop the War Coalition, an umbrella group of NGOs, said: “The level of anger [against Israel]  is unprecedented.”

While it was trendy, former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said that the UK government should suspend its arms exports to Israel if the Tel Aviv regime resumes its military attacks on Gaza. Francoise Holland also temporarily broke ranks and called for a stop to the genocide. Bolivia’s president Evo Morales called Israel a “Terrorist State”. Then, every day more world leaders were forced by popular opinion to make statements condemning Israel despite their master’s hidden purse strings.

It did not take long for these same world leaders to return to ignoring the many new war crimes of Israel. Three long years later, all but Evo Morales have ceased any new words of protest. And Palestine is worse than ever before. And, thanks to America, without a capital… nor country!

Now that it factually appears that Israel completely controls US foreign policy as applied to Palestine, desperation of its people and its need for a new champion is understandable. Consider: US president Trump has functionally abandoned any potential two state solution- anathema to the Likudists who hold power- and has denoted Jerusalem as the capital of Israel while simultaneously cutting off US aid to Palestine and to the UN’s UNRWA while accusing the Palestinians of disrespect for not going to their slaughter willingly. His actions, of course, have further emboldened the Israelis who rang in the New Year, on Dec 31, 2017 by voting in the Likud Central Committee to seize the remainder of the west bank not already stolen, despite multiple UN resolutions, and then returning to shooting and jailing children as young as 13 years old who also peacefully demand freedom instead of life in this deteriorating national prison.

Reportedly, Mohammed Deif is now in failing health due to the summation of his many injuries. It is not likely that he is dead, however, since the Israeli press would certainly trumpet this news. Nor is it likely that his influence or his passion for his Palestinian homeland is ignored in the underground meetings about what to do. Al-Monitor news service reports that two familiar figures have taken over direct command of Hamas — Deif’s long-time deputy, Marwan Issa, and Gaza’s new Hamas political leader, Yahya Sinwar who was released as part of the 2011 prisoner swap. Given the new title, “liaison between the military and political wing,” the real meaning is that of the de facto head of the military wing. Deif still holds the title of commander in name, by virtue of his past glory so, if nothing else, he remains the soul of Palestinian resistance.

Without Hamas and the military tactics of Mohammed Deif, the political goals of Gaza autonomy would not have been able to stare the Israeli war criminals squarely right between the eyes at the negotiation table in post-war 2014. Yes, the Israelis and their worldwide minions have, for the moment, flipped over that table. However, history applied to systemic oppression and genocide has always had only one predictable result: An animal- even man- when beaten, cornered, and threatened with guaranteed death for him and his family, has only one possible and remaining reluctant choice…to fight!

Palestine no longer has any other choice. But, now that history and the facts that are Gaza and Palestine become again a hidden reality, where is that man, the man who almost gave his life for Palestine and its people six times. His body may be waning, but his soul remains in the minds of all of Palestine, it people, its soldiers, its refugees, its flagging politicians..and their dreams of eventual freedom. A collective freedom that now demands the question from its own soul…

Where… is  Mohammed Deif?

*

Brett Redmayne-Titley has published over 150 in-depth articles over the past seven years for news agencies worldwide. Many have been translated. On-scene reporting from important current events has been an emphasis that has led to multi-part exposes on such topics as the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, NATO summit, KXL Pipeline, Porter Ranch Methane blow-out and many more. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Prior articles can be viewed at his archive: www.watchingromeburn.uk

This article  by Professor James Tracy first published in August 2015 is of particular relevance in relation to the “fake news” campaign directed against the alternative and independent media.

In a bitter irony, the media coverup of  the CIA’s covert support to Al Qaeda and the ISIS is instrumented by the CIA which also oversees the mainstream media.

Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears and reads on a regular basis. CIA publicists and journalists alike will assert they have few, if any, relationships, yet the seldom acknowledged history of their intimate collaboration indicates a far different story–indeed, one that media historians are reluctant to examine.

When seriously practiced, the journalistic profession involves gathering information concerning individuals, locales, events, and issues. In theory such information informs people about their world, thereby strengthening “democracy.” This is exactly the reason why news organizations and individual journalists are tapped as assets by intelligence agencies and, as the experiences of German journalist Udo Ulfkotte (entry 47 below) suggest, this practice is at least as widespread today as it was at the height of the Cold War.

Consider the coverups of election fraud in 2000 and 2004, the events of September 11, 2001, the invasions Afghanistan and Iraq, the destabilization of Syria, and the creation of “ISIS.” These are among the most significant events in recent world history, and yet they are also those much of the American public is wholly ignorant of. In an era where information and communication technologies are ubiquitous, prompting many to harbor the illusion of being well-informed, one must ask why this condition persists.

Further, why do prominent US journalists routinely fail to question other deep events that shape America’s tragic history over the past half century, such as the political assassinations of the 1960s, or the central role played by the CIA major role in international drug trafficking?

Popular and academic commentators have suggested various reasons for the almost universal failure of mainstream journalism in these areas, including newsroom sociology, advertising pressure, monopoly ownership, news organizations’ heavy reliance on “official” sources, and journalists’ simple quest for career advancement. There is also, no doubt, the influence of professional public relations maneuvers. Yet such a broad conspiracy of silence suggests another province of deception examined far too infrequently—specifically the CIA and similar intelligence agencies’ continued involvement in the news media to mold thought and opinion in ways scarcely imagined by the lay public.

The following historical and contemporary facts–by no means exhaustive–provides a glimpse of how the power such entities possess to influence if not determine popular memory and what respectable institutions deem to be the historical record.

1. The CIA’s Operation MOCKINGBIRD is a long-recognised keystone among researchers pointing to the Agency’s clear interest in and relationship to major US news media. MOCKINGBIRD grew out of the CIA’s forerunner, the Office for Strategic Services (OSS, 1942-47), which during World War Two had established a network of journalists and psychological warfare experts operating primarily in the European theatre.
2. Many of the relationships forged under OSS auspices were carried over into the postwar era through a State Department-run organization called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) overseen by OSS staffer Frank Wisner.
3. The OPC “became the fastest-growing unit within the nascent CIA,” historian Lisa Pease observes, “rising in personnel from 302 in 1949 to 2,812 in 1952, along with 3,142 overseas contract personnel. In the same period, the budget rose from $4.7 million to $82 million.” Lisa Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” in James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, Port Townsend, WA, 2003, 300.
4. Like many career CIA officers, eventual CIA Director/Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms was recruited out of the press corps by his own supervisor at the United Press International’s Berlin Bureau to join in the OSS’s fledgling “black propaganda” program. “‘[Y]ou’re a natural,” Helms’ boss remarked. Richard Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency, New York: Random House, 2003, 30-31.
5. Wisner tapped Marshall Plan funds to pay for his division’s early exploits, money his branch referred to as “candy.” “We couldn’t spend it all,” CIA agent Gilbert Greenway recalls. “I remember once meeting with Wisner and the comptroller. My God, I said, how can we spend that? There were no limits, and nobody had to account for it. It was amazing.” Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, New York: The New Press, 2000, 105.
6. When the OPC was merged with the Office of Special Operations in 1948 to create the CIA, OPC’s media assets were likewise absorbed.
7. Wisner maintained the top secret “Propaganda Assets Inventory,” better known as “Wisner’s Wurlitzer”—a virtual rolodex of over 800 news and information entities prepared to play whatever tune Wisner chose. “The network included journalists, columnists, book publishers, editors, entire organizations such as Radio Free Europe, and stringers across multiple news organizations.” Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 300.
8. A few years after Wisner’s operation was up-and-running he “’owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS, and other communication vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a CIA analyst. Each one was a separate ‘operation,’” investigative journalist Deborah Davis notes, “requiring a code name, a field supervisor, and a field office, at an annual cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars—there has never been an accurate accounting.” Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post, Second Edition, Bethesda MD: National Press Inc, 1987, 139.
9. Psychological operations in the form of journalism were perceived as necessary to influence and direct mass opinion, as well as elite perspectives. “[T]he President of the United States, the Secretary of State, Congressmen and even the Director of the CIA himself will read, believe, and be impressed by a report from Cy Sulzberger, Arnaud de Borchgrave, or Stewart Alsop when they don’t even bother to read a CIA report on the same subject,” noted CIA agent Miles Copeland. Cited in Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 301.
10. By the mid-to-late 1950s, Darrell Garwood points out, the Agency sought to limit criticism directed against covert activity and bypass congressional oversight or potential judicial interference by “infiltrat[ing] the groves of academia, the missionary corps, the editorial boards of influential journal and book publishers, and any other quarters where public attitudes could be effectively influenced.” Darrell Garwood, Under Cover: Thirty-Five Years of CIA Deception, New York: Grove Press, 1985, 250.
11. The CIA frequently intercedes in editorial decision-making. For example, when the Agency proceeded to wage an overthrow of the Arbenz regime in Guatemala in 1954, Allen and John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and CIA Director respectively, called upon New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger to reassign reporter Sydney Gruson from Guatemala to Mexico City. Sulzberger thus placed Gruson in Mexico City with the rationale that some repercussions from the revolution might be felt in Mexico. Pease, “The Media and the Assassination,” 302.
12. Since the early 1950s the CIA “has secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals and newspapers—both English and foreign language—which provided excellent cover for CIA operatives,” Carl Bernstein reported in 1977. “One such publication was the Rome Daily American, forty percent of which was owned by the CIA until the 1970s.” Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media,” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977.
13. The CIA exercised informal liaisons with news media executives, in contrast to its relationships with salaried reporters and stringers, “who were much more subject to direction from the Agency” according to Bernstein. “A few executives—Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times among them—signed secrecy agreements. But such formal understandings were rare: relationships between Agency officials and media executives were usually social—’The P and Q Street axis in Georgetown,’ said one source. ‘You don’t tell William Paley to sign a piece of paper saying he won’t fink.’” Director of CBS William Paley’s personal “friendship with CIA Director Dulles is now known to have been one of the most influential and significant in the communications industry,” author Debora Davis explains. “He provided cover for CIA agents, supplied out-takes of news film, permitted the debriefing of reporters, and in many ways set the standard for the cooperation between the CIA and major broadcast companies which lasted until the mid-1970s.” Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post, Second Edition, Bethesda MD: National Press Inc, 1987, 175.
14. “The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials,” Bernstein points out in his key 1977 article. “From 1950 to 1966, about ten CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper’s late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy—set by Sulzberger—to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.” In addition, Sulzberger was a close friend of CIA Director Allen Dulles. “’At that level of contact it was the mighty talking to the mighty,’ said a high‑level CIA official who was present at some of the discussions. ‘There was an agreement in principle that, yes indeed, we would help each other. The question of cover came up on several occasions. It was agreed that the actual arrangements would be handled by subordinates…. The mighty didn’t want to know the specifics; they wanted plausible deniability.'” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
15. CBS’s Paley worked reciprocally with the CIA, allowing the Agency to utilize network resources and personnel. “It was a form of assistance that a number of wealthy persons are now generally known to have rendered the CIA through their private interests,” veteran broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr wrote in 1977. “It suggested to me, however, that a relationship of confidence and trust had existed between him and the agency.” Schorr points to “clues indicating that CBS had been infiltrated.” For example, “A news editor remembered the CIA officer who used to come to the radio control room in New York in the early morning, and, with the permission of persons unknown, listened to CBS correspondents around the world recording their ‘spots’ for the ‘World News Roundup’ and discussing events with the editor on duty. Sam Jaffe claimed that when he applied in 1955 for a job with CBS, a CIA officer told him that he would be hired–which he subsequently was. He was told that he would be sent to Moscow–which he subsequently was; he was assigned in 1960 to cover the trial of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. [Richard] Salant told me,” Schorr continues, “that when he first became president of CBS News in 1961, a CIA case officer called saying he wanted to continue the ‘long standing relationship known to Paley and [CBS president Frank] Stanton, but Salant was told by Stanton there was no obligation that he knew of” (276). Schorr, Daniel. Clearing the Air, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977, 277, 276.
16. National Enquirer publisher Gene Pope Jr. worked briefly on the CIA’s Italy desk in the early 1950s and maintained close ties with the Agency thereafter. Pope refrained from publishing dozens of stories with “details of CIA kidnappings and murders, enough stuff for a year’s worth of headlines” in order to “collect chits, IOUs,” Pope’s son writes. “He figured he’d never know when he might need them, and those IOUs would come in handy when he got to 20 million circulation. When that happened, he’d have the voice to be almost his own branch of government and would need the cover.” Paul David Pope, The Deeds of My Fathers: How My Grandfather and Father Built New York and Created the Tabloid World of Today, New York: Phillip Turner/Rowman & Littlefield, 2010, 309, 310.
17. One explosive story Pope’s National Enquirer‘s refrained from publishing in the late 1970s centered on excerpts from a long-sought after diary of President Kennedy’s lover, Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was murdered on October 12, 1964. “The reporters who wrote the story were even able to place James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s head of counterintelligence operations, at the scene.” Another potential story drew on “documents proving that [Howard] Hughes and the CIA had been connected for years and that the CIA was giving Hughes money to secretly fund, with campaign donations, twenty-seven congressmen and senators who sat on sub-committees critical to the agency. There are also fifty-three international companies named and sourced as CIA fronts .. and even a list of reporters for mainstream media organizations who were playing ball with the agency.” Pope, The Deeds of My Fathers, 309.
18. Angleton, who oversaw the Agency counterintelligence branch for 25 years, “ran a completely independent group entirely separate cadre of journalist‑operatives who performed sensitive and frequently dangerous assignments; little is known about this group for the simple reason that Angleton deliberately kept only the vaguest of files.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.” 
19. The CIA conducted a “formal training program” during the 1950s for the sole purpose of instructing its agents to function as newsmen. “Intelligence officers were ‘taught to make noises like reporters,’ explained a high CIA official, and were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. These were the guys who went through the ranks and were told ‘You’re going to he a journalist,’” the CIA official said.” The Agency’s preference, however, was to engage journalists who were already established in the industry. Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.” 
20. Newspaper columnists and broadcast journalists with household names have been known to maintain close ties with the Agency. “There are perhaps a dozen well known columnists and broadcast commentators whose relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources,” Bernstein maintains. “They are referred to at the Agency as ‘known assets’ and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.” 
21. Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, and Washington Post publisher Phillip Graham were close associates, and the Post developed into one of the most influential news organs in the United States due to its ties with the CIA. The Post managers’ “individual relations with intelligence had in fact been the reason the Post Company had grown as fast as it did after the war,” Davis (172) observes. “[T]heir secrets were its corporate secrets, beginning with MOCKINGBIRD. Phillip Graham’s commitment to intelligence had given his friends Frank Wisner an interest in helping to make the Washington Post the dominant news vehicle in Washington, which they had done by assisting with its two most crucial acquisitions, the Times-Herald and WTOP radio and television stations.” Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and the Washington Post, 172.
22. In the wake of World War One the Woodrow Wilson administration placed journalist and author Walter Lippmann in charge of recruiting agents for the Inquiry, a first-of-its-kind ultra-secret civilian intelligence organization whose role involved ascertaining information to prepare Wilson for the peace negotiations, as well as identify foreign natural resources for Wall Street speculators and oil companies. The activities of this organization served as a prototype for the function eventually performed by the CIA, namely “planning, collecting, digesting, and editing the raw data,” notes historian Servando Gonzalez. “This roughly corresponds to the CIA’s intelligence cycle: planning and direction, collection, processing, production and analysis, and dissemination.” Most Inquiry members would later become members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Lippmann would go on to become the Washington Post’s best known columnists. Servando Gonzalez, Psychological Warfare and the New World Order: The Secret War Against the American People, Oakland, CA: Spooks Books, 2010, 50.
23. The two most prominent US newsweeklies, Time and Newsweek, kept close ties with the CIA. “Agency files contain written agreements with former foreign correspondents and stringers for both the weekly newsmagazines,” according to Carl Bernstein. “Allen Dulles often interceded with his good friend, the late Henry Luce, founder of Time and Life magazines, who readily allowed certain members of his staff to work for the Agency and agreed to provide jobs and credentials for other CIA operatives who lacked journalistic experience.”  Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.” 
24. In his autobiography former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt quotes Bernstein’s “The CIA and the Media” article at length. “I know nothing to contradict this report,” Hunt declares, suggesting the investigative journalist of Watergate fame didn’t go far enough. “Bernstein further identified some of the country’s top media executives as being valuable assets to the agency … But the list of organizations that cooperated with the agency was a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ of the media industry, including ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, UPI, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, and others.” E. Howard Hunt, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond, Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007, 150.
25. When the first major exposé of the CIA emerged in 1964 with the publication of The Invisible Government by journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, the CIA considered purchasing the entire printing to keep the book from the public, yet in the end judged against it. “To an extent that is only beginning to be perceived, this shadow government is shaping the lives of 190,000,000 Americans” authors Wise and Ross write in the book’s preamble. “Major decisions involving peace and war are taking place out of public view. An informed citizen might come to suspect that the foreign policy of the United States often works publicly in one direction and secretly through the Invisible Government in just the opposite direction.”Lisa Pease, “When the CIA’s Empire Struck Back,” Consortiumnews.com, February 6, 2014.
26. Agency infiltration of the news media shaped public perception of deep events and undergirded the official explanations of such events. For example, the Warren Commission’s report on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was met with almost unanimous approval by US media outlets. “I have never seen an official report greeted with such universal praise as that accorded the Warren Commission’s findings when they were made public on September 24, 1964,” recalls investigative reporter Fred Cook. “All the major television networks devoted special programs and analyses to the report; the next day the newspapers ran long columns detailing its findings, accompanied by special news analyses and editorials. The verdict was unanimous. The report answered all questions, left no room for doubt. Lee Harvey Oswald, alone and unaided, had assassinated the president of the United States.” Fred J. Cook, Maverick: Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1984, 276.
27. In late 1966 the New York Times began an inquiry on the numerous questions surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination that were not satisfactorily dealt with by the Warren Commission. “It was never completed,” author Jerry Policoff observes, “nor would the New York Times ever again question the findings of the Warren Commission.” When the story was being developed the lead reporter at the Times‘ Houston bureau “said that he and others came up with ‘a lot of unanswered questions’ that the Times didn’t bother to pursue. ‘I’d be off on a good lead and then somebody’d call me off and send me out to California on another story or something. We never really detached anyone for this. We weren’t really serious.'” Jerry Policoff, “The Media and the Murder of John Kennedy,” in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch and Russell Stetler, eds., The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond, New York: Vintage, 1976, 265.
28. When New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison embarked on an investigation of the JFK assassination in 1966 centering on Lee Harvey Oswald’s presence in New Orleans in the months leading up to November, 22, 1963, “he was cross-whipped with two hurricane blasts, one from Washington and one from New York,” historian James DiEugenio explains. The first, of course, was from the government, specifically the Central Intelligence Agency, the FBI, and to a lesser extent, the White House. The blast from New York was from the major mainstream media e.g. Time-Life and NBC. Those two communication giants were instrumental in making Garrison into a lightening rod for ridicule and criticism. This orchestrated campaign … was successful in diverting attention from what Garrison was uncovering by creating controversy about the DA himself.”  DiEugenio, Preface, in William Davy, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation, Reston VA: Jordan Publishing, 1999.
29. The CIA and other US intelligence agencies used the news media to sabotage Garrison’s 1966-69 independent investigation of the Kennedy assassination. Garrison presided over the only law enforcement agency with subpoena power to seriously delve into the intricate details surrounding JFK’s murder. One of Garrison’s key witnesses, Gordon Novel, fled New Orleans to avoid testifying before the Grand Jury assembled by Garrison. According to DiEugenio, CIA Director Allen “Dulles and the Agency would begin to connect the fugitive from New Orleans with over a dozen CIA friendly journalists who—in a blatant attempt to destroy Garrison’s reputation—would proceed to write up the most outrageous stories imaginable about the DA.” James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and The Garrison Case, Second Edition, New York: SkyHorse Publishing, 2012, 235.
30. CIA officer Victor Marchetti recounted to author William Davy that in 1967 while attending staff meetings as an assistant to then-CIA Director Richard Helms, “Helms expressed great concerns over [former OSS officer, CIA operative and primary suspect in Jim Garrison’s investigation Clay] Shaw’s predicament, asking his staff, ‘Are we giving them all the help we can down there?'” William Davy, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation, Reston VA: Jordan Publishing, 1999.
31. The pejorative dimensions of the term “conspiracy theory” were introduced into the Western lexicon by CIA “media assets,” as evidenced in the design laid out by Document 1035-960 Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report, an Agency communiqué issued in early 1967 to Agency bureaus throughout the world at a time when attorney Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment was atop bestseller lists and New Orleans DA Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination began to gain traction.
32. Time had close relations with the CIA stemming from the friendship of the magazine’s publisher Henry Luce and Eisenhower CIA chief Allen Dulles. When former newsman Richard Helms was appointed DCI in 1966 he “began to cultivate the press,” prompting journalists toward conclusions that placed the Agency in a positive light. As Time Washington correspondent Hugh Sidney recollects, “‘[w]ith [John] McCone and [Richard] Helms, we had a set-up when the magazine was doing something on the CIA, we went to them and put it before them … We were never misled.’ Similarly, when Newsweek decided in the fall of 1971 to do a cover story on Richard Helms and ‘The New Espionage,’ the magazine, according to a Newsweek staffer, went directly to the agency for much of the information. And the article … generally reflected the line that Helms was trying so hard to sell: that since the latter 1960s … the focus of attention and prestige within CIA’ had switched from the Clandestine Services to the analysis of intelligence, and that ‘the vast majority of recruits are bound for’ the Intelligence Directorate.” Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974, 362-363.
33. In 1970 Jim Garrison wrote and published the semi-autobiographical A Heritage of Stone, a work that examines how the New Orleans DA “discovered that the CIA operated within the borders of the United States, and how it took the CIA six months to reply to the Warren Commission’s question of whether Oswald and [Jack] Ruby had been with the Agency,” Garrison biographer and Temple University humanities professor Joan Mellen observes. “In response to A Heritage of Stone, the CIA rounded up its media assets” and the book was panned by reviewers writing for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun Times, and Life magazine. “John Leonard’s New York Times review went through a metamorphosis,” Mellen explains. “The original last paragraph challenged the Warren Report: ‘Something stinks about this whole affair,’ Leonard wrote. ‘Why were Kennedy’s neck organs not examined at Bethesda for evidence of a frontal shot? Why was his body whisked away to Washington before the legally required Texas inquest? Why?’ This paragraph evaporated in later editions of the Times. A third of a column gone, the review then ended: ‘Frankly I prefer to believe that the Warren Commission did a poor job, rather than a dishonest one. I like to think that Garrison invents monsters to explain incompetence.'” Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History, Washington DC: Potomac Books, 2005, 323, 324.
34. CIA Deputy Director for Plans Cord Meyer Jr. appealed to Harper & Row president emeritus Cass Canfield Sr. over the book publisher’s pending release of Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, based on the author’s fieldwork and Yale PhD dissertation wherein he examined the CIA’s explicit role in the opium trade. “Claiming my book was a threat to national security,” McCoy recalls, “the CIA official had asked Harper & Row to suppress it. To his credit, Mr. Canfield had refused. But he had agreed to review the manuscript prior to publication.” Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Chicago Review Press, 2003, xx.
35. Publication of The Secret Team, a book by US Air Force Colonel and Pentagon-CIA liaison L. Fletcher Prouty recounting the author’s firsthand knowledge of CIA black operations and espionage, was met with a wide scale censorship campaign in 1972. “The campaign to kill the book was nationwide and world-wide,” Prouty notes. “It was removed from the Library of Congress and from college libraries as letters I received attested all too frequently … I was a writer whose book had been cancelled by a major publisher [Prentice Hall] and a major paperback publisher [Ballantine Books] under the persuasive hand of the CIA.” L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, New York: SkyHorse Publishing, 2008, xii, xv.
36. During the Pike Committee hearings in 1975 Congressman Otis Pike asked DCI William Colby, “Do you have any people paid by the CIA who are working for television networks?” Colby responded, “This, I think, gets into the kind of details, Mr. Chairman, that I’d like to get into in executive session.” Once the chamber was cleared Colby admitted that in 1975 specifically “the CIA was using ‘media cover’ for eleven agents, many fewer than in the heyday of the cloak-and-pencil operations, but no amount of questioning would persuade him to talk about the publishers and network chieftains who had cooperated at the top.” Schorr, Clearing the Air, 275.
37. “There is quite an incredible spread of relationships,” former CIA intelligence officer William Bader informed a US Senate Intelligence Committee investigating the CIA’s infiltration of the nation’s journalistic outlets. “You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people at the management level.” Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media.”
38. In 1985 film historian and professor Joseph McBride came across a November 29, 1963 memorandum from J. Edgar Hoover, titled, “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” wherein the FBI director stated that his agency provided two individuals with briefings, one of whom was “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.” ” When McBride queried the CIA with the memo a “PR man was tersely formal and opaque: ‘I can neither confirm nor deny.’ It was the standard response the agency gave when it dealt with its sources and methods,” journalist Russ Baker notes. When McBride published a story in The Nation, “The Man Who Wasn’t There, ‘George Bush,’ C.I.A. Operative,” the CIA came forward with a statement that the George Bush referenced in the FBI record “apparently” referenced a George William Bush, who filled a perfunctory night shift position at CIA headquarters that “would have been the appropriate place to receive such a report.” McBride tracked down George William Bush to confirm he was only employed briefly as a “probationary civil servant” who had “never received interagency briefings.” Shortly thereafter The Nation ran a second story by McBride wherein “the author provided evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency had foisted a lie on the American people … As with McBride’s previous story, this disclosure was greeted with the equivalent of a collective media yawn.” Since the episode researchers have found documents linking George H. W. Bush to the CIA as early as 1953. Russ Baker, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009, 7-12.
39. Operation Gladio, the well-documented collaboration between Western spy agencies, including the CIA, and NATO involving coordinated terrorist shootings and bombings of civilian targets throughout Europe from the late 1960s through the 1980s, has been effectively expunged from major mainstream news outlets. A LexisNexis Academic search conducted in 2012 for “Operation Gladio” retrieved 31 articles in English language news media—most appearing in British newspapers. Only four articles discussing Gladio ever appeared in US publications—three in the New York Times and one brief mention in the Tampa Bay Times. With the exception of a 2009 BBC documentary, no network or cable news broadcast has ever referenced the state-sponsored terror operation. Almost all of the articles referencing Gladio appeared in 1990 when Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti publicly admitted Italy’s participation in the process. The New York Times downplayed any US involvement, misleadingly designating Gladio “an Italian creation” in a story buried on page A16. In reality, former CIA director William Colby revealed in his memoirs that covert paramilitaries were a significant agency undertaking set up after World War II, including “the smallest possible coterie of the most reliable people, in Washington [and] NATO.” James F. Tracy, “False Flag Terror and Conspiracies of Silence,” Global Research, August 10, 2012.
40. Days before the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City DCI William Colby confided to his friend, Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp his personal concerns over the Militia and Patriot movement within the United States, then surging in popularity due to the use of the alternative media of that era–books, periodicals, cassette tapes, and radio broadcasts. “I watched as the Anti-War movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War,” Colby remarked. “I tell you, dear friend, that the Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for American than the Anti-War movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this.” David Hoffman, The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, Venice CA: Feral House, 1998, 367.
41. Shortly after the appearance of journalist Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News chronicling the Agency’s involvement in drug trafficking, the CIA’s public affairs division embarked on a campaign to counter what it termed “a genuine public relations crisis for the Agency.” Webb was merely reporting to a large audience what had already been well documented by scholars such as Alfred McCoy and Peter Dale Scott, and the 1989 Kerry Committee Report on Iran-Contra—that the CIA had long been involved in the illegal transnational drug trade. Such findings were upheld in 1999 in a study by the CIA inspector general. Nevertheless, beginning shortly after Webb’s series ran, “CIA media spokesmen would remind reporters seeking comment that this series represented no real news,” a CIA internal organ noted, “in that similar charges were made in the 1980s and were investigated by the Congress and were found to be without substance. Reporters were encouraged to read the “Dark Alliance’ series closely and with a critical eye to what allegations could actually be backed with evidence.” http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0001372115.pdf
42. On December 10, 2004 investigative journalist Gary Webb died of two .38 caliber gunshot wounds to the head. The coroner ruled the death a suicide. “Gary Webb was MURDERED,” concluded FBI senior special agent Ted Gunderson in 2005. “He (Webb) resisted the first shot [to the head that exited via jaw] so he was shot again with the second shot going into the head [brain].” Gunderson regards the theory that Webb could have managed to shoot himself twice as “impossible!” Charlene Fassa, “Gary Webb: More Pieces in the Suicided Puzzle,” Rense.com, December 11, 2005.
43. The most revered journalists who receive “exclusive” information and access to the corridors of power are typically the most subservient to officialdom and often have intelligence ties. Those granted such access understand that they must likewise uphold government-sanctioned narratives. For example, the New York Times’ Tom Wicker reported on November 22, 1963 that President John F. Kennedy “was hit by a bullet in the throat, just below the Adam’s apple.” Yet his account went to press before the official story of a single assassin shooting from the rear became established. Wicker was chastised through “lost access, complaints to editors and publishers, social penalties, leaks to competitors, a variety of responses no one wants.” Barrie Zwicker, Towers of Deception: The Media Coverup of 9/11, Gabrioloa Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2006, 169-170.
44. The CIA actively promotes a desirable public image of its history and function by advising the production of Hollywood vehicles, such as Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. The Agency retains “entertainment industry liaison officers” on its staff that “plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment,” Tom Hayden explains in the LA Review of Books. “So natural has the CIA–entertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIA’s hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold.” Tom Hayden, “Review of The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television by Tricia Jenkins,” LA Review of Books, February 24, 2013,
45. Former CIA case officer Robert David Steele states that CIA manipulation of news media is “worse” in the 2010s than in the late 1970s when Bernstein wrote “The CIA and the Media.” “The sad thing is that the CIA is very able to manipulate [the media] and it has financial arrangements with media, with Congress, with all others. But the other half of that coin is that the media is lazy.” James Tracy interview with Robert David Steele, August 2, 2014,
46. A well-known fact is that broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper interned for the CIA while attending Yale as an undergraduate in the late 1980s. According to Wikipedia Cooper’s great uncle, William Henry Vanderbilt III, was an Executive Officer of the Special Operations Branch of the OSS under the spy organization’s founder William “Wild Bill” Donovan. While Wikipedia is an often dubious source, Vanderbilt’s OSS involvement would be in keeping with the OSS/CIA reputation of taking on highly affluent personnel for overseas derring-do. William Henry Vanderbilt III, Wikipedia.
47. Veteran German journalist Udo Ulfkotte, author of the 2014 book Gekaufte Journalisten (Bought Journalists) revealed how under the threat of job termination he was routinely compelled to publish articles written by intelligence agents using his byline. “I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service,” Ulfkotte explained in a recent interview with Russia Today. “German Journo: European Media Writing Pro-US Stories Under CIA Pressure,” RT, October 18, 2014.
48. In 1999 the CIA established In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm seeking to “identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests.” The firm has exercised financial relationships with internet platforms Americans use on a routine basis, including Google and Facebook. “If you want to keep up with Silicon Valley, you need to become part of Silicon Valley,” says Jim Rickards, an adviser to the U.S. intelligence community familiar with In-Q-Tel’s activities. “The best way to do that is have a budget because when you have a checkbook, everyone comes to you.” At one point IQT “catered largely to the needs of the CIA.” Today, however, “the firm supports many of the 17 agencies within the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.” Matt Egan, “In-Q-Tel: A Glimpse Inside the CIA’s Venture Capital Arm,” FoxBusiness.com, June 14, 2013.
49. At a 2012 conference held by In-Q-Tel CIA Director David Patraeus declared that the rapidly-developing “internet of things” and “smart home” will provide the CIA with the ability to spy on any US citizen should they become a “person of interest’ to the spy community,” Wired magazine reports. “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,’ Patraeus enthused, ‘particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft’ … ‘Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters — all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing,” Patraeus said, “the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.” Spencer Ackerman, “CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher,” Wired, March 15, 2012.
50. In the summer of 2014 a $600 million computing cloud developed by Amazon Web Services for the CIA began servicing all 17 federal agencies comprising the intelligence community. “If the technology plays out as officials envision,” The Atlantic reports, “it will usher in a new era of cooperation and coordination, allowing agencies to share information and services much more easily and avoid the kind of intelligence gaps that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” “The Details About the CIA’s Deal With Amazon,” The Atlantic, July 17, 2014.

Featured image: Defense Secretary James N. Mattis announces the new National Defense Strategy at the Hopkins University, Jan. 19, 2018 (Source: author)

The US’ National Defense Strategy focuses on Great Power competition.

The unclassified summary of the recently released document outlines three prevailing strategic approaches that the Pentagon aims to follow in the coming years, which are to reinforce and expand its alliance system while optimizing military lethality and back-end departmental operations such as logistics and expenditures. The clichéd saying of building a “lean, mean, killing machine” is very apt in this context, but while that’s technically the mission of all militaries, the American one is reconceptualizing its purpose in line with the Neo-Realist paradigm of International Relations and sees its core objective as maintaining a balance of power that can indefinitely sustain its post-Cold War global model.

The US-led world order that America created and ultimately led after 1991 is weakening, and the decentralization trend of multipolarity is chipping away at the centralization status quo of unipolarity. American decision makers believe that their Russian and Chinese rivals who are leading this process have mastered the liberal “rules of the game” and are now adept enough at using international institutions and multilateral trade arrangements to their advantage, thus necessitating the US to reprioritize the Neo-Realist paradigm of power and national interests in response. Washington has always been engaged in Machiavellian machinations of divide and rule, but this time it understands that its chances of success are slim if it’s forced to go head-to-head against the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership without any support.

The Libyan War-era policy of “Lead From Behind” has returned to relevancy in response because the US is compelled under these circumstances to rely more on its regional partners who have – or are led to believe that they have – a shared stake in the outcome of the New Cold War. Concurrent with this, however, the Trump Administration seeks to prioritize across-the-board burden-sharing, especially in the operational and financial realms, equalizing the US’ relationship with its allies and forcing them to fairly contribute in all ways if they expect to reap any “rewards” from future joint ventures. In exchange for deepening their full-spectrum military integration with the US, America’s partners can enjoy the economic fruits of the Washington Consensus, though provided that they’re able to successfully preserve it in the face of the Chinese-led Silk World Order and don’t come to believe that Beijing could offer them a better deal.

The transition from unipolarity to multipolarity is clearly being preceded by a period of global chaos made all the more acute by Trump’s “Kraken”-like propensity to shake up the state of international affairs with the intent of creating more strategic opportunities for the US at the expense of its system-challenging Russian and Chinese rivals. Seeing as how the Neo-Realist model is now driving America’s military strategy, it naturally follows that its attendant focus on geopolitics will also be observed by the US as well, thereby explaining why the phrase “Indo-Pacific” is repeated almost a dozen times in the 14-page summarized document. The US obviously wants to use India and a constellation of other allies in this transoceanic space to “contain China” following the same model that it’s been practicing for decades against Russia with NATO, and the end result will likely be that the Pentagon’s “lean, mean, killing machine” engages in more “Lead From Behind” Hybrid Wars against both of their regional interests in the coming years.

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.

On 27 November Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, already at odds with the unelected bureaucrats of the European Union over his insistence on the right to decide whether Brussels or national elected governments shall be allowed to become citizens in Europe’s ongoing refugee crisis, waved another red flag, this potentially a future game-changer for the EU as it exists today. Orban hosted the 6th annual meeting of the China- Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) “16+1” summit in Budapest with China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang. The event got barely a mention in western mainstream media despite the fact that it may have set the seeds for a divide within the EU within the coming months between a French-German-dominated federal EU run by Brussels and a more free, nation-based EU on the model of Hungary, Austria, Poland, the Czech republic and other east members of the EU.

In his opening keynote speech, Hungary’s Viktor Orban noted that Europe’s most competitive investment environment has come into being in Central and Eastern Europe. Noting that not too long ago Asia depended on the west for investment in modernization, that today, “the star of the East is now in the ascendant”, and we live in an era marked by the rise of Asia – and within it China. “We are at the beginning of a period in which the further development of Europe will be dependent on the technological and financial involvement of the East.”

Orban stressed the summit was not against the EU. He stressed that the “16+1” format not only serves the best interests of China and the sixteen Central and Eastern European countries, but also the whole of Europe and the European Union. He then announced Hungary would begin public procurement tender for upgrading the Budapest–Belgrade railway line – including funding from China.The cost of the project is 2.4billion Euros, with 85% to be provided by Export-Import Bank of China. The project is the first European project involving an EU member, Hungary, a non-EU member Serbia and China. It will create a major modern freight route to Western Europe through Central Europe. Strangely enough this is not being greeted with joy in Brussels, rather the opposite.

The China-CEEC or 16+1 annual summit was launched in 2012 before formal inauguration of the Belt, Road Initiative by China in late 2013. Until this year it had little to present in terms of results. It served as a vehicle for China and the countries of Central and East Europe, the newest EU member states as well as applicant non-members to exchange information but little concrete. The BRI developments over the past year are beginning to radically change that.

Prime Minister Li Keqiang and Prime Minister Viktor Orban

In his speech to the summit Prime Minister Li Keqiang proposed more rail lines be launched by China Railway Express and more direct flights between China and Europe. He declared that China would like to set up a logistic center in the CEE region, likely in Hungary, a main China investment focus to date. He also announced the establishment of China-CEEC Inter-Bank Association and the second phase of China-CEEC Investment Cooperation Fund. The China Development Bank will provide funds equivalent to 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) through development-oriented loans to the China-CEEC Inter-Bank Association, which was officially established at the summit, Li said. And he announced that the second phase of the China-Central and Eastern Europe Investment Cooperation Fund, totaling $1 billion, will be mainly spent in the 16 European countries. Li noted the strong growth of agriculture imports from the region to China, rising by 14% this year. Then he called for a feasibility study on extending to Austria a railway line linking the Greek port of Piraeus with Budapest.

Since 2012 China investment in the 16 countries rose by 300% from $3 billion to over 9 billion US dollars.

One-on-one economic diplomacy

The focus on the countries of Eastern and Central Europe by Beijing is a result of the ice-cold response to date of the EU in Brussels and especially by the German and French governments. For them China’s Belt, Road Initiative, sometimes called the New Silk Road, is a threat to their domination of the EU. The recent railroad by the decision of the German Agriculture Minister, to grant a new 5-year approval for the toxic glyphosate against the wishes of the majority of EU states is but an example of the heavy-handed Brussels methods, becoming more rigid as the resistance against heavy-handed Brussels refugee policies and countless other issues grows.

The 16 countries in the China-CEC group after the latest meeting all have formally signed on to participate in the China BRI on a one-be-one basis. The countries include Poland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia, Albania and Bulgaria.

Greece, not formally a member of the 16+1 is already a major infrastructure focus of Chinese state investment in the EU. While Brussels and especially Germany offer Greece only more savage austerity demands since the Greek crisis in 2010, China offers investment. China has invested more than $500 million in the privatized Greek Port of Piraeus using the state shipping group, COSCO, turning it into the busiest Mediterranean port today. China has been operator of the Piraeus Port since 2008 and this April bought 67% ownership for $8 billion to the Greek government including the $500 million for modernization. The China Piraeus Port will serve as the gateway for Chinese seaborne freight into the EU, China’s largest trade partner. Now with the agreement by Hungary to complete the Belgrade-Budapest rail linkthe trade flows could become major for both China and EU countries of the CEE.

Greece took part in the founding meeting in May, 2017 of the Belt, Road Initiative and signed major economic agreements with Beijing.

EU Begins Counter-offensive

Rather that greet the Chinese investment in the ailing economies of Eastern and Central Europe, the Brussels EU Commission, dominated by Germany, is preparing to pass strict new investment rules. In September EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, one who owes his job to Germany’s Angela Merkel, announced a proposal for a new EU rule to centrally control foreign investments into EU member states, another attempt to rob what little remains of member national sovereignty over their national economic development. The Juncker proposal, titled “Investment Screening”, if passed by member states, would require special scrutiny and approval from Brussels when a foreign state-owned enterprise wants to invest in EU ports, energy infrastructure or defense industries. Germany, France and Italy immediately praised the Juncker proposal. Here we see the fault lines that will only become more obvious as EU economic strains grow in coming months.

Austria could play a determining role in such a shift. In October the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) won a victory making Sebastian Kurz prospective Chancellor in a coalition with the euro-skeptic anti-refugee Freedom Party (FPÖ). Hungary’s Orban has welcomed Kurzas a “close ally.” For the Austrian economy, to orient towards the neighboring countries of Eastern Europe, especially Hungary now that the two are closer on resisting forced refugee policies and other heavy-handed moves of Brussels, could initiate a major tectonic shift in the political weight inside the EU.

For Austria the cooperation with China’s Belt, Road Initiative makes huge sense.  For Austria, engagement with China and the BRI is clear given the country’s strong economic relations with Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. The countries of CEEC have major infrastructure deficits and Austrian industry could play a constructive partner role to the Chinese investment, what the Chinese like to call win-win. Clearly the present direction of the German-French-domination of the EU cannot continue as it has. The fault lines are too great.

The Danish Saxo Bank head of macro-analysis, Christopher Dembikin a recent assessment of these growing fault lines predicts “The divide between old core EU members and the more sceptical and newer members of the bloc will widen to an impassable chasm in 2018 and will shift the center of gravity from the Franco-German axis to Visegrad-and-friends (Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia-w.e.).”

Dembik suggests that the French Macron “EU reform” plans to integrate further and create a joint treasury and a common defense budget, more top-down rule, will push the countries of the CEEC, and likely Austria and also Italy to create a new blocking minority coalition of 13 EU countries to form a blocking minority at the European Council within the EU states that will push the EU to abandon the disruptive German refugee policies and austerity in favor of economic stimulus. That indeed would be a refreshing change for millions of Europeans. An outrageous prediction?Perhaps not so unlikely at present.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from the author.

In a speech at Stanford this month, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared that America intends to keep military troops in Syria indefinitely, in pursuit of the US’s “key end states for Syria,” including “post-Assad leadership,” the marginalization of Iran and the elimination of “weapons of mass destruction” that the US claims Syria has.

Occupying a country without the permission of the host government, as America is doing in Syria, contravenes international law. Nor does the US have a legal right to pursue regime change in Syria. Yet multiple media outlets have praised Tillerson’s remarks.

Newsweek (1/19/18) ran an article from the Atlantic Council’s Frederic Hof that called Tillerson’s speech “a major improvement in the American approach to the crisis in Syria.” The piece concluded that “what Mr. Tillerson has articulated is more than good enough as a starting point for a policy reflecting American values and upholding American interests.”

Washington Post (1/22/18): Tillerson will break with Obama’s Syria policies by maintaining the occupation of Syria started by Obama.

The Washington Post editorial board (1/22/18) also endorsed American violation of international law, writing that

Tillerson bluntly recognized a truth that both President Trump and President Barack Obama attempted to dodge: that “it is crucial to our national defense to maintain a military and diplomatic presence in Syria, to help bring an end to that conflict, and assist the Syrian people . . . to achieve a new political future.”

The same paper’s Jennifer Rubin (1/23/18) wrote:

Belatedly, Tillerson has recognized (as critics of both Trump and President Barack Obama have long argued) that we do have a national interest in Syria, cannot tolerate the indefinite presence of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and need to recognize that if we mean to check Iranian aggression, we will need to maintain a presence in Syria.

In Rubin’s conception, Iran’s presence in Syria—at the request of the recognized government—is “aggression,” whereas America’s is apparently legitimate.

The Atlantic (1/18/18) published a piece by Kori Schake, a self-identified supporter of “regime change [and] long-term military commitments.” Schake called Tillerson’s speech

both sensible and fanciful. It was sensible in that it gave a history of Syria’s grisly war, stated clearly America’s interest in continued involvement even as ISIS is defeated, and outlined policies consistent with those interests. It was fanciful in that the policies outlined would require a much greater measure of American involvement than has been in evidence by this administration—or were committed in yesterday’s speech—to succeed.

For Schake, the problem isn’t that the goal of America’s Syria policy is to illegally occupy a country and overthrow its government, while ratcheting up already dangerously high levels of hostility towards Iran and Russia. It’s that that the Trump administration isn’t doing enough to achieve this.

Meanwhile, accounts of Tillerson’s speech on CNN (1/18/18) and Buzzfeed (1/18/18) opt not to make any reference to the absence of a legal basis for what he describes. One of the few allusions of any kind to international law was a throwaway line in an AP report (1/24/18): “The Islamic State’s retreat also has forced the US to stretch thinner its legal rationale for operating in Syria.” What that rationale might consist of was not explained.

The Best Way to End War Is More War

Tillerson is proposing a prolongation and escalation of the war in Syria. The Syrian government will not passively allow itself to be removed by the US military, and neither will Syria’s allies from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. So in practice, Tillerson’s policy means a wider, more dangerous conflict.

Yet the Newsweek piece (1/19/18) accepts that the plan is aimed at creating “conditions suitable for the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their homes”—the opposite of what war produces.

Not only are media outlets failing to address the violence implicit in Tillerson’s policy, they are claiming the opposite and treating it as a plan for peace in Syria. These articles do not explain how a US-led regime change war will achieve that, instead of the years of war and slave markets such policies brought to Libya, or the half million to a million civilians killed in Iraq.

These publications take for granted that the US has a right to decide who governs Syria. For example, an Atlantic article by Paul McLeary (1/18/18) characterizes the US plan to maintain an occupying force in Syria and compel the ouster of its government as “nation-building,” though “nation-destroying” is probably more apt.

For The Atlantic (1/18/18), attempting to divide a nation is called “nation building.”

The Washington Post (1/22/18), similarly, echoes Tillerson’s claim that if the US were to “abandon” Syria, it would be “repeat[ing] the mistake the United States made in Iraq,” when “a premature departure . . . allowed Al Qaeda in Iraq to survive and eventually morph into ISIS.” The Post missed the possibility that the US’s “mistake” in Iraq was invading in the first place, one consequence of which was the birth of both Al Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS.

The paper also claims:

Critics predictably charge that Mr. Trump is launching another “endless war” in Syria. In fact, the administration has simply recognized reality: The United States cannot prevent a resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, prevent Iran from building bases across Syria, or end a civil war that has sent millions of refugees toward Europe without maintaining control over forces and territory inside the country.

The editors go on to write that the Trump administration “has rightly absorbed the lesson that [America’s] way out [of Syria] starts with a serious and sustainable US commitment.”

In other words, the best way for the US to get out of Syria is to stay in Syria, and the best way to end the war in Syria is more war in Syria.

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

All images in this article are from the author.

A few years ago in Wisconsin and in two major cities in California, voters (made up mostly of working folks) chose to restrict the benefit packages and wage increases for public service AKA government employees. Some say that since most of the workers in these places, and throughout America, are employed by the private sector, the attitude became one of resentment. The private sector and non union (in most cases) workers were fed up of seeing their public sector counterparts getting better benefit packages and wage increases. I call it Innerclass warfare. Sad, isn’t it, when the less than 1% of our nation can create such divisions within the labor force. Yet, that was only part of the problem that this voting revealed. In Wisconsin the voters chose to side with a right wing governor who was candid about his goal to eliminate collective bargaining within the public service sector. This device cuts the legs off of the union movement… first with government workers and then copied by the  private sector .

Why has all this been happening? Well, the answer is so obvious, yet our mainstream media and even many  union leaders refuse to recognize it. Former president Eisenhower labeled it the Military Industrial Complex, and it has all but bankrupted our economy. Within 13 years our military spending has just about doubled! In 2011, under Mr. Hope and Change, taxpayers were charged 56 cents of every dollar we sent to Uncle Sam for military spending. Never before in the history of our nation has it ever approached such an amount. We have close to one thousand permanent military bases in over 80 different countries. We illegally invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan, to the tune of over 100 billion tax dollars a year. It costs us 1.2 million dollars to keep one soldier in Afghanistan for a year. That would pay the salaries of 30 teachers, police officers or firemen at $ 40k a year each. Where is the outrage?

Historically, our Congress was able to send money to the states for their budgets and their cities’ budget problems. This was called Revenue Sharing. The money was sent to the states in the form of block grants, meaning it did not have to be paid back. Pretty good, right? Well, that all ended with our devotion to invading countries and occupying them. That all ended with the fear button being pushed down the throats of the public… as we now have with this ISIL, who, by the way, are made up of many who were left homeless or devastated by the Bush gang’s illegal and shameful attacks on their native lands. Both the Republican and the Democratic parties have enabled the Pentagon and the Military Industrial Complex to get more and more of our hard earned tax dollars. Under the Democrat President Obama military spending  soared to over 600 billion dollars, and that did not include what many site as the black budget, or money funneled into military programs which have no congressional oversight. It does not matter who occupies the White House, they all dance to the Pentagon piper. The Congress and the Presidency has for the most part been owned not only by Wall Street, but by this War Empire. The phony demagogue who promised to ‘Drain the swamp’ is filling it with more money for the military… as our cities and towns go down the rabbit hole!

If only the hard working American labor force would take a moment to ponder. If the CEOs of our Fortune 100 companies are earning in excess of 400 times that of their lowest paid full time employee… shouldn’t we have a society whereupon ALL working stiffs have good benefit packages and wage increases? Let’s extend that conversation and say that shouldn’t ALL Americans have the same medical and dental coverage that those CEOS have? I could go on and on but let us leave it at that. If you work for a living ANYWHERE you should be allied with ALL your fellow working stiffs for fair wages and benefits. Isn’t it time for what the Wobblies envisioned over 100 years ago: One big union? The bottom line is this: If we cut the military spending by 25% and sent the savings back to the states etc, there would be NO budget crisis in any state or city!!! Period!! And for all my right wing neighbors who bitch and moan about high property taxes, well, if more Revenue Sharing came back to our cities perhaps then the property taxes needn’t be so high. Stop supporting political parties and candidates who oppose such an idea.

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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] )

Featured image is from The Greanville Post.

On January 23rd, Joe Biden virtually threw his hat into the 2020 U.S. Presidential contest, by producing for the neoconservative-neoliberal Council on Foreign Relations, a speech, and an accompanying article in their influential journal Foreign Affairs, titled, “How to Stand Up to the Kremlin: Defending Democracy Against Its Enemies”. He made clear that no one in American politics is going to stand to Biden’s right on international affairs and the military, when (or “if,” if one still doubts that) he will enter the 2020 U.S. Presidential contest formally. He’s already making the matter clear right now. He says in their journal:

“Given Russia’s aggression in Georgia and Ukraine, NATO must continue to forward-deploy troops and military capabilities to eastern Europe to deter and, if necessary, defeat a Russian attack against one of the alliance’s member states. But the threat of unconventional and nonmilitary coercion now looms larger than ever. More than a decade has passed since Estonia became the first NATO country to see its government institutions and media organizations attacked by hackers based in Russia. In the intervening period, the risk of a far more debilitating attack has increased, but planning for how to defend against it has lagged. One step NATO members can take would be to broaden the responsibility for such planning beyond their militaries and defense ministries. The EU and the private sector need to be part of such efforts, so that Russian strikes on infrastructure can be isolated and backup systems can be put in place.”

He writes and speaks as if Russia and its allies were surrounding NATO, instead of America and its allies surrounding Russia — as if the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact had continued beyond 1991, and America and its NATO alliance had broken up and ended in 1991. Of course, that’s the exact opposite of the reality.

Joe Biden

If Russia were massing its troops and weaponry on America’s borders, Americans would have good reason to hate Russians, but instead America and its allies are massing weapons and troops on Russia’s borders, and they not only aren’t apologizing for it, but they even have the gall to call Russia the aggressor. The U.S. would be terrified if Russia did to America what America is doing to Russia. Biden’s article says, “The United States and its allies must improve their ability to deter Russian military aggression.” What?

America’s not already military enough? (True, “Americans Support Military-Industrial Complex Above All Else”; and, “The military” is, itself, respected by Americans above any other institution — including, the government, the press, or any church, or anything else —but hasn’t this militarism on the part of the American people now gotten out of hand? Certainly, the world seems to think so.)

The U.S. spends at least a trillion dollars annually on ‘defense’; and, even if one strips out of that, like SIPRI does in their calculations (which are designed to low-ball America’s military expenditures), the Department of Homeland Security, and the Energy Department (whose spending is 65% for military — nuclear weapons etc.), and NASA, CIA, etc., it’s still — just for the ‘Defense’ Department — $611 billion according to SIPRI, and America’s allies add to that (and SIPRI doesn’t low-ball them), Saudi Arabia’s $64 billion, and France’s $56 billion, and UK’s $48 billion, and Japan’s $46 billion, and Germany’s $41 billion, and South Korea’s $37 billion, and (here going beyond the world’s ten largest) Italy’s $28B, Australia’s $24B, UAE’s $23B, Israel’s $18B, and Canada’s $15B — then the total would still be $1,011 billion, over a trillion dollars, using SIPRI’s numbers, and this would be competing up against China’s $216 billion, and Russia’s $69 billion (both of which also are not low-balled), or $285 billion total, versus the U.S. group’s $1,011 billion (using SIPRI’s low-balled $611B figure for the U.S.). So, the U.S. alone spends already around ten times what Russia alone spends on its military, and the real figure for the U.S. — especially if its allies are included — is far higher, but Joe Biden and the other salespeople for Lockheed Martin etc., say, “The United States and its allies must improve their ability to deter Russian military aggression.” 

That’s why, this year, U.S. federal spending is rising 8% for the military, and going down sharply for everything else (since destroying Russia takes precedence, as displayed in these figures), as follows:

TRUMP 2018 Budget:

-31% EPA

-29% State Dept. 

-21% Ag. Dept.

-21% Labor

-18% HHS

-16% Commerce

-14% Education

-13% HUD

-13% Transportation

-12% Interior

-6% Energy

-5% SBA

-4% Treasury

-4% Justice

-1% NASA

+6% Veterans Affairs

+7% Homeland Security

+9% Defense

TOTAL: $3.76T

Biden wants to top that? Apparently.

Biden describes Russia as “corrupt” 16 times, as using “aggression” 2 times, as “kleptocratic” 2 times, as “weak” 1 time, and as having the goal “to weaken and divide Western democracies internally” 1 time. He says, “Russia’s leaders have built a Potemkin democracy in which democratic form masks authoritarian content.” But he wants the public to believe that he’s no kleptocrat himself. Maybe he wants the public to believe that only his son is, who got a sweetheart Ukrainian board-membership as soon as Obama’s 2014 coup in Ukraine installed fascist Ukrainian leaders who promptly appointed, to be a powerful local governor, a certain billionaire who had hired Biden’s son Hunter Biden not only as a board member to his gas company but with shares that were thought to be potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Biden (the father) says that 

“After the Cold War, Western democracy became the model of choice for postcommunist countries in central and eastern Europe. Guided by the enlightened hands of NATO and the EU, many of those countries boldly embarked on the transition from dictatorship to democracy.” 

NATO and those other ‘enlightened hands’ also helped Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and so many other countries that they invaded (or else overthrew by coup), and now the EU is getting the spin-off ‘benefit’ of millions of refugees from American (and U.S.-financed, such as in Ukraine) bombing, who help to create lots of competition in the European labor-markets, especially in low-end jobs where the native workers who don’t have the connections that upper-class ones do and which connections enabled upper-class workers to obtain their upper-class jobs, will now have harder times than ever to find work, because these native workers will now be competing against all those newcomers, who don’t even speak the local language, much less have such local connections, and so will will be even more desperate (and thus accept even lower wages and worse working-conditions) than those struggling natives, whose conditions will become even worse than before. 

America drops the bombs (good, American-made bombs, of course, paid for with generous American taxpayers’ dollars — not with American kleptocrats’ profits), and Europe gets the far end of the human debris, with all these newcomers who arrive in Europe penniless because America (sometimes with help from other ‘democratic’ countries) has destroyed their homes, and killed so many of their relatives, and made these millions of people so desperate, that they’ll take any job they can get, after their social-services from European governments run out, which are paid for by European taxpayers, including those low-wage European natives, who are already suffering. 

Of course, Hunter Biden knows the benefits that well-connected people such as he have, and so maybe he’ll be able to be commissioned to advise European governments on how to teach those ‘skills’, to the millions of destitute immigrants that Europe now has. 

Even the neoconservative-neoliberal The Atlantic magazine expressed concern about Hunter’s new-found board seat, when it noted, on 7 June 2014, that,

“Beltway ethicists seem to be mixed about whether this arrangement is kosher or not. What is clear is that relatives of high-level American political figures have benefited from their ties for generations now. It’s practically a tradition at this point.” 

But wasn’t it supposed to be only Russia that’s a ‘kleptocracy’? Should one kleptocracy criticize another (if that’s what Russia is — but I’m an American, and I know that this country is)? 

Joe Biden’s Foreign Affairs article says, 

“By attacking the West, the Kremlin shifts attention away from corruption and economic malaise at home, activates nationalist passions to stifle internal dissent, and keeps Western democracies on the defensive and preoccupied with internal divisions.” 

He asserts that

 “To safeguard its kleptocratic system, the Kremlin has decided to take the fight beyond Russia’s borders to attack what it perceives as the greatest external threat to its survival: Western democracy.”

Biden is militant about protecting such ‘Western democracy.’ He writes:

“To fight back, the United States must lead its democratic allies and partners in increasing their resilience, expanding their capabilities to defend against Russian subversion, and rooting out the Kremlin’s networks of malign influence. The United States has the capacity to counter this assault and emerge stronger, provided that Washington demonstrates the political will to confront the threat. However, since the Trump administration has shown that it does not take the Russian threat seriously, the responsibility for protecting Western democracy will rest more than ever on Congress, the private sector, civil society, and ordinary Americans.”

He continues:

“In contrast to the Soviet Union, however, contemporary Russia offers no clear ideological alternative to Western democracy. Russia’s leaders invoke nationalist, populist, and statist slogans or themes, but the Kremlin’s propaganda machine shies away from directly challenging the core precepts of Western democracy: competitive elections, accountability for those in power, constitutionally guaranteed rights, and the rule of law. Instead, the Kremlin carefully cultivates a democratic façade, paying lip service to those principles even as it subverts them.”

When the Obama Administration brought their ‘Western democracy: competitive elections, accountability for those in power, constitutionally guaranteed rights, and the rule of law’ to Ukraine, which already had a democratically elected President whom Obama then ousted and whom Obama had actually been preparing ever since 2011 to overthrow, all that Ukrainians got, from America’s coup, was soaring misery, and also a civil war in which the far-eastern region (Donbass), which had voted over 90% for the ousted President and refused to accept the U.S.-installed junta, were subjected to a bombing campaign by the U.S.-installed Government in order to eliminate those voters from the rolls so as to be able to stay in power beyond the first post-coup election. 

Joe Biden is a great champion of American ‘democracy’, and he wants to help the entire world, like he and his boss had helped Ukraine.  

In his article’s close, he says:

“What if these recommendations are ignored? The White House seems unlikely to act. Too many times, President Donald Trump has equivocated on whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election, even after he received briefings from top intelligence officials on precisely how Moscow did it. After meeting privately with Putin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam last November, Trump told reporters that Putin “said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.” Pressed about whether he accepted Putin’s denials, Trump replied: “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.” Trump has made a habit of lavishing praise on Putin and even reportedly sought to lift sanctions against Russia shortly after his inauguration. We are not questioning Trump’s motives, but his behavior forces us to question his judgment. 

If this administration cannot or will not stand up to Russia, other democratic institutions, including Congress and civil society organizations, must mobilize. A starting point would be the creation of an independent, nonpartisan commission to examine Russia’s assault on American democracy, establish a common understanding of the scope and complexity of the Russian threat, and identify the tools required to combat it. The 9/11 Commission allowed the United States to come to terms with and address the vulnerabilities that made al Qaeda’s attacks possible. Today, Americans need a thorough, detailed inquest into how Russia’s strike on their democratic institutions was carried out and how another one might be prevented.

In the absence of an independent commission with a broad mandate, the United States will be left with only the relatively narrow investigations led by the special counsel Robert Mueller, the congressional intelligence committees, and the Senate Judiciary Committee. The good news is that Congress has already demonstrated its clear understanding of the Russian threat: in an overwhelmingly bipartisan manner, it passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act by a margin of 419 to 3 in the House of Representatives and by 98 to 2 in the Senate.”

Biden has there laid down the gauntlet against the few Democrats in the U.S. Government who were opposed to that bill, including the 3 in the House and 2 in the Senate. (So, it passed 98-2 in the Senate, and 419-3 in the House). One of the few “Nay” votes on it happened to be by America’s most high-favorability-rated politician, Senator Bernie Sanders, from whom the Democratic Party’s 2016 Presidential nomination was stolen — and quite clearly stolen — by the Democratic National Committee, even though Sanders always performed vastly better than Hillary Clinton did in polled matchups against Trump or any other Republican. The dozens of billionaires who control the national Democratic Party thus were far more concerned to avoid having a Democratic President whom they might not be able to control, than they were to avoid having a Republican President (whom Republican billionaires always control) — for billionaires, class means even more than Party does. Democratic Party billionaires overwhelmingly prefer a Republican over any honest Democrat. Recent U.S. history shows it. That’s why Sanders could rely only upon a “movement,” not really upon either existing Party.

However, even Sanders said (perhaps sincerely) that the reason why he had voted against the bill was that it also includes sanctions against Iran, and would therefore ease the way for Trump to renege on the deal that Obama had reached with Iran to suspend Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of U.S. sanctions. Sanders tweeted:

“I am strongly supportive of sanctions on Russia and North Korea. However, I worry very much about President Trump’s approach to Iran. Following Trump’s comments that he won’t re-certify Iran’s compliance with the nuclear agreement I worry new sanctions could endanger it.” 

So, the high likelihood is that whomever the next U.S. President will be, will be continuing the lie that the overthrow of Yanukovych in Ukraine was a ‘revolution’ instead of a U.S. coup; and, so, the economic sanctions against Russia, and the massing of NATO troops and weapons on and near Russia’s borders — both of which are ‘justified’ by the 20 February 2014 Ukrainian overthrow’s having been a ‘democratic revolution’ instead of “a U.S. coup” — will almost certainly continue, until a hot war against Russia results. The domestic U.S. political divisions exclude any division over the allegations that have been and are leading (since February 2014) to World War III — the U.S. political system is virtually unanimously in favor of those clearly false allegations.

Consequently, within the Democratic Party, the ‘war’, if any, is between the vicious lie, which is blatantly psychopathic, versus the incomprehensible lie, which might simply be shockingly misinformed. But it’s the same lie, in either case. The Democratic Party is virtually united, on that lie. (And, of course, the Republican Party, likewise, is virtually united the same, regarding this same lie.)

America and its allies have been nonstop in a Cold War, supposedly against communism, but which after the end of communism in 1991 has become revealed actually to have been against Russia, even without its communism; and now it’s heading toward a hot war, because of all those ‘historical’ lies, which still are not being faced and ’fessed-to, they’ve simply accumulated as fake ‘history’, and could soon reach critical mass. For example, perhaps the most-highly-honored U.S. ‘journalist’ and ‘historian’ on national-security issues, is Thomas E. Ricks, of the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Policy, and other ‘non-partisan’ but actually neoconservative newsmedia; and he’s best known for his book and articles and interviews obsessing that the 2003 invasion of Iraq (to oust the Moscow-friendly Saddam Hussein) was a “Fiasco” because it was done incompetently — not because it was based upon lies, which Ricks and all other prominent ‘journalists’ failed to call to the public’s attention before the invasion on the basis of lies; and so they’re partly responsible for that invasion on the basis of lies — which they hid at the time and some of which lies they still haven’t reported; they still hide. Ricks has even carried his neoconservatism to such a point as to praise in one article General James Mattis, General H.R. McMaster, and Eliot Cohen — three of Washington’s top neoconservatives — and to criticize the neoconservative but more cautiously so, President Barack Obama, for having fired Mattis in 2013. America honors liars and hiders of lies. And what’s at issue now is the mega-lie, which still is being hidden from the American public.

The conclusion seems inescapable, therefore, that unless and until the mega-lie, that the overthrow of Yanukovych was a ‘revolution’ instead of a “coup,” becomes publicy acknowledged by the U.S. Government to be a lie, the march toward World War III will continue forward, on a straight line to nuclear oblivion, because the mega-lie is the foundation for ‘the restoration of the Cold War’, and the only way to stop this ‘restoration’ from metasticizing into the hot war that will end everybody, is to end the mega-lie upon which it’s based, and to do it soon enough. 

The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was clearly based upon lies, but this war won’t be like getting rid of Saddam Hussein was in 2003. It will be unimaginably worse than that horror. And the only way to end the marching toward that great cliff, is to end the mega-lie, upon which it’s based. The U.S. regime must “fess-up,” and apologize to Russia (and to the American people, and to the entire world), for this enormously dangerous fraud.

Biden is heading in exactly the opposite direction — he wants to capitalize on the fraud.

*

This article was originally published by Strategic Culture Foundation.

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

Power is integral to politics but the obsession with the perpetuation and pursuit of power in Malaysia in the last couple of years has gone beyond reasonable boundaries.

On one side you have a person who is hell-bent on remaining in power in spite of the massive ethical questions surrounding his direct and indirect involvement in a state-owned strategic investment company that was mired in money-laundering, fraudulence and manipulation on a gigantic scale through individuals and entities associated with it. Some of these individuals and entities are being investigated in other countries. A few of them have been convicted in court and imprisoned. And yet in Malaysia there has been no concrete action against the alleged culprits though the Public Accounts Committee of the Malaysian Parliament had proposed in April 2016 that one of the former senior officials of the investment company in question be investigated thoroughly and held answerable. The unwillingness to act against blatant wrongdoing has tarnished the reputation of the person at the apex of the nation. He is obviously not prepared to acknowledge that there is an albatross around his neck.

At the other end of the ring we have a person who is determined to oust the person at the apex of the nation. He is willing to forge marriages of convenience with his former foes in order to achieve this objective — even if it means repudiating his own words and deeds from yesteryear. In the process, he has revealed that it is the attainment of power regardless of the means employed that matters most to him.

The Machiavellian politics of the two principal protagonists has had an adverse impact upon Malaysian public life as a whole. The supporters of each protagonist present their adversary in the vilest terms conceivable. For those opposed to the person at the apex, he has done nothing good though in reality the thrust he has given to the coordinated delivery of public services through Urban Transformation Centres (UTCs), public housing, public transportation and the digital economy has benefitted segments of society. Likewise, opponents of the man trying to oust the person at the apex have deliberately ignored his considerable achievements when he was at the pinnacle for 22 years that would include transforming a commodity based economy to a middle-level manufacturing nation and have instead chosen to focus only on his shortcomings and failures. This skewed approach has also begun to influence perspectives on the economy and ethnic relations.

Some of the opponents of the person at the apex keep repeating that Malaysia is on the verge of bankruptcy — a wild allegation that runs contrary to current evidence such as our strong foreign reserves position. Similarly, opponents of his adversary never tire of highlighting alleged abuses of power in Penang and Selangor, states under PakatanHarapan,  when the  truth is ordinary people have benefitted from some of their welfare-oriented programmes. For PakatanHarapan, UMNO dominates the ruling BarisanNasional and its other component parties have no say at all in decision-making  but this is not quite accurate as demonstrated by the role that a Sarawak BN party played in shaping the coalition’s stand on RUU 355. By the same token, it is wrong of UMNO to argue that the DAP is the dominant force in the Pakatan which given historic, demographic and electoral realities make no sense at all.

If misrepresentations and distortions have become more pervasive in Malaysian politics as a result of the tussle for power of the two antagonists it is partly because the media have performed a negative role. Segments of the established media have been unrelenting in their often vicious attacks upon the opponent of the person at the apex. The decorum and courtesy due to an elder who all said and done had served the nation have been thrown to the winds. Sections of the new media blindly opposed to the person at the apex are equally guilty of coarse, crude criticisms of the man and his family which only reflect their own lack of etiquette.

A more responsible and balanced approach on the part of both the established and new media regardless of who they support or oppose would contribute towards a change in the atmosphere. A changed atmosphere is a prerequisite for the interrogation of power itself which must happen if the nation as a whole is to become less obsessed with power for its own sake. The two coalitions, BN and PK, and any other party that is entering the electoral fray, are even more crucial in bringing about a change in the attitude towards power. The electoral actors themselves, more than anyone else, should realise that an obsession with power could lead to their own destruction because it will only intensify internal friction and factionalism. To put it differently, politics should never be separated from principles, however difficult it may be in certain circumstances. This is where civil society has a vital role to play. If more and more civil society groups demand that politicians adhere to certain principles in politics and refuse to endorse them in an unquestioning  manner especially when they violate the most fundamental norms of decency in public conduct, it is not inconceivable that they will be forced to change.

*

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Yayasan.

Power is integral to politics but the obsession with the perpetuation and pursuit of power in Malaysia in the last couple of years has gone beyond reasonable boundaries.

On one side you have a person who is hell-bent on remaining in power in spite of the massive ethical questions surrounding his direct and indirect involvement in a state-owned strategic investment company that was mired in money-laundering, fraudulence and manipulation on a gigantic scale through individuals and entities associated with it. Some of these individuals and entities are being investigated in other countries. A few of them have been convicted in court and imprisoned. And yet in Malaysia there has been no concrete action against the alleged culprits though the Public Accounts Committee of the Malaysian Parliament had proposed in April 2016 that one of the former senior officials of the investment company in question be investigated thoroughly and held answerable. The unwillingness to act against blatant wrongdoing has tarnished the reputation of the person at the apex of the nation. He is obviously not prepared to acknowledge that there is an albatross around his neck.

At the other end of the ring we have a person who is determined to oust the person at the apex of the nation. He is willing to forge marriages of convenience with his former foes in order to achieve this objective — even if it means repudiating his own words and deeds from yesteryear. In the process, he has revealed that it is the attainment of power regardless of the means employed that matters most to him.

The Machiavellian politics of the two principal protagonists has had an adverse impact upon Malaysian public life as a whole. The supporters of each protagonist present their adversary in the vilest terms conceivable. For those opposed to the person at the apex, he has done nothing good though in reality the thrust he has given to the coordinated delivery of public services through Urban Transformation Centres (UTCs), public housing, public transportation and the digital economy has benefitted segments of society. Likewise, opponents of the man trying to oust the person at the apex have deliberately ignored his considerable achievements when he was at the pinnacle for 22 years that would include transforming a commodity based economy to a middle-level manufacturing nation and have instead chosen to focus only on his shortcomings and failures. This skewed approach has also begun to influence perspectives on the economy and ethnic relations.

Some of the opponents of the person at the apex keep repeating that Malaysia is on the verge of bankruptcy — a wild allegation that runs contrary to current evidence such as our strong foreign reserves position. Similarly, opponents of his adversary never tire of highlighting alleged abuses of power in Penang and Selangor, states under PakatanHarapan,  when the  truth is ordinary people have benefitted from some of their welfare-oriented programmes. For PakatanHarapan, UMNO dominates the ruling BarisanNasional and its other component parties have no say at all in decision-making  but this is not quite accurate as demonstrated by the role that a Sarawak BN party played in shaping the coalition’s stand on RUU 355. By the same token, it is wrong of UMNO to argue that the DAP is the dominant force in the Pakatan which given historic, demographic and electoral realities make no sense at all.

If misrepresentations and distortions have become more pervasive in Malaysian politics as a result of the tussle for power of the two antagonists it is partly because the media have performed a negative role. Segments of the established media have been unrelenting in their often vicious attacks upon the opponent of the person at the apex. The decorum and courtesy due to an elder who all said and done had served the nation have been thrown to the winds. Sections of the new media blindly opposed to the person at the apex are equally guilty of coarse, crude criticisms of the man and his family which only reflect their own lack of etiquette.

A more responsible and balanced approach on the part of both the established and new media regardless of who they support or oppose would contribute towards a change in the atmosphere. A changed atmosphere is a prerequisite for the interrogation of power itself which must happen if the nation as a whole is to become less obsessed with power for its own sake. The two coalitions, BN and PK, and any other party that is entering the electoral fray, are even more crucial in bringing about a change in the attitude towards power. The electoral actors themselves, more than anyone else, should realise that an obsession with power could lead to their own destruction because it will only intensify internal friction and factionalism. To put it differently, politics should never be separated from principles, however difficult it may be in certain circumstances. This is where civil society has a vital role to play. If more and more civil society groups demand that politicians adhere to certain principles in politics and refuse to endorse them in an unquestioning  manner especially when they violate the most fundamental norms of decency in public conduct, it is not inconceivable that they will be forced to change.

*

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the chairman of the Board of Trustees of Yayasan.

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Below is a selection of articles that expose the current crisis encompassing Afghanistan and the Middle East. Take the liberty to share it far and wide.

*     *     *

Afghanistan: Kabul Deadly Terrorist Attacks. US Embassy Had Foreknowledge

By Masud Wadan, January 29, 2018

The Intercontinental hotel in the heart of Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul was stormed by militants last Friday, with the intent to kill and shed blood, to portray an Afghanistan which is still at war. In the grisly attack, many private sector and government officials were burned to ashes and declared “missing” inside the building after the hired terrorists did their utmost to vandalize and maximize the death toll. Who are the sponsors of these atrocities?

Hotel Intercontinental Siege – Is Kabul Falling?

By Andre Vltchek, January 29, 2018

All that is still functioning in the country are structures and infrastructure built before and during the Soviet era, like irrigation ducts, canals and bread factories. Other tangible assistance came recently from China and India, but almost nothing was provided by the NATO occupation countries, except countless fences, wires and military installations.

Shifting Geopolitical Realities in Afghanistan. Threat to US Hegemony?

By Fraidoon Amel, January 28, 2018

Violent geopolitical rivalries between imperialist and hegemonist powers over Afghanistan’s natural resources, trade and transit routes, and geostrategic location have dramatically intensified.

How Regional Rivalries Threaten to Fuel the Fire in Syria and Iran

By James M. Dorsey, January 29, 2018

Turkish allegations of Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian support for the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) threaten to turn Turkey’s military offensive against Syrian Kurds aligned with the PKK into a regional imbroglio.

The Syrian Kurds Think They Can Play Damascus Like a Fiddle

By Andrew Korybko, January 27, 2018

The Syrian Kurds are exploiting Damascus’ strong sense of patriotism in order to provoke it into the dilemma of either entering into a confrontation with Ankara or risk falling victim to slanderous accusations that it “sold them out” to the Turks, with this entire manipulation being carried out with the grand strategic intent of prompting Moscow to diplomatically intervene in safeguarding the PYD’s desired “decentralization” dreams in the region and inadvertently furthering the American-Israeli vision for a Kurdish corridor to the sea.

Violent geopolitical rivalries between imperialist and hegemonist powers over Afghanistan’s natural resources, trade and transit routes, and geostrategic location have dramatically intensified. Despite sixteen years of heavy-handed US presence to establish its hegemony in Afghanistan and beyond, influence of regional powers like Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and India is growing.      

The Perpetual War

Sixteen years into the longest war in its history, the US is aggressively flexing its muscles to assert and maintain its hegemony in Afghanistan and the region. This new development, however, does not stem from Donald Trump’s so-called Afghan strategy. The aggressive posture on the part of the US is partially a reaction to its humiliating defeat in Syria – and one should add Iraq – at the hands of Russia and Iran (with China in the background). Trump’s strategy generated some hysteria among the chattering class as being qualitatively distinct from its predecessors in that it commits the US to an open-ended war.

The fact of the matter is that ever since its official launch on October 7, 2001, the US war in Afghanistan has been an open-ended war. Its endgame depends on US’s hegemonist goals in the region. In other words, the US is pursuing a strategy of perpetual war in Afghanistan irrespective of which president holds office.

Under the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), the US maintains nine military bases at strategic locations across Afghanistan including those bordering Iran, Pakistan and Central Asian Republics. The Afghan airspace is controlled by the US for all practical and strategic purposes. The latter, thus, enjoys a unique geopolitical lead to project power beyond Afghanistan. The infrastructure allows the US to deploy up to 100,000 troops in two to four weeks.

In the grand geopolitical chessboard of Afghanistan, the US is left with the military option only which it pursues, at this stage, through a combination of terrorist proxies, drone attacks and Special Forces operations. It has locked itself in at a geopolitical space surrounded by hostile regional powers like Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan.

More recently, by elevating IS presence in Afghanistan and its level of threat to US enemies such as Russia, China, and Iran, the US is elevating the justification for its own military options intended to go beyond Afghan strategic geography. The US is essentially playing a destabilizing role in the region as it aims at establishing world-tyranny. Its strategy revolves around the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine which aims at preventing the emergence of a regional or global power that could challenge US’s sole hegemonic status.

However, US’s attempt at establishing its hegemony in Afghanistan and beyond is being challenged by a de facto strategic alliance involving Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan. In other words, the US-NATO coalition is facing a formidable enemy – three of which are nuclear powers – determined to contain US’s hegemonist ambitions in the region. China and Russia are at the forefront of shaping this new geopolitical reality.

The Harmonious Hegemony

China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative that aims to connect Asia, Africa and Europe surpasses trade and economic interests and shifts the geopolitical dynamics on a global scale. Its immediate implications are already felt in South and Central Asia – where its ultimate success depends – with Afghanistan as the geopolitical heartland.

As part of OBOR, the over $50-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) subproject became operational on November 13, 2016 when the first batch of Chinese cargo was transported to Gwadar port in insurgency-ridden southern Baluchistan province for onward maritime shipment to markets in Africa and West Asia. China has built a naval base in Gwadar overseeing the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean with a second one reportedly in the making exclusively for military purposes. Gwadar runs deep in China’s strategic nerves both in peacetime but especially in wartime which could see blockade of Chinese naval access to the Pacific. Given Pakistan’s overdependence on China, CPEC is believed to cement China’s clout to influence political and military decisions in that country.

China has further consolidated its strategic footprint in the Indian Ocean by taking over the strategic Hambantota port in Sri Lanka on a 99-year lease contract with 70% stake in exchange for reducing $1.1 billion of the country’s overall 8$ billion debt to China. China’s $38 billion worth of investments in Bangladesh may likely result in breaking up the geopolitical stalemate over the construction of a deep seaport in Sonadia island following pressures exerted by the US, India and Japan on Bangladesh forcing it to abandon the project. China was outmaneuvered over Sonadia by Japan’s counterproposal to construct the Matarbari deep seaport 25km from Sonadia. That may now be changing as Sino-Bangladeshi relationship has been elevated to the strategic level.

All this is happening to the dismay of the US and India – and Japan – who see China’s growing influence as a direct threat to their hegemony over shipping corridors in the Indian Ocean. In anti-Chinese jargon, increasing Chinese presence in and around the Indian Ocean is called The String of Pearls which the trio sees as a Chinese containment strategy. China maintains that its naval presence is to protect its sea lines of communication (SLOCs) – critical among them the South China Sea – that connect Chinese mainland to foreign sources of energy in the Middle East and Africa and build a “harmonious ocean”. China, in other words, is all about harmonious hegemony.

It is in Afghanistan that the tectonic geopolitical shift is played out in all its ugly forms and manifestations. China seems to be the main winner in post-US occupation Afghanistan having secured lucrative deals to exploit natural resources.

Mes Aynak overview (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

After allegedly paying a $30 million bribe to the Afghan Minister of Mines, the state-run China Metallurgical Group Corporation (CMGC) secured the contract for Mes Aynak copper mine in Logar province, one of the largest copper reserves in the world and a 5000-year-old archaeological site, in November 2007. The company managed to acquire the 30-year lease contract against competitors from Russia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. China will invest $3 billion in Mes Aynak which is valued at more than $90 billion.

The contract contains two important clauses: (1) construction of a coal-fired power plant for mining purposes (with environmental consequences) and (2) construction of a freight carrying train line connecting West China to Mes Aynak through Tajikistan to be further extended to Quetta in Pakistan.

Source: agenda.ge

At the first trilateral dialogue between China, Afghanistan and Pakistan in Beijing on December 26, 2017, Afghanistan agreed to join CPEC despite prior hesitation at the behest of India which opposes CPEC, among other reasons, as it passes through the strategically located Pakistan-occupied Kashmir region of Gilgit-Baltistan which borders the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to the north, the Xinjiang region of China to the east and northeast, and the Indian-occupied state of Jammu and Kashmir to the southeast. As part of China’s New Silk Road project, Afghanistan also favors construction of a network of roads and railway lines linking it to the Caspian Sea, Mediterranean Sea and eventually to Europe through Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. The Lapis Lazuli Corridor involving Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey was signed in November 2017 to this effect.

In December 2011, Afghanistan signed its first international oil exploration contract with China National Petroleum Corporation. China, with an investment of $3 billion, won the 25-year contract for the exploration and exploitation of oil in Amu Darya region of northern Afghanistan (Sar-i-Pul and Faryab provinces). It is estimated that the Amu Darya Basin between Tajikistan and Afghanistan contains more than 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil. China’s local partner in the project is “Watan Group” of companies related to Hamid Karzai whose decision to refrain from signing the “Bilateral Security Agreement” with the United States may well be connected to these Chinese investments. It is also estimated that other reserves in Balkh and Jawzjan Northern provinces contain 3.5 billion barrels of crude oil. The contract for the latter reserve was awarded in 2013 to an international consortium including Dragon Oil from the UAE, the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) and their local Ghazanfar Group from Afghanistan.

The Sino-Afghan Special Railway Transportation that connects China, through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with northern Afghanistan (Hairatan port), a vital segment of the One Belt, One Road initiative, was inaugurated as the first-ever freight train line between the two countries in September 2016. The railway link was a joint project of China’s Qin Geng Industrial Co. Ltd and the local Watan Group. However, the link is yet to become fully operational due to India-leaning Uzbekistan’s refusal to allow direct export of Afghan goods through its territory to China.

In January 2017, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) signed a $205 million contract to build the 178-kilometer Dare-e-Sof–Yakawlang road project connecting the northern Samangan with central Bamyan province. This is the second phase of the National North-South Corridor. The now completed first phase was Mazar-i-Sharif – Yakawlang road and the third, yet to commence, being the 550km central Bamyan– southern Kandahar road project.

At first glance, it seems that China has made these lucrative deals at the expense of the security cover provided by NATO-US troops. Nothing could be further from the truth. The start of extraction work of the Chinese workers at Mes Aynak copper mine under the security coverage by 2,000 government troops coincided with the popping up of armed groups which specifically targeted Chinese workers forcing a halt to extraction and their return home.

In the meantime, two governors of Logar province namely Abdullah Wardak and Arsala Jamal, both tasked with facilitating extraction at Mes Aynak, were assassinated in September 2008 and October 2013 respectively. Taliban claimed responsibility for the assassination of Wardak but no group claimed responsibility for assassinating Jamal. Ten years on and the project remains in a limbo.

Similarly, the start of extraction of crude oil by the Chinese in Sar-i-Pul and Faryab provinces was met with attacks by armed groups targeting the Chinese and efforts to destabilize these provinces. Six ICRC staff members were killed in Jawzjan province in February 2017 with no claims of responsibility by any group.

In recent months, IS fighters many of them foreigners were moved to the north of Afghanistan where they have established a foothold in Sar-i-Pul, Faryab and Jawzjan provinces.

There are also intensified efforts to destabilize Xinjiang and encourage separatism there through the Afghan northeastern province of Badakhshan, a main route in the ancient Silk Road, which shares borders with Tajikistan to the north and east and China’s Xinjiang and Pakistan to the east through the historical Wakhan Corridor. The separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is believed to be mainly operating in Badakhshan.

Xinjiang is an important region of China as it borders eight countries: Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

In response, China is taking precautionary measures as it expands its economic, security and political role in Afghanistan through bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral arrangements.

Image on the right: Former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai and former General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Hu Jintao.

On June 16, 2006, China signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborly Friendship and Cooperation with the Karzai government. Article Four of the Treaty is an indicator of China’s strategic forethought when it comes to the US presence in Afghanistan:

“The parties have undertaken not to join coalitions or blocs that violate the sovereignty, security or territorial integrity of the other party, or to resort to such measures, including the conclusion of treaties of this kind with a third country. The parties shall not allow a third country to use their territory to threaten the national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the other party.

The two sides shall prevent the establishment of organizations and institutions that violate the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the other party in their territory.”

In August 2016, the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism in Counter Terrorism, comprising the militaries of Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, was launched, symbolically, in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang. In one of the most dramatic turn of events, Chinese military was spotted in early 2017 conducting “anti-terrorism” patrols deep inside eastern Afghan territory marking the presence of Chinese military involvement in Afghanistan and signaling China’s readiness for potential military engagement should developments necessitate. As China expands its security stakes in Afghanistan, it has also started supplying military aid to the Afghan army.

At the December 2017 trilateral dialogue in Beijing, China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan agreed to joint cooperation against terrorism tied to Xinjiang specifically against ETIM.

China is also proactively increasing its political influence in Afghanistan in concert with its economic and trade interests. Recently, China stepped up its efforts as a mediator and broker of peace in Afghanistan. In fact, the first round of the trilateral dialogue at the level of foreign ministers of China, Afghanistan and Pakistan in December 2017 is an indication of the shifting geopolitical landscape in the region. These Chinese efforts are in line with that country’s economic projects in Afghanistan, Pakistan and beyond.

China is also a party to the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) involving the US, Afghanistan, and Pakistan which mediates talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

Russia-China-Pakistan triumvirate

Russia, like Iran, was one of the first countries that supported the occupation of Afghanistan following 9/11. NATO-led forces in Afghanistan used Russian territory for their supplies until the Ukrainian war put an end to this cozy relationship.

Russia is, however, opposed to the long-term presence of the US in Afghanistan. Gone are the days when Russia wanted the US to stay in Afghanistan. Russia has expressed its position on several occasions against long-term military presence of the US in Afghanistan including through the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolaiy Patrushev:

“Despite Washington’s claims that there is no program for the creation of permanent bases in Afghanistan, we know that US forces will remain in this country after 2014 … Continued long-term foreign military presence in Afghanistan as a boardwagon against other countries in the region, it is unacceptable for Russia.”

On 7 December 2016, the Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan Alexander Mantytskiy announced that Russia is in contact with the Taliban to protect the safety of its citizens. Some interpreted this move by Moscow as conferring political legitimacy on the group. On December 18, 2017 Mantytskiy testified before the Afghan Senate saying both Russia and Taliban have a common interest in fighting IS and highlighted failure of the US-NATO coalition in fighting terrorism in their sixteen years of presence in Afghanistan. IS, he said, aims to expand to Central Asia, Russia, and China.

The fact is that Moscow sees Taliban as a counter-weight to IS as the latter’s presence in Afghanistan is dramatically growing. In the span of two years, IS increased its ranks from a mere hundreds in 2015 to over 10,000 fighters in 2017. US-NATO military bases and “unmarked foreign helicopters” support IS in Afghanistan including bringing foreign fighters from Iraq and Syria. Given that Afghan airspace is controlled by US-NATO for all strategic purposes, the Russian government has repeatedly asked NATO for explanation but to no avail so far.

In April 2017, Russia organized a conference on Afghanistan attended by China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan including Afghanistan. The US refused to participate calling it a “unilateral Russian attempt to assert influence in the region”. In a bold move, Russia offered to mediate peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

As India has been consolidating its growing reach and influence in post-9/11 Afghanistan, Pakistan, a dominant player in Afghanistan, has been increasingly politically isolated. China was its only political and economic lifeline. It needed to reach out to Russia.

The pace of Russian-Pakistani rapprochement is particularly interesting given the cold war enmity between the two and Pakistan’s strategic engagement with the US.

In June 2014, Russia made a strategic foreign policy decision by lifting a longstanding ban on arms sales to Pakistan also opening a new market for its weapons after India’s gradual but firm resort to western weaponry. In October 2015, the two countries signed a 25-year contract to construct the 1,100 kilometer North-South gas pipeline with an annual capacity of 12.4 billion cubic meters connecting Lahore in the northeast with Karachi in the south. This came in the wake of successful US and Saudi pressures on Pakistan to abandon the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline. Given Pakistan’s acute energy needs, the pipeline is a strategic investment by Russia giving it access to energy markets in the wider region.

It was a year later when they elevated their relationship to the level of military-to-military engagement. In September 2016, Russia and Pakistan held their first ever joint military exercise dubbed “Friendship 2016” in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab. This was followed in September 2017 in the southern Russian region of Nizhny Arkhiz. These paved the way for a major concession on the part of Pakistan acceding to Russia’s request to use Gwadar port for its exports in line with Russian interest to join CPEC. It could possibly open the way for a future Russian naval presence in the Indian Ocean.

Ever since these new developments, Russia, China and Pakistan are holding trilateral consultations on Afghanistan. The first official round of the trilateral consultations was held in Moscow on 27 December 2016. A day earlier, the Afghan government (echoing US sentiments) protested for having not been invited to the consultations and questioned its “objectives”; some members of the Afghan Senate questioned its “legitimacy”.

By pressuring Pakistan and asking India to play a colossal role in Afghanistan and Central Asia, the US is effectively pushing the former into an alliance with Russia that includes China and Iran giving momentum and dynamism to this multifaceted alliance. But the US moves against Pakistan are part of a grand strategy to contain China.

As Russia and China’s influence expand in the region aligned with their security and economic interests that of the US is dwindling making it increasingly dependent on India.       

The Indian Factor  

As China and Russia gradually increased their influence in Afghanistan and the region, the US sought to envelop India in its regional strategy – mainly to counter China. In the new US regional strategy, India is meant to become part of the US war machinery to sustain America’s hegemony in the region.

India’s new role, as envisaged by the US, was outlined in a speech entitled “Defining Our Relationship with India for the Next Century” by Rex Tillerson, the US Secretary of State, in October 2017. Envisioning a strategic partnership for the 21^st century, Tillerson, quoting US Secretary of Defense James Mattis, said: “the world’s two greatest democracies should have the two greatest militaries”.

And to signal the importance of India’s new place in the US geopolitical psyche, he employed the phrase “Indo-Pacific”, the new official US jargon for Asia-Pacific, which converges with India’s own Look East Policy. In other words, India has become the new and perhaps the only pillar of US’s South Asia strategy. The “Arabian Gulf” construction by Donald Trump was loaded with geopolitical connotations and was not just an ignorant utterance; a containment strategy that began with the hegemonist power of constructions. The new US approach to India is in line with US’s attempts at building an “Indo-pacific” coalition against China. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) involving US, Japan, Australia, and India and the Malabar naval exercises are such platforms aimed at Beijing.

India in turn needs to stand on US shoulders if it is to act as a meaningful counterbalance to China’s weight in the region and in the world at large. The Look East Policy is India’s own version of String of Pearls which courts China-wary East Asian countries into an alliance with India backed by the US. Following US-led occupation in 2001, India considerably increased its influence in Afghanistan commensurate with its strategic political, security, economic and trade interests and regional ambitions. India is Afghanistan’s largest regional donor with over $2 billion investment in various projects. As an indication of India’s long-term presence, India built the new building of the Afghan parliament at the cost of $90 million.

India has been engaged in a proxy war with Pakistan in Afghanistan for over three decades. India is also one of China’s main rivals competing for control and exploitation of Afghan natural resources, trade and transit routes. It is important to realize that much of India’s engagement in Afghanistan goes beyond its rivalry with Pakistan, driven as it is by its growing resource-hungry economy, and mostly directed at China as the main target.

To expand its influence, India established its consulates in four of Afghanistan’s strategic provinces (Kandahar, Herat, Nangarhar, and Balkh), to the dismay of Pakistan which sees them as a threat to its security and interests. Repeated attacks on India’s diplomatic representations and on Indian citizens engaged in Indian-funded projects are parts of Pakistan’s proxy war against India.

India’s mega-projects in Afghanistan are part of its “Connect Central Asia Policy” (CCAP) which aims to connect India with Central Asia, bypass Pakistan, and balance China’s growing influence in the region.

In November 2011, a consortium of Indian companies led by the Steel Authority of India (SAIL) was awarded a $10.8 billion contract to extract three out of the five blocks at Hajigak iron ore deposits, one of the biggest untapped resources in Asia, located in central Bamyan province. Another block was awarded to Canada’s Kilo Goldmines Ltd which also mines Gold and Iron ore in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is estimated that the region has 1.8 billion tons of iron ore. India was awarded the deal only one month after signing the “Strategic Partnership Agreement” (SPA) with the Karzai government on October 4, 2011 which is seen as one of the most significant achievements of India’s Afghan and regional policy over the past decades.

The development of Chahbahar port in Iran is a giant geopolitical leap for India in its efforts to balance China’s growing influence in the region. Chahbahar is located only 76km from Gwadar port and is seen as part of India’s strategic moves to counter China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean. The project fits well into the 7,200km long International North–South Transport Corridor – India’s gateway to Eurasia – which is a network of ship, rail, and road routes connecting the Indian Ocean with the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea via Iran all the way to Russia and Europe. A joint Iranian-Indian railway line is planned to connect Hajigak with Chahbahar after a trilateral MoU was signed in May 2016 between India, Iran and Afghanistan to build an international trade-and-transit corridor through Afghanistan. The investment at Chahbahar has deepened Indo-Iranian strategic ties as their interests converge on building connectivity between Central and South Asia.

The 215km strategic Zaranj-Delaram highway in the southern Afghan province of Nimroz constructed by India in 2009 connects southern Afghanistan to Chahbahar port in Iran. This is a strategic investment by India as the highway connects trade-routes between Central Asia and South Asia with the Middle East – bypassing Pakistan. The project was built at a great human cost as “…one human sacrifice was made for every kilometer and a half constructed”. In October 2017, India’s first wheat shipment reached Afghanistan via Chahbahar. As part of its efforts to bypass Pakistan, India also opened two air corridors in 2017 to transport cargoes between Afghanistan and India.

Linked to Zaranj-Delaram project is the $290 million India-funded Salma Dam in Herat province with the capacity to irrigate 75,000 hectares of land and generate 42MW of electricity. Construction of Salma Dam particularly irritated Iran which expressed its opposition to such projects supporting Afghan claims of Iranian plots to destroy the Dam.

While India may have to team up with the US and Japan to counter growing Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean, it has to maintain cordial relations with Russia to sustain its footprint in Central Asia. On the other hand, US plans to destabilize Iran or to directly militarily confront it in future threaten India’s interests in Iran.   

Reflection of the shifting geopolitical reality on Afghan politics

The changing geopolitical reality in Afghanistan has directly reflected on the domestic political landscape, unsettling the status quo and affecting the political power relations (believed to have been dominated by pro-Russia and pro-Iran groups since 2001). The domestic power shift favors US interests and is aimed at increasing US leverage in Afghan affairs. A significant chain of events – seemingly unrelated – unfolds:

• January 2014: veteran warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum visits Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to solicit support in anticipation of a post-US Afghanistan;
• September 2014: National Unity Government (NUG) is formed after presidential election results are disputed (the resulting NUG composition reflects how US shares power with regional powers);
• January 2015: IS announces formation of its “Khorasan Province” officially marking its presence in Afghanistan;
• October 2015: Dostum, now Vice-President in the NUG, visits Moscow and travels to the North Caucuses Chechen Republic to meet Ramzan Kadyrov in Grozny. Dostum seeks Russia’s help in the fight against IS “as in Syria”;
• May 2016: Dostum is forced into exile to Turkey after allegations of sexual assault and torture by a former rival. The move is backed by the US, EU and Turkey. He has since been refused to return.
• September 2016: a so-called peace agreement is signed with veteran jihadist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar backed by the US and Saudi Arabia;
• May 2017: Hekmatyar returns to Kabul and has since made Iranian influence in Afghanistan the focus of his political rhetoric, thus, promoting US’s anti-Iranian agenda.
• December 2017: Ghani fires the Governor of strategic Balkh province in the north deemed to be a Russian and Iranian protégé, thus, disturbing the domestic balance of power. The Governor has since refused to vacate his post stating he intends to remain “to defeat the Taliban and IS projects” prompting the US to intervene on the side of the Afghan president.
• In an unprecedented move, Afghan council of religious scholars asks the government to allow Taliban to open a political office in Kabul for intra-Afghan peace talks.

Conclusion

Afghanistan has been the focus of big power geopolitical rivalries ever since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The so-called Great Game, the geopolitical competition between Britain and Tsarist Russia, culminated in three Anglo-Afghan wars (1839-42, 1878-1880, and 1919). Following the October Revolution, the Great Game continued between revolutionary Russia and Britain. It was, however, after the end of WWII that Afghanistan became a hotspot of geopolitical contest between the Soviet Union and the United States.

The Saur Revolution of 1978 – and the Soviet intervention in December 1979 – was a defining historical moment that disturbed the status quo – not only in Afghanistan but potentially in the wider region. Its immediate effect was that it expedited the overthrow of the Shah in Iran. The United States and their allies supported the counter-revolutionary Mujahedeen against revolutionary Afghanistan to prevent a domino effect in the region. Carter Administration’s secret deal with Khomeini was part of this containment strategy.

Afghanistan’s geostrategic location – including its potential as a major trade and transit hub linking South and Central Asia with the Middle East – as well as its vast natural resources has become a “geopolitical curse” and “resource curse” to its people who remain hostage to this predicament.  An indication of Afghanistan’s geopolitical and geoeconomic weight for regional and international players is the number of so-called strategic agreements signed in anticipation of post-2014 Afghanistan. This is not necessarily good news as it is a sign of the entanglement of competing and at times diametrically opposed interests in the rapidly changing Afghan geopolitical scene.  Russian presidential special envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, even spoke of the “disappearance” of Afghanistan in two decades should the current nature and pace of geopolitical games continue. This is a subtle indication of the looming prospect for Afghanistan.

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Fraidoon Amel is an Afghan activist and geopolitical analyst.

“And thus the U.S. left leadership sits in the left chamber of the hall of mirrors, complaining about conspiracy theories while closing its eyes to actual conspiracies crucial to contemporary imperialism.” – Graeme MacQueen, Beyond Their Wildest Dreams: September 11, 2001 and the American Left

It is well known that effective propaganda works through slow, imperceptible repetition. “The slow building up of reflexes and myths” is the way Jacques Ellul put it in his classic, Propaganda.  This works through commission and omission.

I was reminded of this recently after I published a newspaper editorial on Martin Luther King Day stating the fact that the United States’ government assassinated Dr. King.  To the best of my knowledge, this was the only newspaper op-ed to say that.  I discovered that many newspapers and other publications (with very rare exceptions), despite a plethora of articles and editorials praising King, ignored this “little” fact as if it were inconsequential.  No doubt they wish it were, or that it were not true, just as many hoped that repeating the bromide that James Earl Ray killed Dr. King would reinforce the myth they’ve been selling for fifty years, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary that is available to anyone wishing to investigate the truth.

The general attitude seemed to be: Let’s just appreciate MLK on his birthday and get on with it.  Don’t be a spoil-sport.

That this is the approach of the mainstream corporate media (MSM) should not be surprising, for they are mouthpieces for official government lies.  But when the same position is taken by so many liberal and progressive intellectuals and publications who are otherwise severely critical of the MSM for their propaganda in the service of empire, it gives pause.  Like their counterparts in the MSM, these liberals shower King with praise, even adding that he was more than a civil rights leader, that he opposed war and economic exploitation as well, but as to who killed him, and why, and why it matters today, that is elided.  Amy Goodman at Democracy Now in a recent piece about an upcoming documentary about King is a case in point.  Not once in this long conversation about a film about the last few years of King’s life and his commitment to oppose the Vietnam War and launch the Poor People’s Campaign is the subject of who killed him and why broached.  It is a perfect example of the denial of the truth through omission.

Propaganda, of course comes in many forms: big lies and small; half-truths, whispers, and rumors; slow-drip and headlong; misinformation and disinformation; through commission and omission; intentional and unintentional; cultural and political, etc. Although it is omnipresent today – 24/7 surround sound – when it comes from the mouths of government spokespeople or corporate media the average person, grown somewhat suspicious of official lies, has a slight chance of detecting it.  This is far more difficult, however, when it takes the form of a left-wing critique of U.S. government policies that subtly supports official explanations through sly innuendos and references, or through omission.  Reading an encomium to Dr. King that attacks government positions on race, war, and economics from the left will often get people nodding their heads in agreement while they fail to notice a fatal flaw at the heart of the critique.  The Democracy Now piece is a perfect example of this legerdemain.

I do not know the motivations or intentions of many prominent leftist intellectuals and publications, but I do know that many choose to avoid placing certain key historical events at the center of their analyses.  In fact, they either avoid them like the plague, dismiss them as inconsequential, or use the CIA’s term of choice and call them “conspiracy theories” and their proponents “conspiracy nuts.”  The result is a powerful propaganda victory for the power elites they say they oppose.

Orwell called it “Crimestop: [it] means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.  It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction.  Crimestop, in short means protective stupidity.”

There are many fine writers and activists who are very frustrated by their inability, despite a vast and continuous outpouring of excellent critiques of the machinations of the oligarchical rulers of the U.S., to convince people of the ways they have been brainwashed by government/media propaganda.  Most of their anger is directed toward the most obvious sources of this intricate psychological warfare directed at the American people.  They often fail to realize, however – or fail to say – that there are leftists in their ranks who, whether intentionally or not, are far more effective than the recognized enemies in government intelligence agencies and their corporate accomplices in the media in convincing people that the system works and that it is not run by killers who will go to any lengths to achieve their goals.  These leftist critics, while often right on specific issues that one can agree with, couch their critiques within a framework that omits or disparages certain truths without which nothing makes sense.  By truths I do not mean debatable matters, but key historical events that have been studied and researched extensively by reputable scholars and have been shown to be factual, except to those who fail to fairly do their homework, purposely or through laziness.

There is no way to understand today’s world without confronting four key historical events out of which spring today’s conditions of oligarchic rule, constant war, and the growth of an intelligence apparatus that makes Orwell’s 1984 look so anachronistic.

They are: the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK by elements within the U.S. intelligence services, and the insider attacks of September 11, 2011. These are anathema to a group of very prominent left-wing intellectuals and liberal publications.  It is okay for them to attack Bush, Obama, Clinton, Trump, the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, liberals in general, creeping fascism, capitalism, the growth of the intelligence state, etc.; but to accept, or even to explore fairly in writing, what I assert as factual above, is verboten.  Why?

When President Kennedy was murdered by the CIA, the United States suffered a coup d’état that resulted in years of savage war waged against Vietnam, resulting in millions of Vietnamese deaths and tens of thousands of American soldiers.  The murder of JFK in plain sight sent a message in clear and unambiguous terms to every President that followed that you toe the line or else. They have toed the line.  The message from the coup planners and executioners was clear: we run the show. They have been running it ever since.

When Martin Luther King declared his opposition to the Vietnam War and joined it to his espousal of a civil rights and an anti-capitalist program, he had to go. So they killed him.

Then, when the last man standing who had a chance to change the direction of the coup – Robert Kennedy – seemed destined to win the presidency, he had to go. So they killed him.

To ignore these foundational state crimes for which the evidence is so overwhelming and their consequences over the decades so obvious – well, what explanation can leftist critics offer for doing so?

And then there are the attacks of September 11, 2001, the fourth foundational event that has brought us to our present abominable condition.  One has to be very ignorant to not see that the official explanation is a fiction conjured up to justify an endless “war on terror” planned as perhaps the prelude to the use of nuclear weapons, those weapons that JFK in the last year of his life worked so hard to eliminate after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

In refusing to connect the dotsfrom November 22, 1963 through April 4 and June 5 1968and September 11, 2001 until today, prominent leftists continue to do the work of Crimestop.  For the moment I will leave it to readers to identify who they are, and the numerous leftist publications that support their positions.There are two famous left-wing American intellectuals, one dead and one living, who are often intoned to support this work of propaganda by omission:  Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, both of whom dismissed the killing of JFK and the attacks of September 11 as inconsequential and not worthy of their attention. They have quite a few protégés whose work you probably read and agree with, despite the void at the heart of their critiques.  Why they avoid accepting the truth and significance of the four events I have mentioned, only they can say.  That they do is easy to show, as are the dire consequences for a united front against the deep-state forces intent on reducing this society and the world to rubble because of their refusal to confront the systemic evil that they render unspeakable by their acquiescence to government propaganda.

In  his groundbreaking book on the assassination of John Kennedy, JFK And The Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters, James Douglass quotes his guide into the dark underworld of radical evil and our tendency to turn away from its awful truths, the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, who said of the Unspeakable:  “It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and official declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss.”

Can you hear it on your left?

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

“People who were senior career civil servants violated the law, perhaps committed crimes… they tried to frame an incoming president with a false Russian conspiracy that never existed, and they knew it, and they plotted to ruin him as a candidate and then destroy him as a president.”                 – former Federal Prosecutor Joe diGenova [1]

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Over the past year, there has been a saturation of coverage not only in the press, but within left-leaning political circles, besmirching the current president of the United States for his apparent lack of competence, his misogynistic, racist, and xenophobic messaging, and oppressive domestic and foreign policies.

Without question, there is a solid foundation underlying these allegations. However, the standard condemnatory talking points critiquing the Trump Administration, distract from a potentially more troubling development in American politics.

In December of last year, it was revealed that Peter Strzock, a top FBI counter-intelligence official and a special Counsel on Russia probe who had previously worked on the 2016 probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server, had exchanged numerous texts with a fellow FBI official and paramour Lisa Page. The texts suggested considerable anti-Trump bias on the part of this high level agent creating the appearance of a tainted investigation. [2]

One case in point was a text from August of 2016, in which Strzok hints at a strategy of removing Trump from power in the unlikely circumstance he should triumph on November 8th:

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die before you’re 40.” [3]

Additional revelations have come to light about the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee utilizing the research firm Fusion GPS and a former British spy to manufacture false evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians in order to secure a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). [4][5][6]

High crimes and misdemeanors are being revealed pointing to a pattern of blackmail, bribery and falsification of facts at the highest levels of the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Ray McGovern has followed the investigations. A former CIA analyst, McGovern has some insights into the elite maneuvers that can potential subvert the authority of any public official, Democrat or Republican, virtuous or venal. In this week’s Global Research News Hour radio program, he breaks down what is known about an enterprise apparently determined to control the White House regardless of election outcomes.

In this 60 minute program, McGovern speculates on the rationale behind James Comey’s activities during the election, debunks the Russia-Gate ‘hacking’ narrative, and outlines where this drama is headed and if the so-called ‘Deep State’ will prevail.

Ray Mcgovern was an Army and CIA intelligence analyst for 30 years; He chaired National Intelligence estimates through the 1980s and prepared the President’s Daily Brief for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His website is raymcgovern.com. His articles have appeared at consortiumnews.com and globalresearch.ca among other online publications.

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Notes:

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/brazen-plot-to-exonerate-hillary-clinton-and-frame-trump-unraveling-says-former-fed-prosecutor/5626918
2. Andrea Noble (December 12, 2017), ‘Trump is a f**king idiot’ ranted FBI agent Peter Strzok in text messages handed to Congress’, Washington Times; https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/dec/12/peter-strzoks-anti-trump-text-messages-handed-over/
3. Laura Jarrett (December 13, 2017), ‘Months-worth of FBI employees’ texts dreading Trump victory released to Congress’, CNN; https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/12/politics/peter-strzok-texts-released/index.html
4. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/in-the-russian-collusion-debate-whos-fooling-who/
5. https://www.globalresearch.ca/brazen-plot-to-exonerate-hillary-clinton-and-frame-trump-unraveling-says-former-fed-prosecutor/5626918
6. https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/11/the-fbi-hand-behind-russia-gate/

Featured image: Militants stormed Kabul’s intercontinental hotel and kept it under siege for several hours before killing dozens of Afghan and foreign nationals

The Intercontinental hotel in the heart of Afghanistan’s capital city Kabul was stormed by militants last Friday, with the intent to kill and shed blood, to portray an Afghanistan which is still at war. In the grisly attack, many private sector and government officials were burned to ashes and declared “missing” inside the building after the hired terrorists did their utmost to vandalize and maximize the death toll. Who are the sponsors of these atrocities? 

The grieving people of Afghanistan were still reeling from the hotel attack when an explosive-packed ambulance, reportedly an Afghan National Army’s facility used by militants, went off in the midst of teeming street and added more than 100 dead to an already high record of civilian casualities. Many of them have burned beyond recognition. The attack marked the latest in a flurry of armed raids on public institutions from hospitals and hotels to charity organizations and holy sites.

The attack’s enormity could also be measured by international condemnation. The US embassy, the UK embassy, Indian embassy, NATO’s Secretary General, the United Nations Secretary General and even the UK’s foreign minister Boris Johnson issued statements condemning the attack. In a bitter irony, these terrorist atrocities will be used by the US or NATO to justify “more troops” or a “longer stay” in Afghanistan.

The Islamic State or Taliban or any other belligerent group that shamelessly claim the responsibility for these massacres of civilians are, indeed, not a free rebellious movement as described by the media or Afghan Government officials or NATO, it is merely a name given to de facto insurgent factions made up of unrelenting mercenaries who are brainwashed and trained to keep imperialism’s war machine  running.

You might wonder how militants penetrate into the center of Kabul to generate a tragedy. Militants are nothing but pawns used in suicidal attacks; the true masterminds are living lavish lives in Kabul and elsewhere and appear in ties and suits.

In July 2017, following Kabul’s horrific blast in the diplomatic area near German embassy that sparked worldwide reactions, Doha-based Al-Raya daily accused the US of being behind the incident. The source said that the US had organized it to terrify its allies, especially the European countries. It elaborated that such sophisticated bombing can only be designed and carried out by powerful countries and insurgent groups can’t even think of it.

Each and every terror attack in the capital has a specific motive behind it. It is a war backed by extraordinary powers. Afghan security officials do not have authority or ability to contain these attacks. . Blaming Ashraf Ghani’s Government for falling short in securing Kabul is of no avail. The Government is only a speaker to explain the aftereffects and fatalities of the explosions. We [the people of Afghanistan] are mired in a vortex that no internal force is  able to contain.

The aftermath of some of the bloody events tells all about the causes of the incident. As a minded Afghan citizen, you can notice and develop a sense of reality by watching the subsequent blame-game and developments that take place in connection with an attack. It makes you figure out the deeply buried sides of realities behind the frequent deadly blasts.

Within hours of the Intercontinental Hotel attack, Pakistan condemned it. Islamabad has been under fire for supporting militants within its territory who allegedly organize terrorist bombings in Afghanistan. This country’s hasty move of condemnation was aimed to demonstrate that it was not behind [this] armed attack. As usual, Afghanistan’s security officials and the Trump administration threw the blame on the Pakistan-based terrorist Haqqani network and rid themselves of accountability to the mourning people of Afghanistan.

The dependent media of Afghanistan is also toeing the line by concluding the news reports with hurling all the blames across the border on Pakistan’s terrorist hub. The media and Afghan Government’s promotion of Pakistan as a country that directs suicide bombers into Afghanistan has made the people hell-bent that Pakistan is behind all the havoc in Afghanistan. These misguided minds send their curse against Pakistan for each attack.

It is worth noting that two days before the hotel disaster, the US embassy issued a warning to its citizens in Afghanistan about a likely armed raid on one of hotels in Kabul. Did it have Foreknowledge of the attack? 

Why didn’t it share the intelligence information with Afghanistan’s security agencies with a view to thwarting the terror attack.   

Or, assuming the Afghani authorities had been informed, why did they not act in the face of a predicted armed terror attack?

Have the people of Afghanistan been doomed to suffer?

Following the hotel attack, the US-led airstrike on Haqqani network’s strongholds in Pakistan pacified the resentment of those Afghans who pin every Afghan mess on Pakistan. I don’t view Pakistan “innocent or without guilt” in Afghanistan’s dirty war.

Moreover, the US should be held responsible for its very presence in Afghanistan.

The “Taliban and other militants groups” have waged Jihad and kills dozens of Afghan citizens every day, if not for its direct involvement in the war crimes. The NATO and the US has walked back and left Afghanistan and Pakistan to exchange blaming words in the context of deadly blasts in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s conflict must burn under a constant fire with a view to justifying continued US military occupation. Afghanistan is depicted as a country “still at war”, otherwise a brief tranquility would question the legitimacy of the presence of the US and international forces in this country.

Drug business and rare earth elements aside, an ongoing war in Afghanistan provides a pretext to US to confront and challenge Pakistan for its warm relations with China.

While there is no firm evidence of Islamabad’s involvement, the hotel attack was picked up by the White House’s spokeswoman to warn Pakistan as well as justify the US led strikes against the Haqqani in Pakistan. And now after Saturday’s blast, President Trump warned the so-called Taliban militant group.

A scene of Saturday’s suicide blast near a hospital that killed more than 100 and injured about 171

The horrified residents of Kabul were shocked to watch a barrage of gruesome images of the explosion site uploaded on social media.

This war sees no public institution or place including hospitals as exception or exemption. On last Wednesday, Save the Children international organization’s office was assaulted by armed suicide bombers in eastern Nangarhar province where they killed and injured many innocent civilians. This Saturday’s cowardly blast is the third in a week.

As a sign of terror among citizens, some employees of the multi-storey government establishments have tied a rope to their room to slide down through windows in the event of a raid by armed militants.

The bitter reality is that the people of Afghanistan have not recognized their true enemy and desperately shout against this and another. Thanks to social media, people are slowly learning the shadows of the dirty Afghan war.

It is pertinent to note that the war in Afghanistan has cost more than 100,000 lives (2001-2014), according to the US-based Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. This is while reports inform that casualties have soared since 2015. In 2016 alone, nearly 12,000 Afghans have succumbed to the war.

*

All images in this article are from the author.

Afghanistan is now facing mortal danger. It has to survive, but it is not clear how it can manage.

Hotel Intercontinental in Kabul, which was attacked by gunmen last Saturday, used to fit like a glove, like a grandmother’s couch. Outside, the war has been raging. Millions of Afghan lives were aimlessly broken, hundreds of thousands lost. The price of more than 16 years of NATO occupation has exceeded $1 trillion, but instead of bringing peace and prosperity, it has reduced Afghanistan to rubble.

All that is still functioning in the country are structures and infrastructure built before and during the Soviet era, like irrigation ducts, canals and bread factories. Other tangible assistance came recently from China and India, but almost nothing was provided by the NATO occupation countries, except countless fences, wires and military installations.

Even before the siege at the Intercontinental Hotel, which left more than 20 people dead, Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani confessed to ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent Lara Logan that he is unable to protect his own capital.

But it is not only the capital, of course. The entire country is spiraling into chaos. It is clear that it will soon be impossible to control it anymore, at least as one entity, from Kabul.

It can be heard more and more often on the streets of Kabul, Jalalabad and Herat that reducing this country to perpetual conflict and chaos may be the exact plan of the occupation forces.

I used to joke about Hotel Intercontinental –

‘This place feels like a Soviet three-star hotel in some provincial Siberian town. Bent shower bars, stained but otherwise clean carpets, indifferent but somehow friendly staff – you could wave as much as you wanted, but the waitress in the hotel’s cafe would only move after you’d come to her personally, smiled broadly, and pointed your finger at some particular item from the limited assortment of sweets.’

Reception Area, Hotel Intercontinental

Despite everything, Hotel Intercontinental Kabul was always there, standing. It was crumbling, but still somehow majestic, full of history and old-fashioned charm. Its lobby was decorated with traditional Afghan landscapes and portraits. The vistas from the hotel rooms and balconies were breathtaking: the old Bagh-e Bala Palace with its vast public park, then the entire capital city down below as though sitting in a crater, and the great mountain range rising towards the sky right behind that urban sprawl.

During breakfast hours, a few tables near the window in the hotel restaurant were almost always occupied by Russian-speaking pilots and crew members from an Afghan passenger airline, Kam Air. I don’t know whether these people were Russian or Ukrainian, but they spoke Russian among themselves, and also to me. They were tall and muscular, as pilots operating in a war zone are expected to be.

We always exchanged greetings, as well as one or two jokes. No deep discussions, just that – a few jokes and a few very warm smiles.

Some time ago, I had to fly to the ancient city of Herat, and was traveling early in the morning with Kam Air on the same flight as the crew. My driver was late and I approached the airline minivan, which was just about to depart for the airport.

“Would you please take me with you to the airport, boys?” I asked.

“Yes, of course, of course – just jump in!” they grinned.

We were all part of a big family. Foreigners staying at Intercontinental – not rich and not poor, not part of any ‘government initiative’ or wealthy NGO. This hotel was for ‘working people’ – journalists, filmmakers, pilots. Those who required ‘special protection’ were staying behind the enormous concrete walls of their embassies, or in the only truly luxury hotel in the country – Serena.

Stunning view from the hotel

Two hours later, we were flying over tremendous Afghan mountains and tiny ancient villages made of mud, miles below the wing. I was taking photographs, while imagining that insane US “mother of all bombs” that was dropped just a few days earlier on an identical hamlet, killing who knows how many innocent people.

The two powerful engines of an old but reliable MD-82 were purring reassuringly at the rear of the plane. Then, at some point, I closed my eyes and fell asleep. The next thing I experienced was a gentle pat on my shoulder, followed by friendly whisper:

“Kofeiku ne khotite? Rebyata tut tol’koctosveziisvarili” (“Would you like some coffee? The guys here just brewed a fresh one…”)

I drank the aromatic brew, looking down at those stunning, enormous mountains covered by snow. Russian-speaking pilots were in the cockpit, steering the plane with great experience and confidence.

I thought:

“If there is one crew in the world that is qualified to fly over this beautiful but complex and dangerous terrain, then it is this one.”

It was one of those moments when I felt totally happy and alive, drunk with passion for what I had been doing: working in Afghanistan, exposing crimes committed there by the Western countries, falling head over heels in love with this ancient and proud nation, flying over its peaks into one of the most interesting cities of Central Asia – Herat.

On January 20, 2018, in the intensive care unit of Tokyo’s St. Luke’s Hospital, I was fighting for my life, months after my year-old foot wound reopened in Afghanistan, and had since refused to heal.

Through the fog of fever and IV, I observed coverage from Kabul on a television screen that was hanging above my bed. ‘My’ Intercontinental Hotel had been attacked. In fact, it was overrun by what was allegedly one of the most vicious branches of the Taliban, known as the Haqqani Network. At least that is what was tweeted by Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the Afghan government’s chief executive.

At least 21 people lost their lives during the 14-hour standoff. Almost immediately, several pilots and crew members from Kam Air were murdered in cold blood. So were two Venezuelan pilots. None of these people were ‘supporters of the government,’ nor were they collaborators with the invading NATO force.

They were simply a group of romantics, a group of rugged, brave but also very kind and gentle men who adored flying and who, like myself, fell in love with Afghanistan. I know this because they told me, and because it was just so obvious!

In case anyone is wondering, ‘my hotel in Kabul’ has nothing to do with the luxury US chain of the same name. It used to be part of the ‘real’ Intercontinental, but only from 1969, when its doors first opened, until 1980 (shortly after the Soviet Union intervention in Afghanistan). Now, it is a state-owned property, described as ‘luxury’ only by outsiders who are covering Afghanistan from afar. You can get a room there for a mere $50 if you negotiate very hard, and for $60 if your bargaining skills are somewhat limited.

The hotel had already been damaged on several occasions, particularly during the civil war of the 1990s, when it is said that at one point only 85 out its 200 rooms were inhabitable. As recently as 2011, 21 people died here during an attack for which the Taliban claimed responsibility.

Despite its macabre history, however, Intercontinental is still the favorite property of many locals and some foreigners in Kabul. This is where many conferences are held, and – during the fasting month of Ramadan – fast is broken here by members of local elites, close to the swimming pool overlooking the city. And there is music here almost every night: true Afghan traditional music, with local instruments and singers trained by renowned masters.

Security is, of course, everywhere. To return to this property from the city, I always have to go through three full security posts with my car. After all, Afghanistan is now considered one to be one of the most dangerous countries on Earth for foreigners.

In just one week, three deadly attacks shook Afghanistan: one in Kabul, another outside Herat, and a third inside the city of Jalalabad, in which ISIS targeted the NGO, Save the Children.

Soviet water pipe in the village, Nangarhar Province

Last year, I traveled to many corners of this scarred, ancient land. I spoke to people, including those in the villages that were at least partially taken over by Taliban. People are increasingly realizing that they are living in perpetual conflict. Refugees (or internally displaced persons) from the east are talking about the carnage that comes with the arrival of ISIS.

Hard drugs and poppy seeds are everywhere in the center of Kabul, right under the nose of the US occupiers – poppy fields literally surround Bagram Airforce Base.

Soviets and Russians are now remembered with love and great nostalgia; something that I already described in my previous essays from the country.

Very soon, no foreigners will be left in Afghanistan. That may be the main goal of the latest attacks. No witnesses, no alternatives, no solutions.

Who will benefit? Definitely not the devastated Afghan people. Perhaps the warlords, the extremist mullahs, and the occupiers.

Kam Air crew, flying passenger jets all over the country, and the dilapidated Intercontinental were some of the last symbols of normality – a weak promise that one can still come and see what is really happening in this country.

From now on, there will be hardly any foreigners in the country. It will be only us – war correspondents, as well as foreign soldiers and mercenaries.

Afghanistan is now facing mortal danger. It has to survive, but it is not clear how it could manage. Those who love it should return, no matter what risk we’d be facing. A news blockade should be prevented. Alternative (non-Western) information has to flow. By all means, at any price.

*

This article was originally published by RT Op-Edge.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are his tribute to “The Great October Socialist Revolution” a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his websiteand his Twitter.

All images in this article are from the author.

Turkish allegations of Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian support for the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) threaten to turn Turkey’s military offensive against Syrian Kurds aligned with the PKK into a regional imbroglio.

The threat is magnified by Iranian assertions that low intensity warfare is heating up in areas of the Islamic republic populated by ethnic minorities, including the Kurds in the northwest and the Baloch on the border with Pakistan.

Taken together, the two developments raise the spectre of a potentially debilitating escalation of the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran as well as an aggravation of the eight-month-old Gulf crisis that has pitted Saudi Arabia and its allies against Qatar, which has forged close ties to Turkey.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt rather than Saudi Arabia have taken the lead in criticizing Turkey’s incursion into Syria designed to remove US-backed Kurds from the countries’ border and create a 30-kilometre deep buffer zone.

UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said the incursion by a non-Arab state signalled that Arab states would be marginalized if they failed to develop a national security strategy.

Egypt, for its part, condemned the incursion as a “fresh violation of Syrian sovereignty” that was intended to “undermine the existing efforts for political solutions and counter-terrorism efforts in Syria.”

Despite Saudi silence, Yeni Safak, a newspaper closely aligned with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), charged that a $1 billion Saudi contribution to the reconstruction of Raqqa, the now Syrian Kurdish-controlled former capital of the Islamic State, was evidence of the kingdom’s involvement in what it termed a “dirty game.”

Analysts suggest that Saudi Arabia may have opted to refrain from comment in the hope that it could exploit the fact that Iran, a main backer of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has refused to support the incursion.

Nevertheless, Saudi, UAE and Egyptian support for the Syrian Kurds would stroke with suggestions that the Gulf states are looking at ways of undermining regimes in Tehran and Damascus by stirring unrest among their ethnic minorities.

Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said it had recently seized two large caches of weapons and explosives in separate operations in Kurdish areas in the west of the country and a Baloch region on the eastern border with Pakistan. It said the Kurdish cache seized in the town of Marivan included bomb-making material, electronic detonators, and rocket propelled grenades while the one in the east contained two dozen remote-controlled bombs.

The ministry accused Saudi Arabia of providing the weapons but offered no evidence to back up its claim. The ministry has blamed the kingdom for a number of weapons seizures in the past year.

The Revolutionary Guards said earlier this month that it had captured explosives and suicide vests in the south-eastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan that had been smuggled in by a jihadist group that operates out of the neighbouring Pakistan region of Balochistan.

Separately, a Guard commander said that three Guards and three Islamic State militants had been killed in a clash in western Iran.

Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman vowed last year that the battle between his kingdom and the Islamic republic would be fought “inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia.” Former Saudi intelligence chief and ambassador to Britain and the United States, Prince Turki al-Faisal, told a rally of the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, a controversial Iranian [terrorist] opposition group [supported by Mossad] that “I, too, want the fall of the regime.”

A Saudi think tank, the Arabian Gulf Centre for Iranian Studies (AGCIS), believed to be backed by Prince Mohammed, called in a study published last year for Saudi support for a low-level Baloch insurgency in Iran.

In the study, published by the Riyadh-based the Arabian Gulf Centre for Iranian Studies, Mohammed Hassan Husseinbor, a Washington-based Baloch lawyer, researcher and activist, argued that the

“Saudis could persuade Pakistan to soften its opposition to any potential Saudi support for the Iranian Baluch… The Arab-Baluch alliance is deeply rooted in the history of the Gulf region and their opposition to Persian domination,” Mr. Husseinbor said.

Pointing to the vast expanses of Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Mr. Husseinbor went on to say that

“it would be a formidable challenge, if not impossible, for the Iranian government to protect such long distances…in the face of widespread Baluch opposition, particularly if this opposition is supported by Iran’s regional adversaries and world powers.”

Washington’s conservative Hudson Institute that prides itself on the Trump administration having adopted many of its policy recommendations, last year organized a seminar with as speakers Baloch, Iranian Arab, Iranian Kurdish and Iranian Azerbaijani nationalists.

Pakistani militants have claimed that Saudi Arabia had in the last year stepped up funding of militant madrassas or religious seminaries in Balochistan that allegedly serve as havens for anti-Iranian fighters.

The spectre of ethnic proxy wars in Iran, Pakistan, and Syria threatens to further destabilize the greater Middle East and complicate Chinese plans to develop the Pakistani deep-sea port of Gwadar, a crown jewel of China’s Belt and Road initiative.

Fuelling ethnic tensions further risks Iran responding in kind. Saudi Arabia has long accused Iran of instigating low-level violence and protests in its predominantly Shiite oil-rich Eastern Province as well as in Bahrain.  It also risks aggravating war in Yemen, regionalizing the Turkish-Kurdish confrontation in Syria, and pushing the Middle East ever closer to the brink.

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This article was originally published by The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario,  Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa, and the forthcoming China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom

Featured image is from the author.

The United States Air Force is launching its largest-ever three-week premier set of air war drills, called Red Flag 18-1, starting on Friday and will conclude February 16, said the 99th Air Base Wing Public Affairs.

On January 26, the air war drill, known as Red Flag, officially kicked off at Nellis Air Force Base, 20-miles outside of Las Vegas. Base officials have warned residents of increased military aircraft activity due to aircraft departing from Nellis Air Force Base twice-a-day to conduct war drills on the Nevada Test and Training Range.

“We’re trying a few new and different things with Red Flag 18-1,” said Col Michael Mathes, 414th Combat Training Squadron commander. “It’s the largest Red Flag ever with the largest number of participants, highlighting the balance of training efficiency with mission effectiveness.”

The drill involves a variety of attack, fighter and bomber aircraft as well as participants from the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, and Marine Corps. Foreign participants include Royal Australian Air Force and the Royal Air Force.

A video from the 2015 Red Flag drill is shown below.

“Red Flag 18-1 primarily is a strike package focused training venue that we integrate at a command and control level in support of joint task force operations,” said Mathes. “It’s a lot of words to say that we integrate every capability we can into strike operations that are flown out of Nellis Air Force Base.”

According to The Drive, the air war drill is the largest of its kind in the 42-year history, as the United States prepares for a possible conflict on the Korean Penisula.

Further, the USAF is going to “blackout GPS over the sprawling Nevada Test and Training Range,” said the Drive, which will provide realistic war-like conditions to challenge aircrews.

Flying.com reports the drills at the Nevada Test and Training Range will cause rolling GPS blackouts for the vast portions of the Western United States from January 26 through February 18. All GPS-equipped aircraft operating in the Western United States should be prepared for possible navigation failure in the region.

The NBAA Command Center reports the U.S. military will begin training exercises on the Nevada Test and Training Range between 0400Z until 0700Z daily. Training maneuvers will impact vast portions of the Western U.S. including California, Nevada, Oregon, Wyoming, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Montana and New Mexico. FAA enroute ATC centers affected include Albuquerque (ZAB), Denver (ZDV), Los Angeles (ZLA), Salt Lake (ZLC), Oakland (ZOA) and Seattle (ZSE). Operations in R-2508 and R-2501 may also be impacted.  

“Arrivals and departures from airports within the Las Vegas area may be issued non-Rnav re-routes with the possibility of increased traffic disruption near LAS requiring airborne re-routes to the south and east of the affected area. Aircraft operating in Los Angeles (ZLA) center airspace may experience navigational disruption, including suspension of Descend-via and Climb-via procedures. Non-Rnav SIDs and STARs may be issued within ZLA airspace in the event of increased navigational disruption. Crews should expect the possibility of airborne mile-in-trail and departure mile-in-trail traffic management initiatives.”

The Drive explains why the USAF is determined to use GPS spoofing and jamming technology but offers no insight into what a GPS blackout might mean for the millions of civilians who live in the Western region of the US.

GPS denial is a becoming a huge issue for American military planners. Peer states, especially Russia, are already putting GPS spoofing and jamming tactics to work during various training events near their own borders. We have discussed this situation in great depth before, and I would suggest you read this article to understand just how deeply the loss of reliable global positioning system data can mean for the U.S. and its allies during a time of war, as well as what is being done to overcome such a monumental hurdle.

The Pentagon has mysteriously tested technology that can jam GPS over a wide area before, and it is likely that this same capability will be put to use in the Nellis Test and Training Range for this Red Flag 18-1. Line-of-sight and distance impact the way in which GPS users, especially other airplanes, operating far outside the training area will be affected. Here is an article on those tests, which emanated from Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, which is located on the western edge of the Mojave Desert in California, in June of 2016.

Below is a released image showing the impact of a GPS jammer unleashed on the Western United States in a June 2016 test:

If there is a concrete reason why the Department of Defense is quietly preparing a massive air war drill in Nevada now, while simultaneously forcing a gigantic GPS blackout for the Western part of the United States, it has not been disclosed aside from the obvious, of course.

We know one thing: this exercise will last a lengthy three weeks and could pose significant risks and threats to devices that rely on GPS signals, which according to the DHS chart below, is pretty much anything with electronics in it these days.

Featured image: Robert Parry, 1949-2018

Robert Parry, editor and publisher of Consortiumnews.com, passed away on January 27th.

The Global Research team pays tribute to Robert Parry and his unwavering commitment to independent and honest journalism. His legacy will live.

Robert Parry was a powerful voice, incisive in his analysis of complex foreign policy issues, with a longstanding commitment to peace and social justice.  

On January 1st, I sent a short New Year’s message to Robert Parry. Today our thoughts are with Robert Parry and his family. 

To consult  The Robert Parry Archive of articles posted on GR, click here. 

In the following text, his son Nat Parry shares his thoughts on Robert Parry and his legacy.

Robert Parry’s Legacy is Truth in Media!

At this juncture in our history during which independent media is threatened, Robert Parry lives in our hearts and minds. 

Michel Chossudovsky, January 29, 2018

***

It is with a heavy heart that we inform Consortiumnews readers that Editor Robert Parry has passed away. As regular readers know, Robert (or Bob, as he was known to friends and family) suffered a stroke in December, which – despite his own speculation that it may have been brought on by the stress of covering Washington politics – was the result of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer that he had been unknowingly living with for the past 4-5 years.

He unfortunately suffered two more debilitating strokes in recent weeks and after the last one, was moved to hospice care on Tuesday. He passed away peacefully Saturday evening. He was 68.

Those of us close to him wish to sincerely thank readers for the kind comments and words of support posted on recent articles regarding Bob’s health issues. We read aloud many of these comments to him during his final days to let him know how much his work has meant to so many people and how much concern there was for his well-being.

I am sure that these kindnesses meant a lot to him. They also mean a lot to us as family members, as we all know how devoted he was to the mission of independent journalism and this website which has been publishing articles since the earliest days of the internet, launching all the way back in 1995.

With my dad, professional work has always been deeply personal, and his career as a journalist was thoroughly intertwined with his family life. I can recall kitchen table conversations in my early childhood that focused on the U.S.-backed wars in Central America and complaints about how his editors at The Associated Press were too timid to run articles of his that – no matter how well-documented – cast the Reagan administration in a bad light.

One of my earliest memories in fact was of my dad about to leave on assignment in the early 1980s to the war zones of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and the heartfelt good-bye that he wished to me and my siblings. He warned us that he was going to a very dangerous place and that there was a possibility that he might not come back.

I remember asking him why he had to go, why he couldn’t just stay at home with us. He replied that it was important to go to these places and tell the truth about what was happening there. He mentioned that children my age were being killed in these wars and that somebody had to tell their stories. I remember asking, “Kids like me?” He replied, “Yes, kids just like you.”

Bob was deeply impacted by the dirty wars of Central America in the 1980s and in many ways these conflicts – and the U.S. involvement in them – came to define the rest of his life and career. With grisly stories emerging from Nicaragua (thanks partly to journalists like him), Congress passed the Boland Amendments from 1982 to 1984, which placed limits on U.S. military assistance to the contras who were attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government through a variety of terrorist tactics.

The Reagan administration immediately began exploring ways to circumvent those legal restrictions, which led to a scheme to send secret arms shipments to the revolutionary and vehemently anti-American government of Iran and divert the profits to the contras. In 1985, Bob wrote the first stories describing this operation, which later became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

Contra-Cocaine and October Surprise

Parallel to the illegal arms shipments to Iran during those days was a cocaine trafficking operation by the Nicaraguan contras and a willingness by the Reagan administration and the CIA to turn a blind eye to these activities. This, despite the fact that cocaine was flooding into the United States while Ronald Reagan was proclaiming a “war on drugs,” and a crack cocaine epidemic was devastating communities across the country.

Poster by street artist and friend of Bob, Robbie Conal

Bob and his colleague Brian Barger were the first journalists to report on this story in late 1985, which became known as the contra-cocaine scandal and became the subject of a congressional investigation led by then-Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 1986.

Continuing to pursue leads relating to Iran-Contra during a period in the late 80s when most of Washington was moving on from the scandal, Bob discovered that there was more to the story than commonly understood. He learned that the roots of the illegal arm shipments to Iran stretched back further than previously known – all the way back to the 1980 presidential campaign.

That electoral contest between incumbent Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan had come to be largely dominated by the hostage crisis in Iran, with 52 Americans being held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Iranian hostage crisis, along with the ailing economy, came to define a perception of an America in decline, with former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan promising a new start for the country, a restoration of its status as a “shining city on a hill.”

The hostages were released in Tehran moments after Reagan was sworn in as president in Washington on January 20, 1981. Despite suspicions for years that there had been some sort of quid pro quo between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians, it wasn’t until Bob uncovered a trove of documents in a House office building basement in 1994 that the evidence became overwhelming that the Reagan campaign had interfered with the Carter administration’s efforts to free the hostages prior to the 1980 election. Their release sooner – what Carter hoped would be his “October Surprise” – could have given him the boost needed to win.

Examining these documents and being already well-versed on this story – having previously travelled three continents pursuing the investigation for a PBS Frontline documentary – Bob became increasingly convinced that the Reagan campaign had in fact sabotaged Carter’s hostage negotiations, possibly committing an act of treason in an effort to make sure that 52 American citizens continued to be held in a harrowing hostage situation until after Reagan secured the election.

Needless to say, this was an inconvenient story at a time – in the mid-1990s – when the national media had long since moved on from the Reagan scandals and were obsessing over new scandals, mostly related to President Bill Clinton’s sex life and failed real estate deals. Washington also wasn’t particularly interested in challenging the Reagan legacy, which at that time was beginning to solidify into a kind of mythology, with campaigns underway to name buildings and airports after the former president.

At times, Bob had doubts about his career decisions and the stories he was pursuing. As he wrote in Trick or Treason, a book outlining his investigation into the October Surprise Mystery, this search for historical truth can be painful and seemingly thankless.

“Many times,” he wrote, “I had regretted accepting Frontline’s assignment in 1990. I faulted myself for risking my future in mainstream journalism. After all, that is where the decent-paying jobs are. I had jeopardized my ability to support my four children out of an old-fashioned sense of duty, a regard for an unwritten code that expects reporters to take almost any assignment.”

Nevertheless, Bob continued his efforts to tell the full story behind both the Iran-Contra scandal and the origins of the Reagan-Bush era, ultimately leading to two things: him being pushed out of the mainstream media, and the launching of Consortiumnews.com.

I remember when he started the website, together with my older brother Sam, back in 1995. At the time, in spite of talk we were all hearing about something called “the information superhighway” and “electronic mail,” I had never visited a website and didn’t even know how to get “on line.” My dad called me in Richmond, where I was a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University, and told me I should check out this new “Internet site” he and Sam had just launched.

He explained over the phone how to open a browser and instructed me how to type in the URL, starting, he said, with “http,” then a colon and two forward slashes, then “www,” then “dot,” then this long address with one or two more forward slashes if I recall. (It wasn’t until years later that the website got its own domain and a simpler address.)

I went to the computer lab at the university and asked for some assistance on how to get online, dutifully typed in the URL, and opened this website – the first one I had ever visited. It was interesting, but a bit hard to read on the computer screen, so I printed out some articles to read back in my dorm room.

I quickly became a fan of “The Consortium,” as it was called back then, and continued reading articles on the October Surprise Mystery as Bob and Sam posted them on this new and exciting tool called “the Internet.” Sam had to learn HTML coding from scratch to launch this online news service, billed as “the Internet’s First Investigative ‘Zine.” For his efforts, Sam was honored with the Consortium for Independent Journalism’s first Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award in 2015.

X-Files and Contra-Crack

At some point along the way, Bob decided that in addition to the website, where he was not only posting original articles but also providing the source documents that he had uncovered in the House office building basement, he would also take a stab at traditional publishing. He compiled the “October Surprise X-Files” into a booklet and self-published it in January 1996.

Original Consortium merchandise from 1996.

He was also publishing a newsletter to complement the website, knowing that at that time, there were still plenty of people who didn’t know how to turn a computer on, much less navigate the World Wide Web. I transferred from Virginia Commonwealth University to George Mason University in the DC suburbs and started working part-time with my dad and Sam on the newsletter and website.

We worked together on the content, editing and laying it out with graphics often culled from books at our local library. We built a subscriber base through networking and purchasing mailing lists from progressive magazines. Every two weeks we would get a thousand copies printed from Sir Speedy and would spend Friday evening collating these newsletters and sending them out to our subscribers.

The launching of the website and newsletter, and later an even-more ambitious project called I.F. Magazine, happened to coincide with the publication in 1996 of Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series at the San Jose Mercury-News. Webb’s series reopened the contra-cocaine controversy with a detailed examination of the drug trafficking networks in Nicaragua and Los Angeles that had helped to spread highly addictive crack cocaine across the United States.

The African-American community, in particular, was rightly outraged over this story, which offered confirmation of many long-standing suspicions that the government was complicit in the drug trade devastating their communities. African Americans had been deeply and disproportionately affected by the crack epidemic, both in terms of the direct impact of the drug and the draconian drug laws and mandatory minimum sentences that came to define the government’s approach to “the war on drugs.”

For a moment in the summer of 1996, it appeared that the renewed interest in the contra-cocaine story might offer an opportunity to revisit the crimes and misdeeds of the Reagan-Bush era, but those hopes were dashed when the “the Big Media” decided to double down on its earlier failures to cover this story properly.

Big Papers Pile On

The Los Angeles Times launched the attack on Gary Webb and his reporting at the San Jose Mercury-News, followed by equally dismissive stories at the Washington Post and New York Times. The piling on from these newspapers eventually led Mercury-News editor Jerry Ceppos to denounce Webb’s reporting and offer a mea culpa for publishing the articles.

The onslaught of hostile reporting from the big papers failed to address the basic premises of Webb’s series and did not debunk the underlying allegations of contra-cocaine smuggling or the fact that much of this cocaine ended up on American streets in the form of crack. Instead, it raised doubts by poking holes in certain details and casting the story as a “conspiracy theory.” Some of the reporting attempted to debunk claims that Webb never actually made – such as the idea that the contra-cocaine trafficking was part of a government plot to intentionally decimate the African-American community.

Gary Webb holds up a copy of the San Jose Mercury-News with his front-page story.

Gary Webb and Bob were in close contact during those days. Bob offered him professional and personal support, having spent his time also on the receiving end of attacks by journalistic colleagues and editors who rejected certain stories – no matter how factual – as fanciful conspiracy theories. Articles at The Consortium website and newsletter, as well as I.F. Magazine, offered details on the historical context for the “Dark Alliance” series and pushed back against the mainstream media’s onslaught of hostile and disingenuous reporting.

Bob also published the book Lost History which provided extensive details on the background for the “Dark Alliance” series, explaining that far from a baseless “conspiracy theory,” the facts and evidence strongly supported the conclusion that the Reagan-Bush administrations had colluded with drug traffickers to fund their illegal war against Nicaragua.

But sadly, the damage to Gary Webb was done.  With his professional and personal life in tatters because of his courageous reporting on the contra-cocaine story, he committed suicide in 2004 at the age of 49. Speaking about this suicide later on Democracy Now, Bob noted how painful it is to be ridiculed and unfairly criticized by colleagues, as his friend had experienced.

“There’s a special pain when your colleagues in your profession turn on you, especially when you’ve done something that they should admire and should understand,” he said. “To do all that work and then have the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times attack you and try to destroy your life, there’s a special pain in that.”

In consultation with his family, Bob and the Board of Directors for the Consortium for Independent Journalism launched the Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award in 2015.

The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush

The presidency of George W. Bush was surreal for many of us, and no one more so than my dad.

In covering Washington politics for decades, Bob had traced many stories to “Dubya’s” father, George H.W. Bush, who had been implicated in a variety of questionable activities, including the October Surprise Mystery and Iran-Contra. He had also launched a war against Iraq in 1991 that seemed to be motivated, at least in part, to help kick “the Vietnam Syndrome,” i.e. the reluctance that the American people had felt since the Vietnam War to support military action abroad.

As Bob noted in his 1992 book Fooling America, after U.S. forces routed the Iraqi military in 1991, President Bush’s first public comment about the victory expressed his delight that it would finally put to rest the American reflex against committing troops to far-off conflicts. “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all,” he exulted.

The fact that Bush-41’s son could run for president largely on name recognition confirmed to Bob the failure of the mainstream media to cover important stories properly and the need to continue building an independent media infrastructure. This conviction solidified through Campaign 2000 and the election’s ultimate outcome, when Bush assumed the White House as the first popular-vote loser in more than a century.

Despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court had halted the counting of votes in Florida, thus preventing an accurate determination of the rightful winner, most of the national media moved on from the story after Bush was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2001. Consortiumnews.com continued to examine the documentary record, however, and ultimately concluded that Al Gore would have been declared the winner of that election if all the legally cast ballots were counted.

At Consortiumnews, there was an unwritten editorial policy that the title “President” should never precede George W. Bush’s name, based on our view that he was not legitimately elected. But beyond those editorial decisions, we also understood the gravity of the fact that had Election 2000 been allowed to play out with all votes counted, many of the disasters of the Bush years – notably the 9/11 tragedy and the Iraq War, as well as decisions to withdraw from international agreements on arms control and climate change – might have been averted.

As all of us who lived through the post-9/11 era will recall, it was a challenging time all around, especially if you were someone critical of George W. Bush. The atmosphere in that period did not allow for much dissent. Those who stood up against the juggernaut for war – such as Phil Donahue at MSNBC, Chris Hedges at the New York Times, or even the Dixie Chicks – had their careers damaged and found themselves on the receiving end of death threats and hate mail.

While Bob’s magazine and newsletter projects had been discontinued, the website was still publishing articles, providing a home for dissenting voices that questioned the case for invading Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003. Around this time, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and some of his colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and a long-running relationship with Consortiumnews was established. Several former intelligence veterans began contributing to the website, motivated by the same independent spirit of truth-telling that compelled Bob to invest so much in this project.

At a time when almost the entire mainstream media was going along with the Bush administration’s dubious case for war, this and a few other like-minded websites pushed back with well-researched articles calling into question the rationale. Although at times it might have felt as though we were just voices in the wilderness, a major groundswell of opposition to war emerged in the country, with historic marches of hundreds of thousands taking place to reject Bush’s push for war.

Neck Deep was published by the Media Consortium in 2007.

Of course, these antiwar voices were ultimately vindicated by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the fact that the war and occupation proved to be a far costlier and deadlier enterprise than we had been told that it would be. Earlier assurances that it would be a “cakewalk” proved as false as the WMD claims, but as had been so often the case in Washington, there was little to no accountability from the mainstream media, the think tanks or government officials for being so spectacularly wrong.

In an effort to document the true history of that era, Bob, Sam and I co-wrote the book Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, which was published in late 2007. The book traced the work of Consortiumnews, juxtaposing it against the backdrop of mainstream media coverage during the Bush era, in an effort to not only correct the record, but also demonstrate that not all of us got things so wrong.

We felt it was important to remind readers – as well as future historians – that some of us knew and reported in real time the mistakes that were being made on everything from withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol to invading Iraq to implementing a policy of torture to bungling the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obama Era

By the time Barack Obama was elected the 44th president, Consortiumnews.com had become a home to a growing number of writers who brought new perspectives to the website’s content. While for years, the writing staff had been limited primarily to Bob, Sam and me, suddenly, Consortiumnews was receiving contributions from journalists, activists and former intelligence analysts who offered a wide range of expertise – on international law, economics, human rights, foreign policy, national security, and even religion and philosophy.

One recurring theme of articles at the website during the Obama era was the enduring effect of unchallenged narratives, how they shaped national politics and dictated government policy. Bob observed that even a supposedly left-of-center president like Obama seemed beholden to the false narratives and national mythologies dating back to the Reagan era. He pointed out that this could be at least partially attributed to the failure to establish a strong foundation for independent journalism.

In a 2010 piece called “Obama’s Fear of the Reagan Narrative,” Bob noted that Obama had defended his deal with Republicans on tax cuts for the rich because there was such a strong lingering effect of Reagan’s messaging from 30 years earlier. “He felt handcuffed by the Right’s ability to rally Americans on behalf of Reagan’s ‘government-is-the-problem’ message,” Bob wrote.

He traced Obama’s complaints about his powerlessness in the face of this dynamic to the reluctance of American progressives to invest sufficiently in media and think tanks, as conservatives had been doing for decades in waging their “the war of ideas.” As he had been arguing since the early 1990s, Robert insisted that the limits that had been placed on Obama – whether real or perceived – continued to demonstrate the power of propaganda and the need for greater investment in alternative media.

He also observed that much of the nuttiness surrounding the so-called Tea Party movement resulted from fundamental misunderstandings of American history and constitutional principles. “Democrats and progressives should be under no illusion about the new flood of know-nothingism that is about to inundate the United States in the guise of a return to ‘first principles’ and a deep respect for the U.S. Constitution,” Bob warned.

He pointed out that despite the Tea Partiers’ claimed reverence for the Constitution, they actually had very little understanding of the document, as revealed by their ahistorical claims that federal taxes are unconstitutional. In fact, as Bob observed, the Constitution represented “a major power grab by the federal government, when compared to the loosely drawn Articles of Confederation, which lacked federal taxing authority and other national powers.”

Motivated by a desire to correct falsified historical narratives spanning more than two centuries, Bob published his sixth and final book, America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Obama, in 2012.

Along with revenues from book sales, growing donations from readers enabled Bob to not only pay writers but also to hire an assistant, Chelsea Gilmour, who began working for Consortiumnews in 2014. In addition to providing invaluable administrative support, Chelsea also performed duties including research, writing and fact-checking.

Political Realignment and the New McCarthyism

Although at the beginning of the Obama era – and indeed since the 1980s – the name Robert Parry had been closely associated with exposing wrongdoing by Republicans, and hence had a strong following among Democratic Party loyalists, by the end of Obama’s presidency there seemed to be a realignment taking place among some of Consortiumnews.com’s readership, which reflected more generally the shifting politics of the country.

In particular, the U.S. media’s approach to Russia and related issues, such as the violent ouster in 2014 of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, became “virtually 100 percent propaganda,” Bob said.

He noted that the full story was never told when it came to issues such as the Sergei Magnitsky case, which led to the first round of U.S. sanctions against Russia, nor the inconvenient facts related to the Euromaidan protests that led to Yanukovych’s ouster – including the reality of strong neo-Nazi influence in those protests – nor the subsequent conflict in the Donbass region of Ukraine.

Bob’s stories on Ukraine were widely cited and disseminated, and he became an important voice in presenting a fuller picture of the conflict than was possible by reading and watching only mainstream news outlets. Bob was featured prominently in Oliver Stone’s 2016 documentary “Ukraine on Fire,” where he explained how U.S.-funded political NGOs and media companies have worked with the CIA and foreign policy establishment since the 1980s to promote the U.S. geopolitical agenda.

Bob regretted that, increasingly, “the American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the ‘other side of the story.’” Indeed, he said that to even suggest that there might be another side to the story is enough to get someone branded as an apologist for Vladimir Putin or a “Kremlin stooge.”

The PropOrNot logo

This culminated in late 2016 in the blacklisting of Consortiumnews.com on a dubious website called “PropOrNot,” which was claiming to serve as a watchdog against undue “Russian influence” in the United States. The PropOrNot blacklist, including Consortiumnews and about 200 other websites deemed “Russian propaganda,” was elevated by the Washington Post as a credible source, despite the fact that the neo-McCarthyites who published the list hid behind a cloak of anonymity.

“The Post’s article by Craig Timberg,” Bob wrote on Nov. 27, 2016, “described PropOrNot simply as ‘a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds [who] planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.’”

As Bob explained in an article called “Washington Post’s Fake News Guilt,” the paper granted PropOrNot anonymity “to smear journalists who don’t march in lockstep with official pronouncements from the State Department or some other impeccable fount of never-to-be-questioned truth.”

The Post even provided an unattributed quote from the head of the shadowy website. “The way that this propaganda apparatus supported [Donald] Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” the anonymous smear merchant said. The Post claimed that the PropOrNot “executive director” had spoken on the condition of anonymity “to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers.”

To be clear, neither Consortiumnews nor Robert Parry ever “supported Trump,” as the above anonymous quote claims. Something interesting, however, did seem to be happening in terms of Consortiumnews’ readership in the early days of the Trump presidency, as could be gleaned from some of the comments left on articles and social media activity.

It did appear for some time at least that a good number of Trump supporters were reading Consortiumnews, which could probably be attributed to the fact that the website was one of the few outlets pushing back against both the “New Cold War” with Russia and the related story of “Russiagate,” which Bob didn’t even like referring to as a “scandal.” (As an editor, he preferred to use the word “controversy” on the website, because as far as he was concerned, the allegations against Trump and his supposed “collusion” with Russia did not rise to the level of actual scandals such as Watergate or Iran-Contra.)

In his view, the perhaps understandable hatred of Trump felt by many Americans – both inside and outside the Beltway – had led to an abandonment of old-fashioned rules of journalism and standards of fairness, which should be applied even to someone like Donald Trump.

“On a personal note, I faced harsh criticism even from friends of many years for refusing to enlist in the anti-Trump ‘Resistance,’” Bob wrote in his final article for Consortiumnews.

“The argument was that Trump was such a unique threat to America and the world that I should join in finding any justification for his ouster,” he said. “Some people saw my insistence on the same journalistic standards that I had always employed somehow a betrayal.”

He marveled that even senior editors in the mainstream media treated the unproven Russiagate allegations as flat fact.

“No skepticism was tolerated and mentioning the obvious bias among the never-Trumpers inside the FBI, Justice Department and intelligence community was decried as an attack on the integrity of the U.S. government’s institutions,” Bob wrote. “Anti-Trump ‘progressives’ were posturing as the true patriots because of their now unquestioning acceptance of the evidence-free proclamations of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”

An Untimely End and the Future of Consortiumnews

My dad’s untimely passing has come as a shock to us all, especially since up until a month ago, there was no indication whatsoever that he was sick in any way. He took good care of himself, never smoked, got regular check-ups, exercised, and ate well. The unexpected health issues starting with a mild stroke Christmas Eve and culminating with his admission into hospice care several days ago offer a stark reminder that nothing should be taken for granted.

And as many Consortiumnews readers have eloquently pointed out in comments left on recent articles regarding Bob’s health, it also reminds us that his brand of journalism is needed today more than ever.

“We need free will thinkers like you who value the truth based on the evidence and look past the group think in Washington to report on the real reasons for our government’s and our media’s actions which attempt to deceive us all,” wrote, for example, “FreeThinker.”

“Common sense and integrity are the hallmarks of Robert Parry’s journalism. May you get better soon for you are needed more now then ever before,” wrote “T.J.”

“We need a new generation of reporters, journalists, writers, and someone always being tenacious to follow up on the story,” added “Tina.”

As someone who has been involved with this website since its inception – as a writer, an editor and a reader – I concur with these sentiments. Readers should rest assured that despite my dad’s death, every effort will be made to ensure that the website will continue going strong.

Indeed, I think that everyone involved with this project wants to uphold the same commitment to truth-telling without fear or favor that inspired Bob and his heroes like George Seldes, I.F. Stone, and Thomas Paine.

That commitment can be seen in my dad’s pursuit of stories such as those mentioned above, but also so many others – including his investigations into the financial relationship of the influential Washington Times with the Unification Church cult of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the truth behind the Nixon campaign’s alleged efforts to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson’s Paris peace talks with Vietnamese leaders in 1968, the reality of the chemical attack in Syria in 2013, and even detailed examinations of the evidence behind the so-called “Deflategate” controversy that he felt unfairly branded his favorite football team, the New England Patriots, as cheaters.

Reviewing these journalistic achievements, it becomes clear that there are few stories that have slipped under Consortiumnews.com’s radar, and that the historical record is far more complete thanks to this website and Bob’s old-fashioned approach to journalism.

But besides this deeply held commitment to independent journalism, it should also be recalled that, ultimately, Bob was motivated by a concern over the future of life on Earth. As someone who grew up at the height of the Cold War, he understood the dangers of allowing tensions and hysteria to spiral out of control, especially in a world such as ours with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on the planet many times over.

As the United States continues down the path of a New Cold War, my dad would be pleased to know that he has such committed contributors who will enable the site to remain the indispensable home for independent journalism that it has become, and continue to push back on false narratives that threaten our very survival.

Thank you all for your support.

In lieu of flowers, Bob’s family asks you to please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Consortium for Independent Journalism.

“The presence of a group of African sell-outs is a part of the definition of underdevelopment.”- Walter Rodney

Last year, Professor Rupert Lewis, a prominent Caribbean intellectual, was invited to provide a teach-in session on anti-establishment strategies in the 1960s and 1970s at the University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica. In the introduction of his presentation, he posed a crucial question to the participants: what were the organizing principles of the nation?

While internalizing this question, I experienced a detailed flashback in my mind about discussions my grandfather had with me about newly independent Jamaica.

The popular notion of Jamaica is a small state poised by the radiance of the sunshine, lush vegetation, lovely white sand beaches, a vibrant culture and talented people- the ideal tropical paradise to the “outside world”.

On the other hand, my grandfather provided mixed accounts of hopes and sorrows similar to many in his generation who directly experienced Jamaica’s independence from Britain in 1962. He gave chilling accounts of growing up in poverty and having limited access to many social and economic privileges and labelled politics in Jamaica as “politricks”. In his opinion, various political leaders had deceived the Jamaican people and have failed to create an environment that would truly empower all citizens regardless of their differences especially the black and suffering majority. Nevertheless, he also spoke about the feeling of satisfaction despite the fact that he didn’t achieve material wealth or higher education. These accounts have fuelled me to search deft, alternative knowledge in order to enhance my awareness and the awareness of others and most importantly, to effectively respond to Lewis’ question that was posed last year.

First, when we use the word ‘post-colonialism’ to describe independent Jamaica, we are actually accepting an unchallenged myth because there is nothing ‘post’ about ‘post-colonialism’. The prefix ‘post’ means subsequent to, and colonialism is not a process that has officially ended merely through an annual celebration. Colonialism is an institutionalized, historical process that has had long, crippling effects on the construction of race, social class, skin colour, geographic location, gender and sexual orientation in Jamaica. It has also evolved beyond the occupation of territory, physical, psychological mistreatment as well as torture and genocide of our African ancestors. Therefore, the nation, as a concept, in the context of independence is a fictitious concept because colonialism persisted after 1962. Helen C. Scott (2006) challenged post-colonial thought in her book, ‘Caribbean Women Writers: Fictions of Independence’ by arguing, “new methods of foreign control have replaced formal colonialism, making a mockery of independence in any genuine sense.” Scott’s criticism about independence is timeless because independence is a process that charades in liberation, self-determination and inclusion of the masses but the fact of the matter is that, independence has not revolutionized the landscape of Jamaica. Consequently, the organizing principles of the nation were conformity and maintaining the self-interests of the political and economic elite.

The suffering majority were and continue to be excluded from the concept of ‘nation’ because the ownership of wealth and production determines who charts the political path of Jamaica. One’s personhood and self-worth in independent Jamaica can be summarized using this statement, ‘to be is to have’.

Secondly, the late Professor of Economics Norman Girvan (2015) lamented on the fact that the Constitution of Jamaica did not actively involve mass participation and inclusion of the Jamaican people in its framework and implementation but rather a few wealthy landowners and members of the political parties along with British officials. He noted that the language of the Constitution did not reflect the peculiar experiences of the nation and its people and by extension; the original name of the Jamaican Constitution was the Royal Order in Council. This validates the perspective that the plantation institution has remained tightly in tact but has been replaced by new colonial masters who are tied to the values of external forces rather than the aspirations of their local citizenry. This is what led Louis Lindsay in 1975 to postulate that independence served more of a legalistic and ritualistic function rather than a revolutionary function because new leaders have bolstered the images and privileges from the ancient regime while the predicament of the masses have remained unchanged.

My grandfather’s satisfaction with his poverty was borne apathy towards a system that has been promising hope and prosperity for years but like drought, it never came and he accepted his situation. Lewis’ question allowed me to have a deeper insight on the standpoint of the powerless and oppressed and the numerous factors that increase the vulnerabilities of Jamaicans living on the margins in a ‘free’ and ‘independent’ country while ‘irie’ images are flaunted on the basis of escape from the realities, resilience and deception.

*

Tina Renier lives in Jamaica and is currently a final year student at the University of the West Indies, Mona pursuing a Bachelor of Science in International Relations.

“I won’t even start with the old rule that when there’s a contract killing, it’s usually the killer who first offers their condolences.” Nenad Čanak, Radio Free Europe, Jan 22, 2018

The highest form of scandalous patriotism is real estate, often blood soaked, and almost always fortified.  What one controls is often less important as who is doing so. In the case of Kosovo, attempts at control, overt and covert, have been exerted for years. Officially, Serbia lacks de facto effectiveness, a state of affairs in place since the aftermath of the 1999 bombings by NATO.  Neither does Albania, which also acts as a stalking counterpart in the region.  Kosovo itself occupies a legal twilight zone, tormenting those in search of certainty, puzzling international legal scholars and experts in the field of recognition.   

The territory itself has been pockmarked over the years with ethnic displacement and redistributions.  Concentrations of Serbs, for instance, can be found across the Ibar River, many having fled in the wake of avenging Albanians in 1999.  Governance has been shot to pieces.  Security incidents take place during the course of each week. 

Various groups, elements, and bands of not so merry creatures have done their best to insinuate themselves into the ethnic and loose framework of this fragile entity.  Such conditions have been facilitated by the less than forceful assertion of control by NATO and the United Nations, notably over matters touching on security.  In such a vacuum, vigilantism and crime thrive in abundance.

Oliver Ivanović, who was gunned down on January 16 outside his party office in Mitrovica, was one such figure to rise out of this anarchic storm. A Serb who nonetheless still engaged Albanian counterparts when needed, his political awareness was such as to be inaccurately labelled as a moderate.  The informed pragmatist would have been more accurate.

No figure of prominence can ever function in the politics of Kosovo without cracking the odd egg, if not skull.  Reputations are often made in the cauldron of most resistance and greatest defiance.  Ivanović became known for being the front man of the self-styled bridge watchers, keen to ensure that Albanian influence stopped before the town of Mitrovica.

Ivanović, however, had noticed a change in local conditions, notably touching on Mitrovica itself. Albanians were, for one, no longer the largest threats, the irritations in the ointment.  The agents of disorder and decay could be found within.

In September, he made an observation that caught much attention:

“Fear is pervasive in Metrovica, not of Albanians anymore but of Serbs, local criminals who ride around in SUVs without license plates.  Drugs are sold on every corner.  And the police only watch.  It is obvious that they are afraid of the perpetrators or the perpetrators are part of the security structures themselves.”

A contract, or contracts, were duly made on his life, though in the fetid depths of misrule, it remains unclear who was the group behind the trigger.  Vuk Dračković of the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement spotted the traits of political murder similar to those of the 1990s.  Ivanović had been the conciliator, the voice of reason, a figure of negotiation, all factors earning him demerit points with his enemies.  The bullets for Ivanović were “aimed at the Brussels agreement, the internal dialogue on Kosovo’s future, the stability of the region as a whole, and Serbia’s European path.”

Nenad Čanak of the League of Social Democrats for Vojvodina sees a picture a few steps removed, smoked and cured in the great tradition of Balkan conspiracy.  Russia, he suggests, might be involved, as the killing potentially provides an opportunity for Moscow to “act as the peacemaker” thereby causing “the international community [to turn] a blind eye to Crimea and the Donbas and accep[ting] the usurpation of parts of the territory of a neighbouring country, which Russia supports.”

In the aftermath of the death, political figures are treading on water. Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić took stock and paid a visit to Mitrovica, a point hat immediately drew comments from such figures as Dejan Jovic, who called it his kosovski momenat, or “Kosovo moment”.  This was hardly meant to flatter: the late Slobodan Milošević paid a trouble-stirred visit in 1987 promising that “no one should are beat you again”.  The blood was rushing, hearts were aflutter, and the separatist feelings were biting.

As Gordana Knezević noted, the greeting for the Serbian leader on this occasion was different.  1987 had been all bluster and nationalist stirring, spotting and detecting enemies.  Now, the log of concerns was more immediate, tangible and desperate: a fear of local ruination, despoliation and lawlessness.  His response to such insecurity was similarly more contained.

Some fairly pointless speculations have been made in assessing this brutal incident.  One view is that this was blood shed with potential, a murder with decent consequences.  People, for one, will start talking: in Pristina, in Belgrade, in Kosovo.  This aspirational view is well and good, but will hardly be of comfort to those who hanker for that most novel of ideas in Kosovo: stability.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: [email protected]

Western Sahara is home to a fortified wall that is 16 times longer than what used to divide Berlin. It’s also dropped millions of landmines into the mix. Did you know about this?

The Great Wall Of China, 13, 170 miles long, is the longest wall in the world. Coming in second is a desert wall you have never even heard of. “The Berm” is 1,678 miles of piled rock and sand. Heavily armed, it cuts right through the Sahara Desert.

In 1975, Morocco claimed sovereignty over Western Sahara. But the local Sahrawi population resisted so Morocco built the longest functional military wall in the world to keep them out.

Moroccans call it “The Berm” but to the Sahrawis it’s the “Wall of Shame”. “The Berm” is guarded by tanks, radar and roughly 120, 000 soldiers, keeping watch 24/7.

Source: The Longest, Deadliest Wall In The World That Nobody Talks About by INSH on Rumble

It’s also home to the world’s longest continuous minefield. Over seven million landmines lie beyond its fortifications. They have injured over 2,500 people of all ages. Not many people in North America know about this wall. But, it’s a wonder something like this has been allowed to exist for so long.

The seven million landmines scattered across its perimeter also help rank it as the world’s longest minefield. At nearly 1,700 miles, it doesn’t quite match the enormity of the Great Wall of China, but the Great Wall of today doesn’t have explosives surrounding it and soldiers on patrol.

When Morocco took region of Western Sahara over from Spain in 1976, it inherited a long-standing territorial issue with guerrilla forces from the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

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Featured image is from ArtsAction Blog.

Robert Parry, editor and publisher of Consortiumnews.com, passed away on January 27th.

The Global Research team pays tribute to Robert Parry and his unwavering commitment to independent and honest journalism. His legacy will live.

On January 1st, I sent a short note to Robert Parry. Today our thoughts are with Robert Parry and his family. 

Robert Parry was a powerful voice, incisive in his analysis of complex foreign policy issues, with a longstanding commitment to peace and social justice.  

To consult  The Robert Parry Archive of articles posted on GR, click here. 

Below is Robert Parry’s incisive and timely April 2013 article on Hollywood’s slanted interpretation of the Soviet Afghan war.  The US supported “Freedom Fighters” were Al Qaeda. The Afghan Mujahideen were jihadist mercenaries recruited by the CIA. It was all for a good cause: destabilize a progressive secular government, occupy and destroy Afghanistan, undermine the Soviet Union.

“Reagan’s pet “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan as in Nicaragua were tainted by the drug trade as well as by well-documented cases of torture, rape and murder.”

Robert Parry’s Legacy is Truth in Media!  

At this juncture in our history during which independent media is threatened, Robert Parry lives in our hearts and minds. 

Michel Chossudovsky, January 29, 2018

**

A newly discovered document undercuts a key storyline of the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s – that it was “Charlie Wilson’s War.” A note inside Ronald Reagan’s White House targeted the Texas Democrat as someone “to bring into circle as discrete Hill connection,” Robert Parry reports.

Official Washington’s conventional wisdom about Afghanistan derives to a dangerous degree from a Hollywood movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” which depicted the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s as a fight pitting good “freedom fighters” vs. evil “occupiers” and which blamed Afghanistan’s later descent into chaos on feckless U.S. politicians quitting as soon as Soviet troops left in 1989.

The Tom Hanks movie also pushed the theme that the war was really the pet project of a maverick Democratic congressman from Texas, Charlie Wilson, who fell in love with the Afghan mujahedeen after falling in love with a glamorous Texas oil woman, Joanne Herring, who was committed to their anti-communist cause.

However, “Charlie Wilson’s War” – like many Hollywood films – took extraordinary license with the facts, presenting many of the war’s core elements incorrectly. That in itself might not be a serious problem, except that key U.S. policymakers have cited these mythical “facts” as lessons to guide the current U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan.

The degree to which Ronald Reagan’s White House saw Wilson as more puppet than puppet-master is underscored by a newly discovered document at Reagan’s presidential library in Simi Valley, California. I found the document in the files of former CIA propaganda chief Walter Raymond Jr., who in the 1980s oversaw the selling of U.S. interventions in Central America and Afghanistan from his office at the National Security Council.

The handwritten note to Raymond appears to be initialed by then-National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane and instructs Raymond to recruit Wilson into the Reagan administration’s effort to drum up more Afghan war money for the fiscal 1985 budget. The note reads:

“Walt, Go see Charlie Wilson (D-TX). Seek to bring him into circle as discrete Hill connection. He can be very helpful in getting money. M.” (The notation may have used the wrong adjective, possibly intending ”discreet,” meaning circumspect and suggesting a secretive role, not “discrete,” meaning separate and distinct.)

Raymond appears to have followed up those instructions, as Wilson began to play a bigger and bigger role in unleashing the great Afghan spending spree of 1985 and as Raymond asserted himself behind the scenes on how the war should be sold to the American people.

Raymond, a 30-year veteran of CIA clandestine services, was a slight, soft-spoken New Yorker who reminded some of a character from a John le Carre spy novel, an intelligence officer who “easily fades into the woodwork,” according to one Raymond acquaintance. But his CIA career took a dramatic turn in 1982 when he was reassigned to the NSC.

At the time, the White House saw a need to step up its domestic propaganda operations in support of President Reagan’s desire to intervene more aggressively in Central America and Afghanistan. The American people – still stung by the agony of the Vietnam War – were not eager to engage in more foreign adventures.

So, Reagan’s team took aim at “kicking the Vietnam Syndrome” mostly by wildly exaggerating the Soviet threat. It became crucial to convince Americans that the Soviets were on the rise and on the march, though in reality the Soviets were on the decline and eager for accommodations with the West.

Yet, as deputy assistant secretary to the Air Force, J. Michael Kelly, put it, “the most critical special operations mission we have … is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us.”

The main focus of the administration’s domestic propaganda was on Central America where Reagan was arming right-wing military juntas engaged in anti-leftist extermination campaigns. Through the CIA, Reagan also was organizing a drug-tainted terrorist operation known as the Contras to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

To hide the ugly realities and to overcome popular opposition to the policies, Reagan granted CIA Director William Casey extraordinary leeway to engage in CIA-style propaganda and disinformation aimed at the American people, the sort of project normally reserved for hostile countries. To oversee the operation – while skirting legal bans on the CIA operating domestically – Casey moved Raymond from the CIA to the NSC staff.

Raymond formally resigned from the CIA in April 1983 so, he said, “there would be no question whatsoever of any contamination of this.” But from the beginning, Raymond fretted about the legality of Casey’s involvement. Raymond confided in one memo that it was important “to get [Casey] out of the loop,” but Casey never backed off and Raymond continued to send progress reports to his old boss well into 1986.

It was “the kind of thing which [Casey] had a broad catholic interest in,” Raymond shrugged during a deposition given to congressional Iran-Contra investigators in 1987. Raymond offered the excuse that Casey undertook this apparently illegal interference in domestic politics “not so much in his CIA hat, but in his adviser to the president hat.”

Raymond also understood that the administration’s hand in the P.R. projects must stay hidden, because of other legal bans on executive-branch propaganda. “The work down within the administration has to, by definition, be at arms length,” Raymond noted in an Aug. 29, 1983, memo.

As one NSC official told me, the campaign was modeled after CIA covert operations abroad where a political goal is more important than the truth. “They were trying to manipulate [U.S.] public opinion … using the tools of Walt Raymond’s trade craft which he learned from his career in the CIA covert operation shop,” the official said.

From the NSC, Raymond organized inter-agency task forces to bombard the U.S. public with hyped-up propaganda about the Soviet threat in Central America and in Afghanistan. Raymond’s goal was to change the way Americans viewed these dangers, a process that the Reagan administration internally called “perception management.”

Scores of documents about this operation were released during the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987, but Washington-based journalists never paid much attention to the evidence about how they had been manipulated by these propaganda tactics, which included rewarding cooperative reporters with government-sponsored “leaks” and punishing those who wouldn’t parrot the lies with whispering campaigns in the ears of their editors and bureau chiefs. [See Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

Even after the Iran-Contra scandal was exposed in 1986 and Casey died of brain cancer in 1987, the Republicans fought to keep secret the remarkable story of this propaganda apparatus. As part of a deal to get three moderate Republican senators to join Democrats in signing the Iran-Contra report, Democratic leaders dropped a draft chapter on the CIA’s domestic propaganda role.

Thus, the American people were spared the chapter’s troubling conclusion: that a covert propaganda apparatus had existed, run by “one of the CIA’s most senior specialists, sent to the NSC by Bill Casey, to create and coordinate an inter-agency public-diplomacy mechanism [which] did what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might do. [It] attempted to manipulate the media, the Congress and public opinion to support the Reagan administration’s policies.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Iran-Contra’s Lost Chapter.”]

Raping Russians

Hiding the unspeakable realities of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan was almost as high a priority as concealing the U.S.-backed slaughter in Central America. Reagan’s pet “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan as in Nicaragua were tainted by the drug trade as well as by well-documented cases of torture, rape and murder.

Yet, Raymond and his propagandists were always looking for new ways to “sell” the wars to the American people, leading to a clash with CIA officer Gust Avrakotos, who was overseeing the Afghan conflict and who had developed his own close ties to Rep. Charlie Wilson.

According to author George Crile, whose book Charlie Wilson’s War provided a loose framework for the movie of the same name, Avrakotos clashed with Raymond and other senior Reagan administration officials when they proposed unrealistic propaganda themes regarding Afghanistan.

One of Raymond’s ideas was to get some Russian soldiers to “defect” and then fly them from Afghanistan to Washington where they would renounce communism. The problem, as Avrakotos explained, was that the Afghan mujahedeen routinely tortured and then murdered any Soviet soldier who fell into their hands, except for a few who were kept around for anal rape.

“For Avrakotos, 1985 was a year of right-wing craziness,” Crile wrote. “A band of well-placed anti-Communist enthusiasts in the administration had come up with a plan they believed would bring down the Red Army, if the CIA would only be willing to implement it. The leading advocates of this plan included Richard Perle at the Pentagon. … [NSC aide] Oliver North also checked in briefly, but the man who set Avrakotos’s teeth on edge most was Walt Raymond, another NSC staffer who had spent twenty years with the CIA as a propagandist.

“Their idea was to encourage Soviet officers and soldiers to defect to the mujahideen. As Avrakotos derisively describes it, ‘The muj were supposed to set up loudspeakers in the mountains announcing such things as “Lay down your arms, there is a passage to the West and to freedom.”’ Once news of this program made its way through the Red Army, it was argued, there would be a flood of defectors. …

“Avrakotos thought North and Perle were ‘cuckoos of the Far Right,’ and he soon felt quite certain that Raymond, the man who seemed to be the intellectual ringleader, was truly detached from reality. ‘What Russian in his right mind would defect to those fuckers all armed to the teeth,’ Avrakotos said in frustration. ‘To begin with, anyone defecting to the Dushman would have to be a crook, a thief or someone who wanted to get cornholed every day, because nine out of ten prisoners were dead within twenty-four hours and they were always turned into concubines by the mujahideen. I felt so sorry for them I wanted to have them all shot.’

“The meeting [with Raymond’s team] went very badly indeed. Gust [Avrakotos] accused North and Perle of being idiots. … Avrakotos said to Walt Raymond, ‘You know, Walt, you’re just a fucking asshole, you’re irrelevant.’”

However, as Crile wrote, Avrakotos “greatly underestimated the political power and determination of the group, who went directly to [CIA Director] Bill Casey to angrily protest Avrakotos’s insulting manner. The director complained to [CIA operations official] Clair George, who responded by forbidding Avrakotos to attend any more interagency meetings without a CIA nanny present. …

“Avrakotos arrived for one of these White House sessions armed with five huge photographic blowups. … One of them showed two Russian sergeants being used as concubines. Another had a Russian hanging from the turret of a tank with a vital part of his anatomy removed. … ‘If you were a sane fucking Russian, would you defect to these people?’ he had demanded of Perle.

“But the issue wouldn’t go away. Perle, Raymond, and the others continued to insist that the Agency find and send back to the United States the many Russian defectors they seemed to believe, despite Avrakotos’s denials, the mujahideen were harboring. …

“It had been almost impossible to locate two prisoners, much less two defectors. The CIA found itself in the preposterous position of having to pony up $50,000 to bribe the Afghans to deliver two live ones. ‘These two guys were basket cases,’ says Avrakotos. ‘One had been fucked so many times he didn’t know what was going on.’”

Despite this knowledge about the true nature of the Afghan “freedom fighters,” the Reagan administration – and the “Charlie Wilson’s War” moviemakers – concealed from the American people the inhuman brutality of the jihadists who were receiving billions of dollars in U.S. and Saudi largesse. The movie depicted the Soviet soldiers as sadistic monsters and the mujahedeen as noble warriors, just as Ronald Reagan and Walter Raymond would have wanted. (Raymond died in 2003; Reagan in 2004; the movie appeared in 2007.)

But the Reagan administration did calculate correctly that Wilson from his key position on a House Appropriations defense subcommittee could open the spigot on funding for the Afghan muj.

Learning Wrong Lessons

While it’s not unusual for Hollywood to produce a Cold War propaganda film, what was different about “Charlie Wilson’s War” was how it was treated by Official Washington as something close to a documentary. That attitude was somewhat a tribute to the likeable Tom Hanks who portrayed the womanizing and hard-drinking Charlie Wilson.

Yet, perhaps the biggest danger in viewing the movie as truth was its treatment of why the anti-Soviet jihad led to Afghanistan becoming home to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorists in the 1990s. The movie pushed the myth that the United States abruptly abandoned Afghanistan as soon as the Soviet troops left on Feb. 15, 1989.

All across Official Washington, pundits and policymakers have embraced the lesson that the United States must not make that “mistake” again – and thus must leave behind a sizeable force of U.S. troops.

For instance, the New York Times’ lead editorial on May 1, 2012, criticized President Barack Obama for not explaining how he would prevent Afghanistan from imploding after the scheduled U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014, though the Times added that the plan’s “longer-term commitment [of aid] sends an important message to Afghans that Washington will not abandon them as it did after the Soviets were driven out.”

The abandonment myth also has been cited by senior Obama administration officials, including U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as they explained the rise of the Taliban in the mid-1990s and al-Qaeda’s use of Afghanistan for plotting the 9/11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

In late 2009, Defense Secretary Gates reprised this phony conventional wisdom, telling reporters: “We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country only to see it descend into civil war and into Taliban hands.” However, that narrative was based on a faux reality drawn from a fictional movie.

Gates knew the real history. After all, in 1989, he was deputy national security adviser under President George H.W. Bush when the key decisions were made to continue covert U.S. aid to the mujahedeen, not cut it off.

The truth was that the end game in Afghanistan was messed up not because the United States cut the mujahedeen off but because Washington pressed for a clear-cut victory, rebuffing Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s proposals for a power-sharing arrangement. And we know that Gates knows this reality because he recounted it in his 1996 memoir, From the Shadows.

The Real History

Here’s what that history actually shows: In 1988, Gorbachev promised to remove Soviet troops from Afghanistan and sought a negotiated settlement. He hoped for a unity government that would include elements of Afghan President Najibullah’s Soviet-backed regime in Kabul and the CIA-backed Islamic fundamentalist rebels.

Gates, who in 1988 was deputy CIA director, opposed Gorbachev’s plan, disbelieving that the Soviets would really depart and insisting that – if they did – the CIA’s mujahedeen could quickly defeat Najibullah’s army.

Inside the Reagan administration, Gates’s judgment was opposed by State Department analysts who foresaw a drawn-out struggle. Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead and the department’s intelligence chief Morton Abramowitz warned that Najibullah’s army might hold on longer than the CIA expected.

But Gates prevailed in the policy debates, pushing the CIA’s faith in its mujahedeen clients and expecting a rapid Najibullah collapse if the Soviets left. In the memoir, Gates recalled briefing Secretary of State George Shultz and his senior aides on the CIA’s predictions prior to Shultz flying to Moscow in February 1988.

“I told them that most [CIA] analysts did not believe Najibullah’s government could last without active Soviet military support,” wrote Gates.

After the Soviets did withdraw in February 1989 – proving Gates wrong on that point – some U.S. officials felt Washington’s geostrategic aims had been achieved and a move toward peace was in order. There also was mounting concern about the Afghan mujahedeen, especially their tendencies toward brutality, heroin trafficking and fundamentalist religious practices.

However, the new administration of George H.W. Bush – with Gates moving from the CIA to the White House as deputy national security adviser – rebuffed Gorbachev and chose to continue U.S. covert support for the mujahedeen, aid which was being funneled primarily through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI.

At the time, I was a Newsweek national security correspondent and asked my CIA contacts why the U.S. government didn’t just collect its winnings from the Soviet withdrawal and agree to some kind of national-unity government in Kabul that could end the war and bring some stability to the country. One of the CIA hardliners responded to my question with disgust. “We want to see Najibullah strung up by a light pole,” he snarled.

Back in Afghanistan, Najibullah’s regime defied the CIA’s expectation of a rapid collapse, using Soviet weapons and advisers to beat back a mujahedeen offensive in 1990. As Najibullah hung on, the war, the violence and the disorder continued.

Gates finally recognized that his CIA analysis had been wrong. In his memoir, he wrote: “As it turned out, Whitehead and Abramowitz were right” in their warning that Najibullah’s regime might not fall quickly. Gates’s memoir also acknowledged that the U.S. government did not abandon Afghanistan immediately after the Soviet departure.

“Najibullah would remain in power for another three years [after the Soviet pull-out], as the United States and the USSR continued to aid their respective sides,” Gates wrote. Indeed, Moscow’s and Washington’s supplies continued to flow until several months after the Soviet Union collapsed in summer 1991, according to Gates.

Crile’s Account

And other U.S. assistance continued even longer, according to Crile’s Charlie Wilson’s War. In the book, Crile described how Wilson kept the funding spigot open for the Afghan rebels not only after the Soviet departure in 1989 but even after the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991.

Eventually, the mujahedeen did capture the strategic city of Khost, but turned it into a ghost town as civilians fled or faced the mujahedeen’s fundamentalist fury. Western aid workers found themselves “following the liberators in a desperate attempt to persuade them not to murder and pillage,” Crile wrote.

U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley began to wonder who were the worse bad guys, the Soviet-backed communists or the U.S.-supported mujahedeen.

“It was the leaders of the Afghan puppet government who were saying all the right things, even paying lip service to democratic change,” Crile reported. “The mujahideen, on the other hand, were committing unspeakable atrocities and couldn’t even put aside their bickering and murderous thoughts long enough to capture Kabul.”

In 1991, as the Soviet Union careened toward its final crackup, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved nothing for Afghanistan, Crile wrote. “But no one could just turn off Charlie Wilson’s war like that,” Crile noted. “For Charlie Wilson, there was something fundamentally wrong with his war ending then and there. He didn’t like the idea of the United States going out with a whimper.”

Wilson made an impassioned appeal to the House Intelligence Committee and carried the day. The committee first considered a $100 million annual appropriation, but Wilson got them to boost it to $200 million, which – with the Saudi matching funds – totaled $400 million, Crile reported.

“And so, as the mujahideen were poised for their thirteenth year of war, instead of being cut off, it turned out to be a banner year,” Crile wrote. “They found themselves with not only a $400 million budget but also with a cornucopia of new weaponry sources that opened up when the United States decided to send the Iraqi weapons captured during the Gulf War to the mujahideen.”

But even then the Afghan rebels needed an external event to prevail on the battlefield, the stunning disintegration of the Soviet Union in the latter half of 1991. Only then did Moscow cut off its aid to Najibullah. His government finally fell in 1992. But its collapse didn’t stop the war – or the mujahedeen infighting.

The capital of Kabul came under the control of a relatively moderate rebel force led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, an Islamist but not a fanatic. However, Massoud, a Tajik, was not favored by Pakistan’s ISI, which backed more extreme Pashtun elements of the mujahedeen.

Rival Afghan warlords battled with each other for another four years destroying much of Kabul. Finally, a disgusted Washington began to turn away. Crile reported that the Cross Border Humanitarian Aid Program, which was the only sustained U.S. program aimed at rebuilding Afghanistan, was cut off at the end of 1993, almost five years after the Soviets left.

Rise of the Taliban

While chaos continued to reign across Afghanistan, the ISI readied its own army of Islamic extremists drawn from Pashtun refugee camps inside Pakistan. This group, known as the Taliban, entered Afghanistan with the promise of restoring order.

The Taliban seized the capital of Kabul in September 1996, driving Massoud into a northward retreat. The ousted communist leader Najibullah, who had stayed in Kabul, sought shelter in the United Nations compound, but was captured. The Taliban tortured, castrated and killed him, his mutilated body hung from a light pole – just as the CIA hardliner had wished seven years earlier.

The triumphant Taliban imposed harsh Islamic law on Afghanistan. Their rule was especially cruel to women who had made gains toward equal rights under the communists, but were forced by the Taliban to live under highly restrictive rules, to cover themselves when in public, and to forgo schooling.

The Taliban also granted refuge to Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, who had fought with the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets in the 1980s. Bin Laden then used Afghanistan as the base of operations for his terrorist organization, al-Qaeda, setting the stage for the next Afghan War in 2001.

So, the real history is quite different from the Hollywood version that Official Washington has absorbed as its short-hand understanding of the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s.

The newly discovered document about bringing Charlie Wilson into the White House “circle as discrete Hill connection” suggests that even the impression that it was “Charlie Wilson’s War” may have been more illusion than reality. Though Wilson surely became a true believer in the CIA’s largest covert action of the Cold War, Reagan’s White House team appears to have viewed him as a useful Democratic front man who would be “very helpful in getting money.”

Most significantly, the mythology – enshrined in the movie and embraced by the policymakers – obscured the key lessons of the 1980s: the dangerous futility of trying to impose a Western or military solution on Afghanistan as well as the need to explore negotiation and compromise even when dealing with unsavory foes. It wasn’t the mythical U.S. “abandonment” of Afghanistan in February 1989 that caused the devastation of the past two decades, but rather the uncompromising policies of the Reagan-Bush-41 administrations.

First, there was the ascendance of propaganda over truth. The U.S. government was well aware of the gross human rights crimes of the Afghan “muj” but still sold them as honorable “freedom fighters” to the American people. Second, there was the triumphalism of Gates and other war hawks, who insisted on rubbing Moscow’s nose in its Afghan defeat and thus blocked cooperation on a negotiated settlement which held out the promise of a less destructive outcome.

Those two factors – the deceit and the hubris – set the stage for the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a renewed Afghan War bogging down tens of thousands of U.S. troops, America’s disastrous detour into Iraq, and now a costly long-term U.S. commitment to Afghanistan that is expected to last at least until 2024. With a distorted account of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” Tom Hanks and Hollywood didn’t help.

[For a limited time, you can purchase Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush family for only $34. For details, click here.]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

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Shifting Geopolitical Realities in Afghanistan. Threat to US Hegemony?

By Fraidoon Amel, January 28, 2018

Violent geopolitical rivalries between imperialist and hegemonist powers over Afghanistan’s natural resources, trade and transit routes, and geostrategic location have dramatically intensified. Despite sixteen years of heavy-handed US presence to establish its hegemony in Afghanistan and beyond, influence of regional powers like Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and India is growing.

UK Defence Secretary Accuses Russia of Planning to Kill “Thousands and Thousands and Thousands” of Britons

By Robert Stevens, January 28, 2018

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, published as its main front-page story Friday, Williamson said that Russia was spying on Britain’s critical national infrastructure and claimed, “The plan for the Russians won’t be for landing craft to appear in the South Bay in Scarborough, and off Brighton Beach.

Hassan Diab Is Back in Canada!

By Hassan Diab Support Committee, January 28, 2018

As you might have heard, this is not the end of Hassan’s ordeal. There will be an appeal of the release decision. So, the outcome remains uncertain, and we’re not completely out of the woods yet. But for now, we can say that justice prevailed and Hassan is back in Canada and that is worth celebrating.

Iran: New Unjust Accusations by Washington

By Peter Koenig and Press TV, January 28, 2018

Washington will try to find any reason to either increase the completely illegal sanctions on Iran or cancel the deal altogether. There is no doubt in my mind about it. They will not shy back from inventing and fabricating “evidence” that the missile remnants Haley wants to show to UN Security Council member are from Iran.

America’s National Defense Is Really Offense

By Philip Giraldi, January 28, 2018

Pentagon planners clearly anticipate another year of playing at defense by keeping the offense on the field. An impetuous and poorly informed president is a danger to all of us, particularly as he is surrounded by general-advisers who see a military solution to every problem. Hopefully wiser counsel will prevail.

‘Without UNRWA We Have Nothing’: Palestinian Refugees Speak Out Against US Aid Cuts

By Jaclynn Ashly, January 28, 2018

Palestinians in Aida refugee camp disagree, telling Mondoweiss that the cuts are a continuation of US policies aimed at strangling the lifeline of Palestinian refugees.

Syrian forces have found modern radio-electronic equipment on positions of the eliminated militants near the area of At Tanf in eastern Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said on January 26.

“During the search at the site of the fight with terrorists, the Syrian forces found modern radio-electronic equipment manufactured in Europe, ammunition for light weapons and Daesh [ISIS] literature,” the ministry said adding that government forces have also found banners and emblems of the US-backed Forces of Martyr Ahmad al-Abdo there. “These facts show the involvement of the US in the training and formation of a US-controlled armed opposition created from the defeated pro-Daesh forces.“

The ministry also said that the eliminated militants “were planning a breakthrough operation in the nearest future.” The main aim of the operation was to conduct sabotage operations in the provinces of Damascus, Homs and Deir Ezzor. This effort is aimed at drawing attention of the Syrian Army from the battle on terrorists in the province of Idlib.

On January 24, the Syrian patrol destroyed two vehicles and killed five terrorists from the three vehicles-long convoy of terrorists near the area of At Tanf, the ministry added.

*

Featured image is from Valery Sharifulin/TASS.

French academics and writers published a collective letter in Le Monde on 23 January, focusing on the case of Ahed Tamimi and the plight of the approximately 360 Palestinian child prisoners in Israeli prisons. The letter also highlights the case of Salah Hamouri, the French-Palestinian lawyer jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention. Public officials and municipalities across the country have adopted declarations demanding Hamouri’s release and even the French government has acceded to the popular call to demand his freedom.

The statement follows below. 

We call for the support and intervention of the President to stop the detention of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons. We especially wish to draw attention to the case of Ahed Tamimi, pursued by the Israeli government. Last 15 December, Mohammed Tamimi, 15, was hit in the head by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired at close range by soldiers of the Israeli occupation army. The boy was in critical condition and his cousin Ahed Tamimi, age 16, was visibly upset by the announcement of his condition and the severity of his injuries.

This same unit of soldiers approached the family home an hour later, and Ahed screamed at them and slapped a soldier. This time, the encounter was filmed by her mother and posted on social media, and it shows the courage of an unarmed teenager confronting two heavily armed soldiers.

On 19 December 2017, Ahed Tamimi was abducted from her home in the night by the army and brought before a military court. The twelve counts of indictment brought against her could carry a sentence of 12 years in prison. Israeli military courts deal exclusively with Palestinian prisoners, with a conviction rate of 99.74 percent. Thus, the future of Ahed Tamimi appears dark without intervention.

Some as young as 12

We call on the President to provide urgent support for the immediate release of Ahed Tamimi and the dismissal of all charges against her. However, Ahed Tamimi’s case is not isolated. According to Defense for Children International – Palestine, Israel brings 500 to 700 Palestinian children before military courts each year, some as young as 12. It imprisons an average of 200 children in any given period.

According to the reports of international agencies, including UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Amnesty International and Defense for Children International – Palestine, three out of every four children arrested experience violence during arrest or interrogation. They are frequently arrested in night raids on their home; 85 percent of arrested Palestinian children were blindfolded and 95 percent were handcuffed.

They are deprived of access to lawyers, denied the presence of their parents during interrogation and forced to sign confessions. They are also subject to “administrative detention,” imprisonment without charge or trial. They are often detained in detention centers located outside the territories occupied by Israel, making visits from their families difficult. The use of isolation cells for the interrogation of children is a practice that has been likened to torture under international law.

Salah Hamouri victim of the same procedure

The UNICEF report of 2013, “Children in Israeli military detention,” concludes: “The abuse of children in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systemic and institutionalized throughout the process, from the time of arrest through the prosecution of the child, their potential conviction and the application of a penalty.”

We urge President Emmanuel Macron to take action urgently to contact the Israeli authorities to finally end their detention practices that violate children’s rights, human rights and international law. We also remind him that, to date, our compatriot Salah Hamouri also remains in Israeli jails, a victim of the same unfair framework of “administrative detention.” France must ask so that Ahed Tamimi and other Palestinian child prisoners come home as soon as possible. We cannot look away while children and one of our compatriots are illegally detained far from their families.

Signatories:

Etienne Balibar, emeritus professor of philosophy, université de Paris- Ouest ;

Pierre Barbancey, journalist ;

Michel Benassayag, psychoanalyst and philosopher ;

Rony Brauman, physician and essayist ;

Alain Brossat, professor of philosophy ;

Marie Buisson, FERC CGT ;

Cybèle David, organizer of the SUD Education Federation ;

Alain Gresh, editor of the online journal OrientXXI.info ;

Bernadette Groison, general secretary of the FSU ;

Nacira Guénif, sociologist, université Paris-8 ;

Kaddour Hadadi, artist (HK) ;

Geneviève Jacques, president of Cimade ;

Nicole Lapierre, social anthropologist ;

Jean Etienne de Linarès, CEO of ACAT ;

Gilles Manceron, historian ;

Malik Salembour, president of the LDH ;

Sylvie Tissot, sociologist ;

Dominique Vidal, collaborator of Le Monde diplomatique.

Washington’s Asia-Pacific strategy has gone from maintaining primacy over the region for decades to increasingly desperate attempts to salvage its now waning influence.

This is in part due to China’s rise as an economic, military and political regional power as well as the increasing self-reliance of smaller but still pivotal Asian nations. This includes the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand.

In Washington’ Shadow 

The height of contemporary US influence over Thailand was in 2001 when Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister. His administration eagerly catered to US interests at Thailand’s own expense, including sending Thai troops to participate in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, hosting the US Central Intelligence Agency’s extraordinary rendition programme on Thai soil, attempts to sign a US-Thai free trade agreement without approval of Thailand’s parliament and the privatisation of Thailand’s natural resources.

He also indulged in a wide spectrum of human rights abuses including a 2003 90 day “war on drugs” that left nearly 3,000 innocent people extrajudicially executed in the streets, a 2004 crackdown on protesters in Thailand’s restive deep south that left over 80 dead in a single day, the assassination or disappearance of his political opponents and a concerted campaign of fear and intimidation waged against the Thai media.

By 2006, Shinawatra had overreached in his ambitions. Between increasingly bold attempts to consolidate his power and the abuse of that power, the Thai military was finally prompted to oust him from office in a swift and bloodless coup.

In the aftermath, he would be convicted for corruption and sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. Rather than face jail, he fled Thailand and has attempted to run his political party remotely as a fugitive since.

Shinawatra, a multi-billionaire enjoying widespread support from foreign sponsors including in Washington, was able to return to power through a variety of proxies openly serving as his nominees at the head of his political party, Pheu Thai. These proxies included his own brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat and by 2011, his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

In a brief period between 2009-2010 when Shinawatra’s political opponents took power, he deployed protesters and armed militants in the streets of Thailand’s capital of Bangkok where they promptly fought gun battles against police and soldiers, carried out grenade attacks on counter-protesters and engaged in citywide looting and arson leaving nearly 100 dead.

During the 2011 election, Yingluck Shinawatra’s campaign signs literally read, “Thaksin Thinks, Pheu Thai Does,” an open admission that a convicted criminal and fugitive was running for office and that his sister was merely a placeholder.

Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted from power in 2014 in another coup following months of mass protests against Shinawatra’s government and Shinawatra’s systematic use of terrorism to target and attempt to quell the protesters.

Since the 2014 coup, Shinawatra has once again turned to violent coercion. His supporters have targeted tourist destinations and even a hospital with bombings.

Washington, for its part, has attempted to place considerable pressure on Thailand to quickly hold elections it hopes returns the Shinawatras and their proxies to power.

This pressure takes the form of both the US and European media engaging in a constant and concerted campaign to undermine the credibility of the current interim government. The US also uses a large collection of organisations it funds posing as a human rights advocates, pro-democracy activists and academics to add credibility to this disinformation campaign.

Fronts posing as Thai nongovernmental organisations including media platform Prachatai and rights advocates Thai Lawyers for Human Rights are openly funded by the United States government via its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

Thailand Making a Break 

Thailand’s refusal to accept Shinawatra despite the risks of confronting him and the interests he represents fits into a larger regional trend where Asian states are increasingly reasserting themselves over enduring US primacy.

In addition to confronting Shinawatra, Thailand has begun to actively diversify its ties and dependencies away from the US and Europe and toward its immediate and growing neighbours in Asia. This includes not only its neighbours in Southeast Asia, but also China.

Thailand has begun replacing what has for decades been a military arsenal dominated by American equipment with tanks, armoured vehicles and even naval vessels from China. Thailand has also inked deals and begun construction on a number of infrastructure projects with Beijing, including high-speed rail that will link major Thai cities together and link Thailand itself with both its immediate neighbours and China’s southern Yunnan province.

While the US offers Asia “free trade,” China offers the region tangible infrastructure including metro and high-speed rail infrastructure and rolling stock.

Thailand’s geopolitical pivot is more than mere posturing to counter pressure placed on it after removing Washington’s political proxies from power. It is a new, permanent reality that other nations across Asia are also contributing to. Thailand is not alone in its quest to replace Washington’s enduring and coercive influence over the region with tangibly constructive ties with Beijing and others.

China Offers an Alternative 

China has helped relieve a number of pressure points the US has maintained against the rest of Asia for decades. This includes Washington’s ability to leverage economic pressure against Southeast Asia to coerce it along America’s desired path. After the more recent 2014 coup, the US attempted to once again leverage economic pressure against Bangkok to return the Shinawatras back to power.

This included attempts to target Thailand’s seafood industry and tourism. Despite these attempts, Thailand has endured. In terms of tourism, attempts by the American and European media to scare off potential visitors failed spectacularly, thanks to China’s regional rise.

Perhaps at one point in Thailand’s history, its tourism industry which accounts for about 17% of the nation’s GDP, depended on Western visitors who, if convinced to avoid Thailand, could inflict damage to both the industry and to the economy. However, today, Chinese tourists make up the vast majority of visitors entering Thailand. In 2016 approximately 8.7 million Chinese tourists entered the Kingdom, followed by 3.5 million Malaysians and 1 million Russians.

American travellers numbered less than 1 million, and the combined number of tourists from major North American and European nations still amounted to less than those arriving from China alone. It is safe to say that Chinese tourists were not moved by horror stories planted by the US and European media regarding Thailand, if they viewed them at all in the first place.

It is curious to note, however, that terrorist attacks targeting a downtown Bangkok shrine popular with Chinese tourists and bombings targeting other tourist destinations around Thailand followed the US and European media’s failed campaign to sabotage Thailand’s tourism industry.

This example illustrates how once useful “soft power” weapons at Washington’s disposal have been defused by Thailand’s and Asia’s ability as a whole to diversify their economic and political ties, and move out from under the shadow of Washington’s primacy. It is also an example of how Washington is apparently willing to use much more drastic options, including terrorism, to gain with blood what it has failed to gain through “soft power.”

China’s development of infrastructure both within its territory and connecting its economy with nations well beyond it is another example of an alternative to Washington. US free trade agreements are transparent grabs at a nation’s economy and natural resources. The text of most US free trade agreements read like updated versions of concessions forced upon nations by “gunboat diplomacy” during the height of the British Empire.

By developing China’s neighbours through massive infrastructure projects, Beijing is not only empowering itself, but empowering those nations hosting this new infrastructure. Not only will nations like Thailand be able to develop more constructive ties with Beijing as an alternative to Washington, it will be able to develop its own economic capacity negating previous dependencies on and vulnerabilities to concepts like “free trade.”

2018: A Year of Thai Turmoil

The US and Europe are visibly ratcheting up pressure on Thailand in 2018. Elections following the 2014 coup have been repeatedly pushed back, primarily because the cause of the coup, Thaksin Shinwatra and the immense power, influence and impunity he enjoys, has yet to be removed from Thailand’s political landscape making real free and fair elections an impossibility. For Washington, no election that even remotely puts Shinawatra and his Pheu Thai Party at a disadvantage will be recognised as “free and fair.”

The US and Europe have signalled that delaying beyond 2018 will not be tolerated and is already creating “space” for Shinawatra’s supporters to begin preparing for 2009-2010-style protests.

With the US and European media still denying violence carried out by Shinawatra and his supporters in 2009-2010 and again in 2014, the Thai opposition will have a clean slate from which to stoke murder and mayhem at the cost of Thailand’s political and economic stability.

Time is on Thailand’s side however. With each year, Thaksin Shinawatra and his political networks grow weaker while their sponsors in Washington, London and Brussels wane in terms of both real geopolitical power and their ability to influence public opinion at home and abroad. But while some in the US and European media appear to be making peace with the fact that Shinawatra is unlikely to ever make a comeback, where they have decided to retrench is particularly concerning.

Thailand’s deep south hosts an ongoing militancy led by nebulous separatists. Violence erupted in 2001 with Shinawatra taking office after two decades of enduring peace. The conflict has since cost thousands of lives but has remained at the fringe of both domestic and international media attention.

However, as it becomes clear that Shinawatra and his political supporters have exhausted themselves, US government-funded organisations attempting to undermine Thailand’s peace and stability have increasingly turned their attention toward the conflict in the deep south. Some such organisations are participating in “workshops” in the deep south aimed at “empowering” locals to legally contest the Thai government and impede ongoing security operations. The US used so-called nongovernmental organisations in and around Russia for similar purposes during Moscow’s protracted security operations in Chechnya.

The US has leverage terrorism everywhere from Afghanistan in the 1980’s to Libya and Syria beginning in 2011 to the Philippines just last year as a pretext for political and military involvement in the sovereign affairs of foreign nations. The US openly seeks a military presence on mainland Southeast Asia to augment its military presence in Korea, Japan and the Philippines in the east and its ongoing military occupation in Afghanistan in the west as part of a larger strategy of encircling China.

Inflaming Thailand’s deep south while attempting to return a US proxy to power could produce in the future circumstances that finally see US troops permanently stationed on Thai soil and along China’s peripheries. Similar efforts are ongoing in neighbouring Myanmar where the US is fanning the flames on both sides of the current Rohingya crisis. There exists a real prospect of US troops stationing themselves in Myanmar, even in small numbers, to serve an “advisory role” for “anti-terror” operations against militants US ally Saudi Arabia is arming and funding.

A true breakthrough for US policy in Asia would be linking isolated conflicts in Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines together, creating synergies similar to those serving US interests across the Middle East and North Africa.

Thus, 2018 will not only see a concerted attempt to undermine the current Thai government and force it to hold elections the US will do all in its power to ensure Shinawatra wins, but also will see US-funded organisations in Thailand increasingly attempt to leverage violence in Thailand’s deep south to endanger not only Thailand’s peace and stability, but peace and stability across Southeast Asia.

*

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

All images in this article are from New Eastern Outlook.

Washington’s Asia-Pacific strategy has gone from maintaining primacy over the region for decades to increasingly desperate attempts to salvage its now waning influence.

This is in part due to China’s rise as an economic, military and political regional power as well as the increasing self-reliance of smaller but still pivotal Asian nations. This includes the Southeast Asian Kingdom of Thailand.

In Washington’ Shadow 

The height of contemporary US influence over Thailand was in 2001 when Thaksin Shinawatra became prime minister. His administration eagerly catered to US interests at Thailand’s own expense, including sending Thai troops to participate in the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, hosting the US Central Intelligence Agency’s extraordinary rendition programme on Thai soil, attempts to sign a US-Thai free trade agreement without approval of Thailand’s parliament and the privatisation of Thailand’s natural resources.

He also indulged in a wide spectrum of human rights abuses including a 2003 90 day “war on drugs” that left nearly 3,000 innocent people extrajudicially executed in the streets, a 2004 crackdown on protesters in Thailand’s restive deep south that left over 80 dead in a single day, the assassination or disappearance of his political opponents and a concerted campaign of fear and intimidation waged against the Thai media.

By 2006, Shinawatra had overreached in his ambitions. Between increasingly bold attempts to consolidate his power and the abuse of that power, the Thai military was finally prompted to oust him from office in a swift and bloodless coup.

In the aftermath, he would be convicted for corruption and sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. Rather than face jail, he fled Thailand and has attempted to run his political party remotely as a fugitive since.

Shinawatra, a multi-billionaire enjoying widespread support from foreign sponsors including in Washington, was able to return to power through a variety of proxies openly serving as his nominees at the head of his political party, Pheu Thai. These proxies included his own brother-in-law Somchai Wongsawat and by 2011, his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

In a brief period between 2009-2010 when Shinawatra’s political opponents took power, he deployed protesters and armed militants in the streets of Thailand’s capital of Bangkok where they promptly fought gun battles against police and soldiers, carried out grenade attacks on counter-protesters and engaged in citywide looting and arson leaving nearly 100 dead.

During the 2011 election, Yingluck Shinawatra’s campaign signs literally read, “Thaksin Thinks, Pheu Thai Does,” an open admission that a convicted criminal and fugitive was running for office and that his sister was merely a placeholder.

Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted from power in 2014 in another coup following months of mass protests against Shinawatra’s government and Shinawatra’s systematic use of terrorism to target and attempt to quell the protesters.

Since the 2014 coup, Shinawatra has once again turned to violent coercion. His supporters have targeted tourist destinations and even a hospital with bombings.

Washington, for its part, has attempted to place considerable pressure on Thailand to quickly hold elections it hopes returns the Shinawatras and their proxies to power.

This pressure takes the form of both the US and European media engaging in a constant and concerted campaign to undermine the credibility of the current interim government. The US also uses a large collection of organisations it funds posing as a human rights advocates, pro-democracy activists and academics to add credibility to this disinformation campaign.

Fronts posing as Thai nongovernmental organisations including media platform Prachatai and rights advocates Thai Lawyers for Human Rights are openly funded by the United States government via its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

Thailand Making a Break 

Thailand’s refusal to accept Shinawatra despite the risks of confronting him and the interests he represents fits into a larger regional trend where Asian states are increasingly reasserting themselves over enduring US primacy.

In addition to confronting Shinawatra, Thailand has begun to actively diversify its ties and dependencies away from the US and Europe and toward its immediate and growing neighbours in Asia. This includes not only its neighbours in Southeast Asia, but also China.

Thailand has begun replacing what has for decades been a military arsenal dominated by American equipment with tanks, armoured vehicles and even naval vessels from China. Thailand has also inked deals and begun construction on a number of infrastructure projects with Beijing, including high-speed rail that will link major Thai cities together and link Thailand itself with both its immediate neighbours and China’s southern Yunnan province.

While the US offers Asia “free trade,” China offers the region tangible infrastructure including metro and high-speed rail infrastructure and rolling stock.

Thailand’s geopolitical pivot is more than mere posturing to counter pressure placed on it after removing Washington’s political proxies from power. It is a new, permanent reality that other nations across Asia are also contributing to. Thailand is not alone in its quest to replace Washington’s enduring and coercive influence over the region with tangibly constructive ties with Beijing and others.

China Offers an Alternative 

China has helped relieve a number of pressure points the US has maintained against the rest of Asia for decades. This includes Washington’s ability to leverage economic pressure against Southeast Asia to coerce it along America’s desired path. After the more recent 2014 coup, the US attempted to once again leverage economic pressure against Bangkok to return the Shinawatras back to power.

This included attempts to target Thailand’s seafood industry and tourism. Despite these attempts, Thailand has endured. In terms of tourism, attempts by the American and European media to scare off potential visitors failed spectacularly, thanks to China’s regional rise.

Perhaps at one point in Thailand’s history, its tourism industry which accounts for about 17% of the nation’s GDP, depended on Western visitors who, if convinced to avoid Thailand, could inflict damage to both the industry and to the economy. However, today, Chinese tourists make up the vast majority of visitors entering Thailand. In 2016 approximately 8.7 million Chinese tourists entered the Kingdom, followed by 3.5 million Malaysians and 1 million Russians.

American travellers numbered less than 1 million, and the combined number of tourists from major North American and European nations still amounted to less than those arriving from China alone. It is safe to say that Chinese tourists were not moved by horror stories planted by the US and European media regarding Thailand, if they viewed them at all in the first place.

It is curious to note, however, that terrorist attacks targeting a downtown Bangkok shrine popular with Chinese tourists and bombings targeting other tourist destinations around Thailand followed the US and European media’s failed campaign to sabotage Thailand’s tourism industry.

This example illustrates how once useful “soft power” weapons at Washington’s disposal have been defused by Thailand’s and Asia’s ability as a whole to diversify their economic and political ties, and move out from under the shadow of Washington’s primacy. It is also an example of how Washington is apparently willing to use much more drastic options, including terrorism, to gain with blood what it has failed to gain through “soft power.”

China’s development of infrastructure both within its territory and connecting its economy with nations well beyond it is another example of an alternative to Washington. US free trade agreements are transparent grabs at a nation’s economy and natural resources. The text of most US free trade agreements read like updated versions of concessions forced upon nations by “gunboat diplomacy” during the height of the British Empire.

By developing China’s neighbours through massive infrastructure projects, Beijing is not only empowering itself, but empowering those nations hosting this new infrastructure. Not only will nations like Thailand be able to develop more constructive ties with Beijing as an alternative to Washington, it will be able to develop its own economic capacity negating previous dependencies on and vulnerabilities to concepts like “free trade.”

2018: A Year of Thai Turmoil

The US and Europe are visibly ratcheting up pressure on Thailand in 2018. Elections following the 2014 coup have been repeatedly pushed back, primarily because the cause of the coup, Thaksin Shinwatra and the immense power, influence and impunity he enjoys, has yet to be removed from Thailand’s political landscape making real free and fair elections an impossibility. For Washington, no election that even remotely puts Shinawatra and his Pheu Thai Party at a disadvantage will be recognised as “free and fair.”

The US and Europe have signalled that delaying beyond 2018 will not be tolerated and is already creating “space” for Shinawatra’s supporters to begin preparing for 2009-2010-style protests.

With the US and European media still denying violence carried out by Shinawatra and his supporters in 2009-2010 and again in 2014, the Thai opposition will have a clean slate from which to stoke murder and mayhem at the cost of Thailand’s political and economic stability.

Time is on Thailand’s side however. With each year, Thaksin Shinawatra and his political networks grow weaker while their sponsors in Washington, London and Brussels wane in terms of both real geopolitical power and their ability to influence public opinion at home and abroad. But while some in the US and European media appear to be making peace with the fact that Shinawatra is unlikely to ever make a comeback, where they have decided to retrench is particularly concerning.

Thailand’s deep south hosts an ongoing militancy led by nebulous separatists. Violence erupted in 2001 with Shinawatra taking office after two decades of enduring peace. The conflict has since cost thousands of lives but has remained at the fringe of both domestic and international media attention.

However, as it becomes clear that Shinawatra and his political supporters have exhausted themselves, US government-funded organisations attempting to undermine Thailand’s peace and stability have increasingly turned their attention toward the conflict in the deep south. Some such organisations are participating in “workshops” in the deep south aimed at “empowering” locals to legally contest the Thai government and impede ongoing security operations. The US used so-called nongovernmental organisations in and around Russia for similar purposes during Moscow’s protracted security operations in Chechnya.

The US has leverage terrorism everywhere from Afghanistan in the 1980’s to Libya and Syria beginning in 2011 to the Philippines just last year as a pretext for political and military involvement in the sovereign affairs of foreign nations. The US openly seeks a military presence on mainland Southeast Asia to augment its military presence in Korea, Japan and the Philippines in the east and its ongoing military occupation in Afghanistan in the west as part of a larger strategy of encircling China.

Inflaming Thailand’s deep south while attempting to return a US proxy to power could produce in the future circumstances that finally see US troops permanently stationed on Thai soil and along China’s peripheries. Similar efforts are ongoing in neighbouring Myanmar where the US is fanning the flames on both sides of the current Rohingya crisis. There exists a real prospect of US troops stationing themselves in Myanmar, even in small numbers, to serve an “advisory role” for “anti-terror” operations against militants US ally Saudi Arabia is arming and funding.

A true breakthrough for US policy in Asia would be linking isolated conflicts in Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines together, creating synergies similar to those serving US interests across the Middle East and North Africa.

Thus, 2018 will not only see a concerted attempt to undermine the current Thai government and force it to hold elections the US will do all in its power to ensure Shinawatra wins, but also will see US-funded organisations in Thailand increasingly attempt to leverage violence in Thailand’s deep south to endanger not only Thailand’s peace and stability, but peace and stability across Southeast Asia.

*

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

All images in this article are from New Eastern Outlook.

Violent geopolitical rivalries between imperialist and hegemonist powers over Afghanistan’s natural resources, trade and transit routes, and geostrategic location have dramatically intensified.

Despite sixteen years of heavy-handed US presence to establish its hegemony in Afghanistan and beyond, influence of regional powers like Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, and India is growing.

The Perpetual War

Sixteen years into the longest war in its history, the US is aggressively flexing its muscles to assert and maintain its hegemony in Afghanistan and the region. This new development, however, does not stem from Donald Trump’s so-called Afghan strategy. The aggressive posture on the part of the US is partially a reaction to its humiliating defeat in Syria – and one should add Iraq – at the hands of Russia and Iran (with China in the background). Trump’s strategy generated some hysteria among the chattering class as being qualitatively distinct from its predecessors in that it commits the US to an open-ended war.

The fact of the matter is that ever since its official launch on October 7, 2001, the US war in Afghanistan has been an open-ended war. Its endgame depends on US’s hegemonist goals in the region. In other words, the US is pursuing a strategy of perpetual war in Afghanistan irrespective of which president holds office.

Under the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA), the US maintains nine military bases at strategic locations across Afghanistan including those bordering Iran, Pakistan and Central Asian Republics. The Afghan airspace is controlled by the US for all practical and strategic purposes. The latter, thus, enjoys a unique geopolitical lead to project power beyond Afghanistan. The infrastructure allows the US to deploy up to 100,000 troops in two to four weeks.

In the grand geopolitical chessboard of Afghanistan, the US is left with the military option only which it pursues, at this stage, through a combination of terrorist proxies, drone attacks and Special Forces operations. It has locked itself in at a geopolitical space surrounded by hostile regional powers like Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan.

More recently, by elevating IS presence in Afghanistan and its level of threat to US enemies such as Russia, China, and Iran, the US is elevating the justification for its own military options intended to go beyond Afghan strategic geography. The US is essentially playing a destabilizing role in the region as it aims at establishing world-tyranny. Its strategy revolves around the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine which aims at preventing the emergence of a regional or global power that could challenge US’s sole hegemonic status.

However, US’s attempt at establishing its hegemony in Afghanistan and beyond is being challenged by a de facto strategic alliance involving Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan. In other words, the US-NATO coalition is facing a formidable enemy – three of which are nuclear powers – determined to contain US’s hegemonist ambitions in the region. China and Russia are at the forefront of shaping this new geopolitical reality.

The Harmonious Hegemony

China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative that aims to connect Asia, Africa and Europe surpasses trade and economic interests and shifts the geopolitical dynamics on a global scale. Its immediate implications are already felt in South and Central Asia – where its ultimate success depends – with Afghanistan as the geopolitical heartland.

As part of OBOR, the over $50-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) subproject became operational on November 13, 2016 when the first batch of Chinese cargo was transported to Gwadar port in insurgency-ridden southern Baluchistan province for onward maritime shipment to markets in Africa and West Asia. China has built a naval base in Gwadar overseeing the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean with a second one reportedly in the making exclusively for military purposes. Gwadar runs deep in China’s strategic nerves both in peacetime but especially in wartime which could see blockade of Chinese naval access to the Pacific. Given Pakistan’s overdependence on China, CPEC is believed to cement China’s clout to influence political and military decisions in that country.

China has further consolidated its strategic footprint in the Indian Ocean by taking over the strategic Hambantota port in Sri Lanka on a 99-year lease contract with 70% stake in exchange for reducing $1.1 billion of the country’s overall 8$ billion debt to China. China’s $38 billion worth of investments in Bangladesh may likely result in breaking up the geopolitical stalemate over the construction of a deep seaport in Sonadia island following pressures exerted by the US, India and Japan on Bangladesh forcing it to abandon the project. China was outmaneuvered over Sonadia by Japan’s counterproposal to construct the Matarbari deep seaport 25km from Sonadia. That may now be changing as Sino-Bangladeshi relationship has been elevated to the strategic level.

All this is happening to the dismay of the US and India – and Japan – who see China’s growing influence as a direct threat to their hegemony over shipping corridors in the Indian Ocean. In anti-Chinese jargon, increasing Chinese presence in and around the Indian Ocean is called The String of Pearls which the trio sees as a Chinese containment strategy. China maintains that its naval presence is to protect its sea lines of communication (SLOCs) – critical among them the South China Sea – that connect Chinese mainland to foreign sources of energy in the Middle East and Africa and build a “harmonious ocean”. China, in other words, is all about harmonious hegemony.

It is in Afghanistan that the tectonic geopolitical shift is played out in all its ugly forms and manifestations. China seems to be the main winner in post-US occupation Afghanistan having secured lucrative deals to exploit natural resources.

After allegedly paying a $30 million bribe to the Afghan Minister of Mines, the state-run China Metallurgical Group Corporation (CMGC) secured the contract for Mes Aynak copper mine in Logar province, one of the largest copper reserves in the world and a 5000-year-old archaeological site, in November 2007. The company managed to acquire the 30-year lease contract against competitors from Russia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. China will invest $3 billion in Mes Aynak which is valued at more than $90 billion.

The contract contains two important clauses: (1) construction of a coal-fired power plant for mining purposes (with environmental consequences) and (2) construction of a freight carrying train line connecting West China to Mes Aynak through Tajikistan to be further extended to Quetta in Pakistan.

At the first trilateral dialogue between China, Afghanistan and Pakistan in Beijing on December 26, 2017, Afghanistan agreed to join CPEC despite prior hesitation at the behest of India which opposes CPEC, among other reasons, as it passes through the strategically located Pakistan-occupied Kashmir region of Gilgit-Baltistan which borders the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to the north, the Xinjiang region of China to the east and northeast, and the Indian-occupied state of Jammu and Kashmir to the southeast. As part of China’s New Silk Road project, Afghanistan also favors construction of a network of roads and railway lines linking it to the Caspian Sea, Mediterranean Sea and eventually to Europe through Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. The Lapis Lazuli Corridor involving Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey was signed in November 2017 to this effect.

In December 2011, Afghanistan signed its first international oil exploration contract with China National Petroleum Corporation. China, with an investment of $3 billion, won the 25-year contract for the exploration and exploitation of oil in Amu Darya region of northern Afghanistan (Sar-i-Pul and Faryab provinces). It is estimated that the Amu Darya Basin between Tajikistan and Afghanistan contains more than 1.6 billion barrels of crude oil. China’s local partner in the project is “Watan Group” of companies related to Hamid Karzai whose decision to refrain from signing the “Bilateral Security Agreement” with the United States may well be connected to these Chinese investments. It is also estimated that other reserves in Balkh and Jawzjan Northern provinces contain 3.5 billion barrels of crude oil. The contract for the latter reserve was awarded in 2013 to an international consortium including Dragon Oil from the UAE, the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) and their local Ghazanfar Group from Afghanistan.

The Sino-Afghan Special Railway Transportation that connects China, through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, with northern Afghanistan (Hairatan port), a vital segment of the One Belt, One Road initiative, was inaugurated as the first-ever freight train line between the two countries in September 2016. The railway link was a joint project of China’s Qin Geng Industrial Co. Ltd and the local Watan Group. However, the link is yet to become fully operational due to India-leaning Uzbekistan’s refusal to allow direct export of Afghan goods through its territory to China.

In January 2017, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) signed a $205 million contract to build the 178-kilometer Dare-e-Sof–Yakawlang road project connecting the northern Samangan with central Bamyan province. This is the second phase of the National North-South Corridor. The now completed first phase was Mazar-i-Sharif – Yakawlang road and the third, yet to commence, being the 550km central Bamyan– southern Kandahar road project.

At first glance, it seems that China has made these lucrative deals at the expense of the security cover provided by NATO-US troops. Nothing could be further from the truth. The start of extraction work of the Chinese workers at Mes Aynak copper mine under the security coverage by 2,000 government troops coincided with the popping up of armed groups which specifically targeted Chinese workers forcing a halt to extraction and their return home.

In the meantime, two governors of Logar province namely Abdullah Wardak and Arsala Jamal, both tasked with facilitating extraction at Mes Aynak, were assassinated in September 2008 and October 2013 respectively. Taliban claimed responsibility for the assassination of Wardak but no group claimed responsibility for assassinating Jamal. Ten years on and the project remains in a limbo.

Similarly, the start of extraction of crude oil by the Chinese in Sar-i-Pul and Faryab provinces was met with attacks by armed groups targeting the Chinese and efforts to destabilize these provinces. Six ICRC staff members were killed in Jawzjan province in February 2017 with no claims of responsibility by any group. In recent months, IS fighters many of them foreigners were moved to the north of Afghanistan where they have established a foothold in Sar-i-Pul, Faryab and Jawzjan provinces.

There are also intensified efforts to destabilize Xinjiang and encourage separatism there through the Afghan northeastern province of Badakhshan, a main route in the ancient Silk Road, which shares borders with Tajikistan to the north and east and China’s Xinjiang and Pakistan to the east through the historical Wakhan Corridor. The separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is believed to be mainly operating in Badakhshan. Xinjiang is an

A report published Thursday night by the New York Times charging that President Trump ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller last June, and was dissuaded only when his top lawyer threatened to resign in protest, marks a new stage in the ongoing political warfare in Washington.

The report set the tone for news coverage throughout Friday, with media pundits proclaiming that Trump’s proposed action added to evidence that he was guilty of obstruction of justice, an impeachable offense. The Times followed up its news report with a lengthy editorial Friday night demanding to know what Trump was afraid Mueller would uncover in his ongoing investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The editorial, of greater length and more prominent display than normal, suggests a further escalation of the media campaign over the Russia probe. Under the screaming headline, “Why Does President Trump Fear the Truth?”, the Times declared that its report on the attempt to fire Mueller established a pattern:

“The president of the United States has tried repeatedly to shut down an investigation into whether his campaign coordinated with Russian officials to help him win the 2016 election.”

The substance of the Times report was confirmed in detail by numerous other media outlets, and conceded even by ultra-right pro-Trump media like Fox News. In the seven months since the events described by the Times, Trump has continually denied that he ever planned to fire Mueller and he repeated that denial in Davos, Switzerland Friday, where he was attending the World Economic Forum, branding the Times report “fake news.”

According to the media accounts, Trump was enraged by the appointment of Mueller as a special prosecutor in the wake of his May 9 firing of FBI Director James Comey, who then was heading the Russian investigation.

Press reports in early June revealed that Mueller was investigating not only the question of Russian interference and possible collusion by the Trump campaign, but also Trump’s own conduct in seeking to block the investigation, including the firing of Comey. In response, Trump demanded that his White House counsel, Don McGahn, contact the Justice Department and tell Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to dismiss Mueller.

Rosenstein was supervising Mueller’s conduct because Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from all investigations into the Trump election campaign, in which he had played a prominent role.

McGahn refused to transmit the order, telling Trump that to fire Mueller would produce a political firestorm that would destroy his presidency, and he threatened to resign. Trump then relented, and no action was taken.

According to the Times account, Mueller himself learned of the threat to fire him “in recent months as his investigators interviewed current and former senior White House officials in his inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice.” McGahn and another reputed eyewitness to the event, former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, have been interviewed in the Russia investigation. A third eyewitness, former White House chief political counselor Stephen Bannon, is to be interviewed shortly.

The Times report detailed what it claimed were pretexts suggested by Trump to argue that Mueller had conflicts of interest that disqualified him from running the Russia investigation, ranging from flimsy—Mueller had been interviewed by Trump to replace Comey as FBI director and had worked at the law firm that also represented Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner—to ludicrous—Mueller had resigned from the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Virginia in a dispute over fees.

The real reason, as in the firing of Comey, is that Trump wanted to shut down the Russia investigation, which was launched by political enemies within the military-intelligence apparatus who are opposed to any suggestion of a retreat from the confrontational anti-Moscow foreign policy line pursued by the Obama administration during its second term.

The original pretext for the investigations, the claim of massive Russian interference in the US elections, is a fabrication. For example, the total amount spent by alleged Russian entities on Facebook advertising directed against Hillary Clinton amounted to barely $100,000, a drop in the bucket compared to the billions expended by both capitalist parties, with the Democrats having far superior financial resources since Clinton was the favored candidate of Wall Street.

One effect of the anti-Russia campaign, however, has been to provoke Trump to take retaliatory actions against his political opponents, such as the firing of Comey, which could arguably constitute obstruction of justice. Even if not obstruction in a legal or criminal sense, it could potentially be an impeachable political offense, particularly if the Democratic Party were to win control of the House of Representatives in the November 2018 elections.

In the wake of the Comey firing, even sections of congressional Republicans warned that Trump should halt any efforts to block the Russia investigation. It was to avoid further erosion in Trump’s congressional support that McGahn opposed the firing of Mueller of June 2017.

This crisis was followed shortly by two significant personnel shifts. Trump fired his personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, replacing him with two experienced Washington lawyers, John Dowd and Ty Cobb, the latter with longstanding familiarity with Mueller.

More importantly, Priebus was removed and replaced by retired General John Kelly, previously the head of the Department of Homeland Security. Kelly’s elevation to the post of White House chief of staff brought the military brass to its greatest-ever influence in a US administration, with former or serving generals heading the White House staff, the National Security Council and the Pentagon.

The consolidation of this military cabal, among other things, was effectively a pledge that there would be no softening of US policy towards Russia. And since then, the Trump administration has maintained economic sanctions on Russia, approved the shipment of lethal weapons to Ukraine, and stepped up the US military intervention in Syria, now openly directed at the ouster of the Russian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad.

There remain, however, major conflicts between the Trump White House and its political opponents in the ruling elite, in both the Democratic Party and the military-intelligence apparatus. There is no progressive side in this conflict. Both factions are ruthless, right-wing defenders of US imperialism.

The main significance of the Times report is that it amounts to a further warning to Trump not to attempt to remove Mueller, under conditions where the White House is currently negotiating the terms under which Trump himself is to give testimony in the Russia investigation.

This was underscored by the ranking Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Mark Warner of Virginia, a multi-millionaire former telecommunications boss with close ties to the CIA and Pentagon. He declared that firing Mueller would be a “red line that the president cannot cross,” adding, “Any attempt to remove the special counsel, pardon key witnesses, or otherwise interfere in the investigation would be a gross abuse of power, and all members of Congress, from both parties, have a responsibility to our Constitution and to our country to make that clear immediately.”

Warner and several other senators and congressmen renewed calls for Congress to pass legislation to insulate Mueller and future special counsels from presidential retaliation by establishing a three-judge panel to oversee and rule on whether there was “just cause” for such a firing.

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Featured image is from Salon.com.

Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has ratcheted up Britain’s threats against Russia.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, published as its main front-page story Friday, Williamson said that Russia was spying on Britain’s critical national infrastructure and claimed, “The plan for the Russians won’t be for landing craft to appear in the South Bay in Scarborough, and off Brighton Beach.

“What they [Russia] are looking at doing is they are going to be thinking ‘How can we just cause so much pain to Britain?’ Damage its economy, rip its infrastructure apart, actually cause thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths, but actually have an element of creating total chaos within the country.”

The newspaper wrote,

“Gavin Williamson told The Daily Telegraph that Moscow had been researching the UK’s critical infrastructure and how it connected to Continental power supplies with a view to creating ‘panic’ and ‘chaos.’”

Williamson added that Russia was willing to take actions “that any other nation would see as completely unacceptable.”

Without citing any evidence, he posed the question,

“Why would they keep photographing and looking at power stations, why are they looking at the interconnectors that bring so much electricity and so much energy into our country.”

The newspaper noted this was a reference to “energy lines that link the UK to continental supplies and allow Britain to trade and share electricity and gas with neighbours.”

The UK, it said, “has four undersea interconnectors for electricity and three for gas, which provide energy to three million homes—a figure which will rise to eight million when further connections are built.”

Williamson’s comments come just days after General Sir Nick Carter, the chief of the general staff of the armed forces, declared that Britain must actively prepare for war with Russia and other geo-political rivals.

Williamson’s interview was aired the day after British Prime Minister Theresa May met US President Donald Trump at the Davos summit for talks, after which they held a joint news conference. After stating that the media were circulating “false rumours” about their relationship, Trump said he and May “like each other a lot.”

Trump emphasised above all that the US and Britain were at one on military issues:

“We are working on transactions in terms of economic developments, trade and maybe most important, the military. We are very much joined at the hip when it comes to the military. We have the same ideas, the same ideals.”

Looking directly at May, he continued,

“There’s nothing that would happen to you that we won’t be there to fight for you. You know that.”

Gavin Williamson meets with US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in London in November 2017 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

May, who had been signalling general agreement with Trump’s views, by that point resembled a nodding dog as Trump spoke in favour of the US/UK military alliance. She responded, “We continue to have that really special relationship between the UK and the United States. We stand shoulder to shoulder because we face the same challenges around the world. And as you say we are working together to defeat those challenges.”

On Tuesday, General Carter declared that virtually any activity carried out by another state in defence of its political, economic and military interests could now be deemed an act of war.

No longer were there “two clear and distinct states of ‘peace’ and ‘war,’” said Carter. “[A]ll of these states have become masters at exploiting the seams between peace and war…”

“What constitutes a weapon in this grey area no longer has to go ‘bang.’ Energy, cash—as bribes—corrupt business practices, cyber-attacks, assassination, fake news, propaganda and indeed military intimidation are all examples of the weapons used to gain advantage in this era of ‘constant competition.’”

Williamson’s Telegraph interview came after his lobbying secured, this week, a delay in defence spending cuts due to be discussed in the Cabinet as part of the National Security Capability Review. Instead, a five-month review into military spending was announced by the government—which will be led by the Ministry of Defence itself.

Williamson’s push for increased military spending was backed by senior serving generals, including Carter and the chief of the general staff, Sir Stuart Peach, who is the senior military adviser to the government. In November, Peach claimed, without citing any evidence, that Russian naval forces were developing a capacity to sever undersea fibre optic cables.

Williamson was also backed by his predecessor as defence minister, Sir Michael Fallon. In a major intervention, Fallon used his first public speech since his resignation two months ago, amid allegations of sexual misconduct, to demand a substantial military spending increase. Speaking Monday to the Defence and Security Forum think tank, Fallon demanded that the defence budget be allocated an extra £1 billion immediately and proposed that the UK move to spending 2.5 percent of its GDP on defence, as opposed to its current 2 percent—the minimum recommended by NATO.

Failure to do so would mean a “retreat from our vision of a confident, outward looking Global Britain standing up for our people, our values, our allies; then we will drift downwards to being a bit-part world player, a part-time champion of democracy and freedom.”

It “would mean walking away from our international obligations, letting down our allies, and in the end leaving us less safe.”

Fallon upped the ante in a Daily Telegraph opinion piece on Thursday, the day before Williamson’s interview with the same newspaper. He wrote that he warned May a year ago that “depreciation of sterling and cost escalation in nuclear were putting severe pressure on the budgets for 2017-18 and 2018-19. If we wanted to play a leading role in NATO, with our troops and Typhoons defending its eastern flank; to counter the Russian submarine threat to our deterrent and our cables in the North Atlantic; to go on bearing the second biggest load of air strikes and army training in Iraq… then we had to put the defence budget onto a more sustainable footing.”

He added, “The new review must recognise that the threats to our country have significantly increased. Before the invasion of Crimea, Russia seemed innocuous. Now we see its threat to western democracies. And Russia is spending not 2 percent but 5 percent of GDP on modernising its conventional and nuclear forces, on hybrid and electronic warfare.”

The Labour Party is playing a critical role in escalating tensions against Russia. In response to Williamson’s comments, Lord West, a former chief of the naval staff and Labour government security minister, said he was “absolutely certain Russia was looking at how to get into our critical national infrastructure.”

On January 11, Parliament debated a motion, introduced by Labour backbencher Vernon Coaker, demanding that the size, equipment and training of Britain’s armed forces be maintained at least at current levels and that no further cuts to defence spending and capabilities be imposed.

In another debate just four days later—in response to Conservative chair of Parliament’s Defence Committee, Julian Lewis, raising concerns about possible cuts under the National Security Capability Review—Labour Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffith insisted on defence spending increases.

Labour MP Luke Pollard reminded everyone where the main threat to the UK was coming from:

“With Russia on the rise, our allies under threat and our northern flank vulnerable from Russian naval power, the threat from the Russian great bear is clear. Does the Defence Secretary understand that there is no support from any part of this House for any further cuts to our Royal Navy and our Royal Marines or for mergers that reduce the capabilities of our armed forces?”

Anti-corruption protests are raging in Romania.

Tens of thousands of people turned out in Bucharest to protest against the government’s moves to decriminalize a certain threshold of economic corruption, among other legislative initiatives that have drawn the public’s ire, showing that this year will probably be as full of massive demonstrations as the previous one was. Adding to the political turbulence is that the East Balkan country has just received its third Prime Minister in 12 months, and the underlying systemic problems plaguing the state suggest that it might see some more shakeups in the future. For all intents and purposes, Romania is in the throes of a prolonged crisis that has made it utterly dysfunctional, but instead of elaborating more on its multifaceted problems, it’s better to talk a bit about the larger implications of what’s happening and why the anti-corruption protests are such a big deal.

To be blunt, Romanian political culture is corrupt, there’s no other way to say it, and almost anyone of significance is caught up in one way or another in this shadowy system. It might be morally outrageous for the government to want to decriminalize some corruption offenses, but there’s really no other way to stop the never-ending cycle of political tumult unless they “legalize” the small-time criminals and separate them from the big-time ones. The ideal solution would be for corruption to be entirely rooted out of the government, but then the entire Romanian state would probably collapse. As for uncorrupt individuals taking their place, it almost seems as though prospective politicians’ corrupt secrets aren’t revealed by their enemies until after they enter into office, after which their rivals hope to use it as blackmail or the catalyst for a “legal” regime change operation to oust them, possibly under foreign instructions.

In the current context, the Romanian government does indeed desire to relatively “normalize” the situation in the country, but in order to do that, low-level corruption offenses need to be decriminalized in order to stop the regime change cycle and restore some element of stability to the state. It might not be fair, and the present authorities are far from perfect, but this is the only realistic way for Romania to move forward, no matter how much it upsets the public. These same protesters, however well-intentioned they may be, are being manipulated by the political opposition and allied “NGO” groups who want to see the “musical chair” system indefinitely perpetuated because its short-term results stand to benefit their interests, until, of course, they end up falling for the very same anti-corruption reasons.

The bigger picture is that Romania is perfectly suited in the geographic and demographic senses to function as a powerful pillar of the Polish-led “Three Seas Initiative”, provided of course that it can stabilize its domestic situation first, meaning that Bucharest’s reforms are a painful prerequisite for assembling a solid EuroRealist reform bloc in the continent and that its opponents can be surmised to be the same EuroLiberals who stand to lose if this happens.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Friday Jan 26, 2018:

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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.

After a very long three years and two months, HASSAN DIAB IS SAFELY BACK AT HIS HOME IN OTTAWA, united with his wife and children. Hassan says: “It is a miracle”, and we too see it that way.

Hassan arrived in Ottawa on Monday January 15, 2018. His wife, Rania, and their children were there to welcome him back home. We are grateful that Foreign Affairs was able to help bring Hassan back to Canada. For some photos and a link to Hassan’s press conference, see this and this.

As you might have heard, this is not the end of Hassan’s ordeal. There will be an appeal of the release decision. So, the outcome remains uncertain, and we’re not completely out of the woods yet. But for now, we can say that justice prevailed and Hassan is back in Canada and that is worth celebrating.

As members of the Hassan Diab Support Committee, we send you our BIGGEST HEARTFELT THANK YOU!

So many of you have been supporting Hassan in various ways for many years. Thank you for your donations that covered various legal costs. Hassan spent 1,154 days in prison in France, and the lawyers’ bills had to be paid. Thank you for writing to politicians, for phoning PM Trudeau, for signing petitions, for showing up at vigils (despite the freezing weather), and for your kind messages of support.

Over and over you helped us and kept us going. You also kept Hassan and his family going. We are immensely grateful. Let us hope this is the end of a long, difficult road.

We do have a request of you. If you have any connections with human rights groups, unions, faith communities, activists, etc., in France, please share their contact information with us. You can email [email protected] with this information.

Again, many heartfelt thanks!

On Friday, the Pentagon released an unclassified summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy report. On the same day, Secretary of Defense James Mattis delivered prepared remarks relating to the document.

Reading the summary is illuminating, to say the least, and somewhat disturbing, as it focuses very little on actual defense of the realm and relates much more to offensive military action that might be employed to further certain debatable national interests. Occasionally, it is actually delusional, as when it refers to consolidating “gains we have made in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.”

At times Mattis’ supplementary “remarks” were more bombastic than reassuring, as when he warned

“…those who would threaten America’s experiment in democracy: if you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day.”

He did not exactly go into what the military response to hacking a politician’s emails might be and one can only speculate, which is precisely the problem.

One of the most bizarre aspects of the report is its breathtaking assumption that “competitors” should be subjected to a potential military response if it is determined that they are in conflict with the strategic goals of the U.S. government. It is far removed from the old-fashioned Constitutional concept that one has armed forces to defend the country against an actual threat involving an attack by hostile forces and instead embraces preventive war, which is clearly an excuse for serial interventions overseas.

Some of the remarks by Mattis relate to China and Russia.  He said that

“We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models – pursuing veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.”

There is, however, no evidence that either country is exporting “authoritarian models,” nor are they vetoing anything that they do not perceive as direct and immediate threats frequently orchestrated by Washington, which is intervening in local quarrels thousands of miles away from the U.S. borders. And when it comes to exporting models, who does it more persistently than Washington?

The report goes on to state that Russia and China and rogue regimes like Iran have “…increased efforts short of armed conflict by expanding coercion to new fronts, violating principle of sovereignty, exploiting ambiguity, and deliberately blurring the lines between civil and military goals.” As confusing civil and military is what the United States itself has been doing in Libya, Iraq and, currently, Syria, the allegation might be considered ironic.

The scariest assertion in the summary is the following:

“Nuclear forces – Modernization of the nuclear force includes developing options to counter competitors’ coercive strategies, predicated on the threatened use of nuclear or strategic non-nuclear attacks.”

That means that the White House and Pentagon are reserving the option to use nuclear weapons even when there is no imminent or existential threat as long as there is a “strategic” reason for doing so. Strategic would be defined by the president and Mattis, while the War Powers Act allows Donald Trump to legally initiate a nuclear attack.

What might that mean in practice? Back in 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney had requested “a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States… [including] a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons … not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.”

Possible employment of “weapons of mass destruction” responded to intelligence suggesting that conventional weapons would be unable to penetrate the underground hardened sites where Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons facilities were reportedly located. But as it turned out, Iran had no nuclear weapons program and attacking it would have been totally gratuitous. Some other neocon inspired plans to attack Iran also included a nuclear option if Iran actually had the temerity to resist American force majeure.

Pentagon planners clearly anticipate another year of playing at defense by keeping the offense on the field. An impetuous and poorly informed president is a danger to all of us, particularly as he is surrounded by general-advisers who see a military solution to every problem. Hopefully wiser counsel will prevail.

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

Featured image is from the author.