Global Research

According to the document, payments differ depending on the family status of a Daesh militant as well as the number of children in the family. 

Single militants receive the lowest salary, about 72 dollars, or 95,000 Iraqi dinars.

By contrast, Abu Jana, who was born in 1991, married and a father of three children, received 184 dollars in the past month. A militant listed as Abu Nasser, born in 1962, married and father of six children, received 256 dollars.

“Salaries” of Daesh terrorists (Source: SPUTNIK/ NAZEK MOHAMMED)

A local source in Mosul told Sputnik that the amount of payments can fluctuate depending on the circumstances. In general, the wages of the militants grow proportionally with the number of their wives and children. At the same time, the salary usually doesn’t exceed 300 dollars.

The terrorist group also paid generous reimbursements to demobilized disabled people who suffered from the attacks of the international coalition, the source said.

At the same time, leaders of the terrorist group received not only their monthly payments, but also the money from the sales of stolen property of ordinary citizens. The salaries of Daesh leaders are assumed to have been 500 dollars or higher, although this year they experienced certain financial problems as the international coalition bombed the banks where they received their money.

Last year, Sputnik published data on the salaries of militants in 2014, when they first took control over the provinces of Nineveh and Anbar. At that time, the salary of a foreign fighter was $1,300. He was also given a house, a car, a wife and fuel, which was a deficit among the local population. Salaries of local Daesh militants were about 600 dollars. Such high payments were related to the fact that the group controlled oil fields and illegally supplied crude oil to neighboring countries.

Featured image from Flickr/ Day Donaldson

Featured image: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Iranian Foreign Minister has accused Washington’s allies in the Middle East of sponsoring terrorism. Mohammad Javad Zarif was speaking to CNN, commenting on US President Donald Trump’s apparent anti-Iranian policy in the region.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Zarif said Trump’s stance towards Iran, which includes accusations of Tehran sponsoring terrorism, represented a “misplaced and misguided policy.”

“We know where the terrorists are coming from. We know those who attacked the World Trade Center were citizens of which countries in the region – I can tell you none of them came from Iran,” Zarif said.

The FM added that

“none of the people who engaged in acts of terrorism since 2001 came from Iran,” pointing out that “most of them came from US allies.” 

Out of the 19 terrorists who hijacked planes on September 11, 2001, fifteen were Saudi Arabian citizens, two were from UEA while the rest were Egyptian and a Lebanese.

“Look at ISIS [Islamic State, IS], look at Nusra [Al-Nusra Front terrorist group], look at Al-Qaeda, look at other terrorist organizations… none of them have anything to do with Iran and all of them receive not only their ideology but their financial assistance, their weapons, their arms from others who call themselves US allies,” Zarif said.

Trump has branded Iran the main sponsor of terrorism during his US presidential campaign.

During his landmark visit to Saudi Arabia this May, the US president said

 “until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran.”

Following the twin IS-linked terror attacks on the Iranian parliament and the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in early June, which left 14 dead and 42 injured, Trump went as far to say that it was Tehran’s own fault:

“We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”

Zarif dismissed the US leader’s remarks as “repugnant,” while saying that

“Iranians counter terror backed by US clients.”

Repugnant WH statement & Senate sanctions as Iranians counter terror backed by US clients.Iranian people reject such US claims of friendship

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) June 8, 2017

The US accuses Tehran of supporting various Shia militant groups in the Middle East and North Africa – including Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen.

Iran is also a strong ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom Washington wanted to be removed from power. The CNN interview focused on the “endgame” in Syria, which Zarif believes must come with a ceasefire, without preconditions and Syrians deciding for themselves who they want as a president.

Zarif also rejected claims from a group of senators that Iran has violated the nuclear deal, pointing out that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is the monitoring body in accordance with the deal, has verified that Tehran has been in full compliance with the agreed scaleback of its nuclear program.

Zarif accused Washington of violating its part of the deal by calling other states not to do business with Tehran.

On 7 July 2017 122 countries at the UN voted to approve the text of a proposed international treaty entitled ‘Draft Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.’ The treaty is formally open for signature in September, but it only becomes a binding legal instrument according to its own provisions 90 days after the 50^th country deposits with the UN Secretary General its certification that the treaty has been ratified in accordance with its constitutional requirements.

In an important sense, it is incredible that it took 72 years after the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to reach the point of setting forth this unconditional prohibition of any use or threat of nuclear weapons. [Article 1(e) within the framework of a multilateral treaty negotiated under UN auspices.] The core obligation of states that choose to become parties to the treaty is very sweeping. It prohibits any connection whatsoever with the weaponry by way of possession, deployment, testing, transfer, storage, and production [Article 1(a)].

The Nuclear Ban Treaty (NBT) is significant beyond the prohibition. It can and should be interpreted as a frontal rejection of the geopolitical approach to nuclearism, and its contention that the retention and development of nuclear weapons is a proven necessity given the way international society is organized. It is a healthy development that the NBT shows an impatience toward and a distrust of the elaborate geopolitical rationalizations of the nuclear status quo that have ignored the profound objections to nuclearism of many governments and the anti-nuclear views that have long dominated world public opinion. The old reassurances about being committed to nuclear disarmament as soon as an opportune moment arrives increasingly lack credibility as the nuclear weapons states, led by the United States, make huge investments in the modernization and further development of their nuclear arsenals. Even more telling was the failure to seize the window of opportunity in the mid-1990s as the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed to pursue nuclear disarmament with due diligence.

Despite this sense of achievement surrounding the NBT process, it must be admitted that there is a near fatal weakness, or at best, a gaping hole, in this newly cast net of legal prohibition. True, the support of 122 governments lends weight to the claim that the international community, by a significant majority has signaled in an obligatory way a repudiation of nuclear weapons for any and all purposes, and formalized their prohibition of any action to the contrary. The enormous fly in this healing ointment arises from the refusal of all nine nuclear weapons states to join in the NBT process even to the legitimating extent of participating in the negotiating conference with the opportunity to express their objections and influence the outcome. As well, most of the chief allies of these states that are part of the global security network of states relying directly and indirectly on nuclear weaponry also boycotted the entire process. It is also discouraging to appreciate that several countries in the past that had lobbied against nuclear weapons with great passion such as India, Japan, and China were notably absent, and also opposed the prohibition. This posture of undisguised opposition to this UN sponsored undertaking to delegitimize nuclearism, while reflecting the views of a minority of governments, must be taken extremely seriously. It includes all five permanent members of the Security Council and such important international actors as Germany and Japan.

The NATO triangle of France, United Kingdom, and the United States, three of the five veto powers in the Security Council, angered by its inability to prevent the whole NBT venture, went to the extreme of issuing a Joint Statement of denunciation, the tone of which was disclosed by a defiant assertion removing any doubt as to the abiding commitment to a nuclearized world order:

“We do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it. Therefore, there will be no change in the legal obligations on our countries with respect to nuclear weapons.”

The depth of disagreement is set forth very aggressively in the joint statement:

“A purported ban on nuclear weapons that does not address the security concerns that continue to make nuclear deterrence necessary cannot result in the elimination of a single nuclear weapon and will not enhance any country’s security, nor international peace and security. It will do the exact opposite by creating even more divisions at a time when the world needs to remain united in the face of growing threats, including those from the DPRK’s ongoing proliferation efforts.”

In effect, these leading NATO members, armed with nuclear weapons and enjoying Security Council veto power, are making two interrelated claims—that the NBT offers no practical solutions to such current challenges as those posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile program and by dividing the world between those that have or depend on nuclear weapons and those who want to prohibit and eliminate them there is a loss of the kind of unity that is needed to force North Korea to back down.

It is correct that the NBT will not by itself lead to nuclear disarmament as it is not presently backed by a single one of the nine nuclear weapons states, but the civil society backers of the treaty and the 122 approving governments accept their responsibility to work toward implementation, which means changing the climate of opinion sufficiently so that the states with weapons will later adhere to the treaty.

On the more practical side of the joint statement’s position, it should be obvious by now that coercive diplomacy (sanctions plus threats of military attack) have not achieved results. What seems far more promising is a combination of the norms embodied in the NBT together with what I would call ‘restorative diplomacy,’ that is, an effort to ensure North Korea’s security by means other than nuclear deterrence, via guarantees, economic assistance, and the end of provocative military training exercises and weapons deployments. Restorative diplomacy is not hampered in any way by the NBT, and is likely greatly aided by this comprehensive commitment to reject nuclear weapons and their purported security roles.

The body of the joint statement contends that global security depends upon maintaining the nuclear status quo, as bolstered by the Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968 and by the unprovable assertion that it was “the policy of nuclear deterrence, which has been essential to keeping the peace in Europe and North Asia for over 70 years.” It is relevant to take note of the geographic limits associated with the claimed peace-maintaining benefits of nuclear weaponry, which ignores the ugly reality that devastating warfare has raged throughout this period outside the feared mutual destruction of the heartlands of geopolitical rivals, a central shared forbearance by the two nuclear superpowers and other nuclear powers throughout the entire Cold War. During these decades of rivalry, and subsequently, the violent dimensions of geopolitical rivalry have been effectively outsourced to the non-Western regions of the world, causing massive suffering and widespread devastation for many vulnerable peoples throughout the Global South. Such a conclusion suggests that even if we were to accept the claim on behalf on nuclear weapons as deserving of credit for avoiding a major war, specifically a nuclear World War III, that ‘achievement’ was accomplished at the cost of millions, probably tens of millions, of civilian lives in non-Western societies. Beyond this, the achievement, such as it was, involved a colossally irresponsible gamble with the human future, and succeeded as much due to good luck as to the hyper-rationality attributed to deterrence theory and practice.

This reliance on the NPT to justify opposition to the NBT is at the root of these diametrically opposed views of collective security. The joint statement strongly asserts that the NPT/deterrence approach to collective security is the only way to end the impasse blocking moves toward nuclear disarmament, but extensive international experience suggests just the opposite conclusion. Namely, that NPT/deterrence is a management approach developed by the leading nuclear weapons states, and especially by the three governments issuing the joint statement. For these governments it is a greatly preferred alternative to the disarmament approach that motivates the NBT supporters. This comparison of approaches discloses a fundamental intellectual and political distinction that should be clearly articulated and understood.

NBT does not itself challenge the Westphalian framework of state-centrism by setting forth a framework of global legality that is issued under the authority of ‘the international community’ or the UN as the authoritative representative of the peoples of the world. Its provisions are carefully formulated as imposing obligations only with respect to ‘State parties,’ that is, governments that have deposited the prescribed ratification and thereby become formal adherents of the treaty. Even Article 4, which hypothetically details how nuclear weapons states should divest themselves of all connections with the weaponry limits its claims to State parties, and offers no guidance whatsoever in the event of suspected or alleged non-compliance. Reliance is (mis)placed in Article 5 on an essentially voluntary commitment to secure compliance by way of the procedures of ‘national implementation,’ that is, it specifies no binding constraints on State parties that violate the NBT.

The treaty does aspire to gain eventual universality through the adherence of all states over time, but in the interim the obligations imposed are of minimal substantive relevance beyond the agreement of the non-nuclear parties not to accept deployment or other connections with the weaponry. The NBT proceeds on a basis in which the only truly binding obligations under international law that limit the freedom of sovereign states arise from the consent of their governments, and the clearest expression of consent is a negotiated and ratified international agreement in the form of an international treaty.

The issues are jurisprudentially complicated and conceptually controversial but there are other means than by treaty to exhibit consent, which means that from these other lawmaking perspectives even nuclear weapons states could have been deemed to have ‘consented’ to the prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons. The most general and well regarded of these alternative foundations of legal obligations is associated with what is called ‘customary international law.’ To establish a customary legal norm requires a long established pattern of consistent state practice of which the nuclear taboo might serve as evidence having existed for a period of more than seven decades together with ‘a sense of obligation,’ that is, acknowledging that habitual behavior is not enough by itself but that the taboo was respected because it was felt to be obligatory. In effect, a consistent pattern of practice must be reinforced by the sense that behavior was done with an accompanying sense of obligation. It could be argued, for example, that the nuclear taboo incorporates a strong widely shared sense that nuclear weapons should never be used. To offset such an argument, the U.S., France, and the UK could point to the Joint Declaration as contradicting any impression that a customary norm of prohibition had emerged, and this consideration may help explain why these governments were prepared to antagonize public opinion by claiming discretion to rely on threats and even uses of nuclear weapons on behalf of their version of national and global security.

An even more contested source of law is the related expression of an authoritative world consensus through the action of the UN General Assembly claiming a capacity to act in a quasi-legislative role. The adoption of a series of resolutions, most notably GA Resolution 1653, can be argued to establish a world community norm of prohibition. Such a lawmaking authority for the UN amounts to a rejection of prevailing positivist views that international obligations depend on some show of consent by the individually obligated states to become law.

Still further down the list of alternatives to adherence to a treaty of the sort represented by NBT is the contention that natural law prohibits recourse to such indiscriminate, potentially omnicidal weaponry. Such a view, deriving its authority from the earlier connections between international law and religious and moral beliefs, collides with modern ideas that all valid legal norms are based on the consent of states. There is a neo-natural law view that the objections to nuclear weapons and nuclearism reflect values reflecting universally shared beliefs of humanity. In an important respect, the objections of most people to nuclear weaponry is based more on their religious and ethical beliefs than on whether or not there exists a valid legal prohibition, illustrating the gap between societal consensus and the international legal order as dominated by sovereign states.

Taking an unnecessary further step to reaffirm statism, and specifically, ‘national sovereignty’ as the foundation of world order, Article 17 confers on the parties to the NBT a right of withdrawal. All state parties have to do is give notice, accompanied by a statement of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ that have ‘jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.’ The withdrawal will take effect twelve months after the notice and statement are submitted. There is no procedure in the treaty by which the contention of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ can be challenged as unreasonable or made in bad faith. It is an acknowledgement that even for these non-nuclear states, nothing in law or morality or human wellbeing takes precedence over their exercise of sovereign rights. Article 17 is not likely to be invoked in the foreseeable future. This provision reminds us of the strong residual unwillingness of even anti-nuclear governments to supersede national interests by deference to global and human interests. The withdrawal option is also important because it confirms that national security continues to take precedence over international law, even with respect to genocidal weaponry of mass destruction with regional and global implications such as the danger of nuclear winter. As such the obligation undertaken by parties to the NBT are reversible in ways that are not present in multilateral conventions outlawing genocide, apartheid, and torture.

Given these shortcomings, is it nevertheless reasonable for nuclear abolitionists to claim a major victory by virtue of tabling such a treaty? Considering that the nuclear weapons states and their allies have all rejected the process of treaty making, and even those within the circle of the intended legal prohibition reserve a right of withdrawal, the NBT is likely to be brushed aside by cynics as mere wishful thinking and by dedicated anti-nuclearists as more of an occasion for hemlock than champagne. The cleavage between the nuclear weapons states and the rest of the world has never been starker, and there are no signs on either side of the divide of making the slightest effort to find common ground. Indeed, there may be common ground. As of now, it is a standoff between two forms of asymmetry. The nuclear states enjoy a preponderance of hard power, while the anti-nuclear states have the upper hand when it comes to soft power, including solid roots in ‘substantive democracy,’ ‘global law,’ and ‘natural law.’ At stake here is the tension between the managerial and transformational approaches to nuclear weapons and nuclearism.

The hard power solution to nuclearism has essentially been reflexive, that is, relying on nuclearism as shaped by the leading nuclear weapons states. What this has meant in practice is some degree of self-restraint on the battlefield and crisis situations (the nuclear taboo exists without doubt, although it has never been seriously tested), and, above all, a delegitimizing one-sided implementation of the Nonproliferation Treaty regime. This one-sidedness manifests itself in two ways: (1) discriminatory administration of the underlying non-proliferation norm, most unreservedly in the case of Israel; as well, the excessive enforcement of the nonproliferation norm beyond the limits of either the NPT itself or the UN Charter, as with Iraq (2003), and currently by way of threats of military attack against North Korea and Iran. Any such uses of military force would be non-defensive and unlawful unless authorized by a Security Council resolution supported by all five permanent members, and at least four other states, which fortunately remains unlikely. [UN Charter, Article 27(3)] More likely is recourse to unilateral coercion led by the countries that issued the infamous Joint Declaration denouncing the NBT as was the case for the U.S. and the UK with regard to thei recourse to the war against Iraq. The war was principally rationalized as a counter-proliferation undertaking, which itself turned out to be a rather crude pretext for mounting an aggressive war, showcasing ‘shock and awe’ tactics.

(2) The failure to respect the obligations imposed on the nuclear weapons states to negotiate in good faith an agreement to eliminate these weapons by verified and prudent means, and beyond this to seek agreement on general and complete disarmament. It should have been evident, almost 50 years after the NPT came into force in 1970, that nuclear weapons states have breached their material obligations under the treaty, which were validated by an Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1996 that included a unanimous call for the implementation of these Article VI legal commitments. In effect, the ICJ held that nuclear weapons states were under a legal obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith, leaving unsaid their implicit breach of duty by failing to do so in the more than 25 prior years that the NPT had imposed such an obligation on parties to the treaty.

Drawing the main conclusion from deeds as well as words, it is evident for all with eyes that want to see, that the nuclear weapons states as a group have opted for deterrence as a permanent security scheme and their version of the nonproliferation regime as its principal management mechanism. In this security system it is hardly surprising that the legal mandate issued by the ICJ to negotiate nuclear disarmament has been totally ignored.

One contribution of the NBT is to convey to the world the crucial awareness of these 122 countries as reinforced by global public opinion that the deterrence/NPT approach to global peace and security is neither prudent nor legitimate nor a credible pathway leading over time to the end of nuclearism.

In its place, the NBT offers its own two-step approach—first, an unconditional stigmatizing of the use or threat of nuclear weapons to be followed by a negotiated process seeking nuclear disarmament. Although the NBT is silent about demilitarizing geopolitics and conventional disarmament, it is widely assumed that later stages of denuclearization would never be implemented unless they included these broader assaults on the war system. The NBT is also silent about the relevance of nuclear power capabilities, which inevitably entail a weapons option given widely available current technological knowhow. The relevance of nuclear energy technology would also have to be addressed at some stage of nuclear disarmament to address concerns about possible diversion to military uses.

Having suggested these major shortcomings of treaty coverage and orientation, can we, should we, cast aside these limitations, and join in the celebrations and renewed hopes of civil society activists to rid the world of nuclear weapons? I think, with a realistic sense of what has been achieved and what remains to be done, that the NBT should be treated as a historic step forward. It gives authoritative legal backing to the profound populist stigmatization of nuclear weapons, and as such provides anti-nuclear civil society forces with a powerful instrument to alter the climate of opinion in the nuclear weapons states. The Joint Statement is helpful, as well, in a perverse sort of way, undermining the tendency for activists to relax after achieving a provisional goal, in this case the NBT. We should all remember that there have been many lost opportunities and unfulfilled hopeful pledges in the past to get rid of the nuclear shadows haunting the human future. The most recent such instance was Barack Obama’s speech of 2009 in Prague envisioning a world without nuclear weapons that was received with great acclaim and earned the new U.S. president a Nobel Peace Prize, but brought the world not one step closer to getting rid of the weaponry.

Nagasaki, 9 August 1945

Featured image from Preserve Articles

Global Research strives for peace, and we have but one mandate: to share timely, independent and vital information to readers across the globe. We act as a global platform to let the voices of dissent, protest, and expert witnesses and academics be heard and disseminated internationally.

We need to stand together to continuously question politics, false statements, and the suppression of independent thought.

Stronger together: your donations are crucial to independent, comprehensive news reporting in the ongoing battle against media disinformation. (click image above to donate)

*     *     *

US War in Syria Far From Over

By Stephen Lendman, July 17, 2017

Ceasefire in southern Syria was short-lived, discussed in a previous article. On Sunday, Netanyahu said he opposes the Russian/US brokered deal, claiming it “perpetuat(es)” Iranian and Hezbollah presence in the country near Israel’s border.

Brzezinski Wanted NATO to Become the “Hub of a Globe-Spanning Web” of Security Pacts

By Steven MacMillan, July 17, 2017

An Agenda For NATO: Toward a Global Security Web unprecedented risks to global security,” with “extremist religious and political movements” among these risks, movements that he himself helped to empower through advocating giving the Mujahideen US aid.

The US Deep State: Sabotaging Putin-Trump Ceasefire Agreement in Syria

By Federico Pieraccini, July 17, 2017

From the Russian point of view, any military sabotage would once again lay American intentions bare, regardless of Trump’s subsequent moves. However, one thing that is certain is that in the case of sabotage, Trump will be faced with having to make a definitive choice. Either he will surrender to the deep state, returning the situation back to a state of hyper-conflict with a nuclear superpower; or he will confront and overcome the deep state, thereby enabling him to implement his electoral promises.

Photos of Aleppo Rising: Swimsuits, Concerts and Rebuilding in First Jihadi-Free Summer

By Tyler Durden, July 17, 2017

Aleppines and other Syrians are rebuilding – they are optimistically preparing for the future. Welcome to the real Aleppo.

Israel’s Crimes against Humanity: ‘Gaza Will be Unlivable Next Year, Not 2020 as the UN Says’

By Edo Konrad, July 17, 2017

Things have gotten acutely worse in the Gaza Strip over the past month, since Israel and the Palestinian Authority cut the besieged strip’s already inadequate supply of power. But an entire generation of Gazans have grown up without ever experiencing electricity that is available around the clock. Crisis is nothing new.

Featured image from Freedom House

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe won a significant victory today in its fight to protect the Tribe’s drinking water and ancestral lands from the Dakota Access pipeline.

A federal judge ruled that the federal permits authorizing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation, which were hastily issued by the Trump administration just days after the inauguration, violated the law in certain critical respects.

In a 91-page decision, Judge James Boasberg wrote,

“the Court agrees that [the Corps] did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial.”

The Court did not determine whether pipeline operations should be shut off and has requested additional briefing on the subject and a status conference next week.

“This is a major victory for the Tribe and we commend the courts for upholding the law and doing the right thing,” said Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II in a recent statement. “The previous administration painstakingly considered the impacts of this pipeline, and President Trump hastily dismissed these careful environmental considerations in favor of political and personal interests. We applaud the courts for protecting our laws and regulations from undue political influence and will ask the Court to shut down pipeline operations immediately.”

The Tribe’s inspiring and courageous fight has attracted international attention and drawn the support of hundreds of tribes around the nation.

The Tribe is represented by the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice, which filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for issuing a permit for the pipeline construction in violation of several environmental laws.

“This decision marks an important turning point. Until now, the rights of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have been disregarded by the builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Trump administration—prompting a well-deserved global outcry,” said Earthjustice attorney Jan Hasselman. “The federal courts have stepped in where our political systems have failed to protect the rights of Native communities.”

The Court ruled against the Tribe on several other issues, finding that the reversal allowing the pipeline complied with the law in some respects.

The $3.8 billion pipeline project, also known as Bakken Oil Pipeline, extends 1,168 miles across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois, crossing through communities, farms, tribal land, sensitive natural areas and wildlife habitat. The pipeline would carry up to 570,000 barrels a day of crude oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois where it links with another pipeline that will transport the oil to terminals and refineries along the Gulf of Mexico.

Featured image from The Indigenous American

Yesterday, a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded in Paris. At the press conference after the meeting, PM said that Israel rejected the ceasefire in southwestern Syria brokered by Russia and the U.S., Israeli news site Haaretz reported.

Taking such a strange stance, Netanyahu pointed out that the truce agreement in the de-escalation zones increase Iran’s presence in Syria. Some sources claim that Tel-Aviv is especially displeased with the fact that the agreement removes the Iranian forces 20 kilometers from the border while Iran’s presence in the country is not excluded.

Moreover, Israel’s Jerusalem Post newspaper quotes some diplomatic sources claiming Iran is up to establish air, land and sea bases in Syria and Lebanon. In its turn, Politico stresses that Israeli politicians are wary of a land corridor in Iran allegedly plans to set up to directly support Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Tehran is one of Israel’s main rivals and the recent hysteria about Iran’s military presence near Israeli borders seems quite logical. However, is it wise of Netanyahu not only to confront Russia and the U.S. but also to display contempt for peace in a neighboring state?

Clearly, it’s not the first time Israel assault on Syria. Provocations on the Syria-Israel border have become quite common, and Tel-Aviv has been numerously criticized for supporting the armed opposition. For instance, on June 19, 2016, the Wall Street Journal wrote that Israel secretly aided the militants to maintain the buffer zone on the Golan Heights.

Recently, more and more experts conclude that the situation in Syria is beginning to remind of a post-war period. This is an achievement of Damascus and its allies which reached a fairly stable truce in many areas. One of the main successes of the diplomatic process became the de-escalation zones in southern Syria, and one can only hope that Israel will confine itself to words and won’t star destabilizing the situation for its goals.

Introduction

Globalisation affects children’s values, self-images and world outlook through targeted marketing of fairy tales, games and assorted media products. This article analyses these effects and proposes a number of measures to counteract them. Pro-active, grassroots approaches on the part of educators, writers, and artists should help produce specially designed storybooks, animated cartoons, and online games that would introduce the young to a variety of cultures, including aboriginal cultures, without, at the same time ‘Hollywoodising’ them. These approaches should be positive and affirmative rather that fear mongering and alarming.

Particular attention should be given to the difficult task of providing models of behaviour for boys, helping them reach maturity and inner harmony. Educators, above all parents, must critically discuss the values of competitiveness and egoism with their children in spite of the messages broadcast by corporate media.

Empowerment of parents is posited as the main motive force of demands to change educational policies and to circumscribe the scope of advertisement targeting children. Parents must promote sensitivity to their cultural heritage, read bedtime stories, and otherwise be there for their offspring. Children should also be given a chance to hear stories that have shaped their ancestors’ culture for generations. Children should acquire what rightly belongs to them: their cultural heritage.This involvement should produce a generation freed from the belief, actively promoted by business interests, that neoliberal globalisation is natural and inevitable. They should become citizens in spite of the massive globalised efforts to reduce them to consumers. This, in turn, should prompt national governments to resume their duty as protectors of children from undue commercial interests and from the values that underlie such interests. But for this to happen, the change has to come from below.

This paper is not about fairy tales adults tell each other outlining the benefits or dangers of globalisation. It is not about the efforts of promoters of globalisation to spread the gospel to the young, emphasising, as does the World Bank, its inevitability (UN). Nor is it about children who grow up in cross-cultural situations, the offspring of colonial settlers, missionaries, military personnel, and other kinds of expatriates (Bell-Villada et al., 2001).  Rather, it attempts to look at the cultural and educational aspects of globalisation as it engages children by means of fairy tales and related activities and products. Alongside economic, technological, and strategic aspects, cultural and educational aspects should interest and concern adults as well, since parents, teachers, and mentors are,after all, adults.

1. Exposure to Globalised Culture

Fairy tales and bedtime stories play a crucial role in the development of the child: ‘For some fairy tales are a gulp of fresh air, for others it is food for thought or a way to go beyond oneself. Still others look for alternative life paths and find answers in their quest for self-growth; they believe that for every life situation there must be a fairy tale. Fairy tales are fundamental for understanding and deepening relations with the outside world’ (Ben Aarsil, quoted in Perrot, 2011: 235). In the Convention of the Rights of the Child, signed in 1989, the United Nations recognised the right of children to play and to participate freely in cultural and artistic activities appropriate for their age as well as encouraging the production and dissemination of books for children. The UN General Assembly adopted this convention at a time when globalisation was gathering momentum. Indeed, a global approach to children’s rights is appropriate, since comparative research has shown that ‘global capitalism creates common problems for youth in different places and circumstances’ (Cole and Durham, 2008: 4). Increased movements of capital and products in the context of the weakening welfare state have reduced the protection of children from the market and its commercial interests.

Parents, often juggling several jobs just to stay afloat, also pay less attention to their offspring. With the exception of relatively wealthy families, children face a decrease in local inputs from public school and family, with fewer visits to local history museums and fewer bedtime stories. They are thus introduced to global imaginations transmitted via sophisticated marketing campaigns trying to increase consumption and create product loyalties, leading occasionally to real addictions: ‘with their engaging, interactive properties, the new global media are likely to have more profound impact on how children grow and learn, what they value, and ultimately who they become than any medium that has come before’ (Von Feilitzen and Carlsson, 2002: 189).

Teenage Girls Like You (Source: Wikipedia)

‘Children say they “learn a lot” – information, judgments, beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviours – from the cartoons, action series and other television programmes they watch. Even more important: they learn ways to understand reality’ (Ibid.:20). Globalisation affects what children do, watch, read, and wear. It shapes their self-images, their dreams of the future, and their relations with their peers as well as with grown-ups. For example, the hugely successful US-made Spanish-language TV series Muchachitacomotu (Teenage Girls Like You) is ‘filled with stereotypes of dominant views of femininities, social class, race, and power’ (Medina and Wohlwend, 2014: 41).

Fables, stories, and parables have long been disseminated across cultures. Aesop and the Bible are two examples of the world distribution of certain ideas and values, as well as of the virtues they promote. While biblical stories benefited from the institutional support of three major religions, Aesop’s fables did not, and relied at the outset on the spirit of the Renaissance. These initially foreign narratives came to coexist in local cultures with traditional stories and occasionally produced interesting cases of symbiosis and syncretism. These stories, such as La Fontaines’s and Krylov’s renditions of Aesop’s fables, were told or read by parents and grandparents, and quotes from them became part of everyday speech, but they did not invade children’s lives the way new media have done in the last two decades.

A particularly powerful way globalisation engages children has been termed ‘transmedia’. The term ‘describes franchises, anchored by films, television shows, or video games, with a reach that extends beyond multimedia to toys, books, video games, collectibles, apparel, and all sorts of household goods’ (Ibid.: 44). This is a hegemonic global phenomenon promoted by a handful of media giants active across national borders.

One of the more prominent cases of transmedia is the Disney Princess franchise, which packages twelve Disney productions produced between 1937 (Snow White) and 2013 (Frozen). With annual global retail sales of US$4 billion, this franchise operates an empire of interlocking sales. According to its own data (Disney Consumer Products, 2011):

Disney Princess is the number one girls’ license toy brand in the U.S. among all girls and the number one toy brand for dolls ages 2-5.

The National Retail Federation ranks Disney Princess among the top ten most popular holiday gifts for five years running.

More than 142 million books, 81 million sticker packs, and 16 million Disney Princess magazines.

Top ten in books category for The Princess and the Frog read-along app and top five paid book app for Princess Dress-Up: My Sticker Book app.

The breadth and complexity of operation of the Disney Princess franchise is striking. It submerges preschool girls into a veritable flood of pink paraphernalia visible in every aisle of stores catering to this age and gender group. Its products end up penetrating town and country, classrooms and schoolyards, bedrooms and kitchens, clothing closets and lunch boxes. Children look for popular Disney brand names, and complying parents usually oblige (Goudreau, 2012).

Pokemon (Source: 9Now)

American corporations no longer hold a monopoly on transmedia. Pokémon, created and launched in Japan in 1996, is, perhaps, the most graphic example of the power of globalisation used by a successful company outside the United States. This is how it describes its own success barely two years later:

Children are inundated by Pokémon today. In the morning they eat Pokémon seaweed on their rice; they exchange Pokémon cards with their friends at school; they play Pokémon Game Boy games after school; and they have Pokémon chocolates for snacks. They eat Pokémon curry for dinner, watch the Pokémon anime (cartoon) in the evening, and when they get into their futons at night, they read Pokémon comic books…We’ve had plenty of fads starting after the war with war games and plenty of franchising crazes with, i.e., chocolates and cards. But there’s never been a boom in Japan like Pokémon before. (quoted in Cole and Durham, 2008: 179)

The scope of immersion into this culture is indeed unprecedented, and the experiences of mass education in authoritarian societies in the twentieth century seem to pale in comparison with the success of globalised transmedia to penetrate even the most private nooks of life.

Nothing is left to chance. To achieve such a degree of penetration, transmedia must be science-based and focused:

We do not often enough realize that commercial marketing is the best financed source of media production in our world, and that it is often at the cutting edge of semiotic innovation…Transmedia franchises place co-branded content, and with it their ideological messages and inducements to consumption, throughout our virtual and spatial environment. (Lemke, 2011: 292)

Media companies have managed to obliterate distinctions between content and advertising, which makes regulation by child protection agencies very difficult. ‘Many cartoons, programmes and computer games are a form of advertising in themselves inasmuch as the vehicles for “merchandising”, i.e. the marketing of toys, dolls, clothing, accessories, etc., to youthful viewers’. This, in turn, creates ‘unprecedented intimacies between children and marketers’. Advertising has been shown to grow at twice the rate of GDP growth. TV advertising aimed at American children grew from $100 million in 1983 to nearly $13 billion by the end of the century. Children reportedly influence over $500 billion in purchases in the United States alone (Von Feilitzen and Carlsson, 2002: 9, 21, 25, 28).

2. Values and Ideologies

The ideological efficacy and consistency of transmedia have been widely recognised. Disney Princess succeeds in broadcasting traditional feminine dreams of a happy family and reinforces deference to a more powerful male figure (Lacroix, 2004). Disney film production volume surpasses that of major countries such as France, even though that country has one of the more articulate cultural policy traditions. While this naturally provokes resentment and criticism (Ariès, 2002), one must remember that it was the French government that facilitated the implantation the first Disneyland in Europe, which now successfully competes for tourists with the Louvre and the Notre Dame cathedral and is among the most profitable of the eleven Disney theme parks straddling the world.

Most fairy tales varied from country to country. Snegurochka and Ilya Muromets would populate the world of Russian children, while Astérix and Obélix accompanied French children. Each hero was part and parcel of the national culture and conveyed a certain set of values and principles. In order to be part of globalised children’s media, some of these nationally rooted stories become unhinged and come to reflect mostly American culture and acquire American paraphernalia. For example, it is not certain that French children recognise the local origin of some of Perrault’s stories, notably Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella, when they encounter them in Disney productions.

One ubiquitous feature of globalised children’s entertainment is the body image of girls, which instills in the tender minds of pre-schoolers the concern about being slim. Barbie dolls and Disney princesses, as a tribute to political correctness, may be African or Asian, they may be dressed as an astronaut or a doctor, but they are invariably slender. This contributes to widespread eating disorders, low self-image, and self-hate, an epidemic that, like financial crises, began in the United States but has now affected the entire capitalist world.

Girls are not the only targets of globalised media for children. Boys face a barrage of images, particularly on television, of men who are foolish, less articulate, and often violent. This appears to be a consequence of the otherwise healthy move away from the hitherto pervasive sexist images of women and ‘casually racist sitcoms’ (Utton, 2014). Boys remain largely stereotyped and polarised between those of a meek underachiever and an intrepid hero. In spite of a greater, albeit recent, awareness of boys’ emotions in our society, in child-targeting media, boys rarely cry or otherwise express their feelings. Moreover, the increasing strength of girls’ performance in the classroom, in conjunction with the strongly mediatised ‘meek and foolish man’,may have an effect on young boys’ motivation to succeed in school.

Values and models transmitted by globalised media also touch on the social. Pokémon is a case in point. It offers not only an alternative world of connectedness, but also promotes the values of accumulation, competition, and consumption, and in this sense mimics capitalism (Cole and Durham, 2008: 20, 179). At the same time, ‘because commercialized children’s culture – mass-produced clothing, backpacks, videos, toys – is widely accessible, it tends to obscure class divisions’ (Ibid.: 83).

Yet this role of transmedia, expressed inter alia in the form of fairy tales, must be understood as an effective means of political socialisation of future voters, and not only in the world’s periphery. ‘Social class divisions are more extreme now than at any time in US history, but…widespread consumption of commercial children’s culture…divert[s] children’s attention from these tectonic economic shifts’ (Ibid.: 96). They feel they all belong to the same ‘community’, that of Pokémon players or of Barbie clubs. Thus influence is made as much by omission as commission when issues of economic inequality and social solidarity are mostly avoided. This is another incarnation of neoconservatism, ‘traditional in its functions but innovative in its form and discourse’ (Bruno, 2000: 212). Globalisation has the potential to create a more balanced and just world, but so far it has reinforced fragmentation ‘between rich and poor, between the powerful and the powerless’ (Von Feilitzen and Carlsson, 2002: 7). At the turn of this century, nine out of ten children lived in poor countries, while ‘globalisation-from-above hampers implementation of children’s information rights expressed in the UN convention’ (Ibid.: 16).

Pokémon promotes a view of ‘society based on so-called “friendly” or “brotherly” competition, which is none other than a society of commercialism and an endless rush for power’ (Bruno, 2000: 193). Messages emitted via transmedia to millions of children not only socialise them into capitalist accumulation, but also legitimise and reinforce what is often called ‘millennial capitalism’, with its emphasis on immediate gratification and consumption rather than on labour and long-term investment. The culture of game acquired in childhood is preserved into adulthood as magic get-rich schemes, lotteries, and gambling, which replace hard work and savings as the dominant ethos of the new capitalism. More and more people dream of winning many times the amount of their annual income, as addiction to gambling, particularly online gambling, appears to grow. For example, in Britain the number of gambling addicts doubled in six years to reach half a million in 2013 (Gallagher, 2013).Games have come to be seen as a salvation from financial ruin. While lotteries and online gambling attract mostly the poor, derivatives, futures, and other products of financial engineering embody this ethos for the rich. This ethos constitutes ‘a counterpoint to the spirit of Enlightenment’ and replaces its emphasis on the rational with magic and fantasy (Perrot, 2011: 12). This manifests itself in the transformation of workers and employees into spectators of a small group of privileged elites controlling both symbolic and financial capital (Ibid.: 16).

Sociologists are not alone in levelling criticism against media penetration. A few years ago, Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury deplored the ‘intrusion of consumerism into childhood’ and singled out Disney for the ‘corruption and premature sexualisation of children’ (Gledhill, 2002). Reactions can be more forceful and even violent; globalisation provokes religious fundamentalism, ethnic nationalism, and racism: ‘the debate is now between two tendencies: on the one hand, commercial consensus and universal commercialisation, on the other, reaffirmation of identities, which is a reactionary and also inefficient barrier on the path of globalisation’ (Perrot, 2011: 429). It is adults who fuel these conflicts. Children may be severely restricted in their access to global and even local media and may become passive victims of political violence or ostensibly ‘active’ victims as underage soldiers.

A potent ideological message is therefore constantly transmitted, whether the child is in the classroom, bedroom, or ‘chilling’ with friends, benefitting corporations interested in maximising profits through increased sales and market penetration. Business logic has replaced pedagogical and moral desiderata that used to be determined not only by the parents, but also by the church, the state, and, ultimately, society. The triumph of neoliberal economic relations has turned books into merchandise targeting, along with toys and other transmedia,a very vulnerable segment of the population: children. Transnational corporations naturally marginalise or even eliminate altogether local providers of traditional fairy tales, puzzles, and toys, even when their products cost several times more than the more traditional local products.

Frozen, Disney film (Source: Playbuzz)

At the same time, neither children nor their parents or teachers need be passive consumers. The power of values conveyed by transmedia can sometimes be mitigated by active engagement (Appadurai, 1996). Ubiquitous TV series can be invited into classrooms as objects of study, role playing, and discussion. Would Chinese children accept that dragons are villains, as portrayed by American cartoons, while dragons are revered in their own culture? Would girls in Germany accept the meek self-image of a Disney heroine dreaming of marrying a prince, while a firm and assertive woman has run their country for over a decade?

Such active engagement is possible only in the absence of a sense of cultural inferiority. Otherwise, ‘many poorer nations and cultures are excluded from being represented at all, often within their own borders’,and there occurs ‘assimilation of the more powerful by the less powerful’ (De Block and Buckingham, 2007: 22). For example, cultural inferiority had long existed among Soviet elites, which eventually contributed to the cultural submission of post-Soviet Russia to American models and values. Transnational corporations quickly established themselves in the former Soviet republics, currently occupying a dominant position with respect to children’s books and toys (Будай, 2013).

Cultural inferiority can also be instilled by government campaigns, as happened to Arab Jews when they were brought to settle in the recently established State of Israel and forced to shed and even hate their culture as the culture of ‘the Arab enemy’ (Shohat, 1988). Children of these Arab Jewish immigrants to Israel would shun the Arabic stories and lullabies they had grown up on and were forced to learn Hebrew renditions of Russian stories brought in by Zionist pioneers and made into symbols of the dominant culture. They would also throw away lunches prepared at home because the smell of that food would exclude them as carriers of an inferior culture (Forget Baghdad, testimony of Ella Shohat). Nowadays, home-made food is likely to be exchanged for the more desirable Pokémon cards (Thorne, 2005).

3. The Power of Globalisation

Currently, half-a-dozen children-targeting corporations dominate the distribution of media products on virtually every continent. Widespread media deregulation and ‘concerted efforts to defend free commercial speech based on American constitutional interpretations’ have ‘devastating implications for the viability of local production and the local cultural resources for children’. This also leads to ‘an increasing dominance of the English language worldwide’ (Ibid.: 8, 17). No wonder free trade is often called ‘the gospel of the strong’ (Kotkin, 2014: 389).

These dilemmas and challenges are part of the continuing debate about globalisation. Is ‘Coca-colonisation’, i.e., U.S. cultural hegemony, inevitable and irresistible (Wagnleiter, 1994)?Or can there exist multiple sources of global cultural influence (Cowen, 2002), such as Bollywood or Latin American soap operas? Non-US heroes, such as Astérix, have made inroads into the world market, the latter being available in 77 languages. However, all its commercial documentation is usually produced in English, even for literary production,which is subsidised by the French government (Bruno, 2000: 125, 139). At the same time, the Russian animated cartoon Маша и медведь (Masha and the Bear) was translated into 25 languages, reaching children in over one hundred countries. It became the only Russian-language video viewed by over one billion people on YouTube (Сафонова, 2016)

Important changes in modes of reasoning in children have been noted and attributed to globalisation. Thus the spread of Western, mostly American, stories and cartoons reportedly has promoted instant, almost automatic associations as opposed to the more traditional and slower modes of reasoning developed through exposure to folk fairy tales (Almazov, n.d.). This effect may be truly significant in view of the early, often pre-literacy initiation of children to Internet surfing and unsupervised viewing of cartoons and other entertainment products largely produced by transnational media companies. At the same time, national production of storybooks and TV programmes for children continues to shrink under the influence of powerful transnational media giants. The institutions of childhood, including compulsory schooling and child labour laws, were meant to protect the child from the market. Ironically, as a result, children have become a lucrative target market, not as workers, but as consumers (Zelizer, 1985). In other words, globalisation challenges these protective institutions created less than a century ago.

4. Conclusion

Vigorous public debate is needed to ensure public participation in developing media policies of locally produced cultural programming. While global media help children become consumers, national programming should help educate them as engaged and responsible citizens, teach them that freedom is not limited to choosing among competing brands of dolls. Arguably, a commercial system cannot and would not do this. It has therefore been proposed to require commercial media to exit the field of children’s media. However, this kind of proposal goes against the logic of deregulation and neoliberalism that has permeated ruling circles in most countries. Rather than regulating business and protecting citizens from its excesses, governments have largely become agents of the private sector that actively promote the interests of the proverbial one percent. This is detrimental not only to adults, but also to children, who have even less wherewithal to resist the power of globalised corporations.

Therefore pro-active, grassroots approaches on the part of educators, writers, and artists appear so far more probable than government intervention (Frère and Jacquemain, 2013). Specially designed storybooks, animated cartoons, and online games should introduce the young to a variety of cultures, including aboriginal cultures, from those of China and Japan to those of Iran and Turkey, from Russia and the rest of Europe to Africa and the Americas, without, at the same time ‘Hollywoodising’ them. Particular attention should be given to the difficult task of providing models of behaviour for boys, helping them reach maturity and inner harmony. Educators, above all parents, must critically discuss the values of competitiveness and egoism with their children in spite of the messages broadcast by corporate media. A pleasant and natural way to do so is to give children a chance to hear stories that have shaped their ancestors’ culture for generations.

For this to happen, parents’ involvement is both crucial and critical. It is easy and tempting to plug the toddler onto interactive media and leave globalised media giants to shape the child. Parents must promote sensitivity to their cultural heritage, read bedtimes tories, and otherwise be there for their offspring. Children should acquire what rightly belongs to them: their cultural heritage.This is not a matter of nostalgia but, rather, of preservation of cultural diversity and education of responsible citizens. This involvement should produce a generation freed from the belief, actively promoted by business interests, that neoliberal globalisation is natural and inevitable. They should become citizens in spite of the massive globalised efforts to reduce them to consumers. This, in turn, should prompt national governments to resume their duty as protectors of children from undue commercial interests and from the values that underlie such interests. But for this to happen,the change has to come from below.

The ball is squarely in the parents’ court. They can demand changes in educational policies and limitations on the power of advertisement targeting children. They can also be more selective in shopping for and with their children. It is equally important to offer their offspring access to alternative educational programmes independent of commercial interests and promote values of inclusiveness and interchange. Some of these programmes are sponsored by UNESCO, thus ensuring both quality and scope (Stepanyants, n.d.).[1]

Prof. Yakov M. Rabkin is professor of contemporary history at the University of Montreal; his recent book is What is Modern Israel? (Pluto/University of Chicago Press, 2016), also available in French, Japanese, and Russian.  

Note

[1] The author thanks Miriam Rabkin for her suggestions and editing of the initial draft.

Sources

Almazov, Boris. (N.D.). Available at:http://borisalmazov.narod.ru/stati/globalizatsia.htm

Appadurai, A.. (1996).Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Ariès, P. (2002).Disneyland, le royaumedésenchanté.Paris: Golias.

Bell-Villada, G.H., et al. (2001).Writing out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids.Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

Bruno, P. (2000).La culture de l’enfanceà l’heure de la mondialisation.Paris: In Press.

Будай, Д. (2013) Какиеигрушкинасамомделелюбятдети? [Whattoys do childrenreallylike?]. 18 February. Availableat : http://toys.segment.ru/review/tochkazrenia/kakie_igrushki_na_samom_dele_lyubyat_deti_opros_potrebiteley/.

Cole, J., and D. Durham. (2008).Figuring the Future: Globalization and Temporalities of Children and Youth.Santa Fe, CA: School for Advanced Research Press.

Cowen, T. (2002).Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

De Block, L., and D. Buckingham. (2007).Global Children, Global Media.New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Disney Consumer Products. (2011).Disney Princess.Available at: https//disneyconsumerproducts.com.

Forget Baghdad. (2002). Film by Samir.

Frère, B., and M. Jacquemain (Eds.). (2013).Résister au quotidien? Paris: Sciences Po, Les Presses.

Gallagher, P. (2013). Addiction Soars as Online Gambling Hits £2bn Mark.Independent,27 January.

Gledhill, R. (2002). Archbishop Fired Opening Shot at Disney.The Times (London), 23 July.

Goudreau, J. (2012). Disney Princess Tops List of the 20 Best-selling Entertainment Products.Forbes, 17 September 17.

Kotkin, S. (2014).Stalin (Vol. 1). New York: Penguin.

Lacroix, C. (2004). Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney’s Cartoon Heroines from the Little Mermaid to the Hunchback of Notre Dame.Popular Communication,2(4), 213–29.

Lemke, J.L. (2011). Multimodal Genres and Transmedia Traversals: Social Semiotics and the Political Economy of the Sign. Semiotica,173(1), 283–97.

Medina, C.M., and K.E. Wohlwend. (2014).Literacy, Play and Globalization.New York: Routledge.

Perrot, J. (2011).Du jeu, des enfantset des livres à l’heure de la mondialisation. Paris: Editions du Cercle de la Librairie.

Сафонова, К.(2016). Машанаэкспорт: почемумультик «Машаимедведь» полюбиливЕвропе.6 March. Availableat : http://inosmi.ru/social/20160306/235639312.html.

Shohat, E. (1988).Sephardim in Israel: Zionismfrom the Standpoint of ItsJewishVictims.Social Text, 19(20), 1–35.

Stepanyants, M. (N.D.). Schools of the Dialogue of Cultures. Available at:https://doc-research.org/en/project/test/.

Stephens, S. (Ed.). (1995).Children and the Politics of Culture.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Thorne, B. (2005). Unpacking School Lunchtime. In C.R. Cooper et al. (Eds.), Developmental Pathways through Middle Childhood, 63–87.Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbarum.

UN. (N.D.). Available at:http://www.un.org/ru/youthink/globalization.shtml.

Utton, D. (2014). Why Are Men on TV Always Such Fools?The Telegraph, 13March.

Von Feilitzen, C., and U. Carlsson (Eds.). (2002).Children, Young People and Media Globalisation.Göteborg: UNESCO International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media.

Wagnleiter, R. (1994).Coca-colonization and the Cold War.Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press

Zelizer, V. (1985).Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children.New York: Basic Books.

It goes without saying that it’s mainly due to the unprecedented courage of certain journalists that go above and beyond to report the truth, we know that that there’s a whole list of Western countries that continue arming such radical terrorist groups as Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS.

On June 15, the UN report would release a report that would state that Israeli authorities are routinely financing and supplying Islamic radical militants fighting against the legitimate government of Syria and its armed forces in the Golan Heights. The report that was penned by the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) summarizes the period from March 2 to May 16, noting there’s a number of cases Israel would assist renegade armed groups. In total, there’s been sixteen such instances recorded by UNDOF.

But it goes much further that this. As it’s been reported there’s been at least 350 diplomatic Silk Way Airlines flights transporting weapons to various war zones across the world over the last 3 years. This Azerbaijani state-run company has been smuggling weapons to Syria under the pretext of shipping diplomatic pouches.

The files that were leaked to the members of the press include correspondence between the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Azerbaijan, with attached documents for weapons deals and diplomatic clearance for overflight and/or landing in Bulgaria and a great many countries, including US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Turkey.

And there’s no need to be surprised over that since it’s been established a long while ago that the most intense weapons trafficking to radical Islamists has been run by Bulgaria. Moreover, a total of fifteen different intelligence agencies, including special services of the USA, Great Britain, France and the countries of the Persian Gulf have joined their efforts in organizing the so-called “Bulgarian Stream”. They’ve been using diplomatic flights run by American companies to supply pro-US forces on the ground with non-NATO weapons, buying them in Bulgaria and then delivering the crates to Saudi Arabia for them to be smuggled to Syria.

In the west of Mosul, more than 500 such crates with various ammunitions delivered from Saudi Arabia were discovered a while ago. It goes without saying that they were used by ISIS to continue their reign of terror. Pictures of those crates were initially published on Twitter by Iraqi Day.

At the same time, one can recall that Iraq has already tried to accuse Saudi Arabia of supporting radical Islamists last year, when Iraq’s permanent representative to the UN, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, said that ISIS was receiving funds from Riyadh that were sent under the guise of charity for the children of the city of Fallujah. According to this official figure, Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, sent a letter to Riyadh with a request to clarify why the Saudi authorities would not stop sponsoring terrorism, thus abiding numerous resolutions of the Security Council.

Yet another channel of arms trafficking has recently been exposed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kuwait. According to this information, suppliers purchased weapons and ammunition for artillery systems in Ukraine and supplied them to ISIS through Turkey. Saudi Arabia has also been using the pretty same route to supply radical militants with US-produced TOW systems. As for MANPADS, jihadists have been receiving those from Libya, those are apparently being stolen from the warehouses built back in Gaddafi years.

The American Conservative notes that the policy of arming military groups committed to overthrowing the government of President Bashar al-Assad began in September 2011, when President Barack Obama was pressed by his Sunni allies—Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar—to supply heavy weapons to Syria.

Additionally, it’s been pointed out that CIA involvement in the arming of anti-Assad forces began with arranging for the shipment of weapons from the stocks of the Gaddafi regime that had been stored in Benghazi. CIA-controlled firms would ship the weapons from the military port of Benghazi to two small ports in Syria using former US military personnel to manage the logistics. The funding for the program came mainly from the Saudis.

It would then state that:

A declassified October 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report revealed that the shipment in late August 2012 had included 500 sniper rifles, 100 RPG (rocket propelled grenade launchers) along with 300 RPG rounds and 400 howitzers. Each arms shipment encompassed as many as ten shipping containers, it reported, each of which held about 48,000 pounds of cargo. That suggests a total payload of up to 250 tons of weapons per shipment. Even if the CIA had organized only one shipment per month, the arms shipments would have totaled 2,750 tons of arms bound ultimately for Syria from October 2011 through August 2012. More likely it was a multiple of that figure.

The single largest Saudi arms purchase was from the United States. In December 2013, would approve the sale of 15,000 TOW systems to Riyadh, the total worth of weapons sold back then amounted to 1 billion dollars. The TOW missiles began to arrive in Syria in 2014 and soon had a major impact on the situation on the ground.

It’s no secret that the flood of weapons into Syria, along with the entry of 20,000 foreign fighters, have largely defined the nature of the conflict. By helping its Sunni allies provide weapons to al-Nusra Front and its allies and by funneling into the war zone sophisticated weapon, Washington can be describe as the actor responsible for the spread of radical Islamists across the Syrian territory.

Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” 

Featured image from New Eastern Outlook

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

All post-9/11 US wars of aggression continue directly or indirectly through proxies – endless unresolved conflicts, trillions of dollars spent for imperial madness, the immense human cost of no consequence.

Since Russia intervened in Syria at Assad’s request, the tide of battle turned in favor of government and allied forces, smashing US-supported terrorists, liberating many parts of the country.

Yet conflict continues raging. Political analyst Jamal Wakeem believes long-range US rocket launchers deployed to al-Tanf in southern Syria may be used against government and allied forces, a convenient pretext used as unjustifiable justification.

Regime change remains Washington’s objective, said Wakeem. It wants control over Syria, first by gaining it in northern and southern parts of the country.

“(T)he Americans are trying to block any possibility of a geographical link between Baghdad and Damascus…to marginalize Iran and (Hezbollah)…in preparation for the future strike against the Syrian Army and also against its allies,” Wakeem explained, adding:

“I believe we will see a further escalation of the situation. The Americans know very well that the stability of the regime relies mainly on the stability of the capital, Damascus” – something it wants changed.

Ceasefire in southern Syria was short-lived, discussed in a previous article. On Sunday, Netanyahu said he opposes the Russian/US brokered deal, claiming it “perpetuat(es)” Iranian and Hezbollah presence in the country near Israel’s border.

Tel Aviv and Washington want regime change, pro-Western puppet rule replacing Assad, Syrian sovereignty eliminated, Iran isolated.

US war plans were long ago prepared against the Islamic Republic, likely just a matter of time until they’re implemented.

Netanyahu lied saying

“Israel is aware of Iran’s expansionist goals in Syria.”

None exist – not now, earlier or likely planned.

Tehran wants regional stability, peace, not war, and the Middle East free from the threat of nuclear weapons along with America’s aggressive presence.

Separately, the Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS) web site reported “tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped inside (the) ISIS controlled” city.

US-supported terrorists posing “Syrian Democratic Forces and the” US-led coalition ignore their safety and welfare.

Residential areas are being indiscriminately terror-bombed, the same US-led aggression inflicted on Mosul.

RBSS estimates around 70,000 defenseless civilians trapped in the city. Severe shortages of food, water and medical aid created a “humanitarian disaster…”

When US-led aggression began weeks earlier, most medical professionals fled the city with other civilians, RBSS explained.

“Several private hospitals are now out of service due to the heavy shelling,” the group said. “(O)nly one operating hospital remain(s) inside Raqqa city, but it is not sufficient to provide adequate health services.”

“People living in neighborhoods near the front lines have been obligated by ISIS militants to abandon their houses and move towards the city center so they can be used as human shields. ISIS wishes to prevent as many civilians as possible from fleeing the city…”

Satellite images show vast destruction and “severe damage to houses, properties and infrastructure.”

The battle for control of Raqqa repeats US-led devastation inflicted on Mosul – on a somewhat smaller scale, but just as harmful to city residents, victims of US imperial viciousness.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Featured image from Freedom House

I view Saudi Arabia as a dysfunctional manifestation of Islam. In the same way, I view Israel as a dysfunctional manifestation of Judaism. This is not to mean, I hasten to say, that either Judaism or Islam is inherently at odds with the social, cultural or political lives of its adherents or with universal moral values.

The point I am making specifically refers to political manifestations of certain “impulses”, if you will, in a religion – for example, the “messianic impulse” in Judaism that could lead to the claim of inalienable right to Jewish self-determination or the Islamic historic tradition of spreading the faith “by the sword” that could lead to political repression.

I have the utmost respect for all three monotheistic religions and the civilizations they created in functional “manifestations” that enriched and improved the lives of the adherents of these religions – as they still do in many ways and many different communities around the world.

Both Christians and Muslims regard their faiths as traditions that evolved from Judaism. This is accepted and well known when it comes to Christianity. The commonly-heard phrase “Judeo-Christian tradition” links the two religions as does the Bible; the Catholic concept of “we are all chosen people” – chosen by God as “redeemed” through the love of Jesus Christ – is a direct rejoinder to the ancient Hebrew myth that regards Israelite tribes as “the” chosen or “in covenant with God”.

Not as apparent to many people is the fact that Islam too builds on that same ancient tradition and is derived from it. Thus, for example, Muslims are mystified with the “dispute” around Haram al Sharif compound in Jerusalem where Al-Aqsa Mosque is housed.

As Firas Al-Khateeb points out, Muslims regard the “Temple Mount” site in Haram al-Sharif as one of the foundations of their own tradition.

For Muslims, Islam was not a new religion in the 600s when Prophet Muhammad began preaching in Makkah. Instead, it is seen as a continuation and capstone of the traditions of earlier prophets that are revered by all three monotheistic faiths. The message of Muhammad only continues and perfects the messages of Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), and ‘Isa, which had been corrupted over time. Thus, for Muslims, the Temple of Solomon that was built [on] Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in ancient times was in fact part of their own religious history.

What ignited Jewish Zionist interest in Temple Mount after 1967 is the strange alliance between fundamentalist Jews and evangelist Christians.

Southern aerial view of the Temple Mount, Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem (Source: Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia)

I bring all this up about religion and Palestine (aka the Holy Land), because our understanding of what is going on there is itself a battlefield, one that has confused us all and prevented us from describing the problem of Israel in Palestine accurately. But the first step in solving any problem is defining it accurately.

Does the problem of Israel in Palestine reside in the ideology of political Zionism as divorced from religious Zionism as divorced from Judaism, an ancient tradition whose adherents, for various historic and cultural reasons, were not easily assimilated into other societies until late in the modern era? Or is the problem rooted in 19^th-century nationalist movements and settler-colonialism divorced from the particularity of the colonizers as Jews? Or does the problem lie in the uncivilized nature, religion and culture of the native Palestinian Arab?

Since 1948, the struggle for justice in Palestine has been controlled by outright lies and “narratives” meant to put a good face on Judaism and “Jewish identity”, rather than by international law meant to protect the weak against forceful conquest.

The most enduring question Palestinians continue to ask is: “How can it be possible that ‘the world’ is so blind to the justice of our cause?” By “justice of our cause”, they mean justice that moves to redress ethnic cleansing, Apartheid and continuing dispossession and subjugation. By “the world”, they mean primarily Western powers, Christian Zionists and Jews worldwide, most of whom have long supported Israel.

The most difficult answer to tackle is the one related to Jews. One can read a book like Alison Weir’s Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the United States Was Used to Create Israel and quickly understand how US support enabled the creation of Israel and why.

History books like Jonathan Schneer’s The Balfour Declaration or Rashid Khalidi’s The Iron Cage will give one the facts about British involvement in Palestine, but the result of my experience with books on Zionism is confusion rather than clarity.

I am certainly far from understanding exactly how “Zionism is Jewish messianism in process of realizing itself through this wordly-means”, as Arthur Hertzberg defines it (or a strand of it) in the introduction of The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader.

Of the millions of Jews in Israel and worldwide who approve of what has happened to Palestine or disapprove of it but justify it as “necessary for the redemption of the Jews” many would flunk a test with the simple question, “What is a Zionist?”

But, whether from the teachings in their synagogues or their home upbringing as secular Jews, or in Israeli schools or summer camps or “birthright” trips to Israel, etc., many have somehow imbibed Theodor Herzl’s interpretation of the “post exilic history” of the Jews as an insoluble struggle with anti-Semitism, and the Jewish state as the solution to that evil.

What the average Palestinian understands viscerally is the fact that millions of Jews (regardless of their political or religious or nationalist ideology or “identity”) have displaced (and replaced) non-Jewish Palestinian Arabs in their own homeland, claiming it as their own. Millions of Jews worldwide support – no, fiercely demand – the existence of the Jewish state and Jewish supremacy in Palestine, the “Holy Land”.

And yet, there is obfuscation everywhere. The term “Israeli” is used in the mainstream media and even by activists to refer to Israeli Jews — this is because the 20.8 % of the Israeli population that is Palestinian Arab (Muslim and Christian) does not count and there is no such thing as an “Israeli” nationality. The word “Jewish” is never used as a qualifier of the word “settlements” in mainstream media, even though, in fact, they are built exclusively for Jews. Again, “Israeli” is preferred.

Until recently, one couldn’t even say “Jewish State” without first hastening to put it in quotes – i.e., to indicate that Israel has little to do with Jews or with Judaism and everything to do with Zionism, for fear that the designation would implicate “all” Jews.

This is not to say that Zionism, especially in its interpretation as a settler-colonial project, does not accurately describe the driving historical forces and buried Palestinian tragedies that have shaped Israel, but only to say that political correctness is often used, intentionally or unintentionally, to obscure the particularity of the Palestinian Arab – Jewish dynamic that dominates the issue and is always the elephant in the room.

Critics of Israel (Jews and non-Jews) have worked hard to point out the dangers of conflating Zionism with Judaism, mostly in defense of Judaism and “Jewish values”, thus unintentionally derailing the focus from defense of Palestinian rights. But I think it is now time to move this struggle among Jews themselves forward in order to achieve a critical mass of Jewish solidarity with Palestinians, without which, I am afraid, Palestinians are doomed.

As Peter Cohen puts it:

 Zionism is Jewish nationalism and uses Jewish historical, cultural and religious symbols to political ends. Whether or not it is inevitable and implicit in Judaism, it certainly presents itself as such. It may not be so different with Wahabbists and Right-wing Christian supremacists: they’ve hijacked their religions to some degree and out-shouted more tolerant and less aggressively political versions of those religions (this is not an equation, just a parallel). It’s up to Jews to repudiate this aggressive political nationalist variant of Jewish identity linked to settler colonialism, separation and supremacy, and embrace other, more tolerant and inclusive visions.

There is a comparison to be drawn for sure, and moving the conversation/debate forward in this direction can only be helpful to Palestinian Arabs, Muslim and Christian, whose unfortunate destiny is tied to a hijacked “Holy Land”.

Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

The end of May marked the death of a man who had been at the center of global affairs for decades. Zbigniew Brzezinski, born in Warsaw in the 1920s, was one of the most influential foreign policy advisers in the US, who also played a pivotal role in the drive towards further global integration.

Brzezinski earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1953, and subsequently became a professor at that university, before moving on teach at Columbia University. From 1966 to 1968, he was a member of the Policy Planning Council at the Department of State, and in 1968, he served as chairman of the Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force for Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign.

Brzezinski: The Internationalist

From 1973 to 1976, Brzezinski served as the Director of the newly formed Trilateral Commission, an internationalist organization he himself helped to create. In a 1989 interview, Brzezinski revealed his role in founding the Trilateral Commission along with the elitist American banker, David Rockefeller, before bragging how this organization was the first to propose the idea of holding a G7 (was G8 for a period) summit (emphasis added):

“Not only did I run it [the Trilateral Commission], I helped to found it and organize it with David Rockefeller. So, if any of our viewers are conspiracy minded, here is one of the conspirators… It is a North American, Western European, Japanese organization to promote closer contacts between these three regions of the world. And the commission is composed of private citizens, not government officials, who are leaders in the different sectors of society… We’re incidentally the ones who proposed, originally, the holding of the annual summit meeting of the industrial democracies.

Throughout their lives, Brzezinski and Rockefeller worked towards the goal of creating an integrated global system. In David Rockefeller’s book ‘Memoirs,’ he admits that his family has been part of a “secret cabal” working towards building a “one world” system (emphasis added):

“Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”  

In addition to playing an instrumental role in founding the Trilateral Commission, Brzezinski was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a frequent attendee at the elitist Bilderberg conference, illustrating his position as a high-ranking individual deeply entrenched in the parallel governmental system.

Giving the Soviets their Vietnam War and Encouraging Pol Pot

Brzezinski’s most notable role in public life was when he served as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor (NSA) from 1977 to 1981. Famously, in this role, Brzezinski was one of the main intellectual architects who advocated arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, a scheme that he hoped would increase the probability that the Soviet Union would intervene. In an interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998, Brzezinski recalled this operation (with the translation from French provided by William Blum and David N. Gibbs):

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahideen in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. In this period, you were the national security advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?

B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Also in his role as NSA, Brzezinski and the Carter administration encouraged the Chinese to continue supporting the genocidal Pol Pot in Cambodia. After Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Cambodia at the end of 1978, seizing power by early 1979, the US pressed China to continue assisting the Khmer Rouge in their fight against the occupying Vietnamese forces, with Brzezinski admitting that he “encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot.”

Obama: Brzezinski an “Outstanding Friend”

In more modern times, Brzezinski remained a pivotal figure in the US, working in a plethora of think tanks and advising numerous mainline political figures. One such figure was the former US President, Barack Obama, who he was very close to. In a March 2008 speech, Obama revealed how intimate his relationship was with Brzezinski, calling him an “outstanding friend:”

“To Dr. Brzezinski; I can’t say enough about his contribution to our country. Here’s somebody who helped to shape Camp David, and bring about a lasting peace between Israel and some of its neighbours. Somebody who has over decades trained some of the most prominent foreign policy specialists, not only in the democratic party, but has trained a number who ended up in the republican party as well… He has proven to be an outstanding friend, and somebody who I have learned an immense amount from. And for him to support me in this campaign, and then come out to here in Ohio, is a testimony to his generosity.”

NATO to be the Global Security Nexus Point?

An Agenda For NATO: Toward a Global Security Web unprecedented risks to global security,” with “extremist religious and political movements” among these risks, movements that he himself helped to empower through advocating giving the Mujahideen US aid (emphasis added):

The basic challenge that NATO now confronts is that there are historically unprecedented risks to global security… The paradox of our time is that the world, increasingly connected and economically interdependent for the first time in its entire history, is experiencing intensifying popular unrest made all the more menacing by the growing accessibility of weapons of mass destruction — not just to states but also, potentially, to extremist religious and political movements. Yet there is no effective global security mechanism for coping with the growing threat of violent political chaos stemming from humanity’s recent political awakening.

Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). hub of a globe-spanning web of various regional cooperative-security undertakings” (emphasis added):

“To remain historically relevant, NATO cannot — as some have urged — simply expand itself into a global alliance or transform itself into a global alliance of democracies… A global NATO would dilute the centrality of the U.S.-European connection, and none of the rising powers would be likely to accept membership in a globally expanded NATO.

NATO, however, has the experience, the institutions, and the means to eventually become the hub of a globe-spanning web of various regional cooperative-security undertakingsamong states with the growing power to act. The resulting security web would fill a need that the United Nations by itself cannot meet but from which the UN system would actually benefit. In pursuing that strategic mission, NATO would not only be preserving transatlantic political unity; it would also be responding to the twenty-first century’s novel and increasingly urgent security agenda.”

Although Brzezinski’s vision seems far from probable at the present time, it will be interesting to see the path the world takes in the years and decades to come.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image from New Eastern Outlook

The most eagerly anticipated meeting of the year, that between Putin and Trump, lasted far more than the scheduled 20 minutes, extending past two hours. This is not too much of a surprise given the points of friction that needed to be discussed, the many outstanding issues in international relations, and the fact that this was the first official meeting between the two world leaders. The results achieved exceeded initial ambitions, and the personal chemistry between Putin and Trump seems to have been sufficient to reach an important agreement in Syria as well as to conduct discussions surrounding cyber security. Trump even asked Putin about the alleged Russian hacking in the US presidential election as a way of appeasing detractors back home.

The statements of both presidents following their meeting underlined their positive intentions. Putin called Trump a very different person from the one portrayed in the media, mentioning that he was reflective and very attentive to details. Trump, for his part, praised the meeting with Putin, stating the importance of dialogue between nuclear-armed superpowers.

The most important agreement concerned a ceasefire in southern Syria along the border with Israel and Jordan. This is a very active area of fighting, and so the ceasefire obviates the possibility of dangerous confrontations between the United States and Russia, as well as between Syria and Israel, which could escalate out of control as seen when the US Air Force shot down a Syrian Su-22 jet as well an Iranian drone. Israel, from its position in the occupied Golan Heights, has repeatedly struck the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), in a desperate effort to halt its gains against al Qaeda and Daesh terrorists.

In their first meeting, within less than two hours, Putin and Trump came to an agreement on potentially the most volatile situation in the region, saving hundreds of civilian lives in the process. The agreement on Syria now has to run the gauntlet of the deep state and all the other interests arrayed against Trump. Just four days following a similar agreement reached in 2016 between Obama and Putin, everything was upended by the US Air Force bombing and killing nearly a hundred soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army in Deir ez-Zor, shredding the ceasefire agreement that had just been reached.

Trump is dealing with the same occult forces that sabotaged Obama’s ceasefire agreement. It is impossible to know how much strategic support the US deep state has for the ceasefire decision. Ever since the SAA reached the Iraqi border north of al-Tanf, the space available for the US and her allies to maneuver has been dramatically diminished. With al-Tanf isolated, Washington’s ceasefire does not change or shift the already heavily altered balance of power in that area of Syria. For all these reasons, the ceasefire does not appear to be a concession by either party but merely a commonsense move to lessen the possibility of a direct confrontation between super-powers.

The military apparatus seems to be focused on the situation in northern Syria, with Raqqa and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) being the central pivot for the US to reach Deir ez-Zor and its associated oilfields. The US State Department, as well as the US military wing involved in Syria, hope to balkanize Syria, dismembering it in different regions and putting Raqqa under the control of a puppet authority in Damascus. However, such American hopes of imposing a Brennan-style governorate as in Iraq is forlorn, as Damascus is the only authority recognized on Syrian territory, and once Raqqa is filled with returning Syrian citizens, such American plans will fall apart.

Moreover, the Baghdad authorities have already made clear on two occasions how reluctant they are to support Americans in their military operations. In the case of Mosul, they reiterated that the US deployment and involvement be minimal, while the Iraqi authorities have already announced that they want to place under their full control their border with Syria, in effect hobbling Washington’s plan to leave chaos and instability along the borders of the two countries. The US deep state finds in chaos the ideal way to channel conflict and foment instability. One of the most important objectives of the Syrian and Iraqi armies is therefore to isolate the borders and control the flow of human traffic from one country to the other, nixing in the process what has hitherto been a strategic advantage for Daesh and other terrorist organizations, where they have been free to cross borders with weapons and whatever else they please.

Trump and all the actors involved in this negotiation are finally able to make an agreement between Moscow and Washington stand. Unlike with previous agreements, the US in Syria is now in a worse situation than it was 12 months ago, having failed to achieve many of its strategic objectives. Cooperation with Turkey in northern Syria was wrecked following the liberation of Aleppo and the clear US support for the Kurds (SDF). Similarly, areas of deconfliction in Syria agreed to in Astana (between Iran, Russia and Turkey) have stopped the gains of terrorists in many active areas of the conflict, leading to zero chances of occupying more towns. Such efforts have been important bargaining chips during the various peace negotiations.

The crux of this strategy seems to be a focus on the only possible solution that meets the interests of the deep state’s military wing, related to the original plan to dismantle Syria once the removal of Assad failed. From a certain point of view, it may make sense to focus on the situation in the north of the country in Raqqa, the only area where the US still has some influence. This may be the contorted vision drawn up by contending factions of American deep state. Certainly from the point of view of Moscow, the strategy in Syria is a mix of diplomatic solutions, seeking to reach multiple ceasefire agreements with major players like Turkey and the United States, but never setting aside the war effort carried out by Russia, Iran and Syria.

The agreement between Putin and Trump will firstly benefit Syrian civilians as well as widening the opportunity for the SAA to liberate more towns and villages from the grip of terrorism. It is a long-awaited agreement and solution that is now met by the predominant wing of the US deep state. In the event of a failure of the agreement, Trump will be obligated to point out to the world the subversion of the Washington establishment and its deep state, which works to frustrate his agenda and replace it with its own terrible policies.

Moscow’s confidence in deriving concrete benefits from this deal increases hour by hour, thanks to the truce continuing to hold. From the Russian point of view, any military sabotage would once again lay American intentions bare, regardless of Trump’s subsequent moves. However, one thing that is certain is that in the case of sabotage, Trump will be faced with having to make a definitive choice. Either he will surrender to the deep state, returning the situation back to a state of hyper-conflict with a nuclear superpower; or he will confront and overcome the deep state, thereby enabling him to implement his electoral promises.

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

Featured image from Strategic Culture Foundation

Near the center of the current furor over Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 is a documentary that almost no one in the West has been allowed to see, a film that flips the script on the story of the late Sergei Magnitsky and his employer, hedge-fund operator William Browder.

The Russian lawyer, Natalie Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump Jr. and other advisers to Donald Trump Sr.’s campaign, represented a company that had run afoul of a U.S. investigation into money-laundering allegedly connected to the Magnitsky case and his death in a Russian prison in 2009. His death sparked a campaign spearheaded by Browder, who used his wealth and clout to lobby the U.S. Congress in 2012 to enact the Magnitsky Act to punish alleged human rights abusers in Russia. The law became what might be called the first shot in the New Cold War.

Donald Trump Jr., speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention. (Source: Consortiumnews)

According to Browder’s narrative, companies ostensibly under his control had been hijacked by corrupt Russian officials in furtherance of a $230 million tax-fraud scheme; he then dispatched his “lawyer” Magnitsky to investigate and – after supposedly uncovering evidence of the fraud – Magnitsky blew the whistle only to be arrested by the same corrupt officials who then had him locked up in prison where he died of heart failure from physical abuse.

Despite Russian denials – and the “dog ate my homework” quality of Browder’s self-serving narrative – the dramatic tale became a cause celebre in the West. The story eventually attracted the attention of Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, a known critic of President Vladimir Putin. Nekrasov decided to produce a docu-drama that would present Browder’s narrative to a wider public. Nekrasov even said he hoped that he might recruit Browder as the narrator of the tale.

However, the project took an unexpected turn when Nekrasov’s research kept turning up contradictions to Browder’s storyline, which began to look more and more like a corporate cover story. Nekrasov discovered that a woman working in Browder’s company was the actual whistleblower and that Magnitsky – rather than a crusading lawyer – was an accountant who was implicated in the scheme.

So, the planned docudrama suddenly was transformed into a documentary with a dramatic reversal as Nekrasov struggles with what he knows will be a dangerous decision to confront Browder with what appear to be deceptions. In the film, you see Browder go from a friendly collaborator into an angry adversary who tries to bully Nekrasov into backing down.

Blocked Premiere

Ultimately, Nekrasov completes his extraordinary film – entitled “The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes” – and it was set for a premiere at the European Parliament in Brussels in April 2016. However, at the last moment – faced with Browder’s legal threats – the parliamentarians pulled the plug. Nekrasov encountered similar resistance in the United States, a situation that, in part, brought Natalie Veselnitskaya into this controversy.

Film director Andrei Nekrasov, who produced “The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes.” (Source: Consortiumnews)

As a lawyer defending Prevezon, a real-estate company registered in Cyprus, on a money-laundering charge, she was dealing with U.S. prosecutors in New York City and, in that role, became an advocate for lifting the U.S. sanctions, The Washington Post reported.

That was when she turned to promoter Rob Goldstone to set up a meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. To secure the sit-down on June 9, 2016, Goldstone dangled the prospect that Veselnitskaya had some derogatory financial information from the Russian government about Russians supporting the Democratic National Committee. Trump Jr. jumped at the possibility and brought senior Trump campaign advisers, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, along.

By all accounts, Veselnitskaya had little or nothing to offer about the DNC and turned the conversation instead to the Magnitsky Act and Putin’s retaliatory measure to the sanctions, canceling a program in which American parents adopted Russian children. One source told me that Veselnitskaya also wanted to enhance her stature in Russia with the boast that she had taken a meeting at Trump Tower with Trump’s son.

But another goal of Veselnitskaya’s U.S. trip was to participate in an effort to give Americans a chance to see Nekrasov’s blacklisted documentary. She traveled to Washington in the days after her Trump Tower meeting and attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, according to The Washington Post.

There were hopes to show the documentary to members of Congress but the offer was rebuffed. Instead a room was rented at the Newseum near Capitol Hill. Browder’s lawyers. who had successfully intimidated the European Parliament, also tried to strong arm the Newseum, but its officials responded that they were only renting out a room and that they had allowed other controversial presentations in the past.

Their stand wasn’t exactly a profile in courage.

“We’re not going to allow them not to show the film,” said Scott Williams, the chief operating officer of the Newseum. “We often have people renting for events that other people would love not to have happen.”

In an article about the controversy in June 2016, The New York Times added that

“A screening at the Newseum is especially controversial because it could attract lawmakers or their aides.”

Heaven forbid!

One-Time Showing

So, Nekrasov’s documentary got a one-time showing with Veselnitskaya reportedly in attendance and with a follow-up discussion moderated by journalist Seymour Hersh. However, except for that audience, the public of the United States and Europe has been essentially shielded from the documentary’s discoveries, all the better for the Magnitsky myth to retain its power as a seminal propaganda moment of the New Cold War.

After the Newseum presentation, a Washington Post editorial branded Nekrasov’s documentary Russian “agit-prop” and sought to discredit Nekrasov without addressing his many documented examples of Browder’s misrepresenting both big and small facts in the case. Instead, the Post accused Nekrasov of using “facts highly selectively” and insinuated that he was merely a pawn in the Kremlin’s “campaign to discredit Mr. Browder and the Magnitsky Act.”

Financier William Browder (right) with Magnitsky’s widow and son, along with European parliamentarians. (Source: Consortiumnews)

The Post also misrepresented the structure of the film by noting that it mixed fictional scenes with real-life interviews and action, a point that was technically true but willfully misleading because the fictional scenes were from Nekrasov’s original idea for a docu-drama that he shows as part of explaining his evolution from a believer in Browder’s self-exculpatory story to a skeptic. But the Post’s deception is something that almost no American would realize because almost no one got to see the film.

The Post concluded smugly:

“The film won’t grab a wide audience, but it offers yet another example of the Kremlin’s increasingly sophisticated efforts to spread its illiberal values and mind-set abroad. In the European Parliament and on French and German television networks, showings were put off recently after questions were raised about the accuracy of the film, including by Magnitsky’s family.

“We don’t worry that Mr. Nekrasov’s film was screened here, in an open society. But it is important that such slick spin be fully exposed for its twisted story and sly deceptions.”

The Post’s gleeful editorial had the feel of something you might read in a totalitarian society where the public only hears about dissent when the Official Organs of the State denounce some almost unknown person for saying something that almost no one heard.

New Paradigm

The Post’s satisfaction that Nekrasov’s documentary would not draw a large audience represents what is becoming a new paradigm in U.S. mainstream journalism, the idea that it is the media’s duty to protect the American people from seeing divergent narratives on sensitive geopolitical issues.

Over the past year, we have seen a growing hysteria about “Russian propaganda” and “fake news” with The New York Times and other major news outlets eagerly awaiting algorithms that can be unleashed on the Internet to eradicate information that groups like Google’s First Draft Coalition deem “false.”

The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Source: Washington Post)

First Draft consists of the Times, the Post, other mainstream outlets, and establishment-approved online news sites, such as Bellingcat with links to the pro-NATO think tank, Atlantic Council. First Draft’s job will be to serve as a kind of Ministry of Truth and thus shield the public from information that is deemed propaganda or untrue.

In the meantime, there is the ad hoc approach that was applied to Nekrasov’s documentary. Having missed the Newseum showing, I was only able to view the film because I was given a special password to an online version.

From searches that I did on Wednesday, Nekrasov’s film was not available on Amazon although a pro-Magnitsky documentary was. I did find a streaming service that appeared to have the film available.

But the Post’s editors were right in their expectation that “The film won’t grab a wide audience.” Instead, it has become a good example of how political and legal pressure can effectively black out what we used to call “the other side of the story.” The film now, however, has unexpectedly become a factor in the larger drama of Russia-gate and the drive to remove Donald Trump Sr. from the White House.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

Featured image: Yascha Mounk (Source: @Yascha_Mounk / Tiwtter)

The U.S. borg is vehemently trying to set up Russia as an enemy of the “west”. Their anti-Russian propaganda has become part of the campaign against U.S. President Trump who seeks détente with Russia. It requires intense efforts to denigrate the country, its citizens and its leaders. Here is an example of how such propaganda is fabricated.

Yascha Mounk is:

a Lecturer on Political Theory at Harvard University’s Government Department, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy of the German Marshall Fund, and a Nonresident Fellow at New America’s Political Reform Program.

He is a self declared liberal internationalist who has been published and quoted by lots of international media.

Yesterday Mounk tweeted this:

The Mounk tweet is a series of lies:

Need a reminder of the human cost of dictatorship? All these are journalists who criticized Putin–and died under mysterious circumstances

The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin is duly elected and not a dictator. The Russian Federation may not be a “liberal democracy”, but it is a democracy. The picture is old. It shows all Russian journalists who died during their work since 1991. Most of them died as war- or crime-correspondents and were not involved in politics at all. The death of most of those journalists is not mysterious. Getting blown up by artillery during the wars in Chechnya, Yugoslavia or Ukraine is no mystery at all. Most of these journalists never criticize Putin. They were already dead before Putin had any significant political role.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) lists 82 killed Russian journalists since 1992, most of them died due to war or related to civil crimes or corruption. There are about 80 portraits of journalists in the picture Mounk tweeted.

Two recognizable portraits and names therein are of Vlad Listyev, a TV entertainment producer killed in 1995 over some controversy about lucrative advertisement on public TV. Another portrait is of Dmitry Kholodov, killed in 1994 while investigating mafia connections within the Russian military. At the time of their death Putin was a minor bureaucrat in Saint Petersburg. He did not gain power until he became acting president at the end of 1999.

According to the CPJ numbers more Russian journalists were killed during the eight years of Yeltsin’s presidency (1992-2000) than in the 17 years of Putin’s presidencies since. Mounk claims “All these are journalists who criticized Putin …” when more than half of them were already dead before Putin became known and to power. It was during the time of the “Harvard boys” who robbed Russia blind that most of these journalist were killed. The Russian system, thanks to the Harvard driven “reforms” and criminal privatization under Yeltsin, is a rough terrain for investigating oligarchs and mafia businesses. But there is no evidence, none at all, that Putin was ever involved in the decease of any journalist.

The first original publishing of the Mounk picture may have been as early as 2009. A piece on journalists remembrance in Russia from 2014 already includes the pic. The reverse image search shows that the picture has been has been used by several news-outlets since.

Every aspect of the Mounk tweet is a lie.

But Mounk’s lies have by now been re-tweeted over 22,000 times. Many of those who see it will believe the claims he makes. They will trust a widely publish Harvard academic. But the tweet, as well as nearly all other claims about Russia one sees in “western” media, is pure propaganda. It is like the editorial in today’s New York Times that claims “Russia’s oil-dependent economy [is] in trouble” while all Russian economic numbers turned positive and all indicators point to accelerating growth. It is fake news.

The anti-Russian propaganda campaign is now part of the “liberal” campaign against U.S. president Trump. It is failing. Trump’s support is steady if not increasing despite daily new revelation about his (non existent) “collusion with Russia” and the (non existing) “Russian interference” in the U.S. election.

The purveyors of the propaganda stories are in despair. Each and every new fire they try to stoke dies off within a day or two. The temptation then is to invent and push ever bigger lies about Trump, Russia and their non-existing connections.

The fake news Mounk spits out, and which disqualify him as an academic, is a sign of their accelerating panic.

One of the richest local authorities in Britain today stands accused of the ‘social murder’ of over eighty residents in one of its council-owned tower blocks. Grenfell Tower

The allegation is that council officials knowingly authorised, specified and paid for an otherwise fire-safe, high-rise tower block that housed some hundreds of their council tenants, to be retro-clad and insulated with a polymer foam that was inherently combustible and that would emit highly toxic hydrogen-cyanide gas, if ignited.

 Grenfell Tower on fire. Source The New European

In such extreme circumstances, the production and emission of poison gas would immediately disable all those within the affected areas of the building from seeking escape and would consequently lead to them being burnt alive.

Polymer foams have been commercially available for nearly fifty years following their synthesis by the Union Carbide Corporation of America. However, their latent combustibility and toxicity upon ignition have been exhaustively documented for decades subsequent to numerous accidents involving loss of life both in Europe and around the world. Consequently, such foams have been banned in many countries, from being used within buildings, internally or externally. Their legitimate use being confined to the packing and/or thermal insulation of commercial goods, foodstuffs and refrigerated cold stores etc.

The above facts would have been very well-known to those who authorised the use of such inherently dangerous materials in or on council-owned, residential premises and, therefore, those individuals concerned who knowingly acted to endanger life instead of safeguarding it, should be prosecuted on charges of willful neglect leading to multiple manslaughter.

The tragic disregard for public safety and lack of respect for the communities they are paid to serve, which is apparently ingrained in certain local authorities and Town Halls, must now be exposed and excised, once and for all. 

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

During the battle for Mosul, freelance photographer Ali Arkady witnessed and photographed torture, abuse and cold-blooded murder of Iraqi military captives – civilians suspected of ties to ISIS, according to RT.

He was embedded with an elite Iraqi interior ministry emergency response division, witnessed brutal interrogations to obtain forced confessions from suspected ISIS captives or sympathizers.

Arkady later fled the country, taking his photographic and video evidence with him, exposing the brutality of regime practices – as vicious as how ISIS and other US-supported terrorists operate.

Iraqi forces were trained by their US sponsor, America notorious for torture and abuse in its war theaters – notably in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Bush/Cheney’s 2003 rape and destruction of the country.

Regime and US-led coalition forces indiscriminately slaughtered defenseless civilians in the earlier battle for Anbar province, then Mosul since last fall.

Unknown numbers of detainees were extrajudicially executed. Thousands languish in prison uncharged and untried, held incommunicado without access to family members or counsel – tortured, otherwise mistreated and denied access to healthcare.

Journalists covering the battle for Mosul were warned not to issue negative reports. RT earlier explained

“(o)ne of the biggest and deadliest battles of the 21st century is actually also one of the most censored and suppressed.”

US forces are directly involved in combat operations and their aftermath, aware of the brutality inflicted on detainees, maybe encouraging it, civilians held hostage by ISIS enduring similar or harsher treatment from their Iraqi captors.

Arkady’s material revealed clear evidence of high crimes of war and against humanity – Iraqi forces and their US sponsor fully responsible for the horrors.

In a follow-up mid-July report, RT discussed new videos showing Iraqi forces torturing, abusing and murdering civilians alleged to have ties to ISIS – no evidence proving it, no trials, no convictions, just unrestrained brutality.

In one video, men in military uniforms were seen dragging a captive to the edge of a cliff, executing him in cold-blood, then tossing him over, his corpse likely never to be found or identified.

New videos match what Arkady produced earlier. Britain is involved in virtually all US wars of aggression. UK General Rupert Smith criticized clear revelations of regime high crimes.

He lied claiming

“(i)t wasn’t the government of Iraq, it wasn’t the coalition, it was ISIS. Everybody should be entirely clear what they were doing with the civilians.”

“It went way beyond human shields. They were out and out murdering civilians left, right and center.”

Smith ignored the use of ISIS terrorists as imperial foot soldiers. He was silent about unknown thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of defenseless civilians massacred by US-led terror-bombing, UK warplanes involved.

He said nothing about US and likely British forces embedded with Iraqi troops, likely directly involved in their high crimes of war and against humanity.

Washington, London and Baghdad want horrors they caused suppressed. They want the rape and destruction of Mosul portrayed as a liberating struggle.

They want the myth of Iraqi and US-led coalition forces prioritizing the safety and welfare of civilians reported – not the ugly reality of all US-led imperial wars, noncombatants suffering most.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

When taxi and bus drivers take journalists into Syria via the Beirut-Damascus Highway these days, there’s a common greeting that has become a kind of local tradition as the drivers pull into their Damascus area destinations. They confidently tell their passengers: “welcome to the real Syria.” Local Syrians living in government areas are all too aware of how the outside world perceives the government and the cities under its control. After years of often deceptive imagery and footage produced by opposition fighters coordinating with an eager Western press bent on vilifying Assad as “worse than Hitler”, many average Syrian citizens increasingly take to social media to post images and scenes of Syria that present a different vision: they see their war-torn land as fundamentally secular, religiously plural, socially tolerant, and slowly returning to normalcy under stabilizing government institutions.

As the most intense phase of fighting in Aleppo was unfolding in 2016, veteran journalist Stephen Kinzer took to the editorial pages of the Boston Globe to remind Americans that the media has created a fantasy land concerning Syria. Kinzer painted a picture quite opposite the common perception:

Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press… For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it…

The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. It can do so with popular support because many Americans — and many journalists — are content with the official story.

Now, during the first summer of relative calm Aleppo residents have seen in over four years of grinding conflict, the city commonly referred as “the jewel of Syria” is once again rising from the ashes. Foreign journalists are also accessing places like East Aleppo and the heart of the walled ‘old city’ for the first time. Some few honest correspondents, unable to deny the local population’s spirit of hopefulness and zeal with which they undertake rebuilding projects, acknowledge that stability and normalcy have returned only after the last jihadists were expelled by the Syrian government and its allies.

Aleppo orchestra concert, Summer 2017 via Sarah Abdallah

A Western press and political class which generally mourned the liberation of the city from al-Qaeda groups like Nusra (AQ in Syria), calling government actions a ‘massacre’ and ‘genocide’, now finds a reality that can’t be ignored or denied: Aleppines are returning to ravaged parts of the city to rebuild, they are enjoying nightlife, going to music concerts, staying out late at cafes; families are swimming at local pools, women are strolling around in t-shirts and jeans free of the oppressive Wahhabi fighters that once ruled parts of the city.

Kinzer’s Boston Globe piece further concluded that the entire web of assumptions on Syria woven by the media and fed to the public over the years were “appallingly distant from reality” and warned that these lies are “likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.” As new photos continue to emerge of the real Aleppo and the real Syria it is essential to revisit the most destructive among the lies that have helped serve to prolong this tragic and brutal war.

Aleppines didn’t want to live under Wahhabi Islamist rule

Andalusia Swimming Pool in Aleppo, Summer 2017 via Syria Daily

According to multiple eyewitness reports and studies, the story of how war entered Aleppo’s environs was not primarily one of mass public protests and government crackdown, but of an aggressive jihadist insurgency that erupted suddenly and fueled from outside the city. According to then Indian ambassador to Syria, V.P. Haran (Amb. to Syria from 2009 to 2012), Aleppo on the whole was unwillingly dragged into the war after remaining silent and stable while other cities raged. In an interview which detailed his own on-the-ground experience of the opening years of war in Syria, the ambassador said:

Soon parts of Latakia, Homs and Hama were chaotic but Aleppo remained calm and this troubled the opposition greatly. The opposition couldn’t get the people in Aleppo to rise up against the regime so they sent bus loads of people to Aleppo. These people would burn something on the streets and leave. Journalists would then broadcast this saying Aleppo had risen.

Why did it take until July 2012 – well over a year since conflict in Syria began – for Aleppo to see any fighting? Why did residents not “rise up” against the government?

The answer is simple. The majority of Syrians, whether Sunni, Shia, Alawi, Christian, Kurd, or Ismaili, are sane individuals – they’ve seen what life is like under the “alternative” rebel rule marked by sharia courts, smoke and alcohol bans, public floggings, street executions, desecration of churches, and religious and ethnic cleansing of minorities. They recognize that there is a real Syrian national identity, and it goes beyond mere loyalty to the current ruling clique that happens to be in power, but in Syria as a pluralistic Levantine society that rejects Saudi style theocracy.

Rebuilding Aleppo, Summer 2017. Latin Parish of St. Francis via Sarah Abdallah

The kind of religious and cultural pluralism represented in the liberal democracies of the West are present in Syria, ironically, through a kind of government-mandated “go along, get along” policy backed by an authoritarian police state. One can even find Syrian Jews living in the historic Jewish quarter of Damascus’ walled old city to this day.

Syrian urban centers have for decades been marked by a quasi-secular culture and public life of pluralist co-existence. Aleppo itself was always a thriving merchant center where a typical street scene would involve women without head-coverings walking side by side with women wearing veils (hijab), cinemas and liquor stores, late night hookah smoke filled cafés, and large churches and mosques neighboring each other with various communities living in peaceful co-existence. By many accounts, the once vibrant secular and pluralist Aleppo is now coming back to life (and largely never left government-held West Aleppo).

“Moderates” did not “liberate” Aleppo, but gave cover to an ISIS and al-Qaeda invasion

Image: “moderate” rebels mock a Christian government soldier—This photo was originally posted online by a Swedish based terror group in Syria after the Summer 2013 rebel offensive against the Menagh airbase near Aleppo. A rebel fighter mocks a captured Christian government soldier’s cross. Another photo posted in the original set reveals that the soldier was later tortured by being crushed with a large rock on his chest as he lay on his back.

One of the most under reported and least understood events surrounding the history of how all of Aleppo province and the Northern Syria region became a hotbed of foreign jihadists is the fall of the strategically located Menagh airbase near Aleppo. As a Reuters timeline of events indicates:

In early 2012 rebels take control of the rural areas northwest of Aleppo city, besieging the Menagh military air base and the largely Shiite towns of Nubl and Zahra.

After a lengthy siege of Menagh, the base finally fell to jihadist factions under the command of the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) in August of 2013. This event was key to rebel fighters gaining enough territory to cut off the Aleppo-Damascus Highway, which allowed them to encircle all of Aleppo for much of that year. But a little known yet hugely important detail of the Menagh episode is that rebels only got the upper hand after being joined by ISIS suicide bombers commanded by Omar the Chechen (ISIS’ now deceased most senior military commander). The fall of this government base is what opened a permanent jihadi corridor in the North, allowing terrorists to flood the area. The commander for the operation was US Ambassador Robert Ford’s personal friend, Col. Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, who was head of the US and UK funded Revolutionary Military Council of Aleppo (FSA). Okaidi worked in tandem with ISIS military commander Omar the Chechen and his crew for the operation – all while being supported by the United States and Great Britain.

Concerning US-backed Okaidi’s close relationship to the ISIS faction in the summer of 2013, there is actually video evidence and eyewitness testimony (US Ambassador Ford himself later admitted the relationship to McClatchy News). Amazingly, the video, titled “US Key Man in Syria Worked Closely with ISIL and Jabhat al Nusra” never had very widespread public distribution, even though it has been authenticated by the top Syria expert in the U.S., Joshua Landis, of the University of Oklahoma, and author of the hugely influential Syria Comment. Using his Twitter account, Dr. Landis commented: “in 2013 WINEP advocated sending all US military aid thru him [Col. Okaidi]. Underscores US problem w moderates.”

The video, documenting (now former) U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford’s visit to FSA Col. Okaidi in Northern Syria, also shows the same Col. Okaidi celebrating with and praising a well-known ISIS commander, Emir Abu Jandal, after conducting the joint Menagh operation. In an interview, this U.S. “key man” at that time, through which U.S. assistance flowed, also praised ISIS and al-Qaeda as the FSA’s “brothers.” Abu Jandal was part of Omar the Chechen’s ISIS crew assisting the FSA. Further video evidence also confirms Omar the Chechen’s role at Menagh. The videos also show Okaidi proudly declaring that al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda in Syria) makes up ten percent of the FSA. The FSA was always more of a branding campaign to sell the rebels as “moderates” to a gullible Western media than a reality on the ground; it was a loose coalition of various groups espousing militant jihad with the end goal of establishing an Islamist polity in Syria.

Foreign fighters flooded Aleppo Province. The U.S. State Department’s own numbers: read the full report at STATE.GOV

In the end, terror groups like ISIS enjoyed a meteoric rise in Syria due to US government and media support for these so-called “moderate rebels” – all entities which collectively sought regime change at all costs – even the high cost of mass civilian death and suffering that inevitably results from unleashing an insurgency in urban areas.

The Syrian Army and government were never “Shia” or sectarian-based

Al Aziziyah neighborhood in Aleppo via Syria Daily

The Arab Spring narrative was the ideological lens through which experts initially pit the oppressive supposedly “Alawite/Shia regime” against a popular uprising of Syria’s majority Sunnis. As Sunnis make up about 70% of Syria’s population, it was simply a matter of numbers, and of time. But this view proved overly simplistic, and according to one little known West Point study, utterly false. It was commonly assumed that the Syrian Army was a hollowed out Alawite institution with its Sunni conscripts apprehensively waiting for the right moment to defect to the rebel side. This was the fundamental supposition behind years of repetitious predictions of the Assad regime’s impending collapse, and predicated upon a view of the Syrian military as a fundamentally weak and sectarian institution. But West Point’s 2015 study entitled Syria’s Sunnis and the Regime’s Resilience concluded the following:

Sunnis and, more specifically, Sunni Arabs, continue to make up the majority of the regular army’s rank-and- file membership.

The study’s unpopular findings confirmed that the Syrian Army, which has been the glue holding the state together throughout this war, remains primarily a Sunni enterprise while its guiding ideology is firmly nationalistic and not sectarian.

The highest ranking Syrian officer to fall victim to rebel attack was General Dawoud Rajiha, Defense Minister and former chief of staff of the army, in a major 2012 bombing of a Damascus national security office. General Rajiha was an Orthodox Christian. Numerous Christians and officers of other religious backgrounds have served top positions in the Syrian Army going back decades – a reflection of Syria’s generally nationalist and religiously tolerant atmosphere.

Mainstream press did not report from Aleppo, but was hundreds of miles away.

Outside the Citadel of Aleppo: life returning to normal, Summer 2017 via Syria Daily

The heavily populated urban areas of Syria continue to be held by the government. But most reporting has tended to dehumanize any voice coming out of government held areas, which includes the majority of Syrians. The war has resulted in over 6.5 million internally displaced people – the vast majority of which have sought refuge in government territory.

The fact remains that there are some popular figures in the establishment media and analyst community who speak and write frequently about Syria, and yet have never spent a significant amount of time in the country. Throughout much of the war they’ve primarily reported from Western capitals – thousands of miles away – or, if they are in a Middle East bureau, without ever leaving the safety of places like Beirut or Istanbul. Fewer still have the necessary Arabic language skills to keep pace with local and regional events. Some have never been to Syria at all. They become willing conduits of rebel propaganda beamed through WhatsApp messages and Skype interviews, which was especially the case when it came to the battle for Aleppo. That much of the world actually considers these people as authorities on what’s happening in Syria is a joke – it’s beyond absurd.

Outdoor concert venue and Aleppo springs back to life, Summer 2017 via Maram Kasem

We are hopeful that the jihadist menace will be fully expelled and that the international proxy war which has taken so many lives and reduced much of a beautiful nation to rubble will finally come to an end. Aleppines and other Syrians are rebuilding – they are optimistically preparing for the future. Welcome to the real Aleppo.

Final national exams just before summer 2017 via Syria Daily

On September 16, 2013, the UN published its evidence in response to the claim that president Bashar al-Assad of Syria used chemical weapons in an attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Based on interviews with US intelligence and military insiders, Seymour Hersh, the journalist who revealed the role the United States played in the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, was unequivocal in his assertion that the incident on August 21, 2013, was a false flag attack that was exploited politically by Obama in an attempt to deceive the world in making a cynical case for war.

This assertion was supported in April, 2016, by former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, who argued that the Turkish government, at the behest of Washington, engineered the chemical attacks in Ghouta in order to draw the United States into Syria. McGovern stressed that one of the Turkish journalists who exposed Turkey’s involvement in the alleged false flag attack has (as part of president Erdogan’s crackdown on independent journalism), been imprisoned and charged with treason.

Journalist Serena Shim‘s sources in the Southern Turkish province of Hatay would appear to corroborate the false flag thesis. The journalist cited activists who claimed al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front insurgents transported chemical weapons to Syria from Turkey.

In its report entitled, The Alleged Use of Chemical Weapons in the Ghouta Area, the UN did not, as the majority of the corporate media claimed, blame the Syrian president for the August 21, 2013 attack. One day after the incident, on August 22, 2013, the Guardian claimed there was not “much doubt” that Assad was to blame.

In an article for the same paper almost four years later (April 5, 2017), Jonathan Freedland, echoed the near-consensus view among the corporate mass media that Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for another alleged chemical gas atrocity, this time in Idlib province in the north of the country the previous day (April 4, 2017):

“We almost certainly know who did it. Every sign points to the regime of Bashar al-Assad”, he said.

What these ‘signs’ are were not specified in the article. Since the alleged attack over three months ago, there has not been a single piece of independently verifiable evidence that has been presented which alludes to Assad’s guilt.

Channel 4 News

Channel 4 News markets itself as a high grade impartial news broadcaster. On October 4, 2016, reporter, Krishnan Guru-Murthy described a rebel (Jihadist terrorist) “victory” in east Aleppo as “rebels fighting back against the forces of President Assad”. Guru-Murthy reported the battle from the narrow perspective of al-Qaeda and it was clear from his general tone to whom he intended his viewers sympathies to be aligned with.

Guru-Murthy’s embedded report also failed to mention that – as evidenced by the logo clearly displayed on a jacket of one of the individuals featured in the film – that the self-proclaimed ‘humanitarians’ depicted were in fact White Helmets inculcated with Harakat al-Nour al-Zenki, one of 22 brigades that operate in and around Aleppo that comprise one of many U.S. State Department-funded terrorist fighters.

Finally, the Channel 4 reporter omitted to mention that a video had surfaced shortly before the broadcast of the report in which Harakat al-Nour al-Zenki members were shown abusing and then beheading a child, Abdullah Issa, from a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Aleppo. Ten weeks later, on December 21, 2016, an observant commentator, Edward Laurance, inquired of Channel 4 News why it pulled its October, 4 film:

“Would be interested to know why this film has disappeared without trace”, he said.

Getting involved

According to the Pew Research Journalism Project, “the No. 1 message” on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Al Jazeera, is that “the U.S. should ‘get involved’ in the conflict in Syria”. Although propaganda reports from the likes of Guru-Murthy are useful in terms of getting the public partially onside, they are on their own terms insufficient. A high level of public involvement is often achieved as the result of a singularly defining propaganda image or event. In terms of the first Gulf conflict, the event in question was the infamous nurse Nayirah affair. In relation to the 2003 Iraq invasion, it was the WMD debacle, and in Libya in 2011 it was the false claims of rape said to have been committed by Libyan government troops.

The image that probably more than any other captured the public imagination in relation to Syria, was that of a small boy, Omran Daqneesh, photographed covered in dust sitting on a chair which brought a CNN anchor to tears. The pro-regime change broadcaster, Al-Jazeera, produced what was clearly another piece of theatre, albeit far less convincing, in which the news anchor struggled not to laugh out loud live on air while interviewing the absurd figure, Abdulkafi Alhamdo, against a backdrop of a sound recording of explosions. This was reminiscent of CNNs “interview” with fake reporter and Western-funded propagandist, “Danny”.

Liberation

The media propaganda intensified in late November, 2016, following the trouncing of the UK-US and Saudi funded and trained salafist mercenary terrorists by joint Kurdish-Syrian government forces. During this time, these forces began liberating vast swaths of territory in east Aleppo including the Sakhour, Haydariya and Sheikh Fares neighbourhoods.

In the wake of the liberation, at least 120 British MPs backed a petition calling for the UK government to carry out “life-saving aid drops” (euphemism for the implementation of a no fly zone) over eastern Aleppo. Among the MPs demanding the “aid drops” was Labour’s Emily Thornberry, who in the House of Commons cited the White Helmets as the justification for advocating this course of action. On the November 28, 2016 edition of Sky News, journalist Sam Kiley described the re-capture of a third of east Aleppo as a “so-called liberation”, in addition to uttering the trigger phrase “Assad regime”.

The persistent Bana myth

Kiley’s source for his ambivalent statement was Fatemah Alabed, mother of seven year old, Bana Alabed. Bana, in whose name a twitter account was set up in September, 2016, allegedly in an “unknown east Aleppo neighbourhood” – and whose tweets have consistently focused on anti-Assad and anti-Russian themes and the need to be saved from bombing – has been uncritically endorsed throughout the corporate media. Bana has garnered celebrity status, her most notable fan being the author, J K Rowling. Bana and Rowling share the same talent agent.

Bana’s mastering of English idiomatic expressions on twitter is indicative of somebody who is fluent in the language. But her prompted robotic responses to questions by Sky News presenter, Alex Crawford, clearly suggests otherwise. In addition, the various inconsistencies in Bana’s twitter feed narrative reinforce the notion that the seven year old’s account – given the number of tweets – is being run by others out of Aleppo for nefarious purposes. It’s clear that the Bana project, like the White Helmets, is an extremely well-funded propaganda operation. As Dr Barbara McKenzie puts it:

“There can be no doubt that the Bana project is a scam. The tweets are not the thoughts of a little Syrian girl wanting the world to save her from Russian bombs. Rather, they are the product of a sophisticated and well-planned operation designed to shape public perception of the Syrian and Russian operations, in order to justify Western intervention in Syria and facilitate regime change.”

Tormenting the liberated

The media strategy used in order to achieve this has been to depict the Russian and Syrian forces as tormentors rather than liberators. This has been the mass corporate media’s overriding narrative throughout six years of conflict. It’s an inversion of truth that also typified BBC reportage on the liberation of east Aleppo.

Featured image: Hamdan Temraz, UN security officer who disappeared into maw of Israeli secret police (Source: Tikun Olam)

This is getting old. Israel has once again arrested a United Nations official based in Gaza as he attempted to cross into Israel to attend a work meeting there. An Israeli security source has confirmed to me the linked story above and the Shin Bet arrest. The news is under gag order in Israel and no media there may report the story. This conveniently insulates the Israeli public from the news that their supposedly democratic nation has arrested human rights personnel from the most reputable NGO in the world. It also allows the Shin Bet time to build yet another fraudulent case against yet another Palestinian official doing international humanitarian relief work in Gaza.

Since Israelis can’t know this information, I’m going to tell them here. The arrested man is Hamdan Temraz, 61, who is the deputy director of the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) in Gaza. He was arrested at the Erez crossing on July 12th despite having a valid entry permit.

The Palestinian human rights group, al Mezan released this statement to the Palestine Information Center, protesting the latest Israeli outrage:

The Center explained that such Israeli practices are aimed at blocking the work of the international organizations in the Gaza Strip, pointing out that 8 employees working in these organizations have been arrested since the beginning of 2014.

It affirmed that hundreds of employees are denied the permits required to enter or exit Gaza to be able to follow up their organizations’ work, not to mention the Israeli incitement campaigns they are exposed to.

I find it odd that a UN employee has been in an Israeli prison for four days and there has been no statement from the international body. Is this how they come to the defense of their staff when it’s under threat in a police state? I left a phone message with the UN press office seeking a statement, but have not heard from them so far.

It’s no coincidence that last month, Netanyahu called for the UN to dismantle UNWRA, the major relief organizations in Gaza. He appealed directly to U.S. ambassador, David Friedman aka “The Settler’s Friend.” This rehashes a common Israeli narrative in which evil Hamas co-opts everyone and everything to do its dirty terrorist work in the enclave. The U.S. is far the largest donor supporting UNWRA, providing $350-million annually to support the millions of Gazans who are unemployed and undernourished due to the decade-long Israeli siege. Israel hopes that the new Trump regime will realize its ambitions to restrain or suppress the aid work in Gaza, which serves to remind the world of Israel’s ongoing assault against its innocent civilian population.

Last summer, Israel arrested two Palestinians in Gaza. Waheed Borsh worked for the UN Development Program and Mohammed el-Halabi for the Christian relief group, World Vision. Both were accused of exploiting their NGO status to undertake covert activities on behalf of Hamas. In the latter case, el-Halabi was accused of funneling international relief funds to the Islamist group. In every instance, the NGOs undertook full, comprehensive investigations and uncovered no evidence to support the Israeli charges. But since Israel functions as a police state as far as Palestinians are concerned, guilt and conviction were assured. Therefore, in order not to spend decades behind bars, each copped a plea that offered a lesser sentence. [According to World Vision International in a message to Global Research: “Mohammad el Halabi has pled not guilty to all the charges laid against him. His case remains active in the Israeli court system.”]

This charade permits Israel to bolster its fake claim that the international relief organizations aren’t that at all–but rather thinly concealed support groups for militant international terrorists. This, in turn, satisfies the Israeli government’s core far-right constituency, which can tell itself how much the world hates us and how justified it is in utilizing maximum force in “defending” itself from enemies lurking virtually everywhere.

So here’s how it will go with Temraz. He will be accused of taking advantage of his position directing security for the UN agency by permitting Hamas to do something that somehow jeopardizes Israeli security. Perhaps he allowed the militants to build tunnels under UN facilities. Perhaps he offered materials to Hamas to build tunnels. Or even better: he provided the fake IDs the Haram al Sharif attackers used to gain entrance to the Muslim holy site. Who knows what they can devise? The thing is, these Shabak agents aren’t very imaginative. Nor do they need to be. No one reviews the cases they bring for credibility. No judge cares to do so. He or she would rapidly find themselves on the road to career oblivion if they did. So any half-assed concoction can send a man away for a decade or more simply because some agent has to make his quota and throw the fear of god into both Palestinians and the relief agencies servicing Gaza. What a seamy mess of a national security regime this is.

Featured image: Palestinians walk past a gasoline-powered generator in the old market of Gaza City, Gaza Strip, June 9, 2017. (Source: Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

Things have gotten acutely worse in the Gaza Strip over the past month, since Israel and the Palestinian Authority cut the besieged strip’s already inadequate supply of power. But an entire generation of Gazans have grown up without ever experiencing electricity that is available around the clock. Crisis is nothing new.

In addition to sewage that flows into the sea untreated, and hospital ICUs that must rely on gasoline-powered generators, the power shortage also has dire consequences on everyday life in regular households. Without electricity, the pumps that deliver tap water to apartments in high-rise residential buildings stop working.

“Water used to reach these houses between two-to-three hours every few days,” Khalil Shaheen says. “And this is in the summer. Yesterday, my building only had one hour of water.”

Israel pulled its troops out of the Gaza Strip a little over a decade ago, but its military retains effective control over many aspects of life in the coastal enclave. The Israeli army still controls the Strip’s land and maritime borders, decides who and what may enter and exit, blocks basic technologies like 3G cellular broadband from being installed, and has launched three military operations that left thousands of Gazans dead. Israel also sells Gaza the majority of its inadequate supply of electricity.

Shaheen, who is the director of the Economic and Social Rights Unit at the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), one of Palestine’s most prominent rights groups, monitors the impact of Israeli, Palestinian Authority, and Hamas policies on life in the Gaza Strip.

“I’m afraid that with the ongoing situation, Gaza will be unlivable by the end of 2018,” he said in a telephone interview earlier this week.

Palestinian children fill jerrycans with drinking water in the Rafah Refugee Camp in the southern Gaza Strip, June 11, 2017. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Can you talk about what is happening on the ground in Gaza right now?

I can’t even describe Gaza as a prison, because even prisoners have fundamental rights. Gaza is an isolated area under occupation, where people aren’t allowed in and out. There is an electricity crisis that leaves millions without power for hours every day, 97 percent of Gaza’s water is undrinkable, there is not enough electricity to provide basic sanitation needs. Israel and the Palestinian Authority are trying to prevent patients in need of emergency treatment from entering the West Bank or Israel. There are shortages of medication and treatment.

It’s a catastrophic situation. The Israeli occupation’s policies manifest in our daily life. This is true not only regarding the three last wars on Gaza and the ongoing siege; it includes the policy of splitting West Bank (including East Jerusalem) from Gaza.

What about the current water crisis?

It is so bad that there are people who are live in high-rise buildings that simply do not have access to water. There is not enough electricity to pump water from the ground [level] to people on the higher floors. Water used to reach these houses between 2-3 hours every few days. And this is in the summer. Yesterday, my building only had one hour of water. Meanwhile the municipality is trying to ration water to different areas of Gaza.

Remember that all this is taking place as 60 percent of Gaza’s population are unemployed, and 80 percent is dependent on aid. A week ago Oxfam stopped distributing aid packages due to financial issues, which will affect 30,000 people.

“Gaza in the summer is usually full of life. But nowadays it is all darkness.” Gaza City, June 9, 2017. (Ezz Zanoun/Activestills.org)

What is Gaza usually like in the summer?

Usually it is full of life. But nowadays it is all darkness. You walk in the street with darkness. The only solution is the beach, because it is the only area where you can find bits of light from generators. But people are afraid of the sewage. Usually you’ll find thousands of people swimming in the water in the summer. Today you can barely find a few because they are afraid of the toxicity.

Who do Gazans blame for the current crisis?

Both Israeli policies to isolate Gaza and the internal conflict between Palestinian Authority and Hamas have caused this suffering. Gazans pay taxes to both the PA and Hamas, and yet they hardly receive services from either. They believe that both sides have failed to show any political will to end the conflict, reach unity, and give Palestinians access to all basic rights. Meanwhile, the rivalry stokes a culture of fear. PA employees in Gaza are afraid to criticize Abbas, and Hamas employees are afraid to criticize Hamas.

How are people coping?

The poorest and most marginalized are resorting to living off bread and tea only. I’m afraid that with the ongoing situation, Gaza will be unlivable by the end of 2018, not 2020 as the United Nations previously predicted. Gazans cannot enjoy culture, they cannot go to the theater or to the movies. This makes life impossible.

The world must remember that isolation breeds extremism and terrorism. I cannot imagine that the international community supporting isolation while at the same time wanting people to be more moderate and open. The occupation authorities are putting people inside a bottle and closing it, only opening it up when all the air is nearly gone by easing the collective punishment to allow hundreds of people to exit or to allow some goods and commodities to enter into Gaza.

There have been some political changes taking place in Hamas, and I hope the party will change. But there have been no real achievements. Hamas should think about the population in Gaza to allow them to live in dignity.

The people of Gaza are a free and moderate people, they believe in tolerance. This was an underlying current of Gazan culture way before the Palestinian Authority ever existed. But when you prevent people from working or traveling and exploring normal life outside the Gaza, it affects people’s lives and leads them to depression.

The most challenging issue is the fact that Palestinians are losing hope day by day. They want a normal life like all nations and all people worldwide. But the problem is that day by day they are losing hope. And when you lose hope, things becomes very, very bad.

Required by court order to appear before a judge in Syracuse, New York, on July 12, some out-of-towners had already arrived there when the court granted the prosecution’s last-minute request for more time to prepare its case against us, the Jerry Berrigan Brigade, for our nonviolent witness against drone warfare on Jan. 28, 2016. A trial date is likely to be set in a month or two, or perhaps three (so much for our Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial).

Back in January 2016, we stood behind 30 larger-than-life-sized wooden silhouettes of Syracuse peacemaker Jerry Berrigan, who died at age 95 on July 26, 2015.

A widely loved and respected educator, Jerry – like his brothers Dan and Phil – was himself larger than life. Even in his early 90s, Jerry could be seen braving the elements, witnessing against the extrajudicial killings enabled by Hancock drone base in Syracuse.

Jerry was asked at one point if there were anything he would change in his life.

“I would have resisted more often and been arrested more often,” he said.

On Jan. 28, 2016, we – the Jerry Berrigan Brigade – brought images of Jerry to the gates of Hancock as a tangible reminder that this is where he would have been standing that day, putting his body on the line to say a clear, physical “NO” to killing. Jerry’s widow and daughter were there with us, cheering us on.

Most Americans are blissfully unaware that, from states-side drone bases like Hancock, drone “pilots” – with a push of the joystick, a click of a mouse, or simply a keystroke – can incinerate “suspected terrorists,” on the other side of the globe WITHIN THREE SECONDS.

Thanks to a media that is heavily influenced by what Pope Francis (speaking before Congress in 2015) called the “blood-drenched arms traders,” it’s largely a comfortable case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. However, the more the killing is hidden, the more we feel a moral imperative to bring the killing out into the open and appeal to the consciences of U.S. citizens – including those of drone “pilots” many of whom have moral qualms about what they are being ordered to do and end up with bad cases of PTSD.

Many of us protesters – Catholic Workers and Jewish grandmothers alike – take our cue from anti-war activist Rabbi Heschel, who braced us all with this admonition:

“When injustice takes place, few are guilty, but all are responsible. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself.”

Rabbi Heschel got that right. And Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. reassured us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But how long and how to make it bend?

Seventeen-plus months since our Jerry Berrigan Brigade witness at Hancock, we cannot avoid wondering just how long it will take for our case to find justice. Nor are we sure what kind of “justice” will befall us. Whatever it is, though, it will be a small price to pay, when one considers the price paid by families who slip into the crosshairs of drone-fired Hellfire missiles.

Some well-meaning soul suggested we consider apologizing – a notion far from our minds. Were we to issue an apology, it would be patterned on the one given by Jerry Berrigan’s brothers Dan and Phil and the others of the Catonsville Nine, who burned draft cards with homemade napalm 50 years ago at the height of the war in Vietnam:

“Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise. For we are sick at heart, our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children.”

Good Friday Witness, 2017

“Justice” is likely to be meted out more quickly to those of us who decided that Good Friday this year would be a fitting time to honor the memory of innocent victims of Empire, given what happened to Jesus of Nazareth when he challenged Empire. This time nine nonviolent resisters, including from Upstate Drone Action and Catholic Worker, were arrested at the main entrance to Hancock drone base witnessing against Hancock’s role in drone killings.

Done “pilots” launch an MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle for a raid in the Middle East. (U.S. military photo)

Three hung on large wooden drone crosses representing victims of U.S. drone strikes in seven majority Muslim countries. Eleven others held smaller drone crosses headed by the phrase, “DRONES CRUCIFY,” each followed by one of these: Children, Families, Love, Peace, Community, the US Constitution, UN Charter, Rule of Law, US Treaties, Due Process, or Diplomacy (in all, 14 “Stations of the Cross”). All the crosses were confiscated by Base personnel.

Perceiving a need to explain our Good Friday action we issued a statement, that includes the following: 

“Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus. Recognizing that 70% of our nation identify as Christian, we come to the gates of the Hancock drone base to make real the crucifixion today. As Jesus and others were crucified by the Roman Empire, drones are used by the U.S. Empire in similar fashion.

“In Roman times, crosses loomed over a community to warn people that they could be killed whenever the Empire decided. So, too, our drones fly over many countries threatening extrajudicial killings upon whoever happens to be in the vicinity. On this Good Friday, we recall Jesus’ call to love and nonviolence. We’re asking this Air Force base and this nation to turn away from a policy of modern-day crucifixion.

“What if our country were constantly being spied upon by drones, with some ‘suspected terrorists’ killed by drones? What if many bystanders, including children, were killed in the process? If that were happening, we would hope that some people in that attacking country would speak up and try to stop the killing. We’re speaking up to try and stop the illegal and immoral drone attacks on countries against which Congress has not declared war.”

(A five-minute video of Nativity Scene Action at Hancock, the theme of which was: “If Herod Had Drones, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Would Have Been Incinerated.”)

Several of those arrested on Good Friday, including me, were the same “perps” awaiting trial for the action of our Jerry Berrigan Brigade action a year and a half ago. But the judge hearing this more recent case told us when we appeared before him on July 13 that he will now set a trial date for us Good Friday protesters.

Other Witness Against Drones

Over the last couple of years there have been many protest actions and arrests at one of the most important drone bases – Creech AFB in Nevada, where many from many parts of the U.S. and abroad have demonstrated against the brutality of drone killing.

Life-size cut-outs of Jerry Berrigan arrayed to blockade at Hancock airbase in upstate New York on Jan. 28, 2016. (Screen grab from YouTube video)

Lesser known are actions in other parts of the country to raise awareness of the expansion of drone bases in localities like Des Moines, Iowa. There the Des Moines Catholic Worker and Veterans For Peace have launched a campaign to call attention to the drone assassinations in which the 132^nd Wing of the Iowa Air National Guard plays a role from Des Moines airport. There have been several arrests, trials, and convictions.

The July issue of the Des Moines Catholic Worker community newspaper, Via Pacis, carries the words of Frank Cordaro, a Catholic priest, before his latest arrest in late May at the National Guard drone command in Des Moines. Frank reached back to the prophet Ezekiel to address the imperative to “blow the trumpet,” saying:

“This protest is an Ezekiel ‘Watchman’ witness. Ezekiel was a priest of the First Temple and only became a prophet after he was kicked out of Jerusalem and sent into captivity in Babylon. Once there, he started to have visions: ‘The Lord said to me, when the Watchman sees the sword coming against the land, he should blow the trumpet to warn the people.’

“The Des Moines Catholic Worker community has been a kind of Watchman for the city of Des Moines on the issues of war and peace for the past 40 years. It’s probably because we Catholic Workers have been protesting US-led wars for over 80 years nationally and 40 in Des Moines. And it’s very personal for me too. I grew up on the south side of Des Moines and this airport is just blocks away from the neighborhood I grew up in.”

Needed: more Watchmen and Watchwomen. A drone base may soon be coming to your own neighborhood.

Ray McGovern works for a publishing arm of the Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  He has written about the moral imperative of activism and tries to heed it.  He was an Army officer and then a CIA analyst for 30 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Featured image from Consortiumnews

It is far from unusual in recent times: a spate of terrorist activity, followed by police seemingly agog, then the call for cavalry, usually in the form of military forces to guard vital installations and furnish the public with a reassuring presence. Unfortunately, such moves tend to take place long after the horse has bolted, an ineffectual measure in terms of combating terrorism but pernicious in terms of dealing with distinctions policing.

Australia’s Turnbull government has promised new powers under a national security review conducted last year that will grant the Australian army powers to kill terrors suspects on sight. This is not all: the actual militarisation of Australian police personnel is set to take place with specialists from the ADF embedded in various teams. Training from elite SAS personnel is also slated to take place.

These measures are far from reassuring, suggesting that the military aspect of policing has been given not just a jolt but a terrific heave ho. The Prime Minister, showing he is far from mellowing in his role on the subject of defusing fear, insists on the authoritarian prerogative of streamlining and trimming the interaction between military and policing functions. Cut the strings, the heavy bound red tape, and the world will be a safe place.

Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull

According to Malcolm Turnbull,

“The overhaul will make it easier for Defence to work together with federal, state and territory police in the event of a terrorist incident. State and territory police forces remain the best first response to terrorist incidents immediately after an attack starts.”[1]

Distinctions between the policing element of a state, and its military, are worth having. One, working within the boundaries of the law, targets and prevents crime; the other, focuses on the defence of the realm. These points are far from being the same thing. But the terrorist genie, floating about with menace, has been used to render these points theoretical, which is more than just a crying shame.

In another conspicuous area, military and defence functions have been obliterated to cope with refugee and asylum seeker arrivals by boat. Civilian functions more akin to traditional policing and processing have become the purview of the military, a move that was significantly advanced during the years of the Howard government. The signalling shot there was the deployment in August 2001 of the SAS against the Norwegian vessel, the MV Tampa. Its apotheosis is Operation Sovereign Borders.

Theories on how the Australian military interact with policing functions are far from sophisticated. There is, for instance, no equivalent Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 US initiative passed by a Democratic-led Congress after troops were deployed two years prior ostensibly to maintain order at various polling places in southern states.

The Democrats were convinced that the measure was designed to fix the election for Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and pushed for provisions that would limit the role of the US military in terms of operating in civilian spaces, or to “execute the laws”.

This did not mean, of course, that the PCA would not be assailed with grubby hands indifferent to civil liberties. President Bill Clinton did his very best with the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Act of 1996, part of an omnibus of crime statutes that effectively pulled the carpet of law enforcement from under the GOP law-and-order hawks.

While Clinton did not get his wish initially (the final version did not contain an abolition of Posse Comitatus in terms of working with police), the writing was left to dry on the wall. The sheer power and pseudo-military aspects of much in current US policing has arguably rendered neat distinctions redundant.

The Australian constitution does provide for the following:

“The Commonwealth shall protect every state against invasion and, on the application of the Executive Government of the State, against domestic violence.”

Once declared by the Governor-General, “Permanent Forces” may be called out, with “Emergency Forces and Reserve Forces” sought in the event that numbers are insufficient.

In the past, Australia’s military has become the fall-back option for authorities, called upon as a grand clearing house to supply substitute civilian functions. At points, the authorities in Canberra have been cautious to blend military matters with civilian disputes.

In 1997, the National Farmers Federation urged Prime Minister John Howard to use troops to forcibly “reform” the waterfront and keep the docks running during a strike.

“I don’t contemplate,” came Howard’s response, “the use of the military in civilian disputes. I’ve never advocated the use of troops.”[2]

The NFF’s request was perhaps understandable, given that a Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, had used military personnel and material to replace lost manpower during the famed wage dispute of Australian pilots in 1989.

What is being contemplated in these new measures by Turnbull is the deployment of lethal measures and military control over civilian spaces. The ADF, as with other military arms, can provide heavy lifting in the event of natural disaster, emergencies and the like, but deploying it as a de facto police force is setting a vicious cat amongst the pigeons.

Conflating police and military functions is not only an insidious overreach, but blurs assumptions about justice and law enforcement. As a US federal court put it,

“Military personnel must be trained to operate under circumstances where the protection of constitutional freedoms cannot receive the consideration needed in order to assure their preservation.”[3]

Even in the absence of a Posse Comitatus provision in Australia, the tendency to throw the book of evidence and prosecution out and favour summary rough handling, even execution in such cases, is genuine. In this sense, the Australian government risks pushing its domestic arena further down the pathway of a militarisation with grave consequences.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

Notes

[1] http://www.news.com.au/national/australian-army-to-take-terror-attack-lead-not-local-police-under-malcolm-turnbull-overhaul/news-story/6d4301a99b44a4d004db0a43a5e4f9ea

[2]http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP9798/98rp08#APPENDIXF

[3] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/what-posse-comitatus

Featured image from afp.gov.au

The Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB) will create a pipeline of privatization for our public transit systems. Corporations will be able to extract long-term profit from public transit fares and public subsidies. 

Our governments subsidize public transit because it’s critical infrastructure for our communities: to get us from place to place, to reduce traffic congestion, and to green our environment. When we allow corporations to plan, finance, operate, maintain and own public transit, we funnel ridership fares and government funding into corporate coffers.

The CIB will give unprecedented control and decision-making power over our public transit infrastructure to private sector investors. This means the public interest will take a back seat in transit planning and development.

Many of our public transit systems in recent years have been built using public-private partnerships (P3s). The CIB will open the door to even further privatization, allowing profit to drive public transit planning and decision-making.

Transit Privatization

Almost one-third of the $81.3-billion in new infrastructure spending promised in Budget 2017 is for transit infrastructure over 11 years. This includes $20.1-billion through new public transit bilateral agreements between the federal government and provinces and territories and $5-billion through the new CIB. Canadian and foreign investors are expected to put in up to $4 in private funds for every public dollar in the CIB.

The Liberals have played a privatization shell game. While the mandatory P3 screen will end, which had forced all large infrastructure projects through a P3 evaluation process, the CIB is explicitly designed to promote privatization. And 20 per cent of federal public transit funding will be funneled through this privatization bank in addition to the expected private sector investment.

The privatization of public transit systems will likely mean long-term P3 contracts where the private sector finances, operates and maintains the service – all at a cost.[1] No public transit system in North America has been able to cover all its operating costs through transit fares. Governments provide ongoing funding to help residents get from place to place. With public transit privatization, private companies extract long-term profits while governments continue to subsidize the service.

Transit Privatization Hurts CUPE Members and the Public

Pushing public transit projects through the ‘privatization bank’ will hurt the 9000+ CUPE members who work in the sector. It will also hurt citizens particularly lower or middle-income earners who will have to pay for this higher cost public transit either directly through transit fares or indirectly through our tax system.

A majority of CUPE members in the transit sector – over 7,100 – are bus drivers employed by 19 municipal transit authorities in Quebec. CUPE also represents workers who do maintenance work on public transit systems that can be outsourced in many transit privatization projects.

Privatization hurts workers by putting downward pressure on wages and working conditions. Contracting-out and low-waged precarious work are key ways private corporations can profit from infrastructure like public transit. This hurts workers but it also affects public services. Private sector ownership, operating and maintenance shift public transit from serving the public good to supporting private profit.

Privatization also hurts the public. Transit users may face higher transit fares or have to use systems where decision-making on routes has been guided by private profit rather than the public interest. Privatization projects may also limit community involvement and participation in key decisions. Furthermore, broader societal priorities such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions are easily ignored in privatization projects.

Privatization Gone Wrong: Réseau électrique métropolitain (REM)

There are many examples of transit privatization in recent years that can give us some indication of the dangers involved. One example, which may receive funding through the CIB, is the $6-billion Réseau électrique métropolitain (REM) light rail project in Montreal.

This project to connect Montreal’s south shore, the airport, the city centre and Deux-Montagnes has been designed and partially financed by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, which manages the funds of the Quebec Pension Plan and other public pension funds. Decisions about the route, technology and compatibility with existing transit lines have been driven by what suits the profit interests of the Caisse and private developers rather than the public.

The rail line will be maintained, operated and even owned by the Caisse – at significant extra cost. A La Presse investigation estimated the REM will operate with a funding shortfall of approximately $240-million per year. It’s possible public transit fares across the entire city will increase in order to generate these profit levels.[2] Regardless, the public will pay for the higher costs through subsidies from municipalities or the Quebec government or higher fares for transit users.

With the REM, the Quebec government has outsourced public transit planning, design, operation and maintenance to the Caisse. They’ve even sold off segments of their core public transit infrastructure. This will make it difficult to further expand Montreal’s public transit system, integrate it with other transportation networks such as Via Rail and properly oversee the service. This privatization scheme has resulted in a public transit plan that maximizes private profit at the public’s expense.

Unfortunately, we have many cases of public transit privatization gone wrong across the country. The Canada Line P3 in Vancouver, British Columbia went overbudget, lacked innovation and integration with the broader transit system and undermined public accountability. The Ontario Auditor General review of P3 projects, including six transit projects, found that P3s cost $8-billion more than if they had been delivered publicly due to increased private-sector financing costs and a lack of risk transfer. Furthermore, a review of Edmonton’s P3 LRT development indicated that savings were likely going to be found through poor labour practices. Unfortunately, more transit privatization blunders will be coming our way through the privatization bank.

Conclusion

We need to build the public transit infrastructure that reduces traffic congestion, helps the environment and gets us from place to place. This infrastructure helps grow our communities and our economy. But building our public transit infrastructure through the Canada Infrastructure Bank will lead to a pipeline of privatization. Our infrastructure needs to be built in a way that benefits communities, not private investors. It needs to be built in the most cost-effective way – through low-cost public financing. And it needs to include good green jobs for transit workers.

Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) is the largest union in Canada, representing some 650,000 workers in healthcare, education, municipalities, libraries, universities, social services, public utilities, transportation, emergency services and airlines. This article was first published on their website.

Notes

1. Dachis, B. Commentary No. 473, New and Improved: How Institutional Investment in Public Infrastructure can Benefit Taxpayers and Consumers, C.D. Howe Institute, March 2017.

2. Schepper, B. “CDPQ et le REM, un projet qui démantèle le réseau de transport en commun de Montréal,” IRIS, février 2017.

Featured image from Socialist Project

SYRIA (Analysis)– In Part I of independent analyst Sarah Abed’s three-part analysis for MintPress News, Abed began exposing the modern day Kurdish/Israeli alliance that both parties have tried to keep hidden in order to avoid drawing the public’s attention to their ultimate plan, as well as the U.S.’ use of Kurdish factions in destabilizing the Middle East. The Kurds have engaged in such relationships in part because of internal divisions and disunity, which have also made it difficult to fulfill their goal of establishing a fully autonomous Kurdistan spanning over the four countries they currently occupy.

We also examined the Syrian government’s attempts at keeping the country united by addressing and implementing constitutional changes that benefit the Kurds – attempts that have still failed to convince separatist Kurds to abandon their goal of Balkanizing and illegally confiscating parts of Syria at the cost of the people who reside there.

Read Part I below

The Kurds: Washington’s Weapon of Mass Destabilization in the Middle East

By Sarah Abed, July 14, 2017

***

Part II examines this topic in greater depth in hopes of raising awareness of this little-known but imperative part of the Syrian puzzle. Abed will analyze the Kurds’ link to apartheid Israel and why the country has taken such a strong interest in the group, as well as the strange phenomenon of Western military veterans traveling to Syria to fight alongside the Kurds.

The Kurdish link to Daesh (ISIS) will also be covered, as a number of Kurds have chosen to fight on their side. Kurdish alliances with armed terrorist groups in Syria – particularly Daesh – are very telling signs as to what extremes Kurds will go to in order to bring their ideological manifestation of an independent, autonomous Kurdistan into existence.

Washington and Tel Aviv’s geopolitical plans for dominating the Middle East can only be dismantled if the majority of citizens understand the intricate behind-the-scenes mechanisms that are driving their plan. Ultimately, their goal is not only to destabilize Iraq and Syria and divide them into statelets, but also to weaken Iran’s global presence – objectives that are being pursued with the help of the Kurds.

Kurdish ties to Israel

The Kurdish-Israeli relationship has matured significantly. Since at least the 1960s, Israel has provided intermittent security assistance and military training to the Kurds. This served mostly as an anti-Saddam play – keeping him distracted as Israel fought two wars against coordinated Arab neighbors – but mutual understanding of their respective predicaments also bred an Israeli-Kurdish affinity. All signs point to this security cooperation continuing today. Israeli procurement of affordable Kurdish oil not only indicates a strengthening of economic ties, but also an Israeli lifeline to budget-starved Erbil that suggests a strategic bet on the Kurds in an evolving region.

The people closest to the Jews from a genetic point of view may be the Kurds, according to the results of a recent study by Hebrew University.

The Kurds are allied with Syria’s fiercest enemy – Israel – whose planned Greater Israel project coincidentally aligns almost perfectly with the Kurds’ plans for “Kurdistan.”  In the Oded Yinon plan, which is the plan for a “Greater Israel,” it states the imperative use of Kurds to help divide neighboring countries in order to aid in their plans for greater domination. Interestingly enough, Kurds brush this alliance off as being just another step in achieving their ultimate goal of creating an autonomous Kurdistan.

Every major Kurdish political group in the region has longstanding ties to Israel. It’s all linked to major ethnic violence against Arabs, Turkmens and Assyrians. From the PKK in Turkey to the PYD and YPG in Syria, PJAK in Iran to the most notorious of them all, the Barzani-Talabani mafia regime (KRG/Peshmerga) in northern Iraq. Thus it should come as no surprise that Erbil supplied Daesh (ISIS) with weaponry to weaken the Iraqi government in Baghdad. And when it becomes understood that Erbil is merely the front for Tel Aviv in Iraq, the scheme becomes clear.

Israel has reportedly been providing the KRG with weapons and training even prior its military encounters with Daesh. On the level of economic strategy, Israel granted critical support to the KRG by buying Kurdish oil in 2015 when no other country was willing to do so because of Baghdad’s threat to sue. KRG Minister of Natural Resources Ashti Hawrami even admitted to the arrangement, saying that Kurdish oil was often funneled through Israel to avoid detection.

In January 2012 the French newspaper Le Figaro claimed that Israeli intelligence agents were recruiting and training Iranian dissidents in clandestine bases located in Iraq’s Kurdish region. By aligning with the Kurds, Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq and Syria. A year later, the Washington Post disclosed that Turkey had revealed to Iranian intelligence a network of Israeli spies working in Iran, including ten people believed to be Kurds who reportedly met with Mossad members in Turkey. This precarious relationship between Israel and Turkey persists today.

Western veterans take up the Kurdish cause

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, and its Syrian spinoff, the YPG, are cult-like radical movements that intertwine Marxism, feminism, Leninism and Kurdish nationalism into a hodge-podge of ideology, drawing members through the extensive use of propaganda that appeals to these modes of thought. Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK, took inspiration from American anarchist Murray Bookchin in creating his philosophy, which he calls “Democratic Confederalism.”

The PKK spin-off group YPG represents most of the SDF in Syria. With Western political support, they have gained popularity and garnered an impressive amount of support from many military veterans in the West, some of whom have left the comfort of their home countries to fight with the group. One of their most productive marketing tools has been to use young, attractive female fighters as the face of the guerrillas. During their fight against Daesh, the PKK has saturated the media with images of these young female “freedom fighters,” using them as a marketing tool to take their cause from obscurity to fame.

Watch a BBC report on female Kurdish fighters in Syria, featuring Kurdish singer ‘Helly Luv’:

But what doesn’t get reported is how the movement has carried out kidnappings and murder – not to mention its involvement in trafficking narcotics.

Kurdish families are demanding that the PKK stop kidnapping minors. It started on April 23, the day Turkey marked its 91st National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. While children celebrated the holiday in western Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) kidnapped 25 students between the ages of 14 and 16 on the east side of the country, in the Lice district of Diyarbakir.

Although the PKK has kidnapped more than 330 minors in the last six months, the Bockum family was the first in the region who put up a tent near their home to start a sit-in protest, challenging the PKK and demanding that it return their son. Sinan was returned to the family on May 4. Al-Monitor reported this incident from the beginning in great detail.

As Bebyin Somuk reported in her article, the PKK and PYD still kidnap children in Turkey and Syria. She states:

“As I previously wrote for Kebab and Camel, the PKK commits war crimes by recruiting children as soldiers. Some of the PKK militants that surrendered yesterday were also the PKK’s child soldiers. The photos clearly show that these children are not more than sixteen years old. The Turkish army released video of the 25 PKK militants surrendering in Nusaybin.”

SouthFront reported on female PKK fighters who have killed Turkish soldiers.

“The women fighters command of the Kurdistan Worker Party (PKK) have released a statement, claiming PKK female fighters killed 160 Turkish military servicemen in 2016. According to the statement, the women fighters command of the PKK carried out 115 operations against Turkish government forces in 2016. The group also vowed to ‘proceed the struggle during the new year for a life of freedom and until victory is achieved.’”

The PKK is also killing Kurds under the guise of protecting their rights.

“Senior PKK leader Cemil Bayık, in an interview with the Fırat News Agency (ANF) on Aug. 8, said, ‘Our war will not be confined to the mountains like it was before. It will be spread everywhere without making a distinction between mountains, plains or cities. It will spread to the metropolises.’ Terrorist Bayık’s statement signaled that the PKK would take increasing aim against civilians, targeting civilian areas more than ever. And it is happening. Since July 15, the day when the Gülenist terror cult, FETÖ, launched its failed military coup attempt to topple the democratically-elected government, the PKK perpetrated dozens of terrorist attacks, killing 21 civilians and injuring 319 others – most of them Kurdish citizens.”

According to The Washington Institute

 “On November 18, FBI Director Robert Mueller met with senior Turkish officials to address U.S.-Turkish efforts targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), also known as Kongra-Gel. A press release from the U.S. embassy in Ankara following the meeting stressed that U.S. officials ‘strongly support Turkey’s efforts against the PKK terrorist organization’ and highlighted the two countries’ long history of working together in the fight against terrorism and transnational organized crime.

These discussions are timely. Despite Ankara’s recent bid to alleviate the Kurdish issue — a bid referred to as the ‘democratic opening’ — the PKK is one of a growing number of terrorist organizations with significant stakes in the international drug trade. In October, the U.S. Treasury Department added three PKK/Kongra-Gel senior leaders to its list of foreign narcotics traffickers. The PKK, along with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is one of only a few organizations worldwide designated by the U.S. government as both a terrorist organization and a significant foreign narcotics trafficker.”

Drug smuggling is reported to be the main financial source of PKK terrorism, according to the organization International Strategic Research, whose detailed report can be seen here.

Their exaggerated triumphs against Daesh have helped them evolve from a radical militia to an alleged regional power player. Have they been successful in fighting against Daesh in Syria? Yes – but while the Syrian Arab Army has been more effective, it does not receive a fraction of the praise or recognition that the PKK does.

Pato Rincon, a U.S. military veteran, recently wrote about his experience training with the YPG in Syria. Although initially interested in their desire for autonomy, he soon got to know a different side of the group:

“While they are a direct ideological descendant of the Soviet Union, their take on Marxism has a much more nationalistic bent than that of their internationalist forebears. At their training camp that I attended, they constantly spoke of their right to a free and autonomous homeland–which I could support. On the other hand, they ludicrously claimed that all surrounding cultures from Arab to Turk to Persian descended from Kurdish culture. One should find this odd, considering that the Kurds have never had such autonomy as that which they struggle for. All of this puffed-up nationalism masquerading as internationalism was easy to see through…not only was their idea of Marxism fatuous, their version of feminism was even worse.”

Accounts such as this will certainly not make it to mainstream media, as they do not fit the narrative that the Kurds and their sponsors promote.

In another example of Western support for the YPG, Joe Robinson, an ex-soldier and UK national, recently returned to the UK after spending five months in Syria fighting with the group. He was detained and arrested by Greater Manchester Police officers on suspicion of terrorism offenses as soon as he returned. He joined the British military when he was 18 and toured Afghanistan with the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment in 2012.

He left the UK when an arrest warrant was issued after he failed to appear in court. Robinson is pictured here in Syria with YPG fighters.

Robinson is on the far left, holding his weapon while his fellow YPG comrades are holding a Daesh flag.  The writing on the wall speaks volumes about the relationship between Israel, the Kurds and the United States.

SDF working with Daesh

The most evident contradiction to be noted is that the Kurds in the SDF are working with the U.S. through its so-called “Operation Inherent Resolve,” which is the official name for its anti-Daesh operations. But at the same time, the U.S.-led coalition, including Kurdish armed units, lets “militants of the Islamic State terrorist group leave Raqqa instead of killing them,” according to Sergey Surovikin, the commander of Russia’s force grouping in Syria.

“Instead of eliminating terrorists guilty of killing hundreds and thousands of Syrian civilians, the U.S.-led coalition together with the Democratic Forces enters into collusion with ringleaders of ISIL, who give up the settlements they had seized without fighting and head to the provinces where the Syrian government forces are active,” he said.

Sputnik Arabic was able to talk to Husma Shaib, a Syrian expert on armed groups in Syria who explained why the SDF is comparable to the al-Nusra Front and what the actual aim of their operations in Syria is.

The loosely-knit coalition of Syrian rebel groups, including Kurdish factions, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are armed, trained and backed by the U.S.

“In Syria, we regard these forces as unlawful military formations which operate outside of the legal environment. They are the same a terrorist units like al-Nusra Front and Daesh. The Syrian Democratic Forces do not coordinate their activities with the Syrian Army. We regard them as terrorists,” Shaib told Sputnik.

The SDF is mostly comprised of the Kurdish YPG militia, which unanimously declared the “federalization” of what they call “Rojava,” or “Western Kurdistan,” in March 2016.

The leaders of the SDF announced that they’ll try to annex the majority-Arab city of Raqqa if they manage to liberate it.

The Kurds are ethnically cleansing Arabs from Raqqa en masse in order to pave the way for the city’s annexation to their unilaterally declared “Federation” after its forthcoming capture.

Hostility against SAA forces

On June 18, a U.S. jet shot down a Syrian Su-22 fighter-bomber near the city of Tabqa. The U.S.-led coalition said the Syrian aircraft attacked SDF positions, adding that the coalition downed the Syrian jet as part of “collective self-defense of coalition partnered forces,” according to Sputnik News.

However, the SAA stated that they were, in fact, attacking Daesh, not the SDF. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) then sent in a rescue mission to retrieve the downed pilot. Al Masdar News (AMN) reported that they encountered intense resistance from the SDF, which would imply a serious escalation between the two.

The Syrian Army General Command responded with an official statement that the flagrant aggression undoubtedly affirms the US’s real stance in support of terrorism which aims to affect the capability of the Syrian Arab Army- the only active force- along with its allies that practice its legitimate right in combating terrorism all over Syria.

The fin and rear fuselage of a Syrian Airforce Su-22M, The same type of aircraft shot down by US forces while engaging ISIS targets fleeing Raqqa, Syria. (Photo: A.V.)

“The attack stresses coordination between the US and ISIS, and it reveals the evil intentions of the US in administering terrorism and investing it to pass the US-Zionist project in the region.” The statement added.

It affirmed that such aggressions would not affect the Syrian Arab Army in its determination to continue the fight against ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist organizations and to restore security and stability to all Syrian territories.

Earlier in the week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Sputnik that the U.S. strikes on SDF aircraft are aiding terrorists.

“In the case of strikes [by U.S. forces on the aircraft and drones of the Syrian Armed Forces], we are dealing with an open complicity with the terrorists operating on Syrian soil,” Ryabkov said.

CIA-armed Kurds in Syria

The U.S.-led coalition has on numerous occasions stated that it is working with the SDF to try to defeat Daesh in Syria. However, there have been numerous reports of U.S.-led airstrikes targeting Syrian civilians, military and infrastructure. These deadly and avoidable mistakes clearly illustrate how the US-led coalition’s presence in Syria has had a harmful impact on civilians. On June 26, the SDF cut off water supplies to 1 million civilians in Aleppo. Some sources stated that this was out of spite, whereas others stated they were unaware of the reason(s) behind such a destructive and deliberate against innocent civilians.

On July 5, 21st Century Wire reported on U.S. efforts to establish a greater military presence in Syria.

“The U.S. is setting up its military bases in the territories that were liberated from Daesh by our fighters during the fight against terrorism,” a senior SDF representative stated.

“The number of U.S. military installations in Syria has increased to eight bases according to recent reports, and possibly nine according to one other military analyst,” 21st Century Wire reported.

The Syrian government considers separatist Kurds to be just as dangerous as Daesh and other terrorist groups in the country. Their plans to destabilize the country are more dangerous than those of Daesh, especially since the West provides them with moral support, weapons, training, financial aid, armed vehicles and even air support.

“We’ll be recovering [weapons] during the battle, repairing them. When they don’t need certain things anymore, we’ll replace those with something they do need,” stated U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis in late June.

Kurds selling weapons given to them from Germany to fight against Daesh

Reporters from German broadcasters NDR and WDR found several G3 assault rifles and a P1 pistol, all engraved with the initials “BW” for Bundeswehr – Germany’s military – in the northern Iraqi cities of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier pledges German military support to the Kurds in northern Iraq during a meeting in Erbil with Masoud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

The weapons apparently came from stocks that the German government delivered to the Kurdish autonomous government in northern Iraq. The weapons were intended to be used in the fight against the Daesh. Several members of Germany’s Green and Left parties have long raised concerns in parliament that arms delivered to Peshmerga fighters could fall into the wrong hands.

There have been several credible reports since the U.S.-led military alliance formed to help combat Daesh in Syria and Iraq of American-supplied weapons falling into the hands of unallied militias and even Daesh itself.

The U.S. has armed the Kurds and supported their efforts since helping them establish the Syrian Democratic Forces on Oct. 10, 2015. The U.S. needed to fund a group within Syria that was fighting against Daesh, but that was not as extremist as the Free Syrian Army, which was outed as being affiliated with al-Qaeda. The U.S. has stated that its main reason for being in Syria is to fight Daesh, but its actions have proved otherwise. Its true mission is to destabilize the country by assisting the Kurds through the SDF and other armed opposition forces in liberating land that can be used as a bargaining tool in future negotiations.

Ron Paul explains why arming the Kurds was a dangerous idea: 

Washington has repeatedly brushed aside Ankara’s irrefutable evidence that the YPG is an extension of the outlawed PKK terrorist organization, which has terrorized Turkey for more than three decades. U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has sent a letter to his Turkish counterpart Fikri Işık pledging that the United States will retrieve the weapons it sent to the YPG immediately after Daesh is defeated.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense will supply Turkey with detailed lists of the military materials and equipment dispatched to the YPG, implying that the U.S. aims to guarantee transparency in their bilateral relationship. This itself is an attempt to backtrack on a terrible decision that the U.S. may or may not believe they have made. If the reality hasn’t sunk in yet, it most certainly will when the Kurds refuse to give back the weapons or decide to sell them. Washington will then have to deal with an even more disgruntled Turkey.

Why Are Kurds Joining Daesh?

For over a year, Kurdish forces have united in defense against bloody Daesh attacks. So how has Daesh still managed to recruit hundreds of young Kurds to fight for the caliphate against their own families?

“There are Kurdish families in Halabja whose sons are in IS [Daesh] and their hearts are broken, but I’ll never go to their funerals,” said the grieving mother of Kaihan Borhan, a Kurd who died fighting with the Peshmerga against Daesh.

Her family is distraught that the people responsible for his death could well be Kurdish nationals.

“I have a friend whose brother died fighting for ISIS,” said Kaihan’s brother. “I never grieved for him and my friend cannot bear to look me in the eye.”

Here, we can see the path to extremism that many Kurds have taken. Dissatisfaction with the Kurdish intelligence service, Asayish’s persecution of Muslims and domestic grievances are being skilfully exploited by Daesh through the use of propaganda, led by Khattab Al-Kurdi and his Saladin Brigade.

“With God’s permission we will sow the seeds of the Caliphate throughout our land,” said Khattab, who has been one of the most persuasive forces in luring Kurds towards the caliphate.

Even with Khattab’s reported death in April 2015, the threat of more Kurds joining Daesh seems unlikely to diminish, with a new Kurdish imam carrying the rhetoric forward.

Kurds being used to destabilize Iran

Documents leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010 suggested that Israeli Mossad Chief Meir Dagan wanted to use Kurds and ethnic minorities to topple the Iranian government. The Israeli spy service was aiming to create a weak and divided Iran, similar to the situation in Iraq, where the Kurds have their own autonomous government, the spy chief told a U.S. official.

The Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistane (PJAK), a militant Kurdish nationalist group based in northern Iraq, has been carrying out attacks on Iranian forces in the Kurdistan Province of Iran (Eastern Kurdistan) and other Kurdish-inhabited areas. Half the members of PJAK are women. The PJAK has about 3,000 armed militiamen. They represent yet another example of the Kurds finding themselves in the middle of a conflict and being used as a pawn by the West.

The party is closely linked to the PKK. Iran has often accused PJAK and other Kurdish nationalist groups from Iran of being supported by Israel. Journalist Seymour Hersh has also claimed that the U.S. supported PJAK and other Iranian opposition groups. However, both the U.S. and Israel have denied supporting PJAK. In fact, the U.S. Treasury branded PJAK as a terrorist organization last year.

As Hersh noted in 2004:

“The Israelis have had long-standing ties to the Talibani and Barzani clans [in] Kurdistan and there are many Kurdish Jews that emigrated to Israel and there are still a lot of connection. But at some time before the end of the year [2004], and I’m not clear exactly when, certainly I would say a good six, eight months ago, Israel began to work with some trained Kurdish commandos, ostensibly the idea was the Israelis — some of the Israeli elite commander units, counter-terror or terror units, depending on your point of view, began training — getting the Kurds up to speed.”

Why are the so-called Kurdish “freedom fighters” willing to get in bed with any and every group that has an interest in destabilizing Syria? The provocative manner in which the SDF has teamed up with terrorist organizations during the war in Syria is a blaring contradiction to the “revolutionary” public relations image that they have fought hard to establish in recent years.

Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran, continue to oppose the notion of having their borders and sovereignty divided by the U.S. for yet another U.S./NATO-dictated social engineering experiment in the Middle East.

Attempts to rewrite geographic history

An estimated 30 million Kurds reside primarily in mountainous regions of present-day Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. They remain the world’s largest nomadic population without a sovereign state. The Kurds are not monolithic, however, and tribal identities and political interests often supersede a unifying national allegiance.

Some Kurds, particularly those who have migrated to urban centers, such as Istanbul, Damascus and Tehran, have integrated and assimilated, while many who remain in their ancestral lands maintain a strong sense of a distinctly Kurdish identity. A Kurdish diaspora of an estimated two million people is concentrated primarily in Europe, with over a million in Germany alone. These migratory wanderers never possessed their own country at any point in their history, but were always part of a larger country or empire that took them in and provided them refuge.

The version of events that the Kurds present is in staunch contrast with the account that is supported by most historians. This has proven to be a point of contention between the Kurds and the citizens of other countries.

The Kurds claim to have been conquered and occupied throughout their history, for instance. Here is an example of their attempt to rewrite history to fit their narrative:

“The Kurdish region has seen a long list of invaders and conquerors: Ancient Persians from the east, Alexander the Great from the west, Muslim Arabs in the 7th Century from the south, Seljuk Turks in the 11th Century from the east, the Mongols in the 13th Century from the east, medieval Persians from the east and the Ottoman Turks from the north in the 16th Century and most recently, the United States in its 2003 invasion of Iraq.”

In Part III of MPN’s Sarah Abed analysis of the Kurds’ role in helping the U.S. and Israel destabilize the Middle East, she will cover human rights violations, both past and present, committed by the Kurds against Arabs and Christian minorities, as well as address misconceptions as to why the Kurds remain stateless.

Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. Focused on exposing the lies and propaganda in mainstream media news, as it relates to domestic and foreign policy with an emphasis on the Middle East. Contributed to various radio shows, news publications and spoken at forums. For media inquiries please email [email protected].

Ever since the tragic and stupid launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria by the United States took place in April, the entire incident has been represented as a one-man show by the corporate and even by the alternative media. The corporate press, which virtually never gives Trump a break on any issue real or imagined, was strangely approving of The Donald after his war crime while his detractors in the alternative media were presenting the act as that of a madman who is frighteningly close to the red button.

On June 25, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh released a bombshell article revealing a number of facets regarding the alleged chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria and the resulting volley of Tomahawk missiles fired by the United States at the al-Sha’aryat airbase in response. Hersh’s article provides the reader with what many of us already knew and wrote about at the time; i.e. that the Syrian military did not conduct a chemical weapons attack and that the United States was fully aware of that fact. Still, the U.S. government opted to use the attack as a justification for launching 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase that resulted in the deaths of Syrian soldiers, civilians, and children from the nearby village.

Hersh’s article shows that not all key personnel were on board with the decision to launch Tomahawk missiles at al-Sha’aryat or even of the whole Syria/Iraq mission. The article reveals real concerns amongst knowledgeable personnel that the Russians will not continue to act as the cooler heads and that Russia has long wanted peace in the region. Most notably, it reveals the fact that there is a “secret agenda” moving forward in regards to Syria, Iraq, and Russia. Hersh’s article also points to the President as the individual who made the decision to launch attacks in Syria, against the advice of the military and intelligence community. In fact, Hersh’s article makes the entire incident appear as if it were the Trump show from beginning to end.

While Hersh’s article provides valuable information, it is becoming more and more evident that what Hersh came across was either an intentional leak or, perhaps even more accurate, only part of the story.

I wrote at the time that what is most likely here is not the situation that Hersh presents. It is more likely that the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus colluded with their corporate media department and capitalized on this incident and Trump’s narcissism and perceived political necessity. It is more likely that “advisors” like Trump’s rabid Zionist son-in-law who has been given frightening levels of access to the President and the government in an official capacity as Trump’s senior advisor, simply told the President that launching missiles was what he was expected to do by the Deep State and Trump complied. Trump could also have been told by advisors that the story was already out and the narrative already accepted and therefore he had to do something to appease the pro-war leftists, Democrats, and Republicans.

In this regard, Hersh’s article is possibly a limited hangout operation, not on the part of Hersh, but on the part of the intelligence community who wish to do more damage to the President’s public support and his ability to act independently of the “deep state.” It is their ability to announce the tragic massive fraud of Khan Sheikhoun while looking like the level heads and the good guys of the situation. Trump, of course, comes off looking like the lone assassin, the lone madman so eaten up with narcissism that he is putting the country at risk. But while Trump is undeniably a narcissist and he is undeniably putting the country at risk, it is the fact that he is listening to and obeying the deep state apparatus that is the danger, not that he is ignoring them.

While most of the above is informed speculation, it is also put into proper historical context, not only in the Trump administration but also in the history of other administrations over the past several decades, most notably that of Kennedy and Nixon, neither of which point to a promising end for Trump.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo

Backing up my own suspicions is the current Director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo. In a recent speech to the INSA Leadership Dinner on July 11, Pompeo was giving a typical dinner speech about the harrowing world of the intelligence community, how tough it is to have his position, the importance of it, etc. During the course of the speech, however, Pompeo let a very interesting tidbit slip. Pompeo said:

I got a call from the President one afternoon back in April. He wanted to talk about some disturbing images that were coming in from Syria. I’m sure you saw many of them yourselves—scenes of innocent civilians writhing in agony, the apparent victims of a chemical weapons attack.

The President had a very direct message for me: Find out what happened. So we immediately assembled a crack team of Agency experts. They began piecing together the evidence, working closely with some outstanding partners from across the Intelligence Community.

The next day the President called his cabinet together. As we sat down, he turned to me and asked what we had learned. I told him that the IC had concluded that a chemical weapon had indeed been used in the attack, and that it had been launched by the Syrian regime.

The President paused a moment and said: Pompeo, are you sure? I’ll admit that the question took my breath away. But I knew how solid the evidence was, and I was able to look him in the eye and say, Mr. President, we have high confidence in our assessment.

The President never looked back. Based on the Intelligence Community’s judgment, he made one of the most consequential decisions of his young administration, launching a strike against the very airfield where the attack originated.

So I can assure you that when it comes to having the confidence of the Commander in Chief, CIA and the Intelligence Community are in great shape.

In other words, Pompeo is directly contradicting Hersh’s sources, saying it was not Trump who led the show but the intelligence community. Of course, Trump, being President is ultimately responsible for making the wrong decision but notice that, according to Pompeo himself, Trump demanded answers as to whom committed the attack. It was the intelligence community that came back to the President with assurances Assad was responsible.

Obviously, given all of the evidence surrounding Khan Sheikhoun, the idea that Assad committed a chemical weapons attack is ludicrous. It simply did not happen. The United States has no evidence that the incident was what it claims and all of the evidence produced by the Syrians, Russians, and independent researchers points to the contrary, even toward the fact that the entire incident may have been planned to set up the Syrian government so as to provide justification for an attack on Syria by the United States.

So what Pompeo is admitting to is, at best, providing the President with faulty intelligence. However, we know from the Hersh leaks that the intelligence community was already well aware of the fact that the Syrian government did not commit a chemical weapons attack. With that in mind, it appears that Pompeo has admitted to lying to Trump regarding the guilty party in Khan Sheikhoun and the existence of chemical weapons. At the very least, he managed to create a paper trail that leads right to the door of the CIA.

Is anyone surprised?

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1000 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

Featured image from Activist Post

Featured image: Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (Source: The Inquisitr)

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

The phony accusation is all about trying to denigrate, weaken and undermine Trump, along with intense Russia bashing to prevent improved relations – the notion anathema to bipartisan Russophobes.

What’s going on is part of a diabolical plot to remove Trump from office for unjustifiable reasons, not legitimate ones, replacing him with an easily controlled Pence, a deep state puppet in waiting.

Or if removal fails, assure his geopolitical agenda continues longstanding dirty business as usual, including no change in US hostility toward Russia.

The ugly scheme makes reality seem like a Jean le Carre espionage thriller – the deplorable way Washington works.

Donald Trump Jr. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The latest tactic suggests Trump Jr.’s meeting with private citizen/Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya proves a Russian connection to his father.

The June 2016 meeting attended by Russian national/US citizen/lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin is offered as further evidence.

He has no Kremlin connection. Yet he’s called a “former Soviet counter-intelligence official” because he earlier served in Soviet Russia’s military in a counter-intelligence capacity.

It was long ago. There was nothing unusual or improper about his service. The Soviet Union no longer exists – dissolved in December 1991.

Akhmetshin has no connection to the post-Soviet Russian Federation’s government. Yet he and private citizen Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya meeting with Trump Jr. last year has been blown way out of proportion.

It’s being used by anti-Trump US political and media elements as possible “smoking gun” evidence of a nefarious Russia connection.

AP News reported the following about his presence at the Trump Jr./Veselnitskaya meeting, saying:

“In his first public interview about the meeting, Akhmetshin said he accompanied Veselnitskaya to Trump Tower where they met an interpreter.”

“He said he had learned about the meeting only that day when Veselnitskaya asked him to attend. He said he showed up in jeans and a T-shirt.”

“Veselnitskaya brought with her a plastic folder with printed-out documents that detailed what she believed was the flow of illicit funds to the Democrats, Akhmetshin said.”

“Veselnitskaya presented the contents of the documents to the Trump associates and suggested that making the information public could help the campaign, he said.”

“‘This could be a good issue to expose how the DNC is accepting bad money,’ Akhmetshin recalled her saying.”

“Trump Jr. asked the attorney if she had sufficient evidence to back up her claims, including whether she could demonstrate the flow of the money.”

“But Veselnitskaya said the Trump campaign would need to research it more. After that, Trump Jr. lost interest, according to Akhmetshin.”

“‘They couldn’t wait for the meeting to end,’ he said.”

“Akhmetshin said he does not know if Veselnitskaya’s documents were provided by the Russian government. He said he thinks she left the materials with the Trump associates.”

“It was unclear if she handed the documents to anyone in the room or simply left them behind, he said.”

The above account shows Trump Jr.’s explanation of what took place during the meeting is accurate. Nothing improper or out-of-the ordinary occurred – no evidence of a devious, covert, unacceptable or illegal Trump/Russia connection.

Law Professor Jonathan Turley called the Trump Jr.-Veselnitskaya/Akhmetshin meeting the “worst spy story ever,” adding “the overheated rhetoric on possible (if not imminent) criminal charges is bizarre.”

Claims about possible espionage and treason are “facially weak (without) foundation.” Nothing suggests a “Russian intelligence operation…”

“Russians do not usually set up meetings at places like Trump Tower with an unknown number of persons to discuss secret operations.”

Not a shred of credible evidence suggests an improper or illegal Trump team Russia connection.

A Final Comment

RT interviewed Denis Grunis, international cooperation department head of Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office.

According to a 1999 treaty, Moscow sends information on relevant criminal activity to the Justice Department through established communication channels, he explained, stressing:

“It is insane to think that the Prosecutor General’s Office would use a private lawyer to transfer information.”

Separately, Sergey Lavrov said

“(i)t is amazing how serious people are making an elephant out of a fly.”

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

The manipulation of news and the distortion of reality are the most powerful weapons in the hands of power. They can make a whole reality disappear.

Yemen’s, for example.

A child dies in Yemen every ten minutes from preventable causes, UNICEF reported in June. These deaths are only part of a humanitarian catastrophe, among the worst in the world, including a rampaging cholera epidemic, to which the witness of the overwhelming majority of the West’s warmongering Goebbelist media pretends to be deaf, mute, and blind.

Nevertheless, information is accessible. There are sporadic exceptions to the conspiracy of silence in officialdom and the media. The week of July 10, The Independent published in the “Voices” section the appeal of Wael Ibrahim, an aid worker in Yemen:

“It is going to take years to restore any infrastructure like health services, and rewire the city [Sana’a] for electricity. We need more people to talk about Yemen.”

Saudi Arabia, backed by the US and Britain, began bombing Yemen, the poorest country in the region, on 23 March 2015—without a Security Council resolution, as has been the tradition for launching western wars since Bill Clinton’s 1999 Kosovo War (the bombing of Serbia).

The stated objective of the Anglo-American backing of the Saudi attack was the restoration of Yemen’s US-supported government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi’s, which fled to Saudi Arabia under the mounting pressure of the Houthi Shia rebels, accused by the United States of being pawns of Iran, or, dismissively, plain Iran-supported.

Boggles the mind to think of the blithe moral logic that justifies the support of the United States for a (largely faked) uprising in Syria when Iran is not allowed to assist Houthis in Yemen, fighting an authentic civil war, unlike the so-called Free Syrian Army and their hordes of 80% foreign al-Qaeda and Isis allied invaders of Syria’s sovereign state in 2011.

The hypocrisy of empire, one supposes: supporting rebels in one case and the legitimate government in another.

For this reason—Iran’s backing—the Saudis blockade the air and the ports of Yemen to check the flow of Iranian arms shipments to the rebels, adding to the infamy of the war the infamy of an economic siege—infamy because the largest number of victims in this tactic to encircle Iran are civilians, which is another tradition respected by the sorry, deceptive War on Terror.

The blockade also checks the “flow” of food and medicines and other health necessities, with devastating consequences, as we shall see.

Few honest observers doubt that the war in Yemen, instigated by the Obama administration and their British junior partners in the Cameron cabinet, is a war of strategy in which the real target is Iran. As in Iraq in 2003, the British partnership is invaluable because of its long experience in the “management” of former colonies the likes of Iraq and Yemen, when the port of Aden was a central and crucial traffic point in the business of running the British empire, which consisted of two thirds of the planet.

Claiming that Iran destabilizes the region, against the evidence of a chronic history of interference and aggressions there by the US & Co., Trump’s national security advisor asserted in a statement in January:

“As of today, we are putting Iran on notice.”

Yemen, thus, is the unfortunate country inconveniently placed by geography between Iran and Western objectives, bombed, economically besieged, its currency in collapse—the war tactics of the feudal Middle Ages.

Since March 2015, 3.2 million Yemenis have been displaced; 13,000 civilians have been casualties (UN official count); 2 million children cannot attend schools; nearly 15 million people have no access to basic medical care.

Last October, a Saudi bomb struck a funeral in Sana’a, killing 114 people (in some reports, 140) and injuring 613 out of 750 mourners in just one such civilian massacre of many—including in marketplaces and refugee camps—prompting United Nations experts to say the Saudis had violated international law, among other reasons because they attacked twice, while the funeral hall was still littered with wounded from the first attack, killing the wounded and first responders. In March, a Saudi airstrike killed 40 Somali refugees in a boat, fleeing the war torn country; more recently a market on the Saudi border was struck, killing six children.

Saudi airstrikes have destroyed schools, hospitals, and vital infrastructures such as electric grids and water supplies all classic crimes against humanity and war crimes.

King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KS Relief), founded by the lately departed King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud in 2015, claims categorically that Saudi Arabia “has no intention of killing civilians.” Instead, they intend to “regain the will of the Yemeni people, taken by force” by Houthi rebels.

 KSrelief Launches Food Distribution Project in Al Jawf, Yemen (Source: ksrelief.org)

KS Relief has hired a British PR firm to spread good tidings about Saudi humanitarian assistance to Yemen: “We’re here to help,” Indeed, KS Relief has allocated more than $3 billion for assistance to Yemen: “number one donor for aid and development in Yemen,” KS Relief boasts. But, though they deny it, the aid is distributed through various filters, including UN agencies, with secret restrictions as to whom, where, and when. At any rate the campaign for “hearts and minds” in Yemen, sounds as grotesque as its erstwhile precedent in the American war in Vietnam: bomb first, then supply a bandage.

Andrew Smith, for the British Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), told The Independent, a propos Saudi aid to Yemen,

“Any aid that is helping people is to be welcomed, but the best thing that the Saudi regime can do for the people of Yemen is to stop the brutal bombing campaign that has killed thousands and brought millions to the edge of starvation.”

Out of 27 million people in Yemen, 20 million are food-insecure, famished in other words. Wael Ibrahim refers to statistics released by UN and other  agencies:

“As the conflict goes on I’m seeing more and more poverty. There are 20 million people needing help in a population of 27 million people. I’ve seen famine-like conditions such as children with red streaks in their hair – a sign of malnutrition, and an alarming number of people at therapeutic feeding centres.”

Yet, we hear hardly a whimper of protest against this immense suffering among that portion of the American public—the radical left included– which so exercises the vocal cords on behalf of human rights when and where alleged violations coincide with Western intentions of regime change and occupation.

It is puzzling indeed why officials are not instructing the media to manufacture consent for a crusade of human rights in Yemen as they did for Libya and Syria to cover their real intentions. Can they not find a “demon” to raise righteous indignation? An ethnic group, whose human rights are hideously violated by the “demon”? Why is the war in Yemen such a low-profile conflict?

Pardon my cynicism, but the absence of instrumental justification feels like a ghost that refuses to do the job of haunting. Possibly, something too embarrassing could become public knowledge. Possibly a lucrative alliance could suffer.

Possibly.

The American and British weapons industry profit from the war in Yemen—as do, no doubt, all the members of the NATO alliance and beyond. The Obama administration sold on the world’s weapons market $200 billion worth of arms over eight years, the largest US weapons sale since WW II–over $100 billion to Saudi Arabia alone. The Trump administration has also distinguished itself for a vulgar display of fetishistic attachment to the kingdom of satraps. In June, the US Senate approved (53 for; 47 against) Trump’s April arms sale of $110 billion to Riyadh: $500 million in precision-guided munitions.

Britain’s war industries thrive on the suffering of Yemen. British Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) reported in The Independent in July:

“The UK has licensed £3.3 bn worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. Right now, UK made fighter jets are being flown by UK-trained military personnel and dropping UK-made bombs on Yemen. The UK is not just a bystander in this war, it is an active participant.”

“Partners in crimes” would be more accurate: as mentioned, the British government is training the Saudi Air Force for airstrikes in Yemen, at the same time that Theresa May is withholding a report-study of Riyadh’s “ties to extremism.” The Saudi pilots are being trained to drop cluster bombs, “precisely” in theory, made in and sold by Britain. Cluster bombs are WMDs if used on civilian centers. They are allowed only for maiming and killing enemy soldiers. The beauty of recent wars is that “army” has become a nebulous concept. So, anything goes.

In the last few days, the British High Court has denied a request by CAAT, calling for the government’s suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, “pending the [judicial] review into if the sales are compatible with UK and EU arms export law,” as Andrew Smith wrote for CAAT in The Independent, following the denial.

Apparently the arms and military equipment sales to Saudi Arabia–aircraft, helicopter, drones, cluster bombs, and missiles–DO violate the laws of Britain and European Union, otherwise why would the court reject the request for a Judicial Review of the government’s practice?

Such is the absent zeal of western institution for protection of human rights that we should remember this infamous decision when next we are being seduced by the bloodhounds in the media into supporting the faux-crusades for random and selective human rights in the world by heartless and mercenary paladins.

To be fair, two thirds of the British public opposes arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Jeremy Corbyn agrees with the majority, calling the petro-monarchy’s intervention in Yemen “an invasion,” in an interview with Al Jezeera English.

While the crimes in Yemen are being assiduously ignored by the media and covertly aided by governments, their effects are accumulating. An outbreak of cholera is claiming more lives. One person per hour is dying of the water-borne disease. Wael Ibrahim laments in his Independent piece:

“These are the appalling conditions that caused the cholera outbreak in Yemen – I should know, I live here. There is untreated sewage on the streets of Sana’a. Driving near the airport I simply cannot breathe because of the stench.”

This situation carries the horrifying echo of what happened in Iraq in the 1990s, under the sanction regime inflicted by the senior Bush and continued by Bill Clinton, for a total of thirteen years. After bombing Iraq’s water-supply installations during the Gulf War, the US effectively (and possibly deliberately) poisoned the water by sanctioning the importation of purifying chlorine. As is notorious by now, 500,000 children under the age of five perished. Clinton’s ghoulish Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, admitted on CBS that such deaths had been “worth it.” The sanctions on Iraq had been pronounced on an August 6^th, the month and day of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Many noted this sadistic coincidence, denouncing the sanctions as a second Hiroshima bomb—this time dropped on Iraq.

The cholera infection, marked by violent diarrhea, is caused by ingestion of water contaminated by fecal matter. The outbreak in Yemen first manifested itself in October 2016, but between April and June of 2017, it became rampant. According to the United Nations’ World Health Organization, 300,000 Yemenis are already infected. 1,500 people have died, 55% of them children. Hospitals are full with patients showing symptoms. Clean water, sanitation, and healthcare—the means to check the epidemic—are woefully scarce.

And no one yet asks, “Is it/was it worth it?” Perhaps the question will come up later, when counting the dead will do no harm to the progress of that virtual crime, officially known as the “foreign policy” of the United States in the “Middle East,” an abstract map to the planners—not a territory within which people live and will suffer from the plans.

Me? Oh, I turn to literature when speechless at the horror of it all. Who better than Sartre? Without ellipsis, synthesized, from the long passage in his first novel, Nausea:

“The nausea is not within me. I feel it out there. I am within it. I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders, everywhere around me. A monster? A giant carapace? Sunk in the mud? A dozen pairs of claws or fins laboring slowly in the slime? The monster rises. At the bottom of the water.”

Sources

Wael Ibrahim’s report on cholera in Yemen

http://www.independent.co.uk/author/wael-ibrahim

Britain training Saudi pilots

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/saudi-arabia-yemen-conflict-bombing-latest-uk-training-pilots-alleged-war-crimes-a7375551.html

US Senate Backs Trump’s Weapon Sale to Saudi Arabia

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/world/middleeast/trump-weapons-saudi-arabia.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSaudi%20Arabia&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=25&pgtype=collection

Life Beneath Bombs and Blockade

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/opinion/yemen-houthis.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FSaudi%20Arabia&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

Cholera Epidemic in Yemen

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-war-deaths-cholera-epidemic-dying-every-hour-a7782341.html

Britain’s High Court Decision on Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/saudi-arabia-yemen-campaign-against-the-arms-trade-lost-case-a7833766.html

Trump’s Weapons’ Sale to Saudi Arabia

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/world/middleeast/trump-weapons-saudi-arabia.html

Jeremy Corbyn’s Stand on Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-saudi-arabia-arms-sales-yemen-famine-civilian-killed-a7818481.html

Luciana Bohne is co-founder of Film Criticism, a journal of cinema studies, and teaches at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania. She can be reached at: [email protected]

Featured image from Felton Davis / CC BY 2.0

The French energy giant Total just clinched a 50.1% stake in a $4.8 billion deal to develop Iran’s South Pars gas field alongside China and Iran’s national energy companies. This represents the first major post-sanctions investment by a Western company, and Reuters quoted experts who analyzed that it could also give France a unique opportunity to expand its investments in neighboring Qatar, which shares the world’s largest gas field with Iran and calls its South Pars-abutting offshore deposits the North Dome. Qatar, which is already the world’s largest LNG exporter, just announced that it wants to increase its gas exports by 30%, so it’ll clearly need some more investment to do that and France’s Total might be the perfect partner for it.

While all of this is going on, India also offered Iran $11 billion in what it called its “best offer” for the Farzad-B gas field. Although Iran has yet to accept or decline the deal at the time of this recording, it nevertheless sets the benchmark price that Tehran will eventually receive for this, whether from New Delhi right now or someone else who might come in with a higher offer.

Altogether, it can be expected that the LNG price will eventually drop in the future once Iran and Qatar’s latest large-scale gas investments hit the market and contribute to a glut. Moreover, Papua New Guinea and Mozambique, both of which have enormous LNG potential, are also supposed to enter the marketplace in the coming years too, as will Russia’s own Yamal and Sakhalin LNG projects, all of which will drive down the price for this resource. However, the processing and transport expenses are still unusually high for LNG, so unless the costs fall due to the introduction of some new technology or industrial scaling, then it’s almost certain that prices will eventually bottom out at some level or another. The opposite is true for oil, however, because that commodity has a price ceiling which can’t be passed without kicking the US’ costly shale gas extraction back into operation and forcing the price down again. What’s most interesting in all of this is that the prices for oil and gas are indexed with one another, so each resource is affected by the price floor and ceiling of the other, despite the opposite dynamics.

The oil price has relatively stabilized because of OPEC and the deal that its members and most important partners agreed to last year, but no similar organization or coordination exist between the world’s largest natural gas players, though the predictable resource glut and price drop that’s set to hit the LNG marketplace might compel them to form their own “gas OPEC” and initiate cooperative price-fixing measures with one another. The main takeaway here is that the multibillion-dollar Iranian gas deals that have been reached or are under negotiation stand to completely upset the market fundamentals for this commodity by provoking a glut of LNG which could crash the price and compel the formation of a “gas OPEC” between Russia, Iran, and Qatar to stabilize it.

The post presented is the partial transcript of the CONTEXT COUNTDOWN radio program on Sputnik News, aired on Thursday Jul 13, 2017:

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 global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

While the latest figures confirmed over 320,000 cases of cholera in Yemen, the World Health Organization announced that it would be canceling the planned shipment of nearly one million cholera vaccines to the country torn apart by a Saudi Arabia-led bombing campaign, citing security and logistical concerns in the decision to cancel the shipment.

An initial shipment of 500,000 doses are currently in Djibouti, ready to be shipped, however WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters that the doses might be rerouted to several countries in Africa instead.

WHO’s latest figures indicate that there have been around 320,000 cases of cholera, a disease that causes uncontrollable diarrhea and severe dehydration that can be deadly without treatment. The conditions in Yemen in the midst of a Saudi-led, U.S.-sponsored war have led to a spread of the disease on an epidemic scale. Lack of access to clean water, famine, and destruction of health-infrastructure resulting from the war have been the primary drivers of the outbreak.

United Nations officials placed blame for the crisis squarely on those parties involved in perpetuating the conflict.

“This cholera scandal is entirely man-made by the conflicting parties and those beyond Yemen’s borders who are leading, supplying, fighting and perpetuating the fear and the fighting,” U.N. aid chief Stephen O’Brien told the U.N. Security Council Wednesday.

He called for greater international pressure to end the conflict.

“Yemen is facing critical stoppages of hospitals and a lack of doctors and nurses. The health system has essentially collapsed, with an estimated 55 percent of facilities closed due to damage, destruction or lack of funds. Some 30,000 health care workers have not been paid in nearly a year and no funding has been provided to keep basic infrastructure such as hospitals, water pumping and sanitation stations operating,” O’Brien continued.

A Saudi Arabia-led coalition began a bombing and blockading campaign against Yemen in 2015 in an effort to back the government ousted by Houthi rebels. In addition to targeting civilian buildings, such as hospitals, the Saudi coalition has also nearly entirely closed off Yemen’s air and seaports.

The Saudi-led coalition is heavily backed by material and financial support from the United States and the United Kingdom.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly announced to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), a program that grants work permits to more than 800,000 undocumented immigrants, will likely soon be dismantled.

The announcement comes two weeks after officials in 11 states wrote to Attorney General Jefferson Sessions threatening to sue the federal government if it did not rescind Obama’s DACA program by Sept. 5.

DACA was implemented in mid-2012 under the Obama Administration to boost Obama’s credentials among Latino voters. The move was not opposed by immigration officials, who saw the move as an opportunity to accumulate lists of youth living in the US without documentation. As the WSWS wrote in 2012:

The implementation of the DACA program came three months before the presidential election, implementation of the initiative—providing limited rights to a narrow section of immigrants—is at best a cynical gesture in an effort to court Latino voters. At worst, the information gathered in the application process could be used against immigrants and their families. The Obama administration has pursued an aggressive anti-immigrant agenda, rounding up immigrants in wide-scale sweeps and deporting them in record number, and this policy will not end with DACA.

The worst case scenario is now coming to fruition. All of the personal information needed to carry out deportations of these children and their families is now conveniently in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. The thousands of children who lined up for the chance at the limited rights offered by the program gave their names, addresses, countries of origin, their personal histories, and signed a document admitting to being in the country illegally. The cost of this program was paid for by the immigrants themselves at $465 dollars apiece.

In addition to the DACA participants, the status of many Central American immigrants was also called into question by the Trump administration during Kelly’s meeting. Members of the Hispanic Caucus reported that Kelly also suggested many federal programs which grant Haitians, Salvadorans and Hondurans temporary protected status (TPS) due to past disasters in their homelands are also at risk of being canceled, or not renewed, by the Trump administration. For Haiti and El Salvador, TPS faces renewal in January 2018, while El Salvador’s program currently ends next March.

TPS is intended to protect migrants from being deported to a country currently embroiled in war, environmental disaster, or “other extraordinary and temporary conditions.” In June, the governments of El Salvador and Honduras pleaded with the US to extend TPS for their residents, fearing that the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants will provoke a social explosion.

Deporting immigrants who have fled countries such as Haiti, El Salvador and Honduras could very likely be a death sentence for many of these people. These countries all share a common history of relentless intervention by American imperialism, leaving them each in a state of extreme poverty and with dire social conditions.

Five percent of the unaccompanied minors who cross the border come from the city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras. The city has the world’s highest murder rate, 187 murders per 100,000 in 2012, more than twice the country’s average of 90.4. The murder rates in El Salvador (41.2) and Honduras (60) are amongst the worst in Latin America.

Those who choose to flee do so out of dire necessity. Many make the decision, and risk their lives to make the dangerous journey, in hopes of offering their children a better life. Many of their children have grown up thoroughly integrated in US culture with some having no memory of their “home” country or knowledge of its norms or language.

These developments mark a significant ramping up of the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration. In addition to the threats laid out by Kelly this week, there have been numerous reports of asylum seekers being intimidated and even unlawfully turned away at the border by ICE agents. An initiative which aimed at arresting undocumented parents suspected of having paid to have their children ushered into the country by smugglers has been put into effect. All these measures are meant to terrorize and intimidate not only the immigrant population but the working class as a whole.

The dismantling of DACA, the rescinding of asylum programs, along with all the other anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration have little support among the masses.

Class War

Consider the Grenfell Tower inferno as an expression of a new kind of class war, but not a class war as we have known it–between organised workers, political parties and capital–but between ordinary citizens and the local fiefdoms of the capitalist state as increasingly, big business has taken over the running of what’s left of our public and collective life, through ‘outsourcing’, public-private-partnerships and what have you, where making a profit is the bottom line, not serving the public.[1]

Worse still, in order to justify this thievery on a national/international scale that runs to trillions, the state and its partner the corporate/state media, has had to resort to the ‘trusted’ Victorian method of blaming the victim for their own poverty, their own shortcomings, their own misery. Ergo, Grenfell.

Hence Grenfell Tower is an entirely predictable end product of the neoliberal agenda, just as flattening Syria is a product of the same sociopathic ideology. Or flattening the NHS for that matter.

Hence it’s also no surprise that a person like Corbyn would come along at the same juncture in space and time as Grenfell this utterly ruthless but totally incompetent ruling class has dumped on us and done it in the name of democracy.

Depressingly, it seems Corbyn is all we’ve got right now and he’s glued to the Labour Party, so we really have to ask ourselves at this critical juncture; can a Labour government deliver us from evil or will we just get a slightly different kind of evil instead?

The reality is that Corbyn’s aspirations are also the aspirations of twenty million citizens, maybe more. That’s one-third of the population. It also means that at least one-third are not afraid of the word socialism. What an opportunity! Or will it be a missed one?

But can these aspirations be transformed, not even into a socialist programme, but a Keynesian one aka 1945 by some future Corbyn-led Labour government? As regular readers of mine will know, it didn’t surprise me that Corbyn almost won the election, for Labour. All the ingredients were there for a perfect storm: the unemployed, the working poor, students, pensioners, and of course the awful Theresa May, all of whom saw in Corbyn the answer to their prayers. Here was a man they could believe in, he offered them hope.

Add to this an increasing number of so-called middle class voters, who might be materially unaffected by Austerity, but be motivated by things like climate change/global warming, the destruction of natural habitat, pollution and war, endless war that now blows back big time, never mind Brexit. In other words, quality of life.

So desperate in fact, that in spite of the Labour Party’s treacherous record of back-stabbing its members and its voters, it seems millions of us are prepared to give Labour yet another chance. So is it different this time? Will a Labour government (theoretically) under Corbyn’s leadership, initiate the process of dismantling disaster capitalism before it’s too late? Before the psychopaths in charge terminate human life on the planet in the pursuit of profit? Maybe we really are waking up at long last, at least that’s what I want to believe and clearly so do millions of other people. But can a Labour government deliver?

The role of the Middle Classes

“The Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.” — ‘UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007

The ‘middle class’ have always been a thorn in the side of the radical left; are they just upscale workers or actually of a different class? After all, they’re employees not employers so the real issue comes down not to their class but to where their class allegiance lies. In a traditional, industrial capitalist society their role has always been seen as some kind of buffer between worker and capitalist, their allegiances firmly with the ruling elite on whose largesse they depend but is this still the case and if it isn’t, is the MoD’s assessment of their potential new role, correct?

It would seem that the government thinks that the ‘middle classes’ (or those who think of themselves as middle class) can no longer be relied upon by the state or by capital, to support the status quo and even contemplate the idea of them withdrawing their labour and uniting with what’s left of the organised working class.

But it begs the question of how, exactly this newly class conscious middle-class would ‘lead’ the working class. They would first require an organisation and a programme. What would their programme consist of? Socialism? Some kind of technocratic state? And how long would it take I wonder, for the ‘middle classes’ to get their act together and realize that ultimately, their interests and the interests of the ruling class are not necessarily synonymous?

But in theory anyway, they are the best placed to comprehend and plan for a radical transformation of society. As the Whitehall mandarins say, ‘[f]aced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.’

So for example, who is better placed to ‘neutralize’ the security state’s apparatus (eg the GCHQ and its surveillance apparatus)? After all, the ‘middle classes’ design, build and run it on behalf of the capitalist state.

So most definitely, a progressive, revolutionary middle strata is indispensable for the success of any socialist revolution, but lead it as well, as a ‘class’?

But perhaps there is some basis for the MoD’s analysis. After all, with the diminished role of the organised industrial working class as the ‘leading revolutionary force’ in society as envisaged by Marx and Engels, who is to take over their role? And it’s true to say that as information technology, in all its various forms, has taken on the central role in the economy, are these ‘middle classes’ the new working class as the Mod alleges?

But still we have to ask the question: how are the ‘middle class’ and the working class (including the unemployed, students, the old etc) to unite their forces and challenge the capitalist order? Is the Corbyn phenomenon a harbinger of things to come, with such things as Momentum that has so effectively used the new communication tools available to us–to reach out to such disparate sectors of society–actually initiating this new alliance? And if so, what does it tell us about the role of the Labour Party in the process? Does it even have one in this new situation?

Corbyn

Corbyn makes all the right noises. People believe him largely because he sounds sincere. We are sick of being lied to continuously, and he comes across as genuine, and I’ve no doubt he is, but is this enough? Where do Corbyn’s real allegiances lie, with the voters or with the Labour Party? Forgive me for being somewhat cynical but the history of betrayal by the Labour Party is legion and Corbyn is a party man first and foremost and when push comes to shove, what comes first for Corbyn, the Party or the People? Surely, his capitulation over the emasculating changes made to his Election Manifesto by the Blairites is proof enough that for Corbyn, the Party comes first.

So where does this leave the millions who have placed their faith in him (or is it the Labour Party)?

Had the millions who voted for Corbyn actually won, they would have gotten, not Corbyn, but a Labour government populated mostly by Blairite neo-liberals who continuously undermined Corbyn (and as I write, continue to do so!), even though he saved the Labour Party and a good many of the MPs who want him gone. Not a good start. The revised Election Manifesto already gives us a clear indication of who is actually in charge in the Labour Party and it ain’t Corbyn! To paraphrase William Morris, is Corbyn no more than the cat’s paw? I think so.

The organised industrial working class, through its representative, the Labour Party joined the political class of the capitalist state when it entered Parliament, as Morris once more pointed out, whatever it was, it weren’t socialist. Essentially, the elite of the organised working class, mainly up until quite recently, made up of trade union bureaucrats who became an integral part of the ruling political class, accepting the rules of the ‘game’ and repressing any genuine revolutionary urges, telling us that they would ‘reform’ capitalism and that takes time. Well they’ve had over 100 years and since the 1970s, as a class, as a society, as the Left, we have been going backwards not forwards to socialism. Far from ‘reforming’ capitalism, with no opposition to speak of, it reverted to form; gangsterism, cold-blooded exploitation and, probably worst of all, the British state is attempting to justify, nay reclaim its colonial Empire! And we know where the Labour Party stands on this score!

I really would like to think that Corbyn represents the beginnings of real change, and by himself along with the grassroots Momentum-led mobilisation that put him where he is now, I would agree. But it stands outside the Labour Party and derives its strength precisely because it is extra-parliamentary.

What we are really asking of Corbyn and whether they are aware of it or not, so are the hundreds of thousands who joined the Labour Party because of Corbyn, is a revolution inside the Labour Party first, never mind society at large. And there are those, not enough to make a real difference, who joined the Labour Party precisely with that objective in mind, but it’s not like it’s the first time this tactic has been tried (entry-ism). And again, the history of the Labour Party in this regard bears this out. It will go to inordinate lengths to neutralise or remove anybody who presents a challenge to the Party hierarchy and its ideology, especially from its left and the left in general.

I might add that many of those on the organised left who try this method tend to be opportunists of the worst kind, ready to jump on whatever bandwagon that comes along and when it crashes, the first to jump off.

1945 could have changed the relationship between the left and the Labour Party, but it didn’t happen, the Cold War and our colonies made sure of that. Concessions were made by the capitalist class that ensured their survival within what appeared to be socialism with the Labour government adopting particular methodologies of socialist economic planning e.g., nationalisation of key (bankrupt) sectors of the economy, the establishment of a national health service, public housing and so forth but without touching the basic elements not only of a capitalist state but an imperialist one!

So not only did the Labour government preserve capitalism for future generations, they got the people to pay for it under the guise of calling it socialism!

But what are the chances of a Labour government reversing, even in a timid fashion, the catastrophic impact of Austerity and global warmongering? Are we to believe that the capitalist state would just stand by and do nothing? Remember the plot against Harold Wilson’s Labour government organised by MI5 and the Army?

In any case, is even a progressive, capitalist (Keynesian) programme possible after over 70 years has passed since it was introduced and under entirely different circumstances? I can’t emphasise enough that the changes made to Corbyn’s (draft) Election Manifesto are so drastic as to totally undermine his programme and make even his rather modest proposals simply unworkable. How can Austerity be reversed if the Election Manifesto states that it can’t be reversed? How can a future Labour government under Corbyn, stop waging war on the planet, if the idea of waging war is still an acceptable tool of capitalism? Okay, so Corbyn fudged it a bit by using NATO and no doubt the word reluctantly, in other words, the liberal’s version of compromise.

Then of course, there is the penultimate challenge; the Parliamentary Labour Party, its bureaucrats and its intimate relationship with the capitalist state.

The Parliamentary Labour Party

The PLP consists only of Labour MPs, some of whom are nominated by Trade Unions. The PLP also gets to nominate 15% of the Executive Committee (EC) that theoretically anyway, formulates policy based on decisions made at the annual conference of the Labour Party. I might add that there’s plenty of room for manoeuvre at the conference as it’s where proposals from CLP branches can vanish in a maze of backroom committee meetings that only the ‘chosen’ (ie the Party hierarchy) know about.

After Blair came to power in 1997, he changed the rules by adding yet another layer of control that actually trumped the EC. It’s called The National Policy Forum:

The National Policy Forum (NPF) of the BritishLabour Party is part of the policy-making system of the Party, set up by Leader Tony Blair as part of the Partnership in Power process.

The NPF is made up of 186 members representing government, European and devolved assemblies, local government, affiliated trade unions, socialist societies and others, and individual members of the Labour Party, who elect representatives through an all member ballot.

The body is responsible for overseeing policy development. It meets two or three weekends a year to discuss in detail documents produced by the policy commissions, of which there are six, jointly set up by the NPF, the Party’s National Executive Committee and the Government. It submits three types of documents to Labour Party Conference: pre-decision consultative, final policy documents and an annual report on the work of the policy commissions. – Wikipedia

This is the Party bureaucracy, which is in the hands of the neo-liberals. But could that change with the enormous inflow of new blood (Labour Party membership apparently is now some 800,000 strong) into the CLP? Moreover, a key section of this new blood doesn’t come from its ‘traditional’ sources, the white industrial working class. Its new activists are young and from diverse class backgrounds. What it lacks however, is the political experience to see through the smoke and mirrors of ‘democracy’.

The Constituency Labour Party

Constituency parties are organised firstly by individual Parliamentary constituencies which in turn are broken down into Ward branches (the number of Ward branches is determined by the size of the constituency).

Anybody can join the Labour Party, well almost anybody and exceptions are difficult to pin down, in advance. So for example, if you leave a comment somewhere on the Web and Head Office doesn’t like it, you’re likely to be denied the right to join or get yourself kicked out. Likewise, if you belong to another political party that Head Office don’t like (and they find out), that will also get you ejected. And, to be fair, Head Office does have point but it’s a moot point in the light of the behaviour of the PLP and the Party bureaucracy toward the majority of members. Breaking ranks publicly really depends on whose ranks you’re breaking with but theoretically, contradicting official Party policy, in public, is grounds for your expulsion. It’s called toeing the party line (elsewhere it’s called democratic centralism).

Be that as it may, the next hurdle progressive members of the Labour Party have to jump is the relationship between Constituency/Ward members and the Party bureaucracy. So for example, the bureaucracy will try to limit the number of delegates to the Party conference who are opposed to their Blairite line, either through a manipulation of the rules or by browbeating members into supporting the status quo and if that fails, expel them.

It’s all about being in control of the party’s machinery, where rules can be bent/broken, amended or ignored by the bureaucracy in order to maintain control of the apparatus and the Party’s (current) Blairite agenda. Thus it comes down to a battle between the Constituency Party members (all 800,000 of them) and the PLP/bureaucracy (along with the corporate/state media), best illustrated by the desperate, and ultimately unsuccessful, two-year fight to remove Corbyn.

Well over 500,000 of the Labour Party’s new members are probably also new to political involvement, attracted by Corbyn’s message (and no doubt their own misery). This is a staggering number of people (by comparison, the Tory Party had around 150,000 members as of December 2016).

They call it Democracy

So Corbyn finds himself nominally at least, the head of an entrenched political party that is an integral part of the capitalist state. We have, after all, had a two-party system imposed on us for decades, a regular Tweedledee, Tweedledum between Tory and Labour and the vast contradiction between the actual votes cast and the number of seats each party gets ‘awarded’ (first-past-the-post). The corrupt nature of our Parliamentary system (expenses scandals, coverups and lies, lots of lies), whereby the MPs ‘police’ themselves and write the rules that allegedly govern their behaviour, this is democracy? I don’t think so. It’s a corrupt and entrenched system that is impervious to reform.

So what can Corbyn achieve at the head of this future Labour government and what do his supporters expect of him? Can Corbyn deliver what his supporters expect of him? And what will they do when they realise that in order to ‘lead’ the Labour Party in government, he has had to dump pretty much everything that made it worthwhile supporting him and his programme in the first place?

If Momentum teaches us anything it’s about the power and centrality of extra-parliamentary actions. It’s how people were mobilised to put Corbyn where he is today, by Momentum and other ‘grassroots’ structures as well as the left in general.[2]

But above all, it’s the idea that the Labour Party can be transformed into a radical, socialist vehicle for change that I find impossible to accept. If it couldn’t be done in 1945, when the nation was behind it why should it be possible now, in the worst of all situations? Is it wishful thinking or sheer political naivety about the real nature of the Labour Party? And this without considering what the security state would do about a genuinely radical government in the UK:

British Army ‘could stage mutiny under Corbyn’, says senior serving general

Generals would not ‘allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of the UK’ – The Independent, 20 September 2015

The unnamed general, in an interview with The Times newspaper said:

Feelings are running very high within the armed forces. You would see a major break in convention with senior generals directly and publicly challenging Corbyn over vital important policy decisions such as Trident, pulling out of Nato and any plans to emasculate and shrink the size of the armed forces.

‘The Army just wouldn’t stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that. You can’t put a maverick in charge of a country’s security.’

Of course the general’s comments have been disowned but the ruling elite knows how easy it would be to topple an unwanted government, simple flight of capital would do it without recourse to force to bring the country to its knees. And as we know, Corbyn backtracked on Trident, and then there’s the fiasco of Corbyn’s (draft) Election Manifesto mauling. Corbyn knows all to well what’s possible and what isn’t. Compromise is all well and good when the final outcome is positive but when the compromise is so total as it was with the Manifesto, the battle is over before it’s even been fought.

But does this mean that we shouldn’t support Corbyn along with the millions who do? Of course not but the question is whether the Labour Party is the right vehicle to do it with. I’m positive it’s the very last institution to bring about radical change. Surely the experience of Momentum in mobilising the citizens gives us a good idea of the way forward. The problem of course is Corbyn himself, he’s a Party man and will be till the day he dies. To my way of thinking it’s a lost opportunity to shake up this degenerate and moribund system of which the Labour Party is an intrinsic component.

Notes

1. The estate where I live used to be managed directly by the local council. Prior to its transfer to a housing association, the tenants on the estate were asked whether they wanted to stay with the council or move to the new housing association (it contains a some dwellings purchased from the council). They voted for the housing association, though most now regret it, for as bad as the council had been, it was infinitely superior to the endless flow of contractors and sub-contractors that now flood into the estate almost every day, mostly repairing ‘repairs’ and ‘refurbishments’ performed by the previous contractors and sub-contractors, who no doubt replaced the ones before them, with cost not quality being the bottom line. So not only do we get inferior service, it actually costs a lot more and the housing association is even less accountable than the council had been (at least we could vote them out, or try to). This why Grenfells are inevitable, it’s a product of a rampant and unrestrained capitalism, shorn of its veneer of civilisation, where only money and power count.

2. If you visit the Momentum website, you will see this, newly added since the General Election:

And it’s now called Peoples Momentum. Peoples Momentum is now (and apparently has been since June or July of 2016), officially part of the Labour Party. So before the election the ‘official’ Labour Party completely ignored it but now it’s proved its worth, it simply exerts its authority over it and brings ‘in-house’ so-to-speak. End of story and in all likelihood the end of Peoples Momentum as a grassroots movement.

So no more grassroots except that is for Grassroots-Momentum that’s popped up, which looks like it’s picked up where Peoples Momentum left off now that Momentum has been hijacked. But is it an official Labour Party structure and if it is, why does it exist? It certainly reads like it’s official but it’s mired in all kinds of paradoxes not the least of which is its attempt to duplicate Peoples Momentum. Visit its website and you will see that the website is not actually Grassroots Momentum at all but it’s piggy-backing on a site setup in 1980 called Labour Briefing, a left-of-Labour Party publication that attempts to move the Labour Party leftward, from within.

Grassroots Momentum appears to be everything the ‘old’ Momentum was except the name. But when you click on the ‘About‘ link, you’ll learn absolutely nothing about Grassroots Momentum but everything you need to know about Labour Briefing. Brilliant!

This essay is archived here: https://investigatingimperialism.wordpress.com/?p=85187

Children “lived in the dark like rats” while Daesh ruled in Mosul, an aid worker claims. Many of them had hidden from the terrorists and the ensuing war to retake the city. Consequently, they are suffering from rickets, a lack of Vitamin D and are very thin.

Experts believe these children will suffer long term psychological trauma not only from the battles that raged in the city but the day-to-day cruelty they witnessed at the hands of Daesh. The charity Save the Children surveyed 65 kids and found that they were enduring what professionals call “toxic stress”. A staggering 90% had lost close family members and the majority had nightmares whether asleep or awake

“I dream of a woman with blood all over her face,” murmured one girl aged about 10 or 11.

Another girl of the same age said:

“I have bad dreams of dead bodies.”

A boy was present when his cousin was offered a cigarette by a Daesh fighter. When he accepted, they shot him in the back. Mental health adviser Dr Marcia Brophy interviewed children from Mosul and noted that they rarely smiled and spoke of being afraid of an unidentifiable “thing”, “person” or even “monster”.

Their behaviour was “robotic” and lacking in any emotion, according to Brophy. This is the classic profile of children who have been bombarded with horrific images and lost parents and friends. At the Hammam al-Alil camp outside the city, youngsters aged from 10 to 15 said they had seen family members killed before their eyes. They had also witnessed the beheadings and lashings that were part of everyday life under Daesh. One 13-year-old boy recounted the grotesque spectacle of dead bodies hanging on iron bars for days on end.

Unsurprisingly, the children do not believe that Daesh has gone for good. Like an evil character in a fairy story, they think it could return at any moment. Charity workers asked children to put anything they wanted into an imaginary “magic bag”. They often chose “sadness” and “Daesh” as objects they would like to dispose of.

An 11-year-old said she saw people murdered by Daesh in the streets.

“They denied us everything, even playing”.

Her own brother was killed before her for allegedly passing information to the Iraqi army. Testimonies like her will emerge a lot more as the city is retaken. There were an estimated 600,000 children living in Mosul and Nineveh province under Daesh rule.

Education provided little by way of intellectual distraction. Arts and sciences were shelved in favour of a very narrow theological curriculum reflecting the Daesh version of Islam. While many parents claim they removed their sons and daughters from school, most will have sent them out of fear for the consequences.

Children often found themselves at the forefront of the terrorist insurgency. They were used as human shields by Daesh and in one case, a female suicide bomber blew herself up with a baby in her arms to deflect suspicion. She pretended to be a mother fleeing the city but then detonated the device as she passed by Iraqi soldiers and civilians.

At least 30,000 children were born in Iraq under Daesh. Their births were registered by the terrorists so for now, they will be effectively stateless. The school age generation emerging from Daesh rule will struggle with their own identity as they attempt to integrate into the rest of Iraqi society. Part of the necessary healing process will be to find their place in Iraq and begin to erase from their minds the horrors of the early years of their lives.

Featured image from Al Shahid

The recent acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza—on top of the routine humanitarian crisis that defines everyday existence there—has gotten sparse coverage in US media over the past three weeks.

Israeli officials have cut off electricity to almost 2 million Gazans for all but three or four hours a day—in conjunction with nominal Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has cut funding for Gaza’s electricity in an effort to punish his political rivals in Hamas. The Gaza Strip, which remains under effective Israeli control despite the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli troops, requires 450 megawatts daily, but since June has received only around 150 megawatts per day. The power cuts, according to UN humanitarian coordinator Robert Piper, severely undermine “critical functions in the health, water and sanitation sectors,” and have created a “looming humanitarian catastrophe.”

The vast majority of US media also ignored a devastating UN report published Tuesday, documenting the humanitarian conditions in Gaza over the past ten years.

Neither the electrical crisis nor the UN report has been covered by the New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC or Fox News—though the Times and ABC did run AP reports on the former.

The Washington Post  (6/22/17) reported on the electricity cuts just over three weeks ago, but made sure to note in their headline “it’s not all Israel’s fault.” The Post (7/12/17) also mentioned the Gaza electricity cuts in a broader piece, told from Israel’s perspective, about that country’s fears that “Hamas will go to war.”  NPR did not report on the electricity crisis, but unlike the Post, it did have a piece (7/11/17) on the UN report.

In stark contrast, an attack on two Israeli police officers in Jerusalem Thursday was reported by all the above outlets except MSNBC. The New York Times (7/14/17), ABC News (7/14/17), CBS News (7/14/17), NBC News (7/14/17), CNN (7/14/17), Fox News (7/14/17), all dedicated airtime and/or column inches to the shooting in the Old City.

Attacks on Israeli forces—even ones that occur, like this week’s strike, in illegally occupied territory—are framed as random acts of hate with no political context. None of the above reports on the Jerusalem attack made any mention of the increasingly dire situation in Gaza. Nor, even more conspicuously, was there any mention of Israel’s killing of two Palestinians in a West Bank refugee camp less than a day before.

The routine, “factored-in” suffering of Palestinians—even when ramped up to hellish levels—is barely worth a mention by US media. It just is. And when it is touched on, it’s generally framed as Hamas or the Palestinian Authority’s fault, with the broader role played by Israel’s devastating, 50-year-occupation downplayed or omitted.

Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org.

Featured image from FAIR

Featured image: Caliber 3 simulation in which tourists shoot at ‘terrorist’ Palestinians [Caliber 3]

The latest tourist attraction created by Israelis has taken guests by storm. Those visiting Israel are now able to enter an illegal settlement in the West Bank, where they’re offered the ultimate Israeli experience pretending to be a soldier shooting “terrorist” Palestinians in a new simulator.

In the illegal Israeli settlement of Gush Etzion, located between southern Jerusalem and Bethlehem, lies Caliber 3, a “counter-terrorism” academy that created a new concept in an attempt to allow the average tourist to experience how it feels to be an Israeli soldier.

Visitors partake in various activities, such as shooting “targets” with real bullets, and a simulation of a suicide bombing, as well as a stabbing. The programme is available for adults and children, and even carries a three-month-long summer camp for teenage boys to give them the ultimate IDF experience.

They are also taught krav maga, a form of fighting created by Israeli security forces.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, few tourists were concerned that this could potentially incite further tensions, or dehumanise Palestinians. But unfortunately for the tourists, they are completely wrong.

Attractions like Caliber 3 are designed to dehumanise Palestinians and attempt to eradicate the legitimacy of their cause, and the fact that the system is built on an Israeli settlement normalises an occupation that has been consistently declared illegal by the international community.

While it also whitewashes the occupation and attempts to invalidate the context in which Palestinians are provoked to act violently, the its location within a settlement means Palestinians evicted would have had their lives shattered by the very building of this illegal tourist attraction –  turning war, displacement, systematic oppression and apartheid into nothing but a mere game.

On Thursday, the Syrian Arab Army Tiger Forces and tribal forces, backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, have launched a military operation against in the southwestern part of Raqqah province. Initially, pro-government troops advanced south of Resafa and liberated Bir al Zenati, Bir Itaw and Bir Hiwaran villages. On Friday, they captured Ridgem-Abe el-Kalat Hills and deployed in a striking distance from the Dubaysan oil field and the Bir al-Zamlah crossroad.

According to pro-government sources, the ongoing anti-ISIS operation involves about 6,500 fighters from Raqqah tribes loyal to the Syrian government. However, this number cannot be confirmed independently.

When the Tiger Forces and their allies secure the Bir al-Zamlah crossroad, they will have 3 options:

1. To develop momentum southwest of Resafa, capturing oil fields in the area, steadily recapturing the ISIS-held area south of the Ithriyah-Resafa road. The goal of this advance is to secure the western flank of the military grouping that will push to the ISIS-held town of Sukhna from the Resafa direction.

2. To launch a rapid push towards the ISIS-held town of Taybah north of Sukhna. The goal of this move is to increase pressure on ISIS units in the eastern Palmyra countryside and to attempt to isolate Sukhna from the northern and southwestern direction.

3. To push towards Deir Ezzor. This version was widely promoted by some pro-government media. However, if government forces attempt to reach the ISIS-besieged city, their advance may end as the attempt to reach Tabqah from the Ithriyah direction in 2016. In other words, government forces will retreat after a series of flank attacks from ISIS terrorists.

In any case, the government advance in southern Raqqah will also lead to intensification of clashes between the army and terrorists east of Salamiyah. If government forces capture the whole Resafa-Palmyra road, ISIS units remaining west of the road will be cut off from supplies and reinforcements from Deir Ezzor province and the Iraqi border area.

Meanwhile, government forces made notable gains in the southern desert, recapturing Abu Khashbah, al Ghudaht, at Tayyar and Ard Umm ar Rumum and deploying closer to the full encirclement of the area formally controlled by US-backed militants. Clearing this pocket, the Syrian command is seeking to shorten the frontline in southern Syria in order to free additional forces for operations against ISIS.

Next 7-10 days will be very important for the army and show if the Iranian-Syrian-Russian alliance is able to achieve their key goals, including the lifting siege from Deir Ezzor, on the Syrian battleground before US-backed forces capture the city of Raqqah.

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Early July 2017 saw the release of photos showing a single BMPT-72 “Terminator” tank support combat vehicle in service with the Liva al-Quds Palestinian brigade serving with Syrian government forces. So far there have been no indications the vehicle has seen combat use, and it also appears that the vehicle was sent to Syria mainly for combat evaluation rather than in response to any urgent tactical requirement.

The BMPT concept represents an answer to the need to provide a high volume of suppressive fire against enemy anti-tank guided weapons and static weapon emplacements such as machine-gun nests. While modern infantry fighting vehicles are usually armed with automatic cannon which can fill that function, their inferior level of protection means they are hard-pressed to truly accompany tanks and are instead forced to provide overwatch fire with anti-tank guided missiles which limits their ability to use their cannon.

The use of anti-aircraft weapons, either purpose-designed vehicles or gun trucks with towed anti-aircraft guns mounted on their platforms, suffers from a similar limitation. The only way to get around these problems, which Russian forces discovered when fighting in Afghanistan and Chechnya, is to develop a heavily armored vehicle that replaces a tank’s main gun with automatic cannon. This vehicle was Obyekt 199 “Ramka”, which over the years matured into the BMPT-72.

BMPT-72 is, as the name implies, based on the successful and popular T-72 main battle tank chassis. This choice facilitates integration into T-72 tank formations from the perspective of mobility, maintenance, and training. Its armament consists of two 2A42 30mm automatic cannon with a total of 850 rounds in the turret, and two AG-30 30mm automatic grenade launchers mounted over the tracks and controlled by the two “bow gunners.” To deal with long-range threats, the vehicle carries four ready-to-fire 9M120 Ataka laser-guided supersonic anti-tank missiles with a range of up to 10km in the case of the most recent models and carrying either HEAT or thermobaric warheads, depending on mission requirements.

As of early 2017, the BMPT-72 is officially in service only with the armed forces of Kazakhtan, which took the receipt of 10 such vehicles between 2011 and 2013. The vehicle spotted in Syria deviates slightly from the Kazakhstani vehicles in that it carries only a low-light image intensification sight rather than a thermal imager, which makes the vehicle less expensive and is not a great handicap in Syrian conditions where it is not expected to fight duels with advanced MBTs equipped with thermal imagers. Its protection is also different in that it carries Relikt second-generation reactive armor and soft armor packages protecting the sides so far seen only on up-armored T-72B3 tanks in Russian and Belarusian service.

BMPT-72’s appearance in Syria coincided with reports that the Russian Ground Forces are about to procure a number of these vehicles themselves, most likely for use by brigades and divisions operating T-72 and T-90 MBTs. BMPT-72 was not part of earlier procurement plans because it was expected that units equipped with the new T-14 MBT of the Armata family will also include the T-15 heavy infantry fighting which was designed in part to fill the same niche as the BMPT. The T-15 prototypes shown at the 2015 Victory Parade carried an unmanned turret with a single 30mm cannon and 4 Kornet ATGMs, and automatic cannon with caliber of up to 57mm are known to be in development and testing for use on the T-15 and other IFVs.

However, the expansion of the size of the Ground Forces meant that T-72 and T-90 MBTs would remain in service for longer than expected, which in turn revived Russian interest in procuring the BMPT-72.

Voiceover by Oleg Maslov

If you’re able, and if you like our content and approach, please support the project. Our work wouldn’t be possible without your help: PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Featured image from South Front

July 12 marked one year since the beginning of the Seongju residents’ struggle to stop the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system.

So far, the AN/TPY-2 radar — the main component of the THAAD battery that will allow the U.S. to track missile activity in North Korea and China — and two of the six interceptor launchers have made their way into the deployment site. The residents of Seongju and South Korean peace activists are still protesting daily, at times putting their bodies on the line, to block the remaining parts of the THAAD battery from entering the deployment site and call for a reversal of the deployment.

Despite the election of a new liberal administration in May, the South Korean government’s response to the protests of Seongju residents has largely remained unchanged. On July 12, 1,500 riot police officers were deployed to deter protesters from blocking military vehicles entering the THAAD deployment site.

The Seongju residents also face right-wing counter-protesters, who accuse them of being “North Korean sympathizers” and threaten violence.

The residents of Seongju and Gimcheon and the Won Buddhists continue to fight with the conviction that peace will prevail. Here is a look back at the past year in the South Korean people’s struggle to oppose the THAAD missile defense system.

July 2016: U.S. and South Korean governments unilaterally announce decision to deploy THAAD in Seongju County

On July 7, 2016, the U.S. and South Korean governments announced a joint decision to deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system in Seongju, South Korea. The decision shocked and outraged the residents of Seongju, who had traditionally supported the conservative party. Then-Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn visited Seongju to calm the residents and persuade them to accept the government’s decision but was met with a shower of eggs and water bottles.

An emergency task force to oppose the THAAD deployment was formed in Seongju. The task force coordinated daily protests and began to build a soon-to-be national movement. The members of the task force, made up largely of local farmers and residents, announced — “For the livelihood and autonomy of our region, we will not spare any means to oppose the THAAD deployment.”

By the third week of protests, the Seongju Task Force put out a clear message to the South Korean government saying the THAAD battery does not belong anywhere on Korean soil:

Clearly, the government’s suggestion of a new deployment site is nothing more than an extemporaneous move to deflect public criticism. The residents of Seongju know that the government is putting forth an impossible idea as a so-called alternative with the intention of creating division among us. What we fight for is the complete reversal of the THAAD deployment decision, not merely relocating it to a different location. Never forget that Seongju is Korea and Korea is Seongju.

Seongju residents of all ages, including young children and high school students, joined the daily candlelight protests.

July 2016: Seongju residents renounce loyalty to the conservative Saenuri Party

Feeling betrayed by the conservative party for supporting the decision to deploy the missile defense system, the Seongju residents held a mock funeral procession for right-wing president Park Geun-hye and the ultra-right Saenuri Party.

August 2016: “Seongju is Korea, Korea is Seongju”

The Seongju struggle garnered national and international support. On August 14, 10,000 people in Seoul gathered to protest the THAAD deployment. Peace activists from the U.S. like Bruce Gagnon and Will Griffin of Veterans For Peace joined to speak out against the U.S. THAAD system.

(Video Credit: Will Griffin & ZoominKorea)

On August 15, 908 people in Seongju demonstrated their commitment to the anti-THAAD struggle in a head-shaving ceremony.

(Video Source: Voice of People)

August – November 2016: Gimcheon residents and Won Buddhists join the struggle

Residents from the city of Gimcheon joined the movement against the THAAD when they heard that the deployment site would be moved to the Lotte Skyhill Golf Course located on the border of Seongju County and Gimcheon City.

Photo – Gimcheon residents holding signs that say,

“Immediately rescind the decision to deploy the THAAD system that threatens the people of Gimcheon!!!”

The Gimcheon Task Force to Oppose the THAAD Deployment was launched to organize the residents and coordinate nightly candlelight protests in Gimcheon City.

Won Buddhists–the sacred birthplace of their leader being near the new deployment site–formed their own emergency task force to oppose the THAAD on August 31.

Through the summer and the fall of 2016, Seongju and Gimcheon residents as well as Won Buddhists continued to hold nightly candlelight protests.

Seongju and Gimcheon residents also traveled to Seoul to protest in front of the U.S. Embassy.

January – February 2017: Standing up to the Defense Ministry’s backdoor deal with Lotte

Even in the midst of the Park Geun-hye administration’s corruption scandal, the Defense Ministry made a backdoor deal with the Lotte corporation to obtain the right to the company’s golf course in Seongju/Gimcheon and turn into the deployment site for the THAAD system. The people of Seongju and Gimcheon protested in front of Lotte department stores and vowed to boycott Lotte products.

Seongju and Gimcheon women have been at the forefront of the anti-THAAD struggle. Four women from Seongju and Gimcheon spoke with ZoominKorea about their leadership in the struggle and what is at stake for them:

On February 27, however, Lotte finalized its agreement with the Defense Ministry to give up its golf course in exchange for another plot of land owned by the South Korean military. Shortly after, the golf course was handed over to the United States Forces Korea (USFK), which prepared to transfer parts of the THAAD battery into Seongju.

March 2017 to Present: Soseong-ri as the last line of defense for peace

With the golf course secured and its ownership transferred to the USFK, the residents of Seongju vowed to put their bodies on the line to block the THAAD system from entering the deployment site. The small village of Soseong-ri, just two miles from the deployment site, became the new battleground for the struggle to stop the THAAD deployment.

On March 18, close to 5,000 people from across South Korea gathered in Soseong-ri for a national peace action.

The peace action re-energized the anti-THAAD struggle, but it was also the first time the people of Seongju saw firsthand the South Korean police using excessive force against South Korean people to protect the interests of U.S. forces.

(Video Source: OhmyTV)

Despite the police violence, the residents of Soseong-ri along with the Won Buddhist Task Force to Oppose the THAAD successfully blocked several attempts by the USFK and the South Korean Defense Ministry to transport military vehicles into the deployment site.

But on April 26, in the middle of the night without any warning, the USFK and the South Korean Defense Ministry forced key parts of the THAAD system into the deployment site.

After an entire year of daily protests, the new Moon Jae-in administration paused the deployment process and ordered an environmental impact assessment.

On June 24, 3,000 protesters stood hand-in-hand to surround the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and demand the reversal of the U.S.-South Korea decision to deploy the THAAD battery.

(Video Source: Voice of People)

Members of Moon’s cabinet have publicly said that South Korea has no intention of re-negotiating the THAAD deal made with the United States. The South Korean people, including the residents of Seongju and Gimcheon and the Won Buddhists, continue to fight and call on Moon to reverse the THAAD deployment.

All images in this article are from the source.

In an effort to reinforce public perception that policy changes when a new administration assumes the White House, US and European analysts have made several attempts to push forward narratives describing US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy as “confused” or “unclear” in contrast to his predecessor, President Barrack Obama.

However, upon closer examination, from the Middle East to Asia Pacific, US foreign policy has continued, virtually uninterrupted, for decades.

Thailand-based newspaper, The Nation, in an article titled, “Asean under pressure due to uncertain US policy, China’s ambitions: researchers,” would illustrate this by claiming:

Asean will be under tremendous pressure as the United States under Donald Trump’s administration tries to be more engaged without a clear strategy while China competes for the grouping’s favour, experts at the Hawaii-based East-West Center said. 

While it was still hard to see what the Trump administration wanted to do regarding the relationship with Asean, it was expected that the US would continue to see Asean as a useful partner, said Denny Roy, senior research fellow at the research and education institute.

The article also cites former US diplomat Raymond Burghardt reporting:

Burghardt, former US ambassador to Vietnam and deputy envoy to the Philippines, said Vietnam needed to take a crucial role in leading Asean to deal with China regarding the South China Sea as the Philippines seemed to be taking a softer stance to please Beijng. 

However, the article reveals that:

Of the 10 members, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam claim sovereignty over islands, rocks, shoals and reefs in the contentious sea. Indonesia is not a claimant but has some conflicts over fisheries. 

The US, which is not a claimant in the area, has championed freedom of navigation as well as urged Asean to speak with one voice in dealing with China.

Thus, nations allegedly involved in claims in the South China Sea are not actually seeking confrontation with Beijing, while other ASEAN members have categorically abstained from becoming involved altogether. The United States, which has no claims whatsoever in the South China Sea, serves as chief antagonist, pressuring states to seek and expand confrontation with Beijing.

It is a process that heightened drastically amid the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” including a high-profile court case fought by American lawyers on behalf of the Philippines. Despite a predictably successful verdict being delivered, the Philippine government itself refused to use the ruling as leverage against Beijing and decided instead to open bilateral talks, excluding Washington.

A Pattern of Coercion 

In response, the US has increased pressure on the Philippines both openly and covertly.

Overtly, the US has cancelled weapon shipments to Philippine police forces supposedly on humanitarian grounds regarding the government’s current “war on drugs” and allegations of sweeping extrajudicial killings. However justified withholding weapons on such grounds may be, US policy presents a paradox when considering record arms deals being simultaneously made with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two nations notorious for their human rights abuses and two nations currently engaged in brutality both within their borders and beyond them specifically enabled by torrents of US weaponry.

Covertly, terrorism and now even armed combat allegedly linked to the Islamic State has coincidentally made its way to Southeast Asia, targeting not only the Philippines, but also Indonesia and Malaysia for their continued, incremental shift eastward toward Beijing. While US and European media sources insist that terrorist organisations like the Islamic State carry out their atrocities independent of state sponsorship, US intelligence reports and leaked e-mails from among American politicians have revealed otherwise.

Thus, if the “Islamic State” appears amid a geopolitical tug-of-war, as described by academics and former diplomats cited in The Nation’s article, and the Islamic State’s rise was intentionally fuelled by the United States and is sponsored by America’s closest Middle Eastern allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it stands to reason to at least suspect Islamic State activity in Southeast Asia as part of a much wider and well-documented pattern of geopolitical coercion.

Likewise, in 2015 when Thai officials refused American demands to allow suspected terrorists to travel from China onward to Turkey, using Thailand as a transit point, and instead extradited the suspects back to China, terrorism conveniently struck months later, killing twenty in the centre of Bangkok. Ongoing terrorism in Thailand’s deep south has sought out by Washington as a vector of drawing Thailand in closer militarily and politically. When closer cooperation is refused by Bangkok, terrorism predictably spikes.

Even Vietnam, despite hopeful predictions by US analysts and former diplomats, is attempting to play a more balanced game between Beijing and Washington, likely painting itself a target for political subversion, economic sabotage and even covert terrorism sponsored by the United States.

But this current pattern of coercion does not simply span the Obama administration and continue under the Trump administration. It is a process of US involvement in Asia Pacific that dates back to when it quite literally occupied the Philippines as a colonial power. Even the Vietnam War, according to America’s own intelligence agencies, was fought to contain China, not combat “communism” or defend “democracy.”

Thus, “Trump’s” ASEAN policy isn’t “confused” or “unclear,” it is a very clear continuation of a pattern of coercion seeking to maintain what US policymakers and politicians themselves have claimed is American “primacy” across Asia.

Primacy declared by a nation that does not even reside in Asia offers clues as to why ASEAN as a bloc, and its members individually have resisted attempts by Washington to use them as a unified front amid America’s geopolitical game with China.

What the US may claim are “gains” and “closer ties” across Asia will result either from concessions made by individual states to stave off more overt and destructive forms of coercion by Washington, or from successful attempts by Washington to overthrow governments opposed to its objectives in Asia Pacific, and resulting client states steering national policy parallel to Washington’s.

Admitting this would reveal America as a force of destabilisation, exploitation and inhumanity, usurping entire nations of their right to self-determination. Therefore, it is much more politically convenient for analysts and diplomats to claim American policy is “confused” or “unclear” while this singular agenda continues under the Trump administration.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image from New Eastern Outlook

A U.S. peace delegation will travel to South Korea from July 23 to 28 to stand with the South Korean people fighting against the U.S. THAAD deployment and build solidarity with the peace movement there. The peace delegation will include Jill Stein of the Green Party (2016 U.S. presidential candidate), Reece Chenault of U.S. Labor Against War, Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, Juyeon Rhee of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific (STIK) and Will Griffin of Veterans For Peace.

The solidarity delegation is sponsored by STIK and the Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation (CPLEF) and follows a national speaking tour sponsored by the two organizations in April when Won Buddhist Reverend Sounghey Kim toured the U.S. to speak about the anti-THAAD fight in South Korea.

The delegation aims to bring attention to U.S. militarism in the Asia Pacific region, according to Griffin:

While much of the world is focused on wars in the Middle-East, the U.S. is still dominating other parts of the world like East Asia. Ending wars and militarism is important everywhere, but there has been a lack of coverage on East Asia. It is imperative to bring attention to this region, which includes nuclear powers, the largest militaries in the world, the largest economies in the world, the largest populations in the world, and the busiest ports in the world. If war breaks out in the Asia Pacific, it will affect the whole world and could potentially end all life on Earth.

Ramsay Liem, an organizer of the peace delegation and a member of both STIK and CPLEF, discussed the goals of the peace delegation:

The Solidarity Peace Delegation is an effort to educate the American public about the harmful effects of the U.S. deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in Seongju, South Korea. We will join with the many South Korean organizations of our host coalition, the National Task Force to Oppose THAAD Deployment, to call for: 

• The removal of THAAD from South Korea,
• A halt to the arms race on the Korean peninsula by ending the U.S.-South Korea war games in favor of an agreement by North Korea to freeze its production of nuclear weapons and missile testing, and
• Diplomacy with North Korea to end the Korean War with a peace treaty, normalize relations with North Korea and support all efforts by the Korean people to achieve the peaceful reunification of their country.

The delegation will also meet with South Korean groups from multiple sectors, e.g. environmental justice, labor, peace and reunification, women’s, and student organizations, to explore common interests of progressive forces in both our countries and concrete actions we can take to build meaningful, ongoing solidarity. We look forward to the lessons our delegates will share when they return and their leadership in mobilizing broader recognition of and opposition to militarism in Korea, Asia and the Pacific.

Below is the full official statement of the peace delegation. The sponsors seek endorsements from organizations and individuals. To endorse the statement, visit STIK’s website or click here.

***

No to THAAD in Korea, Yes to Peace through Dialogue

Solidarity Peace Delegation of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific and the Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation, July 2017

Under cover of darkness a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system was installed in Seongju City, ROK in April 26 this year, in spite of daily and growing opposition from local villagers and their nation-wide supporters and without official deliberation by South Korea’s governing bodies. Protesters correctly fear that its deployment will strain their country’s already delicate relationship with China, embolden militaristic and anti-democratic political forces in their own country, and exacerbate tensions between North and South Korea. They also worry about potential negative health and environmental effects associated with the operation of the THAAD radar system, and defilement of sacred lands like the nearby pilgrimage site of the Won Buddhist community.

U.S. and some ROK officials claim the THAAD system will protect South Korea from the threat of North Korean missiles. However, because it is stationed 135 miles south of Seoul, virtually all observers agree that the 25 million Koreans living in the capital city area fall outside THAAD’s protective shield. Even more damning, missile defense expert, MIT physicist Ted Postol, adds there is no demonstrable evidence that THAAD is effective under live fire conditions with multiple incoming missiles and decoys. On the other hand, THAAD radar in South Korea has the capacity to monitor missile systems in China, which many suspect is a chief U.S. objective in insisting on stationing it in Korea. China has voiced its opposition to THAAD in Korea in no uncertain terms, enacted economic retributions against South Korea, and threatened an accelerated arms race.

The U.S. THAAD deployment in South Korea is part of the U.S. “pivot” to the Asia Pacific. It expands the already significant network of U.S. missile defense systems encircling China and Russia. This effort to boost declining U.S. political and economic influence in the region comes at a high cost, however, to the American people. It diverts billions of dollars away from critical domestic needs at a time of decaying infrastructure, unprecedented economic inequality, and limited access to basic human services. It also compromises the principles as well as safety of peace-loving Americans by intensifying regional military tensions, fuelling a new arms race, and threatening a renewed outbreak of fighting on the Korean peninsula, this time involving nuclear weapons with unimaginable consequences for human life.

The U.S. deployment of THAAD also complicates North/South Korean relations at a time when North Korea has offered to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for an end to or significant reduction in annual U.S.-South Korea war games. This proposal was routinely rejected by the Obama administration. But today a growing number of respected U.S. officials and policy analysts such as Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Jane Harman, former congresswoman and head of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and William Perry, Secretary of Defense during the first Clinton administration, have expressed support for considering a freeze and halting war games as a first step toward addressing North Korea’s security concerns as well as those of the U.S, its allies, and China and Russia in light of North Korea’s progress in producing nuclear capable ICBMs.

Most Americans know nothing about THAAD, the opposition of South Koreans to its deployment, or recent diplomatic overtures by North Korea to reduce tensions on the peninsula. Even fewer remember the Korean War, are aware that the U.S. retains war time control over South Korea’s armed forces, or understand the desire of the Korean people to achieve the peaceful reunification of their country. Yet, these unknowns should be of vital concern to people in the United States. Should the fragile armistice agreement that halted the fighting but did not end the Korean War give way to renewed fighting, we, along with Koreans in the North and South and countless others in the region will suffer untold losses. In the words of U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, “…if this goes to a military solution, it is going to be tragic on an unbelievable scale…”

At this critical moment, the U.S. and South Korean governments can continue to fuel the fires of war in Korea by further militarizing South Korea or take steps to create international conditions for a lasting peace in Korea. Whichever path the U.S. adopts will be done in the name of the American people. It is, therefore, incumbent upon citizens of the U.S. to engage and work with the people of Korea to arrive at mutually agreeable, peaceful means to resolve hostilities in the region. Beginning this collective work is a primary goal of our delegation.

The Solidarity Peace Delegation travels to South Korea to express the solidarity of peace-loving Americans to those in Korea fighting the THAAD deployment and seeking a fundamental resolution to conflict on the peninsula and in the region. We aim to strengthen mutual understanding about how to achieve these objectives with the goal of aligning U.S. policy with the desire of the Korean people to achieve a lasting peace on the peninsula and, ultimately, the peaceful and independent reunification of Korea.

Recognizing the immense social and economic costs of increased militarization of Korea for both the American and Korean people, the Solidarity Peace Delegation calls upon the governments of the United States and the Republic of Korea to:

• Remove THAAD from South Korea.
• Halt the arms race on the Korea peninsula by ending the U.S.-South Korea war games in favor of an agreement by North Korea to freeze its production of nuclear weapons and missile testing.
• Engage in diplomacy with North Korea to end the Korean War with a peace treaty, normalize relations with North Korea and support all efforts by the Korea people to achieve the peaceful reunification of their country.

Finally, we state our intention to build solidarity in the U.S. for the struggle against the stationing of THAAD in South Korea and the expansion of U.S. militarism in Asia. We also call on peace-loving people in the United States and globally to join us in this effort.

Sponsors

Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific

Channing and Popai Liem Education Foundation

Delegates

Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK

Reece Chenault, U.S. Labor Against the War

Will Griffin, Veterans for Peace, Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific

Juyeon Rhee, Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific

Jill Stein, 2016 presidential candidate, Green Party U.S.A.

Organizational and individual endorsers of the statement will be listed below the sponsors and delegates. To add your endorsement, please fill out the Endorsement Form no later than July 19, 2017 (at the end of the day).

Featured image from Zoom in Korea

The failure of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in four-day talks with the Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and a Kuwaiti official, to mediate an end to the inter-Arab dispute over Qatar, suggests that U.S. influence in the Middle East is waning. Even in the wake of the most recent massive Saudi arms deal announced during Trump’s visit to Riyadh on June 5, and the president’s receipt of the King Abdulaziz al Saud Collar, Washington is unable to dissuade its “enduring partner” from its highly rash course of action.

The New York Times reports that Tillerson flew out from Jeddah Wednesday night “without even attempting the usual tight-smiled announcements of incremental progress.” Maybe because there was none.

The Saudis, along with their Egyptian, UAE, and Bahraini allies, are determined to ostracize and isolate Qatar. Not for the stated reason—repeated by a clueless Donald Trump on June 9—that Qatar supports terrorism.

Trump, claiming credit for leading the effort, declared,

“The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level.”

He claimed (alluding to his Saudi visit) that

“nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior… I decided, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals and military people, the time had come to call on Qatar to end its funding—they have to end that funding, and its extremist ideology in terms of funding. Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism.”

This is bulls..t. It rests upon the Saudi and Egyptian assumption that tolerating the Muslim Brotherhood, allowing media criticisms of Gulf Cooperation Council regimes, and refusal to condemn Hezbollah all constitute support for terrorism.

The real reason for the pressure on Qatar is Iran, and the Saudis’ long term campaign to undermine the Islamic Republic and its Shiite allies and “proxies” (real or imagined) in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere in the region. Riyadh is concerned about the prospects of Shiite rebellion within the Saudi Arabia itself, where over 10% of the population are Shiites oppressed by Wahhabi rule; and in Bahrain, where 70% are Shiites, ruled by an absolute monarch who shares the Saudis’ Wahhabi Islam.

Young Crown Prince Salman clearly feels he has received the green light from Trump to lead, in tandem with Egypt, an anti-Iranian coalition. (The NYT states: “Part of the reason a deal could not be reached…is that the president’s embrace for King Salman…is thought to have given the kingdom the confidence to start and then stick by the embargo regardless of Tillerson’s increasing urgent and frustrated feelings.”) This anti-Iran effort requires the ostracizing of Doha, and its expulsion from the Gulf Cooperation Council, unless it accepts a list of non-negotiable demands (including the closure or complete reorganization of the Qatar-based al-Jazeera news network which sometimes reports critically on the countries now targeting Qatar).

This rupture among some of its closest Mideast partners is most certainly not in Washington’s interests.

Qatar hosts 11,000 U.S. troops at Al Udeid Air Base. This is the largest concentration of U.S. forces in the region.

Bahrain meanwhile hosts the Fifth Fleet, with 5,000 U.S. sailors and Marines in port at any time. It’s awkward for the two countries to be at odds with one another. And it’s embarrassing for the U.S. to be so conspicuously unable to reconcile its allies. What if the crazed and vicious Saudi prince, who has unleashed pure hell on neighboring Yemen with unqualified U.S. support, were to call Trump at 4 A.M. sometime soon, and ask what he thought about a Saudi annexation of Qatar, in order to fight terrorism?

He might remind Trump, or inform him for the first time, that Saudi Arabia intervened in Bahrain in March 2011 to aid the Sunni king in suppressing Shiite protests. So there is successful precedent.

Trump—fondly remembering that sword dance with the king—just might say, sounds good to me, I just need to check with my generals since we have troops there as I recall. The prince would say, “The troops can stay, of course. And we will pay all their expenses from this point. We will hurt Iran and its terrorist allies in the region.”

Later that morning Tillerson and Secretary of “Defense” James Mattis will perhaps say: “No, Mr. President, this is not a good idea. Congress will surely react with horror, and attempt to sanction Saudi Arabia. You’re already in deep political danger. Siding with the one country in the world that doesn’t allow women to drive against a neighbor that has a far more liberal culture and civil society does not look good politically, even if the latter does have a cordial relationship with Tehran. It would be a hard sell, and very much complicate the already difficult relationship with Turkey, a NATO member and also a Doha ally. The Europeans would be very upset.” Donald will listen, frown, and maybe nod his head in apparent understanding.

But let’s say the prince calls back mid-afternoon and Trump, preoccupied with Junior’s situation—and disregarding advice as he often does, and being impulsive as he often is—says: “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do, I guess. Just don’t attack our base. Say hello to your dad, he’s doing a terrific job.”

Then the chaos unleashed by George W. Bush in 2003 will enter a new stage. Turkey, which has troops stationed in Qatar and has offered assistance to Doha to cope with its current difficulties, will perhaps break ties with Riyadh and draw closer to Iran. Iran may move to seize control of the Persian Gulf oil field jointly owned by Qatar and Iran. Trump will declare the Saudi-Egyptian led war on Iran a war against terrorism and the Iranian nuclear threat. Pandora’s box has been open for many years now, and the hope that remained in the box may have escaped by now too.

Gary Leupp is a Professor of History at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese history. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Read other articles by Gary.

The media is currently in the midst of an anti-Russian hysteria that many have dubbed Cold War 2.0. Of course the first cold war never really ended as the wars in Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and even Afghanistan were aimed at Russia as was the relentless NATO expansion. This manufactured panic is a form of psychological warfare that went into high gear during the Sochi Olympics in 2014 as the US was working to launch a fascist coup in Ukraine.

Since most ordinary people would be shocked to discover that Nazis had been installed in power in Ukraine an anti-Russian hysteria was launched to discredit and intimidate any possible critics of this criminal policy. Of course this was also the moment that I decided to launch my blog for the purpose of exposing the history and methods of the American Empire from the “Cold War” (or World War 3) to World War 4 (which goes by many names.)

The fascist coup in Ukraine resulted in a genocidal civil war when the people of Novorossia (the Donbass region of Ukraine) seceded from Ukraine and to the amazement of the world managed with Russian assistance to smash the NATO backed Ukrainian army and their fascist death squad allies attempt to crush the Novorossiyan revolt. Four years later the new cold war has only intensified and frankly gotten so absurd I feel as if I am living in a satire. Only a few courageous voices like Robert Parry have dared to question the current madness. For a discussion of this new cold war I recommend the excellent “The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia” by Dan Kovalik.

This article however will examine the origins of the first “Cold War.” I will be relying on a forgotten classic on the topic “The Cold War and It’s Origins” By D.F. Fleming which he wrote to oppose the madness of his own time which like today threatens to plunge the world into a nuclear war which it is unlikely anyone will survive.

His book was published in 1961 shortly before the Cuban missile crisis nearly ended the world and also shortly before John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the national security state in broad daylight in front of cheering crowds in Dallas Texas. JFK’s crimes were to avoid a nuclear war over Cuba, resisting a massive escalation in Vietnam, and attempting to halt the cold war with Russia. D.F. Fleming actually began writing his monumental work as the post-world war 2 cold war was starting in the late 1940’s and was doubtless risking career suicide for daring to write an objective account of events at the height of McCarthyism. Thus it is my pleasure to rescue his name from obscurity.

The Myth of the Cold War is that the Soviet Union was attempting to conquer the world while freedom loving America was forced to stop them.

Yet as we shall see the last thing the Soviet Union wanted was another world war they had suffered 27 million dead during world war 2 and their only goal was to rebuild after the enormous destruction the nazis wrought.

America on the other hand was undamaged save the 250,000 soldiers they lost in the war (7 million Soviet soldiers were killed) and they had just acquired the atom bomb. Far from defending freedom America was busy allying with every fascist it could find and would overthrow countless democracies installing brutal military dictators in the years to come. America’s main goal was to stop the people of the world from doing anything to combat the terrible poverty and oppression they lived under. America fought on the side of the rich against the poor and dared to call this democracy despite the fact that the poor are the vast majority of the world and the rich a tiny minority of the planet.

The myths of the original cold war live on and are accepted as true despite the mountains of evidence discrediting these myths. Americans prefer to remember the comforting lies rather then to face the awful truths of their own history.

The cold war was in retrospect one of the most successful psychological warfare campaigns in history it aimed to crush dissent at home and revolution abroad. It unleashed fascism at home and abroad. By purging communists from American society it did great damage to the labor, peace, and civil rights movements and created a toothless cowardly american left that slowly but inevitably lead to the completely bankrupt politics of today where no one in the public eye dares to oppose capitalism, imperialism, or even fascism. A world where al Qaeda terrorists receive Oscars and Ukrainian fascists are celebrated as champions of democracy.

But let us turn our attention to the origin of this “Cold War” D.F. Fleming begins his history not with the end of World War 2 but much earlier in Tsarist Russia in the years before 1905.

He outlines the utter misery and ignorance that the vast masses of Russians were forced to live in. The dirt, the disease, the crowding, the cruelty of those times is difficult for us to imagine. Most Russians had no access to health care or education. Any attempt to demand better pay or working conditions was met with brutal reprisals. Unions were illegal. A spirit of revolution born of utter desperation began to spread. Lenin had only recently split his Bolshevik faction off from the other marxists because he foresaw that only a tightly organized revolutionary party would stand a chance against the Tsar’s secret police.

The Tsar’s expansion of his empire into China and Korea lead to a war with the expanding Japanese empire. The Russian government was so corrupt the troops supplies never seemed to arrive and the war resulted in a humiliating defeat. The secret police created their own fake opposition so that they could control it. However conditions were so bad one of their agents a priest Father Gapon was forced to disobey orders and lead a massive demonstration begging the czar for help in a petition. Instead of help the Tsar ordered a massacre. This sparked the 1905 Revolution.

Western “Democracies” sent the Tsar Billions in loans so that he could brutally suppress this revolution since they owned much of the Russian economy and didn’t want Russia’s people interfering with their profits. The Tsar unleashed his proto-fascist “Black Hundreds” death squads who massacred the workers and the peasants along with any jews or “subversives” they could lay their hands on. The Tsar was forced to allow a parliament but broke most of his promises for democratic reform. On the eve of world war 1 nearly ten years later revolution again threatened as the country was paralyzed by massive strikes. However the Tsar foolishly entered the war despite the fact his regime was already tottering.

World war 1 was a disaster for Russia it had some success against the Austro-Hungarian empire but was no match for the crack German troops. The Germans with their modern artillery were able to obliterate the Russian armies their guns were so powerful they could bury the Russians alive from a distance and millions of soldiers perished.

The Russian Officers were so cruel to their men that mutiny was rampant. Again because of corruption and industrial backwardness they were ill trained and poorly supplied. Despite this they did make an important contribution to the allied victory but by 1917 Russia was facing a complete collapse. The women of St. Petersburg sparked a revolution when they marched demanding bread and instead of massacring the people the troops mutinied. However this initial revolution was quickly hijacked by the new provisional government although the Tsar was forced to resign.

The people of Russia desperately needed peace and some relief for their incredible poverty. The new provisional government was committed to continuing the war and delayed putting any socialist reforms into place. It also faced competition from the “Soviets” which meant councils of soldiers workers and peasants.

Lenin newly returned from exile saw an opportunity to turn Russia’s liberal democratic revolution into a communist revolution willing to carry out the will of the people. He won over the Russian people with the slogans “Land, Peace, and Bread” and “All power to the Soviets” Even many in his own party thought this was impossible but of course by November 7 of 1917 only a few months later the Russian October Revolution had succeeded in seizing power.

This is when the cold war began both their former enemies the Germans and their former allies Britain, France, and the US along with 10 other countries were now bent on destroying the Russian Revolution. Luckily for Lenin World War 1 was still ongoing and the Germans’ main priority was to make peace with Russia so that it could send its forces to the western front. They knew Russia was weak and so demanded a large amount of Russian territory in exchange for peace.

Thanks to Trotsky’s bungling they were also able to seize huge amounts of extra territory that had belonged to Russian empire in the Baltic, Poland, and Ukraine which the Germans seized after Trotsky told them he would neither make peace nor war with them. Russia was forced to make peace with the humiliating treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Britain and France were momentarily distracted but provided funding to a series of would be fascist Russian dictators or “White Generals” as they were then called. Men like Generals Denikin and Kolchak. They committed horrendous atrocities and also brought untold disaster and suffering to the men under their command when each of them failed in turn. To give only one example imagine the disaster faced by the men who were forced to retreat without supplies back into Siberia. Once World War 1 Ended the whole world was free to unite in attempting to destroy Socialist Russia.

They not only hoped to destroy the Revolution each also sought to balkanize the country and seize huge territories as loot. The Japanese sought to seize Siberia. France sought to seize Odessa and Crimea. Britain Sought to seize the rich oil fields in the black sea region near present day Chechnya. Germany installed fascist puppets in the Baltic. Poland seized a huge portion of Russian territory. Encircled and invaded on every side amazingly the communists were victorious and regained control of most of their territory. It was one of the most glorious victories in human history.

Tanks in Red Square during the August Coup, four months before the USSR will be dissolved, 1991. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I hope to revisit the topic of the Russian “Civil War” later this year. For now I’ll merely point out that the Cold War began with the imperialist world invading and attempting to conquer what would become the Soviet Union.

Nor did the west seem very concerned about freedom and democracy when they gave the Tsar billions of dollars to unleash his secret police and death squads on his own people in the failed revolution of 1905. Yet thanks to myth people believe that it is the Soviets who were out to conquer the world. For daring to withdraw from the war and for daring to build a new type of society that would benefit the vast majority of Russians the Soviet Union was targeted for destruction.

Their people were massacred their factories burned. American troops were part of this invasion and yet most Americans have no idea that their country ever invaded Russia. This is because not only was a conventional war declared but also from the start a psychological war a propaganda war. Newspapers printed the most absurd lies about the Soviet Union such as that all women were shared in common. The bolsheviks were portrayed as insane and sadistic killers and the papers were full of fake atrocity stories. The media also constantly portrayed the Soviet Union as being in complete chaos and on the verge of collapse.

Thus one of the most amusing parts of D.F. Fleming was a discussion by Walter Lippman (who coined the phrase the “Manufacture of Consent”) in 1920 printed in the New York Times discussing the terrible failure of the press to provide accurate news on events in Russia calling the coverage a disaster and admitting that the paper had wrongly predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union 91 times since November 1917. Yet of course this coverage was no accident but rather the result of the fact that the western media is owned by rich capitalists who always portray every revolutionary as an insane and cruel madman. The difference being that today they don’t even bother to apologize for their blatant lies.

Not only did America wage war on Russia it also waged war on itself shocking even the reactionary Europeans. American Capitalists were equally terrified of the majority of their own population who lived in dire poverty not to mention the Indians whose children they were kidnapping and brainwashing while the adults lived in concentration camps. They were especially terrified of the blacks kept under brutal apartheid rule and targeted at will by american fascist death squads like the KKK.

They were also suspicious of the new immigrants many who were Catholics or Jews and brought dangerous foreign ideas like socialism, anarchism, and communism. Thus in conjunction with their anti-Russian hysteria they launched a brutal attack on labor unions, blacks, and immigrants. People were held without charges like after 9/11 and many immigrants were deported for the crime of dreaming or organizing for a better world. Full scale war was launched on black communities who were forced to take up arms to defend themselves. These were part of a long pattern of “Race Riots” one of the most brutal was in St Louis in the summer of 1917 where thousands of blacks were murdered before the Russian Revolution had even occurred.

Lynch mobs were unleashed on catholics, jews, and of course blacks and even union members. Prior to world war 1 the Media had been organized to wage a massive propaganda war to convince people of the necessity of entering World War 1. Now with the start of the cold war the media would wage an unending propaganda war that continues to this day. Inspired by the example of the Russian Revolution the american communist party was formed demonized by the press erased from history they would play a vital if forgotten role in the creation of the civil rights movement, the passage of new deal social reforms, the creation of the 1st racially integrated unions, the fight against fascism, war, and imperialism. They would be imprisoned, beaten, tortured, murdered and blacklisted. American prisons are still full of communist political prisoners from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.

After many humiliating and disastrous defeats the imperial powers were forced to give up their war on the Soviet Union. Their own war weary people demanded an end and staged strikes to halt the war. The next strategy the west pursued was one of demonization and isolation. They refused to recognize the new government for years.

The Soviets were desperate to rebuild their society. During the war they had built a form of “War Communism” but Lenin believed socialism must make a temporary retreat and trade restored. The era of NEP began and Russia was even willing to allow foreign trade to resume and foreign investment. Yet not even the prospect of being allowed to exploit the USSR’s rich natural resources could convince the west to relax tensions.

The US and UK refused to even recognize the government let alone resume trade. This turned out for the best since the soviet union would instead once again move the country towards socialism and a planned economy. In 1924 tired of being isolated by the west the Soviets signed instead a deal with the Germans who were also still isolated after loosing the war and being forced to pay massive reparations. Russia received vital industrial equipment in exchange for raw materials. It would be a faustian bargain which while helping the Soviets industrialize also helped the Germans to re-arm. However the British and Americans would soon be funneling billions of dollars into Germany to build up Hitler to attack the Soviet Union.

It was with the rise of Hitler and also the great depression that the next major phase of the cold war would begin. In America Franklin D. Roosevelt finally recognized the USSR in 1933 because the US now needed any potential trade and as a counter-balance to Hitler.

In the Soviet Union they immediately recognized the danger Fascism posed and would try desperately to unite with the imperialist democracies to oppose this new threat. D.F. Fleming spends a whole chapter on Litvinov’s repeated attempts to create an alliance to oppose wars of aggression to keep the peace. Yet as D.F. Fleming demonstrates at great length the west would turn down the Soviet Union’s offers of alliance again and again. The British hoped that Hitler would smash the Soviet Union and it’s policy of appeasement was meant to clear the path east for Hitler while evading it’s treaty commitments in Eastern Europe. During these same years the Germans and Italians invaded republican Spain in aid of the fascist General Francisco Franco who fought to seize power.

The west including FDR banned the shipment of weapons to aid the Spanish loyalists resisting these fascists. It was the Soviet Union alone that sent weapons troops and advisers to preserve democracy in Spain. The USSR also encouraged communists and anti-fascists from around the world to volunteer to aid Spain. The US and Britain on the other hand prosecuted these volunteers as criminals. American newspapers demonized the Spanish republic just as it had demonized the Russian Revolution. Many papers openly supported the fascists. France doomed Spain by barring Russian weapons or supplies from entering the country. The west deliberately insured a fascist victory in Spain and seldom is the Spanish civil war even mentioned in discussing the origins of World War 2.

The fall of Spain was greeted with horror and disgust in Russia. It was increasingly clear that the west would do nothing to stop the march of fascism. Despite this obvious fact the Soviets continued to try to form an alliance against Hitler at every step of the wests appeasement. It offered to fight to defend Czechoslovakia the UK on the other hand rejected this offer and forced the Czechs to surrender. It offered to send troops defend Poland (which had signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler in 1935) Poland denied them permission. The UK attempted to get the USSR to sign a unilateral defense agreement with Poland while turning down their offer of a mutual defense pact. This would have embroiled the USSR into war with Germany as soon as they invaded Poland. In the final months before war began the British and French did their best to delay forming an alliance and insult the soviets by sending low level negotiators with no power to make a deal. American and British capitalists had spent billions of dollars arming the German war machine. Germany was poised to invade Poland. Thus Stalin was forced into his brilliant but infamous gamble of the non-aggression pact with Germany. With this move he forced Britain and France to enter the war against Germany. He also managed to regain the Russian territory Poland had won during the “Russian Civil War” and got a free hand to take back the baltic. Of course from a geo-political perspective it was a smart move but politically it was an embarrassing disaster. Communists around the world had been at the fore front of the fight against fascism and were now in the embarrassing position of having to explain this devils bargain. It would be used to blacken the reputation of the Soviet Union until our own time despite the fact that the west had already signed similar deals with Hitler long before. However it bought the Soviet Union one year in time and a valuable buffer zone that would prove vital in managing to survive the war. It should be remembered that Russia stopped the Germans less then 16 miles from Moscow without this non-aggression pact they could easily have lost the war.

Stalin had hoped Hitler would be bogged down for years on the western front. Unfortunately many in the french military feared communists and socialists far more then Fascism of which they were openly sympathetic. Thanks to their treachery France would collapse quickly and the British would be forced to flee back to Britain. The Nazis forces were the best trained and equipped in the world. They were masters of tactics and strategy. Hitler had always dreamed of conquering Russia enslaving and massacring it’s people and seizing it’s valuable natural resources. He dreamed of the conquest of Eurasia. Thus June 22 1941 he launched his invasion of the Soviet Union. If he had been delayed an extra year he would have faced a much harder war because the soviets were just starting to mass produce their next generation of tanks and planes. Most Soviet forces were armed with obsolete equipment in 1941 and were no match for the battle hardened germans in the first months of the war. It was only in 1942 that the Soviets famous T-34 Tanks and Illuyshin bombers would be produced in enough numbers to give the Soviet Union a fighting chance.

The Soviets suffered defeat after defeat and the world doubted it would survive more then a couple months. Luckily Stalin managed to transfer the more experienced troops from the east in time to save Moscow under General Zhukov’s command. For the first time the Nazis were not only stopped but pushed back hundreds of miles. It was the winter of 1941 and the Americans had finally entered the war making it an ally. Churchill who had been in charge of waging war on Russia during the civil war seemingly put his hostility on hold and allied with Russia. However as D.F. Fleming make clears this change was only an illusion and Churchill would play a sinister game during the war. FDR promised Stalin a second front against Hitler in 1942 to take the pressure off Russia. Churchill instead manipulated them into invading North Africa and then Italy. America and Britain would play an only minor role in the war. Instead it was the Soviets who did the vast majority of the fighting and dying. 90% of German troops died on the eastern front. Sadly thanks to textbooks, hollywood and the media the average American doesn’t even realize Russia fought in World War 2 let alone that they nearly single handedly won the war.

In 1942 Hitler launched his summer offensive to capture the Baku oil fields the British had once tried to steal (and nearly bombed at the start of the war which would have insured a Nazi victory.) However the Nazis had to cover their flank by taking Stalingrad and in the most epic battle in history met their doom. Against all odds the Soviets refused to surrender the city which German bombers quickly reduced to ruins. The Soviets defended every house every block to the death. While the Germans were bogged down in the city; Stalin once again moved in reinforcements from the east the Germans didn’t even suspect existed. Under General Zhukov’s able leadership they launched a counter attack smashing thru the Romanians assigned to guard the german lines. Soon the Germans were completely surrounded and were forced to surrender. It was the the most decisive victory in the war. The Summer of 1943 Hitler Gambled on one last major counter-offensive at Kursk. It was the greatest Tank battle in history and the soviets managed to smash the germans. Now the Red Army began the massive task of liberating eastern Europe. It was only in 1944 that the Western Allies finally opened a second front. Even then Churchill had wanted to invade the Balkans to counter the Russians instead of landing at Normandy. The Soviets had to race the allies to liberate Berlin. A secret deal had been cut and the Germans were offering only token resistance in the west while fighting to the last man on the eastern front against the soviets. Finally after an epic battle the Red Army finished off the nazis in the battle of Berlin. As D. F. Fleming points out the Russians saved countless american and British lives by taking the brunt of the fighting. They suffered untold suffering at the hands of the Germans. Americans who have not known any real war or invasion since the war of 1812 have no idea what it is like to suffer a war let alone what Russia suffered at the hands of Germany. They had no sympathy for the Russians just like they have no sympathy for the Yemenis, Iraqis or the Syrians. America will never understand the horror and folly of war until the instant it is obliterated in a nuclear war by which time their will be no one left to understand anything.

Thus with the arrogance born of their spoiled ignorance America wasted no time after the end of world war 2 to claim the Russians were the new nazis. They choose to ignore the huge debt it owed Russia in defeating Fascism. It was of course the American fascists like the Dulles brothers who would shout loudest about this absurd claim. The Dulles brothers had represented the nazi business interests (a fact Fleming only dares hint at) and Allen Dulles cut a secret deal with the Nazis. They would go to work for the american empire. While the Soviets were still fighting hard against fascism during the war the British were already fighting on the same side as the Fascists. Churchill was at it again in one of the most disgraceful chapters of the war. Greece had long been a de facto British colony. Before World War 2 It’s newly returned corrupt king King George II would appoint a fascist dictator General John Metaxas earning the king the hatred of the greek people. While a fascist Metaxas was allied to Britain and so resisted an Italian invasion before dying. The British sent troops to help but were forced to flee and a pro-german fascist puppet was installed. However in one of the heroic chapters of the War the greek people fighting under communist leadership of EAM-ELAS were able to singlehandedly liberate their country. British troops returned and were greeted with cheers they did not have to do any fighting as the greek guerrillas had already won the war. Churchill however wanted his colony back he also wanted to reinstall the king who was hated for installing the Metaxas dictatorship. In December 1944 Churchill ordered the British to protect and reorganize the fascist death squads while ordering the greek Guerrillas of the to disarm. Stalin had made another devils bargain with Churchill. Stalin was promised control in eastern Europe in exchange for British control of Greece they would divide Influence over Yugoslavia (The British broke their deal and Yugoslavia would later become a secret NATO partner ironically Yugoslavia would become NATOs first victim after the cold war and has ceased to exist) Here were the seeds of what would become the cold war. Stalin kept his end of the deal allowing the British to wage a brutal war on the Greeks without coming to their aid. This war was the beginning of the cold war and Britain allied with the fascists against the greek republicans many who were not necessarily even communists but merely fighting against monarchy and fascism. Ironically the British would basically loose this war. FDR had been disgusted by Churchill’s treacherous treatment of his Greek allies who were massacred (some while chanting FDR’s name) or sent to prison camps on remote islands or to north Africa. However Truman would use the greek civil war as the excuse to launch his Truman Doctrine which committed America to a constant encirclement of and covert war upon the soviet union. More importantly it committed the US to battle any revolution anywhere in the world which shocked D.F. Fleming but confirms yet again the brilliance of Gerald Horne‘s discussion of the Counter-Revolution of 1776. In Greece the US would back fascist death squads as they terrorized the greeks while the American’s napalmed the people of Greece in the name of freedom and democracy a pattern that would repeat from Korea, to Vietnam, to El Salvador, and scores of other unlucky countries.

The “Big Three” at the Yalta Conference: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, 1945. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

The soviets were always being accused of being untrustworthy and as a result could be overzealous in fulfilling their promises and Greece was one of the most tragic examples of this. At Yalta they made the deal with Churchill Official and the Americans signed on as well. They agreed to install democracies but as we shall see and as D.F. Fleming points out rather brilliantly the soviets had their own view of democracy. For the soviets democracy was impossible so long as the old elites dominated society. History has proved them correct as in America we are given a choice solely between evil billionaires never in it’s history has an ordinary person been allowed to become president of The United States and run things for the benefit of ordinary americans. To become a politician one must first sell oneself to rich backers. Yet strangely even though everyone knows this everyone forgets everything they know about this corrupt system whenever someone begins to praise the blessings of democracy and the need to murder millions to bring it’s benefits to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Ukraine or Russia. Even if what is labeled democracy is obviously genocidal terrorism or fascism. Thus even today when discussing the cold war or the Truman doctrine no one dares mention that we installed fascism not democracy in Greece. Truman was also backing the Fascists of Turkey who were planning to ally with the Nazis if they had won at Stalingrad. Nor do they seem to mention that the Soviets were actually providing no support instead people parrot the lie that america intervened in Greece to stop soviet “expansionism” As if this wasn’t bad enough once Greeks returned to democracy the CIA backed a fascist coup there in 1967 20 Years after Truman had sent in the troops to Napalm the entire country Greece would suffer at the hands of yet another fascist dictatorship. Today Greece is a poster child for the undemocratic nature of the EU.

However before turning our attention to the postwar Cold War we should discuss the soft coup that took place in the United States. In 1944 FDR’s pro-Russian vice president Henry Wallace was forced off the ticket in a rigged convention and replaced by the racist Russia hater Harry S. Truman. On April 12 1945 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would die. D.F. Fleming is convinced that had FDR lived the Cold War could have been avoided. In my view it could at most have been delayed. However by replacing Wallace with Truman the corrupt forces that stage manage our democracy insured that whatever Roosevelt had accomplished in winning the trust of the Russians would quickly be completely reversed. The people of Russia mourned FDR far more then then many in the US where he was hated and constantly red-baited by the Capitalists and many media outlets. Truman was a lot like George W. Bush stupid arrogant and always trying to act tough. Both Presidents would leave office with the lowest approval ratings in history having embroiled their countries in lost wars that would nonetheless kill millions of Koreans (Truman) and Iraqis (Bush II). Both would unleash hysterical panics destroying the very freedoms they claimed to be fighting for (McCarthyism & the Patriot Act.) Both men were put in power undemocratically.

Now to turn to the causes of this second Cold War that began in 1945. The Soviets were motivated by one single goal security. Having suffered two catastrophic invasions in less then 30 years, as well as suffered constant economic and political warfare they required neighbors who were not hostile and would not join the next potential invasion of their country. Initially they installed popular front (an alliance of communists and socialists) governments in Eastern Europe contrary to myth these governments were democratically elected. However once they realized the west was intent on breaking their Yalta agreements they installed communist governments. In Hungary for example there was a danger that the fascists would come back into power democratically. They openly conspired being arrogant aristocrats and were foiled by the soviets. They decided to install a Communist government in the process killing one person and imprisoning a couple hundreds. This was long after Churchill’s war in Greece had killed tens of thousands and locked hundreds of thousands of people in prison camps on isolated islands or even in the North African desert. Still what happened in Hungary was blasted across the headlines as an example of monstrous Communist Tyranny while when George Polk wrote critically about the Fascist government in Greece he was murdered by Greek Fascists and his death was blamed on the communists. In Czechoslovakia the Communists seized power when it looked like they were loosing influence in the Government they mobilized the masses and forced the government to resign. This was after after Truman declared his Truman Doctrine allowing him to wage covert war on the USSR while waging war on revolutionaries worldwide whether they were nationalists or communists. However these defensive moves by the Soviets were hyped by the politicians and the media as proof that the Soviets were out to conquer the world. I should mention that the Soviets greatly improved the lives of the people in their zones of influence where huge feudal land owners had brutally oppressed and murdered their people. They carried out land reform, provided free education, free health care and guaranteed employment. Food and housing were subsidized to make them affordable. Western visitors at the time to these countries often joked that they could see no iron curtain and people seemed free and happy.

In reality of course it was the United States that was out to conquer the world. It hoped to force the Soviets out of Eastern Europe and was waging a covert war with exile armies of fascists to destabilize the governments and roll back communism. George Kennan who was in charge of this program and was the architect of the Truman Doctrine of “Containment” called it Counter-force. The Massive Propaganda campaign was waged as part of the effort to force the soviets out. It was not fear of the Soviet Union as myth would have it but rather their knowledge of how damaged the Soviet Union was that motivated the empire. America had the Atom Bomb. It had turned the former fascists of Germany and Japan into it’s proxies ready to wage war. Britain and France with their mighty empires had become American pawns desperate for loans and America was confident it would inherit their empires. In the meantime it funded the British and french in their anti colonial struggles. Back then it also dominated the UN.

During the Cold War, the US conducted around 1,054 nuclear tests by official count, between 1945 and 1992 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Above all it had invented the Atom Bomb. It timed the dropping of this bomb for the day before the soviet union was due to join the war with Japan which Stalin had agreed to launch three months after. Thus almost no one remembers the crushing blow the Red Army dealt Japan in Manchuria which would have caused a Japanese surrender without the A-Bomb being dropped. It was done to send a message to the Soviets. Luckily the Soviets had spies within the American Nuclear Program but as D.F. Fleming points out this only sped up their nuclear program by a few months. With the Atom Bomb the US thought it could threaten the USSR into abandoning Eastern Europe. It Surrounded the USSR with bomber bases. American papers openly boasted about plans to launch a pre-emptive Nuclear War. Thus this was the beginning of that arrogant hubris that has characterized the American attitude ever since. The Richest and most industrialized country on the planet with the former great powers as it’s pawns and a monopoly on the Atom Bomb it saw no reason why it should honor it’s Yalta Agreements simply because the Red Army had managed to singlehandedly liberate eastern Europe.

I Call the Cold War World War 3 and view it as primarily a war on the Third World. America’s cold war planners were from the start far more worried about the inevitable collapse of the european empires. There was a danger that newly liberated countries might seek to fight poverty and exploitation threatening the profits of western corporations.

However the US saw that by hyping up the soviet threat it could label any liberation movement or even mild reformers as communists or tools of the kremlin. Thus America’s aggressive war on the planet could be sold as defensive. Revolutions and Anti-colonial struggle would be blamed on communist subversion and western publics were trained to believe that they had to battle communism everywhere in the world. Guatemala, Iran, The Congo, the list went on and on of Nationalist governments overthrown and replaced by brutal dictators. In Guatemala alone 200,000 people would be killed as a result of one of these fascist coups sold in the name of anti-communism. As the Cold War began in 1945 the US was already waging war in The Philippines, Korea, and China. Fascist coups would occur in the 1940’s in Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru. The US was already defending fascist governments in Spain and Argentina.

In West Germany America was allowing most of the Nazi deep State to hold onto power and had formed an alliance with Reinhard Gehlen which terrified the Soviets and was used to run armies of fascists from Ukraine, Latvia, and Estonia and all of eastern Europe. The US was helping fascist war criminals escape justice all over eastern Europe from places like Croatia, Hungary, and Romania. These fascists would settle in the US and Canada seize control of their ethnic communities often violently and throughout the Cold War would lobby constantly for the need to “liberate” not just eastern Europe but the soviet union as well.

The western Media trumpeted these fascist war criminals as heroic freedom fighters never telling the western public about their well documented crimes and atrocities. This pattern remains to this day of course from Syria’s genocidal terrorist death Squads aka the “moderate rebels” to newly reinstalled Ukrainian Fascists both are sold as heroic freedom fighters to the gullible western public. These fascist exiles would form the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of nations along with the “white” Russian exiles the (ABN) branch of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) which I wrote about last year.

Of Course the Cold War had domestic causes as well. The American capitalists hated the “New Deal” reforms that cut into their profits. During World War 2 America had the greatest number of strikes in it’s history. The Capitalists feared the power of the labor unions and this new red scare offered them a chance to crack down on the unions who were forced to expel all real or suspected communists often their most radical and committed members. Unions became tools of organized crime and the CIA.

Southern Segregationists also had long been the chief actors in the anti-communist witch hunts which they used to attack enemies of Jim Crow like Paul Robeson or later Martin Luther King. The NAACP expelled it’s founder W.E.B. Dubois as part of this new red scare. A permanent climate of fear and self censorship survives to our own day. Needless to say any peace movement in the West was also viewed solely as dangerous communist subversion. Some of America’s most brilliant journalists were forced into silence for contradicting the cold war hysteria or for exposing fascists.

Honesty became a crime lies became sacred, propaganda became history. Above all daring to dream of a better world became a crime. Tens of thousands of civil servants, teachers, union members lost their jobs. People were forced to shun old friends lest they be labeled communist as well. The FBI collected every rumor and slander they could find into secret files. Even high level state department officials could be hounded into retirement especially if they had spoken honestly about America’s corrupt Chinese fascist ally Chiang Kai-Shek who’s “China Lobby” was funded by heroin profits and owned Joe McCarthy (he was also backed by the nazis) who was used to carry out their vendettas on their critics in the US state department. Obsessed with rooting out Russian influence in America no one cared that tiny Taiwan had been allowed to completely corrupt the American political process (which was already corrupt enough ) Just as today the west is in a panic about Russian influence but cares little about the stranglehold the Israel lobby has over American, French, and British middle east policy.

These were the early years of the Cold War. The public were told that the Soviets would invade western Europe at any moment even though this was utter nonsense. When Churchill made his famous Iron Curtain speech in Truman’s hometown with Truman in the audience, Churchill was actually stealing nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels phrase. Everywhere there were anti-communist witch hunts. The American military were eager to nuke Russia and were only restrained by the danger that the Red Army might wreak a terrible revenge and by the practical details of occupying the radioactive waste land of the soviet union after it had been bombed to smithereens.

They planned to parachute in their fascist exile armies and seize control but realized that might be impossible in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where every major city had been destroyed. Thus D.F. Fleming ends Volume One of his monumental book with the explosion of the Soviet Bomb in 1949 which may have saved the USSR from annihilation. The west thought it was impossible until at least 1951 but yet again the USSR had surprised the world. America would continue to threaten nuclear war for decades but were now restrained by the Soviet Nuclear capability. Fleming writes of the hopes that America would seize the moment for diplomacy but it refused. Within nine months the Korean War broke out and the “Cold War” turned “hot” although it had been hot all along in places like Greece and even in Korea itself. I will discuss the Chinese Revolution, Korean War and the origins of the Vietnam War in my next article dealing with Volume 2 of D.F. Fleming’s “The Cold War and It’s Origins” The same west that had harshly criticized the Soviet Union for taking relatively mild steps to insure their control of eastern Europe would proceed to murder millions of people to prevent Communist governments from coming to power democratically worldwide.

Sources

My main source was of course the classic “The Cold War and It’s Origins 1917-1960 Volume 1 1917-1950” By D. F. Fleming. However it was written at a time when the history of the CIA was largely unknown, so I also recommend “Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War” By Christopher Simpson. For a discussion of Cold War 2.0 read “The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia” by Dan Kovalik. I also rewatched America’s Hidden History by Oliver Stone which is a powerful documentary but also fails to question certain crucial cold war myths about Stalin and the USSR.

My article on Lenin and the Russian Revolution

http://anti-imperialist-u.blogspot.com/2015/07/lessons-of-russian-revolution.html

My Article on Black Bolshevik which contains a vivid discussion of the Red Scare and the racist  violence of the times as well as the role Communists played in the struggle for Civil Rights

http://anti-imperialist-u.blogspot.com/2015/11/black-bolshevik-harry-haywood.html

My Article on Stalin and the Soviet Union from the Revolution to World War 2 and the “Cold War”

http://anti-imperialist-u.blogspot.com/2015/08/understanding-stalin.html

America’s alliance with Nazi’s was a major reason for the “Cold War” based on Christopher Simpson’s excellent book “Blowback”

http://anti-imperialist-u.blogspot.com/2014/06/nazis-and-cia.html

America allied with nearly every fascist group on the planet as part of the World-Anti-Communist League

https://www.sott.net/article/323037-Beyond-the-Iran-Contra-Affair-Part-3-The-World-Anti-Communist-League

Management and Logistical Failure? Quoting a recently declassified US government audit, Amnesty International reports that the US Army “has failed to keep tabs on more than $1 billion worth of arms and other military equipment” channelled to Iraq under the Iraq Train and Equip Fund (ITEF).

In 2015, US Congress appropriated $1.6 billion for the ITEF program. The funds were earmarked to fight against the ISIS in response to Obama’s counter-terrorism campaign launched in Summer of 2014. In a bitter irony, a large number of these weapons landed up in the hands of terrorists including the ISIS. 

The 1.6 billion were spent on light weaponry. It’s all for a good cause: The shipments of weapons and ammunition were according to reports dispatched to Iraq (c/o the Iraqi Armed Forces) to be distributed to armed groups involved in fighting ISIS-Daesh.

Some of the shipments unfortunately went astray or landed in the wrong hands, according to Patrick Wilcken, an Amnesty researcher on International’s Arms Control and Human Rights. This was attributable to  “US Army’s flawed – and potentially dangerous – system for controlling millions of dollars’ worth of arms transfers to a hugely volatile region.”

“[The report] makes for especially sobering reading given the long history of leakage of US arms to multiple armed groups committing atrocities in Iraq, including the armed group calling itself the Islamic State.” (Amnesty International, May 24, 2017)

The transfers, which include tens of thousands of assault rifles (worth USD$28 million), hundreds of mortar rounds and hundreds of Humvee armoured vehicles, were destined for use by the central Iraqi Army, including the predominantly Shi’a Popular Mobilisation Units, as well as the Kurdish Peshmerga forces.

While acknowledging the billion dollar trade in light weaponry, Amnesty does not beg the question: Why were these tens of thousands of weapons sent to Iraq in the first place? What objectives are being served?

Amply documented, the US and its allies are supplying weapons, training and military equipment to numerous Al Qaeda affiliated rebels (including ISIS) acting on behalf of their State sponsors.

According to Amnesty, the sending of weapons to multiple rebel groups is justified. The killing of civilians is not an issue. The failures of the US Army outlined in the DoD report pertain to errors in monitoring, delivery, record-keeping and human error:

The DoD audit found several serious shortcomings in how ITEF equipment was logged and monitored from the point of delivery onward, including:

• Fragmentary record-keeping in arms depots in Kuwait and Iraq. Information logged across multiple spreadsheets, databases and even on hand-written receipts.
• Large quantities of equipment manually entered into multiple spreadsheets, increasing the risk of human error.
• Incomplete records meaning those responsible for the equipment were unable to ascertain its location or status.

Amnesty fails to acknowledge that the Pentagon has been channelling weapons to jihadist armed groups as part of carefully designed military agenda with a view to destabilizing Iraq as a nation state.

Amply documented, the ISIS and other terror groups have been receiving weapons from both the US and its allies including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And a significant part of the $1.6 billion has been used to finance weapons shipments to the ISIS, both directly as well as indirectly through third parties.

Amnesty casually places the blame on the Iraqi Armed forces:  “Lax controls and record-keeping within the Iraqi chain of command” has resulted in the weapons falling in the wrong hands. According to AI:

[weapons] manufactured in the USA and other countries wind up in the hands of armed groups known to be committing war crimes and other atrocities, such as IS, as well as paramilitary militias now incorporated into the Iraqi army.

What Amnesty fails to  mentioned is these paramilitary groups which are committing countless atrocities are directly or indirectly supported by the US.

The good news, however, according to Amnesty  is that “In response to the audit, the US military has pledged to tighten up its systems for tracking and monitoring future transfers to Iraq.”

According to AI, the US is not in any way complicit in human rights violations by dispaching weapons to multiple armed groups which they finance and control. According AI’s Patrick Wilken, it’s the result of poor management and lack of “check ups and controls”:

“This should be an urgent wake-up call for the US, and all countries supplying arms to Iraq, to urgently shore up checks and controls. Sending millions of dollars’ worth of arms into a black hole and hoping for the best is not a viable counter-terrorism strategy; it is just reckless,” said Patrick Wilcken.

“Any state selling arms to Iraq must show that there are strict measures in place to make sure the weapons will not be used to violate rights. Without these safeguards, no transfer should take place.”

Why were these weapons sent to Iraq in the first place?

Amnesty International is urging the USA to comply with the Leahy Law, which prohibits the supply of most types of US military aid and training to foreign security, military and police units credibly alleged to have committed “gross human rights violations”.

What nonsense. Amnesty does not address the issue of State sponsorship of terrorism, namely human rights committed on behalf of the state sponsors of terrorism. According to AI: “The USA and Iraq must also accede to the global Arms Trade Treaty, which has strict rules in place to stop arms transfers or diversion of arms that could fuel atrocities.”

Featured image: Amnesty International

Text of Michel Chossudovsky’s 1996 article  (updated in 2002) published as a chapter in the The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003

Click image right to order directly from Global Research

As heavily-armed US and NATO troops enforced the peace in Bosnia, the press and politicians alike portrayed Western intervention in the former Yugoslavia as a noble, if agonizingly belated, response to an outbreak of ethnic massacres and human rights violations. In the wake of the November 1995 Dayton peace accords, the West was eager to touch up its self-portrait as savior of the Southern Slavs and get on with “the work of rebuilding” the newly “sovereign states.”

But following a pattern set early on, Western public opinion had been skillfully misled. The conventional wisdom exemplified by the writings of former US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmermann, held that the plight of the Balkans was the outcome of an “aggressive nationalism”, the inevitable result of deep-seated ethnic and religious tensions rooted in history.1 Likewise, much was made of the “Balkans power-play” and the clash of political personalities: “Tudjman and Milosevic are tearing Bosnia-Herzegovina to pieces”.2

Warren Zimmermann (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analyses are the economic and social causes of the conflict. The deep-seated economic crisis which preceded the civil war had long been forgotten. The strategic interests of Germany and the US in laying the groundwork for the disintegration of Yugoslavia go unmentioned, as does the role of external creditors and international financial institutions. In the eyes of the global media, Western powers bear no responsibility for the impoverishment and destruction of a nation of 24 million people.

But through their domination of the global financial system, the Western powers, in pursuit of national and collective strategic interests, helped bring the Yugoslav economy to its knees and stirred its simmering ethnic and social conflicts. Now it is the turn of Yugoslavia’s war-ravaged successor states to feel the tender mercies of the international financial community.

As the world focused on troop movements and cease-fires, the international financial institutions were busily collecting former Yugoslavia’s external debt from its remnant states, while transforming the Balkans into a safe-haven for free enterprise. With a Bosnian peace settlement holding under NATO guns, the West had in late 1995 unveiled a “reconstruction” program that stripped that brutalized country of sovereignty to a degree not seen in Europe since the end of World War II. It consisted largely of making Bosnia a divided territory under NATO military occupation and Western administration.

Neocolonial Bosnia

Resting on the Dayton accords, which created a Bosnian “Constitution,” the US and its European allies had installed a full-fledged colonial administration in Bosnia. At its head was their appointed High Representative, Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister and European Union representative in the Bosnian peace negotiations.3 Bildt was given full executive powers in all civilian matters, with the right to overrule the governments of both the Bosnian Federation and the Republika Srpska (Serbian Bosnia). To make the point crystal clear, the Accords spelled out that

“the High Representative is the final authority in theater regarding interpretation of the agreements.”4

He is to work with the multinational military implementation force (IFOR) Military High Command as well as with creditors and donors.

The UN Security Council had also appointed a “Commissioner” under the High Representative to run an international civilian police force.5 Irish police official Peter Fitzgerald, with UN policing experience in Namibia, El Salvador, and Cambodia, was to preside over some 1,700 police from 15 countries. Following the signing of the Dayton Accords in November 1995, the international police force was dispatched to Bosnia after a five-day training program in Zagreb 6.

The new “Constitution” included as an Appendix to the Dayton Accords handed the reins of economic policy over to the Bretton Woods institutions and the London based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The IMF was empowered to appoint the first governor of the Bosnian Central Bank, who, like the High Representative, “shall not be a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina or a neighboring State.”7

Under the IMF regency, the Central Bank is not allowed to function as a Central Bank:

“For the first six years … it may not extend credit by creating money, operating in this respect as a currency board.”8

Neither was Bosnia to be allowed to have its own currency (issuing paper money only when there is full foreign exchange backing), nor permitted to mobilize its internal resources. Its ability to self-finance its reconstruction through an independent monetary policy was blunted from the outset.

While the Central Bank was in IMF custody, the EBRD heads the Commission on Public Corporations, which supervises since 1996, operations of all public sector enterprises in Bosnia, including energy, water, postal services, telecommunications, and transportation. The EBRD president appoints the commission chair and is in charge of public sector restructuring, i.e., the sell-off of state- and socially-owned assets and the procurement of long-term investment funds.9 Western creditors explicitly created the EBRD “to give a distinctively political dimension to lending.” 10.

As the West proclaimed its support for democracy, actual political power rests in the hands of a parallel Bosnian “state” whose executive positions are held by non-citizens. Western creditors have embedded their interests in a constitution hastily written on their behalf. They have done so without a constitutional assembly and without consultations with Bosnian citizens’ organizations. Their plans to rebuild Bosnia appear more suited to sating creditors than satisfying even the elementary needs of Bosnians. The neocolonization of Bosnia was a logical step of Western efforts to undo Yugoslavia’s experiment in “market socialism” and workers’ self-management and to impose the dictate of the “free market”.

Historical background

Multi-ethnic, socialist Yugoslavia was once a regional industrial power and economic success. In the two decades before 1980, annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged 6.1 percent, medical care was free, the rate of literacy was 91 percent, and life expectancy was 72 years.11. But after a decade of Western economic ministrations and a decade of disintegration, war, boycott, and embargo, the economies of the former Yugoslavia were prostrate, their industrial sectors dismantled.

Yugoslavia’s implosion was partially due to US machinations. Despite Belgrade’s non-alignment and its extensive trading relations with the European Community and the US, the Reagan administration had targeted the Yugoslav economy in a “Secret Sensitive” 1984 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 133) entitled “US Policy towards Yugoslavia.” A censored version declassified in 1990 elaborated on NSDD 64 on Eastern Europe, issued in 1982. The latter advocated “expanded efforts to promote a ‘quiet revolution’ to overthrow Communist governments and parties,” while reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into a market-oriented economy. 12

The US had earlier joined Belgrade’s other international creditors in imposing a first round of macroeconomics reform in 1980, shortly before the death of Marshall Tito. That initial round of restructuring set the pattern.

Secessionist tendencies feeding on social and ethnic divisions, gained impetus precisely during a period of brutal impoverishment of the Yugoslav population. The economic reforms “wreaked economic and political havoc… Slower growth, the accumulation of foreign debt and especially the cost of servicing it as well as devaluation led to a fall in the standard of living of the average Yugoslav… The economic crisis threatened political stability … it also threatened to aggravate simmering ethnic tensions”.13

These reforms accompanied by the signing of debt restructuring agreements with the official and commercial creditors also served to weaken the institutions of the federal State creating political divisions between Belgrade and the governments of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces. “The [Federal] Prime Minister Milka Planinc, who was supposed to carry out the program, had to promise the IMF an immediate increase of the discount rates and much more for the Reaganomics arsenal of measures…”14 And throughout the 1980s, the IMF and World Bank periodically prescribed further doses of their bitter economic medicine as the Yugoslav economy slowly lapsed into a coma.

From the outset, successive IMF sponsored programs hastened the disintegration of the Yugoslav industrial sector. Following the initial phase of macro-economic reform in 1980, industrial growth plummeted to 2.8 percent in the 1980-87 period, plunging to zero in 1987-88 and to a negative 10 percent growth rate by 1990.15 This process was accompanied by the piecemeal dismantling of the Yugoslav welfare state, with all the predictable social consequences. Debt restructuring agreements, meanwhile, increased foreign debt, and a mandated currency devaluation also hit hard at Yugoslavs’ standard of living.

Mr. Markovic goes to Washington

In Autumn 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslav federal Premier Ante Markovic met in Washington with President George Bush to cap negotiations for a new financial aid package. In return for assistance, Yugoslavia agreed to even more sweeping economic reforms, including a new devalued currency, another wage freeze, sharp cuts in government spending, and the elimination of socially owned, worker- managed companies .16

The Belgrade nomenclature, with the assistance of Western advisers, had laid the groundwork for Markovic’s mission by implementing beforehand many of the required reforms, including a major liberalization of foreign investment legislation.

“Shock therapy” began in January 1990. Although inflation had eaten away at earnings, the IMF ordered that wages be frozen at their mid November 1989 levels. Prices continued to rise unabated, and real wages collapsed by 41 percent in the first six months of 1990 .17

The IMF also effectively controlled the Yugoslav central bank. Its tight money policy further crippled the country’s ability to finance its economic and social programs. State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics went instead to service Belgrade’s debt with the Paris and London clubs. The republics were largely left to their own devices. The economic package was launched in January 1990 under an IMF Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) and a World Bank Structural Adjustment Loan (SAL II). The budget cuts requiring the redirection of federal revenues towards debt servicing, were conducive to the suspension of transfer payments by Belgrade to the governments of the Republics and Autonomous Provinces.

In one fell swoop, the reformers had engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia’s federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics. The IMF-induced budgetary crisis created an economic fait accompli that paved the way for Croatia’s and Slovenia’s formal secession in June 1991.

Crushed by the Invisible Hand

The reforms demanded by Belgrade’s creditors also struck at the heart of Yugoslavia’s system of socially-owned and worker-managed enterprises. As one observer noted, ‘the objective was to subject the Yugoslav economy to massive privatization and the dismantling of the public sector. “The Communist Party bureaucracy, most notably its military and intelligence sector, was canvassed specifically and offered political and economic backing on the condition that wholesale scuttling of social protections for Yugoslavia’s workforce was imposed.” 18 It was an offer that a desperate Yugoslavia could not refuse. By 1990, the annual rate of growth of GDP had collapsed to -7.5 percent. In 1991, GDP declined by a further 15 percent, industrial output collapsed by 21 percent.19

The restructuring program demanded by Belgrade’s creditors was intended to abrogate the system of socially owned enterprises. The Enterprise Law of 1989 required abolishing the “Basic Organizations of Associated Labor (BAOL)”. The latter were socially-owned productive units under self-management with the Workers’ Council constituting the main decision making body. The 1989 Enterprise Law required the transformation of the BOALs into private capitalist enterprises with the Worker’s Council replaced by a so-called “Social Board” under the control of the enterprise’s owners including its creditors.20

Overhauling The Legal Framework

Advised by Western lawyers and consultants, a number of supporting pieces of legislation were put in place in a hurry. The Financial Operations Act of 1989 was to play a crucial role in engineering the collapse of Yugoslavia’s industrial sector, it was to provide for an “equitable” and so-called “transparent trigger mechanism” which would steer so-called “insolvent” enterprises in bankruptcy or liquidation. A related act entitled the Law on Compulsory Settlement, Bankruptcy and Liquidation was to safeguard “the rights of the creditors”. The latter could call for the initiation of bankruptcy procedures enabling them to take over and/or liquidate the assets of debtor enterprises.21

The earlier 1988 Foreign Investment Law had allowed for unrestricted entry of foreign capital not only into industry but also into the banking, insurance and services’ sectors. Prior to the enactment of the law, foreign investment was limited to joint ventures with the socially- owned enterprises.22 In turn, the 1989 Law on the Circulation and Management of Social Capital and the 1990 Social Capital Law allowed for the divestiture of the socially-owned enterprises including their sale to foreign capital. The Social Capital Law also provided for the creation of “Restructuring and Recapitalisation Agencies” with a mandate to organize the “valuation” of enterprise assets prior to privatization. As in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, however, the valuation of assets was based on the recorded “book-value” expressed in local currency. This book-value tended to be unduly low thereby securing the sale of socially-owned assets at rock-bottom prices. Slovenia and Croatia had by 1990 already established their own draft privatization laws.23

The assault on the socialist economy also included a new banking law designed to trigger the liquidation of the socially-owned Associated Banks. Within two years, more than half the country’s banks had vanished, to be replaced by newly-formed “independent profit-oriented institutions.” 24 By 1990, the entire “three-tier banking system” consisting of the National Bank of Yugoslavia, the national banks of the eight Republics and autonomous provinces and the commercial banks had been dismantled under the guidance of the World Bank. A Federal Agency for Insurance and Bank Rehabilitation was established in June 1990 with a mandate to restructure and “reprivatize” restructured banks under World Bank supervision.25 This process was to be undertaken over a five- year period. The development of non-banking financial intermediaries including brokerage firms, investment management firms and insurance companies was also to be promoted.

The Bankruptcy Program

Industrial enterprises had been carefully categorized. Under the IMF-World Bank sponsored reforms, credit to the industrial sector had been frozen with a view to speeding up the bankruptcy process. So-called “exit mechanisms” had been established under the provisions of the 1989 Financial Operations Act.26. Under the new law, if a business was unable to pay its bills for 30 days running, or for 30 days within a 45-day period, the government would launch bankruptcy proceedings within the next 15 days.19 This mechanism allowed creditors (including national and foreign banks) to routinely convert their loans into a controlling equity in the insolvent enterprise. Under the Act, the government was not authorized to intervene. In case a settlement was not reached, bankruptcy procedures would be initiated in which case workers would not normally receive severance payments.27

In 1989, according to official sources, 248 firms were steered into bankruptcy or were liquidated and 89,400 workers had been laid off.28 During the first nine months of 1990 directly following the adoption of the IMF program, another 889 enterprises with a combined work-force of 525,000 workers were subjected to bankruptcy procedures.29 In other words, in less than two years the World Bank’s so-called “trigger mechanism” (under the Financial Operations Act) had led to the lay off of 614,000 (out of a total industrial workforce of the order of 2.7 million). The largest concentrations of bankrupt firms and lay-offs were in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Kosovo.30

Many socially owned enterprises attempted to avoid bankruptcy through the non payment of wages. Half a million workers representing some 20 percent of the industrial labor force were not paid during the early months of 1990, in order to meet the demands of creditors under the “settlement” procedures stipulated in the Law on Financial Organizations. Real earnings were in a free fall, social programs had collapsed, with the bankruptcies of industrial enterprises, unemployment had become rampant, creating within the population an atmosphere of social despair and hopelessness.

The January 1990 IMF sponsored package contributed to increasing enterprise losses while precipitating many of the large electric, petroleum refinery, machinery, engineering and chemical enterprises into bankruptcy. Moreover, with the deregulation of the trade regime, a flood of imported commodities contributed to further destabilizing domestic production. These imports were financed with borrowed money granted under the IMF package (i.e. the various “quick disbursing loans” granted by the IMF, the World Bank and bilateral donors in support of the economic reforms). While the import bonanza was fuelling the build-up of Yugoslavia’s external debt, the abrupt hikes in interest rates and input prices imposed on national enterprises had expedited the displacement and exclusion of domestic producers from their own national market.

“Shedding Surplus Workers”

The situation prevailing in the months preceding the Secession of Croatia and Slovenia (mid 1991) (confirmed by the 1989-90 bankruptcy figures) points to the sheer magnitude and brutality of the process of industrial dismantling. The figures, however, provide but a partial picture, depicting the situation at the outset of the “bankruptcy program” which continued unabated in Yugoslavia’s successor States in the years following the Dayton accords.

The World Bank had estimated that there were still in September 1990, 2,435 “loss-making” enterprises out of a remaining total of 7,531.31 In other words, these 2,435 firms with a combined work-force of more than 1,3 million workers had been categorized as “insolvent” under the provisions of the Financial Operations Act, requiring the immediate implementation of bankruptcy procedures. Bearing in mind that 600,000 workers had already been laid off by bankrupt firms prior to September 1990, these figures suggest that some 1.9 million workers (out of a total of 2.7 million) had been classified as “redundant”. The “insolvent” firms concentrated in the Energy, Heavy Industry, Metal processing, Forestry and Textiles sectors were among the largest industrial enterprises in the country representing (in September 1990) 49.7 percent of the total (remaining and employed) industrial work-force.32

As 1991 dawned, real wages were in free fall, social programs had collapsed, and unemployment ran rampant. The dismantling of the industrial economy was breathtaking in its magnitude and brutality. Its social and political impact, while not as easily quantified, was tremendous. Yugoslav President Borisav Jovic warned that the reforms were “having a markedly unfavorable impact on the overall situation in society…. Citizens have lost faith in the state and its institutions…. The further deepening of the economic crisis and the growth of social tensions has had a vital impact on the deterioration of the political-security situation.”33

The Political Economy of Disintegration

Some Yugoslavs joined together in a doomed battle to prevent the destruction of their economy and polity. As one observer found,

“worker resistance crossed ethnic lines, as Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Slovenians mobilized … shoulder to shoulder with their fellow workers.”34

But the economic struggle also heightened already tense relations among the republics and between the republics and Belgrade.

Serbia rejected the austerity plan outright, and some 650,000 Serbian workers struck against the federal government to force wage hikes.35 The other republics followed different and sometimes self-contradictory paths.

In relatively wealthy Slovenia, for instance, secessionist leaders such as Social Democratic party chair Joze Pucnik supported the reforms:

“From an economic standpoint, I can only agree with socially harmful measures in our society, such as rising unemployment or cutting workers’ rights, because they are necessary to advance the economic reform process.”36

Serbian President Slobodan Milošević’s unequivocal desire to uphold the unity of Serbs, a status threatened by each republic breaking away from the federation, in addition to his opposition to the Albanian authorities in Kosovo, further inflamed ethnic tensions. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

But at the same time, Slovenia joined other republics in challenging the federal government’s efforts to restrict their economic autonomy. Both Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic joined Slovene leaders in railing against Belgrade’s attempts to impose harsh reforms on behalf of the IMF.37

In the multiparty elections in 1990, economic policy was at the center of the political debate as separatist coalitions ousted the Communists in Croatia, Bosnia and Slovenia. Just as economic collapse spurred the drift toward separation, separation in turn exacerbated the economic crisis. Cooperation among the republics virtually ceased. And with the republics at one another’s’ throats, both the economy and the nation itself embarked on a vicious downward spiral.

The process sped along as the republican leadership, deliberately fostered social and economic divisions to strengthen their own hands:

“The republican oligarchies, who all had visions of a ‘national renaissance’ of their own, instead of choosing between a genuine Yugoslav market and hyperinflation, opted for war which would disguise the real causes of the economic catastrophe .”38

The simultaneous appearance of militias loyal to secessionist leaders only hastened the descent into chaos. These militias (covertly financed by the US and Germany), with their escalating atrocities, not only split the population along ethnic lines, they also fragmented the workers’ movement.39

“Western Help”

The austerity measures had laid the basis for the recolonization of the Balkans. Whether that required the breakup of Yugoslavia was subject to debate among the Western powers, with Germany leading the push for secession and the US, fearful of opening a nationalist Pandora’s box, originally arguing for Yugoslavia’s preservation.

Following Franjo Tudjman’s and the rightist Democratic Union’s decisive victory in Croatia in May 1990, German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in almost daily contact with his counterpart in Zagreb, gave his go-ahead for Croatian secession.40 Germany did not passively support secession; it “forced the pace of international diplomacy” and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. Germany sought a free hand among its allies “to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mittel Europa.”41

Washington, on the other hand, “favored a loose unity while encouraging democratic development … [Secretary of State] Baker told Tudjman and [Slovenia’s President] Milan Kucan that the United States would not encourage or support unilateral secession … but if they had to leave, he urged them to leave by a negotiated agreement.”42 In the meantime, the US Congress had passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act which curtailed all financial assistance Yugoslavia. The provisions of the Act had been casually referred to by the CIA as “a signed death warrant” for Yugoslavia. 43 The CIA had correctly predicted that “a bloody civil war would ensue”.44 The law also demanded the IMF and the World Bank to freeze credit to Belgrade. And the US State Department had insisted that the Yugoslav republics (considered as de facto political entities) “uphold separate election procedures and returns before any further aid could be resumed to the individual republics”. 45

Post War Reconstruction and the Free Market

In the wake of the November 1995 Dayton Accords, Western creditors turned their attention to Yugoslavia’s “successor states”. Yugoslavia’s foreign debt had been carefully divided and allocated to the successor republics, which were strangled in separate debt rescheduling and structural adjustment agreements.46

The consensus among donors and international agencies was that past IMF macroeconomics reforms inflicted on federal Yugoslavia had not quite met their goal and further shock therapy was required to restore “economic health” to Yugoslavia’s successor states. Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia had agreed to loan packages to pay off their shares of the Yugoslav debt that required a consolidation of the process begun under Ante Markovic’s bankruptcy program. The all too familiar pattern of plant closings, induced bank failures, and impoverishment has continued unabated since 1996. And who was to carry out IMF diktats? The leaders of the newly sovereign states have fully collaborated with the creditors.

Croatian President Franjo Tuđman (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In Croatia, the government of President Franjo Tudjman was obliged to sign already in 1993 at the height of the civil war, an agreement with the IMF. In return for fresh loans largely intended to service Zagreb’s external debt, the government of President Franjo Tudjman agreed to implementing further plant closures and bankruptcies, driving wages to abysmally low levels. The official unemployment rate increased from 15.5 percent in 1991 to 19.1 percent in 1994.47

Zagreb had also instituted a far more stringent bankruptcy law, together with procedures for “the dismemberment” of large state-owned public utility companies. According to its “Letter of Intent” to the Bretton Woods institutions, the Croatian government had promised to restructure and fully privatize the banking sector with the assistance of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the World Bank. The latter had also demanded a Croatian capital market structured to heighten the penetration of Western institutional investors and brokerage firms.

Under the agreement signed in 1993 with the IMF, the Zagreb government was not permitted to mobilize its own productive resources through fiscal and monetary policy. The latter were firmly under the control of its external creditors. The massive budget cuts demanded under the agreement had also forestalled the possibility of post-war reconstruction. The latter could only be carried out through the granting of fresh foreign loans, a process which has contributed to fuelling Croatia’s external debt well into the 21st Century.

Macedonia had also followed a similar economic path to that of Croatia. In December 1993, the Skopje government agreed to compress real wages and freeze credit in order to obtain a loan under the IMF’s Systemic Transformation Facility (STF). In an unusual twist, multi-billionaire business tycoon George Soros participated in the International Support Group composed of the government of the Netherlands and the Basel-based Bank of International Settlements. The money provided by the Support Group, however, was not intended for “reconstruction” but rather to enable Skopje to pay back debt arrears owed the World Bank..48

Moreover, in return for debt rescheduling, the government of Macedonian Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski had to agree to the liquidation of remaining “insolvent” enterprises and the lay off of “redundant” workers –which included the employees of half the industrial enterprises in the country. As Deputy Finance Minister Hari Kostov soberly noted, with interest rates at astronomical levels because of donor-sponsored banking reforms, “it was literally impossible to find a company in the country which would be able to (…) to cover [its] costs (…).49

Overall, the IMF economic therapy for Macedonia was a continuation of the “bankruptcy program” launched in 1989-90 under federal Yugoslavia. The most profitable assets were put on sale on the Macedonian stock market, but this auction of socially owned enterprises had led to industrial collapse and rampant unemployment.

And global capital applauds. Despite an emerging crisis in social welfare and the decimation of his economy, Macedonian Finance Minister Ljube Trpevski proudly informed the press in 1996 that “the World Bank and the IMF place Macedonia among the most successful countries in regard to current transition reforms”. 50

The head of the IMF mission to Macedonia, Paul Thomsen, agreed. He avowed that “the results of the stabilization program were impressive” and gave particular credit to “the efficient wages policy” adopted by the Skopje government. Still, his negotiators had insisted that despite these achievements, even more budget cutting was necessary. 51

Reconstruction Colonial Style

But Western intervention was making its most serious inroads on national sovereignty in Bosnia. The neocolonial administration imposed under the Dayton accords and supported by NATO’s firepower had ensured that Bosnia’s future would be determined in Washington, Bonn, and Brussels rather than in Sarajevo.

The Bosnian government had estimated in the wake of the Dayton Accords that reconstruction costs would reach $47 billion. Western donors had initially pledged $3 billion in reconstruction loans, of which only a part was actually granted. Moreover, a large chunk of the fresh money lent to Bosnia had been tagged to finance some of the local civilian costs of IFOR’s military deployment as well as repay international creditors. 52

Fresh loans will pay back old debt. The Central Bank of the Netherlands had generously provided “bridge financing’ of $37 million to allow Bosnia to pay its arrears with the IMF, without which the IMF will not lend it fresh money. But in a cruel and absurd paradox, the sought-after loans from the IMF’s newly created “Emergency Window” for “post-conflict countries” will not be used for post-war reconstruction. Instead, they will repay the Dutch Central Bank, which had coughed up the money to settle IMF arrears in the first place. 53

Debt piles up, and little new money goes for rebuilding Bosnia’s war torn economy.

While rebuilding is sacrificed on the altar of debt repayment, Western governments and corporations show greater interest in gaining access to strategic natural resources. With the discovery of energy reserves in the region, the partition of Bosnia between the Federation of Bosnia- Herzegovina and the Bosnian-Serb Republika Srpska under the Dayton Accords has taken on new strategic importance. Documents in the hands of Croatia and the Bosnian Serbs indicate that coal and oil deposits have been identified on the eastern slope of the Dinarides Thrust, retaken from Krajina Serbs by the US-backed Croatian army in the final offensives before the Dayton accords. Bosnian officials had reported that Chicago-based Amoco was among several foreign firms that subsequently initiated exploratory surveys in Bosnia.54

“Substantial” petroleum fields also lie “in the Serb-held part of Croatia” just across the Sava River from Tuzla, the headquarters for the US military zone.55 Exploration operations went on during the war, but the World Bank and the multinationals that conducted the operations kept local governments in the dark, presumably to prevent them from acting to grab potentially valuable areas. 56

With their attention devoted to debt repayment and potential energy bonanzas, both the US and Germany have devoted their efforts –with 70,000 NATO troops on hand to “enforce the peace”– to administering the partition of Bosnia in accordance with Western economic and strategic interests.

While local leaders and Western interests share the spoils of the former Yugoslav economy, they have entrenched socio-ethnic divisions in the very structure of partition. This permanent fragmentation of Yugoslavia along ethnic lines thwarts a united resistance of Yugoslavs of all ethnic origins against the recolonization of their homeland.

But what’s new? As one observer caustically noted, all of the leaders of Yugoslavia’s successor states have worked closely with the West: “All the current leaders of the former Yugoslav republics were Communist Party functionaries and each in turn vied to meet the demands of the World Bank and the IMF, the better to qualify for investment loans and substantial perks for the leadership.” 57

From Bosnia to Kosovo

Economic and political dislocation has been the pattern in the various stages of the Balkans war: from the initial military intervention of NATO in Bosnia in 1992 to the bombing of Yugoslavia on “humanitarian grounds” in 1999. Bosnia and Kosovo are stages in the recolonization of the Balkans. The pattern of intervention under NATO guns in Bosnia under the Dayton accords has been replicated in Kosovo under the formal mandate of United Nations “peace-keeping”.

In post-war Kosovo, State terror and the “free market” go hand in hand. In close consultation with NATO, the World Bank had carefully analyzed the consequences of an eventual military intervention leading to the occupation of Kosovo. Almost a year prior to onslaught of the war, the World Bank had conducted relevant “simulations” which “anticipated the possibility of an emergency scenario arising out of the tensions in Kosovo”. 58 This suggests that NATO had already briefed the World Bank at an early stage of military planning.

While the bombing was still ongoing, the World Bank and the European Commission had been granted a special mandate for “coordinating donors’ economic assistance in the Balkans”59 The underlying terms of reference did not exclude Yugoslavia from receiving donor support. It was, however, clearly stipulated that Belgrade would be eligible for reconstruction loans “once political conditions there change”.60.

In the wake of the bombings, “free market reforms” were imposed on Kosovo largely replicating the clauses of the Rambouillet agreement which in turn had in part been modeled on the Dayton Accords imposed on Bosnia. Article I (Chapter 4a) of the Rambouillet Agreement stipulated that: “The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles”.

Along with NATO troops, an army of lawyers and consultants was sent into Kosovo under World Bank auspices. Their mandate: create an “enabling environment” for foreign capital and ensure Kosovo’s speedy transition to a “thriving, open and transparent market economy.” 61 In turn, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) provisional government had been called upon by the donor community to “establish transparent, effective and sustainable institutions” 62 The extensive links of the KLA to organized crime and the Balkans narcotics trade was not seen by the “international community” as an obstacle to the installation of “democracy” and “good governance”.

In occupied Kosovo under UN mandate, the management of State owned enterprises and public utilities was taken over by appointees of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The leaders of the Provisional Government of Kosovo (PGK) had become “the brokers” of multinational capital committed to handing over the Kosovar economy at bargain prices to foreign investors.

Meanwhile, Yugoslav State banks operating in Pristina had been closed down. The Deutschmark was adopted as legal tender and almost the entire banking system in Kosovo was handed over to Germany’s Commerzbank A.G which gained full control over commercial banking functions for the province including money transfers and foreign exchange transactions.63

Taking over Kosovo’s Mineral Wealth

Under Western military occupation, Kosovo’s extensive wealth in mineral resources and coal was slated to be auctioned off at bargain prices to foreign capital. Prior to the bombings, Western investors already had their eyes riveted on the massive Trepca mining complex which constitutes “the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, worth at least $5 billion.” 64 The Trepca complex not only includes copper and large reserves of zinc but also cadmium, gold, and silver. It has several smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, a power plant and Yugoslavia’s largest battery plant. Northern Kosovo also has estimated reserves of 17 billion tons of coal and lignite.

Barely a month after Kosovo’s military occupation under NATO guns, the head of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Bernard Kouchner issued a decree to the effect that:

“UNMIK shall administer movable or immovable property, including monetary accounts, and other property of, or registered in the name of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia or the Republic of Serbia or any of its organs, which is in the territory of Kosovo”.65.

No time was lost, a few months after the military occupation of Kosovo, the International Crisis Group (ICG) a think tank supported by Financier George Soros, issued a paper on “Trepca: Making Sense of the Labyrinth” which advised the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) “to take over the Trepca mining complex from the Serbs as quickly as possible and explained how this should be done”.66 And in August 2000, UNMIK Head Bernard Kouchner sent in heavily armed “peacekeepers” (“wearing surgical masks against toxic smoke”) to occupy the mine on the pretense that it was creating an environmental hazard through excessive air pollution.

Meanwhile, the United Nations had handed over the management of the entire Trepca complex to a Western consortium. With a stake in the Trepca deal was Morrison Knudsen International, now regrouped with Rayethon Engineering and Construction. The new conglomerate is the Washington Group, one of the World’s most powerful engineering and construction firms as well as a major Defense contractor in the US. Junior partners in the deal are TEC-Ingenierie of France and Sweden’s consulting outfit Boliden Contech.

The Installation of a Mafia State

While Financier George Soros was investing money in Kosovo’s reconstruction, the Soros Foundation for an Open Society had opened a branch office in Pristina establishing the Kosovo Foundation for an Open Society (KFOS) as part of the Soros’ network of “non-profit foundations” in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Together with the World Bank’s Post Conflict Trust Fund, the Kosovo Open Society Foundation (KOSF) was providing “targeted support” for “the development of local governments to allow them to serve their communities in a transparent, fair, and accountable manner.”67 Since most of these local governments are in the hands of the KLA which has extensive links to organized crime, this program is unlikely to meet its declared objective.68

In turn, “strong economic medicine” imposed by external creditors had contributed to further boosting a criminal economy (already firmly implanted in Albania) which feeds on poverty and economic dislocation.

With Albania and Kosovo at the hub of Balkans drug trade, Kosovo was also slated to reimburse foreign creditors through the laundering of dirty money. Narco-dollars will be recycled towards servicing Kosovo’s debt as well as “financing” the costs of “reconstruction”. The lucrative flow of narco-dollars thus ensures that foreign investors involved in the “reconstruction” programme will be able reap substantial returns.

Neoliberalism, the Only Possible World?

Administered in several doses since the 1980s, NATO-backed neo-liberal economic medicine has helped destroy Yugoslavia. Yet, the global media has carefully overlooked or denied its central role. Instead, they have joined the chorus singing praises of the “free market” as the basis for rebuilding a war shattered economy. The social and political impact of economic restructuring in Yugoslavia has been carefully erased from our collective understanding. Opinion-makers instead dogmatically present cultural, ethnic, and religious divisions as the sole cause of war and devastation .In reality, they are the consequence of a much deeper process of economic and political fracturing.

Such false consciousness not only masks the truth, it also prevents us from acknowledging precise historical occurrences. Ultimately, it distorts the true sources of social conflict. When applied to the former Yugoslavia, it obscures the historical foundations of South Slavic unity, solidarity and identity in what constituted a multiethnic society.

At stake in the Balkans are the lives of millions of people. Macroeconomic reform combined with military conquest and UN “peace keeping” has destroyed livelihoods and made a joke of the right to work. It has put basic needs such as food and shelter beyond the reach of many. It has degraded culture and national identity. In the name of global capital, borders have been redrawn, legal codes rewritten, industries destroyed, financial and banking systems dismantled, social programs eliminated. No alternative to global capital, be it Yugoslav “market socialism” or “national capitalism”, will be allowed to exist.

Notes

1. See, e.g., former US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmerman, ‘The Last Ambassador, A Memoir of the Collapse of Yugoslavia, Foreign Affairs, Vol 74,no. 2,1995.

2. For a critique, see Milos Vasic, et al., War Against Bosnia, Vreme News Digest Agency, Apr. 13, 1992. 

3. Testimony of Richard C. Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of European and Canadian Affairs, before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Washington, 19 December 1995. 

4. Dayton Peace Accords, Agreement on High Representative, Articles I and II, 16 December 1995. 

5. Dayton Peace Accords, Agreement on Police Task Force. Article II.

6. According to a United Nations statement, United Nations, New York, 5 January 1996. See also Seattle Post Intelligencer, 16 January 1996, p. A5.

7. Dayton Peace Accords, Agreement on General Framework, Article VII 

8. Ibid. 

9. Ibid, Agreement on Public Corporations, Article I.10. 

10. Stabilizing Europe, The Times (London), Nov 22, 1990. 

11. World Bank, World Development Report 1991, Statistical Annex, Tables 1 and 2, Washington, 1991. 

12. Sean Gervasi, ‘Germany, the US, and the Yugoslav Crisis, Covert Action Quarterly, No. 43, Winter 1992-93, p. 42. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Dimitrije Boarov, “A Brief Review of Anti-inflation Programs, the Curse of Dead Programs”, Vreme New Digest Agency, No. 29, 13 April 1992. 

15 World Bank, Industrial Restructuring Study: Overview, Issues, and Strategy for Restructuring, Washington, D C, June 1991, pp. 10,14. 

16. Gervasi, op. cit., p. 44. 

17. World Bank, Industrial Restructuring Study, op. cit., p. viii. 

18. Ralph Schoenman, Divide and Rule Schemes in the Balkans, The Organizer, San Francisco, Sept. 11,1995 

19. Judit Kiss, Debt Management in Eastern Europe, Eastern European Economics, May June 1894, p 59

20. See Barbara Lee and John Nellis, Enterprise Reform and Privatization in Socialist Economies, The World Bank, Washington DC, 1990, pp. 20-21. 

21. For further details see World Bank, Yugoslavia, Industrial Restructuring, p. 33. 

22. World Bank, Yugoslavia, Industrial Restructuring, p. 29. 

23. Ibid., p. 23. 

24. Ibid., p. 38. 

25. Ibid., p. 39. 

26. Ibid., p. 33. 

27. Ibid., p. 33. 

28. Ibid., p. 34. Data of the Federal Secretariat for Industry and Energy. Of the total number of firms, 222 went bankrupt and 26 were liquidated. 

29. Ibid., p. 33. These figures include bankruptcy and liquidation. 

30. Ibid., p. 34. 

31. Ibid., p. 13. Annex 1, p. 1. 

32. “Surplus labor” in industry had been assessed by the World Bank mission to be of the order of 20 per cent of the total labor force of 8.9 million, – i.e. approximately 1.8 million. This figure is significantly below the actual number of redundant workers based on the categorization of “insolvent” enterprises. Solely in the industrial sector, there were 1.9 million workers (September 1990) out of 2.7 million employed in enterprises classified as insolvent by the World Bank. See World Bank, Yugoslavia, Industrial Restructuring, Annex 1. 

33 British Broadcasting Service, Borisav Jovic Tells SFRY Assembly Situation Has Dramatically Deteriorated, 27 April 1991. 

34. Schoenman, op. cit 

35 Gervasi, op cit., p. 44. 

36. Federico Nier Fischer, Eastern Europe: Social Crisis, Inter Press Service, 5 September 1990. 

37 Klas Bergman, ‘Markovic Seeks to Keep Yugoslavia One Nation, Christian Science Monitor, July 11,1990, p.6. 

38 Dimitrue Boarov, 3A Brief Review of Anti-Inflation Programs: the Curse of the Dead Programs, Vreme News Digest Agency, Apr. 13, 1992. 

39 Ibid 

40 Gervasi, op cit, p. 65. 

41 Ibid, p 45

42 Zimmerman, op. cit.

43.Jim Burkholder, Humanitarian Intervention? Veterans For Peace, undated, www.veteransforpeace.org ). 

44. Ibid. 

45. Ibid.

46. In June 1995, the IMF, acting on behalf of creditor banks and Western governments, proposed to redistribute that debt as follows: Serbia and Montenegro, 36%, Croatia 28%, Slovenia 16%, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 16% and Macedonia 5%. 

47. “Zagreb’s About Turn”, The Banker, January 1995, p. 38. 

48. See World Bank, Macedonia Financial and Enterprise Sector, Public Information Department, 28 November 1995.

49. Statement of Macedonia’s Deputy Minister of Finance Mr. Hari Kostov, reported in MAK News, 18 April 1995. 

50. Macedonian Information and Liaison Service, MILS News, 11 April 1995. 

51 Ibid 

52. According to the terms of the Dayton Accords (Annex1-A), “the government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall provide free of cost such facilities NATO needs for the preparation and execution of the Operation”. 

53 IMF to Admit Bosnia on Wednesday, United Press International, 18 December 1995. 

54. Frank Viviano and Kenneth Howe, “Bosnia Leaders Say Nation Sit Atop Oil Fields”, The San Francisco Chronicle, 28 August 1995. See also Scott Cooper, “Western Aims in Ex-Yugoslavia Unmasked”, The Organizer, 24 September 

55 Ibid. 

56 Ibid. 

57 Schoenman, op. cit. 58. World Bank Development News, Washington, 27 April 1999. 

59 World Bank Group Response to Post Conflict Reconstruction in Kosovo: General Framework For an Emergency Assistance Strategy, http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/kosovo/kosovo_st.htm undated).. 60. Ibid 61 World Bank, The World Bank’s Role in Reconstruction and Recovery in Kosovo, http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/pb/pbkosovo.htm, undated 

62. Ibid  

63. International Finance Corporation (IFC), International Consortium Backs Kosovo’s First Licensed Bank, http://www.ifc.org/ifc/pressroom/Archive/2000/00_90/00_90.html Press Release, Washington, 24 January 2000. 

64. New York Times, July 8, 1998, report by Chris Hedges.

 65. Quoted in Diana Johnstone, How it is done, Taking over the Trepca Mines: Plans and Propaganda, http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/howitis.htm Emperors Clothes, 28 February 2000. 

66. See Johnston, op cit. For the ICG report see http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/Johnstone/icg.htm  

67. World Bank, KOSF and World Bank, World Bank Launches First Kosovo Project, Washington, http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/extme/097.htm November 16, 1999 News Release No. 2000/097/ECA. 68 Out of the 20 million dollars budget for this program, only one million dollars was being provided by the World Bank.

Canada’s Liberal government has issued a formal apology and financial payout of $10.5 million to Omar Khadr. To provide some context, we re-publish a speech about Khadr’s plight presented by his lawyer Dennis Edney. 

This radio feature originally aired on July 1st, 2016 (Canada Day.)

Michael A Welch, July 15th, 2017.

* * * *

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

On this week’s holiday edition of the Global Research News Hour, we spend the hour listening to Dennis Edney speaking on The Rule of Law and the Politics of Fear. This speech was presented on the evening of June 19, 2015 at the Broadway Disciples United Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in occupied Anishnaabe Territory in the homeland of the Metis nation. Dennis Edney was the lawyer for Omar Khadr. a Canadian who had been held in America’s notorious Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for 10 years before being returned to Canada in 2012.

In this interview we will hear Dennis Edney tell Omar Khadr’s story and put it in the wider context of the then Harper Government’s draconian policies and failure to respect the rule of law.

The speech was followed by a brief question and answer period.

videographer credit: Paul Graham

Dennis Edney is recipient of the 2008 National Pro Bono Award and of the 2009 Human Rights Medal awarded by the Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia for work that “has helped to promote and further human rights”.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in everyThursday at 6pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

Featured image: Historical map of Cyprus (Source: Piri Reis / Wikimedia Commons)

After the disaster at Crans–Montana an embarrassed negotiating Greek team returned like wet cats with their tails between their legs attempting to justify and spin their failure. 

A tired president, influenced by his inner core of “advisors”and politicians flew back feeling dejected. They are now busy trying to convince Cypriots they are not giving up but would seek ways to restart the Bi-Zonal, Bi-Communal Federation talks (BBF). During a televised news conference the President agreed to continue the negotiations on a prerequisite and conviction that a “solution” is achievable with the Turks. What a damn idea!

Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Foreign Minister of Turkey in Saadabad Palace in Tehran, Iran (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Reality speaks louder than words. In Switzerland, the Greek team was entrapped by a much superior and shrewder negotiating team led by Mr. Mevlut Cavusoglu the Turkish foreign minister ­–­a cunning man who had a strategic plan in place and knew precisely what he was doing and where he was going in the interests of Turkey and not others.

Meanwhile throughout the talks, Akinci played the victim bride and hardly spoke. He was there as a flowerpot smelling the sweet scents of success. On the sly, he was actually one of the architects of Ankara’s conspiracy to fool everyone. He behaved splendidly, acting damp as instructed by allowing Cavusoglu to do all the talking in a game of deceit!

Only Nicos Kotzias the Greek Foreign Minister smelled the stench of Mevlut Cavusoglu’s devious intentions. Kotzias had the balls and the foresight to speak out against the Turkish Minister’s devious behaviour and dubious remarks; remarks spoken with a forked tongue – there was no love lost between the two!

The Anastasiades team seemed quite prepared to make further concessions in exchange fora negotiated BBF solution. In the spirit of goodwill the President ignored the danger signs written on the wall and failed miserably to anticipate (or refused to accept) the obvious. Over optimistic and gullible the Cyprus team continued trusting that Turkey would change its behaviour and act honorably.

Nikos Kotzias, Syriza politician and present Foreign Minister of Greece, in 2013. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

They dismissed the idea that a chameleon never reveals its true colours. Instead, they chose to behave as good Europeans and good Samaritans acting as obedient “good little boys and girls”. Everyone knows what happens to both! They ignore the one critical rule known to all – that shaking a hand with Turkey one soon discovers a couple of one’s fingers missing.

Meanwhile during the negotiations, not a single mention of the Republic of Cyprus was made. It was as if it never existed. For all intents and purposes the talks concentrated on establishing a New Cyprus between the “two communities” on a power-sharing formula of a non-existent mythological “federation”. It was as if Anastasiades had forgotten that the people elected him as the President of the Republic and not a “community leader” as the UN, the EU and others presented him in the interests of the negotiations as not to offend Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots.

What a bloody mess! Turkey – as predicted – never had any intention of negotiating seriously and its presence at Crans–Montana was nothing less than window dressing and a PR exercise, knowing the world would be watching. This was a calculated move to pave the way forward and ultimately take possession of the entire occupied area. Sultan Erdogan did not waste time announcing that:

“it’s too bad the Greek side did not want a settlement. Turkey will now proceed with its plans B and C for Cyprus.”

It is only a matter of time before the next bombshell will come! Who will stop Turkey then? Nobody did in 1974!

Cavusoglu meticulously applied the Turkish conspiracy at Crans–Montana to the latter.For days the Turkish foreign minister, with a smiling face, kept making spoken but vague promises ­­of Turkey’s “good intentions” for a solution (but never in writing) until he was ready for the good kill.

As it has turned out Cavusoglu and Akinci were there to retrieve as many concessions from the Greek side as possible! Exacerbated by the Turkish minister’s dishonorable and cunning attitude, the UN-Secretary pressed him to stop beating around the bush and put Ankara’s proposals on the table and in writing.It was then that Cavusoglu got offended and threw a tantrum including another bombshell half-hour before all collapsed.

He announced in not so many words that:“with or without an agreement, the Turkish troops will never be withdrawn from Cyprus” and neither would Turkey abandon“the right to intervene in the island”. If that was the Turkish position and red lines, then why go through the travesty of negotiating at all with such people?

Everyone at the conference was utterly shocked by Cavusoglu’s revelation on the two most important and critical issues of the negotiations. They finally recognized that Turkey never meant a single word spoken at the negotiating table but rather was playing for time in a shameful Ottoman game of political deception.

After ten days and a 15-hour session of non-stop negotiations UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced at 3am that he was

“deeply sorry to inform that despite very strong commitment and the engagement of all parties…the conference on Cyprus was closed without an agreement being reached” and then he went on to wish the “best for all the Cypriots in north and south Cyprus”.  

As a seasoned diplomat, the UN Secretary-General stopped short of actually blaming Turkey for the collapse of the UN conference but ironically, he went on to admit the presence of two separate states– North and South Cyprus! Those words could now end up becoming an established term of a permanent partition of Cyprus under occupation.

As for the President and his team, reality had suddenly dawned on them! How could they be so wrong about their Turkish Cypriot compatriots after so many years of negotiations with them? They recognized that Akinci was not the well-meaning man Anastasiades had befriended and he helped to elevate his status to presidential prominence – albeit unofficial. After two years the on-off negotiations between the two “friends” finally came to an inglorious end and they went their ways. No one but Turkey is any the wiser for what the future holds!

In such a situation, people with a sense of dignity often resign as a matter of honour for failing their duty. No matter how one sweetens the end result, the Anastasiades team has been outsmarted by Turkey’s well-thought strategy forged before their arrival in Switzerland! There are no greys in negotiations but simply “failure”or “success” and the talks in Switzerland have failed for the third time in the past six months. That’s not a sign of success but a sign of political incompetence!

The honourable thing to do now is for the President to resign in a dignified manner. Mr. Anastasiades should step down and call for immediate elections. He should also consider firing en-masse his advisors and party hacks for cultivating an over-optimistic climate, misleading the public and failing to anticipate Turkey’s next move.

There is one problem – Cyprus never had a strategic long-term counter-attack plan in place. When it comes to the Cyprus issue, policies are always changed for political convenience each time a new President is elected and that’s the problem!

In the absence of powerful independent Think Tanks the results are always the same – dismal and catastrophic to say the least! That’s what has been happening in Cyprus – the dependency on inglorious politicians of a politicocracy without merit but nepotism.

Drawing from past experiences the UN conference at Crans–Montana should never have started – the talks were doomed to fail from the very start. Why did the President insist so strongly? People will never know for real. One does not make up a flippant strategy and committing the nation to becoming hostage to political incompetence.

What now?

Crans–Montana may well turn out to be a blessing – at least the Republic of Cyprus has not been decimated to accommodate Turkey’s grandiose geopolitical plans. In fact the UN-Secretary General saved the Republic and that’s the positive side of it all.

No matter how disappointed the President and his party – including the leftists may feel – the collapse should be considered as an optimistic step forward and not negative. As a politician, Anastasiades and his inner clan faced a similar leadership challenge during his UN Annan Plan pet project; the electorate rejected it outright in a referendum!

Thankfully the Republic has been protected this time around but the President’s leadership is in question.

The Cyprus government will now be impelled to forge a new foreign policy by recognizing that the existing one has been a shambles. Out of the ashes of the Crans–Montana fiasco, one thing has become clear; the Turkish Cypriots must decide if they want to be a part of the Cyprus Republic, or be a part of Turkey. They certainly cannot have it both ways. Enjoy EU privileges the Republic has to offer and at the same time demanding union with a third country and military occupier of their homeland.

The Turkish Cypriots can either work together with the Greek Cypriots for the unification of Cyprus by refusing outright political integration with Ankara – like the Greek did with Athens – or they can join Turkey ruled by Sultan Erdogan; a dictator who has recently imprisoned over 150.000 innocent Turks.The recent imprisonment of a Turkish Cypriot Mufti in Turkey on trumped up changes clearly shows that no one is safe with Erdogan in control.

In fact, the 120.000 Turkish Cypriots living in the occupied area face a real threat of extinction from nationalists, illegal settlers (450.000) and ISIS “sleeper” terrorist units lodged in their midst. Unless the Turkish Cypriots pick up the Greek Cypriots’ olive branch of friendship and reconciliation,their community is doomed.

Time for serious action!

Under the current developments radical decisions need to be applied and a dynamic new foreign policy put in place immediately. After years of negotiations, the old policies have proven wrong and failed big time. A Revolution of the Mind is critical if the Republic is to start exerting serious political and economic pressure against Turkey but also against the TC elite and supporters of the status quo.

As a start, the government must shut all crossings to stop the movement of people, goods and services between the two sectors; drop the BBF idea and seek out ways within the perimeters of the UN and work with the Turkish Cypriots for another type of solution; stop outsiders and tour operators using the Republic’s airports transporting thousands of tourists to the occupied area; revoke all EU passports and Cypriot citizenship including privileges now enjoyed by TCs living in the occupied area; ensure that EU funding and taxpayers money stops flawing in the occupied area; make it abundantly clear that the Republic is an integral part of the European Union and can no longer be taken advantage of; put a string of EU and Cypriot flag banners along the crossings to remind everyone – friends and foes – that the Republic is a vital part of the EU and not a place of political abuse or convenience; punish severely those that break the laws conducting business and illegal activities including smuggling between the two sectors; stop all medical privileges, welfare benefits and other dispensations to TCs that live in the occupied area but who take advantage of what the Republic has to offer them; stop providing free services to Turkish sectors and isolate politically the pseudo-regime that represents Turkey’s interests and not the interests of the Turkish Cypriots.

Certainly the Cyprus government knows on how to apply a strong offensive strategy rather than to continue the current placating policy. Faced with a decisive strong Cyprus government, Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots may start to “Think out of the Box” and negotiate honorably. If not, the status quo will continue for years to come but without the Turkish Cypriot community.

There is a long road ahead full of obstacles but it is the only homeland Greek and Turkish Cypriots have. One hopes they will not abandon it to the whims of Turkey’s brute force but choose reconciliation as a way forward and reunite the island democratically under one-man-one-vote on the basis of UN/EU Human Rights and in respect of Rule of Law and not Rule of Man.

May common sense prevail and bring peace to this strife-torn island that everyone want a piece of its entrails.

Author’s Note: After so many years of writing over 400 articles about the social, political and economic issues related to Cyprus this is the last and final article written by the writer on the subject.

Featured image: Former President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva served as Brazil’s president from 2003 – 2010. He’s led in opinion polls to win another term in office next year.

If it stands, his near ten-year sentence on corruption charges would bar him from seeking reelection in 2018. He’s a far cry from extremists now running things in Brazil.

Last year, Washington conspired with them to impeach and remove democratically elected President Dilma Rousseff from office on bogus charges.

Tyranny replaced democracy. A wish list for markets and investors was implemented – neoliberal harshness eliminating social justice, powerful privileged interests served at the expense of most others.

Lula is no paragon of progressive governance. James Petras earlier explained he

“embrace(d) free trade, sign(ed) military agreements with Washington, (was) acclaimed ‘Statesman of the Year’ by the billionaire’s club at Davos in 2010, and has enriched bankers from Wall Street to the city of London…”

He “spent billions on roads and ports for exporters but nothing for resident slum safety.”

On July 12, Lula was convicted and sentenced to 9.5 years imprisonment on corruption-related charges. He remains free while appealing the ruling.

Dark forces in Brazil want him prevented from winning another presidential term, a similar scheme to how Rousseff was impeached and removed from office.

Lula was convicted of accepting an alleged $1.2 million bribe from Brazilian construction company OAS in exchange for helping the firm obtain government contracts.

He denies it. So does his lead attorney, Valeska Texeira Zanin Martin, saying

“(n)o credible evidence of guilt has been produced, and overwhelming proof of his innocence blatantly ignored.”

“This politically motivated judgement attacks Brazil’s rule of law, democracy and Lula’s basic human rights. It is of immense concern to the Brazilian people and to the international community.”

Lula was acquitted of “imputations of corruption and money laundering involving the storage of presidential stock for lack of sufficient proof of materiality.”

His legal team said Judge Sergio Moro’s ruling ignored evidence of innocence, accusing him of political bias.

According to attorney Martin, bank and real estate records prove Lula’s innocence. Money he allegedly used to buy a three-story beachfront apartment wasn’t a bribe, she explained, because it’s registered in OAS’ name.

If sold, the monetary transaction would show up in bank transactions, proving Lula didn’t acquire the property, according to Martin.

He indeed may have been framed. Prosecutor Henrique Pozzobon said

“(w)e don’t have to prove…we have conviction.”

If the former president is unable to overturn it, including by Brazil’s Supreme Court if his case goes that far, he’ll face imprisonment or house arrest and be barred from seeking reelection next year – most likely what the case against him is all about.

If acquitted on appeal, he’s not out of the woods yet. He faces charges in four other corruption cases.

According to Martin, “(w)e will prove (his innocence), not only (reversing Moro’s ruling), but all” the other charges against him.

Lula stressed he’s “proven (his) innocence and now…want(s) them to prove (his) guilt.”

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

Notice to our readers. We were not able to corroborate this report by Your News Wire. This article is reported as being fake

It should nonetheless be noted that the collapse of WTO7 was a deliberate and planned act. That is is firmly established. The announcement of the collapse of WTC7 was made both by the BBC and CNN prior to the actual event, which confirms that there prior knowledge of the collapse. 

“The most grotesque lie pertains to the BBC and CNN announcement in the afternoon of September 11, that WTC Building Seven (The Solomon Building) had collapsed. The BBC report went live at 5.00pm, 21 minutes before the actual occurrence of the collapse, indelibly pointing to foreknowledge of the collapse of WTC 7.  CNN anchor Aaron Brown announced that the building “has either collapsed or is collapsing” about an hour before the event.” (Michel Chossudovsky, The 9/11 Reader, Global Research, September 11, 2012)

(See also: WTC7.net the hidden story of Building 7: Foreknowledge of WTC 7’s Collapse)

*    *    *

To consult the Your News article, reported by snopes to be fake  click here

CIA Director Marc Pompeo said on July 11 at INSA Leadership Dinner that there is allegedly solid evidence that the Syrian authorities had been using chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun.

As M. Pompeo clarified, President Donald Trump ordered to conduct an investigation on the chemical attack in the Syrian province of Idlib. In their work, the intelligence community allegedly managed to establish the links of Damascus with the incident, but Pompeo did not present any concrete facts.

The CIA director noticed that the results of their valuation underlined the decision to strike at the Shayrat Airbase were collected in less than a day by a team of experts in cooperation with some ‘outstanding’ partners from across the Intelligence Community.

It is worth noting that an air strike on the territory of another state is akin to declaring war. Does everyone understand the degree of responsibility for such a decision or are Pompeo’s ‘partners’ so outstanding? Probably, the second looks more credible.

It seems that in their reports the CIA relies on its new much discredited agents, White Helmets. The Intelligence Community probably thinks these sources can be trusted without even checking the data. After all, this organization gained the ‘profound gratitude’ throughout the world shooting and providing fake videos from Syria, and even received an Oscar for quality elaborate hoaxes.

In fact, one wants to believe that Trump’s decision to strike at the Shayrat Airbase was based on reliable facts and not only on the fact that Pompeo hardly bore to have Trump to look at him, which in itself is no doubt an achievement of the Director. However, leaving the sarcasm, what is the evidence of the CIA really based on? That’s the big question that today still haunts the whole world. Isn’t it time for the United States to present the testimony on the matter for everyone to see?

The only two things you should think about after the pompous speech of the CIA director are about the decision-making process of the American leadership and about the competence of certain officials. Now it becomes clear where the reports about the inconsistent policy of the United States and the country’s lack of a clear strategy in the Middle East come from.

And the most terrible thing for the patriots of the U.S. is that, their leadership is not going to change the attitude towards the state in the eyes of the international community. A negative evaluation of the U.S. foreign policy could have been turned into a positive one someday if Washington had been interested in settling the Middle East’ crises. At first, it is necessary to stop making those false allegations about the involvement of the Syrian Arab Army in any crimes using the controlled media.

But now the scheme of the White House’s work on the Middle East briefly looks like this one:

I. Accusing an unwelcome government of a crime without providing really valid evidence
II. An Airstrike or a ground based large scale operation to destroy the infrastructure, may be sanctions
III. Promoting the interests of business elites in conditions of controlled chaos
IV. Acknowledgements, if necessary, of past wrongs and miscalculations without punishment of the perpetrators

Almost every major operation of the U.S. Army begins with data of not clear origin accompanied by a real psychological attack of Internet users. How, then, can anyone respect the U.S. policy if the leadership ridicule the country at the highest level, if the officials are not able to present material evidence of allegations, and the foreign policy of the White House contradicts the established principles of international law?

Follow the latest developments by reading Inside Syria Media Center.

Sophie Mangal is a special investigative correspondent and co-editor at Inside Syria Media Center.

All images in this article are from the author.

Featured image: Cardinal George Pell (Source: Salt and Light / Youtube)

The Catholic Church, much in the manner of a modern corporation, is a sprawling edifice of operations and functions. To hold part of it accountable for abuses – against human, bank account, or country – has presented a formidable legal obstacle.

This nightmare has taken place amidst a broader question: the extent Church officials believe they are accountable to secular justice, or those ordained by the Church itself. St. Augustine’s point was clear enough: of the two sovereignties – that of the City of Man, or that of God – the latter would prevail.

Apologies for the specific issue of clerical child abuse have issued over the last decade. In 2003, Pope John Paul II, hardly a man known for his progressive tidings, suggested there was “no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young.”[1] In July 2008, Pope Benedict XVI, on a visit to Australia, issued a specific apology for the past abusive conduct by the church’s Australian clergy, demanding reparations and punishment as a response. But the wheels of justice have not so much grinded slowly as indiscernibly.

In an unprecedented move, Cardinal George Pell, termed by author Gianluigi Nuzzi “the ambitious bulldog from Sydney,” and one present at the penitent moments of Benedict XVI’s apology, has made his way to Australia to face what are termed “historical sex offences”.

The paving was already taking place, with police investigating complaints about alleged offences that occurred in the Victorian town of Ballarat in the 1970s. In October, three Victoria Police detectives ventured to Rome to interview Pell, who “voluntarily participated in an interview regarding allegations of sexual assault.”[2]

Previous high-ranking Catholic figures have found themselves prodded by legal scrutiny, albeit ineffectively. Cardinal Archbishop Bernard Law of Boston received the special attention of the Boston Globe in 2002 which exposed the extensive nature of cover-ups on the subject of child abuse. The Massachusetts attorney-general though it wise to investigate claims of sex abuse in the church.

Law’s case is an instructive one in terms of evasion, deflection and ultimately, the use of institutional cover to protect those accused of either being directly involved in child abuse, or being complicit after the fact. The attorney-general’s report released in 2002 took the Cardinal to task over “choices that allowed the abuse to continue”. But the cardinal had a get out of gaol card: mandatory reporting laws regarding abuse had were not introduced till 2002.

Pope John Paul II, despite his fragile state, was also quick off the mark in whisking the troubled official to greener pastures: Law received the position of Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, subsequently retiring without much fuss.

Over time, Cardinal Pell became the typical, paper churning functionary, suitably dogmatic, assiduously administrative, and always a defender of the Vatican through gloomy rain, vicious hail or roasting sunshine. As prefect of the newly created secretariat for the economy, he found himself stroking the purple, breathing the aroma of power. Importantly, he had won Pope Francis’ favour.

To have also reached such a position came with legal perks and padding. While the Vatican remains an amorphous international entity, it can afford to duck and weave with defences of immunity in the courts of other countries regarding the conduct of its officials. As the US State Department describes it, the Vatican City State is “a sovereign, independent territory.”[3] Lacking an extradition treaty with the Vatican, the Australian authorities were always going to be hamstrung by any concrete action.

This became a moot point. Pope Francis, in his efforts to scrub and cleanse the stables, has let Pell return to face the legal music. Obviously feeling the momentum gathering, he also sacked long time irritant and conservative sparring partner Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the Congregation of the Faith, the Vatican office charged with investigating sex abuse cases.

The timing was sweetening in its appropriateness: Mueller’s five year term had been characterised by accumulation rather than action – some 2,000 cases of abuse had found themselves into the files, mouldering rather than advancing. But his time in office had also been characterised by scepticism towards last year’s papal treatise Amoris Laetitia, deemed a tad too liberal for the liking of the reactionary set.

In Australia, the impetus to challenge church authorities has grown, much of it fed through evidence given to the ongoing Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The cases are mounting, though the stonewalling persists. (To date, 130 of the 2,025 cases referred to police by the commission have seen any action.)

The case against Pell has been framed under Victorian state law, and will be subject to the standard laws of evidence. The onerous nature of proving such allegations years after the fact remain problematic, but state authorities obviously feel that something might stick.

After years of protection, a Cardinal, one of the highest officials of the Vatican to date, shall appear on summons before the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on July 18. Will the City of Man prevail over that of the City of God?

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

Notes

[1] http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=9567

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-29/cardinal-george-pell-charged-sexual-assault-offences/8547668

[3] https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3819.htm

As Venezuela’s fascist-minded oligarchy conspires with U.S. imperialism to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro, few in the U.S. seem to care.

Instead of denouncing rightwing violence that aims at regime change, many on the U.S. left have stayed silent, or opted to give an evenhanded analysis that supports neither the Maduro government nor the oligarchy trying to violently overthrow it. Rather, the left prioritizes its energy on lecturing on Maduro’s “authoritarianism” and the failures of “Chavismo.”

This approach allows leftists a cool emotional detachment to the fate of the poor in Venezuela, and clean hands that would otherwise be soiled by engaging with the messy, real life class struggle that is the Venezuelan revolution.

A “pox on both houses” analysis omits the U.S. government’s role in collaborating with Venezuela’s oligarchs. The decades-long crimes of imperialism against Venezuela is aided and abetted by the silence of the left, or by its murky analysis that minimizes the perpetrator’s actions, focusing negative attention on the victim precisely at the moment of attack.

Any analysis of a former colonial country that doesn’t begin with the struggle of self-determination against imperialism is a dead letter, since the x-factor of imperialism has always been a dominant variable in the Venezuelan equation, as books by Eva Gollinger and others have thoroughly explained, and further demonstrated by the ongoing intervention in Latin America by an endless succession of U.S. presidents.

The Venezuelan-initiated anti-imperialist movement was strong enough that a new gravitational center was created, that pushed most of Latin America out of the grasp of U.S. domination for the first time in nearly a hundred years. This historic achievement remains minimized for much of the U.S. left, who remain indifferent or uneducated about the revolutionary significance of self-determination for oppressed nations abroad, as well as oppressed peoples inside of the U.S.

A thousand valid criticisms can be made of Chavez, but he chose sides in the class fault lines and took bold action at critical junctures. Posters of Chavez remain in the homes of Venezuela’s poorest barrios because he proved in action that he was a champion for the poor, while fighting and winning many pitched battles against the oligarchy who wildly celebrated his death.

And while it’s necessary to deeply critique the Maduro government, the present situation requires the political clarity to take a bold, unqualified stance against the U.S.-backed opposition, rather than a rambling “nonpartisan” analysis that pretends a life or death struggle isn’t currently taking place.

Yes, a growing number of Venezuelans are incredibly frustrated by Maduro, and yes, his policies have exacerbated the current crisis, but while an active counter-revolutionary offensive continues the political priority needs to be aimed squarely against the oligarchy, not Maduro. There remains a mass movement of revolutionaries in Venezuela dedicated to Chavismo and to defending Maduro’s government against the violent anti-regime tactics, but it’s these labor and community groups that the U.S. left never mentions, as it would pollute their analysis.

The U.S. left seems blissfully unaware of the consequences of the oligarchy stepping into the power vacuum if Maduro was successfully ousted. Such a shoddy analysis can be found in Jacobin’s recent article, Being Honest About Venezuela, which focuses on the problems of Maduro’s government while ignoring the honest reality of the terror the oligarchy would unleash if it returned to power.

How did the U.S. left get it so wrong?

They’ve allowed themselves to get distracted by the zig-zags at the political surface, rather than the rupturing fault lines of class struggle below. They see only leaders and are blinded to how the masses have engaged with them.

Regardless of Maduro’s many stumbles, it’s the rich who are revolting in Venezuela, and if they’re successful it will be the workers and poor who suffer a terrible fate. An analysis of Venezuela that ignores this basic fact belongs either in the trash bin or in the newspapers of the oligarchy. Confusing class interests, or mistaking counter-revolution for revolution in politics is as disorienting as mistaking up for down, night for day.

The overarching issue remains the same since the Venezuelan revolution erupted in 1989’s Caracazo uprising, which initiated a revolutionary movement of working and poor people spurred to action by IMF austerity measures. How did Venezuela’s oligarchy respond to the 1989 protests? By killing hundreds if not thousands of people. Their return to power would unleash similar if not bloodier statistics.

In Venezuela the revolutionary flame has burned longer than most revolutions, its energy funneled into various channels; from rioting, street demonstrations, land and factory occupations, new political parties and radicalized labor-union federations and into the backbone of support for Hugo Chavez’s project, which, to varying degrees supported and even spearheaded many of these initiatives, encouraging the masses to participate directly in politics.

Chavez’s electoral victory meant — and still means — that the oligarchy lost control of the government and much of the state apparatus, a rare event in the life of a nation under capitalism. This contradiction is central to the confusion of the U.S. left: the ruling class lost control of the state, but the oligarchy retained control of key sectors of the economy, including the media.

But who has control of the state if not the oligarchy? It’s too simplistic to say the “working class” has power, because Maduro has not acted as a consistent leader of the working class, seeming more interested in trying to mediate between classes by making concessions to the oligarchy. Maduro’s overly-bureaucratic government also limits the amount of direct democracy the working class needs before the term “worker state” can be applied.

But Maduro’s power base remains the same as it was under Chavez: the working and poor people, and to that extent Maduro can be compared to a trade union president who ignores his members in order to seek a deal with the boss.

A trade union, no matter how bureaucratic, is still rooted in the workplace, its power dependent on dues money and collective action of working people. And even a weak union is better than no union, since removing the protection of the union opens the door to sweeping attacks from the boss that inevitably lower wages, destroy benefits and result in layoffs of the most “outspoken” workers. This is why union members defend their union from corporate attack, even if the leader of the union is in bed with the boss.

History is replete with governments brought forth by revolutionary movements but which failed to take the actions necessary to complete the revolution, resulting in a successful counter-revolution. These revolutionary governments often succeed in breaking the chains of neo-colonialism and allowed for an epoch of social reforms and working class initiative, depending on how long they lasted. Their downfall always results in a counter-revolutionary wave of violence, and sometimes a sea of blood.

This has happened dozens of times across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where the class divisions are sharper, where imperialism plays a larger role, and where the class dynamics are more variegated: the poor are poorer, there is a larger informal labor force, a larger section of small shopkeepers, larger rural population, etc.

Winning significant reforms under capitalism is incredibly difficult, even in rich countries; it is twice as difficult in former colonial countries, due to the death grip the oligarchy has on the economy plus the collaboration of imperialism, which intervenes in financial markets — or with bullets — to prevent the smallest reforms.

The example of Allende’s Chile could be compared to Maduro’s situation in Venezuela. Allende was far from perfect, but can anybody claim that Pinochet’s coup wasn’t a catastrophe for the Chilean working class? In Venezuela the counter-revolution would likely be more devastating, as the oligarchy would have to push back against decades of progress versus Allende’s short-lived government. If it came to power the street violence of the oligarchy would be given the resources of the state, aimed squarely at the working class and poor.

Maduro is no Chavez, it’s true, but he has kept most of Chavez’s victories intact, maintaining social programs in a time of crashing oil prices while the oligarchy demands “pro-market reforms.” He’s essentially kept the barking dogs of the oligarchy at bay, who, if unleashed, would ravage the working class.

The oligarchy has not accepted the balance of power that Chavez-Maduro have tilted in favor of the working class. A new social contract has not been cemented; it is being actively fought for in the streets. Maduro has made some concessions to the oligarchy it’s true, but they have not been fundamental concessions, while he’s left the fundamental victories of the revolution in tact.

The social contract we call Social Democracy in Europe wasn’t finalized until a wave of revolution struck after WWII. Although Maduro would likely be happy with such a social democratic agreement in Venezuela, such agreements have proven impossible in developing countries, especially at a time while global capitalism is attacking the social democratic reforms in the advanced countries.

The Venezuelan ruling class has no intention of accepting the reforms of Chavez, and why would they so long as U.S. imperialism invests heavily in regime change? A ruling class does not accept power-sharing until they face the prospect of losing everything. And nor should Venezuela’s working class accept a “social contract” under current conditions: they have unmet demands that require revolutionary action against the oligarchy. These contradictory pressures are at the heart of Venezuela’s still-unresolved class war, which inevitably leads either to revolutionary action from the left or a successful counter-revolution from the right.

Thus, for a U.S. leftist to declare that either side is equally bad is either bad politics or class treachery. Many leftists went bonkers over Syriza in Greece, and they were right to be hopeful. But after radical rhetoric Syriza succumbed to the demands of the IMF that included devastating neoliberal reforms of austerity cuts, privatizations and deregulation. Maduro has steadfastly refused such a path out of Venezuela’s economic crisis.

This is why Maduro is despised by the rich while the poor generally continue to support the government, although passively but occasionally in giant bursts, such as the hundreds thousands strong May Day mobilization in support of the government’s fight against the violent coup attempts, which was all but ignored by most western media outlets, since it spoiled the regime-change narrative of “everybody hates Maduro.”

The essential difference between Maduro and Chavez will make or break the revolution: while Chavez took action to constantly shift the balance of power in favor of the poor, Maduro simply attempts to maintain the balance of forces handed down to him by Chavez, hoping for some kind of “agreement” from an opposition that has consistently refused all compromise. His ridiculous naivety is a powerful motivating factor for the opposition, who see a stalled revolution in the way a lion views an injured zebra.

Venezuelan expert Jorge Martin explains in an excellent article, how the oligarchy would respond if it succeeded in removing Maduro.

1) they would massively cut public spending

2) implement mass layoffs of the public sector

3) destroy the key social programs of the revolution (health care, education, pension, housing, etc.)

4) there would be a privatization frenzy of public resources, though especially the crown jewel PDVSA, the oil company

5) massive deregulation, including turning back rights for labor and ethnic-minority groups

6) they would attack the organizations of the working class that came into existence or grew under the protection of the Chavez-Maduro governments

This is “Telling the Truth” about Venezuela. The U.S. left should know better, since the ruling class exposed what it would do during the Caracazo Uprising, and later when they briefly came to power in their 2002 coup: they aim to reverse everything, using any means necessary. The documentary “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is still required watching about the 2002 coup.

Maduro may have finally learned his lesson: Venezuela’s crisis has forced him to double down on promoting the interests of the poor. When oil prices collapsed it was inevitable the government would enter a deep crisis, it had only two choices: deep neoliberal reforms or the deepening of the revolution. This will be the litmus test for Maduro, since the middle ground he sought disappeared.

Rather than begging for money from the International Monetary Fund —which would have demanded such Syriza-like reforms — Maduro instead encouraged workers to takeover idle factories while a General Motors factory was nationalized. A new neighborhood-based organization, CLAP, was created that distributes basic foodstuffs at subsidized prices that benefits millions of people.

On May Day this year, in front of hundreds of thousands of supporters, Maduro announced a Constituent Assembly, an attempt to re-engage the masses in the hopes of pushing forward the revolution by creating a new, more progressive constitution.

It’s true that Maduro is using the Constituent Assembly to overcome the obstruction of the oligarchy-dominated National Assembly — whose stated intention is to topple the government — but the U.S. left seems indifferent that Maduro is using the mobilization of the working class (the Constituent Assembly) to overcome the barriers of ruling class.

This distinction is critical: if the Constituent Assembly succeeds in pushing forward the revolution by directly engaging the masses, it will come at the expense of the oligarchy. The Constituent Assembly is being organized to promote more direct democracy, but sections of the U.S. left have been taken in by the U.S. media’s allegations of “authoritarianism.”

Nicolas Maduro (L) and Hugo Chavez (R) (Source: Megazip)

If working and poor people actively engage in the process of creating a new, more progressive constitution and this constitution is approved via referendum by a large majority, it will constitute an essential step forward for the revolution. If the masses are unengaged or the referendum fails, it may signify the death knell of Chavismo and the return of the oligarchy.

And while Maduro is right to use the state as a repressive agent against the oligarchy, an over reliance on the state repression only leads to more contradictions, rather than relying on the self-activity of the workers and poor. Revolutions cannot be won by administrative tinkering, but rather by revolutionary measures consciously implemented by the vast majority. At bottom it’s the actions of ordinary working people that make or break a revolution; if the masses are lulled to sleep the revolution is lost. They must be unleashed not ignored.

It’s clear that Maduro’s politics have not been capable of leading the revolution to success, and therefore his government requires deep criticism combined with organized protest. But there are two kinds of protest: legitimate protest that arises from the needs of working and poor people, and the counter-revolutionary protest based in the neighborhoods of the rich that aim to restore the power of the oligarchy.

Confusing these two kinds of protests are dangerous, but the U.S. left has done precisely this. Maduro is accused of being authoritarian for using police to stop the far-right’s violent “student protests” that seek to restore the oligarchy. Of the many reasons to criticize Maduro this isn’t one of them.

If a rightwing coup succeeds in Venezuela tomorrow, the U.S. left will weep by the carnage that ensues, while not recognizing that their inaction contributed to the bloodshed. By living in the heart of imperialism the U.S. left has a duty to go beyond critiques from afar to direct action at home.

Protesting the Vietnam war helped save the lives of Vietnamese, while the organizing in the 1980’s against the “dirty wars” in Central America limited the destruction levied by the U.S.-backed governments. In both cases the left fell short of what was needed, but at least they understood what was at stake and took action. Now consider the U.S. left of 2017, who can’t lift a finger to re-start the antiwar movement and who supported Bernie Sanders regardless of his longstanding affection for imperialism.

The “pink tide” that blasted imperialism out of much of Latin America is being reversed, but Venezuela has always been the motor-force of the leftward shift, and the bloodshed required to reverse the revolution will be remembered forever, if it’s allowed to happen. Their lives matter too.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image from Photos.de.tibo via Flickr

“’What the Health’ – is the groundbreaking follow-up film from the creators of the award-winning documentary Cowspiracy. The film follows intrepid filmmaker Kip Andersen as he uncovers the secret to preventing and even reversing chronic diseases – and investigates why the nation’s leading health organizations don’t want us to know about it. With heart disease and cancer, the leading causes of death in America, and diabetes at an all-time high, the film reveals possibly the largest health cover-up of our time.”

This is the introduction to the trailer of one of two new documentary, “What the Health”, and “Food Matters”, purportedly showing how the food and pharma industries are conspiring to keep us lingering along sick and unhappy, drug and pharma addicts, consuming more and more unhealthy food saturated with sugar and fat, to lead to increasing pharma- and drug consumption – a spiral ending at the graveyard. 

What the Health – trailer (2 min)

Food Matters – trailer (3 min)

What do these food-war documentaries have in common with the holocaust-type wars and destruction in Iraq and Syria; the devastation of Libya, Afghanistan, Ukraine, the chaos in Sudan, Somalia, all of Central Africa, the destabilization and attempted destabilization of Pakistan, Venezuela, Iran, Ecuador, Bolivia, all of Central America, the Philippines and countless other countries that could make up an entire United Nations by themselves?

Russia and China, are of course, also in the crosshairs of the evil empire. To achieve Full Spectrum Dominance as per the neocons bible, the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), all opposition to the New World Order has to be tamed, come hell or high water – or even a nuclear holocaust.

These wars have everything in common. Everything. They go all hand-in-hand. They want humanity subjugated, suffering from diabetes, cancer and heart diseases, and dying at an increasing pace to have a real impact on population reduction.

Are we blind? Why are we still jumping up and down in front of our TV, in our comfortable armchairs, watching the evening news – watching how countries are destroyed – in far-away places, gobbling up the lies of the commentators – cursing about Venezuela, Russia, Iran and even China, because that’s what the news commentators teaches us to do – why?

Well, this killing is not for us, we are safe, we are protected by our democratic governments military and police, they take good care of us – so we keep swallowing heaps of fat-dripping cheeseburgers, French fries, ice creams, and mega-liters of sugar-loaded sodas.

The food war like the pharmaceutical war fit perfectly the pattern of the Dark State that masterminds Washington. They are joining the war of bombs, canons and guns. These wars show clearly that there are deeper and darker forces at play than we realize. The world population needs to be reduced drastically that the elite can live happily with the limited resources our planet will leave behind. Kissinger and the Rockefeller sponsored Bilderbergers have been advocating this for a long time. We pay no attention. They eat well. Look how old they become? That’s not by accident. Not only that, a smaller population is easier managed, enslaved than a large one.

Remember Kissinger’s infamous saying in the early seventies:

“Who controls food, controls the people, who controls energy controls entire continents, and who controls money controls the world”.

Kissinger is just a spokesman for the Deep Dark State. A patsy. A convinced patsy and a well remunerated patsy. He has conveniently stayed in the background for decades, since Laos, Vietnam and Chile. But, lately he is coming to the fore again. As a chief Zionist, he is a welcome advisor for the neocons, especially as they are strategizing for their last blow.

Why are we blinded?

None of the people in the two trailers, the people who spoke up, scientists, who seem to be so awake – none of them mentioned the end-goal of the elite as responsible for our unhealthy, outright killer food and equally killer medication intake, what we eat, drink, swallow as palliatives for our pains — poisoned by toxins, by GMOs, by fat… you name it.

Do they not know? – Do they not know what could in a very immediate future be implanted in GMOs as long-term debilitating diseases, that will reduce the function of our brains, our vital organs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and finally our heart – but not before we have tried hard with medication and drugs – and our hard-earned money – to stay alive, albeit miserable, but alive – until the stoppage of the heart does us part. Literally and figuratively. Do they really not know? Or do they not dare to tell?

The fear factor. It always reminds of Greece. Everybody on this planet who has a half-wit brain, knows that the destruction of Greece is purposeful, and not recoverable, never as part of the EU and the Euro. Everybody knows that. Tsipras and his entourage stooges know that they are complicit in not only destroying their country, but also the lives of their countrymen.

Yet, nobody says anything. Tsipras knows, he could stop it all by just stepping out of this criminal organization called EU with their fraudulent currency, called euro. He doesn’t dare. Fear. Because he may have been told by the dark masters of the universe what may happen to him, his family, if he doesn’t behave – or worse, if he talks? – Yes, we know what happened to many of those who haven’t heeded the warnings of the dark manipulators.

The same about the food and pharma industry.

Do these scientists who warn us really believe it’s the fast-food and pharma lobby alone behind it all? Do they not suspect more sinister forces behind this human calamity? Do they not see the connection between bombs, food and pharma? – Have they not read Orwell’s1984 – which is being played out in our full sight?

The food and pharma lobby are semi-gods, accompanying the war god, and closely modeled according to the deep dark great god of Satan. They follow his dictum. They are agreed patsies who cash in huge profits on the way to the human graveyard. Population control by government repression, transiting to population reduction by food, wars, drugs, by implanted diseases, genetic diseases… and since lately, by forcefully imposed mass vaccinations.

The Macrons and Gentilonis of this world are the French and Italian ‘trailblazers’ to show the rest of the western world how to deal with a resisting population. It’s already happening in Italy. In France, the law is already prepared, waiting to be approved by Macron’s parliamentary majority after the summer vacation. To most awakened people it’s clear – you can put anything into a vaccine – as well as into a genetically modified food crop – long-drawn-out diseases, genetic diseases that will be difficult to trace back to vaccines or GMOs generations from now. And if – it will be too late.

And we keep having no clue. And if we had a clue, we have lost the sense of solidarity. Without solidarity, without joining hands with other resisters, friends and comrades, against this miserable neocon NWO lot, we are lost. And they know it. That’s why they keep dividing us, with markets and with greed. Be aware and stop falling into the trap. Reach out in solidarity, to others who want to resist.

People have always been lied to by the masters, but the extent of deceit planted upon us day after day, hour after hour, has never been as strong and as intense and Machiavellian as today – when we are, as I said in an earlier article – probably in the ‘final phase‘. The recent G20 summit in Hamburg was just a trial balloon – taking the temperature of the resisters, a benign beginning of the horrors that may come.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

Featured image from IMDb

If the feeling of pity would be worth a damn one would be tempted to feel sorry for the hapless Poles. Now Poland’s leaders have again been seduced, this time by a dangerous Washington stratagem: to try to become the Natural Gas Hub of the EU displacing Germany and pushing Russia out.

The Poles seem to have a penchant to fall for self-destructive projects. That was the case in 1939 when the Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck signed with Britain and later France the Polish-British Common Defense Pact believing that Britain would defend Poland’s sovereignty in the event of a Nazi invasion only to find itself divided as spoils of war by Hitler and Stalin while Britain and France stood by quietly smiling. They had another agenda from the Poles.

It was also the case when the Polish people, especially Lech Walesa, believed the Reagan CIA and National Endowment for Democracy. Solidarność, with millions in CIA and State Department money via the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA NGO-front, took Poland from the frying pan of Soviet control to free market hyperinflation and looting of the nation’s most valuable assets. The “national DNA” if we can speak of such, seems to lack one or more vital amino acids that cause them to distort true perception of who their friends and who their enemies are.

President Trump’s speech receives rapturous reception in Poland (Source: Source: @SebastianLedwon/Twitter)

Now, during the recent “red carpet” reception of US President Trump in Warsaw, the Poles fell all over themselves to embrace the US President and to believe his promises to make Poland a rival to Russian natural gas for the EU. In his July 6 remarks to the meeting of the Three Seas Initiative in Warsaw Trump told the leaders present that they should take US energy exports as an alternative to dependence on Russian gas.

The Three Seas Initiative is a loose effort of 12 Central and East European nations to coordinate energy policies among others. Trump told his Polish audience, clearly referring to Russia,

“Let me be clear about one crucial point. The United States will never use energy to coerce your nations, and we cannot allow others to do so. You don’t want to have a monopoly or a monopolistic situation.”

He then went on to state

 “We are committed to securing your access to alternate sources of energy, so Poland and its neighbors are never again held hostage to a single supplier of energy.”

LNG Energy Hub?

Trump’s stop in Warsaw on route to the Hamburg G20 summit was calculated to feed Polish dreams of US backing to block the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea from Ust Luga south of St. Petersburg to Greifswald, Germany midway between Berlin and Hamburg and 80 km from the Polish border. The Poles are furious that they lose not only the transit fees from Gazprom for a Polish pipeline from Ukraine. They also want to push Russia’s Gazprom out of the huge and growing EU gas energy market. This is precisely the Trump Administration long-term agenda. In his meetings with the Polish government Trump reportedly spoke about LNG gas infrastructure and the enormous possibilities to import US LNG from its surplus of shale gas.

US shale gas sent by special tankers from the very limited number of LNG terminals existing in the USA East Coast and Gulf of Mexico doesn’t come cheap.

This June the first US shipment of LNG came to Poland from Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass plant in Louisiana. And it didn’t come cheap. Energy consultants estimate the price at the Polish LNG terminal in Swinoujscie to be $5.97 per million British thermal units. The same gas in the US market today goes for around $3 per million Btu. Estimates are that Russian gas to Germany costs about $5 per MBtu. The Poles are getting suckered because of their Russophobia and manipulation by Washington.

A NATO Energy Strategy

The Polish strategy has been a long time in the making, and supported by the US and the Atlantic Council. Already in 2014 Poland began construction on its liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, in the Baltic port of Swinoujscie at a cost of nearly $1 billion. It can accept 5 billion cubic metres of gas per year, and is discussing doubling that. But that’s only the first part of what in fact is a NATO strategy to drive Russian gas out of EU markets.

The strategy calls for making Poland a natural gas hub for Central Europe via linking of Poland with Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic through interconnectors.

It’s part of what’s called the Three Seas Initiative, founded last year by Poland and Croatia to link energy strategies among the twelve countries bordering the Adriatic, the Baltic and the Black Sea. Croatia’s government is also trying to construct a controversial floating LNG terminal on the island of Krk in the Adria amid major opposition in the popular Croatian tourist region of Istria. In addition to Poland and Croatia the initiative includes Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia and Austria, almost all of whom are presently relying on Russian natural gas.

Atlantic Council, the Washington-based think tank de facto of NATO strategy, is the public driver of the Three Seas Initiative to try to push Russian gas out from the former communist countries of Eastern and Central Europe. Ironically, Germany and other Western EU countries back the Gazprom Nord Stream II already in construction, putting them in conflict with Poland’s Three Seas Initiative.

In May the Atlantic Council held a conference in Washington on the Three Seas strategy. Former Obama National Security Director, General James Jones gave a keynote speech in which he pushed the strategic importance for the Trump Administration to back the Three Seas Initiative on energy “independence” from Russian gas. In his remarks Jones stated that the purpose of the Initiative is to reduce or eliminate the “Kremlin’s strong hand” in the European energy sector. Trump’s July 6 speech to the Three Seas Initiative in Warsaw could have been written, and maybe it was, by General Jones himself. Strategic geopolitical Washington policies are not penned by Presidents, at least not since the CIA assassination of JFK in November 1963. Making Poland an energy hub along with Croatia for import of very expensive US LNG natural gas is Washington geopolitical strategy against Russia.

New EU Fault Lines

In addition to taking aim at Russia energy influence in the eastern and central European EU states, the Trump policy on LNG gas to Poland and potentially Croatia is aimed at hitting the dominant influence of Germany and France over EU affairs. The latest US Senate economic sanctions against Russia take direct aim at the companies involved in backing the German-Russian Nord Stream II pipeline expansion across the Baltic independent of Poland transit. If passed by the House of Representatives and signed by Trump, it would impose severe economic sanctions on EU companies involved in energy projects with Russia, such as Nord Stream II.

Concrete Weight Coating Begins on Rügen for Nord Stream 2 Pipes (Source: Nord Stream 2)

The governments of Germany and Austria immediately registered vehement opposition to the latest possible US sanctions for obvious reasons. On June 15 the German and Austrian foreign ministers issued an unusually US-critical joint statement. It declared in very strong terms, “Europe’s energy supply is a matter for Europe, not the United States of America. We cannot accept … the threat of illegal extraterritorial sanctions against European companies that participate in the development of European energy supply.” Austria boycotted the Trump July 6 appearance before the Three Seas Initiative.

What is developing are new major EU fault lines around the economic lifeline of energy, explicitly of natural gas energy. On the one side is the axis between especially Germany but also Austria, France and other EU states currently tied to major Russian gas supplies. Now emerges clearly the opposed axis of Poland allied with Washington. How this plays out in the next months and years will have major implications for war and peace not only in Europe.

Washington’s New ‘Gas Great Game’

One feature of the Washington Deep State is that their strategic imagination is limited to what seemed to work for them a century or so ago until recently, namely control of energy. In the past several years, in addition to countless Pentagon wars for control of oil such as the 2003 occupation of Iraq and the destruction of Libya in 2011, the US-steered war against Bashar al-Assad until today, is fundamentally a war for control of energy, specifically natural gas energy.

If we view the often confusing Trump Administration policy aims through the special prism of global domination of natural gas and strategic denial of same for other rivals, a clear strategy is now visible. One key cornerstone of the Trump strategy is the attempt to make Poland a European hub for US shale gas via support of the Three Seas Initiative.

A second cornerstone of the new Washington strategy is to sabotage an emerging Qatar-Iran-Syria-Turkey natural gas alliance to bring the world’s largest natural gas reserves in the shared gas field in the Persian Gulf straddling both Iranian and Qatari territorial waters.

That sabotage was launched between Saudi Arabia and Washington during Trump’s recent visit to Riyadh where among other issues Trump encouraged a Saudi-led Sunni “Arab NATO.” The result was the bizarre Saudi-led sanctions against Qatar for ties to Iran and support of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism. Bizarre because as most of the observant world knows, Saudi Arabia today is the world’s leading sponsor and financier of terrorism along with Washington and has been since at least the support for Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda Mujahideen in Afghanistan after 1979. Until recently when they realized winning the war in Syria was hopeless, Qatar had its hands dirty with aid to terrorists in Syria. That was then apparently. In reality the Qatar blockade by the Saudis is aimed not at stopping radical terrorists. It is aimed at keeping Iranian and Qatari and potentially Syrian gas out of the EU gas market, potentially the world’s largest gas consumer in coming years.

Then add to these two key elements of US gas war the recent attempt to seduce China into becoming reliant on US shale gas imports. One outcome of the April meeting at Mar-a-Lago between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was the announcement that the US Commerce Department will support and facilitate export of US shale gas in the form of LNG to China. China presently is a major importer of natural gas from Qatar and is about to become a significant Russia gas importer when the large Power of Siberia gas pipeline to China begins operation in 2019. Washington is playing on China’s understandable wish to have several different gas suppliers for China’s strategy of dramatically lessening coal power reliance.

The Fatal Flaw

There is a fatal flaw in the new Washington gas wars geopolitical strategy. Despite the fact that there are another 12 LNG ports under construction along the US East Coast and Gulf of Mexico, the reliability of USA shale gas supplies over the long term is highly dubious.

Much has been written about the enormous environmental damage from hydraulic ‘fracking’ required to seismically induce liberation of the shale gas from low permeability shale rock formations. The list includes a high demand for freshwater, up to 10 million gallons per well. It includes production of large amounts of highly toxic waste water, of induced seismicity–earthquakes, of greenhouse gas emissions, and groundwater contamination.

To bypass these issues which in many states violate clean Water Act laws, Scott Pruitt, the Trump head of the Environmental Protection Administration responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act has indicated he favors lifting many environmental restrictions on shale gas fracking to boost gas production. That would mean huge water needs across the USA from Pennsylvania to Texas to North Dakota. It would also mean a quantum jump in toxic groundwater pollution.

The most serious fatal flaw however on the Trump USA shale export domination plan is the stability of shale gas production itself. Because of the geology of unconventional shale gas, the well production has a relatively high beginning flow rate. However, as repeated tests have shown, shale gas wells experience a hyperbolic decline in volume after about 4-5 years. tests indicate that gas volume can decline by some 80% after 7-8 years. This means that perhaps 80% of the profit of a shale well comes only in the first 5-7 years before dropping dramatically. This means that to continue the levels of gas output far more wells must be drilled at a far higher cost in terms of gas price to the end users as well as costs to the environment.

Until now shale gas drillers have focused on what are called “sweet spots” such as the West Texas Permian Basin where large volumes of gas can generate large profits. The glut in domestic US shale gas is being relieved by a recent law allowing gas and oil export for the first time since the energy crisis of the 1970’s. However in recent months alarming signs of a kind of present-state “peak” in shale gas at current levels of investment are emerging.

According to the June 16th issue of the energy industry newsletter, OilPrice.com, shale oil production in the very active Texas Permian Basin may already be in decline. That means shale gas will soon follow. OilPrice.com in their subscriber report states, “The Permian Basin has also seen productivity run into a brick wall, with new-well production per rig having declined every month so far this year. The extraordinary productivity increases came to a halt in 2016. Back in August 2016, the average rig could produce just over 700 barrels of oil per day from a new well. That figure has dropped to an estimated 602 barrels per day for July 2017. Falling productivity suggests that the sweetest spots have been taken up, and that if the industry wants to produce more, it will have to spend more and drill in marginal areas.”

This is the fatal flaw which everyone is ignoring, especially Poland in the US shale gas seduction.

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.”

Featured image from New Eastern Outlook

The latest series of NATO Sea Breeze maneuvers that began on Ukrainian territory became clear evidence of the rapid expansion and entrenching of military presence of the West on the territory of Ukraine. For the first time of all twenty-year history of these exercises, the civil airport of the of the million-inhabitant Odessa became an epicenter of military activity. In the former years the NATO military personnel were ashamed to show so openly to the general public the scale of their activity on the Ukrainian territory. But now, seemingly, all shame was rejected. Especially as the local “public” for three years was fooled by the mantra that “NATO is the only savior of Ukraine from Russian aggression.” 

These days the airport of Odessa turned into a natural NATO airfield that only just manages to receive and send military aircraft with staff and military equipment. The Odessa “patriotic” Dumskaya.Net publication, literally choking with delight at such proximity to NATO “saviors”, regularly publishes photoreports on these take-offs and landings, from which it is possible to have a certain notion of the plans of the alliance’s command. Thus, just in a week in Odessa the arrival of the following military plans of the alliance was recorded.

U.S. Air Force S-130 military transport plane. Repeated arrivals were recorded.

S-17 Military Transport Plane from Hungary participates in the transfer of NATO employees.

A-400 Military transport plane of Great Britain

But, perhaps, the most interesting visitor was the latest American distant anti-submarine Poseidon R-8 plane, which in general arrived in Ukraine for the first time.

The “Poseidons” didn’t deliver any freight. They arrived precisely in their main quality – a distant anti-submarine reconnaissance plane. Moreover, they came with an obvious view to a further Odessa future. Her is the curious details that the same “Dumskaya.Net” presented:

“Both reconnaissance planes landed at the Odessa airport with an interval of 25 minutes. Before them the transport C-130J ‘Hercules’ landed, which ‘covered’ the landing of the confidential American equipment. It carried out inspection of the airport and all the strip regarding reliability, and only after the positive decision both ‘Poseidons’ followed its example…”

Here it is important to understand the following. In ordinary life these strategic “sea hunters” are based rather far from the territory of the former USSR – at the Italian air base Sigonella, which makes their every sortie to the territories of the Black Sea and, in particular, to the coast of the Russian Crimea a rather long and expensive action.  Taking into account this fact, the location of the “Poseidons” on a stationary basis in Odessa, or in its vicinities, can significantly raise their operational opportunities for continuous control of this water area.

In this regard the unprecedented activity of the Kiev Ministry of Defence attracts attention, which literally goes all out in order to maximally increase the restoration of the former large Soviet air base in the city of Artsyz, capable of receiving all existing types of transport planes. It is obvious that the transfer of this airfield to the order of NATO will provide the alliance with a fully-fledged base for the solving of all complex logistic, operational, and tactical tasks in this theatre of military operations.

Thus, Ukraine, legally without being a NATO member, actually continues to turn into a military outpost of this bloc, sharpened for use exclusively against Russia.

Translated from Russian, originally published by NewsFront.Info, translated by Ollie Richardson and Angelina Siard

All images in this article are from the author.

According to a recent infographic by the New York Times, 79,000 US troops have currently been deployed in Europe out of 210,000 total US troops stationed all over the world, including 47,000 in Germany, 15,000 in Italy and 17,000 in the rest of Europe. By comparison, the number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan is only 8,400 which is regarded as an occupied country. Thus, Europe is nothing more than a backyard of corporate America.

Both NATO and EU were conceived during the Cold War to offset the influence of Soviet Union in Europe. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 and the Maastricht Treaty that consolidated the European Community and laid the foundations of the European Union was signed in February 1992.

The basic purpose of the EU has been nothing more than to lure the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe into the folds of the Western capitalist bloc by offering incentives and inducements, particularly in the form of agreements to abolish internal border checks between the EU member states, thus allowing the free movement of labor from the impoverished Eastern Europe to the prosperous countries of the Western Europe.

No wonder then, the neoliberal political establishments, and particularly the deep state of the US, are as freaked out about the outcome of Brexit as they were during the Ukrainian Crisis in November 2013, when Viktor Yanukovych suspended the preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union and tried to take Ukraine back into the folds of the Russian sphere of influence by accepting billions of dollars of loan package offered by Vladimir Putin to Ukraine.

In this regard, the founding of the EU has been similar to the case of Japan and South Korea in the Far East where 45,000 and 28,500 US troops have currently been deployed, respectively, according to the aforementioned infographic.

After the Second World War, when Japan was about to fall in the hands of geographically-adjacent Soviet Union, the Truman Administration authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to subjugate Japan and also to send a signal to the leaders of the Soviet Union, which had not developed their nuclear program at the time, to desist from encroaching upon Japan in the east and West Germany in Europe.

Then, during the Cold War, American entrepreneurs invested heavily in the economies of Japan and South Korea and made them model industrialized nations to forestall the expansion of communism in the Far East.

Similarly, after the Second World War, Washington embarked on the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe with an economic assistance of $13 billion, equivalent to hundreds of billions of dollars in the current dollar value. Since then, Washington has maintained its military and economic dominance over Western Europe.

Notwithstanding, there is an essential stipulation in the European Union’s charter of union according to which the developing economies of Europe that joined the EU allowed free movement of goods (free trade) only on the reciprocal condition that the developed countries would allow free movement of labor.

What’s obvious in this stipulation is the fact that the free movement of goods, services and capital only benefits the countries that have a strong manufacturing base, and the free movement of people only favors the developing economies where labor is cheap.

Now, when the international financial institutions, like the IMF and WTO, promote free trade by exhorting the developing countries all over the world to reduce tariffs and subsidies without the reciprocal free movement of labor, whose interests do such institutions try to protect? Obviously, they try to protect the interests of their biggest donors by shares, i.e. the developed countries.

Regardless, while joining the EU, Britain compromised on the rights of its working class in order to protect the interests of its bankers and industrialists, because free trade with the rest of the EU countries spurred British exports.

The British working classes overwhelmingly voted in the favor of Brexit because after Britain’s entry into the EU and when the agreements on abolishing internal border checks between the EU member states became effective, the cheaper labor force from the Eastern and Central Europe flooded the markets of Western Europe; and consequently, the wages of native British workers dropped and it also became difficult for them to find jobs, because foreigners were willing to do the same job for lesser pays.

Hence, raising the level of unemployment among the British workers and consequent discontentment with the EU. The subsequent lifting of restrictions on the Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the European Union in January 2014 further exacerbated the problem and consequently, the majority of the British electorate voted in a June 2016 referendum to opt out of the EU.

The biggest incentive for the British working class to vote for Brexit has been that the East European workers will have to leave Britain after its exit from the EU, and the jobs will once again become available with better wages to the native British workforce.

Although the EU’s labor provisions ensure adequate wages and safeguard the rights of workers, but the British working class chose to quit the EU on the basis of demand and supply of labor. With East European workers out of the country, the supply of labor will reduce hence increasing the demand. The native British workforce can then renegotiate better terms and conditions from the owners of industries and businesses, and it will also ensure ready availability of jobs.

Regardless, instead of lamenting the abysmal failure of globalization and neoliberal economic policies, we need to ask a simple question that why do workers choose to leave their homes and hearths, and families and friends in their native countries and opt to work in a foreign country? They obviously do it for better wages.

In that case, however, instead of offering band aid solutions, we need to revise the prevailing global economic order and formulate prudent and far-reaching economic and trade policies that can reduce the imbalance of wealth distribution between the developed and developing nations, hence reducing the incentive for immigrant workers to seek employment in the developed countries.

Free movement of workers only benefits a small number of individuals and families, because the majority of workforce is left behind to rot in their native developing countries where economy is not doing as well as in the developed world, thanks to the neoliberal economic policies. A comprehensive reform of the global economic and trade policies, on the other hand, will benefit everyone, except the bankers, industrialists and the beneficiaries of the existing neoliberal world order.

More to the point, the promotion of free trade by the mainstream neoliberal media has been the norm in the last several decades, but the implementation of agreements to abolish internal border controls between the EU member states has been an unprecedented exception.

Free trade benefits the industrialized nations of the EU, particularly Germany and to some extent the rest of the developed economies of the Western Europe; but the free movement of labor benefits the cheaper workforce of the impoverished Eastern and Central Europe.

The developed economies of the Western Europe would never have acceded to the condition of free movement of labor that goes against their economic interests; but the political establishment of the US, which is the hub of corporate power and wields enormous influence in the Western capitalist bloc, must have persuaded the unwilling states of the Western Europe to yield to the condition against their national interests, in order to wean away the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe from the Russian influence.

Had there been any merit to the founding of the EU, the Western Europe would have promptly accepted Turkey’s request to join the EU. But they kept delaying the issue of Turkish membership to the EU for decades, because with a population of 78 million, Turkey is one of the most populous countries in Eurasia.

Millions of Turks working in Germany have already become a burden on the welfare economy of their host country. Turkey’s accession to the EU would have opened the floodgates of immigrant workers seeking employment in the Western Europe.

Moreover, Turkey is already a member of the NATO and a longstanding and reliable partner of the Western powers; while the limited offer to join the EU, as I have already described, serves as an inducement to the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe to forswear their allegiance to Russia and to become the strategic allies of the Western powers.

Thus, all the grandstanding and moral posturing of unity and equality of opportunity aside, the hopelessly neoliberal institution, the EU, in effect, is nothing more than the civilian counterpart of the Western military alliance against the erstwhile Soviet Union, the NATO, that employs a much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare to win over political allies and to isolate the adversaries that dare to sidestep from the global trade and economic policy as laid down by the Western capitalist bloc.

Finally, the fabled divide-and-rule policy that has been deployed by imperialist powers to weaken resistance movements against imperialism in their former colonies is a historically proven fact, but at the same time, neocolonial powers also use unite-and-rule strategy to create friendly alliances and to institute a centralized command and control structure in order to buttress the global neocolonial world order.

Despite the spits and spurts of World War Three, it seems the United States (at least part of the establishment) and Russia are beginning to move toward a cooling of their approaches to the Syrian crisis. While we have seen this many times in the past – the apparent mutual understanding of Russia and the U.S. – we have been consistently been rattled by an abrupt push by the United States toward a greater involvement in Syria and a push that could very well be the catalyst for a third world war.

While there obviously remains the possibility that the United States will once again lash out like a dying lunatic empire, risking the lives of everyone on earth, we might also ask whether or not the U.S. has had a change in strategy or even perhaps whether or not the American “Plan B” is coming to fruition.

U.S. Bases In Syria Set The Borders For A Federalized Country

The United States is currently, by stealth, setting up a situation in which it is firmly entrenched in its illegal occupation of Syrian territory. The American bases in Syria which have now reached a count of eight, possibly even nine according to some sources, follow along a distinct line of what will be the formation of the borders of a fractured Syria and the creation of a Kurdistan. Combined with Israel’s illegal occupation of the Golan Heights, the United States has set up a number of bases that traverse Kurdish held territory both in the North near Ayn al-Arab (Kobane) and all along the Turkish border as well as throughout the southeast of the country in territory taken by the Syria Democratic Forces, a brigade of fighters made up of Kurdish extremists and Islamic terrorists.

The reason for the U.S. bases is not so much to back up the SDF forces in their military campaigns. After all, the SDF is merely just a hodgepodge of Kurds and Arab terrorists, both of whom are being used and supported by the West to destroy and destabilize Syria. Instead, the United States forces are being strategically placed so as to prevent the SAA from retaking territory in its north and southeastern regions. The U.S. knows that the Syrian military cannot withstand a direct confrontation with the U.S. military and it is becoming abundantly clear that Russia is not willing to risk a direct confrontation with the U.S. over the questions of Syrian border integrity, particularly in the southeastern desert regions. It seem as long as Syria retains a government friendly to Russia and Russian interests, Moscow will be content to see a smaller Syria where a larger one previously existed.

With this in mind, it is easy to see the borders of a Kurdistan slowly coming into view.

As Vanessa Beeley writes for 21st Century Wire,

In the North, we can speculate that the US is trying to create optimum conditions for an autonomous Kurdish region and the eventual partitioning of Syria, following the already skewed US road map. According to Gevorg Mirzayan, Associate Professor of Political Science at Russia’s Finance University, Kurds control 20% of Syrian territory, when ISIS is defeated the likelihood is that they will want to declare a “sovereign” state. This would play into, not only US, but primarily Israel’s hands.

The US/Israeli agenda has clearly been to form a buffer zone inside all Syrian borders from North to East to South preventing Syrian access to neighbouring country borders & territory and reducing Syria to a geopolitically isolated, internalized peninsular.

“We’ve even set up a base at Al Tanf in the southern part, it’s an American base within the country of Syria,” Black said. “You can’t get a more obvious violation of international law than to actually move in and set up a military base in a sovereign country that has never taken any offensive action towards our country.” ~ Senator Richard Black

The US is relentlessly flaunting international law, as it has throughout this protracted conflict – it has established, inside Syria, almost as many bases as it has set up in its regional, rogue state allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Syria, a country that the US has been punishing for over six years, via economic, media and militant terrorism. The lawlessness of the US hegemon has now reached epic proportions and threatens to engulf Syria and the region in sectarian conflict for a while yet thanks to its Machiavellian meddling in a sovereign nation’s affairs on almost every front.

One need only to examine the map provided in Beeley’s article to see exactly where the U.S. bases are located and how they essentially form the borders of a Kurdistan region inside Syria. But if there is any doubt that the U.S. is simply using the SDF as a proxy spearhead force (perhaps less antagonistic to the U.S. than its al-Qaeda proxies), one need only read the words of a senior representative of the SDF, when he stated that,

“The US is setting up its military bases in the territories that were liberated from Daesh by our fighters during the fight against terrorism.”

Beeley quotes a FARS News report whose source lists six U.S. military bases in Syria.

“The US has set up two airports in Hasaka, one airport in Qamishli, two airports in al-Malekiyeh (Dirik), and one more airport in Tal Abyadh at border with Turkey in addition to a military squad center in the town of Manbij in northeastern Aleppo,” Hamou said.

Beeley then goes on to list a number of American bases mentioned by Reuters in 2016. She writes,

In March 2016, a Reuters report also discussed the US establishment of military air-bases in North East Syria, in Hasaka and in Northern Syria, in Kobani. Both areas that are controlled by Kurdish forces, maintained by the US, and championed by Israel in their bid for statehood and independence from Syria which would inevitably entail the annexing of Syrian territory.

“The Erbil-based news website BasNews, quoting a military source in the Kurdish-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), said most of the work on a runway in the oil town of Rmeilan in Hasaka was complete while a new air base southeast of Kobani, straddling the Turkish border, was being constructed.” ~ Reuters

Federalization – America’s Plan B

It is obvious not only from events on the ground but also from declarations made early on by U.S. government officials and by published writings of corporate-financier think tanks and Neo-Con organizations that the “Plan A” of the Western coalition was the total destruction of the Syrian government in the same manner as what happened in Libya in 2011. However, six years on, due to the assistance provided by Russia, the Syrian government has held itself together and has even reversed many of the gains made by Western-backed terrorists. Therefore, a “Plan B” has been openly discussed in the same circles as the ones which openly called for the complete destruction of Syria years earlier.

Consider the op-ed published by Reuters and written by Michael O’Hanlon, entitled “Syria’s One Hope May Be As Dim As Bosnia’s Once Was.” The article argues essentially that the only way Russia and the United States will ever be able to peacefully settle the Syrian crisis is if the two agree to a weakened and divided Syria, broken up into separate pieces.

O’Hanlon wrote,

To find common purpose with Russia, Washington should keep in mind the Bosnia model, devised to end the fierce Balkan conflicts in the 1990s. In that 1995 agreement, a weak central government was set up to oversee three largely autonomous zones.

In similar fashion, a future Syria could be a confederation of several sectors: one largely Alawite (Assad’s own sect), spread along the Mediterranean coast; another Kurdish, along the north and northeast corridors near the Turkish border; a third primarily Druse, in the southwest; a fourth largely made up of Sunni Muslims; and then a central zone of intermixed groups in the country’s main population belt from Damascus to Aleppo. The last zone would likely be difficult to stabilize, but the others might not be so tough.

Under such an arrangement, Assad would ultimately have to step down from power in Damascus. As a compromise, however, he could perhaps remain leader of the Alawite sector. A weak central government would replace him. But most of the power, as well as most of the armed forces would reside within the individual autonomous sectors — and belong to the various regional governments. In this way, ISIL could be targeted collectively by all the sectors.

Once this sort of deal is reached, international peacekeepers would likely be needed to hold it together — as in Bosnia. Russian troops could help with this mission, stationed, for example, along the Alawite region’s borders.

This deal is not, of course, ripe for negotiation. To make it plausible, moderate forces must first be strengthened. The West also needs to greatly expand its training and arming of various opposition forces that do not include ISIL or al-Nusra. Vetting standards might also have to be relaxed in various ways. American and other foreign trainers would need to deploy inside Syria, where the would-be recruits actually live — and must stay, if they are to protect their families.

Meanwhile, regions now accessible to international forces, starting perhaps with the Kurdish and Druse sectors, could begin receiving humanitarian relief on a much expanded scale. Over time, the number of accessible regions would grow, as moderate opposition forces are strengthened.

Though it could take many months, or even years, to achieve the outcome Washington wants, setting out the goals and the strategy now is crucial. Doing so could provide a basis for the West’s working together with — or at least not working against — other key outside players in the conflict, including Russia, as well as Turkey, the Gulf states and Iraq.

O’Hanlon is no stranger to the Partition Plan for Syria. After all, he was the author the infamous Brookings Institution report “Deconstructing Syria: A New Strategy For America’s Most Hopeless War,” in June, 2015 where he argued essentially the same thing.

In this article for Brookings, a corporate-financier funded “think tank” that has been instrumental in the promotion of the war against Syria since very early on, O’Hanlon argued for the “relaxation” of vetting processes for “rebels” being funded by the U.S. government, the direct invasion of Syria by NATO military forces, and the complete destruction of the Syrian government. O’Hanlon argued for the creation of “safe zones” as a prelude to these goals.

Yet, notably, O’Hanlon also mentioned the creation of a “confederal” Syria as well. In other words, the breakup of the solidified nation as it currently exists. He wrote,

The end-game for these zones would not have to be determined in advance. The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones and a modest (eventual) national government. The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force, if this arrangement could ever be formalized by accord. But in the short term, the ambitions would be lower—to make these zones defensible and governable, to help provide relief for populations within them, and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.

Such a plan is reminiscent of the Zbigniew Brzezinski method of “microstates and ministates.” In other words, the construction of a weak, impotent state based upon ethnicity, religion, and other identity politics but without the ability to resist the will of larger nations, coalitions, and banking/industrial corporations.[1]

Federalization Is An Old Israeli Plan

Written in 1982, Israel’s famous “Yinon Plan” also called for the fractionalization of Syria, revealing that what is today a “Plan B” was once a “Plan A.” The plan advocated for the federalization of Syria as strategic destruction on the Syrian state by the Israelis and their allies. As Khalil Nakleh wrote in the opening to Oded Yinon’s “A Strategy For Israel In The Nineteen Eighties,”

The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.

In making her case against a Kurdish state inside Syria, Maram Susli also referenced the philosophy of the Yinon Plan. She wrote,

Israel wants to establish a Kurdistan, as a Sunni-Iranian rival to Shi’ite Iran. They hope such a Sunni state will block Iran’s access to Syria and will also prevent Lebanese resistance against Israeli invasion. This was all outlined in Israel’s Yinon Plan published in 1982. Israel is an extension of US influence and hegemony in the region, the Israeli lobby holds much sway over US politics. Strengthening Israel in the region will strengthen US influence over the region, once again shrinking Russian influence and pushing the nuclear power into a corner. Journalists who show a sense of confusion about the reason the West is supportive of Kurdish expansionism should consider this point.

Finally, a designated ‘Kurdish area’ in Syria is deeply rooted in ethnocentric chauvinism. A US state strictly designated for Hispanic, White or Black ethnicity would be outrageous to suggest and would be considered racist. But the use of ethnicity as a means to divide and conquer is the oldest and most cynical form of imperialism. Syria must remain for all Syrians, not just for one minority. Voices who oppose this should be discouraged. The Syrian Constitution should continue to resist all ethnocentric religious-based parties. If there is a change to the Syrian constitution, it should be the removal of the word Arab from Syrian Arab Republic. In spite of the fact that the vast majority Syrians speak the Arabic language, the majority of Syrian are historically not ethnically Arab. All sections of Syrian society should be treated equally under the Syrian flag.

For an in-depth discussion of the concept of federalizing Syria, I suggest reading my article, “U.S. Increasing Involvement In Syria Yet Again As Regional, World Tensions Flare – Are We Edging Toward Federalization, World War Three In Syria?”

It should also be noted that a Kurdish state would have both strategic and economic reverberations for Syria as well as for Hezbollah and Iran whose land supply lines would be effectively cut, a massive strategic victory for Israel and thus for the “deep state” apparatus of the U.S. government who wish to see the destruction of all governments who do not bend to its will.

The Kurdish Question

The question of whether or not Kurdish groups should be allowed their own ethno-centric state either within Syria, Iraq, Iran, or Turkey is one that has confused many onlookers, particularly in recent years as Kurdish militias have fought valiantly against ISIS (despite working with other radical Islamic terror organizations). First, it is important to separate Kurdish fighting groups like the PKK and YPG from Kurdish people. These groups are not representative of Kurds as a whole. Instead, they represent a radical, violent, extremist ideology of Communism and bizarre cultural Marxism.

Second, it is important to separate Syrian Kurds from Kurds in Syria. The former are Syrians who are Kurds or, in other words, Syrian citizens who are also Kurds. The latter are Kurds from other countries who happen to be inside Syria.

Maram Susli (aka Syrian Girl) wrote an article in April, 2016, entitled “Why A Kurdish Enclave In Syria Is A Very Bad Idea,” where she outlined five major reasons why the idea of creating a “Kurdish state” or “Kurdish autonomy” in Syria is entirely counterproductive. She wrote,

1. Kurds are not a majority in the Area PYD/YPG are attempting to annex

The region of Al Hasakah, which the Kurdish Nationalist Party (PYD) and its military wing YPG have declared a federal Kurdish state, does not have a Kurdish majority. Al Hasakah Governorate is a mosaic of Assyrian Christians, Armenians, Turkmen, Kurds and Bedouin Arabs. Of the 1.5 millionpopulation of Al Hasakah, only 40% are ethnically Kurdish. Moreover, parts of Al Hasakah Governorate, such as Al Hasakah district, is less than 15% Kurdish (!). In the other large minorities in the area the Arabs and Assyrian Christians form a majority. Declaring a small area with a wide array of ethnic groups as belonging to a specific ethnic minority is a recipe for oppression.

The Kurdish population of Al Hasakah has also been heavily inflitrated by illegal Kurdish immigration from Turkey. Kurdish immigration to Syria began in the 1920’s and occurred in several waves after multiple failed Kurdish uprisings against Turkey. It continued throughout the century. In 2011 the Kurdish population in Syria reached between 1.6 to 2.3 million, but 420,000 of these left Syria for Iraqand Turkey as a result of the current conflict. Some Syrian Kurds have lived in Homs and Damascus for hundreds of years and are heavily assimilated into the Syrian society. However, Kurdish illegal immigrants who mostly reside in north Syria, and who could not prove their residence in Syria before 1945, complain of oppression when they were not granted the rights of Syrian citizens. Syrian law dictates that only a blood born Syrian whose paternal lineage is Syrian has a right to Syrian citizenship. No refugee whether Somali, Iraqi or Palestinian has been granted Syrian citizenship no matter how long their stay. In spite of this, in 2011 the Syrian President granted Syrian citizenship to 150,000 Kurds. This has not stopped the YPG from using illegal Kurdish immigrants who were not granted citizenship as a rationale for annexing Syrian land. Those who promote Federalism are imposing the will of a small minority – that is not of Syrian origin – on the whole of Al Hasakah’s population and the whole of Syria.

2. It is Undemocratic to Impose Federalism on the Majority of Syrians

PYD did not bother to consult with other factions of Syrian society before its unilateral declaration of Federalism. The other ethnicities that reside in Al Hasake governate, which PYD claims is now an autonomous Kurdish state, have clearly rejected federalism. An assembly of Syrian clans and Arab tribes in Al Hasaka and the Assyrian Democratic Organization (ADO) rejected PYD’s federalism declaration. In Geneva, both the Syrian government and the opposition rejected PYD’s federalism declaration. Furthermore, PYD does not represent all of Syria’s Kurdish population. The Kurdish faction of Syrian national coalition condemned PYD’s federalism declaration. Most of Syria’s Kurds do not live in Al Hasakah and many that do work outside it. Thousands of Kurds have joined ISIS and are fighting for an Islamic State not a Kurdish one.

Unilateral declaration of federalism carries no legitimacy since federalism can only exist with a constitutional change and a Referendum. Federalism is unlikely to garner much support from the bulk of Syria’s population, 90-93% of whom is not Kurdish. Knowing this, PYD have banned residents of Al Hasakah from voting in the upcoming Parliamentary elections to be held across the nation. This shows the will of the people in Al Hasakah is already being crushed by PYD. It is undemocratic to continue to discuss federalism as a possibility when it has been rejected by so many segments of Syrian society. Ironically we are told the purpose of the US’ Regime change adventure in Syria is to bring democracy to the middle east.

3. Federalism May Risk Ethnic cleansing of Assyrian Christian and other minorities

Since the Kurdish population are not a majority in the areas PYD are trying to annex, the past few years have revealed that PYD/YPG are not beyond carrying out ethnic cleansing of non-Kurdish minorities in an attempt to achieve a demographic shift. The main threat to Kurdish ethnocentric territorial claims over the area are the other large minorities, the Arabs and the Assyrian Christians.

Salih Muslim, the leader of PYD, openly declared his intention to conduct an ethnic cleansing campaign against Syrian Arabs who live in what he now calls Rojava. “One day those Arabs who have been brought to the Kurdish areas will have to be expelled,” said Muslim in an interview with Serek TV. Over two years since that interview he has fulfilled his word, as YPG begun burning Arab villages around Al Hasakah Province hoping to create a demographic shift. It is estimated that ten thousandsArab villagers have been ethnically cleansed from Al Hasake province so far. The villages around Tal Abayad have suffered the most as Kurdish expansionists seek to connect the discontiguous population centres of Al Hasakah and Al Raqqa. “The YPG burnt our village and looted our houses,” said Mohammed Salih al-Katee, who left Tel Thiab Sharki, near the city of Ras al-Ayn, in December.

YPG have also begun a campaign of intimidation, murder and property confiscation against the Assyrian Christian minority. The YPG and PYD made it a formal policy to loot and confiscate the property of those who had escaped their villages after an ISIS attack, in the hope of repopulating Assyrian villages with Kurds. The Assyrians residents of the Khabur area in Al Hasaka province formed a militia called the Khabour Guard in the hope of defending their villages against ISIS attacks. The Khabur Guard council leaders protested the practice of looting by Kurdish YPG militia members who looted Assyrian villages that were evacuated after ISIS attacked them. Subsequently, the YPG assassinated the leader of the Khabur Guard David Jindo and attempted to Assassinate Elyas Nasser. At first the YPG blamed the assassination on ISIS but Elyas Nasser, who survived, was able to exposethe YPG’s involvement from his hospital bed. Since the assassination YPG has forced the Khabour Guard to disarm and to accept YPG ‘protection.’ Subsequently most Assyrian residents of the Khabour who had fled to Syrian Army controlled areas of Qamishli City could not return to their villages.

The Assyrian Christian community in Qamishli has also been harassed by YPG Kurdish militia. YPG attacked an Assyrian checkpoint killing one fighter of the Assyrian militia Sootoro and wounding three others. The checkpoint was set up after three Assyrian restaurants were bombed on December 20, 2016in an attack that killed 14 Assyrian civilians. Assyrians suspected that YPG was behind these bombings in an attempt to assassinate Assyrian leaders and prevent any future claims of control over Qamishli.

It would be foolish to ignore the signs that more widely spread ethnic cleansing campaigns may occur if Kurdish expansionists are supported, especially since other ethnic groups are not on board with their federalism plans. It has only been 90 years since the Assyrian genocide which was conducted by Turks and Kurds. This history should not be allowed to be repeated. Assyrians have enjoyed safety and stability in the Syrian state since this time. Forcing the Assyrians to accept federalism is not going to ensure their safety. Establishment of a federal Kurdish state in Iraq has not protected Assyrian villages from attacks by Kurdish armed groups either. The campaign of ethnic cleansing against both Assyrians and Arabs in Al Hasakah has already begun and may now only escalate.

4. The Resources in Al Hasake are shared between all Syrians

While Kurds make up only 7-10% of Syria’s total population, PYD demands 20% of Syria’s land. What’s more, the region of Al hasakah that YPG want to annex has a population of only 1.5 million people. Much of Syria’s agriculture and oil wealth is located in Al Hasakah and is shared by Syria’s 23 million people. Al Hasakah province produces 34% of Syria’s wheat and much of Syria’s oil. The oil pumping stations are now being used by ISIS and YPG’s Kurds to fund their war efforts while depriving the Syrian people.

While headlines abound about Syria’s starving population, there is little talk of how federalising Syria could entrench this starvation into law for generations to come. Instead, promoters of Federalism talk about how giving the resources shared by 23 million people to 1.5 million people will lead to peace.

5. A Kurdish Region in Syria will be a Threat to Global Security

Since the majority of Syria’s population and Syria’s government oppose Kurdish annexation claims, PYD will not be able to achieve federalism through legal means. The only way the PYD and YPG can achieve federalism is through brute force. This brute force may backed by the US air force and an invasion by special forces which contradicts international law. Head of PYD Saleh Islam has already threatened to attack Syrian troops if they attempt to retake Raqqa from ISIS. A Kurdish state in Syria as the Iraqi Kurdistan ensures US hegemony in the region. Like the KRG[1] the YPG are already attempting to build a US base on Syrian soil. Russia, which has been an ally of Syria for a long time, will be further isolated as a result. This will once again tip the balance of power in the world.

All of Syria’s neighbouring countries are also opposed to an ethnocentric Kurdish state in Syria. The YPG is linked to the PKK, which is active in Turkey and which the United Nations has designated a terrorist organisation. Turkey will see YPG’s federalism claims as strengthening the PKK. Turkey may invade Syria as a result, guaranteeing at least a regional war. This regional war could involve Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Israel.

Israel wants to establish a Kurdistan, as a Sunni-Iranian rival to Shi’ite Iran. They hope such a Sunni state will block Iran’s access to Syria and will also prevent Lebanese resistance against Israeli invasion. This was all outlined in Israel’s Yinon Plan published in 1982. Israel is an extension of US influence and hegemony in the region, the Israeli lobby holds much sway over US politics. Strengthening Israel in the region will strengthen US influence over the region, once again shrinking Russian influence and pushing the nuclear power into a corner. Journalists who show a sense of confusion about the reason the West is supportive of Kurdish expansionism should consider this point.

Finally, a designated ‘Kurdish area’ in Syria is deeply rooted in ethnocentric chauvinism. A US state strictly designated for Hispanic, White or Black ethnicity would be outrageous to suggest and would be considered racist. But the use of ethnicity as a means to divide and conquer is the oldest and most cynical form of imperialism. Syria must remain for all Syrians, not just for one minority. Voices who oppose this should be discouraged. The Syrian Constitution should continue to resist all ethnocentric religious-based parties. If there is a change to the Syrian constitution, it should be the removal of the word Arab from Syrian Arab Republic. In spite of the fact that the vast majority Syrians speak the Arabic language, the majority of Syrian are historically not ethnically Arab. All sections of Syrian society should be treated equally under the Syrian flag.

Conclusion

While it is difficult and often unwise to make any predictions when it comes to geopolitics and decisions taken by a government and establishment system gone rogue, we can attempt to analyze what we believe the evidence is showing us. In the case of the recent moves made by both the United States and Russia, it appears that the federalization of Syria is taking form before our eyes. While Russia has acted as the savior of the Syrian government since its entrance into the war, Russia does not seem willing to truly engage the United States in direct military combat over Syrian borders. This approach, while undoubtedly bemoaned by many, is understandable and completely reasonable from the point of view of Russia. After all, the first responsibility of a national leader is to the people of his nation, a concept seemingly forgotten by the people of Western Europe and North America.

Still, it seems that the United States is insisting upon at least fractionalizing Syria so that the Syrian government is drastically weakened. A Kurdish state would have both strategic and economic reverberations for Syria as well as for Hezbollah and Iran whose land supply lines would be effectively cut. A Kurdish state would also serve to inhibit an Iranian pipeline.

The wild card, however, is whether Syrians will be able to live with the creation of such a large cutout rump state carved out of their own territory. Only time will tell as to how the situation will develop. Considering the fact that two nuclear powers are on opposing sides in this battle, it is safe to say the outcome concerns us all.

Note

[1] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives. 1st Edition. Basic Books. 1998.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President, and Resisting The Empire: The Plan To Destroy Syria And How The Future Of The World Depends On The Outcome. Turbeville has published over 1000 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST atUCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

All images in this article are from the source.

Russian foreign policy always operates on a foundation of reciprocity…so after Putin’s first fact-to-face with Trump, it appears that the sticky issue of Obama’s Russian diplomat expulsion has now been solved.

Russia will just simply expel 30 US diplomats from the Russian Federation, as well as freeze some US assets “in a retaliatory move against Washington.”

We have to admit, it is refreshing to see Russia do to the US  what the US has been doing to the rest of the world for decades.

Zerohedge reports…

When Obama announced the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the seizure of Russian diplomatic compounds in Maryland last December in response to alleged Russian interference in the election, Putin just smiled and said Russia would not retaliate, expecting that relations between Russia and the US would normalize under president Trump. Six months later, relations have not only not normalized but have deteriorated further following the latest round of sanctions against Russia despite daily allegations that Trump colluded with the Kremlin to convince several million Americans to vote against Hillary.

And, as a result, Putin’s patience appears to have run out, and according to Russian newspaper Izvestiya, the Kremlin is set to expel around 30 US diplomats and freeze some US assets in a retaliatory move against Washington.

Moscow may expel about 30 US diplomats, freeze some US assets in Russia https://t.co/nWxx0bbtfr #USRussia pic.twitter.com/uLGKiE4YO4

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) July 11, 2017

Sputnik News reports that a Foreign Ministry source, told Izvestiya newspaper that the move is due to the failure to reach an agreement on two Russian diplomatic compounds in the US seized by the Obama White House last December.

A source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told the Izvestiya newspaper.

“There is a preliminary agreement on holding a meeting between Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ryabkov and US Under Secretary of State Thomas Shannon in St. Petersburg. If the compromise is not found there, we will have to take such measures.”

Izvestiya also cited Andrey Klimov, a senator in the upper house of Russia’s parliament, who said that

“Russia had already waited more than six months for the Trump administration to improve the relationship between the two countries” and was now forced to strike back.

“We are forced to draw a line and answer in a similar way,” Klimov told Izvestiya. “These moves are not meant as our attempts to show our negative attitudes toward the Trump administration but rather as evidence of the fact that Russia is a strong nation that deserves respectable treatment.”

According to Zerohedge, the Russian newspaper adds that the decision came after Trump and Putin’s first meeting at the G20 Summit in Germany failed to produce an agreement on the lightening of US sanctions against Russia.

The issue of the Russian diplomatic compounds was also raised at the Putin-Trump meeting in Hamburg, according to the Russian press reports.

And, as Trump and his family face fresh claims of collusion with the Kremlin, Putin’s patience over the non-return of the Russian compounds has run out.

According to the newspaper, while the administration plans to seize the American summer house in a forest region outside of Moscow and a warehouse in the center of the city, it will not touch the residence of the American ambassador and the American international school in St. Petersburg.

Alex Christoforou is a writer and director for The Duran – Living the dream in Moscow. 

Journalists have been targeted in war zones for decades. “Local and foreign correspondents were among the first detainees of the victorious Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in 1975. Western journalists, and even those who sought to free them, were held hostage for years during Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s, and dozens of reporters in Latin America have been grabbed by paramilitaries or drug cartels.” Robert Mahoney CPJ/Deputy Director

But the sheer scale of the problem since the Arab uprisings is unprecedented, according to CPJ data. Of the 227 journalists killed globally since 2011, one-third died covering Syria.

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists 

“To hold a pen is to be at war” Voltaire. 

***

More than in any other war in recent history, a highly-funded, well-coordinated propaganda campaign has fueled the aggressive interventionist invasion in Syria. Mainstream media has led entire populations of people, especially in the West into supporting a foreign created and imported war on a sovereign nation, that prior to this invasion did not have any of the issues that exist today.

War propaganda has lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria, and millions of refugees, and billions in losses due to infrastructure being destroyed. The fact that well-meaning people will support such a devious, deadly, unrighteous, harmful and illegal war without even questioning the motives behind, the key players, the amount of suffering and damage it has caused is both disheartening and outrageous.

It has also lead to a significant number of journalists being kidnapped and killed while reporting on the ground. As a result, many fake activists have taken over social media and mainstream media. They have risen to fame under the guise of being truthful citizen reporters who just want the world to see the misery that the “regime” is putting them through. They are in fact paid mouthpieces for the opposition and armed terrorist groups. They have strong connections with Anti-Assad media and are the darlings of mainstream media news such as CNN, BBC, and AlJazeera. They are eager to have them on, give them airtime to spew their scripted narratives and convince a slew of people that the Syrian Army, Russian Army, and the Syrian government are committing atrocities against civilians. Of course, these media outlets take everything they say as the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help them, God. They do not question nor do they debate. They will, however, push a story and make it into a headline and that is how propaganda is bought and sold to the masses.

However, they will not afford that same attention, time, or respect for independent journalists that do not follow the demonization script. They will altogether ignore them and pretend like they do not exist. It’s really quite cynical.

This article will armor the everyday civilian with enough information to thoroughly convince any critical thinker of the truth. This serves two purposes, first, the reader is exposed to information from different sources that corroborate the same story and prove that the official narrative is nothing but a lie. Secondly, once they have fully understood and absorbed the information it is their duty to educate others. This ripple effect is critical if we are going to make any progress towards ending these bankers wars. This global war that is being waged on peaceful nations through staged uprisings and Soros funded Color revolutions needs to be stopped. Some may not realize the negative effect that these wars will have on humanity as a whole.

That’s why it’s imperative that We take whatever action necessary to get people out of this submissive trance that they are under, and free them from the chains of their own cognitive dissonance, which they have been placed under by the government, educational system, marketing, media etc. for far too long.

“Once you are kidnapped in Syria it’s a completely black hole you’re never going to come out of,” Nicole Tung, a freelance photographer who worked with James Foley, said.

This is done in an effort to silence the truth. The most dangerous weapon against a mass media campaign is the truth.

***

Syria – Killing Journalists Enabled “Media Activist” Domination – Intended Effect?

By Moon of Alabama

The “Stand with Aleppo” campaign in the U.S. was started and is propelled by a Democratic party operative who is also CEO of a public relations company and “strategic affairs consultant” in Chicago, Becky Carroll.

The Cordeliere made some additional remarks on anti-Syria propaganda. These about the U.S. directed Information Warfare campaign from inside Syria. This leads me to the thoughts below about the U.S. waged Unconventional Warfare in Syria and how it may be responsible for the elimination of “neutral” journalists on the ground.

We start with Club des Cordeliers remarks on the video campaign coming out of Syria and currently especially out of east-Aleppo:

US State Dep’t has openly trained Syrian “activists” in social media propaganda techniques since 2012. U.S. Embassy Geneva, Aug 21, 2012 , .S. Equipment, Training Reaching Syrian Opposition:

The State Department has $25 million in nonlethal assistance that it can use for training purposes, and [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland said “a broad cross section of activists” inside Syria and in neighboring countries is benefiting from an “extremely active” U.S. training effort that is focused on Syrians who have not left their country.“We are doing training on free media, countering the government’s circumvention technology, legal and justice and accountability issues, and how to deal with the crimes that have been committed during this conflict, programs for student activists who are encouraging peaceful protest on the university campuses, [and] programs for women,” Nuland said.

She added that the State Department has been working for years with Syrians and others on ways to counter Internet censorship, as well as supporting Syrian human rights and justice programs.

US-trained Syrian contra propagandists via seminars conducted in Istanbul. St. Louis Public Radio, Dec 3, 2012 U.S. Steps Up Aid (But No Arms) To Syrian Exiles:

[T]he U.S. State Department is supporting Syria’s political opposition, in projects that have been under wraps until recently.One program, a multimillion-dollar media project called Basma, or “fingerprint” in English, is run out of an office in Istanbul where Syrian activists write and produce reports for a Facebook page and the Basma website. A promotional video explains the goals of Basma: “to support a peaceful transition for a new Syrian nation that supports and guards the freedom of all of its citizens.”
…
In another U.S.-funded program, kept quiet over security concerns, young activists, mostly those in the front lines in the early days of the revolt, are invited to Istanbul for workshops. They gather in hotels, from towns and villages inside Syria. They are now members of revolutionary councils — civilians trying to restore services and local government in places out of regime control.

Syrian “activists” given electronic equipment & technical instruction in State Dep’t-sponsored Istanbul training. Wired, Oct 25, 2012, Exclusive: U.S. Rushes to Stop Syria from Expanding Chemical Weapon Stockpile:

U.S. intelligence agencies are believed to be helping with the training of opposition groups, while the Pentagon denies shipping arms to the rebels. In public, American aid has largely been limited to organizational advice (Washington is trying to set up a council of opposition leaders in Doha in the next few weeks, for instance) and technical assistance. Several hundred Syrian activists have traveled to Istanbul for training in secure communications, funded by the U.S. State Department. The rebel leaders received tips on how to leapfrog firewalls, encrypt their data, and use cellphones without getting caught, as Time magazine recently reported. Then they returned to Syria, many of them with new phones and satellite modems in hand.

To NATO military strategists, social media propaganda is an element of “winning the online information war” in Syria. Small Wars Journal, Apr 26, 2016, The Impact of Cyber Capabilities in the Syrian Civil War:

The events of the Syrian Civil War have clearly demonstrated the power of cyber capabilities in warfare. […] However, it would appear that all of the actors have used cyber capabilities for propaganda purposes. The use of social media, DDoS attacks, and the defacement of websites were all used to promote strategic narrative or to undermine and embarrass the enemy. Although all of these activities would fall under the category of information war, developments in social technology has increased the importance of winning the online information war. This is illustrated by the fact that most of the information that the public receives about the conflict is transmitted through social media.

Revealing chart outlining US Army Special Ops doctrine on use of electronic communication in unconventional warfare. FM 3-05.130 Unconventional Warfare, Sep 2008 Table B-1 – Information operations integration into joint operations (pdf)

Highly influential 1989 paper on Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) called for technology-driven psychological warfare. Marine Corp Gazette, Oct 1989 The Changing Face of War – Into the 4th Generation (pdf)

All this is to make clear that there is nothing random or organic about online propaganda produced by Syrian “activists.”

Bana hoax, Aleppo “farewell” videos, et al. should be seen as coordinated, strategic information warfare funded and organized by US actors.

Some additional thoughts on this.

A recent piece by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent points to the mass of propaganda about and out of Syria, mostly U.S. directed as shown above, and explains why we only see and hear this and nothing else: There’s more propaganda than news coming out of Aleppo this week:

[T]he jihadis holding power in east Aleppo were able to exclude Western journalists, who would be abducted and very likely killed if they went there, and replace them as news sources with highly partisan “local activists” who cannot escape being under jihadi control.
…
The precedent set in Aleppo means that participants in any future conflict will have an interest in deterring foreign journalists who might report objectively. By kidnapping and killing them, it is easy to create a vacuum of information that is in great demand and will, in future, be supplied by informants sympathetic to or at the mercy of the very same people (in this case the jihadi rulers of east Aleppo) who have kept out the foreign journalists. Killing or abducting the latter turns out to have been a smart move by the jihadis because it enabled them to establish substantial control of news reaching the outside world.

We have to see the killing and kidnapping of journalists as a (secret) part of the arsenal of the Unconventional Warfare and the U.S. created propaganda storm out of Syria.

The same applies to humanitarian Non-Government Organizations. Neither the United Nations nor the Red Cross or any other neutral NGO had staff in east-Aleppo. Only the MI-6 propaganda outlet SOHR in Coventry provides numbers allegedly sourced from Syria. Only (U.S. trained) “media activists” on the Takfiri side report or tweet from inside east-Aleppo. Only these get interviewed. Only the U.S./UK created and directed “White Helmets” and the French government sponsored Takfiri “Aleppo Media Channel” produce pictures and videos from inside east-Aleppo. As this was the only available information source and sole available audio-visual material it was heavily used by news outlets around the world. It reflected solely the armed oppositions and its sponsors’ views and warfare needs.

If one intends to give a maximum effect to the propaganda output of one’s proxies in an Information Warfare operation, it makes great sense to eliminate all other potential sources of information from the wider warzone. Thus – the abduction and killing of neutral professional journalists is a conscious process that enables their replacement with one’s own Information Warfare assets. I believe we have seen such a process in Syria.

A similar process was applied earlier when the U.S. invaded Iraq. News outlets which gave a different than the official U.S. view were targeted by U.S. military forces. The Al-Jazeerah offices in Baghdad were bombed by the U.S. military. (The White House even considered bombing the Al-Jazeerah head office in Doha, Qatar.) Wikileaks published a video which showed a U.S. helicopter killing Reuters staffers. Only journalists embedded with the U.S. military were protected against U.S. military action. Their reports were naturally heavily skewed towards the official U.S. propaganda view.

(On top of all of that we have to consider that even regular news outlets and journalists are often vehicles of intelligence services and as such far from neutral.)

The killing or abduction of journalists in a war zone allows their replacement with better controlled and more partisan assets. Just raising the (security) costs for real journalists has such an effect. A news outlet has to pay for professionally made news agency photos or videos. The U.S./UK propaganda operation “White Helmets” has produced hundreds of “gripping” and “emotional” staged rescue operation pictures and videos. It distributes those for free in “ready to be used” high quality. Many news outlets prefer these no-cost pictures even though their veracity is highly questionable. 

Keeping journalists away from the battle zone by killing or abducting a few of them at the beginning of the conflict helped enormously to increase the effect of the later Information Warfare operation known as “White Helmets” and other similar organizations.

This brings me back to U.S. Embassy Geneva report quoted above. In the very same speech in which U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland lauded the creation, training, and outfitting of U.S proxy teams for propaganda creation and other purposes (aka “media activists”) she also lamented the demise of real journalists in Syria:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters August 21 that the United States has provided more than 900 sets of communications gear to groups and individuals inside Syria.
…
Nuland also offered condolences to the family of Japanese journalist Mika Yamamoto, who was killed August 20 while she was traveling with Syrian opposition forces in Aleppo, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.Yamamoto, who worked for the Tokyo-based Japan Press, was caught in gunfire, the Foreign Ministry said.

Nuland also said the U.S. government had lost contact with two stringers reporting for the Alhurra television network who had reportedly been traveling with Yamamoto.

In an August 21 interview with the Voice of America, Reporters Without Borders spokeswoman Soazig Dollet said five foreign journalists have been killed since the start of the Syrian uprising in March 2011, and that Syria “is now the most dangerous place for war reporter[s] in the world.”

The lauding of U.S. proxy media efforts and the (fake) lamenting over the killing of real journalists by Victoria Nuland in one speech were totally unrelated to each other – unless they were not. It was totally unintended that the resulting lack of real journalists in Syria amplified the effect of the U.S. Information Operation by proxy. Or maybe it was not.

***

48 journalists killed in 2016; Camera operator and photographer most dangerous jobs: CPJ report

Source: Dawn

48 journalists killed in 2016; Camera operator and photographer dangerous jobs: CPJ report The Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 48 journalists were killed in 2016. CPJ is also investigating the death of 27 journalists to determine whether they were work-related.

The deadliest countries for journalists were, in order, Syria, Afghanistan, Mexico, Iraq and Yemen.

“More than half of the journalists killed in the year died in combat or crossfire, for the first time since CPJ began keeping records. The conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Afghanistan, and Somalia claimed the lives of 26 journalists who died covering the fighting,” the New York-based group said.

This year, 18 journalists were targeted directly for murder, the lowest number since 2002. “The reason for the decline is unclear, and could be a combination of factors including less risk-taking by the media, more efforts to bring global attention to the challenge of combating impunity, and the use of other means to silence critical journalists,” the report said.

According to the report, photographer and camera operator were the most dangerous media jobs in 2016. 20 of journalists killed in 2016 were freelancers. 75 percent of journalists killed in this year were war reporters.

Journalists who risked their lives in the conflict were also kidnapped and executed by Islamic State and other militant groups. “Islamic State is responsible for the disappearance of at least 11 journalists since 2013. They are feared dead, but do not appear in CPJ’s data on killed journalists because their fate cannot be confirmed,” the report added.

***

Al-Qaeda Propagandist Employed By CNN To Make Prize-Winning Syria Doc

Featured image: Syria, after six years of U.S.-manufactured war. (Source: VENEZUELAPHOTO: PRENSA LATINA | [email protected] \SANA)

The conflict between the U.S. and Russia over Syria seems to have calmed down after the recent G-20 meeting between Putin and Trump. Some kind of agreement was made but neither its scope nor its bindingness is known. One common current aim is the defeat of ISIS.

At the meeting between the Presidents Trump and Putin in Hamburg a temporary truce was agreed for the south-west area of Syria. The Syrian government (violet) holds the city of Deraa while various foreign sponsored insurgent groups (green), including al-Qaeda and ISIS, occupy the borders towards Israel and Jordan. There had been some serious fighting after recent al-Qaeda attacks on Baath city neat the Golan. During these the Israeli airforce had multiple times supported the al-Qaeda groups with attacks on the Syrian army.

Under the truce agreement the Russian side guarantees that the Syrian government and its allies stop fighting while the U.S. guarantees that Israel, the various FSA groups, al-Qaeda and ISIS stay quiet. The truce has now held for several days. There were no spoilers. The U.S. seems to have strong influence with ALL those entities.

East of the Deraa area in the governate of Sweida the Syrian army has continued operations against U.S. supported Free Syrian Army groups. Within a few days it has taken a lot of ground against little resistance including a deserted U.S. base that was not publicly known. It is possible that a secret part of the Deraa truce agreement allows for the Syrian army to liberate the whole area next to the Jordan border towards the east up to the U.S. held border crossing at al-Tanf.

Source: Fabrice Balanche/WINEP – see bigger picture here

The U.S. base in Tanf had become nonviable after the Syrian army had taken all ground north of it and Iraqi militia had blocked it from the Iraqi side. The U.S. had trained some Syrian mercenaries at Tanf and had planned to march those north towards Deir Ezzor. As that route is now blocked some of the trained mercenaries were recently transferred by air to Shadadi base in north-east Syria where they will have to fight under Kurdish command. Others have refused to move north. Jaysh Maghawir al-Thawra, previously called the New Syrian Army, is mostly made up of local men who probably do not want to leave their nearby families and do not want to come under Kurdish leadership. The U.S. should send them home and leave the area.

Today a new two-pronged move against the ISIS siege on Deir Ezzor was started. Syrian army forces and its allies moved east from their Palmyra positions and south-east from their positions south of Raqqa. An additional move against Deir Ezzor may come from the Syrian forces further south-east near the Iraqi border. The Iraq air force has recently flown attacks against ISIS position in the Deir Ezzor areas. This was done in agreement with the Syrian government. That may be a sign that Iraqi forces will join the fight to relief the city with an additional move south-west from their positions near Tal Afar. The U.S. military has for now given up its dream of assaulting and occupying Deir Ezzor with its proxy forces.

The west and north west of Syria have been relatively quiet. A rumored imminent Turkish attack on Kurdish held areas has not happened. The mostly al-Qaeda held areas in Idleb governate are still unruly. Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Turkmen, Uighurs, Kurds, local Free Syrian Army gangs all have their little fiefdoms in the area. Assassinations and attacks on each other are daily occurrences. There is no reason for the Syrian government to intervene in that melee.

The agreement between Trump and Putin over Syria might be more wide ranging than is publicly known. For now it seems that the parties have agreed on areas of influences with the U.S. for now; occupying the north-east currently under control of its YPG proxies. It is building more bases there with the total number now being eight or nine. At least three of these have their own airstrips. It is asking Congress to legalize further base building. It is obvious that the U.S. military plans to stay in the area even after ISIS is defeated.

But the Kurds in Syria are only a minority in almost all areas they currently control. They are not united and the YPG, the only U.S. partner, is a radical anarcho-marxist group that has no legitimacy but force. The area is landlocked and all its neighbors are against Kurdish autonomy.

The U.S. effort to impose itself on the area is doomed. The use of the Kurds as a Trojan horse is unlikely to succeed. The Defense Department, it seems, has not yet accepted that fact. It still may try to sabotage whatever Trump and Putin have agreed upon.