Global Research

He was fat and fourteen and we called him “Tits.” He wasn’t terribly fat but his breasts were bigger than any girl’s we knew, so though he didn’t like it we dubbed him Tits. It was once upon a time long ago, before women’s liberation, when Elvis was king. 

He thought he was another Elvis; played the guitar and sang. Once he had a party in his grandparents’ dark basement. The whole gang was there. We were excited. There was mystery in the air. We didn’t know at the time that Elvis wore diapers and was a dope fiend. God no. Elvis was the King and David thought he was another Elvis and would get all the girls with his guitar. Ike was liked by everyone, or so it seemed. What did we know?

His grandparents were Jewish and he had a Jewish name. That made him exotic to us Catholic kids. Somewhere down the line we knew his ancestors had killed Christ. But it didn’t bother us. His mother had converted and that made him half-and-half. We knew no one like him.

“In the Still of the Night” was one of his favorites. He liked accompaniment. Shutupshoobeedo ….something like that. We’d do it in the round to his direction, each coming in when he nodded. He was the maestro. Tits. Oh how we laughed. Shutupshoobeedo ….  We sang in the streets at night, in courtyards, imagining an audience in the old Bronx apartments. We never got applause, but sometimes they screamed for us to shut up. Shoobeedo.

So David had this party down in his grandparents’ dark basement. He stole my girlfriend that night, but I didn’t care. I guess the girl didn’t either. I laughed. He was Elvis. He shook and rocked and didn’t wear diapers, at least as far as I knew. He stood up on the couch and crooned “Love Me Tender.” That was it. My girlfriend was his. When I saw the look in her eyes watching him, I was relieved.

“Hey, David, give us another one,” yelled Willy, “I mean Tits.”

We played spin the bottle. I kissed a few girls. Tits sang some more, old songs. He played the guitar. We all screamed for more, give us more, Tits, we yelled. The girls were pretty quiet, but they liked his singing. He waved his hair, knew how to curl his lip in a grinning bad boy snarl. The kisses were dry and mild. He shook and rocked as he stood on the couch, Tits shaking and shocking the girls. Later he told us that Jewish girls were easy, but we’d have to go down to the Grand Concourse for that. He was the King, Elvis with tits, and he had all the moves.

“Come to my house,” he told Willy and me a few weeks later. “I know this girl who’s going to come over and she’s gonna strip for me.”

We knew she couldn’t be Irish Catholic; no Irish Catholic girl would ever strip. It was hard enough getting them to give you a hard dry brittle little kiss. She might be Italian, but Italians were sex nuts like the Jews, and they weren’t really Catholic even if they went to church.

“What are we going to do?” I asked excitedly.

“Hide in the closet and watch what I do.  You know that Jap sword I have? Well, when she strips, I’m going to take it out …”

“Cut it out,” said Willy, “if you show her your tits she’ll go nuts.” He fell on the floor laughing.

It was pretty funny, calling him Tits, but I had never seen any. The year before I almost got a glimpse when I was away in the country and peeked through a hole in the wall at a girl getting undressed. But she turned at the wrong moment and I saw nothing but her ass and for a kid like me that was nothing. I had been seeing asses all my life, they were there from the beginning, but girls’ breasts, my God, they grew until you had to hold them down with a bra so they wouldn’t …well, I didn’t know what they were capable of. All I knew was that babies came out of women’s belly buttons.

“Come on up about one o’clock,” David told us. “My mother will be at work and the girl will be coming at one-thirty.  You gotta get there early and hide in the closet.”

We understood that only Jewish mothers worked. They sinned and had sex and never had more than one or two kids. David was half-Jewish, but we knew that meant nothing. If he was half-Jewish, he was Jewish, even though he went to Catholic school with us. He could never be Catholic like us. Somehow Tits was perverted, but we loved it.

The apartment overlooked Woodlawn Cemetery in the north Bronx. A lot of famous people are buried there. Babe Ruth, I think. Fr. Flynn, our pastor, loved him, but he never told us about Babe’s sexual exploits, only about his athletic prowess and how he came from a Catholic orphanage and loved God. Boy, he could hit the ball out of the park. Pitch, too. There’s never been anyone like him, Flynn would say. He could run in spite of that big belly. Quite a man, he once ate twenty-five hot dogs and then hit three home runs, drove in six. Shacked up the night before, but the good father didn’t tell us that, only hinted at it for some strange reason. That’s what Tits told us. He said Fr. Flynn didn’t know the difference between knocking up or knocking in. Tits knew all about the Babe. He said he was a big lady’s man, sort of an early version of Elvis but with a bat instead of a guitar and that girls and women loved guys who held things in their hands like that.

“Stay in there until she strips,” said Tits, “then just peak out. Make sure she doesn’t see you, especially when I take it out.”

Willy fell down in hysteria. I couldn’t help laughing. Take it out – where did this girl come from?

So we hid in the closet.

We heard her come in and say something. David talked extra loud so we could hear him. The girl went to Evander Childs High school, was a freshman, and we figured she was either Jewish or Italian or else she wouldn’t be ready to take her clothes off. Yeh, she was a slut, we knew that. She probably lived in one of those connected brick houses further east on the other side of the el train where you could get illegal fireworks for the Fourth of July. Strange things happened over there. We had heard that girls from that neighborhood liked to put out and make a lot of noise about it too. The girl sounded dirty.

“You want a soda?” David never offered us one.

“Okay, want a cigarette?”

“Sure. I’ve run out.” We knew he didn’t smoke.

We heard them lighting up and opening the soda. The girl coughed. Well, maybe it was David, I wasn’t sure. Willy started to laugh. He got me going. For a moment I though she heard us. We had to hold our sides we were laughing so hard.

I carefully peeked out. They were sitting on the couch and Tits was strumming his guitar. He sang a few lines of “Love Me Tender” and the girl told him how good he was. He was so proud; his plump cheeks seemed to glow. They puffed up. I couldn’t see the girl too well since she was hidden behind him. Willy looked, but he couldn’t see her either.

Then, by God, Tits was on her. We knew because we heard the guitar drop and him panting. The girl was squealing under his pants. Ah! Ah! Ah! He was breathless.

“You’re hurting me. Get off, will ya?”

Was he crushing her to death?

“Take off your clothes.” He was standing now. “I said take off your clothes. I’m going to show you something, Baby.” He was swaggering.

“Let me finish my soda first,” she said.

Willy and I were both looking out now. The girl got up and put her soda bottle on the table. She was short and skinny and had stringy dark hair. I could hear her gum snapping madly. Juicy Fruit I think it was. The smell was so strong, the snaps so fast and loud.

“Look, Baby, I said take it off,” Tits boomed in the deepest voice I’ve ever heard. He was strumming his guitar.

We shifted around in the closet to get a better view and when we looked next – I swear it must have been five seconds later – the girl was standing there in her pink underpants, not the silky kind that you could see through but solid pink, and no bra. Oh my God, we couldn’t believe it – she had on an undershirt like my father wore. Flat as a board. Tits seemed agitated.

He went to the corner and got his six foot long Japanese sword. He took it out of its long metal sheath.

“Whaddya doing?” the girl squealed.

“Dance for me, Baby. And take off that undershirt. Strip.”

“Put that thing away. Are you crazy?”

“I’m just fooling around.” His voice was rising. “Don’t worry.”

The girl was quickly putting on her clothes.

“Come on, what are ya doing?” He lay down his sword.

“I gotta meet my girlfriend.”

“It’s early.” His voice sounded like one of those boys who gets cut up and sings like a girl. Like a really high whistle.

“I gotta go.”

She walked toward the door and we had to close the closet quickly. For a split second I thought she saw us and was going to yank the door open. But she opened the other door and went out into the hall.

“How about tomorrow?” Tits squeaked.

The girl laughed a really low horse laugh like an old aunt of mine who’d been smoking since she was twelve. I remember wondering how such a deep sound could come out of that small skinny body. We were peeking again.

“Are ya kiddin? There’s something wrong with you. I should’ve listened to my girlfriend. Just yesterday she goes to me, ‘Candy,’ she goes, ‘watch out for that guy David. He needs a bra.’ “

We cracked up.

Poor Tits, he never sang again. The king had been slain. The world changed.

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

Featured image: Unique Japan

“America first” and “to hell with the rest of the world”! One single stroke of hand, one signature, and over 1,000 hardworking people in Bali, Indonesia, suddenly ended up on the pavement. No second thoughts, no mercy. American savage capitalist ways met and embraced that fabled Indonesian feudalism, which was implanted into this country several decades ago, precisely after the 1965 military coup sponsored by the West.

U.S. President Donald Trump, always on the lookout for some great business opportunities, finally found one in Bali (and one more in West Java), a tropical, once paradise-like Indonesian island. And not just somewhere in Bali, but right next to the holiest and the most spectacular Hindu temple in the country, Tanah Lot.

It is true that he was not the first one determined to destroy the area. An enormous hotel and golf resort, Le Meridien teamed up with several Indonesian businesses, and perpetrated a land grab, forcing out thousands of local people. That was a long time ago. Then the Pan Pacific hotel chain moved in, purchased the property, and is running it to this day.

However, Mr. Trump is now planning something truly monumental here, in the middle of the iconic rice fields and dormant rural countryside: a shout of hedonism, a 6-star opulent, a concrete monstrosity, which will certainly and irreversibly dwarf the local culture and the traditional Balinese aesthetics.

Mr. Trump teamed up with Hary Tanoesoedibjo, an unsavory and ruthless Indonesian businessman. It is actually feared by many that Mr. Tanoesoedibjo (and others around him) are now manipulating Indonesian politics, on behalf of the West, trying to eliminate progressive elements that have managed to enter (some say ‘miraculously’) the Indonesian government. It is also no secret that Mr. Tanoesoedibjo himself has high political ambitions, and will most likely be running for the post of president.

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, poses with Hary Tanoesoedibjo and his wife, Liliana. (Source: Nikkei Asian Review)

The US geopolitical interests, as well as the interests of the local business “elites”, have always been directly antagonistic to the interests of the Indonesian poor (still the great majority of the country’s population).

I spoke to Ms. Ni Luh, working in the Guest Relations Department of the Pan Pacific Hotel:

“I have been employed by this property for more than 20 years. First it was Le Meridien, now it is Pan Pacific. Soon the hotel will be closing down. I was told this on the February 14, 2017, on Valentine’s Day. I was devastated. I just took a bank loan of Rp. 60 million (US$4,000), for the education of my child, and I had only managed to pay one single installment, before hearing ‘the news’. How will I be able to repay that loan if I lose my job in July? I feel very scared and very sad.

I am a single mother; my child is still in junior high school. I cannot rely on anybody else.” 

“I heard that we would only get severance pay of Rp. 40 millions (US$3,000). And that is after 20 years of service. Our union here is still trying to negotiate to get at least Rp. 100 millions, but I’m not sure they will succeed.” 

“This land is now owned by Hary Tanoe and Donald Trump. It is big – 103 hectares. I heard that they want to expand, to acquire more land that is still owned by the villagers. This new hotel will be huge, with 125 suites. They call it a 6 star property. And they’ll create a totally new golf course here.”

There was a deal, between the first owners and the employees. I checked. This deal will be now fully ignored by the new owners: Trump/Tanoe. I went to the surrounding villages, where everyone appears to be in total distress.

Ms. Ketut, who works at a small eatery, Warung Bu Dini, on the main road leading to the Tanah Lot temple, appears to be angry and desperate:

“The biggest problem with the change of ownership of the Nirwana Bali Resorts is that there will be more than 800 villagers who will lose their jobs.” 

Some say over one thousand.

Ms. Ketut continues: 

“When Nirwana Bali acquired our lands, we signed agreements that said: with each ‘ownership of land certificate’, the owners will provide 2-4 jobs to the families of the certificate holders. The new owners, Hary Tanoe and Donald Trump, simply do not intend to honor those agreements anymore. There is obviously nothing we can do about it.” 

“Our ‘warung’ will also suffer, when they close the hotel in July 2017. Some golfers are actually our customers. Now, for 3 years almost no one will be eating here.” 

To put things into perspective: to protest or to defend one’s rights in Indonesia is extremely dangerous. People who dare to go against the ‘big interests’, often get beaten, they disappear, their houses are burned, wives and daughters raped.

Three years is a long period of time, especially in a country where many are living from day to day, with no ‘reserves’ and no savings.

Mr. Trump must know it, and of course he doesn’t care.

Ms. Ni Luh concludes:

“They are not going to re-hire us, at least not people they will consider to be already ‘too old’ (I’m 43 years old now). They don’t care that we have worked here for 20 years and that this is in a way our second home. I’ll have to find another job. How, I don’t know, but I have to: I have a child to feed.”

Ms. Indra, her colleague at the Pan Pacific Hotel, seems to be in a same boat:

“We are all very sad and feel very uncertain. My son will go to university this year, but I am losing my job very soon.”

***

In the meantime, Bali is collapsing, like the rest of Indonesia. It is already ruined environmentally; it is infested by notorious traffic jams, pollution and lack of public spaces. During and after the Financial Crises of 1997-98, most of the Balinese families in the tourist areas were forced to sell their land. Instead of running their own businesses as before, local people are now mostly employed by big companies, either Javanese or foreign. Living conditions are tough.

Idyllic, artistic and sensual Bali is basically gone. In a predominantly Muslim country, it still functions as some sort of a duty-free island, where alcohol and pork are widely available, and where clubs are open until the wee hours. There are also a few beautiful rice fields between the terrible urban sprawls with no sidewalks and no public transportation to speak of (still a norm for most of the cities in Indonesia).

Tanah Lot temple from still existing Pan Pacific hotel

Instead of artists, writers and dreamers, Bali is now catering to mass tourism.

One chain 5-star hotel after another is opening its doors, on the beaches and in the spectacular ravines.Instead of integrating themselves into the cultural and traditional landscape, these hotels are creating huge luxury “bubbles”, fully separated from the rest of the island.

Now Donald Trump has found his niche.

Confidently, the Trump International Hotel & Tower Bali site declares:

“Trump Hotels has exciting plans to open the collection’s first resort in Asia as Trump International Hotel & Tower Bali. When completed, the luxurious resort will be the largest and most integrated lifestyle resort destination in Bali.” 

But what about the island, what about the villages and what about the people? All that, obviously, matters nothing!

The site further boasts:

“Built atop a sheer cliff along a sweeping coastline, the development will offer breathtaking views of the Indian Ocean and Tanah Lot, the most popular tourist and cultural icon of Bali.”

What will soon come up will be an enormous golf resort, next to the iconic temple, which is totally unique, in fact it is an island during high tide, accessible only during those times of the day when the tide is low. But even the temple is already damaged; it is reinforced by badly poured concrete. It is surrounded by horrible eateries on the ‘shore’. Right before the sunset, hundreds of huge buses are bringing thousands of indifferent tourists for a quick glimpse. Nothing is serene in Bali, anymore.

Paradoxically (but in a way logically by turbo-capitalist Indonesian standards), the greatest views of the temple will be ‘reserved’ for the richest of the rich, for those who will be able to afford to stay and to play at the luxury hotel and golf course owned by Mr. Trump.

Somehow, at least to me, the advertisements of the future hotel look more like a requiem for the island of Bali.

***

My history with Bali is long. I used to come here, periodically, to shut myself off from the world, and to write. Even when I used to live in my beloved Chile, I would fly to Bali, to the other side of the world, via Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Kuala Lumpur.

Bali used to be serene. It used to have soul – capricious, unpredictable, but soul nevertheless.

I wrote my revolutionary novel, Point of No Return, in Ubud. Exile or Terasing! Di negerisendiri, a book with Pramoedya Ananta Toer, the greatest Indonesian writer, and with Ms. Rossie Indira, was actually edited in Tanah Lot.

I avoid the island now; I have done so for many years. I only come when some calamity occurs, or something truly significant.

This time, the symbolism is clear: what is happening in Tanah Lot is indicating, brutally, although on a small scale, how the world and Indonesia will be governed from Washington, in the upcoming years.

[Originally published by NEO]

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel “Aurora” and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire” and  “Fighting Against Western Imperialism”. View his other books here. Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Putin said in an interview with US film director Oliver Stone that no one would survive if a war began between Russia and the United States.

“I think no one would survive [such a conflict],” Putin said answering a question if the United States would be dominant in a “hot war” with Russia. The part of the interview was partially released by the US Showtime TV channel.

Putin added that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is constantly looking for an enemy to justify its existence.

“There is no longer an Eastern Bloc, no more Soviet Union. Therefore, why does NATO keep existing? My impression is that in order to justify its existence, NATO has a need of an external foe, there is a constant search for the foe, or some acts of provocation to name someone as an adversary.”

However, Putin said that the hope for normalization of the Russia-US relations still exists.

“America has had the election. Donald Trump won. Is there any hope for change?” Stone asked Putin in a part of the interview published on Tuesday.

“Hope? There is always hope. Until they are ready to bring us to the cemetery and bury us,” Putin answered.

According to the US media reports, as part of the preparations to the interview, Stone and Putin watched the film “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” of 1964 by the US filmmaker Stanley Kubrick about a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Russian leader said in an interview as cited by The Daily Beast news outlet that Kubrick foresaw some contemporary issues from a technical point of view however the idea of a retaliatory weapon had become even more dangerous today with more sophisticated and complex weapons elaborated.

Stone gave the DVD with the film to Putin who subsequently found that the case contained no DVD inside and called the move a “typical American gift,” the US media reported.

The four-part Putin’s interview is expected to be aired by Showtime on June 12-15.

Featured image: Sputnik / Aleksey Nikolskyi

NSA contractor Reality Winner allegedly leaked documents showing that Russia probed U.S. election systems days before the 2016 presidential election.

How big a crisis is this?

Washington’s Blog asked Bill Binney, the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).

Binney told us:

If you think about this article [the story by the Intercept], and assume it’s true, then hacking a few days before the election is a little late if they really wanted to influence the voting.

To me, this sounds more like fishing for information to find out as much as they could about the democratic party much like the Chinese did hacking the OPM [U.S. Office of Personnel Management] files. I’m sure the Chinese found more use for the data they got then the Russians did on the Democratic party because Hillary did not win.

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi agrees:

The Intercept article cites an unnamed intelligence official who “cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.” To that I would add, “even if it is all true as described.”

And I would also make some additional observations about what the report and Intercept article are suggesting. First and foremost would be the questions of scale and timing.

There is no evidence that the Russians, or whoever carried out the probes, were able to tamper with either the actual voting process or the tabulation of votes. Indeed, the NSA report dismisses any such possibility. Second, corrupting an election in a country as large as the United States with an electoral system that is largely decentralized would require much more than a probe of 122 local officials starting a week before the balloting. So there was clearly no intention to disrupt the election or to tilt it in a certain direction based on the evidence provided by the NSA report.

I would also note that there is no proof provided in the report to support the assertion that the GRU, Russian military-intelligence service, carried out the probes. Would a highly-sophisticated intelligence service behave so transparently in an operation that would certainly be regarded as highly sensitive? I think not. Cut-outs would have been used to misdirect anyone looking to determine the hand behind the hacks.

All of which is not to say the Russian government didn’t do it or order it done, but it seems to me that the revelations provided in the NSA report do not go very far beyond the kind of random probings that are part and parcel of foreign-intelligence operations as carried out by any sophisticated service. Did someone in Moscow think it might be useful to have some kind of idea of how to meddle with U.S. election technology if that type of info might prove useful down the road? Quite possibly. It should be noted that the U.S. National Security Agency illegally collects vast quantities of information on ordinary Americans but that does not necessarily imply intent to use it in a malicious way. It is a desirable capability and intelligence agencies are always working to expand their reach.

So was Russian intelligence probing U.S. electoral systems? Quite plausibly yes, and it should be a matter of concern for every American as it suggests a vulnerability in the electronics behind how we vote. But did Russia actually interfere with the election or seek to use the probing to elect a particular candidate? The answer is clearly no. The article and the document it is based on should serve as a wake-up call to those who are complacent about the security of our technologies. But on a political level, we are back to square one, with often hysterical allegations surfaced as part of the media and political storm we now refer to as Russiagate.

(And even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security apparently probed U.S. election systems without permission in 2016.)

Indeed, it might be a little bit hypocritical for U.S. politicians to rail about Russian interference with our election when:

• The Washington Post says the U.S. tried to change other countries’ governments 72 times during the cold war

• The Los Angeles Times notes that the U.S. has interfered in other countries’ elections as many as 81 times

• This includes recent elections

• And as Time magazine notes, this includes the U.S. swaying Russia’s election of its top leader

Those who live in glass houses should probably not be throwing stones.

Featured image: Wccftech

For U.S. mainstream journalists and government analysts, their erroneous “groupthinks” often have a shady accomplice called “confirmation bias,” that is, the expectation that some “enemy” must be guilty and thus the tendency to twist any fact in that direction.

We have seen this pair contribute to fallacious reasoning more and more in recent years as the mainstream U.S. media and the U.S. government approach international conflicts as if the “pro-U.S. side” is surely innocent and the “anti-U.S. side” is presumed guilty.

That was the case in assessing whether Iraq was hiding WMD in 2002-2003; it was repeated regarding alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria during that six-year conflict; and it surfaces as well in the New Cold War in which Russia is always the villain.

The trend also requires insulting any Western journalist or analyst who deviates from the groupthinks or questions the confirmation bias. The dissidents are called “stooges”; “apologists”; “conspiracy theorists”; or “purveyors of fake news.” It doesn’t really matter how reasonable the doubts are. The mocking insults carry the day.

In addition, there is almost no accountability in those rare cases when the mainstream media and government propagandists must admit that they were demonstrably wrong. For every Iraq WMD confession – which resulted in almost no punishments for the “groupthinkers” – there are dozens of cases when the Big Boys just hunker down, admit nothing and count on their privileged status to protect them.

It doesn’t even seem to matter how well-credentialed the skeptic is or how obvious the failings of the mainstream analysis are. So, you even have weapons experts, such as Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who are ignored when their judgments conflict with the conventional wisdom.

The Syrian Case

For instance, in a little-noticed May 29, 2017 report on the April 4, 2017 chemical weapons incident at Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria, Postol takes apart the blame-the-Syrian-government conclusions of The New York Times, Human Rights Watch and the Establishment’s favorite Internet site, Bellingcat.

Postol’s analysis focused on a New York Times video report, entitled “How Syria And Russia Spun A Chemical Strike,” which followed Bellingcat research that was derived from social media. Postol concluded that “NONE of the forensic evidence in the New York Times video and a follow-on Times news article supports the conclusions reported by the New York Times.” [Emphasis in original.]

The basic weakness of the NYT/Bellingcat analysis was a reliance on social media from the Al Qaeda-controlled area of Idlib province and thus a dependence on “evidence” from the jihadists and their “civil defense” collaborators, known as the White Helmets.

The jihadists and their media teams have become very sophisticated in the production of propaganda videos that are distributed through social media and credulously picked up by major Western news outlets. (A Netflix infomercial for the White Helmets even won an Academy Award earlier this year.)

Postol zeroes in on the Times report’s use of a video taken by anti-government photographer Mohamad Salom Alabd, purporting to show three conventional bombs striking Khan Sheikhoun early in the morning of April 4.

The Times report extrapolated from that video where the bombs would have struck and then accepted that a fourth bomb – not seen in the video – delivered a sarin canister that struck a road and released sarin gas that blew westward into a heavily populated area supposedly killing dozens.

The incident led President Trump, on April 6, to order a major retaliatory strike with 59 Tomahawk missiles hitting a Syrian government airfield and, according to Syrian media reports, killing several soldiers at the base and nine civilians, including four children, in nearby neighborhoods. It also risked inflicting death on Russians stationed at the base.

A Wind Problem

But the Times video analysis – uploaded on April 26 – contained serious forensic problems, Postol said, including showing the wind carrying the smoke from the three bombs in an easterly direction whereas the weather reports from that day – and the presumed direction of the sarin gas – had the wind going to the west.

Indeed, if the wind were blowing toward the east – and if the alleged location of the sarin release was correct – the wind would have carried the sarin away from the nearby populated area and likely would have caused few if any casualties, Postol wrote.

Postol also pointed out that the Times’ location of the three bombing strikes didn’t match up with the supposed damage that the Times claimed to have detected from satellite photos of where the bombs purportedly struck. Rather than buildings being leveled by powerful bombs, the photos showed little or no apparent damage.

The Times also relied on before-and-after satellite photos that had a gap of 44 days, from Feb. 21, 2017, to April 6, 2017, so whatever damage might have occurred couldn’t be tied to whatever might have happened on April 4.

Nor could the hole in the road where the crushed “sarin” canister was found be attributed to an April 4 bombing raid. Al Qaeda jihadists could have excavated the hole the night before as part of a staged provocation. Other images of activists climbing into the supposedly sarin-saturated hole with minimal protective gear should have raised other doubts, Postol noted in earlier reports.

There’s also the question of motive. The April 4 incident immediately followed the Trump administration’s announcement that it was no longer seeking “regime change” in Syria, giving the jihadists and their regional allies a motive to create a chemical-weapons incident to reverse the new U.S. stand. By contrast, the Syrian government seemed to have no logical motive to provoke U.S. outrage.

In other words, Al Qaeda and its propagandists could have posted video from an earlier bombing raid and used it to provide “proof” of an early-morning airstrike that corresponded to the staged release of sarin or some similar poison gas on April 4. Though that is just one possible alternative, it’s certainly true that Al Qaeda does not show very much humanitarian concern about the lives of civilians

Critics of the White Helmets have identified the photographer of the airstrike, Mohamad Salom Alabd, as a jihadist who appears to have claimed responsibility for killing a Syrian military officer. But the Times described him in a companion article to the video report only as “a journalist or activist who lived in the town.”

Mocking the Russian/Syrian Account

For their part, the Syrian government and the Russians said Syrian planes conducted no airstrike early in the morning but did attack the area around noon. They speculated that the noontime attack may have struck chemical weapons stored by the jihadists, causing an accidental release of poisonous gas.

The Times jumped on the discrepancy between the reports of an early-morning attack and the Syrian-Russian account of a noontime strike to show that the Syrians and Russians were lying.

In response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asking,

“How can you verify the video?”

The Times narration by Malachy Browne smugly says:

“Well, here’s how. Let’s take a look at videos, satellite photos and open source material of that day. They show that Assad and Russia are telling a story that contradicts the facts.”

Yet, the Times’ point about the Syrians and Russians lying about the time element makes little sense because the Syrians and Russians aren’t denying that an airstrike occurred. They acknowledged that there was an airstrike, albeit later in the day, and they speculate that the attack might have accidentally released chemicals stored by Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front. In other words, they gained no advantage by putting the time at noon instead of early in the morning.

There could have been honest confusion on the part of the Syrians and Russians as they struggled to understand what had occurred and how – or the noontime airstrike and the morning chemical release could have been unrelated, i.e., the jihadists and/or their foreign allies could have staged the early-morning poison-gas “attack” and the Syrian bombing raid could have followed several hours later but could have been unrelated to the poison-gas release.

However, for the Times and others to pounce on a seemingly meaningless time discrepancy, further shows how “confirmation bias” works. The “enemy” must be shown to be guilty, so any comment – no matter how innocent or irrelevant – can be cited to “prove” a point.

Double Standard on Trust

The Times also has displayed a bizarre bias when Syrians speak from government-controlled areas. Then, the Times always inserts language suggesting that the interviewees may be under coercion. Yet the Times assumes that “witnesses” inside Al Qaeda-controlled territory are commenting honestly, freely and without fear of contradicting the jihadists.

The Times’ double standard is particularly curious because United Nations investigators don’t even dare enter these jihadist zones because the jihadists have a history of beheading journalists and other civilians who get in the way.

An example of this bias was on display in Wednesday’s Times in an article about the family of Omran, the boy made famous by a photo of him in an ambulance. The article discussed the family’s ordeal and mentioned the father’s vocal support for the Assad government.

However, because the family backed Assad, the Times inserted this caveat:

“Syrians appearing on state television or on channels associated with the Assad government are not able to speak freely. The government exerts tight control over all information broadcast about the war, including interviews with civilians, who can be coerced and threatened with arrest if they criticize the government.”

Yet, the Times treats interviews with people inside jihadist-controlled territory as inherently truthful with the interview subjects described in favorable or neutral terms, such as “rescue workers,” “journalists,” “eyewitnesses” or sometimes “activists.” There is rarely any suggestion that Al Qaeda might either be controlling these messages or intimidating the interviewees, who are usually denouncing Assad, what the Times and other mainstream news outlets want to hear.

False-Flag Evidence

This gullibility has continued despite evidence that the jihadists do generate sophisticated propaganda to promote their cause, including staging “false-flag” chemical weapons attacks. For instance, U.N. investigators who examined one alleged chlorine-gas attack by the Syrian government against Al-Tamanah on the night of April 29-30, 2014, heard multiple testimonies from townspeople that the event had been staged by rebels and played up by activists on social media.

“Seven witnesses stated that frequent alerts [about an imminent chlorine weapons attack by the government] had been issued, but in fact no incidents with chemicals took place,” the U.N. report stated. “While people sought safety after the warnings, their homes were looted and rumours spread that the events were being staged. … [T]hey [these witnesses] had come forward to contest the wide-spread false media reports.”

Accounts from other people, who did allege that there had been a government chemical attack on Al-Tamanah, provided suspect evidence, including data from questionable sources, according to the U.N. report.

The report said,

“Three witnesses, who did not give any description of the incident on 29-30 April 2014, provided material of unknown source. One witness had second-hand knowledge of two of the five incidents in Al-Tamanah, but did not remember the exact dates. Later that witness provided a USB-stick with information of unknown origin, which was saved in separate folders according to the dates of all the five incidents mentioned by the FFM [the U.N.’s Fact-Finding Mission].

“Another witness provided the dates of all five incidents reading it from a piece of paper, but did not provide any testimony on the incident on 29-30 April 2014. The latter also provided a video titled ‘site where second barrel containing toxic chlorine gas was dropped tamanaa 30 April 14’”

Some other “witnesses” alleging a Syrian government attack offered curious claims about detecting the chlorine-infused “barrel bombs” based on how the device sounded in its descent.

The U.N. report said,

“The eyewitness, who stated to have been on the roof, said to have heard a helicopter and the ‘very loud’ sound of a falling barrel. Some interviewees had referred to a distinct whistling sound of barrels that contain chlorine as they fall. The witness statement could not be corroborated with any further information.”

The U.N. report might have added that there was no plausible explanation for someone detecting a chlorine canister in a “barrel bomb” based on its “distinct whistling sound.” The only logical conclusion is that the chlorine attack had been staged by the jihadists, and their supporters then lied to the U.N. team to enrage the world public against the Assad regime.

Another Dubious Case

In 2013, the work of Postol and his late partner, Richard M. Lloyd, an analyst at the military contractor Tesla Laboratories, debunked claims from the same trio — Bellingcat, the Times and Human Rights Watch — blaming the Syrian government for the even more notorious sarin-gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, which killed hundreds.

Postol and Lloyd showed that the rocket carrying the sarin had only a fraction of the range that the trio had assumed in tracing its path back to a government base.

Since the much shorter range placed the likely launch point inside rebel-controlled territory, the incident appeared to have been another false-flag provocation, one that almost led President Obama to launch a major retaliatory strike against the Syrian military.

Although the Times grudgingly acknowledged the scientific problems with its analysis, it continued to blame the 2013 incident on the Syrian government. Similarly, Official Washington’s “groupthink” still holds that the Syrian government launched that sarin attack and that Obama chickened out on enforcing his “red line” against chemical weapons use.

Obama’s announcement of that “red line,” in effect, created a powerful incentive for Al Qaeda and other jihadists to stage chemical attacks assuming that they would be blamed on the government and thus draw in the U.S. military on the jihadist side. If Obama’s expected “retaliation” had devastated the Syrian military in 2013, Al Qaeda or its spinoff Islamic State might well have taken Damascus.

Yet, the 2013 “groupthink” of Syrian government guilt survives. After the April 4, 2017 incident, President Trump took some pleasure in mocking Obama’s weakness in contrast to his supposed toughness in quickly launching a “retaliatory” strike on April 6 (Washington time, although April 7 in Syria).

White House Claims

Trump’s attack came even before the White House released a supportive – though unconvincing – intelligence report on April 11. Regarding that report, Postol wrote,

“The White House produced a false intelligence report on April 11, 2017 in order to justify an attack on the Syrian airbase at Sheyrat, Syria on April 7, 2017. That attack risked an unintended collision with Russia and a possible breakdown in cooperation between Russia and United States in the war to defeat the Islamic State. The collision also had some potential to escalate into a military conflict with Russia of greater extent and consequence.

“The New York Times and other mainstream media immediately and without proper review of the evidence adopted the false narrative produced by the White House even though that narrative was totally unjustified based on the forensic evidence. The New York Times used an organization, Bellingcat, for its source of analysis even though Bellingcat has a long history of making false claims based on distorted assertions about forensic evidence that either does not exist, or is absolutely without any evidence of valid sources.”

Postol continued,

“This history of New York Times publishing of inaccurate information and then sticking by it when solid science-based forensic evidence disproves the original narrative cannot be explained in terms of simple error. The facts overwhelmingly point to a New York Times management that is unconcerned about the accuracy of its reporting.

“The problems exposed in this particular review of a New York Times analysis of critically important events related to the US national security is not unique to this particular story. This author could easily point to other serious errors in New York Times reporting on important technical issues associated with our national security.

“In these cases, like in this case, the New York Times management has not only allowed the reporting of false information without reviewing the facts for accuracy, but it has repeatedly continued to report the same wrong information in follow-on articles. It may be inappropriate to call this ‘fake news,’ but this loaded term comes perilously close to actually describing what is happening.”

No Admissions

When I interviewed Postol on Wednesday, he said he had received no responses from either the Times or Bellingcat, adding:

“It seems to me that the analysts were ignorant beyond plausibility or they rigged the analysis. … To me, this is malpractice on a large scale.”

Referring to some of the photographed scenes in Khan Sheikhoun, including a dead goat that appeared to have been dragged into location near the “sarin crater,” Postol called the operation “a rather amateurish attempt to create a false narrative.”

But the problem of the Times and Bellingcat presenting dubious – or in Postol’s view, “fraudulent” – information about sensitive geopolitical and national security issues has another potentially even darker side. These two entities are part of Google’s First Draft Coalition of news organizations that are expected to serve as gatekeepers separating “truth” from “fake news.”

The emerging idea is to take their judgments and enter them into algorithms to scrub the Internet of information that doesn’t comport with what the Times, Bellingcat and other approved news outlets deem true.

That these two organizations would operate with a pattern of “confirmation bias” on sensitive war-and-peace issues is thus doubly troubling in that their future “groupthinks” could not only mislead their readers but could ensure that contrary evidence is whisked away from everyone else, too.

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).

All images in this article are from the author.

Soldiers of the Air Force, The blustering and swashbuckling Egyptian Army is moving against us to annihilate our people… – Battle Order of the Officer Commanding Israeli Air Force, Monday, June 5th 1967.

The Six Day War of June 1967, a series of battles fought by the armed forces of the state of Israel against a combination of Arab armies, is one of manifold significance. From a military standpoint, it presented a model strategy of how to prosecute and win a war waged on several fronts.

The stunning victory also created a sense of euphoria among communities in the Jewish Diaspora: Among American Jews, a segment of Jewry David Ben Gurion viewed with disdain because of their failure to migrate en masse to Israel, a new sense of commitment in both emotional and financial terms was born. In the Soviet Union where Jews sensed an increase in anti-Semitism during the build up to the war, Israel’s triumph led to a rise in ethnic consciousness; a state of affairs which fueled the Refusenik Movement.

The taking of the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old City where reside the revered Jewish sites of the Temple Mount and the Wailing or Western Wall; the Muslim Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque and the Christian Church of the Holy Sepulchre, added a religious dimension.

It also had profound and lasting geopolitical consequences. Israel firmly established itself as the regional super-power of the Middle East and the acquisition of land from Egypt (Gaza and the Sinai), Jordan (the West Bank) and Syria (the Golan Heights) brought large populations of Arab people under Israeli occupation. Today, the continued occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, the blockading of the Gaza Strip and the annexation of the Golan Heights continue to define the Arab-Israeli dispute.

The chronology of events which preceded the outbreak of fighting are clear enough. There had been a background of increased Palestinian guerrilla activity on Israel’s borders and an aerial battle between Israeli and Syrian air force jets which came before two fateful moves made by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. First, on May 16th 1967, he requested that the United Nations remove its peacekeeping force from the Sinai. Then on May 23rd, he closed the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. Additionally, on May 30th, Egypt and Jordan signed a mutual defence pact.

The narrative presented to the world at the time, and for the most part, since then is that Nasser’s actions were taken as a preparation for a war in which combined Arab armies would invade and destroy Israel. With bellicose statements frequently emanating from Arab media outlets such as the Voice of the Arabs radio station calling for Israel’s destruction and the “sweeping of the Jews into the sea”, the Israeli assault beginning with a raid on the Egyptian Air Force in the dawn hours of Monday June 5th 1967, was put forward as a preemptive attack that was brought about in order to forestall the annihilation of Israel.

To the onlooking world, annihilation seemed to be more than a mere possibility. The sheer geographical size of its Arab neighbours in comparison to Israel’s territorial extent was an unavoidable factor in leading to such a conclusion. There were reports of Israelis digging graves in preparation for mass burials. The air of an impending doom felt by those in the Jewish Diaspora was exemplified by a photograph taken in the London suburb of Golders Green depicting a little girl seated in front of a house while holding a handwritten placard with the words ‘HELP ISRAEL’.

Israeli politicians contributed to the grand narrative of a people placed perilously upon a precipice. After asserting that the war had been started by “the Arab invasion of Israeli territory”, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol told the Knesset on June 12th 1967 that “the very existence of the state of Israel hung upon a thread, but Arab leaders’ hopes of annihilating Israel have been confounded.”

The truth however is quite different. Israel was simply never in danger of annihilation and the allegation that Israel had reacted to an imminent threat of an invading force of Arab armies defies a closer examination of the evidence.

The constant references made to the prospect of annihilation in the build up to the conflict was a continuation of a line propagated since the war Jewish militias fought against Arab armies in 1948 after the British withdrawal from Palestine. Both the Haganah and Palmach were composed of a well-disciplined and well-resourced core of soldiers many of whom had obtained valuable experience in combat and intelligence units of the British Army during the Second World War. The members of the major Jewish underground organisations Irgun and Lehi (the Stern Gang) were also brutally effective practitioners of the dark arts of inflicting mass terror and psychological warfare. And although figures may vary, all credible estimates regarding the total numbers of combatants deployed in the field provide for a significant numerical advantage in favour of the Israeli side.

Arab armies by comparison were a hodge-podge of militias fighting not to sweep the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea, but to hold on to territory assigned to the Arab population of Palestine under the terms of the by then vitiated United Nations partition plan. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force dispatched by the corrupt government of King Farouk, had limited manpower to draw upon; 80% of the male population of fighting age were judged to be either mentally or physically unfit for military service. Also, the logistics arm of its army was severely limited in its capacity to support ground forces beyond its borders. The army sent by the Syrians was more adept at playing politics than at waging war. Both armies along with those provided by other countries such as Lebanon and Iraq were simply no match for the Israeli side.

IDF forces in the Sinai front (Source: IDF Archive via The Holy Land Timeline)

The only formidable force arraigned against Israel were the British-trained Arab Legion of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan who were successful in frustrating the attempts of the Israelis to gain control of the Old City of Jerusalem. But it is pertinent to note that David Ben Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, had sent Golda Meir and a Haganah intelligence officer on a mission to King Abdullah which aimed to keep Transjordan out of the impending conflict.

In her memoirs, Meir stated the following:

Ben Gurion knew that Trans-Jordan was not intending to join in on any Arab attack on the Jewish state in territory provided for it by the vitiated partition plan…He would always remain our friend, he said, and, like us, he wanted peace more than anything else

It is also useful to note that the 1973 war instigated by Egypt was fought with limited military objectives, specifically involving the Egyptian and Syrian armies reacquiring some of the land taken during the 1967 war to serve as the basis for applying political pressure on Israel to withdraw from occupied territories.

The claim that Israel was facing annihilation in 1967 was as false as those made in 1948 and 1973. Indeed, it can be asserted that no combination of Arab military force was capable of defeating Israel in any of these conflicts.

The intelligence agencies of both Britain and the United States forecasted victory of the powerfully armed and well-disciplined Israelis prior to the war of 1967.

“The only difference between the British and us,” said US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, “was how long it would take the Israelis to beat the Egyptians.”

The Central Intelligence Agency predicted that Israel would defeat its Arab neighbours in one week. Its director Richard Helms put it thus:

If the Israelis attacked first, it was going to be a short war.. If the Egyptians attacked first, it was going to be a longer war, but there wasn’t any question about who was going to win it

Just over ten years after his army was routed by the Israelis during the Suez War, Nasser’s bluster and chess moves were not aimed at igniting a war, but instead was motivated out of a mixture of pride (King Hussein had once accused him of hiding behind the skirts of the United Nations Emergency Force in Sinai) and a desperate gamble aimed at bringing in the United States to the table as a mediator.

Nasser was hedging his bets on an intervention by the United States based on a formula set out by President Dwight Eisenhower after the Suez War. Eisenhower had made a commitment on behalf of the United States to keep the Straits of Tiran open. In other words, Nasser acted in the expectation that the United States would convene a peace conference at which the “society of nations” would effect a peace settlement that would enable Nasser to save face and reopen the Straits.

Those familiar with the story of Gamal Abdel Nasser will find this reasonably plausible. Back in the 1950s, Nasser had kept a back channel of communication with an earlier prime minister of Israel Moshe Sharett, who is often characterised as a politician who acted earnestly in the pursuit of peace with its Arab neighbours.

However, Sharett was frustrated by the machinations of the hardline Moshe Dayan while he served as the Chief of General Staff. And in 1967, Dayan would frustrate the efforts of both Prime Minister Eshkol and General Yitzhak Rabin who had favoured a limited military operation which would have paved the way for an international peace conference.

In Israel, there were many who were not keen on effecting a peace settlement. They had began ratcheting up the tension after Egypt and Syria had signed a mutual defence pact in November of 1966. The agreement provided that each country would support the other if attacked by Israel. Incidents were manufactured by the Israelis on the Syrian border which led to tit-for-tat exchanges. These confrontations continued until April of 1967 when pilots of the Israeli Air Force engaged in a series of dogfights with their Syrian counterparts over a seven-hour period. It culminated with the Israeli mirage jets downing six Syrian MIG 21s.

Neither Egypt nor either of the other frontline Arab states had any intention of attacking Israel. So far as Egypt was concerned 40,000 soldiers, among them some of the finest units of its army, were bogged down by a protracted conflict in Yemen. The deployments Nasser ordered into Sinai were nowhere near the numbers required to mount a serious strike. The CIA, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the British Secret Intelligence Service all concluded that they were defensive in nature.

Evidence that this was the case came over the years from a number of Israeli military and political figures.

For instance in the February 28th edition of the French magazine Le Monde, Yitzhak Rabin said the following in an interview:

I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on 14 May would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it.

Also, in the early 1970s, General Matetiyahu Peled, Chief of Logistical Command during the war, while engaged in a radio debate asserted that

“Israel was never in real danger and there was no evidence that Egypt had any intention of attacking Israel”, adding, “Israeli intelligence knew that Egypt was not prepared for war.” In an interview for Le Monde published in June of 1972, Peled said the following:

To pretend that the Egyptian forces concentrated on our borders were capable of threatening Israel’s existence does not only insult the intelligence of any person capable of analysing this kind of situation, but is primarily an insult to the Israeli army.

And from Menachem begin in 1982 came this statement:

In June 1967 we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.

It follows that the fears of annihilation and a second holocaust, encouraged at home and abroad by the Israeli authorities were unfounded. Again, many military figures have confirmed this including General Haim Bar-Lev, another Chief of Staff of the IDF.

“We were not threatened with genocide on the eve of the Six Day War,” he told Ma’ariv in April of 1972, “and we never thought of such a possibility.”

This was backed up General Ezer Weizmann, Chief of Operations during the war, who pooh-poohed the suggestion by stating that

“there was never any danger of annihilation. This hypothesis has never been considered in any serious meeting.”

It is important to note that the Israelis had first announced that their attack had been in response to Egyptian military action, and that when it was realised that this version of events would not stand the test of scrutiny, it reverted to the story of a preemptive action. As for the emotive narrative of the digging of mass graves, photographic archives show Israeli civilians digging trenches much in the manner as civilians have been apt to do when preparing to defend towns and cities in war time.

Right from its inception, the leaders of Israel were well practised in the art of public manipulation and control. Both David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan were taken by the philosophy of keeping Israel’s citizens in a consistent state of apprehension and alertness, otherwise, they feared, they might become complacent about their hard won Zionist nation. This is why both men provoked many border skirmishes which were responded to with typically disproportionate force.

David Ben Gurion (Center) and Moshe Dayan (Right) (Source: therese-zrihen-dvir.over-blog.com)

Most of the skirmishes on the Syrian border -more than a thousand occurring between 1948 and 1967 according to Syrian estimates- were in fact provoked by Israel as a means of extending Israeli territory in the demilitarized zone between both countries.

Dayan admitted this in an interview in 1976:

We would send a tractor to plow some (disputed) area…and we knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was…

Manipulation and control were also at the heart of the decision to lie to the Israeli public over the false flag operation carried out in Egypt in 1954 by a Jewish Arab cell charged by Israeli military intelligence with the mission of bombing British and American establishments in the hope of discouraging a rapprochement between Egypt and the West. Those who went to the gallows or who were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment were claimed by Israel’s government to have been the innocent victims of an anti-Semitic show trial by the Nasser government.

The reason for perpetuating the myth of a preemptive strike on the grounds of self-defence and the threat of annihilation lies in the quest for achieving ‘Greater Israel’. This idea is rooted not only in religious thinking and the secular objectives of political Zionism but also in terms of acquiring resources linked to land and water.

The Land of Israel or Eretz Yisrael, encompasses territory that is larger than what was provided for Jews under the partition plan and the additional territory won by militias after the 1948 war. Although the concept of ‘Greater Israel’ varies in terms of the extent of its borders, one consistent feature is the inclusion of the biblical regions of Judea and Samaria, which broadly correspond to the location of the modern West Bank.

The war of 1967 was a war of conquest that had been in preparation for many years. It was about completing the unfinished business from 1948 which included claiming the whole of Jerusalem. Nasser had been goaded into a trap and the opportunity had to be seized. Those within the Israeli government who prevaricated such as Prime Minister Eshkol and the IDF Chief of Staff Rabin were labelled as “weak” and “indecisive”.

In fact, some argue that Eshkol’s government was subjected to a coup d’etat instigated by Right-wing elements in the military who with the support of like-thinking politicians and the media contrived to force Eshkol into forming a National Unity Government with the Right-wing Herut party led by Menachem Begin. Up to that point in history, the prime minister had by tradition also held the portfolio of minister of defence (save for the short-lived Moshe Sharett), but Eshkol was pressured to relinquish it to the hawk Moshe Dayan.

Dayan was effectively the architect of the Israeli conquests that followed. The waging of an aggressive war under the pretence of a preemptive strike along with the encouragement of an atmosphere fearful of annihilation each served a purpose: To give Israeli actions the veneer of legality, and, in the latter case, as explained by Mordecai Bentov, a member of the National Unity Government in Al-Hamishmar newspaper in April of 1971, a rationalization for the intended land grab:

The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.

The ruthless use of propaganda as a means of camouflaging Israel’s true objectives lies behind one of the most notorious events of the Six Day War: the sinking of the USS Liberty. This murderous act of Israeli aggression against its ally, the United States, was played down as a case of attacking a target mistakenly under the fog of war.

An American intelligence gathering vessel bristling with antennae and flying the stars and stripes, the Liberty was cruising off the coast of Egypt on June 8th when attacked by a combination of Israeli air and naval forces. Thirty-four of its crew were killed and 174 left wounded. The attack, which was almost certainly ordered by General Dayan, had occurred at a most sensitive stage of the war.

The Israelis, whose rout of the Egyptian army had brought about the unwanted burden of policing more prisoners of war than they could handle, had reached el Arish where hundreds of captured Egyptian soldiers had been executed. Some had been forced to dig their own graves while others were buried by native Bedouin tribesmen after Israeli soldiers had shot them and left the bodies rotting in the desert sun. The Liberty was well-placed to listen in on these events given that el Arish is a port city on the Mediterranean coast.

The other issue of crucial importance concerned Israel’s strategic conduct of the war. After its conquest of the Sinai Peninsula, Israel’s intention was to order many of its units to turn around and be redeployed so as to consolidate the capture of the West Bank and also to provide reinforcement for the units charged with attacking Syria and taking the Golan Heights.

Far from entertaining thoughts of a life or death struggle with its Arab foes which could possibly result in the mass extermination of its citizens, Israeli calculations were based on achieving certain victory. However, this would need to be accomplished within a limited time scale after which it leaders were aware that a UN Security Council-brokered ceasefire would have to be implemented.

While Israel had obtained the blessing of President Lyndon Johnson to go to war, it did not have America’s consent so far as taking over the West Bank and Syrian territory was concerned. Such actions it was felt might provoke an intervention by the Soviet Union.

Cabinet meeting with Dean Rusk, President Johnson and McNamara (Source: Wikipedia)

Thus it was that with victory complete in the Sinai and two days left of the war, the Israelis did not want the Americans eavesdropping through the Liberty when its troops were rerouted northwards. Such was the secrecy behind the planned incursion into Syria that Prime Minister Eshkol was not told of the plan by Dayan until after he had ordered the attack on the Golan Heights.

After being closely monitored by Israeli reconnaissance planes, the Liberty was subjected to a sustained attack lasting for about two hours. The ship endured waves of attacks by strafing jets and projectiles fired from motorized torpedo boats. Crew who attempted to launch lifeboats were targeted by machine guns and napalm bombs were dropped. The intention appeared to be to sink the the ship and leave no survivors. This would have left it open for the attack to be blamed on Egypt.

Miraculously, the ship was kept afloat and a distress signal sent after having had both its tactical and distress frequencies jammed by the Israelis. Twelve fighter jets and four tanker planes stationed on the USS Saratoga, an aircraft carrier of the nearby American Sixth Fleet, were sent into action to defend the Liberty but were recalled by US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara. Once the Israelis knew that the American fleet had received word of the attack, they were quick to inform the Americans that their ship had been hit by mistake.

A cover up was effected by the Johnson administration under pressure from an ever more assertive Israeli lobby which had threatened to smear Johnson with the accusation of blood libel. Alongside this allegation of anti-Semitism would be a refusal by Jewish organisations to fund Johnson if he chose to run for reelection the following year.

Although the establishment cover up over the attack on the Liberty persists to this day several prominent American officials have over the years gone on the record to contradict the hastily arrived official verdict that it had been a mistake; Dean Rusk, a former US Secretary of State, and Admiral Thomas Moorer who was the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff at the time of the incident being among the most prominent of these dissenters.

In a perceptive insert in Newsweek magazine’s ‘Periscope’ column dated June 19th 1967, a staff writer offered the following thesis:

Although Israel’s apologies were officially accepted, some high Washington officials believe the Israelis knew the Liberty’s capabilities and suspect that the attack might not have been accidental. One top-level theory holds that someone in the Israeli armed forces ordered the Liberty sunk because he suspected it had taken down messages showing that Israel started the fighting.

Tape recordings of the dialogue of Israeli personnel during the attack which were available to American officials soon after the incident have been made public in recent years. On separate occasions, a voice is heard clearly identifying the Liberty as an American vessel. The position that the destruction of the USS Liberty was a tragic error is no longer tenable.

The truth behind the Six Day War is one which many who have been conditioned to accept the sanctity of the Israeli version of history may find shocking and difficult to comprehend. But what Israel had assured America would be a limited war turned into a land grab. It had not been a war of self-defence but one of aggression. It was also not a war waged to prevent annihilation, instead it was a war that led to dispossession and occupation.

For decades, the Six Day War has been represented as one of the stellar achievements of the reborn Jewish state. Just over two decades after the persecutions and genocide visited upon European Jewry, the Jewish David defied the prospect of certain defeat to slay the Arab Goliath in a just and audacious martial enterprise.

The technical accomplishments and personal bravery of Israeli military personnel notwithstanding, the background of false propaganda, the numerous breaches of international law and the commission of a series of war crimes all put the lie to the famous statement by Abba Eban, Israel’s long-term foreign minister that “Never in the history of nations has armed force been used in a more righteous or compelling cause.”

The effects of the occupation of the West Bank including the spread of illegal settlements, the economic strangulation of Gaza in between intermittent punitive military actions as well as the illegal annexation of the Golan Heights continue to challenge Israeli claims to righteous and moral conduct.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Featured image: from the author

Undemocratic Democrat Brad Sherman represents California’s 30th congressional district.

On June 12, he circulated an article of impeachment against Trump to all House members, “seeking their input and support,” he said, issuing a statement, saying:

“(A)s set forth in my letter to my colleagues: As the investigations move forward, additional evidence supporting additional Articles of Impeachment may emerge.”

“However, as to Obstruction of Justice and 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (b)(3), the evidence we have is sufficient to move forward now. And the national interest requires that we do so.”

“I act not for partisan advantage. Having served with Mike Pence in the House for twelve years, I disagree with him on most issues of public policy.”

“But we must move forward as quickly as possible to ensure a competent government that respects the Constitution and the rule of law, even if we end up with a President who is effective and dedicated to regressive policies.”

“I have no illusions. Articles of Impeachment will not pass the House in the near future. But given the risk posed to the Republic, we should move things forward as quickly as possible.”

Like virtually all other members of Congress, Sherman ignores international, constitutional and US statute rule of law principles.

An excerpt of the Resolution (Screenshot from sherman.house.gov)

Other than continuing US war on humanity Trump’s predecessors began, supported by the vast majority of House and Senate members, no just cause exists to impeach and remove him from office.

The Constitution’s Article I, Section 2 empowers House members to impeach a sitting president, Senate members with sole power to try them.

Article II, Section 4 states

“(t)he President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Views on any issues aren’t impeachable offenses, no matter how extreme, offensive or different from most others in government – only criminal acts too severe to ignore, open to interpretation, given how egregiously America operates at home and abroad with bipartisan support.

Other than continuing longstanding US naked aggression against sovereign independent states, threatening others, and supporting wealth, power and privilege exclusively at the expense of social justice, Trump isn’t guilty of an impeachable offense.

Sherman lied claiming he “prevented, obstructed and impeded the administration of justice during a federal investigation” into Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials, along with (nonexistent) Moscow US election hacking – including “threatening, and then terminating, James Comey.”

“…Donald John Trump has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States,” Sherman added.

If he’s guilty of all of the above and more, virtually the entire Congress warrants impeachment and removal from office.

What a wonderful idea, a clean slate, a chance to start over for revolutionary change – ending debauched duopoly governance, the deplorable way things are now.

Trump is part of the dirty system, much like nearly all his predecessors.

Jack Kennedy was the most notable defender of good governance, assassinated for wanting peace, not war, nuclear disarmament and rapprochement with Soviet Russia – unforgivable high crimes, according to America’s deep state.

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

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: Wikipedia

Sound absurd? It is – not a shred of truth to the neocon/CIA-connected Washington Post’s accusation.

Claiming “(h)ackers allied with the Russian government have devised a cyberweapon that has the potential to be the most disruptive yet against electric systems that Americans depend on for daily life, according to US researchers” is a malicious bald-faced Big Lie.

Saying so-called CrashOverride malware “could be deployed against US electric transmission and distribution systems with devastating effect” is part of longstanding irresponsible Russia bashing.

According to a likely CIA-funded disinformation Dragos cybersecurity report, “Russian government hackers have shown their interest in targeting US energy and other utility systems,” said WaPo, citing firm researchers – quoting its director Sergio Caltagirone saying:

“It’s the culmination of over a decade of theory and attack scenarios, It’s a game changer.”

It’s baloney. No Russian threat to America’s power grid or anything else in the country exists.

In January, WaPo notoriously claimed Russian hackers penetrated America’s power grid, saying a Vermont utility was attacked.

The accusation was exposed as fake news, willful deception. Cybersecurity specialists said the code detected wasn’t Russian. It was an outdated Ukrainian hacking tool.

Burlington Electric explained the malware was found during a single laptop scan not connected to its power grid.

A company statement said

“(w)e took immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal officials of this finding.”

The incident had nothing to do with alleged hacking by Russia or any other country. Blaming Moscow for these type incidents is a knee-jerk response – entirely lacking credibility.

Vermonters could relax. Their power grid wasn’t threatened by Russia. Nor are Americans in the other 49 states.

The Russians weren’t coming in January or earlier. They’re not coming now. No cyber or other attacks by Moscow loom.

The Russian threat is a fabricated hoax, part of longstanding US hostility toward its government.

The Trump administration hasn’t commented on WaPo’s accusation. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to its latest claim.

It’s baseless, part of continuing anti-Russia propaganda – making stuff up because legitimate reasons to criticize its government don’t exist.

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

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: The Hacker News

In a climate of outright confrontation, even the Gulf monarchies have been overtaken by a series of unprecedented events. The differences between Qatar on one side, and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on the other, have escalated into a full-blown diplomatic crisis with outcomes difficult to foresee.

Officially, everything started with statements made by Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani that appeared on the Qatar News Agency (QNA) on May 23, 2017. A few hours before the conference between the 50 Arab countries and the US President, Al Thani was reported to have said the same words that appeared on QNA. The speech was very indulgent towards Iran and described the idea of an “Arab NATO” as unnecessary. The exact words are not known because the event in which Al Thani had made such incendiary remarks concerned military matters and was thus not accessible to the general public. Especially to be noted is that QNA denies having published words in question and attributed them to a cyber-attack.

The public dissemination of the Emir’s words on QNA promptly provoked an unprecedented diplomatic crisis in the Gulf. Immediately, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Egypt and the Maldives took advantage of the confusion created by Al Thani’s alleged words by enacting a series of extreme measures while accusing Doha of supporting international terrorism (through Hamas, al Qaeda, Iran and Daesh). Qatar’s ambassadors in the countries mentioned were requested to return home within 48 hours, and Qatari citizens were given 14 days to leave Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. At the same time, Riyadh proceeded to close its airspace as well as land and sea borders to Qatar, effectively isolating the peninsula from the rest of the world.

Realistically, what interest would Qatar have had in promulgating the words of Al Thani in order to antagonize Riyadh and Abu Dhabi? Even if the Emir had made such remarks, Doha would certainly not have given them to QNA to publish on its website. If it was not a cyber-attack, it was certainly a miscalculation on Doha’s part or, worse, possibly internal sabotage to damage the Al Thani family.

To explain the dynamics that have officially created this unprecedented situation, it is necessary to sift through the facts in order to discern reality from fiction.

There is no difference between Saudi Arabia and Qatar

The Saudi charge that Qatar supports terrorism is well supported by the facts, Doha having long supported terrorist groups in North Africa and the Middle East, from Libya to Syria through to Egypt and Iraq. The problem is that the one throwing the charge, Saudi Arabia, is as guilty of it as is the accused. Both countries have provided the financial backing for much of the extremism that has been infesting the globe for decades. The Saudi royal family is the ultimate expression of the Wahhabi heresy that historically corresponds to the ideology of al Qaeda. Riyadh’s support for terrorist organizations was complemented by the US neoconservative strategy designed to destabilize Afghanistan in the context of anti-USSR geopolitics, as admitted by the recently deceased Zbigniew Brzezinski.

The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar has deep roots and affects not only the ideological difference between Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood, but also the increased religious tolerance of Doha as opposed to the ideological intransigence of Riyadh.

Qatar, through the Muslim Brotherhood, has supported the Arab Spring that deposed Mubarak and placed Morsi in charge of Egypt, creating in the process strong tensions with the Saudis. Riyadh supported al Sisi to remedy the situation in Egypt, financing the coup that sent Morsi to jail. In 2014 this prompted a crisis between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, with Qatar’s ambassadors being expelled from the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Differences were soon patched up by the convergence of interests in destabilizing Syria and Iraq with extremist terrorism funded by both nations together with Turkey’s important contribution.

The Neocon Zionist and Wahhabi plans

What is interesting to note in connection with the Gulf crisis is the change in strategy in recent months by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Washington’s plan, shared by Tel Aviv and supported by Riyadh, is to pin the blame for sponsoring international terrorism on Tehran and Doha, fingering Qatar as the key financier of Hamas, al Qaeda and Daesh. The reason and purpose behind this are manifold.

The problem of Islamic terrorism has become a subject of focused attention for European and American citizens because of frequent attacks. Security agencies are incapable of preventing terrorist attacks from the same elements they have for years funded and supported as part of their anti-Iranian and anti-Syrian strategy. The difficulties faced by secret services in halting such attacks (as opposed to rogue secret services who aid terrorist networks a la Operation Gladio) have made people question.

Citizens, increasingly frightened and angry with their governments for the lack of security, are beginning to realize that the extremists receive their financial support from the Gulf countries, who are known to be in business with many European capitals. The last thing that the governments of France, Italy, Germany, the UK and the US want is the revelation that they are in league with Islamic terrorism for geopolitical purposes. The consequences would be disastrous for the already fragile credibility of the West.

Further confirmation of this strategy to gang up on Qatar can be seen in the economic field. S&P downgraded the credit rating of Qatar a short time ago to AA-, setting the stage for a further downgrade that could have important implications for the future economic stability of the emirate.

Trump and other leaders of the G7 seem to have made up their minds, agreeing with Saudi wishes, heaping on Qatar all the blame for Islamic terrorism. The US administration, more eagerly than its European vassals, also insists on including Tehran in the charge of state sponsors of terrorism. For Washington, the aim is to curtail covert Western support for terrorism, all the more urgent given the worsening state of affairs in Europe. Politicians from the Old Continent understand that it is fundamental for a culprit to be found before being accused of being unable to stop Islamist terrorism. It is a desperate exit strategy that aims to attribute primary blame to Qatar and secondary blame to Iran.

Europeans are more reluctant to endorse this vision, given the possible trade opportunities for the European private sector in Iran following the removal of sanctions. It is even possible that some European leaders are opposed to Trump’s idea, probably discussed during the G7 in Italy, given Qatar’s billions of investment poured into the dying European economy.

Israel has officially maintained a neutral position concerning the Arab Spring, benefiting from the chaos in the region and the weakening of geopolitical opponents like Syria and Egypt. Qatar’s support for Hamas, Israel’s historic enemy, is a factor that has contributed to Tel Aviv’s support for Riyadh’s manoeuvres against Doha.

The Saudis, on the other hand, have multiple reasons for attacking Qatar. Firstly, it brings Doha’s foreign policy back into line after showing leanings towards Tehran. Secondly, it aims to incorporate Qatar in order to absorb its enormous financial resources, as an extreme measure to help solve Saudi Arabia’s disastrous economic situation.

Chaos as a means of preserving global hegemony

Behind a convergence of convenience involving the triumvirate of Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar lies a well-outlined project of preventing Tehran from becoming a regional hegemon. The Saudis regard Iran as a heretical nation with regard to Islam and have always promoted policies against Tehran. Israel considers Iran the only real danger in the region as it is also a military powerhouse like Israel. As for the United States, the main objective is to mediate a diplomatic rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is needed for the two nations to officially develop a military alliance against Tehran. The final goal is the creation of an Arab NATO to contain Iran, mirroring NATO’s stance towards the Russian Federation.

Source: Iran Focus

The fault lies in Qatar.

Washington sees only one possible way to at once allay the concerns of her European allies suffering an onslaught of Islamist attacks while simultaneously giving the impression to a domestic audience of fighting extremists. It plans to do this by entering into a major agreement with the two nations closest to Islamist terrorism – Israel and Saudi Arabia – while blaming a third terrorist-supporting nation for all the terrorism -Qatar. Of course the weakest and strategically least relevant of these three countries is Qatar.

The real challenge: Unipolarity vs. Multipolarity.

The most salient point in this story is the contrast between the new multipolar order and the American unipolar world order. Qatar, thanks to its enormous financial resources, has maintained high-level contacts with a wide variety of countries that are not necessarily allied to Riyadh.

From the point of view of energy, Qatar is the region’s second power after Riyadh, getting 90% of its revenue from exports of liquefied natural gas from the world’s largest deposit that is shared with Iran. In the case of relations with Moscow, the problem is not significant given the relations between Saudi Arabia and the Russian Federation. For example, Qatar has recently injected capital into Rosneft by acquiring a large share of stocks. Qatar foreign minister meet with Lavrov in Moscow a couple of days ago discussing how to deescalate tensions but also reaffirming the importance of relations between Doha and Moscow. Qatar, on the back of its economic wealth, has expanded its political horizons by moving away from Riyadh, infuriating Washington and Tel Aviv.

The strengthening of the Iranian position in the region was achieved thanks to two main factors, namely the victories in the Syrian war and the agreement with the Obama administration over Iranian nuclear power. This rehabilitation of Iran on the international scene following the signing of the agreement slowly led Doha to advance back-channel dialogue with Tehran to reach a compromise, especially in relation to the exploitation of the South Pars / North Dome gas field. About three months ago, Qatar removed the moratorium on exploiting the field and carried out dialogue with Iran over its development. It seems that an agreement has been reached between Qatar and Iran for the future construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to the Mediterranean or Turkey that will also carry Qatari gas to Europe. In exchange, Doha’s ending of support for terrorism has been demanded, openly contravening Saudi and American directives to destroy Syria.

The Saudis have bet all their chips on the continuation of American hegemony. They prefer to please the United States by avoiding the sale of oil to China in yuan, and are consequently paying the price, with China buying more and more oil from Angola and Russia instead. Moscow Central Bank has even opened a bank branch in Shanghai to convert yuan into gold, creating something that resembles the US dollar gold standard of yesteryear.

In Yemen, Riyadh has compromised its future by squandering huge amounts of wealth, with the only thing to show for it being a pending military defeat at the hands of the poorest Arab country on the planet. The collapse of the price of oil has only exacerbated these difficulties. Qatar has avoided these problems by virtue of having huge gas reserves as well as a somewhat more diversified foreign policy than Riyadh. For the Saudis, placing under their control the world’s largest gas reserve, as well as an obscene amount of cash, would offer the opportunity of at least recovering in part the huge losses experienced recently.

In this bloody game, Qatar is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the mainstream media’s coverage of the events leaves us with little doubts as to what the future for Doha will be. CNN’s interview with the Qatari ambassador to the United States represented a rare example of journalistic integrity when the ambassador was embarrassed by the CNN host’s airing accusations of Qatar’s support for terrorists.

Neocon Deep State Vs Neoliberal Deep State

The fratricidal war within the US deep state also affects the Middle East, especially in the clash between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It has long been known that Huma Abedin has deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, as did the previous American administration as well as Hillary Clinton. This proximity has had repercussions on the relationship between Obama and the Sunni countries, especially Saudi Arabia.

Until a few months ago, Washington was full of rumours about alleged lobbying efforts by former Trump adviser Michael Flynn on behalf of Erdogan. Considering that the former general was fired, this could be an important indicator of Trump’s position on Qatar, as the Turkish President is very close to the Muslim Brotherhood, a Doha-backed ideological movement. Flynn could have been fired by Trump for his close indirect relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The mainstream media close to the Clinton/Obama clan may have used the alleged links between Flynn and Russia to obscure the hidden links between Washington and the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, the evidence of collusion between the Muslim Brotherhood and Washington dates even before 2010, with Obama’s speech in Cairo in 2009 and the resulting Arab springs, all funded by Qatar via the Muslim Brotherhood, with Washington’s blessing. The consequences of those actions are well known, having increased the chaos in the region, forced a greater US presence in the Middle East, and contributed to increasing synergies between the Shiite axis in response to terrorist aggression.

In this context, Turkey backed the same terrorist groups as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and the abortive July 2016 coup only served to strengthen the takeover of power by Erdogan and the Muslim Brotherhood faction supporting him. Even today the consequences of the coup reverberate in the region, with the alliance between Ankara and Doha recently strengthened with the presence of Turkish troops in Qatar. Another element not to underestimate was Iran’s attitude towards Ankara following the failed coup d’état, with Tehran declaring its solidarity with Ankara.

The strategic choices of previous administrations in the Middle East were disastrous in every respect. They strengthened enemies and weakened historic allies. No wonder Trump has decided to hit the rewind button, placing strong confidence in the two main allies in the Middle East, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Trump and the deep-state faction loyal to him aims to create an Arab NATO able to confront Iran in its own right, freeing Washington from a constant presence in the Middle East. The United States is focussed on two key factors in this strategy, namely the sale of Saudi oil in US dollars, and the sale of weapons to US allies to keep its military-industrial complex happy. These goals coincide with what happened recently in the emirates with Trump’s visit. The United States and Saudi Arabia have signed agreements worth over 350 billion dollars. Saudi Arabia strongly supports the creation of an Arab NATO. The organization would make official Tehran’s role as the greatest danger for the entire region. Moreover, the project of an Arab NATO would suit Israel fine, as it hates Tehran.

For the US deep state, or at least part of it, the most urgent strategy concerns the transfer of American forces in terms of presence and focus, from the Middle East and Europe to Asia in order to face the main challenge of the future, namely China’s intention to dominate the Asian region. What is happening in the Philippines with Daesh, which the author wrote about last week, is simply the continuation of a wider strategy that also affects the Saudi-Qatar conflict.

With Obama and the ruling Democrats, much attention had been paid to the issue of human rights. In particular, the component of the deep state close to the Clinton/Obama clan embraced the Muslim Brotherhood’s attempt to subvert power in the Middle Eastern region through the Arab Spring. The approach of neoconservatives and neoliberals towards hegemony is very different and shows conflicting strategies, highlighting the diversity between the two souls of the US deep state that has long been battling each other.

On one hand, the neoliberal/human-rights clan is very close to Obama and Clinton as well as supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar indirectly. Neoconservatives, however, are historically more aligned with Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of whom seem to support Trump in order to make the US role in the Middle East less central, thanks to an Arabian NATO that would free the US up to shift its attention to Asia by delegating regional control to Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

In this regard, the nuclear agreement between the Obama administration and Tehran is explained. The neoliberals hoped to see Iranian revolts in the wake of the Arab Spring, leading to the overthrowing of the regime and the ushering in of democracy. Neoliberal human-rights interventionists abuse the word democracy, wielding it as a baton. The results of these efforts can be seen in the disasters in Libya and Syria. Paradoxically, Obama and Clinton’s strategy has backfired on Washington, since Iran, thanks to the nuclear agreement, has increased its weight in the region, forcing the Neocon-Saudi-Zionist faction to try to sabotage it in any way.

Conclusion

Qatar is at a crossroads. Acquiescing to Saudi pressure means falling into line and abandoning its dalliance with the multipolar world order. The fate of Doha is probably already determined, with Iran and Russia hardly desirous of becoming too much involved in the sanguinary game. A likely outcome is that the Al Thani family will in the end acquiesce to Saudi demands after resisting thanks to foreign partners help. What is interesting to note is that the situation in Washington has deteriorated to such an extent that even Washington’s historic allies are fighting each other.

Iran, Russia and China, assisting Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya, have created the necessary conditions to end Middle-Eastern destabilization, even prompting an internal crisis in the Gulf Cooperation Council. The bet that Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Washington embarked on with the aggression against Doha could prove to be an unforgivable strategic error, even leading to the end of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the weakening of the anti-Iran coalition in the region.

If Qatar should decide to resist Saudi pressure, which is only possible with the covert support of Russia, China and Iran, it is likely that the Syrian war has its days numbered. This is not to mention the fact that such an outcome would provide Turkey with an even easier path to transition into the Eurasian alliance.

Should Doha decide to oppose the demands of Riyadh (their economic capacity is certainly not lacking), it will be up to Russia, Iran and China to decide whether to risk supporting Qatar against Saudi Arabia in order to stabilize the region. The hostility of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel hold towards Qatar are warning signs for the Eurasian bloc, already facing many obstacles in the world as it is.

Despite this, Tehran and Moscow are providing and offering Qatar’s first needed goods in terms of food and medicine. Iran is also opening its own airspace to Doha-based companies. Iran, in addition to being a nation usually ready to help when demanded, sees the opportunity to continue the destruction of the axis opposed to it. An overall assessment (In Astana at the SCO meeting?) will be needed to determine which strategy is best to follow. Above all it will be necessary to understand how Qatar will want to proceed in this unprecedented crisis in the Gulf region.

Even in Syria, the terrorist groups funded by the monarchies and Turkey are fighting each other, reflecting the divisions and tensions within the Gulf. It is only a matter of time before the conflicts between various organizations extends to other places in Syria, leading to the collapse of the opposition groups. In light of these developments, it appears that Iran and Syria have proposed to Qatar that they switch from supporting terrorism and instead cooperate in the reconstruction of Syria with Chinese and Iranian partners. Receiving credible responses to such a proposition is impossible, but following dialogue between Doha and Tehran on the development of the North Pars Gas Field, one cannot rule out that an agreement could be reached in Syria in the medium term, which would also bring enormous benefits to Doha as well as to Damascus and Tehran.

The American century is rapidly coming to an end. Terrorists are biting their masters’ hands and the vassals are rebelling. The unipolar world order that defers to the United States is rapidly disappearing, and the consequences are being felt in many areas of the world.

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

Featured image: Strategic Culture Foundation

Has your electric garage door stopped working? Does your dog wake up in the middle of the night and begin howling? Is the weather unseasonably hot, cold, windy, dry or wet? Has your television set (or refrigerator, or sound system or home alarm) inexplicably turned on, or off?

If one uncritically viewed the corporate-controlled media and accepted at face value the statements of much of official Washington, especially the Democratic Party, one could easily draw the conclusion that the Russians did it.

A paranoid frenzy is gripping the US political and media establishment. A ruling elite that commands the world’s largest economy ($18 trillion, 24.3 percent of world GDP), the world’s largest military, and the most technically sophisticated spying apparatus is obsessed with the supposedly omnipresent tentacles of a government that oversees the world’s twelfth largest economy (1.8 percent of world GDP, or one-fourteenth that of the US), and which entered the computer era a generation later than Silicon Valley.

By one estimate, the United States has 3.6 million computer programmers, about 20 percent of the world’s total, compared to just over half a million in Russia. The US is home to the most powerful software, hardware and Internet companies in the world. No Russian IT company ranks in the world’s top 100. Yet, according to the narrative peddled by the American media in its campaign over alleged Russian hacking during the 2016 US presidential election, Russian cyber warfare operations have cut through US IT systems like a knife through butter.

Thursday’s appearance by fired FBI Director James Comey before the Senate Intelligence Committee has raised the anti-Russian hysteria in the US media to a new level. The former head of the US political police denounced supposed Russian interference in the US elections as a dire threat to American democracy.

“They’re going to come for whatever party they choose to try and work on behalf of,” he warned. “And they will be back… they are coming for America.”

None of the capitalist politicians who questioned him challenged the premise that Russia was the principal enemy of the United States, or that Russian hacking was a significant threat to the US electoral system. None of them suggested that the billions funneled into the US elections by Wall Street interests were a far greater threat to the democratic rights of the American people.

Weekend media reports added to the apocalyptic warnings. A front-page report in the Sunday New York Times warned that the conflict between Trump and Comey should not be allowed to overshadow the more important issue: “a chilling threat to the United States” from Russian intervention in the American electoral system.

According to the Times,

“from the headquarters of the National Security Agency to state capitals that have discovered that the Russians were inside their voter-registration systems, the worry is that attention will be diverted from figuring out how Russia disrupted American democracy last year and how to prevent it from happening again.”

The article went on to suggest, citing only the suspicions of US intelligence officials in the absence of any actual evidence, that Russian government hackers had penetrated companies providing software for voting systems, the electrical power grid and other vital infrastructure. It quoted a series of anti-Russian comments from “experts,” who expanded on Comey’s comments, warning of “intensified cyber warfare.”

Even more strident was a commentary published in Politico.com under the headline, “Forget Comey. The Real Story Is Russia’s War on America.” The author is Molly K. McKew, a former US adviser to anti-Russian governments in Georgia and Moldova.

She denounces President Trump’s “lack of curiosity about the long-running, deep-reaching, well-executed and terrifyingly effective Russian attack on American democracy,” going on to attack the White House for “failing to craft a response to the greatest threat the United States and its allies have ever faced.”

McKew writes of “Russia’s global imperialist insurgency,” and advocates a course of action that goes beyond a “new Cold War,” leading inexorably to an armed confrontation between the two largest nuclear powers in the world.

The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly explained the political issues in the anti-Russian campaign, which represents an effort by the most powerful sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, backed by the Democratic Party and the bulk of the corporate media, to force the Trump White House to adhere to the foreign policy offensive against Moscow embarked on during the second term of the Obama administration, particularly since the 2014 US-backed ultra-right coup in Ukraine.

Those factions of the ruling class and intelligence agencies leading the anti-Russia campaign are particularly incensed that Russian intervention in Syria stymied plans to escalate the proxy civil war in that country into a full-fledged regime-change operation. They want to see Assad in Syria meet the same fate as Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Their fanatical hatred of Putin indicates that they have similar ambitions in mind for the Russian president.

The entire framework of the anti-Russian campaign is fraudulent. The military-intelligence agencies, the Democratic Party and the media are following a well-established pattern of manufacturing phony scandals, previously a specialty of the Republican right: the Clinton Whitewater scandal, Obama the Muslim, Hillary Clinton and Benghazi. These bogus campaigns begin with allegations that then acquire a momentum of their own.

Of what does the “undermining” of US democracy by alleged Russian hacking consist? No vote totals were altered. No ballots were discarded, as in Florida in 2000 when the antidemocratic campaign was spearheaded by the US Supreme Court. Instead, truthful information was supplied anonymously to WikiLeaks, which published the material, showing that the Democratic National Committee had worked to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders, and that Hillary Clinton had cozied up to Wall Street audiences and reassured them that a new Clinton administration would be in the pocket of the big financial interests.

These revelations certainly damaged Clinton, but only because they confirmed what the American people already thought of her: that she was a corrupt stooge of the financial oligarchy.

As for intervening in the elections of other countries, this is a practice the American ruling class has perfected through much practice. One case deserves special mention: the intervention of US political operatives, directed from the White House, in the 1996 Russian election, for the purpose of ensuring the reelection of Boris Yeltsin. At the start of the campaign, Yeltsin was polling in the single digits and facing growing popular opposition. A July 1996 Time magazine cover, showing Yeltsin holding an American flag, summed up the campaign: “Yanks to the Rescue: The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win.”

Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election because she ran as the candidate of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus and made no appeal to working-class discontent. This was after eight years during which Obama had intensified the economic stagnation, wage cutting and austerity that had been going on for decades, while overseeing a further growth in social inequality. This right-wing orientation has continued to guide the Democratic Party in the first months of the Trump administration.

The Democrats are not fighting Trump over his assault on health care, his attacks on immigrants, his militaristic bullying around the world, or even his status as a minority president who can claim no mandate after losing the popular vote. Instead, they have chosen to attack Trump, the most right-wing president in US history, from the right, denouncing him as insufficiently committed to a military confrontation with Russia.

Featured image: credits to the owner

MINNEAPOLIS– The annual Global Peace Index, recently released for June 2017, has found that while the world is more peaceful now than last year, violence has increased significantly overall in the past decade.

Although the situation has improved in many countries, the ten lowest-ranking nations – known as the world’s “least peaceful” countries – have shown little change in recent years.

However, nine of those ten countries share one commonality in the violence that they’ve experienced: U.S.-led destabilization efforts and regime change operations.

Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan: Targets for regime change and manufactured sectarianism

Syria, which ranked last in the June 2017 index, has been in the throes of a U.S.-led regime change effort for the better part of six years – a conflict that has ravaged one of the most prosperous nations in the Middle East and turned it into the latest battleground for a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia.

The U.S. has been planning the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at least as far back as 2006. Since the 2011 “uprising,” the U.S. has continuously funded and armed opposition groups in Syria along with several extremist groups, many of which have since joined terrorist organizations like Daesh (ISIS) and the al-Nusra Front.

The nations that rank just above Syria – Iraq and Afghanistan – were both targets of major U.S. invasions in the early 2000s and the U.S.’ continued presence in both of these countries has greatly contributed to the still-deteriorating situations in both nations.

With the U.S. troop presence growing in Iraq and set to surge dramatically in Afghanistan with the deployment of over 50,000 troops, more conflict is inevitable.

South Sudan: “Nation-building” gone awry

South Sudan, which ranked fourth, has also been victimized by U.S. intervention and “nation-building.”

The U.S. pushed South Sudan to secede from Sudan in 201,1 as South Sudan held 75 percent of Sudan’s oil reserves — the largest oil reserves in all of Africa. Analysts argued that the U.S. sought to create an independent South Sudan in order to dislodge Chinese claims to Sudanese oil, as the Chinese had previously signed oil contracts with the (now Northern) Sudanese government. The U.S.’ significant aid contributions to South Sudan, totaling $1.6 billion between 2013 and 2016, suggest that Washington has sought to influence the government there for that very purpose.

UN Security Council Delegation meets President Salva Kiir in Juba, South Sudan. (Source: paanluelwel.com)

Just two years later, however, South Sudan dissolved into a deadly civil war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 1.5 million. Some analysts have suggested that the civil war broke out between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his former deputy Riek Machar only when Mayardit started to cozy up to China.

The chaos from U.S. meddling in South Sudan has reached beyond its borders and brought trouble to Sudan, with that nation ranking as the eighth least peaceful nation.

Yemen: U.S.-backed Saudi aggressors responsible for famine, war crimes

Yemen, which ranked fifth, has also been involved in a U.S.-linked conflict, though the United States’ role has been less direct. While the U.S. is not leading the fight in Yemen, it has ardently backed the war’s aggressor – Saudi Arabia – from the beginning and has supplied the Saudis with billions of dollars in weapons, as well as occasionally bombed locations in Yemen to aid their Gulf allies.

In addition, the U.S. has turned a blind eye to the Saudis’ numerous war crimes in Yemen, despite the enormity of the tragedy unfolding there, including blocking aid shipments and consequently triggering widespread famine. The U.S. has been eager to see Saudi influence continue in Yemen – as it was prior to the conflict – due to Yemen’s location, which grants it control over the strategic strait of Bab al-Mandab, a chokepoint for the Saudi oil trade.

Yemen is followed by Somalia in the rankings.

Somalia: State of anarchy persists thanks to U.S. involvement

U.S. involvement in Somalia has a long history and reached a climax in the early 1990s, when the U.S.-supported military dictatorship of Siad Barre was overthrown, plunging the nation into civil war.

Thanks to Somalia’s strategic location for global oil markets at the mouth of the Red Sea, the U.S. became involved and, according to a staffer for the chief of the UN Somalia operation, “dragged the UN into Somalia kicking and screaming.” Somalia remained in a state of anarchy for 16 years until a coalition of Islamic courts took over the capital in 2006. However, this government was soon overthrown by Ethiopia with U.S. support.

Current U.S. anti-terrorism policy in Somalia, which includes the use of airstrikes, has been blamed for worsening the nation’s conflict and its burgeoning humanitarian crisis, having driven the nation into famine.

Libya: Plunged into chaos after challenging U.S. petrodollar

Another recent victim of U.S. regime change efforts, Libya now ranks as the seventh least peaceful nation in the world. Once one of the most prosperous nations in Africa, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi made the “mistake” of challenging the U.S. petrodollar system by creating a gold-backed pan-African currency known as the dinar. Following his ouster, Libya was essentially transformed into a failed state where there is still no clear government, terrorism runs rampant and slaves are now openly traded in public.

Ukraine: Targeted by U.S.-led coup over gas industry

Ukraine, which was the target of a U.S.-led coup in 2014 to weaken the influence of Russia’s lucrative gas industry on European gas markets, now ranks tenth among the least peaceful nations in the world. The only nation ranking near the bottom that has not experienced clear U.S. involvement is the Central African Republic, which ranks ninth.

The United States’ not-so-peaceful ranking

The United States itself also plummeted dramatically in this year’s Global Peace Index, now ranking 114 out of the 163 nations surveyed. This decrease was the greatest decline measured in any country this year.

Jeremy Christian at a “March for Free Speech” rally in Portland on April 29. Christian was chraged with a double murder and hate crimes, after he cut the throats of two men and stabbed another on a commuter train late on Friday afternoon. (Photo: Doug Brown/The Portland Mercury)

Statisticians have blamed divisiveness that has made itself plain following the 2016 presidential election, as well as a continued rise in homicide rates.

The United States’ involvement in military conflicts abroad is not factored into its ranking, meaning that this placement is conservative at best. As indicated by the ten lowest-ranking nations, if this factor were taken into consideration, the U.S. could likely find itself at the bottom of the list for its role in spurring disastrous and deadly conflicts around the world under the guise of foreign policy.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress contributor who has written for several news organizations in both English and Spanish; her stories have been featured on ZeroHedge, the Anti-Media, 21st Century Wire, and True Activist among others – she currently resides in Southern Chile.

Featured image: credits to the owner

Laudatory tributes and commendations poured into the Republic of Namibia capital of Windhoek over the weekend in the aftermath of the announcement of the passing of Herman Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, the co-founder of the Ovamboland People’s Organization (OPO), the predecessor to the Southwest Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), founded in 1959-1960 respectively.

Toivo, who was 93 years old, died in his home on June 9 of an apparent heart attack. His decades of service to the people of Namibia, Southern Africa, the African Revolution as a whole, and the international community, were widely known.

The liberation icon had spent 16 years on the dreaded Robben Island prison along with African National Congress (ANC) leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, among others. He had been arrested, charged and convicted of treason due to his uncompromising work aimed at the overthrow of the racist-settler colonial system in Namibia which became a colony of the former Union of South Africa during World War I.

After receiving the news of Toivo’s death, Namibian President Hage Geingob went on national television where he made the announcement to the people. He noted the profound loss personally as well as to the people of this Southern African state.

Geingob said in his broadcast to the nation:

“Good evening fellow Namibians. The icon of the Namibian struggle and national hero Comrade Andimba Toivo ya Toivo is no more. He left us this evening around 1800h at his house in Windhoek, Namibia. On behalf of the Namibian government … I express collective sorrow to the bereaved family … their loss is not only felt by the family but by us all as a country.” (Namibian Broadcasting Corporation, June 9)

Former SWAPO leader and founding president of the Republic of Namibia, Sam Nujomo, through his assistant John Nauta, indicated that the first head-of-state would deliver a message of condolence as part of the memorial and funeral services. Nujomo took control of the SWAPO leadership after Toivo was arrested and imprisoned by the apartheid regime in the 1960s.

ANC and SACP Issue Statements of Condolence

The ANC ruling party in the Republic of South Africa, longtime allies and strategic partners with SWAPO for decades immediately expressed its condolences through statements amid several South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) television segments reflecting on the life, times and contributions of Toivo. The SWAPO leader had spent time in South Africa prior to his imprisonment beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s.

In fact Toivo championed the rights of African mineworkers in both South Africa and Namibia and was expelled from South Africa for collecting and circulating taped testimonies outside the country to the United Nations (UN) illustrating the harsh conditions of super-exploitation and racial oppression which was the foundation of the system of apartheid. The work of the liberation movements domestically and internationally was a key element in building a worldwide movement in defense of the ANC as well as SWAPO along with the African working class struggles inside South Africa and Namibia.

In a statement responding to the passing of the freedom fighter, the ANC described their ally as:

“A man of strong beliefs and convictions, Cde Toivo dedicated his life to the fight against oppression by the then South Africa authorities, rejecting apartheid South Africa’s reduction of sovereign Namibia into its colony. His life was the personification of solidarity, the quest for self-determination and unyielding commitment to the liberation of his people.”

This same ANC tribute continued saying:

“South Africa has lost a true friend in Comrade Toivo ya Toivo and we send our deepest condolences to our fraternal organization, Swapo, the people of Namibia and Comrade Ya Toivo’s family on his passing. Comrade Toivo has left an indelible mark in the history of our region and the continent. Ours is to emulate his life’s work and continue to fight for the realization of his vision of freedom for oppressed peoples of the world and of a continent at peace with itself.”

In another statement of condolences to the family of Toivo, the SWAPO Party and the Namibian government, the South African Communist Party (SACP) said:

“The South African Communist Party expresses its message of heartfelt condolences to the family of Cde Herman Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, the people of Namibia, Southern Africa and the African continent as whole on the death of the freedom fighter and co-founder and leader of the South West African People`s Organisation (Swapo). Cde Toivo died at the age of 93 in Windhoek yesterday, Friday 9 June 2017.”

The SACP went on to emphasize:

“Africa is not independent yet, because of persisting imperialist domination and capitalist exploitation of its resources and people. The masses of our people remain impoverished across the board, while a few, both national and foreign exploiters are becoming rich and richer out of the exploitation. The SACP is  reiterating its call for African continental unity to continue and deepen the struggle to advance the African revolution in honor of the exceptional founders and leaders of our national liberation movements, of who Cde Toivo was one.”

SWAPO Continued Anti-Colonial Struggle to Its Conclusion

Namibia was initially colonized by Germany in the late 19th century. The social conditions imposed upon the African people prompted a revolt in 1904 among the Herero and Nama which was ruthlessly suppressed.

Thousands of Africans were killed by the German imperialists during the revolt. Tens of thousands of others were forced into concentration labor camps where they died of disease and starvation.

The country of Namibia is rich in mineral resources in addition to having access to the Atlantic Ocean and its deep water port at Walvis Bay. With the defeat of Germany in World War I, their African colonies were taken over by the British and other European imperialists. During the 1920s, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) led by Marcus Garvey recruited thousands of people into this Pan-Africanist movement.

As conditions worsened under the apartheid settler-colonial system the consciousness of masses grew rapidly. By the conclusion of the 1950s, the people were prepared for a qualitative leap in the organization of a national liberation movement. Consequently, the OPO was later transformed into SWAPO at the beginning of the 1960s.

In 1966, Toivo recruited cadres to form the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the armed wing of SWAPO. The initial fighters were sent to the People’s Republic of China for training.

Through a series of legal and political maneuvers, the United Nations declared the racist apartheid regime’s governance over Namibia as being a violation of international law. A UN Council for Namibia was established in 1967. Later SWAPO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Namibian people through the passage of UN Resolution 435 in 1978.

With the defeat of the South African Defense Forces (SADF) in Angola in 1988 by the combined forces of the Angolan military, SWAPO/PLAN and tens of thousands of Cuban Internationalists, negotiations were held on a transferal of power to the Namibian people. UN-supervised elections were held in November 1989 and the country was declared independent under SWAPO leadership on March 21, 1990.

Today Namibia remains one of the most stable and peaceful states on the African continent and is a leading member of the regional Southern African Development Community (SADC) founded inside the country in August 1992. Namibian foreign policy is Pan-Africanist in its orientation while SWAPO has maintained its control of the government for the last 27 years.

Toivo will go down as one of the great leaders of the African Revolution to emerge during the 20th century. After his release from prison in South Africa in 1984, he was appointed as Secretary General of SWAPO.

When Namibia gained its independence in 1990, Toivo was deployed in the government as the Minister of Mining. He served in government until retiring in 2006.

Just days prior to his death, he attended and co-chaired a Conference of African states in Solidarity with the Republic of Cuba in Havana.

Author’s Note: This writer met Herman Andimba Toivo ya Toivo in October 1985 when he toured the United States. Toivo was invited by the Southern African solidarity movement at Wayne State University in Detroit where the author introduced him to the audience of students, faculty members, journalists and community activists at a public forum. Later, the following month in November 1985, this writer met and held discussions with Toivo at the UN Council for Namibia offices in New York City. This writer spent time in Namibia during the 1990s where he met the-then President Sam Nujomo and renewed bonds with other SWAPO and government officials.

What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti. Sooner or later, it comes to places like Michigan’s Benton Harbor and Flint. Our destinies are linked. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish aristocrat who long puppeteered United States presidents from behind the curtains, has written: “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation.” I concur. As long as the US attempts to dominate the world and continues to dispense the violence commensurate with this ambition, it cannot expect to practice democracy at home.

Mr. Brzezinski reasoned that the main impediment to imperial ambitions is that people will not willingly get killed in wars of conquest, but I believe there are more profound reasons why democracy cannot thrive under such circumstances. For one, the servants of empire develop a comfort with dictatorship that eventually compels them to cross the Rubicon, as they did in Roman times, and come home to continue the practice. Even more important, democracy cannot flourish where the rich are free to justify their money accumulation by rendering everyone and everything salable. A symptom of such pathology is the phenomenon of privatization.

Triple whammy

The battle has begun to privatize the functions of city governments, which really hold the commons and real wealth of any country. Water is at the center of this battle, and this includes waterfront property as well as drinking water. In Haiti, immediately after the earthquake of January 12, 2010, Bill Clinton pressured the government to declare an 18-month state of emergency, during which he could govern all the reconstruction as the co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). There is little to show for more than $6 billion of aid funds to the IHRC besides a massive sweatshop complex, built for less than three percent of that amount, well away from the earthquake damage. Haiti’s mayors, the main impediments to the appropriation of land and water commons, were dismissed and replaced with Interim Agents appointed by a president who, in turn, had been installed by Hillary Clinton in May 2011 in a fraudulent election.

In Michigan, there was no earthquake as there was in Haiti. Instead, the disaster was slow and cumulative. Though Clinton is credited for most of it, it had the approval of Republicans and Democrats. First came the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of January 1994, which eliminated tariffs and other trade barriers between the US, Canada, and Mexico. Corporations like Whirlpool and General Motors moved their production to Mexico and abandoned those who had created their fortunes for generations as predominantly unionized laborers. The housing crash in 2008, due to the banking sector’s financial crimes, caused a rash of foreclosures. Finally, as more people fell into poverty, the federal government unraveled most social safety nets, including welfare and food stamps. The old manufacturing cities lost much of their population, together with their tax base. The residents who stayed, however, retained their power to vote despite being poor. Against this, the scions of corporate bosses, big property owners with plans of their own, continued to influence politics at the federal, state, and city levels. A clash between the poor and the rich of these cities became inevitable.

Ground zero, Benton Harbor

It is in Benton Harbor, a town of about 10,000 people on Lake Michigan, with 70 percent unemployment and a per-capita annual income of about $10,000, that the fight for America’s cities started. Whirlpool Corporation was the major employer and had its corporate offices there, when a plan was hatched to take 530 acres of the city, including a lakefront park, for conversion into a $500 million development called Harbor Shores, with multi-million dollar condos on the beach area and a Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course. In response, Reverend Edward Pinkney, a pastor and community leader, spearheaded the organization of the local 2008 elections and the recall of a mayor who had borrowed $3.2 million for the city, rather than require Whirlpool to pay its fair share of taxes. Opposition candidates won four commissioners seats and the mayoral seat: the five votes that were needed to control the City Commission.

Whirlpool got $3.87 million in tax breaks in 2010 and left Benton Harbor for Mexico in March 2011, but the corporate bosses’ influence remained. Soon thereafter, the state of Michigan declared Benton Harbor to be $5 million in debt and then orchestrated a land grab with Public Act 4: a new law that allowed the state government to appoint, for a city, an Emergency Manager (EM) that trumps all elected local officials. According to Reverend Pinkney, Michigan Governor, Rick Snyder, was beholden to Whirlpool, and Benton Harbor’s first EM, Joseph Harris, was a professional accountant close to Cornerstone Alliance, which is part of Whirlpool. The city’s water bills tripled and its jobs were outsourced, but Benton Harbor paid millions of dollars to demolish the houses of its poorer residents and got its golf course and lakefront condos for the rich. Reverend Pinkney was thrown in prison for up to 10 years on a bogus charge of tampering with the mayor-recall petition.

The fight for Flint

The rich of Michigan realized right away they had good thing in Public Act 4. The state began, almost immediately, to train hundreds of EMs for appointment to other cities. Governor Snyder ordered the city of Flint into receivership, also in 2011, and the state appointed an EM for it. With the departure of much of General Motors, which had begun there in 1908, the city had lost much of its tax base and had a budget deficit. Specifically, Flint went from about 200,000 people in the 1960s to about one half this number by 2011, when the median household income was around $25,000, and about 40 percent of the residents lived below the poverty line.

On April 25, 2014, by order of its EM, Flint began to get its water from the Flint River using a formerly retired plant, instead of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD), which had provided the city with treated water originating from Lake Huron. The reason for this decision is often given as a need to save money, but according to journalist Steve Neavling, in response to the potential loss of a major client, the DWSD made a number of proposals to Flint, including the offer of a deal that would have been 20 percent less expensive than switching. In fact, the DWSD suggested that there was a political aim to the switch. One possible such objective might have been to destabilize Detroit, in a domino effect, for the assignment of its own EM.

The story of Flint’s water contamination is no less tragic for being told many times. The corrosive water from the Flint River dislodged the protective scales from within the service water pipes and caused so much leaching of lead, that in some instances the water contained lead concentrations that would have been considered high even for toxic wastes! This happened because when residents complained about the brown coloration of the water, and later of infections with pathogenic Escherichia coli, the city hired two water-privatization companies, Veolia, and Lockwood, Andrews & Newman (LAN), to solve the problem. To save money, anticorrosives were not added to the water. The discoloration was treated by Veolia, which then declared the water safe to drink. Chlorination of the water in an attempt to disinfect it led to yet more leaching of lead. In addition the chlorine was removed by reactions with particles of iron in the water, and this led to growth of Legionella bacteria. In the end, thousands of people were poisoned with lead, including 9,000 children under the age of six, and 12 people died from Legionnaire’s Disease. All these facts about Flint’s water became public, not because of government watchdogs, but because of the efforts of citizen scientists who got assistance from scientists to analyze the lead concentrations in water and the blood of Flint’s children.

Two former Flint EMs, Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose, as well as several Flint Department of Public Works employees, face criminal charges for their roles in the Flint debacle. In addition, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has filed a civil lawsuit in which Veolia and LAN are both alleged to have committed professional negligence and public nuisance, and Veolia is also alleged to have committed fraud. The city draws its water again from DWSD, but the damaged pipes continue to leach lead and, like Haitians who have come to depend on tanker-truck water for their food and drink, Flint residents subsist on bottled water.

Emergency Managers: a rich man’s antidote to local democracy

Michigan voters repealed Public Act 4 in 2012, which had disenfranchised the majority of the Michigan poor, who are overwhelmingly black, but the same year, the state passed Public Act 436, and this has been upheld after a court challenge. A fact sheet from Michigan State University Extension summarizes the law as follows:

“If an EM is appointed, this person is authorized to act for and in place of the local governing body and administrative officer of the community. The governing body only retains any powers authorized by the EM. The EM has broad powers to resolve the financial crisis and insure the fiscal accountability of the community to provide services for the health, safety and welfare of its residents.”

Like Bill Clinton in the IHRC in Haiti, EMs are appointed for 18 months with a possibility for indefinite renewal. Public Act 436 is a law that extracts all meaning from the word democracy and spits it out like so much trash onto a garbage heap. Nevertheless, many US cities are rearing to try similar laws. In effect, the EM law says that you can only have what you’ve got so long as somebody rich and powerful doesn’t want it. In a context of privatization, where everything can be bought and sold, groundwater, glacier water, rivers, and lakes may be sold, as can roads, bridges, parks, state houses, and museum artifacts. The rich, who would corral the sun and sky and put a meter on them if they could, are not treated as the threat they really are. Much lip service is given to the idea of water being a human right, as if, if this repeated enough times, it will become another platitude. But life is not worth living if there is nothing one would die for, and what is a human right but a right without which one would not be fully human, and life would not be worth living?

This is the third part of a series of articles that examine how water is snatched from cities and privatized.

See Part I and II below.

Water for Profit: Haiti’s Thirsty Season

By Dady Chery, May 12, 2017

Neocolonialism in Haiti, Water for Profit and the Cholera Epidemic

By Dady Chery, May 23, 2017

Sources:

News Junkie Post | Dady Chery is the author of We Have Dared to Be Free. | Photograph one (featured image) from the archive of Joe Brusky; photographs five and eleven from the archive of Michigan Municipal League; cartoon six by Donkey Hotey; and photograph twelve from the archive of the US Department of Agriculture.

The rest of the images are from the author.

It must be wonderful being Vladimir Putin and being the most powerful person on earth. And not even have to say so yourself. The US Democratic Party is saying it for Putin along with the entirety of the Western presstitute media and the CIA and FBI also. The Russian media doesn’t have to brag about Putin’s power. Megyn Kelly, the Western presstitutes, and Western leaders are doing it for them: Putin is so powerful that he is able to place in office his choice for the President of the United States.

I mean, Wow! What power! Americans are simply out of the game. Americans, despite a massive intelligence budget and 16 separate intelligence services plus those of its NATO vassals, are no match whatsoever for Vladimir Putin.

I mean, really! What is the CIA for? What is the NSA for? What are the rest of them for? Americans would do better to close down these incompetent, but expensive, “intelligence services” and pay the money to Putin as a bribe not to select our president. Maybe the CIA should get down on its knees and beg Putin to stop electing the President of the United States. I mean, how humiliating. I can hardly stand it. I thought we are the “world’s sole superpower, the uni-power, the exceptional, indispensable people.” It turns out that we are a nothing people, ruled by the President of Russia.

When the Democrats, CIA, and media decided to launch their PR campaign against Trump, they didn’t realize how inconsequential it would make the United States appear by putting American democracy into Putin’s pocket. What were they thinking? They weren’t. They were fixated on making sure Trump did not endanger the massive military/security complex budget by restoring normal relations with Russia.

There is no sign that American leadership in any area is actually capable of thought. Consider Wall Street and corporate leadership. To boost share prices Wall Street forced all corporations to desert their home country and move the production of goods and services sold to Americans offshore to where labor and regulatory costs were lower. The lower costs raised profits and share prices. Wall Street threatened resistant corporations with takeovers of the companies if they refused to move abroad in order to increase their profits.

Neither Wall Street nor corporate boards and CEOs were smart enough to understand that moving jobs offshore also moved US consumer incomes and purchasing power offshore. In other words, the financial and business leadership were too stupid to comprehend that without the incomes from high value-added, high productivity US jobs, the American consumer would not have the discretionary income to continue in his role as the economy’s driver.

The Federal Reserve caught on to Wall Street’s mistake. To rectify the mistake, the Fed expanded credit, allowing a buildup in consumer debt to keep the economy going on credit purchases. However, once consumer debt is high relative to income, the ability to buy more stuff departs. In other words, credit expansion is not a permanent fix for the lack of consumer income growth.

A country whose financial and business leadership is too stupid to understand that a population increasingly employed in part-time minimum wage jobs is not a big spending population is a country whose leadership has failed.

It is strickly impossible to boost profits by offshoring jobs without also offshoring US consumer incomes. Therefore, the profits from offshoring are temporary. Once enough jobs have been moved offshore that aggregate demand is stymied, the domestic market stagnates and then declines.

As I have demonstrated so many times for so many years, as has John Williams (shadowstats.com), the jobs reports from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics are nonsense. The jobs in the alleged recovery from June 2009 are largely low income domestic service jobs and the product of the theoretical birth/death model. The alleged recovery from the 2007-08 financial crisis is the first recovery in history in which the labor force participation rate declined. Labor force participation rates decline when the economy offers scant job opportunities, not when employment opportunities are rising.

What we know about US jobs is that the jobs are increasingly part-time minimum wage jobs. According to a presstitute news report that might or might not be true, there are only 12 counties in the entirely of the United States in which a person can rent a one-bedroom home on a minimum wage income. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/08/minimum-wage-affordable-housing-rentals-study

In response to this report, a professor at Virginia Tech suggested that the government offer increased rental assistance and boost programs such as the National Housing Trust Fund, which invests in affordable housing.

In other words, taxpayers are to pick up the costs to Americans of US corporations deserting the US labor force. Those Americans who still have middle class incomes will be taxed to cover the lost incomes that the offshoring corporations and Wall Street have snatched away from American workers who can no longer earn enough to pay for their own housing.

In other words, capitalism has reached the point in its descent that it cannot exist without public subsidies for the people dispossessed by capitalism.

On a number of occasions I have written about how many costs of production are imposed on third parties, such as the environment. A significant percentage of the profits of capitalist corporations comes from the political and legal ability of the corporations to impose their costs of production on third parties. In other words, capitalism makes money because it can impose its costs of production on the environment and on people who do not share in the profits. I have provided many examples of this, especially in the area of real estate development. The developer is able to shift a large part of his costs to others.

This cost shifting has now reached the level of inducing Armageddon. There is an effort to impeach Trump and put the warmonger VP Pence in the presidency. As Trump campaigned on restoring normal relations with Russia, a defeat of the attempt to reduce tensions would reinforce the recent conclusion of the Russian military high command that Washington is planning a first strike nuclear attack on Russia.

This is the risk that the entire world faces due to the dependence of the power and profit of the US military/security complex on war and enemies.

In other words, there is only one remaining rationale for the existence of the United States of America — the interests of the military/security complex — and these interests require a powerful enemy whether real or orchestrated.

Former CIA official John Stockwell wrote:

“It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms.”

The hatred and distrust of Russia that the West is currently being force-fed reflects Stockwell’s revelation, as does the orchestrated hatred and distrust of Muslims that has supported Washington’s destruction in whole or part of seven countries and trillions of dollars in new US war debt.

Globalism, that is, labor arbitrage across national boundaries, and financialization, the diversion of consumers’ incomes into interest and fees to banks, have wrecked the US economy. The “opportunity society” has vanished. Children have poorer economic prospects than their parents. The offshoring of manufacturing and professional service jobs such as IT and software engineering has collapsed the growth of aggregate demand in the US. The Federal Reserve’s credit expansion was only a temporary reprive.

Formerly prosperous areas are in ruins. States’ budgets and pension systems are failing. There is no payoff to a university education. Americans’ economic prospects have been erased by globalism. Getting ahead requires connections as it did in the aristocratic systems. The high concentration of income and wealth has negated democracy. The government is only accountable to the rich.

American political and business leadership not only destroyed the image of US sovereignty by placing American democracy in Putin’s pocket, but also destroyed the formerly vibrant American economy, once the envy of the world.

Where can Americans find leadership? Certainly not in the Democratic Party, nor in the Republican Party, nor in the media, nor in the corporate community. How then does the US compete with Russia and China, two countries with good leadership? Is war the only answer to the question?

The good news for Trumptarians is that Donald J. Trump is not going to be legally impeached, indicted, removed from office or otherwise until his protectors and enablers are weakened first: Congressional Republicans. And they won’t be weakened until mid-term elections in 2018. In “Washington time” that might as well be the next century.

As far-sighted Democrats build political strategies to get elected in 2018, the ever so expeditious GOP-Trumptarian wrecking ball swings 24/7 dismantling the structure and fabric of America. By 2018, there might not be a Beacon on a Hill to uphold, leaving only a sovereign America First molehill owing $20 trillion in national debt and $13 trillion in consumer debt. Such is the cost of Empire so far.

It is always possible that one or two or even three House and Senate Republicans vacate their seats for reasons of health, for example, and are replaced by Democrats to upset the GOP’s carefully crafted though slim majorities that for now have rode out moderate Republican dissenters. But attrition applies to judges too, especially the oldest sitting members of the Supreme Court – Ginsburg, Kennedy, Breyer. The oddmakers call for a right-leaning packed Court lasting generations. The Trump-dyed imprint being left on this nation, with or without him staying in power, isn’t going to come off with Clorox.

As things stand, unless stricken by heart failure or an act of God, Trump is here to stay. He is beyond the law because Republicans have blocked enforcement of it, or reversed it. If Mueller gets too close he’ll be fired. If Trump shoots people on Fifth Avenue, he’ll remain immune from prosecution until he leaves the Oval Office. If he cuts deals with the House of Saud, launders billions through his properties and off-shore investment vehicles, accepts payments from foreign governments, or drops sulphuric acid on the Guttenberg Bible, Trump will never be wrong. Only a psychopath with extreme NPD who is a chronic liar, cheat, thief, misogynist, racist, racketeer, deceiver and manipulator is wrong, never Trump.

Also, as the Lord’s personal envoy sent to save America how could he ever be wrong?

If that day does arrive when Trump is prosecuted his defense attorneys will file an “insanity defense” and Trump’s luck will save him yet again; and that same luck, he’ll hope, will continue to save him until his very last day, his last throw of the dice, his last attempt to cut a deal – the day he faces the Book of Life.

Hear now his plea and petition at the gate of St. Peter, who by now has become so sicken by what he read he recuses himself. Then the Lord enters, but not the one believed unto by the righteous of the day.

Then Trump’s life review commences … then the weeping and gnashing of teeth begins … the wailing and beseeching … the bargaining, bartering, haggling … finally the verdict.

“Do you have anything to say before sentencing?” asks the Lord of Trump. A suspenseful wait for apologies, contrition, penitence, repentance, remorse, shame is dashed …

“Well do you? You have attacked illegals as one does who has committed lifelong illegalities. You have denigrated minorities, women and the weak as one who is inwardly cowardly and weak. You have divided nations, families and people from one another as one does who is devoid of giving or receiving trust and love. You have postured great wealth as one does who is bankrupt. You have engendered hate and violence as one does who is self-loathing and ashamed. You have scapegoated others as one does who bears the crimes he attributes to others.”

Seeking to divert the attention of heaven from himself and onto another; seeking to find the scapegoat that will elicit angels to support him; seeking to tell the final lie that will reprieve him; waving his hand and throwing his head back, he bellows

“Fake news!”, “Throw Peter and the rest out of here. I’ll pay the legal fees!”, “Even though I break every Commandment and my God is money; even though I act more like Herod then Jesus, the Evangelicals voted for me!”

Trump is sentenced. The new land he finds is filled with joyous souls who cannot be shaken by impostors. A land where all is transparent and no lie or deception can be hatched. A society where money is non-existent and without winners and losers. A land where perfect justice is bestowed; where no one can cheat or steal another’s place and receive only what they have merited. A place beyond death that annuls violence or the murder of another.

This was Donald J. Trump’s sentence.

Not into the eternal flames by an avenging God, but into a personal Hell of realizing all that he did wrong by witnessing all that is right.

Such is the Law.

Notes

Geneva Sands, “Meet the 9 sitting Supreme Court justices”, ABC News, May 29, 2017.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/meet-sitting-supreme-court-justices/story

James Downie, “How GOP gerrymandering is protecting Trump”, Washington Post, May 19, 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/05/19/how-gop-gerrymandering-is-protecting-trump/

Philip Bump, “The one little number that — so far — is all the protection Donald Trump needs”, Washington Post, May 12, 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/12/the-one-little-number-that-so-far-is-all-of-the-protection-donald-trump-needs/

U.S. Debt Clock.
http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Steve Liesman, “Household debt just surpassed the record level reached during the 2008 financial crisis”, CNBC, May 17, 2017.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/17/household-debt-levels-higher-than-2008-debt-levels.html

Featured image. JustPlainPolitics.com

On June 9, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allied militia groups reached the border with Iraq in the area north of the US-led coalition garrisons at the village of At Tanf and Al Zquf. This advance dramatically changed the strategic situation in southeastern Syria and de-facto allowed the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance to win the race for the border with Iraq.

The key goal of the US-led coalition actions near the border was to prevent the SAA from linking up with the allied Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) operating in Iraq and to build a buffer zone controlled by Western-backed militant groups between the two countries.

The PMU is a major power in Iraq and an official part of the Iraqi Armed Forces. It’s currently conducting a large-scale operation against ISIS terrorists at own side of the border. The June 9 advance destroyed the US-led coalition’s plans.

The government forces deployed north of At Tanf also prevent US-backed proxies from advancing on the ISIS-held border town of al-Bukamal. While the US-led forces in southeastern Syria have never had enough manpower and capabilities to do this, the declared aim to retake al-Bukamal from ISIS was an important part of the US propaganda campaign to justify its illegal presence in the area.

Now, government forces in southeastern Syrian forces will likely coordinate its efforts with the PMU in order to clear the Syrian-Iraqi border area and to move to al-Bukamal and Qaim. Iran will also be able to incease supplies to the Syrian government via a land route. Some PMU member groups are already participating in the operations in Syria on the side of the SAA. Now, this number will likely be increased.

Meanwhile, Jordanian border guards clashed with a convoy consisting 9 cars and 2 motorcycles trying to enter Jordanian territory from the direction of At Tanf. The border guards destroyed 2 cars and 2 motorcycles. The rest of the vehicles retreated. At Tanf town is under a full control of the US-led Coalition and militant groups affiliated with the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The people who attempted to infiltrate into Jordanian territory may be a group of FSA who decided to withdraw to Jordan for an unknown reason. It is almost impossible for anyone to move in Al Tanaf without the US-led coalition approval. However, it is also possible that these people were local smugglers.

Following a success at the border with Iraq, the SAA and its allies intensified operations against ISIS in the countryside of Palmyra, retook some points east of the city and attacked ISIS in the Arak area. The mid-term goal of the government operation is to capture the strategic Sukhna town located on the road to Deir Ezzor. The SAA, Hezbollah and other groups had sent reinforcements to the area in order to speed up the operation.

According to reports, ISIS had deployed a large force for another attempt to retake Deir Ezzor from the SAA. The government forces push to Sukhna may be a response to this situation.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed up by the US-led coalition’s airpower and artillery units, are storming the ISIS-held city of Raqqah. A fierce fighting is ongoing in the 17th Division Base, Husaywah and the industrial district near Mashlab.

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Featured image: credits to the owner

It’s one of the dirtiest of dirty open secrets.  

US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents prove it – obtained by Judicial Watch through an FOIA lawsuit. 

They show ISIS, al-Qaeda and like-minded terrorist groups are the “major forces” used as US foot soldiers in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. 

The myth of so-called “moderate rebels” was long ago discredited. Yet claiming they exist persists. 

The DIA documents show America, NATO, Saudi Arabia and other regional rogue states support an Islamic caliphate to challenge, topple and replace Bashar al-Assad with an imperial puppet. 

Longstanding US/Israeli plans call for redrawing the Middle East map by color revolutions and wars, replacing independent governments with pro-Western puppet regimes, balkanizing Iraq, Syria, Iran and other regional countries for easier control, looting their resources, and exploiting their people. 

In a January 2016 Iran Review article, James Fetzer discussed evidence of ISIS’ creation by America. 

In February 2015, Iraq’s military “downed 2 UK cargo planes carrying weapons for ISIL,” he explained. 

In March 2015, “Iraqi popular forces…shot down a US helicopter carrying weapons for ISIL in Al-Anbar province…”

Photographic evidence proved it. 

In response to an April 2015 Syrian request to designate ISIL (ISIS) a terrorist organization, “the US, Britain, France and Jordan refused…” 

(Source: Iran Review)

“Photographs…showing ISIS members sporting ‘US Army’ tattoos” went unreported by Western media scoundrels.

A 2012 DIA document states the West will facilitate the rise of ISIS “to isolate the Syrian regime.” 

Former CIA contractor Steven Kelly said Washington

“created ISIL for the sake of Israel,” along with assuring “never-ending war in the Middle East” to make the Jewish state the dominant regional power and provide a “constant flow of orders for weapons from the military-industrial complex at home…” 

ISIS fighters are recruited from scores of countries, including Western ones. 

In October 2015, Russian lower house State Duma International Affairs Committee chairman Alexi Pushkov explained America is

“not bombing ISIS at all…Obama is lying to the American people.” 

In November 2015, Vladimir Putin said dozens of countries are supporting ISIS, including America and other Western ones. 

Fetzer:

“There are many other sources that confirm that ISIS was created by the US and is being supported by Western powers to promote their own political agenda, where nothing coming from the administration of Barack Obama is worthy of belief.”  

“Since the nullification of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (which precluded the techniques of propaganda and disinformation within the United States) by the NDAA 2013, there are no trustworthy (mainstream) news sources in the US…” 

In Washington, “ISIS is commonly called ‘John McCain’s Army’…(one of) the earliest advocates of (regional) military action” on the phony pretext of combating ISIS. 

On Sunday, Fars News quoted Iranian armed forces deputy chief of staff General Mostafa Izadi saying: 

“We possess documents and information showing the direct supports by the US imperialism for this highly disgusting stream (ISIS) in the region which has destroyed the Islamic countries and created a wave of massacres and clashes.” 

Washington uses ISIS and like-minded groups as instruments for regional “proxy war…” 

On Friday, Fars News quoted Iran’s parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, saying

“(t)he United States has aligned itself with the ISIL in the region.” 

ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra (ISIS in Syria) and like-minded groups are US creations. 

They’re used as foot soldiers to advance its imperium – responsible for aiding Washington rape and destroy one country after another. 

Most Americans are unaware of Washington’s diabolical agenda in the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa and elsewhere in their name – a bipartisan conspiracy against world peace, stability and security no matter the human cost. 

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

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: credits to the owner

U.S. nuclear testing ceased in 1992. In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that virtually every American that has lived since 1951 has been exposed to nuclear fallout, and that the cumulative effects of all nuclear testing by all nations could ultimately be responsible for up to eleven thousand deaths in the United States alone. The United States did indeed learn much about how to construct safe and reliable nuclear weapons, and their effects on human life and the environment. In doing so, however, it paid a terrible and tragic price.

Nuclear weapons have a mysterious quality. Their power is measured in plainly visible blast pressure and thermal energy common to many weapons, but also invisible yet equally destructive radiation and electromagnetic pulse. Between 1945 and 1992, the United States conducted 1,032 nuclear tests seeking to get the measure of these enigmatic weapons. Many of these tests would be today be considered unnecessary, overly dangerous and just plain bizarre. These tests, undertaken on the atomic frontier, gathered much information about these weapons—enough to cease actual use testing—yet scarred the land and left many Americans with long-term health problems.

The majority of U.S. nuclear tests occurred in the middle of the Western desert, at the Nevada Test Site. The NTS hosted 699 nuclear tests, utilizing both above-ground and later underground nuclear devices. The average yield for these tests was 8.6 kilotons. Atmospheric tests could be seen from nearby Las Vegas, sixty-five miles southeast of the Nevada Test site, and even became a tourist draw until the Limited Test Ban Treaty banned them in 1963. Today the craters and pockmarks from underground tests are still visible in satellite map imagery.

The bulk of the remaining nuclear tests took place in Pacific, at the islands of Bikini, Enewetak, Johnson Island and Christmas Island. The second nuclear test, after 1945’s Trinity Test, took place at Bikini Atoll. The Pacific tests were notable not only for their stunning visuals, the most compelling imagery of nuclear weapons since Hiroshima, but also the forced relocation of native islanders. Others that were near tests were exposed to dangerous levels of radioactive fallout and forced to fleet. In 1954, the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru accidentally sailed through fallout from the nearby fifteen-megaton Castle Bravo test. Contaminated with nuclear fallout, one crew member died, and the rest were sickened by radiation.

The first hydrogen bomb codenamed “Ivy Mike” was detonated at Enewetak Atoll in 1952. (Source: Ionisation / Reddit)

The first test of a thermonuclear, or fusion, bomb took place on November 1952 at Enewetak Island. Nicknamed Ivy Mike, the huge eighty-two-ton device was more of a building than a usable nuclear device. The device registered a yield of 10.4 megatons, or the equivalent of 10,400,000 tons of TNT. (Hiroshima, by contrast, was roughly eighteen thousand tons of TNT.) Ivy Mike was the biggest test by far, creating a fireball 1.8 miles wide and a mushroom cloud that rose to an altitude of 135,000 feet.

One of the strangest atmospheric tests occurred in 1962 at the NTS, with the testing of the Davy Crockett battlefield nuclear weapon. Davy Crockett was a cartoonish-looking recoilless rifle that lobbed a nuclear warhead with an explosive yield of just ten to twenty tons of TNT. The test, code-named Little Feller I, took place on July 17, 1962, with attorney general and presidential adviser Robert. F. Kennedy in attendance. Although hard to believe, Davy Crockett was issued at the battalion level in both Germany and North Korea.

Also in 1962, as part of a series of high-altitude nuclear experiments, a Thor rocket carried a W49 thermonuclear warhead approximately 250 miles into the exoatmosphere. The test, known as Starfish Prime, had an explosive yield of 1.4 megatons, or 1,400,000 tons of TNT, and resulted in a large amount of electromagnetic pulse being released over the Eastern Pacific Ocean. The test, conducted off Johnston Island, sent a man-made electrical surge as far Hawaii, more than eight hundred miles away. The surge knocked out three hundred streetlights and a telephone exchange, and caused burglar alarms to go off and garage doors to open by themselves.

Nuclear tests weren’t just restricted to the Pacific Ocean and Nevada. In October 1964, as part of Operation Whetstone, the U.S. government detonated a 5.3-kiloton device just twenty-eight miles southwest of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The test, nicknamed Salmon, was an experiment designed to determine if nuclear tests could be detected by seismometer. This was followed up in 1966 with the Sterling test, which had a yield of 380 tons.

In 1967, as part of a misguided attempt to use nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes, the United States detonated a nuclear device near Farmington, New Mexico. Project Gasbuggy was an early attempt at nuclear “fracking,” detonating a twenty-nine-kiloton nuke 4,227 feet underground just to see if the explosion would fracture surrounding rock and expose natural-gas reserves. The experiment was unsuccessful. Two similar tests, Rulison and Rio Blanco, took place in nearby Colorado. Although Rulison was a success in that it uncovered usable gas reserves, the gas was contaminated with radiation, leaving it unsuitable for practical commercial use.

A handful of nuclear tests were conducted in Alaska, or more specifically the Aleutian island of Amchitka. The first test, in October 1965, was designed to test nuclear detection techniques and had a yield of eighty kilotons. A second test occurred four years later, and had a yield of one megaton, or one thousand kilotons. The third and largest test, Cannikin, was a test of the Spartan anti-ballistic missile warhead and had a yield of less than five megatons.

During the early years of nuclear testing it was anticipated that nuclear weapons would be used on the battlefield, and that the Army and Marine Corps had better get used to operating on a “nuclear battlefield.” During the 1952 Big Shot test, 1,700 ground troops took shelter in trenches just seven thousand yards from the thirty-three-kiloton explosion. After the test, the troops conducted a simulated assault that took them to within 160 meters of ground zero. This test and others like them led to increases in leukemia, prostate and nasal cancers among those that participated.

U.S. nuclear testing ceased in 1992. In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that virtually every American that has lived since 1951 has been exposed to nuclear fallout, and that the cumulative effects of all nuclear testing by all nations could ultimately be responsible for up to eleven thousand deaths in the United States alone. The United States did indeed learn much about how to construct safe and reliable nuclear weapons, and their effects on human life and the environment. In doing so, however, it paid a terrible and tragic price.

Kyle Mizokami is a defense and national-security writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in the Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and the Daily Beast. In 2009, he cofounded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.

This first appeared in March and is being reposted due to reader interest. 

Featured image: Creative Commons via The National Interest Blog

Eric Zeusse’s work is invariably thought-provoking, well-researched, and far more credible than most mainstream reporting. Unfortunately, in his otherwise excellent article “All ‘Islamic Terrorism’ Is Perpetrated by Fundamentalist Sunnis, Except Terrorism Against Israel,” Zeusse commits two grave errors. The result is a grotesque calumny against Sunni Islam. 

Zeusse’s first error is to label the alleged perpetrators of 54 high-profile terrorist events, and their private and state sponsors, “fundamentalist Sunnis.” Both words in this expression are incorrect.

The word “fundamentalist,” deriving from the 19^th-century “fundamentals of belief” movement, describes Protestant Christians who subscribe to a literal reading of scripture. There is no comparable movement in Islam. All Muslims, from the most radically esoteric Sufis to the most hidebound obscurantist Wahhabis, read the Qur’an literally and accept it as the literal word of God. (Esotericist Muslims, and to a lesser degree all Muslims, also read their scripture allegorically, but do not dispense with the literal reading in doing so.)

Christian fundamentalism is a reaction against the 19^th-century “death of God” in Western post-Christian societies, and the accompanying decline of religion, especially in the public sphere. Muslim societies have experienced no such decline of religion. In the Islamic world, God is very much alive, and always has been, so there is nothing for any alleged Muslim “fundamentalism” to react against.  The alleged perpetrators of 9/11, Bali, Madrid, 7/7, the Boston bombings, Charlie Hebdo, and so on cannot be described as fundamentalists, since there is no such thing as Islamic fundamentalism.

Nor can they be accurately described as Sunnis. To the extent that any school or tendency in Islamic thought can be connected to the alleged terror perpetrators, it is Wahhabism, which is very different from Sunni Islam. Most educated Sunni Muslims, including the majority of religious scholars, view Wahhabism as a marginal sect that can arguably be classified as a form of neo-Kharajism, meaning it is outside of Sunni Islam.  (Kharajism was a sect of holier-than-thou purists who left the mainstream Islamic fold during the period of leadership controversies following the death of the Prophet of Islam.)

Wahhabis have a history of rejecting mainstream Sunni Islamic scholarship and massacring Muslims with whom they disagree. Originally a small, insignificant sect of desert bandits, they were armed and funded by the British Empire, and later the American Empire, as a weapon against mainstream Islam. Without this imperial backing, and the oil money it brought, Wahhabism would not even exist today. Wahhabism is best viewed as the artificially-sustained pseudo-religious ideology of Western mercenaries fighting against Islam and Muslims. And since almost 90% of Muslims are Sunni, it is Sunnis who are the primary targets of this ongoing war. Indeed, the vast majority of the victims of the kind of terrorism Zeusse is talking about are Sunni Muslims.

Zeusse’s second mistake is even more grave, and far more offensive. Publishing in Global Research, an outlet that has featured extensive investigative work showing that 9/11 and its follow-up events have been false flags, Zeusse nonetheless takes it for granted that the “Muslim” patsies blamed for these events are actually the “terrorists.” This false narrative has triggered the murder of 32 million Muslims, five million by direct violence and 27 million by deprivation, according to Gideon Polya, an expert on preventable mortality. By endorsing the genocidally mendacious cover stories of the 9/11-triggered series of false flags, Zeusse is making himself an accessory to the murder of 32 million people.

The facts of 9/11 have long been available to anyone willing to look at them, beginning with the obvious controlled demolitions of WTC-7 and the Twin Towers. Every aspect of the official story has been falsified.

The official narrative claims “radical Muslims hijacked planes and crashed them into buildings, which caused the Towers and WTC-7 to collapse from fire.”

“Radical Muslims”? The alleged terrorists were not even practicing Muslims, much less extremists. Hebrew-speaking coke fiend Mohammad Atta’s favorite food was pork chops, according to his pink-haired stripper girlfriend Amanda Keller. Atta and other “hijackers” indulged in gambling junkets to Las Vegas and Jack Abramoff’s casino boats, never went near a mosque, and got drunk and left an alcohol-soaked Qur’an on the bar the night before 9/11. Evidence suggests some if not all of the alleged hijackers were impersonated by intelligence agents. For details see Daniel Hopsicker’s Welcome to Terrorland and Jay Kolar’s “What We Now Know About the Alleged 9/11 Hijackers” in Paul Zarembka’s The Hidden History of 9/11.

“Hijackers”? There is no evidence that any Muslims (or anyone else) manually hijacked any planes on 9/11, and abundant evidence that no such thing happened. David Ray Griffin’s excellent article “Was America Attacked by Muslims on 9/11?” provides a good summary of the evidence. Those seeking more information should read Elias Davidsson’s work including Hijacking America’s Mind on 9/11, then move on to Dr. Griffin’s dozen or so books on the subject.

“Plane crashes?” The claim that all four 757 and 767 passenger airliners crashed at the advertised locations is highly debatable. Pilots for 9/11 Truth has provided abundant evidence against that hypothesis.

“The Twin Towers and WTC-7 collapsed from office fires?” This ridiculous lie has been thoroughly demolished by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. But you don’t need special expertise to see that WTC-7 was imploded — and that the Towers did not collapse, they exploded.

Yet Eric Zuesse would have us believe that “fundamentalist Sunni Muslims” committed the atrocities in New York and Washington. How can Global Research, edited by people who know better, publish such an obscene calumny?

Though I have investigated fewer than 20 of the 54 supposed “Sunni fundamentalist” terror events listed by Eric Zeusse, my conclusion that these were all likely or confirmed false flags suggests that most if not all of the others were also false flags.

My three edited books We Are Not Charlie Hebdo, ANOTHER French False Flag, and Orlando False Flag feature 55 leading public intellectuals deconstructing the myth of Islamic terror as it relates to these and several other recent false flag events. Here is a selection from my essay “Pre- and Post-9/11 False Flags” in We Are NOT Charlie Hebdo:

After a hiatus lasting most of the decade, the false flag of Islamic terror was re-hoisted in the USA following the Fort Hood shootings of November 2009. (Technically this event cannot be classified under the terrorism rubric since the victims were soldiers, not civilians.) American historian and terror analyst Webster Tarpley writes that the Fort Hood massacre attributed to Major Nidal Hasan unleashed “an articulated campaign of media hysteria and mass manipulation.” Tarpley went on to question the official story of the shootings by citing reports of multiple shooters, adding: “There remains the question of whether Major Hasan’s psychosis has been artificially produced through a program of brainwashing and heavy-duty ‘Clockwork Orange’ psychological manipulation.” That question would re-emerge in 2014 in connection to another likely Manchurian Candidate terrorist, the leader of Islamic State and self-proclaimed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

If the Fort Hood shooting was tragic, the follow-up incident involving a so-called underwear bomber was pure farce. While the American people were told that a terrorist named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had packed his underwear full of plastic explosives in hope of blowing up a jetliner, they were not told that Abdulmutallab did not have a detonator—and that plastic explosives cannot explode without a detonator. Worse, eyewitnesses saw Abdulmutallab boarding the Detroit-bound plane in Amsterdam without a passport, escorted by a “sharply-dressed man” who appeared to be some sort of security agent. A cameraman on board the plane was clearly complicit in the attack, beginning to film shortly before the attack began, and panning seamlessly to capture the entire episode as if on cue. Passenger and eyewitness Kurt Haskell, a Detroit attorney, has published convincing evidence that the whole affair was a poorly-disguised false flag operation. ABC News reported Haskell’s courtroom testimony: “I am convinced that Umar was given an intentionally defective bomb by a U.S. agent to stage a false terrorist attack.”

A subsequent headline-garnering reminder of the alleged Islamic terror threat was the Times Square bombing attempt of  May 1^st, 2010. Like the underwear bombing incident, the Times Square scare involved an utterly incompetent terrorist patsy and a so-called bomb that was highly unlikely to explode. According to former US intelligence insider Gordon Duff, editor of Veterans Today, the fake attack was “part of a CIA false flag against Pakistan.”

The next major American myth-maintenance operation was the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013. If anything, this alleged Islamic terror incident was an even more crushingly obvious false flag than its predecessors. Photographs taken at the scene show that the exploded backpack the FBI claims held a bomb was not worn by either Tsarnaev brother, but instead by an unknown man wearing a cap with insignia of Craft International, a Blackwater-style outfit owned by “American  Sniper” Chris Kyle specializing in mercenary mayhem whose motto is “Sometimes violence does solve problems.” Craft and the officials who hired them hid from the media and refused to either deny or explain the mercenaries’ presence at the Marathon. Video taken at the scene reveals apparently staged carnage complete with theatrical pseudo-amputations of artificial limbs and poorly-distributed amounts of cinematic fake blood. The FBI murdered a key witness, Ibrahim Todashev, execution style while he was in custody. The Tsarnaevs’ uncle Ruslan Tsarnaevwas married to Samantha Fuller, daughter of controversial CIA agent Graham Fuller, until 2004. Graham Fuller has allegedly been implicated in a number of scandals including the Iran-Contra affair and the creation of al-Qaeda. He provided support to Chechens fighting against Russia. Fuller  has advocated “guiding the evolution of Islam” and has been called the CIA controller for the ethnic Turkish USA-based Fethullah Gulen organization which controls over $20 billion in assets and has been accused of trying to overthrow the government of Turkey. While in Turkey in May 2011 I met with Turkish journalists who said Fuller, who headed the CIA station in that country in September 2001, threatened them shortly after the attacks, telling them not to question the official story of 9/11 in print.

The above is just a small sample of the evidence that most or all high-profile “Islamic terror” acts in the West, and a great many in the rest of the world, are directed by Gladio B – a NATO program, steered mainly by assets of Israel, to create a wave of false flag terror blamed on Muslims in service to the “clash of civilizations.” What we are seeing, then, is not “Sunni fundamentalist terror,” as Eric Zeusse would have it. Instead, we are seeing a false-flag genocide campaign AGAINST Sunni Islam and Sunni Muslims, who make up the near-totality of the 32 million people murdered as a result of 9/11 and its follow-up false flag operations.

Eric Zeusse owes Sunni Muslims – especially the family and friends of the 32 million people murdered by the Big Lie that Zeusse swallows and promulgates – a monumental apology.

Kevin Barrett, an American Muslim, is a Ph.D. Arabist and Islamic Studies specialist. Driven out of the University of Wisconsin in a political witch-hunt for investigating 9/11, he is the author and editor of many books and articles deconstructing the “war on terror.” He hosts Truth Jihad Radio and co-hosts False Flag Weekly News. His website is www.TruthJihad.com .

Featured image: Wikipedia

Dear Prime Minister Netanyahu,

Since you celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the victory of the Six Day War, did you ponder what this triumph has done to the Palestinian people and to the moral character of the state of Israel? I am not sure how harshly history will judge you, but one thing is certain—I, like millions of Jews around the world, deeply believe that no prime minister of Israel has done more damage to the country’s future security and well-being than you have. The sad irony is that for you, the facts on the ground are freely expungable in your morally distorted universe.

Fifty years have passed, and as the longest serving prime minister, you have not yet articulated any vision about Israel’s future and the fate of the Palestinians. Instead, you find comfort in hypocrisy, pretending to do what is right and defending your ceaseless lying and twisted logic, making a virtue out of falsehood. Remember Mr. Netanyahu, a moral leader does not cheat or mislead, but takes a clear positon regardless of how unpopular it may be—but you have pursued policies where nothing is beyond the pale.

You profess to support a two-state solution and that you are ready to negotiate unconditionally, but everything you have said or done over the years stands in total contrast to that notion. How do you reconcile a two-state solution with your statement,

“I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state today, and evacuate areas, is giving radical Islam an area from which to attack the State of Israel”?

And when you were asked during the last elections in 2015 if no Palestinian state would be created under your leadership, you said:

“Indeed.”

In your speech to Congress in May 2011, you stated that

“This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace.” During the same speech, you fervently proclaimed that “In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.”

Tell me, how do these statements conform with the idea of a Palestinian state to be established on the same land, when you have no intention of ever evacuating any settlement? You reconfirmed that in September 2016, stating:

“The Palestinian leadership actually demands a Palestinian state with one pre-condition: No Jews. There’s a phrase for that: It’s called ethnic cleansing.”

You use national security as a blank check to spread fear by portraying the Palestinians as the greatest danger that faces the nation.

“In order to assure our existence,” you stated, “we need to have military and security control over all of the territory west of the Jordan [River].”

How much weight should the Palestinians put on your presumed readiness to negotiate a two-state solution, when in the same breath you emphatically demand from Abbas that he must first recognize Israel as a Jewish state? As you said,

“the real core of this conflict… is not this or that settlement, or this or that community, it’s the persistent and enduring [Palestinian] refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any boundary.”

Both claims are untrue and unfounded.

If the negotiations were to start without any pre-conditions, how could you claim that

“Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people”?

On another occasion, you stated that:

“[Israel] didn’t occupy Jerusalem fifty years ago, it liberated it…I want to the tell the world in a loud and clear voice: Jerusalem has always been and always will be the capital of Israel.”

If you remove the future of Jerusalem from the negotiating table, isn’t that a pre-condition?

You continue to proclaim that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace. Can you explain by what miracle the settlements will not prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state with a contiguous landmass, especially when you continue their expansion and rule out the evacuation of existing settlements?

To be sure, Mr. Netanyahu, your desperate need for reaffirmation of your dubious schemes and bigoted attitude leads you to create an atmosphere of uncertainty and a sense of vulnerability among the Israelis so you can rally the political support to stay in power. If this is not the trademark of a demagogue, then what is? Aristophanes put it well when he stated that:

“You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way, it’s only in troublous times that you line your pockets.”

You demand the Palestinians behave and dare not resist the occupation, but what have you offered in return? You refuse to release political prisoners; you refuse to halt the expansion of settlements; you refuse to provide the Palestinians permits to build, and you refuse unrestricted mobility of Palestinians, not to speak of the daily ordeal to which they are subjected. If you wanted real peace, Mr. Netanyahu, shouldn’t you have used the fiftieth anniversary to make at least a good-will gesture, such as releasing a few hundred Palestinian political prisoners to give hope that new, brighter, and happier days may dawn?

You ought to recall what Frederick Douglas once observed:

“where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.”

To blame the Palestinians for the lack of peace is hypocritical at best. What is it that you want from them? They are at Israel’s mercy; they have nothing left to give. You, Netanyahu, have the power to propose a framework for peace. No country or combination of countries in the Middle East can expect to defeat Israel militarily for the foreseeable future. If you do not negotiate peace from strength now, then when?

Peace based on a two-state solution is not a favor to the Palestinians—it is fundamental to Israel’s long-term national security. Without peace, you jeopardize the Jews’ nationhood for which so many have suffered and died.

Remember this, Mr. Netanyahu: nearly 80 percent of Palestinians and roughly 70 percent of Israelis were born under occupation. What sort of Jewish state are you creating? A state which is in the business of oppressing other people, because people like you portray them as the eternal enemy?

Haven’t the Jews lived long enough to know the meaning of being persecuted, incarcerated, segregated, expelled, and sentenced to death? Are you suggesting that the Palestinians are an irredeemable foe, and we the Jews must oppress and humiliate them to be safe and secure?

No, Mr. Netanyahu. What you are subjecting the Palestinians to day in and day out defies Jewish values, defies what is moral and right, defies logic, and defies the very reason why the Jews struggled to survive for millennia to have a home of our own.

You and your blind zealots are utterly ignorant of what we must stand for. They are destroying brick-by-brick the only country that offers a refuge to every Jew who seeks to live in a free, democratic Jewish state. The occupation does not make Israel a free, safe, and independent state, but a prison with fences and wall and bunkers and shelters, with tens of thousands of soldiers on the ready to kill, to raid, to destroy.

Why?

Because you want to make the Palestinians the eternal enemy, only to support a warped ideology that wantonly ignores their unmitigated reality. Yes, the existence of the Palestinian people is a fact that you cannot wish away. Does it ever occur to you that they want to live a normal life without fear, without dread, and without anxiety and concerns? Does it ever occur to you that the continuing occupation feeds into the frenzy of extremism? Would we the Jews have acted any differently under brutal occupation?

As one who claims to represent not only Israel but world Jewry, don’t you have the obligation to offer a vision as to where you are leading the people of Israel? And what should Jews around the world, in whose name you claim to speak, expect five or ten years down the line?

Given the continuing tense and dire situation in the territories, it is only a matter of time when the next bloody conflagration will happen. The blood of every Israeli and Palestinian man, woman, and child will be on your hands. No one else is to blame for your paralysis to act but you.

You cannot blame your lunatic and outrageous hardcore ideologues partners like Bennett, Shaked, and Lieberman, who refuse to see the light and choose to live in the dark, not knowing what’s in store for them. They put a leash around your neck and you welcome it because you hypocritically use them to provide you with the political cover you need to pursue your twisted scheme. It is you, and only you, who can change direction by getting rid of them and forming a new government committed to peace, if you only will it. But you don’t.

I wonder, Mr. Netanyahu, what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? To reap the real fruits of the Six Day War is to make peace. Nothing short of peace will make the Six Day War a triumph, because the war is continuing. You, more than any other human living in Israel, will be responsible and accountable to the next generation who will be asking, why? Why must we live in a prison of our own creation when the state of Israel was created to liberate us?

History will not be kind to you, Mr. Netanyahu, unless you change course. It is time to reflect, because the destiny of the nation of Israel is in your hands.

This letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu will be followed next week with an open letter to Palestinian President Abbas.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.
[email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com

Featured image: credits to the owner

Just when you thought our Syria policy could not get any worse, last week it did. The US military twice attacked Syrian government forces from a military base it illegally occupies inside Syria. According to the Pentagon, the attacks on Syrian government-backed forces were “defensive” because the Syrian fighters were approaching a US self-declared “de-confliction” zone inside Syria. The Syrian forces were pursuing ISIS in the area, but the US attacked anyway.

The US is training yet another rebel group fighting from that base, located near the border of Iraq at al-Tanf, and it claims that Syrian government forces pose a threat to the US military presence there. But the Pentagon has forgotten one thing: it has no authority to be in Syria in the first place! Neither the US Congress nor the UN Security Council has authorized a US military presence inside Syria.

So what gives the Trump Administration the right to set up military bases on foreign soil without the permission of that government? Why are we violating the sovereignty of Syria and attacking its military as they are fighting ISIS? Why does Washington claim that its primary mission in Syria is to defeat ISIS while taking military actions that benefit ISIS?

The Pentagon issued a statement saying its presence in Syria is necessary because the Syrian government is not strong enough to defeat ISIS on its own. But the “de-escalation zones” agreed upon by the Syrians, Russians, Iranians, and Turks have led to a reduction in fighting and a possible end to the six-year war. Even if true that the Syrian military is weakened, its weakness is due to six years of US-sponsored rebels fighting to overthrow it!

What is this really all about? Why does the US military occupy this base inside Syria? It’s partly about preventing the Syrians and Iraqis from working together to fight ISIS, but I think it’s mostly about Iran. If the Syrians and Iraqis join up to fight ISIS with the help of Iranian-allied Shia militia, the US believes it will strengthen Iran’s hand in the region. President Trump has recently returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia where he swore he would not allow that to happen.

But is this policy really in our interest, or are we just doing the bidding of our Middle East “allies,” who seem desperate for war with Iran? Saudi Arabia exports its radical form of Islam worldwide, including recently into moderate Asian Muslim countries like Indonesia. Iran does not. That is not to say that Iran is perfect, but does it make any sense to jump into the Sunni/Shia conflict on either side? The Syrians, along with their Russian and Iranian allies, are defeating ISIS and al-Qaeda. As candidate Trump said, what’s so bad about that?

We were told that if the Syrian government was allowed to liberate Aleppo from al-Qaeda, Assad would kill thousands who were trapped there. But the opposite has happened: life is returning to normal in Aleppo. The Christian minority there celebrated Easter for the first time in several years. They are rebuilding. Can’t we finally just leave the Syrians alone?

When you get to the point where your actions are actually helping ISIS, whether intended or not, perhaps it’s time to stop. It’s past time for the US to abandon its dangerous and counterproductive Syria policy and just bring the troops home.

Featured image: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Matthew Bruch/Released

USA-North Korean relations remain very tense, although the threat of a new Korean War has thankfully receded. Still the U.S. government remains determined to tighten economic sanctions on North Korea and continues to plan for a military strike aimed at destroying the country’s nuclear infrastructure. And the North for its part has made it clear that it would respond to any attack with its own strikes against U.S. bases in the region and even the U.S. itself.

This is not good, but it is important to realize that what is happening is not new. The U.S. began conducting war games with South Korean forces in 1976 and it was not long before those included simulated nuclear attacks against the North, and that was before North Korea had nuclear weapons. In 1994, President Bill Clinton was close to launching a military attack on North Korea with the aim of destroying its nuclear facilities. In 2002, President Bush talked about seizing North Korean ships as part of a blockade of the country, which is an act of war. In 2013, the U.S. conducted war games which involved planning for preemptive attacks on North Korean military targets and “decapitation” of the North Korean leadership and even a first strike nuclear attack.

I don’t think we are on the verge of a new Korean war, but the cycle of belligerency and threat making on both sides is intensifying. And it is always possible that a miscalculation could in fact trigger a new war, with devastating consequences. The threat of war, perhaps a nuclear war, is nothing to play around with. But – and this is important – even if a new war is averted, the ongoing embargo against North Korea and continual threats of war are themselves costly: they promote/legitimatize greater military spending and militarization more generally, at the expense of needed social programs, in Japan, China, the U.S., and the two Koreas. They also create a situation that compromises democratic possibilities in both South and North Korea and worsen already difficult economic conditions in North Korea.

There is a Choice for Peace

We don’t have to go down this road – we have another option – but it is one that the U.S. government is unwilling to consider, much less discuss. That option is for the U.S. to accept North Korean offers of direct negotiations between the two countries, with all issues on the table.

The U.S. government and media dismiss this option as out of hand – we are told that

(1) the North is a hermit kingdom and seeks only isolation,

(2) the country is ruled by crazy people hell bent on war, and

(3) the North Korean leadership cannot be trusted to follow through on its promises. But none of this is true.

First: if being a hermit kingdom means never wanting to negotiate, then North Korea is not a hermit kingdom. North Korea has been asking for direct talks with the United States since the early 1990s. The reason is simple: this is when the USSR ended and Russia and the former Soviet bloc countries in central Europe moved to adopt capitalism. The North was dependent on trade with these countries and their reorientation left the North Korean economy isolated and in crisis.

The North Korean leadership decided that they had to break out of this isolation and connect the North Korean economy to the global economy, and this required normalization of relations with the United States. Since then, they have repeatedly asked for unconditional direct talks with the U.S. in hopes of securing an end to the Korean War and a peace treaty as a first step toward their desired normalization of relations, but have been repeatedly rebuffed. The U.S. has always put preconditions on those talks, preconditions that always change whenever the North has taken steps to meet them.

The North has also tried to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB), but the U.S. and Japan have blocked their membership. The North has also tried to set up free trade zones to attract foreign investment, but the U.S. and Japan have worked to block that investment.

So, it is not the North that is refusing to talk or broaden its engagement with the global economy; it is the U.S. that seeks to keep North Korea isolated.

Out of Control Militarism

Second: the media portray North Korea as pursuing an out of control militarism that is the main cause of the current dangerous situation. But it is important to recognize that South Korea has outspent North Korea on military spending every year since 1976. International agencies currently estimate that North Korean annual military spending is $4-billion while South Korean annual military spending is $40-billion. And then we have to add the U.S. military build-up.

North Korea does spend a high percentage of its budget on the military, but that is because it has no reliable military ally and a weak economy. However, it has largely responded to South Korean and U.S. militarism and threats, not driven them. As for the development of a nuclear weapons program: it was the U.S. that brought nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula. It did so in 1958 in violation of the Korean War armistice and threatened North Korea with nuclear attack years before the North even sought to develop nuclear weapons.

Third: North Korea has been a more reliable negotiating partner than the USA. Here we have to take up the nuclear issue more directly. The North has tested a nuclear weapon 5 times: 2006, 2009, 2013, and twice in 2016.

Critically, North Korean tests have largely been conducted in an effort to pull the U.S. into negotiations or fulfill past promises. And the country has made numerous offers to halt its testing and even freeze its nuclear weapons program if only the U.S. would agree to talks.

North Korea was first accused of developing nuclear weapons in early 1990s. Its leadership refused to confirm or deny that the country had succeeded in manufacturing nuclear weapons but said that it would open up its facilities for inspection if the U.S. would enter talks to normalize relations. As noted above, the North was desperate, in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, to draw the U.S. into negotiations. In other words, it was ready to end the hostilities between the two countries.

The U.S. government refused talks and began to mobilize for a strike on North Korean nuclear facilities. A war was averted only because Jimmy Carter, against the wishes of the Clinton administration, went to the North, met Kim Il Sung, and negotiated an agreement that froze the North Korean nuclear program.

President and Mrs. Carter admire a gift presented by North Korea President Kim Il Sung (Source: The Carter Center)

The North Korean government agreed to end their country’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid and normalization. And from 1994 to 2002 the North froze its plutonium program and had all nuclear fuel observed by international inspectors to assure the U.S. that it was not engaged in making any nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the U.S. did not live up to its side of the bargain; it did not deliver the aid it promised or take meaningful steps toward normalization.

In 2001 President Bush declared North Korea to be part of the axis of evil and the following year unilaterally canceled the agreement. In response, the North restarted its nuclear program.

In 2003, the Chinese government, worried about growing tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, convened multiparty talks to bring the two countries back to negotiations. Finally, in 2005, under Chinese pressure, the U.S. agreed to a new agreement, in which each North Korean step toward ending its weapons program would be matched by a new U.S. step toward ending the embargo and normalizing relations. But exactly one day after signing the agreement, the U.S. asserted, without evidence, that North Korea was engaged in a program of counterfeiting U.S. dollars and tightened its sanctions policy against North Korea.

The North Korean response was to test its first nuclear bomb in 2006. And shortly afterward, the U.S. agreed to drop its counterfeiting charge and comply with the agreement it had previously signed.

In 2007 North Korea shut down its nuclear program and even began dismantling its nuclear facilities – but the U.S. again didn’t follow through on the terms of the agreement, falling behind on its promised aid and sanction reductions. In fact, the U.S. kept escalating its demands on North Korea, calling for an end to North Korea’s missile program and improvement in human rights in addition to the agreed upon steps to end North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. And so, frustrated, North Korea tested another nuclear weapon in 2009.

And the U.S. responded by tightening sanctions.

In 2012 the North launched two satellites. The first failed, the second succeeded. Before each launch the U.S. threatened to go to the UN and secure new sanctions on North Korea. But the North asserted its right to launch satellites and went ahead. After the December 2012 launch, the UN agreed to further sanctions and the North responded with its third nuclear test in 2013.

This period marks a major change in North Korean policy. The North now changed its public stance: it declared itself a nuclear state – and announced that it was no longer willing to give up its nuclear weapons. However, the North Korean government made clear that it would freeze its nuclear weapons program if the U.S. would cancel its future war games. The U.S. refused and its March 2013 war games included practice runs of nuclear equipped bombers and planning for occupying North Korea. The North has therefore continued to test and develop its nuclear weapons capability.

Here is the point: whenever the U.S. shows willingness to negotiate, the North responds. And when agreements are signed, it is the U.S. that has abandoned them. The North has pushed forward with its nuclear weapons program largely in an attempt to force the U.S. to seriously engage with the North because it believes that this program is its only bargaining chip. And it is desperate to end the U.S. embargo on its economy.

We lost the opportunity to negotiate with a non-nuclear North Korea when we cut off negotiations in 2001, before the country had a nuclear arsenal. Things have changed. Now, the most we can reasonably expect is an agreement that freezes that arsenal. However, if relations between the two countries truly improve it may well be possible to achieve a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula, an outcome both countries profess to seek.

New Possibilities and Our Responsibilities

So, why does the U.S. refuse direct negotiations and risk war? The most logical reason is that there are powerful forces opposing them. Sadly, the tension is useful to the U.S. military industrial complex, which needs enemies to support the ongoing build-up of the military budget. The tension also allows the U.S. military to maintain troops on the Asian mainland and forces in Japan. It also helps to isolate China and boost right-wing political tendencies in Japan and South Korea. And now, after decades of demonizing North Korea, it is difficult for the U.S. political establishment to change course.

However, the outcome of the recent presidential election in South Korea might open possibilities to force a change in U.S. policy. Moon Jae-in, the winner, has repudiated the hard-line policies of his impeached predecessor Park Guen-Hye, and declared his commitment to re-engage with the North. The U.S. government was not happy about his victory, but it cannot easily ignore Moon’s call for a change in South Korean policy toward North Korea, especially since U.S. actions against the North are usually presented as necessary to protect South Korea. Thus, if Moon follows through on his promises, the U.S. may well be forced to moderate its own policy toward the North.

What is clear is that we in the U.S. have a responsibility to become better educated about U.S. policy toward both Koreas, to support popular movements in South Korea that seek peaceful relations with North Korea and progress toward reunification, and to work for a U.S. policy that promotes the demilitarization and normalization of U.S.-North Korean relations.

I discuss this history of U.S.-North Korean relations and current developments in South Korea in a May 8 interview on KBOO radio. To keep up on developments I encourage you to visit the following two websites: Korea Policy Institute and ZoominKorea.

Martin Hart-Landsberg is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon; and Adjunct Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences, Gyeongsang National University, South Korea. His areas of teaching and research include political economy, economic development, international economics, and the political economy of East Asia. He is also a member of the Workers’ Rights Board (Portland, Oregon) and maintains a blog Reports from the Economic Front where this article first appeared.

Featured image: Socialist Project

USD Partners, a rail terminal operator owned in part by Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs, has signed a nearly three year deal to facilitate moving tar sands by train from where it is extracted in Alberta, Canada, to an offloading terminal in Stoud, Oklahoma, in a route mirroring that of the Keystone XL pipeline.

From Stroud, the heavy oil can be sent via pipeline to the nearby oil storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma. USD‘s announcement, which said the company could transport up to 70,000 barrels per day of tar sands in rail cars, came in a June 2 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The deal, centering around the purchase of the Stroud terminal, also included the acquisition of 300,000 barrels of storage space in Cushing, a town known by oil and gas industry observers as the “pipeline crossroads of the world.”

“We are proud to announce the successful repositioning of an underutilized asset to create a competitive network solution for our new customer’s growing oil sands production,” Dan Borgen, CEO of USD Partners, said of the deal in a press release. “Our Hardisty to Stroud rail solution delivers immediate takeaway capacity, preserves the integrity of our customer’s heavy barrels and enables substantial end market optionality at Cushing with available pipeline capacity to the Gulf Coast.” (Note: Tar sands are also known as “oil sands.”)

Ironically, as reported by DeSmog’s Justin Mikulka, Goldman Sachs penned a 2013 report titled, “Getting oil out of Canada,” which said tar sands–by-rail was not economically viable. However, in the years following that report, USD, with the backing of Goldman, has entrenched itself more deeply in the tar sands–by-rail market.

In Hardisty, Alberta, where the tar sands–by-rail journey begins, USD Partners owns a major oil-by-rail shipping facility. The Hardisty facility currently has the ability to handle two tar sands–by-rail shipments per day, equivalent to 120,000–140,000 barrels per day of crude. This latest deal will represent a quarter of the site’s business.

Credit: USD Partners

“Inbound product” shipped from Alberta to Stroud “is delivered by the Stillwater Central Rail, which handles deliveries from both the BNSF and the Union Pacific railways,” explains the USD Partners press release. BNSF is owned by Warren Buffett, who is a major campaign contributor to Democratic Party candidates, including 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shown deep support for tar sands development, to the dismay of environmentalists.

“No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there,” Trudeau said in March at CERAweek, a major oil and gas industry conference held in Houston, Texas. “The resource will be developed. Our job is to ensure that this is done responsibly, safely, and sustainably.”

The tar sands have a larger carbon footprint than other oil products when accounting for the product’s entire life cycle — making it bad news for the climate.

“Tar sands crude … would have a carbon footprint of 632 kilograms per barrel,” InsideClimate News explained in an April 2017 story, pointing to an environmental impact statement done for Enbridge’s Line 67 pipeline, a tar sands–carrying pipeline. “That compares to an average U.S. refinery mix of 521 kilograms per barrel of carbon dioxide emissions.”

The announcement by USD comes as the investment research and management firm Morningstar has released a report which concluded that tar sands are currently being carried at record levels via rail, up to 183,000 barrels per day in March, with those figures likely on the rise.

“Given that no new crossborder pipeline capacity is expected on line before 2019, we expect Canadian crude-by-rail traffic into the United States to continue growing as production increases,” reads the report.

Read more here.

Goldman Sachs Ties to Trump, Clinton

Several former Goldman Sachs bankers serve in the Trump administration, including Trump’s top economic adviser Gary Cohn, who previously worked as the bank’s president and chief operating officer. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, also formerly worked for Goldman as chief information officer.

Another senior economic adviser, Dina Powell, has served as president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, while Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s top aides, was a vice president for Goldman.

Goldman Sachs also had a key person in Hillary Clinton’s corner: CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein endorsed Clinton’s run for president both in 2016 and 2008. Cohn was also a donor to Clinton both as a U.S. Senator and during her 2008 run for office, giving $5,600 in total to Clinton’s campaigns, according to data posted on OpenSecrets.org. And the banking giant itself paid Clinton $675,000 to address company executives three times after her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State.

Prior to surrounding himself with Goldman Sachs bankers, Trump critiqued what he described as their “control” over his opponents during the 2016 election cycle.

“I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him,” Trump stated in a February 2016 campaign rally of his primary opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). “Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton.”

Oil by Rail Hub

Stroud, Oklahoma, was the end point for the first delivery of oil-by-rail shipped from the Bakken Shale in North Dakota in 2010. Until purchased by USD Partners, the Stroud facility was owned by EOG Resources, a company formed out of the ashes of the now-defunct Enron.

“Because current crude oil production in North Dakota exceeds the existing pipeline takeaway capacity, EOG developed the crude by rail concept and agreed to a strategic transportation arrangement with BNSF Railway,” EOG wrote in a press releaseabout the premier shipment. “The initial target for EOG’s rail system is one unit train per day with a maximum capacity of 60,000 gross barrels of oil per train, although initial shipments may be less frequent.” (Note: A unit train is composed of cars carrying only one type of cargo.)

Just weeks earlier, Buffett announced the purchase of BNSF through his holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, which sent shockwaves through the shipping market for U.S. oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and opened the door for the “bomb trains” boom.

Stroud, according to the 2013 environmental impact statement (EIS) published by then-President Barack Obama’s State Department, has the capacity to handle a similar amount of oil per day as TransCanada‘s Keystone XL pipeline, approved earlier this year by President Donald Trump‘s administration. The Alberta-to-Oklahoma oil-by-rail route was viewed as a prospective pipeline alternative. “Under this scenario, up to 15 unit trains per day would arrive at Stroud” and “seven rail terminals would be built,” according to the EIS.

The Gulf Coast pipeline, the southern leg of Keystone XL approved by President Barack Obama during a March 2012 presidential campaign stop in Cushing, also passes through Stroud on its way south to Port Arthur, Texas.

USD: Oil by Rail ‘Pioneer’

The American Journal of Transportation described USD Partners as a “pioneer” of shipping oil by rail and tar sands by rail, crediting the company with reshaping U.S. oil markets.

USD has “helped introduce the energy markets to specialized terminals that can quickly load mile-long oil tank trains heading to the same destination — facilities that have revolutionized the U.S. oil market,” explained the publication in a 2013 article. “USD is shifting its attention away from the best-known U.S. shale oil plays toward Canada, announcing plans two weeks ago to help build what might be the biggest oil-by-rail terminal to serve the northern oil sands patch.”

USD also maintains a considerable fleet of rail cars, numbering more than 3,300 as of December 2015, according to its website. Those cars have the ability to heat “heavy viscous crude oil grades” such as the Alberta tar sands, “reducing the need to blend these heavier crude grades with diluents.”

The head of USD Partners has in turn credited Goldman with its increased clout in the oil-by-rail orbit.

“Their investment has allowed us to grow at a more rapid pace than we otherwise would have,” Borgen told Reuters in 2013. “We have similar cultures, and they’re some of the smartest in the business.”

Main image: A westbound oil train rolls through Essex, Montana in January 2013. Credit: Roy Luck, CC BY 2.0

Featured image: from the author

According to a recent report [1] by CBC Canada, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, which was formerly known as al-Nusra Front and then Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) since July 2016, has been removed from the terror watch-lists of the US and Canada after it merged with fighters from Zenki Brigade and hardline jihadists from Ahrar al-Sham and rebranded itself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in January this year.

The US State Department is hesitant to label Tahrir al-Sham a terror group, despite the group’s link to al-Qaeda, as the US government has directly funded and armed the Zenki Brigade, one of the constituents of Tahrir al-Sham, with sophisticated weaponry including the US-made antitank TOW missiles.

The overall military commander of Tahrir al-Sham continues to be Abu Mohammad al-Julani, whom the US has branded a Specially Designated Global Terrorist with a $10 million bounty. But for the US to designate Tahrir al-Sham as a terrorist organization now would mean acknowledging that it supplied sophisticated weapons to terrorists, and draw attention to the fact that the US continues to arm Islamic jihadists in Syria.

In order to understand the bloody history of al-Nusra Front during the Syrian civil war, bear in mind that since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in August 2011 to April 2013, the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front were a single organization that chose the banner of “Jabhat al-Nusra.” Although al-Nusra Front has been led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani but he was appointed [2] as the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, in January 2012.

Thus, al-Julani’s al-Nusra Front is only a splinter group of the Islamic State, which split from its parent organization in April 2013 over a leadership dispute between the two organizations.

In March 2011, protests began in Syria against the government of Bashar al-Assad. In the following months, violence between demonstrators and security forces led to a gradual militarization of the conflict. In August 2011, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was based in Iraq, began sending Syrian and Iraqi jihadists experienced in guerrilla warfare across the border into Syria to establish an organization inside the country.

Led by a Syrian known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the group began to recruit fighters and establish cells throughout the country. On 23 January 2012, the group announced its formation as Jabhat al-Nusra.

In April 2013, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released an audio statement in which he announced that al-Nusra Front had been established, financed and supported by the Islamic State of Iraq. Al-Baghdadi declared that the two groups were merging under the name “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.” The leader of al-Nusra Front, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, issued a statement denying the merger and complaining that neither he nor anyone else in al-Nusra’s leadership had been consulted about it.

Al-Qaeda Central’s leader, Ayman al Zawahiri, tried to mediate the dispute between al-Baghdadi and al-Julani but eventually, in October 2013, he endorsed al-Nusra Front as the official franchise of al-Qaeda Central in Syria. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, however, defied the nominal authority of al-Qaeda Central and declared himself as the caliph of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Keeping this background in mind, it becomes amply clear that a single militant organization operated in Syria and Iraq under the leadership of al-Baghdadi until April 2013, which chose the banner of al-Nusra Front, and that the current emir of the subsequent breakaway faction of al-Nusra Front, al-Julani, was actually al-Baghdadi’s deputy in Syria.

Thus, the Islamic State operated in Syria since August 2011 under the designation of al-Nusra Front and it subsequently changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in April 2013, after which, it overran Raqqa in the summer of 2013, then it seized parts of Deir al-Zor and fought battles against the alliance of Kurds and the Syrian regime in al-Hasakah. And in January 2014 it overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in Iraq and reached the zenith of its power when it captured Mosul in June 2014.

Regarding the rebranding of al-Julani’s Nusra Front to “Jabhat Fateh al-Sham” in July 2016 and purported severing of ties with al-Qaeda Central, it was only a nominal difference because al-Nusra Front never had any organizational and operational ties with al-Qaeda Central and even their ideologies are poles apart.

Al-Qaeda Central is basically a transnational terrorist organization, while al-Nusra Front mainly has regional ambitions that are limited only to fighting the Assad regime in Syria and its ideology is anti-Shi’a and sectarian. In fact, al-Nusra Front has not only received medical aid and material support from Israel, but some of its operations against the Shi’a-dominated Assad regime in southern Syria were fully coordinated with Israel’s air force.

The purpose behind the rebranding of al-Nusra Front to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and purported severing of ties with al-Qaeda Central was to legitimize itself and to make it easier for its patrons to send money and arms. The US blacklisted al-Nusra Front in December 2012 and pressurized Saudi Arabia and Turkey to ban it too. Although al-Nusra Front’s name has been in the list of proscribed organizations of Saudi Arabia and Turkey since 2014, but it has kept receiving money and arms from the Gulf Arab States.

It should be remembered that in a May 2015 interview [3] with al-Jazeera, Abu Mohammad al-Julani took a public pledge on the behest of his Gulf-based patrons that his organization only has local ambitions limited to fighting the Assad regime in Syria and that it does not intend to strike targets in the Western countries.

Thus, this rebranding exercise has been going on for quite some time. Al-Julani announced the split from al-Qaeda in a video statement last year. But the persistent efforts of al-Julani’s Gulf-based patrons have only borne fruit in January this year, when al-Nusra Front once again rebranded itself from Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS) to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which also includes “moderate” jihadists from Zenki Brigade, Ahrar al-Sham and several other militant groups, and thus, the US State Department has finally given a clean chit to the jihadist conglomerate that goes by the name of Tahrir al-Sham to pursue its ambitions of toppling the Assad regime in Syria.

Featured image: credits to the owner

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Sunday for the dismantling of the UN agency that aids millions of Palestinian refugees, accusing it of anti-Israeli incitement and saying he had conveyed his message to the US ambassador to the United Nations.

Adnan Abu Hasna, a Gaza-based spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said Netanyahu was pursuing a “fantasy”. The United States, Israel’s main ally, was the biggest donor to UNRWA last year, pledging $368 million.

In public remarks to his cabinet at its weekly meeting, Netanyahu said UNRWA perpetuated, rather than solved, the Palestinian refugee problem and that anti-Israeli incitement was rife in its institutions, which includes schools.

“It is time UNRWA be dismantled and merged with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,” Netanyahu said.

Referring to a meeting he held in Jerusalem on Wednesday with Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, Netanyahu said:

I told her it was time the United Nations re-examine UNRWA’s existence

UNRWA was established by the UN General Assembly in 1949 after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in the 1948 war that followed Israel’s creation. It says it currently aids five million registered Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.

Chris Gunness, UNRWA’s chief spokesman, said in an email to Reuters that only the General Assembly, by a majority vote, could change the agency’s mandate.

“In December 2016, UNRWA’s mandate was extended for three years by the General Assembly by a large majority,” he added.

UNRWA’s spokesperson Abu Hasna, speaking in Hebrew on Israel Radio, cautioned that if “UNRWA is gone” in the Gaza Strip, where its food, educational and health services are crucial,

two million people will turn into Daesh supporters

In a statement issued in response to Netanyahu’s calls, Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said:

“There is only one reason that the UNRWA provides crucial humanitarian support to five million Palestinian refugees – the continuing illegal occupation of Palestinian land by the Israeli military and state and the denial of the right of return.”

Netanyahu’s notion that the UNRWA ‘perpetuates’ Palestine’s refugee problem suggests a break with reality. Netanyahu’s defence minister Avigdor Lieberman said that disloyal Palestinian citizens of Israel should be beheaded, and his justice minster Ayelet Shaked described Palestinian children as ‘little snakes’. Let’s take his complaints about incitement with a pinch of salt.

Featured image: UNRWA

LONDON: Seven Indian companies are among those from 20 countries named in a list whose components were used by the ISIS to make explosives, a EU-mandated study said, suggesting that more work needs to be done to track the flow of chemicals and other items to the terror group.

The study by Conflict Armament Research (CAR) showed that 51 companies from 20 countries such as Turkey, India, Brazil, and the US produced, sold or received the over 700 components used by ISIS to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Turkey topped the list of countries with a total of 13 firms involved in the supply chain. It was followed by India with seven companies, CAR said in a statement. The study was completed in 20 months.

Seven Indian companies manufactured most of the detonators, detonating cord and safety fuses. Under Indian law, transfer of this material requires a licence. Those were all legally exported under government-issued licenses from India to entities in Lebanon and Turkey, the CAR said.

According to the report, the terror group mostly uses Nokia 105 mobile phone for remote detonation.

Companies from Brazil, Romania, Russia, the Netherlands, China, Switzerland, Austria and Czech Republic were also involved, it said.

The study said that governments and firms need to do more to track the flow of cables, chemicals and other equipment. CAR’s executive director James Bevan said,

“these findings support growing international awareness that ISIS in Iraq and Syria are very much self-sustaining — acquiring weapons and strategic goods, such as IED components, locally and with ease.”

The report said that CAR gained access to the components through partners including the US-backed Kurdish YPG in Syria, the Iraqi Federal Police, the Kurdistan Region Security Council and forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

These components were seized during battles in the Iraqi towns of al Rabia, Kirkuk, Mosul, and Tikrit and the Syrian town of Kobani.

Featured image: The Economic Times

In light of the global crisis that is shaping a country’s foreign relations, we bring to your attention selected articles on the “legitimacy” of US foreign policy. According to Antiphon Freeman,

“Multiple reports are confirming that a US-led Coalition used white phosphorus-loaded ammunitions in heavily populated cities of Iraq and Syria. Thousands of civilians are known to be in the areas where the weapons were used… 

*     *     *

Trump Just Dropped Chemical Weapons in a Major City, 100,000 Civilians Trapped

By Antiphon Freeman, June 12, 2017

Right now it’s unclear how many civilian casualties were incurred but so far the Pentagon has confirmed that the United States has killed at least 500 innocent people since it first started its operations. Many believe that’s a very conservative estimate and that the death toll is far higher. U.K. based Airways claims the death toll has so far reached 3,800 civilians.

Going for Regime-Change in Doha

By Abdel Bari Atwan, June 12, 2017

The strongly-worded warning issued to Qatar on Friday by US President Donald Trump – accusing it of being a “funder of terrorism… at a very high level” and demanding that it to “stop immediately supporting terrorism” -suggests that the US has not only signed up fully to the Saudi-UAE-Egyptian-Bahraini alliance against Qatar, but assumed its leadership. It also confirms that the steps taken by the four countries to blockade Qatar and suffocate it economically had prior American approval.

Confirmed: US Enters Fight Against ISIS in the Philippines

By Adam Garrie, June 12, 2017

Yesterday, Reuters broke a story calming that the US has agreed to a Philippine request to assist Philippines in the war against ISIS, a story confirmed by both a military spokesman for Philippines and the United States. The story has now been directly contradicted by Philippines President Duterte, also according to Reuters. Duterte claims that he “never approached U.S”.

Why is Venezuela in the White House’s Crosshairs?

By Peter Koenig, June 11, 2017

Among different foreign sources of support and funding, most of them American, is the infamous National Endowment for Democracy – NED, a so called “fake” NGO “think-tank” (sic), receiving from the US State Department hundreds of millions of dollars per year to ’spread democracy’ American style around the globe, i.e. training local rebel groups abroad and within the targeted country to provoke instability through unrest and violence; distribute anti-government propaganda, infiltrate the media, universities and so on. They are the same who were responsible for the so-called Arab Spring and the Color Revolutions in former Soviet Republics, including Ukraine.

Serbia to Sue NATO for 1999 Bombings Using Depleted Uranium Ammunition?

By Sputnik, June 11, 2017

Codenamed “Operation Allied Force,”’ it was the largest attack ever undertaken by the alliance and the first time that NATO used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council and against a sovereign nation that did not pose a real threat to any member of the alliance.

Inside the US Fight to Fix Israel’s Global Standing

By Jonathan Cook, June 11, 2017

The Trump administration is using unprecedented threats and financial “blackmail” against the United Nations and its agencies to end their focus on human rights abuses by Israel, according to analysts and Palestinian leaders.

*     *     *

Truth in media is a powerful instrument.

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Featured image: A screenshot from a video in news.groopspeak

HOMS, SYRIA — On the evening of Aug. 17, 2016, an event that has yet to be adequately explained occurred in the Qaterji District of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Four-year-old Omran Daqneesh, as well as his siblings and parents, were injured in media alleged was an attack by the Russians – or the Syrian military, depending on what source one chose to believe.

People in Aleppo suggested it could have been a strike by the US-led coalition. The reality is not yet known. The attack also claimed the life of Omran’s 11-year-old brother, Mohammad Ali Daqneesh.

Overnight, the world was introduced to Omran, who became the poster child of suffering in Syria due to extensive coverage by Western corporate media. The al-Qaeda-affiliated White Helmets, and subsequently the media, made the child’s injuries out to seem far more serious than they actually were.

CNN anchor Kate Bolduan “broke down” over a photo of the boy that was likely taken and propagated precisely to elicit such emotion. Video footage of Omran showed him seated in an ambulance, blank-faced and barefoot with blood drying on his face. The world was collectively heartbroken at seeing Omran – but was also misled about his story.

Most Western media blamed the Russians for Omran’s injuries – but some media outlets, including The Guardian, claimed that he’d been hit by a Syrian airstrike.

For its part, the Russian Defense Ministry denied allegations regarding Russia’s involvement in the incident. As Tim Anderson wrote at the time, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the Russian Air Force

“never work[s] on targets within residential areas … [especially not in] al-Qaterji, mentioned by the Western media, as it is adjacent to the exit corridors for locals which were opened in the framework of the Russian humanitarian mission.”

Both Western and Gulf media would rehash the story of his injury in the coming weeks and months, but also omit some key facts in the process.

The source of the video footage showing Omran being put in the ambulance was the Aleppo Media Centre (AMC), which is funded by the West and promotes the “rebel opposition” narrative in Syria, relying on al-Qaeda sources. The journalists who took the video and photos are embedded in al-Qaeda-controlled areas.

Watch the AMC footage of Omran being loaded into a waiting ambulance:

Mahmoud Raslan, the photographer responsible for the viral photo of Omran, is known to be close to terrorists of the Nour al-Din al-Zenki faction, who are most widely known for their methodic beheading of Palestinian child Abdullah Issa in July 2016. After Issa’s slaughter, photos emerged of a grinning Raslan taking a selfie with some of the al-Zenki murderers.

If u doubt that Raslan took photo, see him taking pics & wearing same shirt as he wore in selfie w/beheaders #Syria pic.twitter.com/TNcHlyDNB1

— Walid (@walid970721) August 19, 2016

Father speaks out – Omran is happy and healthy

Omran’s father, Mohammad Kheir Daqneesh, had six children, including Omran and the late Mohammad Ali. In the year following the attack that injured Omran and his family, Mr. Daqneesh became sick of the way Gulf and Western media used the image of his son as propaganda to garner public support for further intervention in Syria.

He chose to speak out on June 5, 2017, giving interviews to Syrian media in which he gave his side of Omran’s story. He pointed out the ways in which Omran had been made into an icon without his knowledge or his family’s consent, as well as the false premises under which this was done.

Mohammad Daqneesh recalled scrambling to find Omran and his other children in the dark, moving them to safety before rescuing the rest of his family. At one point, Omran was taken to an ambulance by a White Helmets “volunteer,” with the iconic photo to be taken shortly thereafter while Daqneesh was still inside his home.

Mr. Daqneesh denied any knowledge of a Russian or Syrian airstrike, saying that he had not heard any airplanes at the time. He added that his son’s injury was mild, but had been exaggerated in the news, adding that Omran was at ease and had since returned to normalcy in his home in Aleppo.

Omran Daqneesh, dubbed Aleppo Boy by the media, and his father Mohammad, in their Aleppo home, June 6, 2017. (Photo: Eva Bartlett, MintPress News)

On June 6, I met with Omran and Mr. Daqneesh at their Aleppo home to inquire about the incident. In a small sitting room outside their apartment, Mohammad Daqneesh was able to provide some more answers.

On the August evening of the attack, Mohammad Daqneesh and his family were inside the first-floor apartment they had been renting since fleeing their original Aleppo neighborhood when “rebels” came into their district. Daqneesh described their area of Qaterji as having been calm, with “nothing happening” for most of the three years they’d been there.

“We were at our home in the Qaterji neighborhood when the strike happened. What caused it, I don’t know – we didn’t hear any sound[s] of airplanes or bombing. Suddenly everything went dark. Thank God, [Omran’s] injury was a light injury, very light. But they exaggerated and made a big deal out of it. I was also lightly injured on my head and arm, but [they were] very mild injuries,” Daqneesh said.

“My son Mohammad Ali was taking the trash out when suddenly the incident occurred and he was hit by rubble. His hands were injured and he suffered internal bleeding,” he said.

Ali ended up at the same hospital as Omran, where he stayed for three days before passing away.

“I went there to find them and take them out of there. I needed some stitches, but I didn’t get it done there, I didn’t trust them. I asked a nurse elsewhere to do it,” Daqneesh said.

But the hospital in question had a dark side to it. Pierre Le Corf, a French citizen who has lived in Aleppo for over a year, looked into the hospital after eastern Aleppo was secured.

“The [hospital] was held and managed by [al-]Nusra and the Tahrir Party. It was funded and supported by SAMS (Syrian-American Medical Society), and there were SAMS posters all over the hospital. Doctors there were more like interns, not actual doctors but they received intensive training for a period,” Le Corf told me in Aleppo.

As the White Helmets are lauded with having had a widely-loved presence in eastern Aleppo (and other al-Qaeda occupied regions of Syria), I asked Omran’s father whether he had had any interactions with them prior to the August 2016 evening. He replied that he hadn’t and added:

“I saw nothing of them, but I heard a lot from other people. Some said they do help people and others said they steal their money, mobiles, etc from those they help.”

British journalist Vanessa Beeley, in her investigations into the White Helmets, heard far more sordid first-hand accounts when she visited the Jibreen reception center for displaced Syrians from eastern Aleppo areas in December 2016.

In the corporate media frenzy which followed that August 2016 night, Mahmoud Raslan—the star photographer of Omran in the ambulance—at one point described crying for Omran. I asked Mohammad Daqneesh about this, knowing of Raslan’s close affiliation with al-Zenki.

“If he cried and felt sorry for my child, that’s up to him. But if he cried to manipulate others feelings, that’s a different story. We see a lot of cases on the television which we cry for. But not like this slight injury,” Daqneesh said, touching Omran’s forehead.

To my question of whether the militants had attempted to intimidate or otherwise coerce Daqneesh into corroborating the narrative around Omran, he said:

“They tried to pressure us to say that the Russian and the Syrian air forces hit us, but I can’t be a witness to something I didn’t see. They offered me money, travel out of Syria, residency, citizenship, employment, health insurance, and things like that. And they offered us their protection on the way out of Syria because the road, the Ramouseh road, was very dangerous. They wanted to put us inside an armored vehicle which would take us to the Turkish borders, through Bab Salame, with the help of the armed men.”

Assuming that Daqneesh is being “held under house arrest” as pro- “rebels” media have claimed, why then would he refuse this offer? I asked why he hadn’t left with them and what he thought of claims he was being forced to speak as he has done.

“Firstly, I am a Syrian citizen and my children have every right to live in this country. Also, it was simple (injury), why would I leave? I’ve gone back to my work. Some media have said that I live in Turkey now and my family and I left Omran alone. That’s all a lie.

I didn’t ask them to put us in the media and to trade with our blood. I didn’t ask them to take photos and write stories about us. They imposed themselves on us and did all that. Now they are saying that I’m a traitor, that I betrayed the country and that I’m sitting with a criminal.

I stay only where I am convinced is right for me, and I recommend that they return to their senses. Enough damaging this country, they came here and caused us all this damage and harm, I am asking them to back off and to leave this country and people alone. Enough is enough.”

“Rescuers” Traded Blood for Photo Op

The now infamous photo of Omran Daqneesh as he sits in an ambulance in Aleppo, Syria. (Source: MintPress News)

Syrian journalist Khaled Iskef is largely responsible for bringing the true story of Omran Daqneesh to light. Through months of dialogue with Mohammad Daqneesh, Iskef’s urging him to talk to the media, eventuated on June 5th.

In meetings with Iskef in Aleppo, he told me about something even more disturbing than the exploitation of Omran Daqneesh: according to Iskef’s investigations through talking with Daqneesh and his friends, the White Helmets “rescuers” first grabbed one child for their “rescue” photo op, but when they saw undeniably adorable Omran, they took him instead, leaving the first child aside. Trading blood, as Daqneesh said.

Iskef spoke of why Daqneesh changed his mind about speaking to press.

“He refused any media because of what’s happened with his child. When you think of how Western media treated the child, his reaction to any media was to refuse. I kept telling him you must talk to the media.”

Watch CNN reporter Kate Bolduan sheds tears for Omran Daqneesh:

Mahmoud Raslan, the photographer of that famous photo, is now in Idlib, after having left in December 2016 with the terrorists occupying eastern Aleppo districts when the Syrian army and allies liberated Aleppo.

According to Iskef, Raslan recently bragged anew about photographing Omran. “This made his father crazy.” Daqneesh never gave permission to Raslan or anyone to photograph his son, and ensured no one would do so after the initial photograph was used as war propaganda. “This is what made him open up and talk, he was so angry.”

In his article for al-Mayadeen, in Arabic, Khaled Iskef wrote (on-line translated):

“According to Omran’s father, some journalists close to the Nusra Front told him that 26 million Muslims depended on him …and said they were waiting for his statement that the bombing was the Syrian regime.”

The foreign journalists he referred to, he told me, included Bilal Abdul Kareem, who is perhaps known to some readers for having been embedded with al-Qaeda, praising the White Helmets, and fawningly interviewing Saudi terrorist, Sheikh Abdullah Muhaysini.

Iskef also tweeted about the attempts to bribe Daqneesh, writing:

4-#Omran'sf:Rejected the amount of 8000$ from MusaalOmar and the American journalist close to the Nusra Front,BilalAbdulKarim#OmranDaqneesh

— خالد اسكيف (@khalediskef) June 6, 2017

In our conversations and in a series of recent tweets, Iskef mentioned that Daqneesh is being threatened for having spoken out against the media lies and manipulations. One such tweet read:

“Threats that now reach me, and my family’s because I have exposed the lies of the gunmen who were controlling eastern parts of #Aleppo.”

Aleppo, Former al-Qaeda Hot-Bed: From Occupied to Liberated

While the entire details of the August 17 2,016 evening are not yet clear, what is clear is that the White Helmets, the AMC, and the corporate media lied and exploited Omran Daqneesh and his family in their concerted war propaganda efforts to demonize the Syrian and Russian governments.

Khaled Iskef raised a good, if not basic, point:

“Can they prove it was a Syrian or Russian airstrike?”

In our June 6th interview, Mohammad Daqneesh likewise said:

“We asked the journalists to bring out the pieces of the weapon we were hit by, to see it. They refused, they refused.”

After hearing what Mohammad Daqneesh had to say that afternoon, I chatted with one of his neighbors in the same area. The neighbor mentioned a day in 2014, two days prior to the Presidential elections, in which he said

“96 gas bombs on Sulimaniyeh and Midan. My house was destroyed to rubble. The government didn’t retaliate because where the terrorists were and fired from there were civilians.”

Indeed, in a September 2014 article on mortar and rocket terrorism, I wrote about the bombings prior to the Presidential elections in the Damascus region alone. These bombings hit government-secured cities throughout Syria:

“According to political analyst and Damascus resident Mazen al-Akhras, in the three-month period of April, May and June 2014, terrorist-insurgents fired 994 mortars on Damascus and environs, 426 of which were fired in June (see a list of locations hit and a number of mortars below). On June 3, Election Day in Syria, the terrorist-insurgents fired 151 shells on Damascus, killing 5 and maiming 33 Syrians, Akhras said.”

In December, 2016, all of Aleppo city was liberated of the Nusra, Zenki, and other terrorist factions which had occupied eastern areas (and formerly northern) for years. Syrian and friendly media showed the celebrations which lasted well beyond Christmas, which was celebrated for the first time in years in the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim city, with Muslims celebrating with their Christian friends and neighbors.

After the liberation of Aleppo, Western and Gulf media, and most of the many concerned human rights groups went silent on Aleppo—as they had been utterly silent on the near-daily murders of civilians and bombings of hospitals on the government side of Aleppo by militants they dubbed ‘rebels’. The number of civilians who died as a result of terrorist snipings, explosive bullets, Hell-Cannon-fired gas cylinder bombs, Grad missiles and other powerful munitions, was nearly 11,000, according to the head of Forensics in Aleppo by late 2016. The media shifted their attention to other areas occupied by al-Qaeda where atrocities could be claimed and White Helmets could perform for their payments.

Western and Gulf media have propagated relentlessly against the Syrian army, and Syria’s allies, distorting realities on numerous occasions, and completely fabricating allegations on numerous others, all with the sole intent of demonizing those who have actually fought terrorism in Syria since this began in 2011. Unsurprisingly, the same Western media which distorted, exploited and lied about Omran Daqneesh is striving to discredit the words of his father, Mohammad.

Mohammad Daqneesh, an unwilling party to the war propaganda, had the following to say about Syria and its army:

“Syria comes before anything. I don’t belong to any side. Syria comes first. The Syrian Army protects the country and the people. I served in the Syrian army. The army is the people, and the people are the army.”

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian activist/freelance journalists covering the Middle East, especially the Syrian conflict.

Featured image: Danny Makki/MintPress News

An Iranian official has urged active diplomacy with Turkey towards tackling the problem of dust storms, which chronically blight regional states as a result of Ankara’s massive dam building projects.

As part of its Southeastern Anatolia Project known as GAP, Turkey has built 22 dams on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which also run across Syria, Iraq and Iran.

The project has reportedly reduced water flow in the rivers’ basin by 34 percent and caused 94 percent of the Mesopotamia to dry up, kicking up dust storms in Syria and Iraq which head to Iran and cripple life in its southwestern and western provinces.

Hedayat Fahmi of Iran’s Energy Ministry said on Sunday Turkey was exacerbating the situation by continuing to build more dams, leaving more parched river basins which become new breeding grounds for dust storms.

This becomes more palpable if we consider that the dams hold back as much as 100 billion cubic meters of water, half of which is harnessed in the country’s Ataturk Dam.

Dust storms over the Persian Gulf (Source: Wikipedia)

The project, which is executed by US, German and Israeli firms among others, is due to provide water for up to two million hectares of arable lands in Turkey and boost the country’s electricity production by 7,500 megawatts.

‘Water wars likely’

Expert projections, Fahmi said, hold that the Middle East would be losing as much as 10 percent of its water resources by 2045. Over the same period, the demand for water in the region would increase by 60 percent, he said, adding this could even lead to regional wars.

“To tackle the problem of fine particles in the country, the four countries are needed to interact and engage in water diplomacy toward ensuring their entitlement to joint water resources,” Fahmi said.

The official said given that Iraq and Syria are faced with security and social predicaments, Iran should take a more active role in diplomatic efforts.

Regional cooperation on the matter stalled in 2011 when terrorism and conflicts began to blight the two Arab countries.

Back in March, Iran sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, calling for the creation of a regional task force to address the pressing issue of dust storms in the region.

Featured image: PressTV

The strongly-worded warning issued to Qatar on Friday by US President Donald Trump – accusing it of being a “funder of terrorism… at a very high level” and demanding that it “stop immediately supporting terrorism” — suggests that the US has not only signed up fully to the Saudi-UAE-Egyptian-Bahraini alliance against Qatar, but assumed its leadership. It also confirms that the steps taken by the four countries to blockade Qatar and suffocate it economically had prior American approval.

This amounts to a conditional American declaration of war. When Trump announces at a White House press conference,

‘I’ve decided, along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, our great generals, and military people, the time has come to call on Qatar to end its funding,’ the meaning cannot be clearer in this regard.

Trump struck this hard-line stance just hours after Tillerson made statements about the crisis in the Gulf that were conciliatory and calming in tone. He urged Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain to ease their blockade of Qatar, arguing that it was damaging to US military operations against the Islamic State (IS) group in addition to causing humanitarian harm.

In our view, this sudden toughening of the American position was a response to the way the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin-Hamad Al Khalifa, turned down Trump’s invitation to him and the other principals in the crisis to travel to Washington to explore for solutions. He justified his refusal to attend on the grounds that he could not leave his country while it remained under blockade. This angered the US president, who has been behaving like an emperor and thinks his orders cannot be disobeyed.

Emir Tamim does not trust the US administration, and fears the invitation could merely have been a trap to keep him in the US and prevent him from returning home, while Saudi and UAE forces invade in support of an internal coup that deposes him as ruler and installs a new emir from the other wing of the ruling Al Thani. The 10,000 US troops based at al-‘Udaid in Qatar also could conceivably play a supporting role in such a scheme.

It was striking that during the three summits that were convened for him in Riyadh earlier this month (with Saudi, Gulf and Arab/Islamic leaders respectively), Trump adopted wholesale the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia and the UAE which deems Iran to be the spearhead of terrorism in the region. He supported their severing of ties with and closure of their borders and airspace to Qatar on the grounds that is an ally of Iran and supporter of terrorism, in the view of this new alliance.

When Trump instructs his generals, as he did at the White House press conference, to take practical measures to oblige Qatar to stop funding terrorism, that leaves Doha with very few options. It can either accept the ten conditions to which Saudi Arabia and its allies demanded its immediate compliance, or it must face up to the consequences of refusing to do so.

The summary expulsion, in a harsh manner, of Qatari citizens from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain and the three Gulf countries’ closure of their borders and severing of relations is a declaration of war that spells of the end of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as we have known it. Trump’s adoption of these steps, meanwhile, aborts the so-called ‘Arab/Islamic NATO’ as it was proposed at the Riyadh summits. Instead, this alliance will be reduced to one based solely on the members of the Gulf/Arab anti-Qatar coalition. When Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain enact laws that punish expressions of support for Qatar on social media with 15 years imprisonment or fines of up to one million dollars, this means that all the talk of brotherhood and common bonds between the Gulf states has evaporated forever – along with any remaining lip-service to respecting human rights.

Qatar has announced that it will not submit to tutelage or surrender in the face of attempts to suffocate and blockade it, and will therefore not change its foreign policy. It has begun to seek support and protection from its friends in Ankara and Tehran. This could prompt its adversaries to take even harsher and more aggressive measures against it, such as Egypt preventing Qatari gas exports from transiting the Suez Canal.

Qatar has cards of its own to play, such as shutting down the pipeline that supplies Qatari gas to the UAE, or expelling 200,000 resident Egyptian migrant workers. But it has insisted that it will not resort to such measures, and that Egyptian workers will not be harmed and Qatari gas will continue being pumped.

It was evident from the outset of this crisis that it would becoming increasingly serious, and now it can be expected to escalate further – especially after the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad fell into a state of depression due to the failure of his mediation effort, to which not all sides were responsive.

When Trump brings his generals – some of them based at al-Aideed — into the crisis and orders them to act to stop Qatar form supporting terrorism, we should expect the worst. The ‘worst’ in this case could mean a military solution and enforced regime-change. And that would mean setting the region, in part or in whole, ablaze.

Featured image: Raialyoum

The Philippine military has confirmed that the United States has started to offer limited support to President Rodrigo Duterte’s battle with ISIS.

Duterte had said that the US is unreliable as an ally insofar as they impose ideological conditions as a prerequisite for any kind of assistance. Duterte contrasted this with Russia and China which operate in a more straightforward and businesslike manner.

The recent announcement of US forces aiding the Philippine struggle against ISIS may largely be due to the fact that Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte seem to have developed a good relationship. Duterte continues to speak positively about Trump in spite of his broader negative views on America’s colonial attitude towards post-colonial Philippines.

Philippine Lieutenant Colonel Jo-Ar Herrera spoke at a press conference in the ISIS besieged city of Marawi and stated,

“They (US forces) are not fighting. They are just providing technical support”.

According to Reuters, the US Embassy in Manila has confirmed that they are supporting the Philippine fight against ISIS at the request of the Philippine government but did not release any further details.

Unlike in Syria or Libya, the United States does have a legal mandate and even a moral one to genuinely help Philippines. However, the dangers of mission creep are ever present.

President Duterte’s opposition have been trying to remove him from office after questioning his decision to put the southern Philippine island of Mindanao under martial law. Opposition leaders, many from the Liberal Party of Philippines tend to take a much more traditional view of Philippines as a US ally/dependent than does Duterte who has engaged in historic positive bilateral relations with both China and Russia.

There remains a danger that the United States could co-opt forces still loyal to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and use them as ‘moderate rebels’ who fight ISIS on behalf of their own local interests as well as America’s wider geo-political interests which are keen not to let Philippines slip out of the American orbit and into the Chinese sphere of influence.

That being said, MILF has engaged in a ceasefire with the government in Manila dating back to 2014. The ceasefire still generally holds and furthermore, unlike his neo-liberal and right-wing opponents, President Duterte had promised autonomy to Muslim regions of southern Philippines from which Duterte (whose background is Roman Catholic) himself hails.

It is important for Duterte to make sure that Islamist groups in southern Philippines remain focused on doing any future deals directly with  Manila in exchange for participation in the united front against ISIS which Duterte has proposed. There exists a manifest danger of such groups working with the United States to unilaterally re-shape the political sovereignty of Philippines.

Although the situation in Philippines is not yet as internationalised as that in Syria, there remains a danger that the US could seek to use the crisis as leverage against Duterte’s sovereignty minded policies which remain highly popular among Philippine voters.

In this sense Philippines has a more fortunate geographical disposition than Syria. Syria shares borders with multiple hostile countries including Turkey, Israel and Jordan. The often unsafe border with Lebanon and the at times open border with ISIS controlled Iraq have made things difficult for Syria during its long war against terrorism.

For Philippines, because ISIS is for now limited to  the island of Mindanao, a Philippine naval blockade could help to prevent ISIS fighters from making the journey to Philippines from neighbouring states with a small but significant radical Salafist population, Indonesia in particular.

Philippines needs support from its allies and partners, but one must always be cautious of the kind of military support which the United States tends to give. There tends to be a great deal of extra baggage that accompanies this support and President Duterte is well aware of this. There is only so much that Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte’s good personal relationship can do to change this long term historical trend.

UPDATE: Duterte did NOT approach US for military assistance in the Philippines

This could mean that elements of the Philippine military have approached America unilaterally, without permission from their commander in chief.

Yesterday, Reuters broke a story calming that the US has agreed to a Philippine request to assist Philippines in the war against ISIS, a story confirmed by both a military spokesman for Philippines and the United States. The story has now been directly contradicted by Philippines President Duterte, also according to Reuters. Duterte claims that he “never approached U.S”.

Duterte further stated,

“I am not aware of that (any request for US assistance) until they (US forces) arrived”.

This could likely mean that elements of the Philippine military have gone rogue and requested assistance from the United States, which America confirmed it is giving, without the permission of the Philippine President.

If this escalates, it could mean that the United States has decided to take matters into its own hands along with elements of the Philippine military. This represents a deeply dangerous and undemocratic precedent that could be developing in Philippines.

Featured image: International Policy Digest

Higher interest rates will triple the interest on the federal debt to $830 billion annually by 2026, will hurt workers and young voters, and could bankrupt over 20% of US corporations, according to the IMF. The move is not necessary to counteract inflation and shows that the Fed is operating from the wrong model.

Responding to earlier presidential pressure, the Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates this week for the third time since November, from a fed funds target of 1% to 1.25%.  But as noted in The Guardian in a March 2017 article titled “Trump Is Set to Win the Battle on Interest Rates, but US Economy Will Pay the Price”:

An increase in the base rate, however small, will tighten the screw on younger voters and some of the poorest communities who voted for him and rely on credit to get by.

More importantly for his economic programme, higher interest rates in the US will act like a honeypot for foreign investors . . . . [S]ucking in foreign cash has a price and that is an expensive dollar and worsening trade balance. . . . It might undermine his call for the repatriation of factories to the rust-belt states if goods cost 10% or 20% more to export.

In its Global Financial Stability report in April, the International Monetary Fund issued another dire warning: projected interest rises could throw 22% of US corporations into default. As noted on Zero Hedge the same month,

“perhaps it was this that Gary Cohn explained to Donald Trump ahead of the president’s recent interview with the WSJ in which he admitted that he suddenly prefers lower interest costs.”

But the Fed was undeterred and is going full steam ahead. Besides raising the fed funds rate to a target of 3.5% by 2020, it is planning to unwind its massive federal securities holdings beginning as early as September. Raising interest rates benefits financial institutions, due to a rise in interest on their excess reserves and net interest margins (the difference between what they charge and what they pay to depositors). But borrowing costs for everyone else will go up (rates on student loans are being raised in July), and the hardest hit will be the federal government itself. According to a report by Deloitte University Press republished in the Wall Street Journal in September 2016, the government’s interest bill is expected to triple, from $255 billion in 2016 to $830 billion in 2026.

The Fed returns the interest it receives to the Treasury after deducting its costs. That means that if, rather than dumping its federal securities onto the market, it were to use its quantitative easing tool to move the whole federal debt onto its own balance sheet, the government could save $830 billion in interest annually – nearly enough to fund the president’s trillion dollar infrastructure plan every year, without raising taxes or privatizing public assets.

That is not a pie-in-the-sky idea. Japan is actually doing it, without triggering inflation. As noted by fund manager Eric Lonergan in a February 2017 article,

“The Bank of Japan is in the process of owning most of the outstanding government debt of Japan (it currently owns around 40%).”

Forty percent of the US national debt would be $8 trillion, three times the amount of federal securities the Fed holds now as a result of quantitative easing. Yet the Bank of Japan, which is actually trying to generate some inflation, cannot get the CPI above 0.2 percent.

The Hazards of Operating on the Wrong Model

The Deloitte report asks:

Since the anticipated impact of higher interest rates is slower growth, the question becomes: why would the Fed purposely act to slow the economy? We see at least two reasons. First, the Fed needs to raise rates so that it has room to lower them when the next recession occurs. And second, by acting early, the Fed likely hopes to choke off inflationary pressure before it starts to build.

Rates need to be raised so that the recession this policy will trigger can be corrected by lowering them again – really? And what inflation? The Consumer Price Index has not even hit the Fed’s 2% target rate. Historically, when interest rates have been raised in periods of tepid growth, the result has been to trigger a recession. So why raise them? As observed in a June 2 editorial in The Financial Times titled “The Needless Urge for Higher Borrowing Costs”:

In this context, the apparent determination of the Fed in particular to press on with interest rate rises looks a little peculiar. Having created expectations that it was likely to tighten policy with three quarter-point increases over the course of 2017, the Fed is acting more like a party to a contract that feels the need to honour its terms, than a central bank that takes the data as it finds them. [Emphasis added.]

In the six months since President Trump was elected, the Fed has pressed on with two rate hikes and is proceeding with a third, evidently just because it said it would.  Impatient bond investors are complaining that it has found one excuse after another to postpone the “normalization” it promised when market conditions “stabilized;” and in his presidential campaign, Donald Trump attacked Janet Yellen personally for keeping rates low, putting her career in jeopardy. She has now gotten with the program, evidently to restore the Fed’s waning credibility and save her job. But the question is, why did the Fed promise these normalization measures in the first place? As then-Chairman Ben Bernanke explained its “exit strategy” in 2009:

At some point, . . . as economic recovery takes hold, we will need to tighten monetary policy to prevent the emergence of an inflation problem down the road. . . . [B]anks currently hold large amounts of excess reserves at the Federal Reserve. As the economy recovers, banks could find it profitable to be more aggressive in lending out their reserves, which in turn would produce faster growth in broader money and credit measures and, ultimately, lead to inflation pressures.

The Fed evidently believes that the central bank needs to tighten monetary policy (raise interest rates and sell its bond holdings back into the market) because the massive “excess reserves” held by the banks (currently ringing in at $2.2 trillion) will otherwise be lent into the economy, expanding the money supply and triggering hyperinflation. Which, as David Stockman puts it, shows just how clueless even the world’s most powerful central bankers can be in matters of banking and finance . . . .

Banks Don’t Lend Their Reserves

There need be no fear that banks will dump their excess reserves into the market and create “inflation pressures,” because banks don’t lend their reserves to their commercial borrowers. They don’t because they can’t. The only thing that can be done with money in a bank’s reserve account is to clear checks or lend reserves to another bank. Reserves never leave the reserve system, which is simply a clearing mechanism set up by the central bank to facilitate trade among banks. Technically, dollars leave the system when a depositor pulls money out of the bank in cash; but as soon the money is spent and redeposited, these Federal Reserve Notes go back into the banking system and again become reserves.

Not only do banks not lend their reserves commercially, but they do not lend their deposits. Banks create deposits when they make loans. As researchers at the Bank of England have acknowledged, 97 percent of the UK money supply is created in this way; and US figures are similar. Banks do not need reserves or deposits to make loans; and since they are now flooded with reserves, they have little incentive to pay interest on the deposits of “savers.” If they do not have sufficient incoming deposits at the end of the business day to balance their outgoing checks, they can borrow overnight in the fed funds market, where banks lend reserves to each other.

At least they used to do this. But since the Fed began paying Interest on Excess Reserves (IOER) in 2008, they have largely quit lending their reserves to each other. They are just pocketing the IOER. If they need funds, they can borrow more cheaply from the shadow banking system – the Federal Home Loan Banks (which are not eligible for IOER) or the repo market.

So why is the Fed paying interest on excess reserves? Because with the system awash in $2.2 trillion in reserves, it can no longer manipulate its target fed funds rate by making reserves more scarce, pushing up their price. So now the Fed raises the fed funds rate by raising the interest it pays on reserves, setting a floor on the rate at which banks are willing to lend to each other – since why lend for less when you can get 1.25% from the Fed?

That is the theory, but the practical effect has been to kill the fed funds market. The Fed has therefore implemented a new policy tool: it is “selling” (actually lending) its securities short-term in the “reverse repo” market. The effect is to drive up the banks’ cost of borrowing in that market; and when this cost is passed on to commercial borrowers, market rates are driven up.

Excess Reserves (Source: Zero Hedge)

Interest Paid on Excess Reserves (Source: Zero Hedge)

Meanwhile,  the Fed is paying 1% (soon to be 1.25%) on $2.2 trillion in excess reserves. At 1%, that works out to $22 billion annually. At 1.25%, it’s $27.5 billion; and at 3.5% by 2020, it will be $77 billion, most of it going to Wall Street megabanks. This tab is ultimately picked up by the taxpayers, since the Fed returns its profits to the government after deducting its costs, and IOER is included in its costs. Among other possibilities, an extra $22 billion annually accruing to the federal government would be enough to end homelessness in the United States. Instead, it has become welfare for those Wall Street banks that largely own the New York Fed, the largest and most powerful of the twelve branches of the Federal Reserve.

Paying IOER is totally unnecessary to prevent inflation, as evidenced again by the case of Japan, where the Bank of Japan is actually trying to fan inflation and is now charging banks 0.1% rather than paying them on their excess reserves. Yet the inflation rate refuses to rise above 0.2%.  

Banks cannot lend their reserves commercially and do not need to be induced not to lend them. The Fed’s decision to raise rates by increasing IOER just increases public and private sector borrowing costs, slows the economy, threatens to bankrupt businesses and consumers, and gives another massive subsidy to Wall Street.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, a Senior Fellow of the Democracy Collaborative, and author of twelve books including Web of Debt and The Public Bank Solution. She co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.

Featured image: credits to the owner

President Trump is now doing the unthinkable – in his war on terror, he has resulted to the use of chemical weapons.

Multiple reports are confirming that a US-led Coalition used white phosphorus-loaded ammunitions in heavily populated cities of Iraq and Syria. Thousands of civilians are known to be in the areas where the weapons were used according to The Washington Post.

Use of such weapons violates international humanitarian law due to the types of injuries it can cause when other weapons are available to do the job. While white phosphorus isn’t exactly outlawed by the Geneva Convention, it is still illegal to use in densely populated areas. And, here’s why:

“When a white phosphorus shell explodes, the chemical inside reacts with the air, creating a thick white cloud. When it comes in contact with flesh, it can maim and kill by burning to the bone.”

According to Airwars:

“As many as 100,000 civilians trapped inside the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa are being given conflicting evacuation instructions according to Coalition statements and local reports, as US-backed ground forces finally assault the city supported by air and artillery strikes.

Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) started their slow encirclement of Raqqa last November. Artillery and airstrikes have rained down since then killing hundreds of civilians in the near region according to monitors, though the final operation to take the city commenced officially only on June 6^th. In a press release published that day, the Coalition stressed that “The SDF have encouraged civilians to depart Raqqah so that they do not become trapped, used as human shields or become targets for ISIS snipers.”

Right now it’s unclear how many civilian casualties were incurred but so far the Pentagon has confirmed that the United States has killed at least 500 innocent people since it first started its operations. Many believe that’s a very conservative estimate and that the death toll is far higher. U.K. based Airways claims the death toll has so far reached 3,800 civilians.

Featured image: A screenshot from the first video in this article

The shocking election result in the United Kingdom – the Conservatives losing their majority and the creation of a hung Parliament; and Jeremy Corbyn being more successful than any recent Labor candidate – cutting a 20 point Theresa May lead down to a near tie – gives hope to many that the global shift to the right, fueled by the failures of governments to meet the basic needs of their population and growing economic insecurity, may be ending.

Corbyn is a lifelong activist (as you will see in the photos below), whose message and actions have been consistent. He presented a platform directed at ending austerity and the wealth divide and was openly anti-war. There are a lot of lessons for the Labor Party in the UK from this election but there are also lessons for people in the United States. We review what happened and consider the possibilities for creating transformative change in the United States.

The Corbyn Campaign Results

The Corbyn campaign showed that a political leader urging a radical progressive transformative agenda can succeed. Many in his own party, the neo-liberal pro-war Blairites, claimed Corbyn could not win, tried to remove him from leadership, and sabotaged and refused to assist his campaign.

Corbyn showed he could win the leadership of the UK in the future, maybe sooner than later. While Theresa May is in the process of forming a minority government with a small radical conservative party from Northern Ireland, there has already been a backlash, mass petitions and protests against it and UK history has shown in similar circumstances that the second place finisher, may, in the end form the government. Corbyn is taking bold and radical actions. He is preparing to present a Queen’s speech in which he will say that he and his party are “ready to serve” and will continue to push his program through Parliament. He is calling on other parties to defeat the government in Parliament.

Corbyn did better than any recent Labor leader. Jonathan Cook, a British political commentator, writes in “The Facts Proving Corbyn’s Election Triumph” that Corbyn received 41 percent of the vote against May’s 44 percent. This was a big improvement in Labor’s share of seats, the largest increase since 1945. Cook points out that Corbyn won more votes than “Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown and Neil Kinnock, who were among those that, sometimes noisily, opposed his leadership of the party.” Even Tony Blair does not look all that good compared to Corbyn, Cook recounts:

“Here are the figures for Blair’s three wins. He got a 36 per cent share of the vote in 2005 – much less than Corbyn. He received a 41 per cent of the vote – about the same as Corbyn – in 2001. And Blair’s landslide victory in 1997 was secured on 43 per cent of the vote, just two percentage points ahead of Corbyn last night.

“In short, Corbyn has proved himself the most popular Labour leader with the electorate in more than 40 years, apart from Blair’s landslide victory in 1997.”

Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor of Jacobin, writes that Corbyn was not only campaigning against the Tories and Theresa May, but battling his own party – yet he still “won”:

“This is the first election Labour has won seats in since 1997, and the party got its largest share of the vote since 2005 — all while closing a twenty-four point deficit. Since Corbyn assumed leadership in late 2015, he has survived attack after attack from his own party, culminating in a failed coup attempt against him. As Labour leader he was unable to rely on his parliamentary colleagues or his party staff. The small team around him was bombarded with hostile internal leaks and misinformation, and an unprecedented media smear campaign.

“Every elite interest in the United Kingdom tried to knock down Jeremy Corbyn, but still he stands.”

The Blairites were taught a lesson by Corbyn. Many of his harshest critics are now changing their tune and embracing Corbyn. Hopefully they will join in creating a party in Corbyn’s image – a party for the many, not the few. Corbyn has rebuilt the mass base of Labor. The party is now the largest in Europe with half a million members. It is time for the “leaders” of Labor to follow the lead of the people and of Jeremy Corbyn.

What can we learn regarding US politics?

Sunkara argues Corbyn demonstrated that a winning campaign strategy is “to offer hopes and dreams to people, not just fear and diminished expectations.” In current US terms that means it is insufficient just to oppose Trump, a positive vision for the future that shows what a candidate and party stand for is needed, e.g. it is not just enough to defend the failing Affordable Care Act and oppose the Republican’s American Health Care Act, you must stand for something positive: National Improved Medicare for All. This is one example of many.

Sunkara provides more detail:

“Labour’s surge confirms what the Left has long argued: people like an honest defense of public goods. Labour’s manifesto was sweeping — its most socialist in decades. It was a straightforward document, calling for nationalization of key utilities, access to education, housing, and health services for all, and measures to redistribute income from corporations and the rich to ordinary people.

“£6.3 billion into primary schools, the protection of pensions, free tuition, public housing construction — it was clear what Labour would do for British workers. The plan was attacked in the press for its old-fashioned simplicity — “for the many, not the few” — but it resonated with popular desires, with a view of fairness that seemed elementary to millions.

“The Labour left remembered that you don’t win by tacking to an imaginary center — you win by letting people know you feel their anger and giving them a constructive end to channel it towards. ‘We demand the full fruits of our labor,’ the party’s election video said it all.”

Corbyn showed how important it is to have the correct analysis on foreign policy. Twice during the campaign, the UK was hit by a terrorist attack. Corbyn responded by telling the truth: part of the reason for terrorism is the UK foreign policy, especially in Libya. He also opposed the use of nuclear weapons. The Conservatives thought these anti-war positions would hurt Corbyn, instead they helped.

This is even more true in the United States with the never ending wars the country is fighting. But, the unspeakable in the United States, as Paul Street calls it, is acknowledging that terrorism is conducted by the US. This taboo subject makes it hard for people to understand that the US is constantly committing acts of terrorism around the world, which lead to predictable blow back from US militarism, regime change and war. No elected official will tell these obvious truths, which the people of the United States would instinctively understand if they were voiced.

Although the U.S. is often portrayed as a ‘center-right’ nation and progressives are called extremists, the reality is that there is majority support for a progressive agenda. There is a developing national consensus in the United States for transformational change, and Bernie Sanders articulated some of that consensus, at least on domestic issues, in his run for president, but the problem is that U.S. elections are manipulated by the elites in power who make sure that their interests are represented by the winner.

Sunkara ends his article on Corbyn saying “Also, Bernie Sanders would have won.” We do not know what would have happened in a Trump-Sanders election. The closest example may be McGovern’s 1972 campaign against Nixon which he lost in a landslide. In that campaign, the Democrats deserted their candidate, even the AFL-CIO and big unions did not support McGovern and Nixon demonized him in the media. Would Clinton-Democrats have stood with Sanders or would they have sabotaged him like the party did to McGovern?

A key to Corbyn’s success was retail politics.  The population of the UK is 65 million, compared to the US population of 321 million. Retail politics can work in the UK, while in the US paid media advertising drives the campaign, which means money often determines the outcome. This gives great power to big business interests, and while it can be overcome, it is a steep hill to climb.

Despite their significant losses, the Democrats are still controlled by Clinton-Obama Wall Street and war neo-liberals as we saw in the recent DNC chair election where Clinton protégé, Tom Perez, was elected. We are not optimistic that the US can apply the Corbyn model within the Democratic Party because it has been a party representing the oligarchs from its origins as the party of plantation slave-owners.

The duopoly parties that represent Wall Street, war and empire will not allow voices that represent “the many, not the few” to participate in US elections. They shut them out whether they run as an insurgent inside a party, as people learned from the mistreatment of Bernie Sanders by the DNC, or if they run outside of the two parties. The bi-partisans make independent party runs nearly impossible with unfair ballot access laws, barriers to voter registration, secret vote counting on unverifiable election machines, exclusion from the debates and exclusion by the corporate media, who are in cahoots with the bi-partisans.

It Comes Down To Building An Independent Mass Political Movement

We live in a mirage democracy with managed elections, as we describe in the article “Fighting for A Legitimate Democracy By and For the People,” on the long history of wealth dominating politics in the U.S.

Historically, transformations have occurred because of mass social movements demanding change and participating in elections through independent parties that have grown out of a movement with candidates from the movement (Corbyn has been involved in every anti-war movement, anti-apartheid, anti-austerity, pro-peace and human rights movements among others). Showing mass electoral support, even without winning, has resulted in significant changes – union rights, women’s voting rights, the eight-hour workday – indeed the New Deal came out of third party platforms. It is important to resist the duopoly parties in order to get to the root of the problems we face; as Patrick Walker explains, the “grassroots resistance must oppose Democrats as well as Trump.”

A broad and diverse social movement whose demands are articulated by an independent party platform has forced one of the two parties to capitulate to the movement or disappear. That still seems to be the most likely path to real change for the US.

Corbyn teaches that we should embrace the radical transformational change that is needed, whether in elections or as a movement, to inspire people to take action and shift the realm of the possible. The people thirst for change as their economic situation becomes more insecure. There needs to be a movement that addresses that insecurity through a human rights lens, or else the insecurity will be channeled towards hatred and violence.

The key first step is to show the many, we are with them; that we are listening and acting consistent with their beliefs. Taking this correct first step, lights the path ahead of us.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance.

All images in this article are from the authors.

In Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, Susanna Martin was executed for being a witch. The evidence against her was compelling and irrefutable. In capital cases like this, testimony by at least two eyewitnesses was required to convict. One man testified that in 1660 he had seen Ms. Martin bewitch a horse. Another testified that she had broken uninvited into his dreams 20 years later. The judges ruled that this constituted two eyewitnesses to the same crime because witchcraft was a “habitual” crime. She was hanged on July 19. 

By similar logic and equally “solid” evidence, Joel Sucher, in a piece titled “Has Oliver Stone Ever Met a Dictator He Doesn’t Admire?” published in the Observer in January accuses Oliver of despotophilia, which Joel too identifies as a “habitual” crime. Joel thinks he knows Oliver. He made a highly laudatory documentary about Oliver in the early 1990s when, he recalls, “Oliver was an aw’ shucks, pot-smoking, break your balls, tweak your chain, say outrageous things” kind of guy. But he and Oliver have had little if any relationship since.

I, myself, have been close friends with Oliver for more than 20 years. Oliver and I co-authored The Untold History of the United States documentary film series and New York Times bestselling book between 2008 and 2013 and have been writing articles together and doing screenings and lectures around the world for the past four years. In his article, Joel describes me as a “friend and a legit American University historian, an anti-nuclear activist.” Joel has been trying to reach Oliver through me for years, but Oliver spurned all his requests, telling me he didn’t “trust” Joel.

Perhaps this is Joel’s attempt at payback. It is not serious analysis. To me, the Oliver who Joel describes is completely and utterly unrecognizable. The man who loves despots doesn’t exist except in Joel’s mind. But the methodology Joel employs to discredit Oliver is precisely the same one used over and over again by conservative hacks who are out to do a hatchet job. It anticipated the assault on Oliver that has begun in an effort to preemptively discredit his forthcoming series of interviews with Vladimir Putin that air June 12-15 on Showtime. Joel is not a conservative hack. Why he would want to emulate those he once despised baffles me.

Oliver is one of Hollywood’s most recognizable and talented directors. He has won several Academy Awards and would have won more if it had not been for his outspoken, controversial, and often radical stands on topics such as the U.S. invasion of Vietnam; the CIA death squads, covert wars, and toppling of popular governments in Central America and South America; the sinister forces who may have been behind the Kennedy assassination; the Wall Street looting of the American economy; the odious presidencies of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush; the revelations by and persecution of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden; the nuclear arms race and its threat to all life on our planet; America’s far-flung empire of bases; the corrosive effects of U.S. militarism on a global scale; the overreach of the national security state; and a host of other issues.

He is not only a brilliant filmmaker; he is a provocateur. Over the course of the past 40 years, he has said and done his share of outrageous things. Those who recognize his artistry but disdain his politics cherry pick from the same tired litany of examples to paint the portrait of an apocryphal Oliver Stone. Their purpose is not to understand Oliver but to demean him. That’s too bad because Oliver plays a unique and essential role in American public life. He is one of a tiny handful of Hollywood artists who cares enough about his country to say the things that need to be said, offering a serious critique of the United States and its role in the world. He doesn’t do it out of hatred of the United States. He does it out of a sincere patriotism—the same patriotism that motivated him to drop out of Yale and volunteer for combat in Vietnam, where he was twice wounded and highly decorated. Disillusionment with that war began his process of lifelong exploration and led to his deep-seated belief that America can and should live up to its highest ideals.

Having worked as closely with Oliver as I have, I can say categorically that he is no lover of despots. He admires those who speak truth to power—people like the young William Jennings Bryan, FDR, Henry Wallace, JFK, and Martin Luther King. To suggest, as Joel does, that Oliver admired the enormously popular and four times democratically elected Hugo Chavez for his authoritarian tendencies rather than because he dramatically reduced Venezuelan poverty, sparked a populist upsurge throughout Latin America, and defied those business, State Department, and CIA interests which tried to oust him, is complete nonsense. To think that Oliver would want to interview Fidel Castro because he admired his despotic tendencies rather than because he was a charismatic, larger-than-life figure who stood up to the United States, and, despite his flaws, inspired revolutionaries around the world for decades is equally meretricious.

To suggest that Oliver’s decision to interview Vladimir Putin for a forthcoming series of interviews came from some desire to lionize the Russian leader is also hogwash. Oliver interviewed Putin long before this current brouhaha over the Russian intervention into the U.S. presidential elections. Oliver saw that tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Syria, Ukraine, and the Baltics were driving our two nations closer toward war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. He had already lived through a war about which American leaders lied shamelessly and one in which neither they nor the American people had any understanding of who our Vietnamese adversaries were and what motivated them. Watching the demonization of Putin in the American media and the simplistic rendering of Russian aggression and future expansionist plans, he didn’t want to see this happen again. And with the U.S. and Russia possessing thousands of nuclear weapons, hundreds of which are pointed at each other on hair-trigger alert, a military confrontation between the world’s two military superpowers could have consequences too frightening to contemplate. For Joel to suggest that Oliver was intending to whitewash and sanctify Putin rather than try to understand him and prevent a cataclysmic catastrophe is again simply unconscionable.

Joel’s discussion of The Untold History of the United States is another disingenuous attempt to distort the record in order to put Oliver in the worst possible light. He begins by referencing the Television Critics Association press conference at which some reporters deliberately twisted Oliver’s remarks to suggest that we were going to exonerate Hitler. Oliver, contrary to Joel’s assertion, never said that Hitler was “misunderstood” or that we were going to treat him sympathetically. Oliver was saying that fascism, as the most vile of historical movements, is not sufficiently well understood in the United States and that those who treat Hitler as a case of individual pathology rather than as a complex historical phenomenon are dangerously misinformed.

In Untold History, Oliver and I deplore anti-Semitism and reveal the fraudulence of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Oliver is half Jewish. Most of my relatives were killed in the Holocaust. To imply that Oliver is anti-Semitic is beyond absurd. What Oliver was referring to and what we do reveal is U.S. businessmen’s much deeper and longer involvement with Nazi Germany than most Americans realize. To say, as Joel does, that Untold History met with “mixed reviews” might be technically correct, but it is highly misleading. That the New York Times and New York Review of Books would take issue with a book and documentary series that critically explore the history of the American empire and national security state is not a surprise. It certainly shouldn’t be a surprise to Joel, who describes himself as having been a “left-wing anarchist” in his younger days. Nor should the fact that right wingers would share that assessment. If Joel were being more honest, he would have mentioned that the overwhelming majority of reviews were not only positive but effusive. And to have to dig down to Boise, Idaho to find a reviewer who makes fun of Oliver’s narration shows how desperate Joel was to cast aspersions on anything Oliver touches.

Perhaps Joel’s radical days are long past and, in the words of Phil Ochs, he has “grown older and wiser and that’s why he’s turning [us] in,” but I would have thought he might cite instead the effusive encomiums for Untold History from Mikhail Gorbachev, Bill Maher, Dan Ellsberg, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, or from the dozens of historians who have sung its praises, or from Pulitzer Prize-winner Martin Sherwin who called Untold History “the most important historical narrative of this century,” or from the Nobel nominated antiwar activist David Swanson, who called it “phenomenally great.” I was similarly taken aback by Joel’s deep and presumably newfound trust of the CIA and his disbelief in the fact that the CIA might have attempted to overthrow a left-wing Latin American leader, which, we know, has only occurred dozens of times.

I could but won’t go through the entire bill of particulars that Joel levels at Oliver. Suffice it to say that, whatever his motives, Joel is trying to tarnish the reputation of one of the very few Hollywood filmmakers who refuses to be cowed by the establishment into making movies that lull the population into conformist somnambulance rather than ones that make viewers think critically and want to change the world. Oliver’s supposed “love” of dictators is simply a figment of Joel’s fertile imagination. But, just to be safe, I’ll be sure to tell Oliver to stop bewitching horses and breaking into Joel’s dreams.

Peter Kuznick is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, DC. He and Oliver Stone co-authored The Untold History of the United States.

Featured image: Wikipedia

Well, it was nice while it lasted. Like many others, I rejoiced through the night at the astounding UK election results, which seemed to presage a much needed, much longed-for paradigm shift in the poisonous bipartisan neoliberal consensus that has imprisoned the politics of the UK (and US) for so many years. But this morning finds us in what might be an even worse situation, as a wounded — and woefully incompetent — Theresa May limps to the palace to form a government that will be utterly at the mercy of the right-wing sectarian cranks of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.

And since the government-forming deal won’t be a formal coalition, the DUP will be able to extract whatever concessions they please from May, who will obviously do anything to cling to power. They have already made clear to May that their price for keeping her in office will be a “hard Brexit” in Northern Ireland: no special concessions for the unique situation there — the only place where an EU nation will have a land border with Brexit Britain. This will almost certainly mean that armed border controls will have to be set up. And this in turn will almost certainly mean a renewal of strife and division in Northern Ireland after a generation of relative peace and easy flow back and forth between the UK-controlled counties and Ireland proper. The DUP fears that any special arrangement will pull Northern Ireland even closer to Ireland — which would, of course, threaten their own little power base.

We can still hope that the Parliamentary Labour Party will now embrace the paradigm shift that millions of people made yesterday in voting for a bold Labour manifesto aimed at the greater common good, not the harsh, inhumane dogmas of the failed neoliberal consensus. If they do that, if they build on the momentum and enthusiasm generated by the remarkable campaign and its renewed focus on, yes, the many not the few, then they will be able to thwart or at least hinder the worst depredations of what will be an even more right-wing government. May will now be the weakest UK leader in decades, at risk of falling at any moment if the DUP withdraws its support. She and her hideous policies will be susceptible to pressure at every single step — if Labour hangs together, if the PLP will stop viewing the leadership, the party membership — and millions of Labour voters — as enemies to be undermined and overthrown.

So despite the euphoria of the long night, we should remember that we are still in murky waters, with a rickety, right-wing Tory-DUP alliance in government. If Labour can maintain its campaign for the common good with unity and energy, then the election can still be what we all thought it was during the night: a new beginning. If not, if Labour falls into internal strife, if its inveterate, neoliberal die-hards continue to put their failed ideology ahead of the interests of the country and the world, then we will have seen a false dawn, with much darkness yet to come.

Featured image: credits to the owner

Despite the ongoing military operations in Syria and Iraq, which daily engage vast territories under the control of the “Islamic State” (ISIS), the latter has been able to hit distant targets in the Islamic world, in Europe and in Asia.

Despite the loss of territories, the world is facing – and will continue so to do – an ideology adopted and incarnated by an organisation that has succeeded in attracting young men and women, provoked their emotion, brought out their hate and anger, and shaken the stability of established geographical boundaries. Many are the reasons, but the world does not want to pay attention to particular ones because they make it an accomplice in the spread of this ideology and its consequences, capable of hitting all societies regardless of any differences.

According to unofficial estimates, 40,000 to 50,000 men and women joined the ranks of ISIS, including some 5,000 to 6,000 from Europe, more than 10,000 from Russia, the Caucasus and thousands from the Maghreb, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, the United States and even the Maldives. This is in addition to the tens of thousands of fighters who have joined it from Iraq (the cradle country) and Syria (the country of geographical extension). The organisation reached around 100,000 fighters, being able to control vast territories in both Syria and Iraq, and has sustained dozens of battles on several fronts for four consecutive years of continuous war.

These numbers are an unprecedented leap in the contemporary history of polarisation and recruitment to an extremist Islamic organisation that holds a certain doctrine and calls for an “Islamic State from east to west”. In the Afghanistan war, for example, in the early 1980s, the number of foreign fighters were significantly lower. This enormous increase is due to many reasons that were not available to the days of “Arab Afghans” and Muhajereen (Foreign fighters joining the holy war – Jihad) during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

The obvious initial reason that contributed to the promotion of this phenomenon is Internet which allowed free and immediate communication between peoples across the globe. The second reason is the credulity of the media and the lack of commitment to the channeling of facts without politicisation rampant among the mainstream media and analysts. The third and most important reason concerns the occupation of Middle Eastern countries (the 2003 Iraq war, the Libya war and the Syrian war), the Western intervention with soldiers on foreign soil and the policy of regime change followed by President George W. Bush, and whose similar policy is today adopted by the current US President Donald Trump.

Internet:

The world woke up very late to react against the way ISIS (as well as al-Qaeda) exploited social media and the evolution of the development of the communication (internet and all attached facilities) to share images of its combat in action, its data and ideas. The Internet is the most powerful tool used to attract young people and families, not only to join the “Islamic State”, but also to exposed “the injustice and abuse Muslims suffer in the Middle East due to the West ambition to occupy land and kill Muslims with no accountability”. ISIS also called for an “Islamic uprising worldwide and the return of the glorious rule of Islam”that took place more than 1400 years ago.

ISIS benefited from immeasurable experiences of sympathisers who chose to join the ranks; doctors, engineers, university degree holders and many from all walks of life, including experts with large competence in propaganda. Those served ISIS and managed to create a regular magazine, radios and short films in many languages.

They integrated the widespread electronic games with pictures of battles and killing in real life. An abundance of informative materials emanates daily from ISIS through the Internet to deliver ideas and messages to every home and continent no group ever had access to before. ISIS used “live killing” to project the power over his weak enemies”. The terrorist group was “innovative” in different ways of killing to show the all-powerfulness of the group and its capability to have life and death control over large numbers of the population in Mesopotamia and Bilad al-Sham. ISIS projected an image of “a beautiful life desired by many beings (many wives and slaves, sharing spoils of war, salary, housing, social well-being, social security, teaching, sharing a new family and society) and tranquility” under its “state” to address the dreams of intellectual and unemployed youth. Those joined the group “to do something”, to “fight injustice”, to “escape domestic harassment”, to “improve their lives” or to contribute to the Islamic renaissance, apparently mistreated and abused by the West.

ISIS was able to reach a large number of supporters in many countries without stepping in, all to serve “the state of the Caliphate” and be part of it. Many of these were not necessarily asked to be the holders of a robust Islamic faith. A large number of these did not adhere to Islamic practice and do not know its rules and requirements. Many of these – especially those who managed to join ISIS in Iraq and Syria – needed intensive religious courses as the group showed in many of its propaganda videos. Youths were recruited by their will and enthusiasm or influenced by friends or family members. The “Lone wolves” that attacked the west were recruited in their places of residence through the Internet even if most of them were not strong believers and were born and raised in the same country where they have committed terrorist acts.

Unfortunately, it was too late when the security services finally paid enough attention to the power of Internet and its danger to begin the process of counter-propaganda and control. Governments in the west largely contributed to the direct and indirect support of terrorism by using Internet to promote their own policies towards the Middle East, mainly in their approach towards the war in Syria and the way this war was handled.

Mainstream media and its role:

The way mainstream media is handling the war in Iraq and above all the war in Syria has had a devastating role and negative influence on various communities around the globe, mainly those previously considered as passive radicals but who never went into action. The media coverage has encouraged “lone wolves” and contributed to providing valid reasons for large convoys who joined in the exodus to “Caliphate land”. The media have helped mislead young people by adopting unverified and fake news related to the war in Syria, and in so doing, disregarded their responsibility towards the profession. News was widely shared, following the “newspaper/television’s policy”, without necessarily reflecting reality and, in many cases, in the absence of the journalists on the ground. Information was taken for granted from activists’ sources and roles were inverted: journalists became activists and vice versa.

The desire of many countries to remove the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and change the regime overwhelmed professionalism. Journalists became active on social media, spreading their fake news and “breaking news” about events in Syria and Iraq while they were thousands of miles away, without necessarily verifying their sources, as long as it fitted the globally agreed narrative. The ugliness of the war in Syria and Iraq was exposed as it was a kind of game and race: who shares the information first and who can gather the largest number of killed in one photo, attributing the blame to the Syrian state. It was a machine of propaganda, careless about the effect of their doing on the mind of the youths sitting at home and being affected by the event, wanting to “react and do something”. ISIS could not be more grateful than to have the entire main stream media working under the service of its own propaganda. ISIS sympathisers used available publishing material to its own benefit and narrative: a perfect recruitment tool, free of charge, powerful, reaching every single home.

Foreign Policy and System Change:

This is at the heart of the problem that analysts, media and experts deliberately pass or even conceal when analysing factors contributing to the growth of terrorism. These ignore what former US President Barack Obama did not hesitate to acknowledge that “ISIS is the unintended consequences of the US-led war on Iraq” in 2003. Terrorist analysts relied on “Islamophobia”, analysed the “lone wolf” phenomenon and studied the reasons behind the massive migration to ISIS but deliberately disregarded Liberal democracy leaders’ policy and decisions in handling Middle East issues, particularly Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Obviously, the reasons behind terrorism are many as those agreed by scholars specialised in terrorism studies. But the fact remains that the “killing in the name of Islam” took place after the killing of hundreds of thousands of Muslims in their homes. Under the excuse of dismantling the arsenal of weapons of Mass Destruction the regime in Iraq was changed, followed by Libya where the world suddenly discovered in 2011 the dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi, to end up in Syria where leaders promoted the removal of Assad and offered as an alternative the radical Islam of ISIS and al-Qaeda.

US military deployment at Syrian-Jordanian border (credits to the owner of the photo)

In all places, US soldiers were part of the events, on the ground or in the sky participating in regime changes, building military bases and occupying more territories but leaving behind a fertile ground for terrorist organisation to proliferate and grow, like ISIS and al-Qaeda. Still today the US and Europe have not learned from history and still want to occupy territory: they set up four new military bases in Syria and are prepared to plant roots in Bilad al-Sham under the excuse of recovering ISIS-occupied areas. But ISIS will not be totally annihilated and these new occupying forces will face stronger and more experienced insurgency: history will repeat itself.

In the absence of justice and a climate of flourishing wars, ISIS ideology seems coherent and powerful, capable of recruiting and reviving itself. These radical organisations are composed of intelligent and educated people who can adapt to harshness and security measures taken against their methods to develop other, counter methods to keep conflicts going as long as Western policies insist on promoting regime changes through overseas intervention.

Every day in the Middle East there is an attack such as the attack on Manchester, Iran, France and other terrorist attacks around the world. Every day dozens are killed in Iraq and Syria. ISIS has demonstrated an ability to plan and execute, recruiting the largest number of suicide attackers in the history of mankind, all ready to blow themselves up for their cause. If we take the last terrorist attack in Iran, ISIS was directly behind the attackers who were able to carefully examine the security weaknesses, break into the parliament and broadcast live video while the terrorist attack was on-going through A’maq, the ISIS broadcasting agency.

ISIS is very capable of planning, coordinating and synchronising attacks, like the Bataclan and in Brussels. Lone wolves are also capable of planning and triggering massive terror attacks with large numbers of victims as in Nice and Manchester. The aim is to cause terror, large numbers of casualties and a wider audience.

If the US will not reconsider its foreign policy and keeps, along with many terrorism analysts, its head in the sand, ignoring the real implications of the expansion of terrorism, ISIS will strike again and again. If the terrorist group was able to attract tens of thousands of people in such a short time and attract them physically and intellectually to its cause, the new version of ISIS – after its defeat in Syria and Iraq – may be more aggressive and dangerous to societies. It is time to wake up and learn from past history and the power of revenge.

Featured image: Elijah J M

On 8 of June, I had the privilege to attend a press conference hosted by the Venezuelan Ambassador in Bern, Switzerland. The purpose of the press conference was to clarify the current highly misrepresented situation in Venezuela, as well as explaining the process of electing a new National Constitutional Assembly (Asamblea Nacional Constituyente – ANC) on July 30, 2017.

In his hour-long presentation, the Ambassador introduced the issues at stake by explaining that Venezuela today has the largest known oil reserves in the world and the fourth largest deposits of gas; that the US is importing 60% of its lush energy use (a distant first of the globe’s per capita energy users), mostly from the Middle East, where it is subject to long and costly transport (40-45 days), and to many risk factors, including the Gulf of Hormuz, controlled by Iran, where today about one third of all the world’s petrol must pass through.

By contrast, shipments of petroleum from Venezuela across the Caribbean to the refineries in Texas takes only 4-5 days.

This is the main reason why Venezuela is in the White House’s crosshairs, plus, of course, the fact that for Washington it is totally intolerable to have a sovereign socialist Republic in its ‘backyard’ – and so close, the same syndrome applies also for Cuba, a genuinely successful socialist nation, having survived almost sixty years of atrocious and criminal American strangulation. There is no tolerance for sovereign independent countries that do not bend to the dictate of the United States and her behind the scene handlers.

The Ambassador then went on explaining the process of the upcoming election of the National Constitutional Assembly (ANC). He described the process of direct democracy, where Venezuelans elect their delegates by region and by sector, and where of course, the opposition was also supposed to participate, although the opposition’s leadership has already declared they would boycott the process.

The elected new ANC would then be called to amend the Constitution of 1999, to adapt it to today’s circumstances. The current Constitution was approved in a similar democratic process by the people and sanctioned by the ANC one year after President Hugo Chavez Frias became President in 1998. The 1999 Constitution is still valid and adhered to until this day.

The July election will choose 545 members to the National Assembly, of which two thirds (364) would be elected on a regional or territorial basis, and one third (181) by sectors of professions or activities, i.e. students, farmers, unions of different labor forces, employees, business owners – and so on. This cross-section of people’s representation is the most solid basis for democracy.

The Ambassador assured the journalists that there will be a very high peoples’ participation in the elections, as was the case for the 19 democratic elections that took place since 1998, when Comandante Chavez became President.
This election should be an opportunity for the opposition to gather as many Assembly seats as possible, and then help shape the new Constitution in a fully democratic process. Not by street violence.

The fact that the opposition is planning to boycott the election shows clearly, they are not interested in democracy. They have one goal only, to oust President Maduro and take power, privatize state assets, especially hydrocarbons (petroleum and gas) to hand them to international mainly US corporations to be exploited at no benefits for the Venezuelan people.

This was precisely the case before President Chavez took the reins of the country. Foreign corporations, almost all North Americans, left not a dollar in tax revenues in Venezuela.

Venezuela today is arguably the only true democracy in the western world, as said on numerous occasions by Professor Noam Chomsky, MIT.

***

To counter the neoliberal mainstream media’s (MSM) demonization of the Bolivarian Revolution and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and her President Nicolas Maduro, the Ambassador showed various videos demonstrating that the instigators of violence were clearly the armed opposition. They are constituted and led by a rich elite and supported ideologically and financially from outside.

Among different foreign sources of support and funding, most of them American, is the infamous National Endowment for Democracy – NED, a so called “fake” NGO “think-tank” (sic), receiving from the US State Department hundreds of millions of dollars per year to ’spread democracy’ American style around the globe, i.e. training local rebel groups abroad and within the targeted country to provoke instability through unrest and violence; distribute anti-government propaganda, infiltrate the media, universities and so on. They are the same who were responsible for the so-called Arab Spring and the Color Revolutions in former Soviet Republics, including Ukraine.

The facts explained and demonstrated by the Ambassador showed clearly who was responsible for most of the 67 deaths and more than 1,200 injured within the last couple of months.

This is all supported by unmistakable videos, showing government supporters, who are despite what the western media are saying, the vast majority – between 70% and 80%, demonstrating peacefully and unarmed.

However, western media twists and manipulates the truth to become anti-Venezuela propaganda, including video clips presented out of context, or outright falsified, blame the aggression on the government supporters, accusing authorities and police of oppressing civil liberties, of dictatorship, of killing its own people.

The western MSM do not show the weaponized right-wing opposition attacking police with explosives, putting police cars on fire and throwing Molotov cocktails and more sophisticated explosives at police and authorities.

This point of opposition violence, blackmail and more, is clearly demonstrated by a recent US journalist covering the riots for the pan-Latin American TeleSur TV. Ms. Abby Martin, the host of the Empire Files, an investigative program, told RT (Russia Today) that she received numerous death threats from opposition fighters during her work on the ground in Venezuela. She says protesters threatened to lynch and burn her alive if she tried to contradict their narrative (https://www.rt.com/news/391338-us-journalist-venezuela-threats/). This is to be taken seriously, because several journalists have already been murdered by the opposition.

***

The Ambassador made two very important points that the west should listen to. He said, that despite the violent social upheavals, the government is respecting the principles of democracy and has not declared a State of Emergency or Martial Law, nor curtailed private-owned foreign media slandering Venezuela with lies.

This contrasts with other countries, like France which for the past two years has been under a declared State of Emergency, just a small step below Martial Law, and is about to put this state of permanent militarization into her Constitution; or take Argentina which is suppressing foreign media like TeleSur (and were at the point of shutting down also RT), because they are telling Argentinians the inconvenient truth.

***

When the Ambassador opened the floor for questions and comments, most of the journalists present were polite, seeking clarifications of the election process. But there were two sore thumbs sticking out, the representatives of the two largest and most neoliberal Swiss newspapers, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) and the Tagesanzeiger.

They came with a specific agenda. It seems they didn’t listen to anything the Ambassador said. They simply hurled their list of insults, accusations and offensive negative lie-propaganda at the Ambassador. Both of them are what one would assume in Switzerland, educated people. They must know the truth. If they don’t say the truth, they are most likely bought agents of the Anglo-Zionist network that controls 90% of the news throughout the western world. After they accomplished their mission of insulting the Ambassador, they left the conference.

Isn’t it a journalist’s foremost obligation to adhere to a code of ethics? – That’s what they were taught at universities, to seek the truth and portray the truth as objectively as possible.

And what about Switzerland? A country that boasts about its neutrality, appears to have completely abandoned her noble principles and moved to become Europe’s epicenter of neoliberalism. No wonder, such alternative international media like TeleSur and RT are not publicly offered to households by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG), the monopoly holder (90%) of Swiss television and radio providers.

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.

 

First, a quick who’s who

We will probably never find out what truly was discussed between Trump, the Saudis and the Israelis, but there is little doubt that the recent Saudi move against Qatar is the direct results of these negotiations. How do I know that? Because Trump himself said so! As I mentioned in a recent column, Trump’s catastrophic submission to the Neocons and their policies have left him stuck with the KSA ]Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] and Israel, another two rogue states whose power and, frankly, mental sanity, are dwindling away by the minute.

While the KSA and Qatar have had their differences and problems in the past, this time around the magnitude of the crisis is much bigger than anything the past. This is a tentative and necessarily rough outline of who is supporting whom:

Supporting the Saudis (according to Wikipedia)	Supporting Qatar (according to me)
United Arab Emirates , Bahrain , Egypt , Maldives , Yemen (they mean the pro-Saudi regime in exile), Mauritania , Comoros , Libya (Tobruk government), Jordan , Chad , Djibouti , Senegal , United States , Gabon.	Turkey, Germany, Iran.

Questions, many questions

The situation is very fluid and all this might change soon, but do you notice something weird in the list above? Turkey and Germany are supporting Qatar even though the US is supporting the KSA. That’s two major NATO member states taking a position against the USA.

Next, look at the list supporting the Saudis: except for the USA and Egypt they are all militarily irrelevant (and the Egyptians won’t get militarily involved anyway). Not so for those opposing the Saudis, especially not Iran and Turkey. So if money is on the side of the Saudis, firepower is on the side of Qatar here.

Then, Gabon? Senegal? Since when are those two involved in Persian Gulf politics? Why are they taking sides in this faraway conflict? A quick look at the 10 conditions the Saudis demand that the Qataris fulfill does not help us understand their involvement either:

1. Immediate severance of diplomatic relations with Iran,
2. Expulsion of all members of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas from Qatar,
3. Freezing all bank accounts of Hamas members and refraining from any deal with them,
4. Expulsion of all Muslim Brotherhood members from Qatar,
5. Expulsion of anti-[P]GCC elements,
6. Ending support for ‘terrorist organizations’
7. Stopping interference in Egyptian affairs,
8. Ceasing the broadcast of the Al Jazeera news channel,
9. Apologizing to all [Persian] Gulf governments for ‘abuses’ by Al Jazeera,
10. Pledging that it (Qatar) will not carry out any actions that contradict the policies of the [P]GCC and adhering to its charter.

The Saudis also handed over a list of individuals and organizations they want banned (see here).

Looking at these conditions it becomes pretty clear that Iran and the Palestinians (especially Hamas) are high on the list of demands. But why would Gabon or Senegal care about this?

More interestingly, why is ISRAEL not listed as a country supporting the KSA?

As always, the Israelis themselves are much more honest about their role in all this. Well, maybe they don’t quite say “we done it” but they write articles like “Five reasons why Israel should care about the Qatar crisis” which lists all the reasons why the Israelis are delighted:

1. It hurts Hamas
2. It brings Israel closer to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf
3. It shows US influence is back in the region
4. It delegitimizes terrorism
5. It bolsters Israel’s hand in general and Israel’s government in particular

That kind of honesty is quite refreshing, even if it is primarily for internal, Israeli, consumption. Quick check with a Palestinian source – yup, the Israelis are backing the KSA. This is hardly surprising, no matter how hard the western corporate media tries to not notice this.

What about the USA? Do they really benefit from this crisis?

The USA has what might possibly the largest USAF base worldwide in Qatar, the Al Udeid Air Base. Furthermore, the forward headquarters of United States CENTCOM are also located in Qatar. To say that these are crucial US infrastructures is an understatement – one could argue that these are the most important US military facilities anywhere in the world outside the United States. Thus one would logically conclude that the very last thing the US would want is any type of crisis or even tensions anywhere near such vital facilities yet it quite clear that the Saudis and the Americans are acting in unison against Qatar. This makes no sense, right? Correct. But now that the US has embarked on a futile policy of military escalation in Syria it should come as no surprise that the two main US allies in the region are doing the same thing.

Besides, was there ever a time with the Trump Administration’s policies in the Middle-East made any logical sense at all? During the election campaign they were, shall we say, 50/50 (excellent on ISIS, plain stupid about Iran). But ever since the January coup against Flynn and Trump’s surrender to the Neocons all we have seen in one form of delusional stupidity after another.

Objectively, the crisis around Qatar is not good at all for the USA. But that does not mean that an Administration which has been taken over by hardcore ideologues is willing to accept this objective reality. What we have here is a very weak Administration running a rapidly weakening country desperately trying to prove that it has still a lot of weight to throw around. And if that is, indeed, the plan, it is a very bad one, one bound to fail and one which will result in a lot of unintended consequences.

Back to the real world

What we have here is a severe case of smoke and mirrors and what is really taking place is, yet again, a clumsy attempt by the Three Rogue States (USA, Saudi Arabia, Israel) to weaken Iran.

Of course, there are other contributing factors here, but the big deal, the core of the problem, is what I would call the rapidly growing “gravitational pull of Iran” and the corresponding “orbital decay” of the entire region closer and closer to Iran. And just to make things worse, the Three Rogue States are visibly and inexorably losing their influence over the region: the USA in Iraq and Syria, Israel in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia in Yemen – all three have embarked on military operations which ended up being abject failures and which, far from showing that these countries were powerful, showed how weak they really are. Even worse is the fact that Saudis are facing a severe economic crisis with no end in sight, while Qatar has become the richest country on the planet, mostly thanks to an immense gas field that Qatar shares with Iran.

It could appear that Qatar is not such a big threat to Saudi Arabia after all, being – unlike Iran – another Salafi country, but in reality this is very much part of the problem: over the past couple of decades the Qataris have felt their new wealth give them means completely out of proportion with their physical size: not only did they create the most influential media empire of the Middle-East, al-Jazeera, but they even embarked on a foreign policy of their own which made them key players in the crises in Libya, Egypt and Syria. And yes, Qatar had become a prime supporter of terrorism, but so are the United States, Saudi Arabia or Israel, so that is just a hollow pretext. The real Qatari ‘crime’ was to refuse, on purely pragmatic reasons, to join into the massive anti-Iranian campaign imposed on the region by Saudi Arabia and Israel. Unlike the long list of countries which had to voice their support for the Saudi position, the Qataris had the means to simply say “no” and chart its own course.

What the Saudis now are hoping for is that Qatar will yield to the threats and that the Saudi-lead coalition will prevail without having a “hot” war against Qatar. How likely they are to achieve this result is anyone’s guess, but I am personally rather dubious (more about this later).

What about Russia in all that?

The Russians and the Qataris have butted heads many times over, especially over Syria and Libya where Qatar played an extremely toxic role in being the prime financiers of various takfiri terrorist groups. Furthermore, Qatar is Russia’s number one competitor in many LNG (liquefied natural gas) markets. There were also other crises between the two countries, including what appears to be a Russian assassination of the Chechen terrorist Leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev and the subsequent torture and trial of two Russian Embassy employees accused of being involved in the assassination (they were sentenced to life in prison and eventually sent back to Russia). Still, the Russians and the Qataris are eminently pragmatic peoples and the two countries mostly maintained a cordial, if careful, relationship which even included some joint economic ventures.

It is highly unlikely that Russia will intervene directly in this crisis unless, of course, Iran is directly attacked. The good news is that such a direct attack on Iran is unlikely as none of the Three Rogue States really have any stomach to take on Iran (and Hezbollah). What Russia will do is use her soft power, political and economic, to slowly try to reel Qatar into the Russian orbit according to the semi-official strategy of the Russian Foreign Ministry which is to “turn enemies into neutrals, neutrals into friends, friends into allies”. Just like with Turkey, the Russians will gladly help, especially since they know that this help will buy them some very precious influence in the region.

Iran, the real target of it all

The Iranians are now openly saying that the recent terrorist attack in Tehran was ordered by Saudi Arabia. Technically speaking, that means that Iran is now at war. In reality, of course, as the real local superpower, Iran is acting with calm and restraint: the Iranians fully understand that this latest terrorist attack is a sign of weakness, if not desperation, and that the best reaction to it is to act the same way the Russians reacted to the bombings in Saint Petersburg: stay focused, calm and determined. Just like the Russians, the Iranians have now also offered to send food to Qatar but it is unlikely that they will intervene militarily unless the Saudis really go crazy. Besides, with Turkish forces soon deployed in Qatar, the Iranians have no real need for any displays of military might. I would argue that the simple fact that neither the USA nor Israel have dared to directly attack Iran since 1988 (since shooting down by the US Navy of the Iran Air Flight 655 Airbus) is the best proof of the real Iranian military power.

So where are we heading?

That is truly impossible to predict, if only because the actions of the Three Rogue States can hardly be described as “rational”. Still, assuming nobody goes crazy, my personal feeling is that Qatar will prevail and that the latest Saudi attempt to prove how powerful the Kingdom still is will fail, just like all the previous ones (in Bahrain 2011, Syria 2012 or Yemen 2015). Time is also not on the side of the Saudis. As for the Qataris, they have already clearly indicated that they are unwilling to surrender and that they will fight. The Saudis have already taken the outrageous decision to impose a blockade of a fellow Muslim country during the holy month of Ramadan. Will they really now further escalate and commit an act of aggression against a fellow Muslim country during that month? They might, but it is hard to believe that even they could be that ignorant of the Muslim public opinion. But if they don’t, then their operation will lose a lot of momentum while the Qataris will be given time to prepare politically, economically, socially and militarily. Qatar might be small, and the Qataris themselves not very numerous, but their immense pockets allow them to quickly line up any amount of suppliers and contractors willing to help them out. This is case where the famous “market forces” will act to Qatar’s advantage.

The Qatari Foreign Minister is expected in Moscow on Saturday and it is pretty obvious what the talks will be about: while Russia will not put all her political weight to support the Qataris, the Kremlin might accept becoming a mediator between the KSA and Qatar. If that happens, that would be the ultimate irony: the main outcome of the Saudi-Israeli-US operation will make Russia an even more influential player in the region. As for Qatar itself, the outcome of this crisis will probably articulate itself along Nietzschean lines: “That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”

Conclusion

I see this latest crisis as yet another desperate attempt by the Three Rogue States to prove that they are still the biggest and baddest guys on the block and, just like the previous ones, I think that it will fail. For example, I just don’t see the Qataris shutting down al-Jazeera, one of their most powerful “weapons”. Nor do I see them breaking all diplomatic relations with Iran as those two states are joined at the hip by the immense South Pars gas condensate field. The immense wealth of the Qataris also means that they have very powerful supporters worldwide who right now, as I write these lines, are probably on the phone making calls to very influential people and indicating to them in no unclear terms that Qatar is not to be messed with.

If anything this crisis will only serve to push Qatar further into the warm embrace of other countries, including Russia and Iran, and it will further weaken the Saudis.

The Three Rogue States have the same problem: their military capability to threaten, bully or punish is rapidly eroding and fewer and fewer countries out there fear them. Their biggest mistake is that instead of trying to adapt their policies to this new reality, they always chose to double-down over and over again even though they fail each time, making them look even weaker and their initial predicament even worse. This is a very dangerous downward spiral and yet the Three Rogue States seem unable to devise any other policy.

I will end this column by comparing what Presidents Putin and Trump are doing these days as I find this comparison highly symbolic of the new era we are living in:

Trump, after bombing a few “technicals” (4×4 trucks with a machine gun) and trucks in Syria, the proceeded to tweet that Comey was a liar and a leaker.

As for Putin, he participated the latest meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which welcomed both Pakistan and India as full members. The SCO now represents over half of all the people living on our planet and one quarter of the world’s GDP. You can think of it as the “other G8”, or the “G8 that matters”.

I submit that this quick comparison of agenda really says It all.

UPDATE1: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is now telling the Saudis to ‘cool it’. The Saudi-Israeli plan is beginning to collapse.

Featured image: The Unz Review

Syrian Arab Army (SAA) continues the offensive from eastern Homs to the city of Deir ez-Zor.

According to the military correspondents of Inside Syria Media Center, Some progress have been made in certain sectors of the front.

As of June 11, the Government troops liberated the strategically important settlement to the south of Palmyra. Servicemen of the 5th Army Corps liberated more than 2 km of the road near the strategic desert city of Arak (also spelled Urak or Araq, it is a village in eastern Syria, administratively part of the Homs Governorate situated on an oasis in the Syrian Desert along the road to Palmyra). A control is established over a number of heights that ensure the safety of the Arak Gas Fields to the west of the city. At the moment, SAA is about 4 km from Arak.

The Arak gas fields

Meanwhile, the General Command of the Army and the Armed Forces sais, the liberation of vast territories in Badiyat ash-Sham (Syrian Desert) from ISIS, as well as the arrival of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies at the Syrian-Iraqi border will become a strategic turning point in the fight against terrorism. The success proves the effectiveness of SAA in countering the global terrorist threat to international peace and security.

Inside Syria Media Center received a copy of the General Command’s statement where is noticed that the army units in cooperation with the Allied forces completed on Friday evening the first stage of the military operations in the Syrian Badiyat, reaching the border with Iraq to the northeast of Al-Tanf (one of 3 official border crossings between Syria and Iraq).

Success was achieved after taking control of vast territories and strategically important points and positions inside the Badiyat totally over 20 square kilometers since operations first started south and east of Palmyra. Over one hundred ISIS terrorists have been liquidated since the operation began in the south and in the east of Tadmor (Palmyra).

Coordinated actions resulted in a major turn in the general situation on the fight against terrorism. And well-planned operations provide the launching pad for further progress and for expanding military operations against ISIS both in the Syrian Desert areas and in the Syrian-Iraqi border zone.

The press release also claims that the ring is shrinking around the remnants of terrorist groups and their supply lines are interrupted in many directions. These achievements will allow the Syrian army to defeat terrorism in Syria so that it does not spread through the countries of the world, repeating the tragedy.

In addition, the General Command reaffirm our position that attacks of the US-led international coalition on the positions of the Syrian army and its allies are unacceptable as such actions hamper progress in fighting terrorism.

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.

The most recent Russiagate expose comes from The Intercept, which was founded by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. The site has been the source of a number of stories that rely on stolen or leaked government documents, including material from Edward Snowden. It has also produced some exemplary investigative reporting on U.S. government high crimes and misdemeanors of various kinds, including its account of the Obama Administration assassination program and, more recently, the misrepresentation by the White House of the military action in Yemen that killed an American Navy Seal.

The article appeared yesterday and is entitled “Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before the 2016 Election.” The report mentioned is dated May 5. The leaker, an NSA contractor named Reality Leigh Winner, working out of Georgia, came to the attention of the authorities after The Intercept contacted the NSA and asked for comments before it ran the article. It was asked not to run the piece, but was willing to redact some material at the request of the government. Winner was identified by microdot keys on the paper that led to the copier she had used. She has been arrested and charged under the Espionage Act and is the first Trump-era leaker to be prosecuted.

Screenshot from The Intercept website

The article has inevitably caused quite a stir among those like myself, who believe passionately that Russiagate is mostly a politically-motivated fraud, and those on the other side of the fence, who think that Moscow did interfere in the recent presidential election with the intention of helping Donald Trump win.

At risk of oversimplifying, I would summarize the article and the NSA document it is based on as follows:

The report described two cyberattacks that its NSA authors attribute to Russia’s military intelligence unit, the GRU. The first attack “evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions” was on August 24, 2016, directed against a company that markets voter registration software. The second occurred about a week before the election, directed against 122 local election officials, presumably in the eight states where the company operated. The attacks employed spear phishing, which is using spoof emails to deceive users into accessing links or attachments that install malware on the computer of the user. The spoof emails were reportedly sent from two email providers, Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook.com, so they would look benign to a United States user.

According to the NSA report, the first attack on the American company, subsequently revealed to be VR Systems of Florida, was likely successful and the information obtained was used to create emails that would look authentic to the recipients for the second wave of attacks, which began on October 31 and November 1.  The report describes the second series of attacks as a “voter registration themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.”

VR Systems’ products are used by electoral commissions in California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.

In its article, The Intercept opines that “the report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood.” If everything related in the report is true, indeed it does, and it somewhat challenges Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent emphatic claim that his country had not interfered in the U.S. election.

The Intercept article cites an unnamed intelligence official who “cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.” To that I would add, “even if it is all true as described.”

And I would also make some additional observations about what the report and Intercept article are suggesting. First and foremost would be the questions of scale and timing.

There is no evidence that the Russians, or whoever carried out the probes, were able to tamper with either the actual voting process or the tabulation of votes. Indeed, the NSA report dismisses any such possibility. Second, corrupting an election in a country as large as the United States with an electoral system that is largely decentralized would require much more than a probe of 122 local officials starting a week before the balloting. So there was clearly no intention to disrupt the election or to tilt it in a certain direction based on the evidence provided by the NSA report.

I would also note that there is no proof provided in the report to support the assertion that the GRU, Russian military-intelligence service, carried out the probes. Would a highly-sophisticated intelligence service behave so transparently in an operation that would certainly be regarded as highly sensitive? I think not. Cut-outs would have been used to misdirect anyone looking to determine the hand behind the hacks.

All of which is not to say the Russian government didn’t do it or order it done, but it seems to me that the revelations provided in the NSA report do not go very far beyond the kind of random probings that are part and parcel of foreign-intelligence operations as carried out by any sophisticated service. Did someone in Moscow think it might be useful to have some kind of idea of how to meddle with U.S. election technology if that type of info might prove useful down the road? Quite possibly. It should be noted that the U.S. National Security Agency illegally collects vast quantities of information on ordinary Americans but that does not necessarily imply intent to use it in a malicious way. It is a desirable capability and intelligence agencies are always working to expand their reach.

So was Russian intelligence probing U.S. electoral systems? Quite plausibly yes, and it should be a matter of concern for every American as it suggests a vulnerability in the electronics behind how we vote. But did Russia actually interfere with the election or seek to use the probing to elect a particular candidate? The answer is clearly no. The article and the document it is based on should serve as a wake-up call to those who are complacent about the security of our technologies. But on a political level, we are back to square one, with often hysterical allegations surfaced as part of the media and political storm we now refer to as Russiagate.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

Featured image: credits to the owner

This article was first published in December 2016 under the title

Liberate Idleb After East Aleppo. Shifting Military Alliances, Moscow’s Role

What the article brings out, which is of relevance to the current crisis in Qatar is that Qatar had become a major partner of Moscow and shareholder of Russia’s natural gas conglomerate Rosneft

*  *  *

The liberation of East Aleppo by the Syrian Arab Army was only possible because the foreign participants accepted to cease supporting the jihadists. Their retreat could not have been negotiated by the Syrian Arab Republic, but only by the Russian Federation.

Moscow has managed to turn Qatar and make it an ally. Qatar’s change of heart was sealed by the sale by Moscow of one fifth of the capital of Rosneft, at the beginning of December, in Doha. Rosneft, the jewel in Russia’s crown, is the largest company in the world. By implementing this transaction, allegedly in order to bail out Russia’s budget deficit, Igor Setchine and Vladimir Putin have inextricably united the political energies of the two greatest gas exporters in the world. De facto, Qatar dropped the jihadists, although since last May, it has disposed of a permanent office at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The other revolution is that of Turkey. While as a state it remains a member of NATO, its President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become a personal enemy of Washington. Since the general elections, Moscow has been leaning on Erdoğan in order to break the ties between Turkey and the United States.

Even though this is a complex manœuvre which may take some time, it panicked Tel-Aviv, who commanded the assassination of ambassador Andrei Karlov in Ankara – a murder which was duly approved and celebrated by the New York Daily News, the fourth-largest newspaper in the USA, and public address system for the toughest of the Zionist lobbies. Perhaps Tel-Aviv also commanded the shooting, the same day in Moscow, of the director of the Latin American bureau of the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Peter Polshikov.

After having considered for an instant that Karlov’s death might be a move in a double game by Erdoğan – the assassin had been one of Erdoğan’s body-guards – Moscow realised that it probably was not so. Vladimir Putin therefore reinforced the security of Russia and her representatives abroad. Incidentally, this episode attests to the fact that, despite appearances, President Erdoğan is no longer the master of his own house.

The capture of foreign officers in a NATO bunker in East Aleppo illustrates the evolution of the conflict. The captured men were principally British, US, French, Saudi and Turkey. By publicly confirming a non-exhaustive list of 14 names, ambassador Bachar Ja’afari stood NATO squarely in front of its responsibilities – a very different approach from that taken in February 2012, when Syria engaged in bilateral negotiations with France and Turkey during the siege of the Islamic Emirate of Baba Amr. At that time, Damascus had returned about forty Turkish officers and twenty French officers to their original army, either by the intermediary of Mikhaïl Fradkov (director of Russian Intelligence services), or directly via Admiral Edouard Guillaud (French Chief of Staff) at the Lebanese frontier. But the agreement which had been concluded with President Nicolas Sarkozy was not respected by his successor, François Hollande.

The existence of a NATO bunker in East Aleppo confirms what we have been saying about the role of NATO LandCom in the coordination of the jihadists, from Izmir. But the Atlantic Council, supreme organ of the Atlantic Alliance, never gave the go-ahead to this operation. As with the attack on Tripoli (Libya) in August 2011, Washington used NATO systems without certain of its members being informed. By doing so, it was applying the Rumsfeld doctrine, according to which there is no longer a permanent coalition around the United States, but only custom-built coalitions, according to the targets chosen by Washington.

The liberation of Syria should continue at Idleb. This governorate is today occupied by a horde of jihadist groups without a common commander. Since these groups are incapable of ensuring their own intendancy, and even less that of the civilian population, the zone is de facto governed by NATO via a string of pseudo-NGO’s. At least, this is what was noted last month by a US think-tank. To beat the jihadists there, it will be necessary first of all to cut their supply lines, in other words, close the Turtkish frontier. This is what Russian diplomacy is currently working on.

Al Jazeera – 8 June 2017

The Trump administration is using unprecedented threats and financial “blackmail” against the United Nations and its agencies to end their focus on human rights abuses by Israel, according to analysts and Palestinian leaders.

They accuse the United States of joining Israel in a campaign of intimidation against the UN secretariat and member states to forcibly rehabilitate Israel’s international standing.

The offensive comes after the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu had faced several years of criticism in diplomatic circles for refusing to engage in a peace process with the Palestinians.

An early indication of the new campaign’s success, analysts noted, was the election last week of Danny Danon as a vice-president of the UN’s main representative forum, the General Assembly.

Danon has been Israel’s ambassador to the UN since 2015.

He is known as an arch-opponent of the two-state solution and, before heading to the UN in New York, had repeatedly called for Israel to annex most of the West Bank.

US ‘attorney’ for Israel 

It is views like Danon’s, which are increasingly dominant inside the Israeli government, that have driven a swelling boycott movement, as well as increasing comparisons between Israel and apartheid South Africa.

“The US and Israel are now jointly engaged in ‘street fighting’ at the UN,” a Western diplomat, who wished to remain anonymous, told Al Jazeera. “Washington is throwing its weight around and bullying people. The old rules of diplomacy have been thrown out of the window.”

That view was confirmed by Hanan Ashrawi, a former Palestinian negotiator and member of the PLO Executive Committee.

“The Trump administration has become a very vocal and aggressive attorney for Israel,” she told Al Jazeera. “It threatens consequences for anyone seen to be supporting the Palestinians or criticising Israel.”

Danon will take up his new post in September, chairing sessions of the General Assembly, helping to set its agenda and overseeing enforcement of rules and decorum during its meetings.

New sheriff in town

The increasingly overt alliance between Israel and the US at the UN was highlighted this week when Danon escorted Nikki Haley, Trump’s envoy to the UN, on a visit to Israel.

In a speech to the US pro-Israeli lobby group AIPAC in March, Haley promised to be “a new sheriff in town” at the UN.

On the way to Israel, Haley stopped in Geneva to berate one of the UN’s chief agencies, the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), for what she termed its “chronic anti-Israel bias”. Its behaviour “makes a mockery not of Israel, but of the Council itself,” she added.

She threatened that the US would pull out of the UNHRC if it did not rein in its criticism.

In April, Haley issued a similar warning when she took over the rotating presidency of the UN’s most powerful body, the Security Council. She told members that their monthly Middle East debates would now focus on Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, not Israel.

Apartheid report retracted

Israel and the White House have been leaning on other key UN agencies.

In March, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia was forced to retract an expert report after it concluded that Israel had established an apartheid regime ruling over the Palestinians.

And last month the US condemned a resolution by the UN’s cultural agency, UNESCO, after it called on Israel to uphold international law and end policies that were changing the religious and cultural character of occupied East Jerusalem.

Although the resolution passed, most European countries either abstained or voted against it. Afterwards, Netanyahu crowed:

“The number of countries who support this absurd UNESCO resolution is getting smaller.”

Threat to UN budget

All this has been occurring against the drumbeat of threats from the Trump administration that it is ready to impose drastic cuts to the UN budget. Washington is the UN’s biggest contributor, covering nearly $13.5bn of the world body’s funding.

“The main factor behind Danon’s promotion is blackmail by the Trump administration,” said Ashrawi. “It is threatening to withhold UN funding and it is clear member states are scared.”

Nathan Thrall, author of a new book on Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, The Only Language They Understand, said the campaign had forced the Palestinians to back off from diplomatic initiatives at the UN.

Over the past seven years, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas placed an emphasis on the struggle to win recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN. That included joining a UN agency, UNESCO, in 2011. The US responded by suspending its UNESCO’s funding.

“The Palestinians are afraid what Trump might do,” Thrall told Al Jazeera. “If the US starts making global institutions collapse, the Palestinian leadership are worried they will get the blame from other countries.”

Peacekeeping operations and humanitarian assistance would be among the UN operations expected to suffer.

“The Palestinians don’t want to lose friends when they need them most,” added Thrall.

Right’s enfant terrible

Danon, aged 46, was selected for the role of General Assembly vice-president by a regional faction at the UN known as the Western European and Others Group. It includes most European countries, plus Israel, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The election of vice-presidents is organised on a regional basis to ensure fair geographical representation.

Salah Bardawil, a senior Hamas official, tweeted that Danon’s elevation was “a mark of Cain on the UN’s forehead.”

Israel has been the subject of dozens of resolutions condemning its violations of the UN charter – far more than any other member state. But in particular, the choice of Danon has disturbed Palestinian leaders. Until recently, his was widely seen as the enfant terrible of the Israeli right.

Netanyahu sacked Danon from his post as deputy defence minister in summer 2014, during Israel’s attack on Gaza, in which some 500 Palestinian children were killed. He called Danon “irresponsible” for describing Israel’s military operation as too lenient.

Salam Fayyad blocked

When Netanyahu announced Danon’s posting as ambassador a year later, Israeli analysts described the decision as a “cruel joke”.

Ashrawi noted that Danon’s treatment at the UN contrasted strongly with that of Salam Fayyad, the former Palestinian prime minister.

Efforts by the US Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, to appoint Fayyad, a Palestinian moderate, as the UN envoy to Libya were blocked by the US in February. Haley described the move as against Israel and added:

“The United States will act, not just talk, in support of our allies.”

Even before Trump, there were signs that Israel’s fortunes at the UN were changing.

Last year, Danon made history becoming the first Israeli ambassador to chair a permanent committee – dealing, paradoxically, with international law, the subject on which Israel has faced most criticism. Again, Danon received the backing of the Western European and Others Group.

However, Danon’s relations with the previous US administration were strained. In late 2012 he accused President Barack Obama of being “no friend of Israel”.

Security Council seat?

By contrast, Danon has been enthusiastically embraced by the Trump administration, observed Thrall.

“Israel is doing well diplomatically, at the moment. There are rumours that it aspires to a seat in the Security Council. The climate is such that some Israeli politicians even seem to think that might be achievable.”

Interviewed by the settlers’ news agency Arutz Sheva last month, Danon said there was a “new spirit” at the UN.

“They no longer focus only on Israel. The UN is no longer the Palestinian playground. Something is changing here.”

Of his relationship with Haley, he told the Orthodox Jewish magazine Mishpacha in April:

“When it comes to Israel, we share the same views.”

Making new friends 

Although the world body has been viewed as traditionally hostile to Israel, experts have cited several factors that explain Israel’s changing fortunes.

In recent years, Israel has made strategic alliances with powerful states at the UN, in addition to its main ally in Washington. Israel has won favour often through arms sales and intelligence sharing.

The diplomat, who has worked in Israel, said:

“Israel has been reaching out to emerging economies in BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] as well as Mexico. That is starting to pay a diplomatic dividend.”

Also, Europe, which is in growing disarray, has abandoned even the pretence of acting as a counterweight to Washington. That has made it easier to win over European countries to Israel’s side.

Thrall noted:

“The apparent calculus in countries like the UK is that the best way to ingratiate themselves with the US is to be good to Israel.”

And the UN, mired in financial difficulties, is reeling from the threat of further penalties from the US and its allies if it continues to be seen as anti-Israel.

“Israel and the US are ready to break the international order to get their way,” said the diplomat. “People are scared of what they might be capable of doing.”

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Featured image: credits to the owner

“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Simon and Garfunkel, The Boxer (1970)

No one could say that Donald Trump has not made politics interesting. In so doing, he may well have distorted it, mangling its practice with ingredients of corrupting alt-reality. That same process has seen a distinct cheapening as well, but it could not be anything else.

Trump has revealed, within political practice, the virus that has afflicted it, the theatre that takes place from the White House, to Congress, to the Deep State. Life may be a stage, but Trumpland is a flickering pantomime, destroying any pretence of virtue in politics. There are only positions, opponents, and resolutions through bullying force.

The entertainment reality show got another instalment on Thursday with the testimony of former FBI director James Comey before members of the Senate intelligence committee. The various birds of prey wishing to find smoking carrion were left only partially satisfied. The Republicans were left confused, and the right wing media felt that Trump had been exonerated. There was something for everyone.

Comey did serve a few titbits, and in a political environment rich with conspiracy and assumption, these were converted into main courses. He did not, for instance, suggest that Trump was literally the subject of a counterintelligence investigation (go for the “satellites”, urged the former director), but garnished it with the following:

“As I explained, the concern of one of my senior leader colleagues was, if you’re looking at potential coordination between the campaign and Russia, the person at the head of the campaign is the candidate. So, logically, this person argued, the candidate’s knowledge, understanding, will logically become a part of your inquiry if it proceeds.”

As for those circling satellites, one stood out as a rich prospect on the Russian connection: the attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Comey’s testimony was notably slanted in that direction. His recusal from the Russia-link investigation in March pointed to a deeper connection.

Then, the old suggestiveness about special facts, the sort that revealed as much as it concealed:

“I can’t discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic.”

Whether the President’s plea on behalf of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to call of the dogs constituted an obstruction of justice was not something Comey wished to opine on.

“That’s a conclusion that I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there and whether that’s an offence.”

The whole occasion played into a reality show that has assumed monumental proportions. Unwittingly, participants are playing to the Trump tune, following his direction. For one, the president could triumphantly claim that Comey had himself leaked, and deserved investigating himself. He may well have also lied, dangled Trump tantalisingly before the press corps, though he then claimed to have said nothing of the sort.

Trump also offered his “100 percent” willingness to testify under oath about his engagements with Comey to counter the former director’s claim.

“I would be glad to tell him,” he said in the White House Rose Garden, “exactly what I told you.”

On cue, the impeachment brigades were also tossing a few confected ideas about, finding in the Comey revelations molehills fit for vast mountains. Democrat Representatives Al Green from Texas, along with fellow Texan Sheila Jackson Lee and Brad Sherman of California have stated that their scribes are working on articles of impeachment.

Green, however, has taken the enthusiastic lead, calling the act of firing Comey an “obstruction of justice”. “Obstruction of justice by the President is the problem. Impeachment by Congress is the solution.”[1] Green has been of such a persuasion from the start, and while he exudes principle on this score, he has already reached judgment on the matter. Constitutional lawyers, however, differ.

Green’s views received the backing of two anti-Trump resistance groups, MoveOn.org Civil Action and Invisible.[2] The executive of MoveOn did not “make this call [for impeachment] lightly” but it is hard to imagine anything not having an element of lightness when dealing with the relentless Trump vortex.

Invisible, having concluded that Comey’s testimony was ample, accurate and sufficient, felt that Trump had, in fact “tried to obstruct justice.”[3] Stating the obvious point that obstructing justice was impeachable, the organisation did not pause to consider that ethical abuse and legal manipulation straddles a grey area. But anger is the enemy of circumspection. “Impeachment takes time but we need to start the process now.”

Former ethics czar during the Obama years, Norm Eisen, provided another reading, claiming that the testimony was a “significant inflection point”. Leaked and hearsay evidence had existed before but “for the first time, we had direct evidence of obstruction of justice. It was a giant step towards accountability for Trump, but there will be many more giant steps necessary.”[4]

The emphasis should be on the sheer gigantic nature of those steps. In this postmodern theatre of competing views, each group stuck to their stubborn, already minted interpretations. Prior to the testimony, minds had already closed. Even Comey added a tantalising number to the tenor of the whole session, a nod to the Richard Nixon White House. “I have seen the tweet about tapes. Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”

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

Notes

[1] http://www.houstonpress.com/news/al-green-calls-for-trump-impeachment-again-9505509

[2] https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/06/10/president-donald-trump-impeachment-impeach-james-comey-testimony/22135883/

[3] https://www.indivisibleguide.com/resource/truth-or-trump/

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/10/trump-james-comey-testimony-obstruction-justice-analysis

Featured image: credits to the owner

On May 26, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of British Labour Party, made a speech which dealt in large part with security and foreign policy. Much of his presentation was surprisingly accurate. Here is what he said:

—There is a cause-and-effect relationship “between wars our governments supported and fought in other countries and terrorism here at home.” For instance, the May 22 Manchester bombing, which killed 22 people, may well be connected to the United Kingdom’s involvement in the overthrow of the Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi and the subsequent civil wars.

—This cause-and-effect relationship is not a matter of speculation. “Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services, have pointed to these connections.”

—Past governments have not been willing to address these connections, and now the people of the U.K. are confronted with a “war on terror that is simply not working.”

—“We need a smarter way to reduce the threat from countries that nurture terrorists and generate terrorism.” Therefore, Corbyn promised that, if he were to become the leader of the British government, he would “change what we do abroad.”

Corbyn’s speech is unusual because political leaders rarely point out that policies supported by major special interest groups (such as the Zionists, Saudis and the arms industry) are really catastrophic errors. More rarely still do politicians say so in public. In the case of terrorist attacks, almost every Western leader has blamed “radical Islam” (leaving out, of course, any reference to Saudi Wahhabism).

The public at large has gone along with this view because it echoes the media message that constitutes the source of their knowledge on most non-local subjects. The media outlets have never told them that the murderous foreign policies of their own governments contributed to terrorism coming to their shores. And now, along comes Jeremy Corbyn’s message that British policies abroad have something to do with British tragedies at home.

The Reaction

Such a fundamental challenge to policy can be traumatic, so Corbyn’s political foes have responded with indignation. For instance, Ben Wallace, Minister of State for security in the present Conservative government, labeled Corbyn’s remarks as “crass and appallingly timed.” The word “crass” means rude or vulgar and it is hard to see how stating a truism in acceptable English qualifies as crass.

Just so, why characterize Corbyn’s timing, coming shortly after the Manchester terror attack, as “appalling”? Should the Labour Party leader have waited for a lull in such attacks so that his point would be missed by the British public?

Wallace also indulged in wrongheaded denial. He charged Corbyn with being ahistorical in his assessment of terrorist enemies. He stated that “these people [the terrorists] hate our values, not our foreign policy.”

It is depressing that conservatives throughout the Western world have learned so little – if anything at all – since 2001. That is the year George W. Bush delivered the grotesquely misleading line that Ben Wallace now echoes. Right after 9/11 Bush proclaimed the terrorists do what they do (at least in the West) because “they hate our freedoms.”

Anyone who is familiar with the attitudes of Middle East militants, religious or secular, knows that the vast majority do not care what sort of values and freedoms we practice in our own countries. However, they do care about the damaging foreign policies we impose upon their countries.

Tim Farron, the British Liberal Democratic leader, also went after Corbyn for using the moment of the Manchester terrorist attack to make “a political point.” Apparently, though, it’s a point that Farron has missed. What is important about Corbyn’s statement is that it properly contextualizes not only the Manchester attack but most of all other terrorist attacks in the West. Corbyn’s message is an accurate historical analysis that has political implications.

To What Avail the Truth?

Politicians obviously have self-interested reasons for denying that they have misinterpreted, miscalculated, and then persisted in bad policies that have resulted in death and destruction for their own countrymen as well as others. No doubt a sort of special interest-induced myopia allows some of them to believe that if they only stick to their strategy they will prevail.

This is certainly the case with the American President Donald Trump. After the latest terror attack in London he let loose a Twitter broadside telling the world “we must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people.”

This lined up nicely with Prime Minister Theresa May’s public comment that the British government has been “too tolerant” toward terrorists. These words have little real meaning. They are more likely code words for continued Western violence in the Middle East, which Mr. Corbyn correctly identifies as the reason there are terrorist attacks in our part of the world in the first place.

A recent British poll conducted just before the June 8 election indicated that 75 percent of those contacted now believe that Jeremy Corbyn is correct and there is a connection between intervention into the Middle East morass and terrorism within the U.K. The poll claims its sample is representative of the population as a whole.

Then on June 9, the U.K. had its general election. As a result the Conservatives remain the largest party in parliament, but with a seriously reduced number of seats. In order to rule with an outright majority, a party needs 326 seats. The Conservatives won only 319 compared to Labour’s 261. There are several other parties such as the Liberal Democrats mentioned above, but their seat count is much less. For example the Liberal Dems won only 12 seats. All in all it was a comparative win for Labour and loss for the Conservatives.

People cast their votes for many different reasons – mostly local in nature (thus the notion of voting one’s pocketbook). However, terrorism is a factor that has been invading the local space of more and more British citizens, and so we can safely assume that at least some who supported the Labour Party in this election did so because they heeded Jeremy Corbyn’s warning of a connection between the U.K.’s present foreign policy and national insecurity. As for those who pinned their hopes on continued Conservative Party rule, they also inadvertently voted for endless terrorism in their own backyard.

Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism. He blogs at www.tothepointanalyses.com.

Featured image: Consortiumnews

Padre Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann died yesterday aged 84 after a relapse following successful treatment for a stroke earlier this year. His death deprives us of the leadership and guidance of one of the world’s great moral leaders, a tireless advocate of non-violence and peace. For everyone who knew him personally, he was a determined, loving human presence, the very embodiment of solidarity and moral charity. Miguel had tremendous humility and willingness to serve. He was a great educator. He taught those around him not to be afraid of confronting and addressing their own contradictions, as he did his own, with rigor, honesty, sincerity and humor.

Padre Miguel was a Latin American prophet of peace inspired by Sandino and Bolivar, but also by Dorothy Day, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. An uncompromising anti-imperialist, he passionately and unapologetically defended expressions of non-alignment as diverse as the Cuban Revolution, the Libyan Jamahiriya and the Islamic Revolution of Iran. Among many other remarkable facets, like his accomplished contributions to moral philosophy and liberation theology, Miguel was a qualified civil engineer. He was far from being a mere dreamer, as his imperialist antagonists so often labeled him.

Miguel was a man of action who fulfilled his religious vocation through a lifetime of service as a Maryknoll priest. Following his ordination in 1962, he accompanied impoverished families in the marginal barrios of Santiago de Chile before returning ten years later to Nicaragua where he put his civil engineering studies to use building over 600 houses in an innovative rebuilding program, in the university city of León, to rehouse families left homeless by the devastating 1972 Managua earthquake. During those same years he became a leading advocate of liberation theology and put his beliefs into action, promoting active non-violent resistance to the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua.

As he put it in prayer he wrote in 1984:

To love life is to risk it,
to live it fully
means being ready always
to lose it,
giving it over entirely to solidarity…

By the time the Sandinista People’s Revolution finally defeated Anastasio Somoza on July 19th 1979, Miguel d’Escoto’s moral stature and authority were recognized internationally. He was an obvious choice to serve as Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister, a post he held until 1990, all through the years of the US government funded terror war.

Very early on, Padre Miguel came under relentless pressure from the Vatican to give up his government post. When he refused, in 1985, the papal authorities banned him from saying Mass. For Miguel, this ban was a vindictive attack wounding him emotionally for thirty years, until the ban was lifted by Pope Francis in 2014. Asked why he refused to give in to the Vatican, Miguel replied

“it would have been to betray my people, betray their legitimate rights and aspirations…it would have been to betray the People’s Sandinista Revolution, betray all our heroes and martyrs, Daniel and all our comrades engaged in the struggle”.

Typically, Padre Miguel expressed that identification both through physical action and through decisive and highly accomplished moral and intellectual action. Physically, from July 7th to August 6th 1985, the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, he held a month long fast publicising Nicaragua’s call for peace and an end to the US government’s terrorist war. In February 1986, he organized a Walk for Peace of over 300km in 15 days accompanying 100 christian activists between Jalapa on Nicaragua’s Honduran border and Managua. All along the route, still today, people remember receiving the exhausted marchers with Miguel among them and helping him, tending to his blistered and bloody feet. They remember too the inspiring prayers and reflections of Miguel and his fellow marchers each day and how the church hierarchy closed their churches to the marchers.

Father Miguel D’Escoto: Messenger of Love, Life and Reconciliation (Source: Internationalist 360)

Miguel combined that grass roots spiritual action with the strategy of his foreign policy team, successfully exposing US terrorist aggression via an unprecedented judgment in the International Court of Justice while also promoting the regional Esquipulas peace process. The contrast could not be greater between the humility and intellectual and moral power of Miguel d’Escoto in those years and the futile preening and posturing of his US and allied country counterparts. If you ask from where Miguel and his team drew the moral resources to shape that regional peace process, his colleague and contemporary, the historian Aldo Diaz Lacayo, has explained,

“In Latin America, the cuture of Peace was born along with Independence. It is not new at all. Simon Bolivar’s great concern was Peace.”

Aldo Lacayo’s remarks hint at the fundamental role the Esquipulas peace process played in forming the culture now embodied in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Key components were : no US presence in the process, a formal institutional structure and also a commitment to both peace and progress towards integration. Miguel d’Escoto and his team were conscious inheritors of not just Sandino but Bolívar too. Their realist vision projected forward a practical template for those ideas to be realized later by Fidel and Hugo Chávez. Nicaragua’s revolution was a crucial step helping that vision come about.

But for Nicaragua to participate in the emancipation led by Comandante Chavez, the Sandinista Front for National Liberation had to survive 17 years of political opposition and internal splits. During that time, Miguel D’Escoto was one of several key figures supporting Daniel Ortega’s leadership through one gratuitous attack and setback after another. His spiritual authority and intellectual rigor reinforced Daniel Ortega’s defense of core Sandinista principles while exposing the superficiality and opportunism of Ortega’s detractors. Throughout that period, Padre Miguel never stopped doing diplomacy, building bridges around the world based on the ideals of peace, cooperation and non-alignment.

So his election as President of the 63rd UN General Assembly was perfectly natural and he made his mark immediately in the context of the economic crisis of 2008 and its environmental corollary, the breakdown of the binding Kyoto protocol. Padre Miguel brought together specialists in economics and other disciplines to formulate proposals to reform the international financial system. US and allied government opposition vetoed that initiative. Similarly, that year 2009 saw the fatal betrayal by Barack Obama of his government’s commitment to a new relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean. After the Honduran oligarchy ousted Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, Padre Miguel accompanied Zelaya in a daring but very dangerous and in the end unsuccessful attempt to land at Tegucigalpa’s airport.

Just two years later, Miguel tried in vain to support Libya’s Jamahiriya against NATO country aggression. All through this period, Padre Miguel was working with other international figures, like Evo Morales among others, on the Reinvention of the UN and the defence of Mother Earth. Miguel d’Escoto never gave up fighting for peace and justice. He remains now and for always a prophetic figure fully worthy of forbears like Fray Montesinos whose spirit he invoked with these words for the government and people of the United States:

“May God illuminate your minds, so befuddled for now with hatred and greed, and allow you to straighten out your criminal foreign policy before it is too late for the world, for Mother Earth and humanity…”

Featured image: Internationalist 360

Riyadh accusing Qatar of supporting terrorism ignores the pernicious regional infestation of Saudi-supported extremist Wahhabism, the ideology connected to ISIS and like-minded groups.

Both countries support regional terrorist groups, both US allies, despite mixed messages from Washington on Qatar.

Secretary of State Tillerson called for “no further escalation by the parties in the region, (urging) calm and thoughtful dialogue” to resolve things, asking other Gulf states to ease their blockade, citing humanitarian reasons ignored by Washington in all its wars.

Qatar is home to the Pentagon’s Central Command, thousands of US military personnel stationed in the country. During his visit to Riyadh, Trump met with emir al-Thani, saying Washington’s “relationship (with the country) is extremely good.”

On Friday, he tone changed, calling Qatar a longtime “funder of terrorism at a very high level…Stop teaching hate. Stop the killing,” he said.

Qatar’s Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani meets with US President Donald Trump. Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead.

The diplomatic standoff continues. Iran offered Qatar use of its southern ports to import needed goods. The tiny Gulf state is import-dependent.

On Wednesday, an Iranian cargo plane delivered tons of supplies to Qatar. National Agricultural Products Federation of Iran president Reza Nourani said talks are underway to export food to the nation.

It’s currently sending around 50 tons daily to the region. Some of it could be diverted to Qatar. Iranian ships can supply much more of what’s needed.

Turkey’s Erdogan pledged support for the al-Thani regime, one rogue leader supporting another.

Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt, one of the rival Libyan regimes, the Saudi-supported Yemeni one, and the Maldives cut ties with Qatar, imposing a land and sea blockade.

On Thursday, they designated 59 individuals and 12 entities in the country as terrorist organizations.

Qatar is Turkey’s staunchest regional ally. It plans building a military base in the country to confront unnamed “common enemies,” according to Turkish ambassador Ahmet Demirok.

Ankara is already allied with Qatar militarily, small numbers of its forces in the country. Plans are for many more to be deployed.

Gulf states welcomed Trump’s criticism of Qatar. It has nothing to do with supporting terrorism, no nations more supportive than America, its key NATO allies, Israel, the Saudis and other regional rogue states.

Part of the dispute is over Qatari/Iranian ties and its alleged Muslim Brotherhood support. A larger issue is over control of regional oil, gas, pipelines supplying it and their routes.

If the region wasn’t resource rich, it wouldn’t suffer from endless US-led wars. Syria is targeted for regime change to eliminate an Israeli rival and isolate Iran – ahead of longstanding plans to replace its government with pro-Western puppet rule.

Will Saudi forces invade Qatar to transform the state into a Riyadh satellite? Is Trump signed on to the scheme?

Is another regional war likely besides those raging in Iraq, Syria and Yemen?

Institute for Gulf Affairs director Ali al-Ahmed believes it’s coming. He “received reports of Saudi military movements near the Qatari border” days earlier.

“They are preparing,” he said. If Saudi terror-bombing of Yemen eases, it would indicate a likely move against Qatar, he said.

“I have it on good authority that Trump has already told the Saudis he would have no objection,” he explained. Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain will support the action, he added.

Riyadh wants Qatar reduced to satellite state status, along with control over its resources and cash reserves, said al-Ahmed.

“Saudi Arabia was a state founded on the principle of robbery and looting. That is what the al-Saud originally were: They were desert raiders and looters. They were desert pirates. Now they desperately need money again,” he explained.

If he’s right, Saudi war on Qatar with US and regional support could happen any time.

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

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: Encyclopedia Britannica

Most British politicians – waking up after a General Election which sent a strong message that the UK electorate don’t want railroading by its leaders – sail along blissfully innocent of nuclear’s impending denouement, not only in the rest of the world but in the UK too, writes IAN FAIRLIE.

The UK political situation on nuclear power is pretty uninspiring, apart from the Greens. Few political supporters of nuclear power appear to be aware that nuclear power is in free-fall around the world – especially in Western Europe and in the US, where many reactors are being closed without replacement.

Few seem aware of the legal, technical, regulatory, and economic difficulties faced by utilities in building the handful of new reactors and of the crippling costs of shutting down the many old ones. None appears aware of nuclear’s financial meltdown across the globe.

In a perceptive new article published by a prestigious US Ivy League University, Is Nuclear Power Coming To An End? Fred Pearce, a distinguished UK science writer, wrote:

“Now come the bankruptcies. In an astonishing hammer blow to a global industry in late March 2017, Westinghouse – the original developer of the workhorse of the global nuclear industry, the pressurized-water reactor (PWR), and for many decades the world’s largest provider of nuclear technology -filed for bankruptcy after hitting big problems with its latest reactor design, the AP1000.

“Largely as a result, its parent company, the Japanese nuclear engineering giant Toshiba, is also in dire financial straits and admits there is ‘substantial doubt’ about its ability to continue as a going concern.

“Meanwhile, France’s state-owned Électricité de France (EDF), Europe’s biggest builder and operator of nuclear power plants, is deep in debt thanks to its own technical missteps and could become a victim of the economic and energy policies of incoming President Emmanuel Macron.

“This is no short-term trend. While gas and renewables get cheaper, the price of nuclear power only rises. This is in large part to meet safety concerns linked to past reactor disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima and to post-9/11 security worries, and also a result of utilities factoring in the costs of decommissioning their aging reactors.”

Pearce concludes by stating

“…the industry is in crisis. It looks ever more like a 20th-Century industrial dinosaur, unloved by investors, the public, and policymakers alike. The crisis could prove terminal.”

Most British politicians sail along blissfully innocent of nuclear’s impending denouement, not only in the rest of the world but in the UK too. The Government’s nuclear plans at Hinkley, Wylfa and Moorside are doubtful at best and moribund at worst.

First Anti-Nuclear Conference in 30 Years

We might shake our heads at the ignorance and irrationality of some of our senior politicians. However we should perhaps not despair too much, because on 17^th June, CND is convening a one-day National Conference in London with a stellar array of speakers. No Need For Nuclear Conference

The Conference will explicitly discuss the incoherence and irrationality of the nuclear policies adopted by the main parties. Apart from Chernobyl or Fukushima anniversaries, this is the first anti-nuclear conference in the UK in about 30 years. As such, it marks the long overdue re-emergence of an important issue.

The UK anti-nuclear groups are relatively weak, under-resourced and fragmented, which means there has been little recent opposition to the Government’s irrational energy policies.

Perhaps this conference will help change that.

No Need for Nuclear Conference booking:

• Buy your ticket on online
• Saturday 17 June 2017
• Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square
• London WC1R 4RL

Dr Ian Fairlie is an independent consultant on environmental radioactivity. He was formerly a senior scientist in the Civil Service and worked for the TUC as a researcher between 1975 and 1990.

Featured image: The Ecologist

They were sold-off by Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Government in 1997 in order to make huge profits for its friends and subsequent foreign investors.

• Deutsche Bahn AG is the state-owned company that operates and owns the principal railway network in Germany carrying over 2 billion passengers over 80 billion km per annum and delivering freight approx. 80 billion km.
• NCF (Société nationale des chemins de fer français; National society of French railways or French National Railway Corporation) is France’s national  state-owned railway company.
• Nederlandse Spoorwegen is Holland’s state-owned railway network operator.

The Governments of Germany, France and Holland own and operate their national railway systems for the absolute benefit of all their citizens.

The Conservative Government of Britain operates the national railway system for the benefit of its private shareholders, instead.

The Labour Party wishes to re-nationalise the railway network operating system in Britain in order to bring it back into the 21^st century. To achieve this we need a Labour Government headed by a charismatic leader of integrity to return the national rail system into public ownership.

That leader is Jeremy Corbyn. The time is now!

Featured image: Bring Back British Rail

The pollsters only got it partly wrong this time, though the most spectacular prediction cock-up was that on what would happen to British Labour prior to the exit polls. Scotland crept up with a Tory surge, netting 12 seats, and there were scattering and skirmishing victories over the Scottish National Party, which suffered a considerable bruising.

But what mattered here was a return to the two-tiered showdown, the battlefront which saw Labour mount a challenge that recovered electoral ground almost to the tune of 10 percent from the last vote in 2015. At the end of this bloody carnival, the only one left tall and standing was Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn’s gains, constituting the greatest vote share for Labour since Attlee in 1945, stimulated a movement to harry what must be regarded as a crippled Tory government in need of friends. While the Conservatives were the ultimate victors, it was so utterly Pyrrhic as to warrant reconsideration of their leadership choices.

After all, such electoral bloodshed had been entirely unnecessary for Theresa May, who ran what has been termed, even by some conservatives, the worst election campaign in living memory.

“The decision to call an election,” wrote a smug Rod Liddle, who had been on the money from the start, “was arrogant and complacent – and so was the subsequent campaign.”[1]

Having fallen short of a majority by eight seats, May has had to court the Democratic Unionist Party with their 10 seats. Overnight, they have become powerbrokers, the buttressing element of a fragile union. This presents its own problems for May, given the position taken by its leader, Arlene Foster, against a “hard Brexit”.

This particular pertains to the border with the Republic of Ireland. “No one wants to see a hard border, Sinn Fein [the opposition party in Northern Ireland] talk about it a lot, but nobody wants a hard border.”[2]

There were the fuming figures who still found deep troubles with the Corbyn surge. Extreme views about JC being a friend to Islamic extremism and sympathetic to anti-Semitism did their rounds from the poison pen of such publications as the Tower Magazine.[3] Count him, claimed Toby Young in the Spectator, to “side with Britain’s enemies, never allowing his judgment to be clouded by jingoism.”[4]

But Corbyn’s greatest satisfaction will be had against those who thought his insistence on principle too much of a handicap.

“We are a Labour government in waiting not a protest movement,” charged Owen Smith, who failed in an effort to overthrow Corbyn.[5]

Only a flint-styled pragmatism, went the Labour apparatchiks jaded by the New Labour days, would win over the British voter.

“He has stuck doggedly,” Young remarked in bile-dripping gest, “to his brand of hard-left politics for more than 50 years.”

Writers such a J.K. Rowling, taking time off from writing fiction, decided to pillory Corbyn as a person who would “lead Labour to electoral oblivion. Of that there is no doubt.” Figures known for their trashier brand of journalism, not to mention inventiveness on sources (Piers Morgan stand up!), predicted majorities for the Conservatives of between 90 to 100 seats.

Zaid Jilani at The Intercept also took note about predictions on Corbyn’s election performance in the US, many of which were not much better. An ill-considered David Axelrod, deemed the master strategist behind President Barack Obama’s victories, suggested that British Labour had suffered a mad lapse into “Corbynization”.

The party had “sort of disintegrated in the face of their defeat [in 2015] and moved so far left that it’s, you know, in a very- in a very frail state.”

Labour, having been tossed out off traditional lands in Scotland in the last election, did edge forward, but another surprise on the night, and one that poured cold water on the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, was the Tory surge in the north. Much of that could be put down to the feet of the charismatic (they do not come often) Ruth Davidson, whose presence outshone that of May’s dull steel approach. Brexit’s disorienting effects have been considerable.

A stunning figure, and one that must be heartening to those permanently engaged in the task of encouraging those to enroll and vote, was the youth vote. Even the Tories benefited from their participation, though in the main, Corbyn was their man.[6]

May has been wounded, and in a political sense, mortally. This, despite actually obtaining a greater share of the vote for the Conservatives from 2015. She has made herself weak before Europe in imminent Brexit negotiations, and has arguably damaged the prospect of a credible Brexit taking place at all. She has made herself a sitting rich target within the Tories, who had to scramble on election night to restrain opinion and criticism of their leader. (Witness the warnings of Iain Duncan Smith in that regard.)

Her bungling was occasioned by pure hubris, and few, including many in the Labour party, believed that the nemesis would come in the form of Corbyn. But there he is, having not only survived, but emboldened his progressive cause. While across the Atlantic, Trump storms as a violent, nativist option, Corbyn supplies the alternative, an antidote from a progressive core.

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

Notes

[1] https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/boris-johnson-is-not-the-answer/

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-10/uk-election-democratic-unionist-party-dup-brexit-explained/8606954

[3] http://www.thetower.org/5054-the-extremist-ties-of-labours-jeremy-corbyn/

[4] https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/all-hail-comrade-corbyn-i-recognise-greatness-when-i-see-it/#

[5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/04/watch-live-jeremy-corbyn-goes-head-to-head-with-rival-owen-smith/

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/09/corbyn-may-young-voters-labour-surge

Featured image: credits to the owner

Tories Leap Into the Unpopularity Abyss – The official Conservative party spokesman, Laura Kuenssberg, has just announced that Theresa May will remain as Prime Minister, supported by the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland. Now the DUP are probably the most unpleasant bunch of individuals in organised politics in the UK. The “No Surrender” arch protestant bigot party founded by Ian Paisley.

It is fascinating that, after an election in which the Tories and their mainstream media acolytes attacked Jeremy Corbyn at every opportunity for his alleged sympathies with the IRA, the Tories have come to an arrangement with a party that was from its inception and still is the political wing of the loyalist terrorism. The mainstream media never even mentioned the existence of Loyalist terrorism during its sustained attack on Jeremy Corbyn.

The loyalist terrorists murdered 1,016 people in the period 1969-2001. They shot someone dead in a supermarket car park in an internecine dispute actually during the election campaign. In all the media attacks on Corbyn about the IRA, there was no acknowledgement that Loyalist terrorism even existed. I think we can be pretty certain that the media are not going to start digging into the terrorist links of the Tories’ allies now. But social media is going to discredit them.

The DUP are corrupt, homophobic, racist and above all religious bigots of the worst kind. The nastiest people in politics. The utterly discredited Theresa May refuses to resign and intends to continue to rule over us with the support of this ugly faction. Popular support for the Tory government is going to plunge to unprecedented levels. This gruesome malformation of a bigots’ alliance between Brexiteers is not going to last long as a government, and the popular retribution will be massive.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and held various positions of seniority from London to West Africa.

Featured image: TruePublica

“…and I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they are a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court. And if our human rights laws stop us from doing it, we’ll change the laws so we can do it.” – Prime Minister Theresa May (June 6, 2017)[1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

For this writer, one of the more astonishing aspects of last Thursday’s live coverage of the election in the United Kingdom was the lack of reference to the violent attacks, deemed terrorist and ISIS inspired, over the last three months.

On March 22, almost a month before the Prime Minister called the snap election, dozens were injured and five, including the perpetrator, killed when a man in a truck mowed down pedestrians on the Westminster Bridge outside the British Houses of Parliament, proceeding to then enter the Parliament Yard stabbing a police officer before being shot dead. [2]

Two months later, a blast at the Manchester Arena, near the end of US singer Ariana Grande’s concert claimed the lives of 22 and was attributed to suicide bomber Salman Abedi, a Manchester man of Libyan descent. The Prime Minister announced the threat level had been raised from ‘severe’ to ‘critical.’ Almost 1000 troops were dispactched to ‘key locations’ in response. [3]

And on the weekend leading up to the election day, three men in a van ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge, before going on a stabbing rampage in nearby Borough market. Seven were killed and 48 injured in the attacks. Armed police called to the scene unloaded an ‘unprecedented’ 50 rounds of bullets into the men. [4]

As we saw with 9/11, which freed the US president’s hand in introducing regressive anti-terrorism measures, attacks with a high body count typically result in the increase in popularity of the leaders demanding a decisive and authoritarian response. This is precisely what incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May delivered. [5][6]

Yet May’s opposition rival Jeremy Corbyn connected the incidents with the United Kingdom’s foreign wars, and in spite of calling for more dedicating more resources for police, he stood by a much more pacifistic foreign policy in his election platform. [7]

This stance notwithstanding, polls turned very much in the Labour leader’s favour, and the expected landslide for the Conservatives, became a ‘hung’ Parliament with the Prime Minister barely holding onto power with the help of a rump of elected members of Parliament belonging to the Northern Ireland based DUP.

On the heels of the ‘shock’ election result, the Global Research News Hour radio program places a special emphasis on examining the terror attacks themselves and the election campaign in which they were situated.

In part one, guest Patrick Henningsen joins us by skype (see below) to expose suspicious aspects of the attacks, how they impacted the campaign and how the mechanisms being put in place in their wake will have repercussions for the nation and the Western world. Patrick Henningsen is the founder and executive editor of 21st Century Wire.

 

 

In part two, J. Michael Springmann digs into his own research and experience to reveal the long-standing and well established practice of CIA and other intelligence agencies utilizing, training and incorporating extremist Islamist terrorist assets. He puts what is known about the UK attacks in that context. Springmann is a former diplomat and whistle-blower. He formerly worked as an officer at the Visa Office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he saw CIA officials routinely approving unqualified candidates granted visas for travel to the United States. He is the author of the 2014 book Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World – An Insider’s View . Springmann has also authored the recently released book Goodbye, Europe? Hello, Chaos? Merkel’s Migrant Bomb (2017).

Near the end of the show, Professors Radhika Desai and Alan Freeman, co-directors of the University of Manitoba based Geopolitical Economy Research Group, interprets the June 8th election results themselves and what they mean for the future of policy for the UK and the West.

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

Notes:

1. http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-40181444
2. Emily Allen and Barney Henderson (March 26, 2017) ‘Westminster attack: Everything we know so far about the events in London’, The Telegraph; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/22/westminster-terror-attack-everything-know-far/
3. Chiarra Palazzo and Emily Allen (May 26, 2017) ‘Manchester terror attack: Everything we know’, The Telegraph; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/manchester-terror-attack-everything-know-far/
4. Harriett Alexnder (June 6, 2017), ‘London Bridge attack – everything we know’, The Telegraph; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/03/london-bridge-everything-know-far/
5. Jennifer Merolla and Elizabeth Zechmeister (June 12, 2016), ‘How terrorist attacks can change opinions and elections — including the 2016 election’, Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/19/how-terrorist-attacks-can-change-opinions-and-elections-including-the-2016-election/?utm_term=.190104c2dcb3
6. Jane Merrick (June 4, 2017), ‘May’s authoritarian response to the London Bridge attack’ , CNN; http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/04/europe/mays-authoritarian-response/index.html
7. Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason (May 26, 2017), ‘Jeremy Corbyn links foreign policy to growing terror threat’ The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/25/jeremy-corbyn-links-foreign-policy-to-growing-terror-threat

The Syrian Army has reached the Iraqi border, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. 

While we don’t have a lot of details yet, here’s what we can say: this is a brilliant move if true. Not exactly a checkmate yet, but definitely a check on US ambitions in southern Syria. 

.

#BreakingNews:#SAA and allies reached for the first time the Syrian-Iraqi borders north-east al-Tanaf.

— Elijah J. Magnier (@EjmAlrai) June 9, 2017

#BREAKING
Hezbollah media announced that #SAA reached Al Tanf&Iraqi border
Waiting for official confirmation

— NDF (@NatDefFor) June 9, 2017

BREAKING
Russian MoD confirmed this news pic.twitter.com/BonFUG3eOe

— NDF (@NatDefFor) June 9, 2017

In essence, as Americans were busy bombing small Syrian groups entering their declared exclusion zone via the main road, a separate Syrian force staged a lightning-quick advance through roadless desert, well to the east of the “deconfliction” zone enveloping the Americans.

The Syrians drove eastwards towards al-Bawda, then cut south to the border (Source: Russia Insider)

If the US forces are not cut off from ISIS they no longer have an excuse to continue occupying this part of Syria. (Or will they insist they get to leapfrog over the Syrian army?)

Russians are saying it will be them and the Syrians — rather than the Americans — who will be advancing along the Iraqi border towards al-Bukamal (the major border crossing in the Euphrates valley coveted by the Pentagon):

Source: Russia Insider

Russian officers also accused the US of hindering the Syrian war effort against ISIS, by blocking its military from opening a new front against the group:

“The coalition air forces and the strongholds of the forces of New Syrian Army have blocked the way of the government forces, tasked with defeating IS groups.”

“This is a violation of the sovereign right of Syria to protect it borders.”

The new, and improved, map with the Americans and dependent forces (green) now boxed-in by the Syrian army (red) (Source: Russia Insider)

There is a video of the Russian briefing, but so far not yet translated (except for an incomplete summary at RT).

UPDATE — Apparently in sync with the Syrian army move south, Iraqi forces likewise advanced against ISIS from their side and met on the border. Thus Syria has not just reached the formal Iraqi border, but actually re-established an actual link to Iraq:

Syrian Army reporter confirms Syrian Army securing border post 40 km from Al Tanf and Al Hashd Al Shaabi advanced to secure other side today pic.twitter.com/rIqeID7Idz

— M Green (@MmaGreen) June 9, 2017

UPDATE #2: We now have the video of the briefing at Russian MoD with English subs. The most relevant part starts at 15:27 into the clip:

The Syrians advanced 184 kilometers in a single day!

Featured image: Russia Insider

US cable and broadcast channels scheduled its coverage. So did PBS, NPR, the BBC and CBC.

All or parts of it can be watched on C-Span, local TV stations nationwide, YouTube, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire and various web sites.

Bars in DC and elsewhere opened early to air it. The Capitol Hill Union Pub offered a free drink every time Trump tweets about his testimony. Schoolteachers intend discussing his testimony with young students.

Trump, his lawyers and other aides tuned in, preparing to respond as necessary.

It’s more spectacle than substantive, much ado about nothing, a tempest in a teapot. Comparing it to the Army-McCarthy hearings or Nixon tapes is pure nonsense.

No smoking guns exist, no blockbuster revelations, nothing to claims about another Watergate or worse, no evidence of obstruction of justice or other wrongdoing in Trump’s face-to-face and telephone conversations with Comey.

The most highly anticipated hearing in decades is all smoke and no fire, all hype and no meat. The most “(un)trust(ed) name in news” headlining “James Comey just went nuclear on Donald Trump” made CNN more of a laughing stock than already.

The hype and surreal atmosphere are bizarre, nothing like it in decades on Capitol Hill.

Law Professor Jonathan Turley mocked it, saying

“(t)he only thing missing is a Vegas betting line and bunting. No doubt children got up this morning screaming “it’s Comey day, it’s Comey day!”

Releasing his prepared remarks in advance created a media firestorm – twisting and misinterpreting what he said – anything to denigrate Trump, making stuff up out of whole cloth.

He had nothing on Lyndon Johnson, his political career built on a foundation of massive electoral fraud. He was intimidating in dealings with others, bullying them to get his way.

Historian Robert Dallek said he

“viewed criticism of his policies as personal attacks.” He called political opponents “disloyal to him and the country.”

He insulted reporters, acting uncivilized much of the time. His press secretary George Reedy called him

“a miserable person…a bully, sadist, lout…egoist (and) colossal son-of-a-bitch.”

His bigger than life persona got things done. Trump is a business tycoon elevated to the nation’s highest office.

LBJ was a longtime politician, both involved in imperial wars. Vietnam was Johnson’s undoing. Trump is at odds with America’s deep state.

After trouncing Barry Goldwater in 1964, Johnson was too roundly disliked to run for reelection. Trump entered office widely despised.

Though unclear if he’ll avoid impeachment and removal from office, it won’t be from Comey’s testimony if happens.

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

His new 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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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Who Was Behind the Tehran Terrorist Attacks?

By Stephen Lendman, June 08, 2017

ISIS claimed responsibility for the incidents – the group supported by Washington, NATO, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and other regional rogue states.

They all have motive to destabilize Iran. They benefit from weakening Tehran if achieved.

London Wolves: Third London Bridge Attacker Was on EU Watch List – Talked Terrorism with Security

By Shawn Helton, June 08, 2017

After two identities of the three involved in the London Bridge terror event were released earlier this week, British authorities announced the identity of the third attacker, an individual already well-known to security, 22 year-old Youssef Zaghba. In addition to being another ‘known wolf’ Zaghba, also openly acknowledged his ambition to commit an act of terror to airport security officials.

Iraqi Forces Carrying Out Tortures in Mosul Mostly Supervised by US – Security Official

By RT News, June 09, 2017

The American military has continued to work with the EDR despite the special forces unit being blacklisted in 2015 under the Leahy Act, which requires foreign military units to be banned from receiving US military aid if there is “credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

US “Jihadi Express”: Indonesia – Afghanistan – Syria – Philippines

By Andre Vltchek, June 09, 2017

While the name ‘jihad’ itself has been used habitually and ‘liberally’ all over the Western mainstream media, it was clear to all of us at the table that behind the brutal combat as well as most of the horrors unleashed in such places like Syria and Philippines, hidden are the geopolitical interests of the West in general and of the United States in particular.

How Britain Helped Create ISIS

By Steven MacMillan, June 09, 2017

For years, the UK has been pouring millions into the Syrian opposition. In 2012, the British Foreign Secretary at the time, William Hague, admitted that Britain had been helping the Syrian rebels in a “practical and non-lethal way,” and vowed to increase British assistance. As the Independent noted, this non-lethal aid consisted of Britain sending the Syrian opposition £8m-worth of body armour, vehicles with ballistic protection, trucks, forklift trucks, communications equipment, laptops, water purification kits and other equipment needed to fight a war. In 2013, a report claimed that Britain was involved in an operation with other European states and the US to send the Syrian rebels 3,000 tons of weapons, sent in 75 planeloads, from Zagreb to the rebels.

Featured image: Omid Vahabzadeh/TIMA

ISIS terrorists have lost large chunks of territories to Syrian government forces in the provinces of Raqqa and Homs.

In the province of Raqqa, the Syrian Army’s Tiger Forces reached the area controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) west of Tabqa after liberating about two dozens of villages, including Rumthan, Bir Mulayhan, Shatnah, al-Qusur, al-Muhaddad, Jubb al-Khafi and Husayn al-Mikhallaf, south of Maskanah.

The government forces made this advance after a full withdrawal of ISIS members from the area. Now, the Tiger Forces are able to develop momentum in the direction of the Ithriyah-Tabqa road, further clearing areas east of Khanasir. This will allow to shorten the frontline and to set a foothold for the operation against ISIS at the Salamiyah-Palmyra road.

The army expansion in the Raqqa province may also push the SDF to encircle the ISIS-held provincial capital from the southern direction, preventing ISIS from fleeing the besieged city.

In the province of Homs, the army liberated the al Abbasiyah area, the Hamamt Zenobia area and the Olayanieh village south of Palmyra. The army advance was massively supported by airstrikes from the Russian and Syrian air forces.

In the Damascus desert, government forces took control over the Dawka area, creating conditions for an advance on Bir Qassab and al-Safa controlled by US-backed militants.

On Thursday, the US-led coalition once again bombed the army and its allies near the area of at-Tanf. The airstrikes destroyed technical vehicles in the Khibrat al-Shami area at the Damascus – Baghdad highway, 40 km away from the US garrison.

According to the statement, coalition warplanes also downed a medium-sized unmanned aerial vehicle that had targeted area near the US-led forces positions. The drone appears to be an Iranian-made Shahhed-129.

Meanwhile, the SDF captured the 17th Division base north of Raqqa and continued developing momentum in the city. According to the US-led coalition, there are about 2,500 ISIS members inside the city.

Voiceover by Lance Ramsay

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My examination of 54 prominent international examples of what U.S. President Donald Trump is presumably referring to when he uses his often-repeated but never defined phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” indicates that it is exclusively a phenomenon that is financed by the U.S. government’s Sunni fundamentalist royal Arab ‘allies’ and their subordinates, and not at all by Iran or its allies or any Shiites at all. Each of the perpetrators was either funded by those royals, or else inspired by the organizations, such as Al Qaeda and ISIS, that those royals fund, and which are often also armed by U.S.-made weapons that were funded by those royals. In other words: the U.S. government is allied with the perpetrators. 

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See the critique of this article by Kevin Barrett

Stop the Smear Campaign (and Genocide) Against Sunni Islam!By Kevin Barrett, June 13, 2017 

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Though U.S. President Donald Trump blames Shias, such as the leaders of Iran and of Syria, for what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism,” and he favors sanctions etc. against them for that alleged reason, those Shia leaders and their countries are actually constantly being attacked by Islamic terrorists, and this terrorism is frequently perpetrated specifically in order to overthrow them (which the U.S. government supports even overtly, such as in the case of Bashar al-Assad). Furthermore, all of that terrorism and those attacks, not only against the U.S. and Iran but against all nations except for Israel, are perpetrated not by Shia such as the U.S. President alleges, but instead by fundamentalist Sunnis, and they are financed by the very same fundamentalist Sunni Arab leaders that President Trump calls America’s allies against “radical Islamic terrorism.” 

My review of well-known Islamic terrorist incidents shows that, other than terrorism inside and against Israel, all Islamic terrorism is perpetrated by fundamentalist Sunnis, none of it is perpetrated by Shia, either fundamentalist or not, though the U.S. government and its allies blame Shia countries for “radical Islamic terrorism” — even while the U.S. government and its officials know full well that only  fundamentalist Sunnis are actually behind it. Israel, the Sauds, and their client-nations — and U.S. weapons-manufacturing firms such as Lockheed Martin — benefit, but the publics get slaughtered by these terrorist groups, which are financed by America’s ‘allies’, and armed largely by the U.S.

The exceptional case is Israel. Specifically in that country, Al Quds Brigades in the Gaza Strip are “majority funded by Iran”, but, even in Israel, America’s allies contribute to the terrorism. The dominant Hamas in the Gaza Strip is not Shiite, but is instead strictly fundamentalist Sunni, with the “donor bodies located in Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, the United States, United Arab Emirates, Italy and France”. (That’s most of the strongly U.S.-allied countries.) The other major terrorist organization in Israel is Hezbollah, which is fundamentalist Shia, and is funded by Shia throughout the world, not only in Iran (such as the U.S. government frequently implies, though it’s false to attribute Hezbollah to Iran, instead of to the world’s wealthy Shia everywhere). 

However, outside Israel, all of the Islamic terrorism is perpetrated by fundamentalist Sunni groups, such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, and their regional affiliate organizations, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba in India.

The countries that the U.S. government rails against and imposes economic sanctions against, are the non-sponsors of radical Islamic terrorism (except in Israel), and are themselves the chief victims of it, such as Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Those countries’ governments, and Shia populations, are purely victims of Islamic terrorism (sometimes beheaded for being so), not perpetrators of it (except, occasionally, against Israel — but, even there, they don’t have any monopoly, whereas Islamic terrorism against countries other than Israel is virtually, if not entirely, a Sunni fundamentalist monopoly). 

Wikipedia keeps a “List of Islamist Terrorist Attacks”, which currently describes 479 Islamic terrorist incidents. I have looked into the perpetrators of 54 of these incidents that struck me as having been especially publicized in the U.S., and that thus might reasonably be expected to have formed the American public’s general impression of Islamic terrorism, if the U.S. is a democracy (and so the public in the U.S. would be informed by an honest press), but I excluded all incidents that were against Israel, because if the U.S. is a democracy, then the U.S. public wouldn’t be focused on any single foreign country’s experience with Islamic terrorism, but would instead be concerned mainly about the national (U.S.), and then secondarily the global international, problem — no one foreign country. Every one of the perpetrators, so far as I was able to determine from the news-reports, has been fundamentalist Sunni (affiliated with, or else inspired by, known fundamentalist Sunni terrorist organizations). In none of the 54 instances was any connection at all indicated to the Shiite terrorist organization, Hezbollah, which group focuses solely against Israel, nor connected to any other Shia organization. 

Here are those 54 incidents (and for the basic details about each one, see that wikipedia list of all 479 attacks), all of which would reasonably be referred to by the phrase (if used by an American) “radical Islamic terrorism,” if any terrorist attack would be referred to by that commonly-used-by-Trump phrase:

U.S., 11 September 2001, 4 hijacked airliners

U.S., 4 July 2002, shooting at Los Angeles International Airport

Indonesia, 12 October 2002, Bali bombings

Russia, 23 October 2002, Moscow theater hostage crisis

Russia, 12 May 2003, Znamenskoye Grozny suicide bombing

Indonesia, 5 August 2003, Marriott Hotel bombing in Mega Kuningan, South Jakarta

Turkey, 15-20 November 2003, Istanbul bombings

Philippines, 27 February 2004, sinking of Super Ferry by Abu Sayyaf

Turkey, 9 March 2004, pipe-bomb attack in Istanbul restaurant

Spain, 11 March 2004, Madrid train bombings

Russia, 31 August 2004, Moscow Metro bombing

Russia, 1-3 September 2004, Beslan school hostage crisis

Indonesia, 9 September 2004, Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta

UK, 7 July 2005, London bombings

Indonesia, 1 October 2005, Bali, Jimbaran, and Kuta, bombings

India, 11 July 2006, Mumbai train bombings

India, 13 May 2007, Jaipur bombings

India, 26 July 2008, Ahmedabad bombings

India, 13 September 2008, Delhi bombings

India, 26 November 2008, Mumbai attacks in the financial center

U.S., 1 June 2009, Little Rock recruiting office shooting

Indonesia, 17 July 2009, Marriott and Ritz-Carlton bombings in Mega Kuningan

U.S., 5 November 2009, Fort Hood shooting

Russia, 29 March 2010, Moscow Metro bombings

Iran, 15 July 2010, Zahedan bombings

Egypt, 1 January 2011, Alexandria bombing

Russia, 24 January 2011, Domodedovo International Airport bombing

Egypt, 7 May 2011, Attacks on Imbaba Coptic church

China, 30 July 2011, Knife and bomb attacks in Kashgar

Bosnia and Herzogovina, 28 October 2011, U.S. Embassy shooting

Nigeria, 25 December 2011, church bombings in four cities

Russia, 3 May 2012, Makhachkala attack

Libya, 11 September 2012, Benghazi attack on U.S. Consulate

U.S., 15 April 2013, Boston Marathon bombings

Syria, August 2014, ISIS massacres 700 residents of Deir Ezzor

France, 7-9 January 2015, Charlie Hebdo shootings

Nigeria, 8 January 2015, Baga massacre

Denmark, 14 February 2015, Copenhagen shootings

Nigeria, 26-30 June 2015, Boko Haram rampage kills 200+

France, 13 November 2015, Paris bombings and shootings

Belgium, 22 March 2016, Brussels bombings

Iraq, 3 July 2016, Baghdad bombings

France, 14 July 2016, Nice truck-attack

Germany, 18 July 2016, Wuerzburg knife-hatchet attack

Germany, 24 July 2016, Ansbach suicide-bombing

France, 26 July 2016, Rouen church attacks

U.S., 28 November 2016, Ohio State U. car-attack

Sweden, 7 April 2017, Drottninggatan truck-attack

Egypt, 9 April 2017, Coptic churches attacked in several cities

France, 20 April 2017, Champs-Élysées shooting-rampage

UK, 22 May 2017, Manchester Arena massacre

Egypt, 26 May 2017, Minya shootings of Copts

UK, 3 June 2017, Knife-attacks on London Bridge

France, 6 June Notre Dame knife attacks

100% of those attacks were by fundamentalist Sunnis.

That is not intended to constitute an all-inclusive count of all terrorist instances, but to be instead a count of instances that I, an American, recollected seeing reported since the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks against America, and, thus, as being reasonably what is referred to by Trump’s often-repeated phrase, “radical Islamic terrorism.” 

President Donald Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia sign a Joint Strategic Vision Statement for the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, during ceremonies, Saturday, May 20, 2017, at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo Shealah Craighead)

The conclusion that I draw from those 54 instances is that U.S. President Trump is himself strongly allied with the chief international funders of what he calls “radical Islamic terrorism”. For example, when ISIS on June 7th did deadly gun and suicide-bomb attacks against Iran’s parliament in Tehran, Trump immediately responded by blaming Iran’s government for that, by saying,

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

Later that same day, the pro-Saud, anti-Shiite, CNN reported,

“Iran’s Revolutionary Guards say Saudi Arabia supported ISIS in the deadly twin attacks in Tehran on Wednesday, an accusation likely to infuriate the Saudi kingdom amid high tensions in the region.”

(In other words: if the Sauds attack Iran afterward, they’ll just be doing what the Iranian government should have expected — and the Sauds would not, in that case, be doubling-up on their own hatred and aggression against Iran and against Shia generally, such as in Yemen and Syria.) 

Contrast this Trump-response versus the way Iran had responded to the 9/11 attacks against Americans:

“After 9/11, Iran not only denounced the attacks and cooperated with the United States in Afghanistan, but also offered to negotiate a comprehensive resolution of differences with no preconditions.”

(George W. Bush responded to that initiative by Iran, only slightly less hostilely than Trump did to the attacks by ISIS in Tehran. The names of U.S. Presidents change far more frequently than U.S. government policies do. Trump, Obama, and Bush, are merely different brand-names for the same basic governmental product. The U.S. aristocracy remains much the same regardless of the nominal President etc.)

In addition, however, I should note that Trump’s phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” presumes the existence of such a thing as “moderate Islamic terrorism,” and that Trump’s remaining admirers evidently don’t care about, nor even notice, such ugly, or even stupid, implications of this phrase that he often uses. He would be better advised to remove the term “radical” from it. He might as well distinguish between “radical” versus “moderate” genocides, as talk about “radical” versus “moderate” terrorism. But there is no evidence that his followers even notice that ugly absurdity from him.

The evidence is clear and overwhelming, that the U.S. government is allied with the people who fund international Islamic terrorist groups, except for the few Islamic terrorist groups that perpetrate their attacks in or otherwise against Israel. At least in this regard, the U.S. government is clearly anti-American (i.e., against the American people), but the owners of U.S. weapons-manufacturing firms benefit from it, and so too do Israel and the owners of the fundamentalist Sunni countries that are treated by the U.S. government as ‘allies’ but might perhaps more accurately be referred to (along with Israel’s aristocracy) as America’s “masters.”

Just in as this was being written, came the news, “Saudi Soccer Team Refuse To Observe Minute’s Silence For London Terror Attack Victims”.

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

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Several were left dead and many more injured after coordinated terror attacks on Iran’s capital of Tehran. Shootings and bombings targeted Iran’s parliament and the tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini.

According to Reuters, the so-called “Islamic State” claimed responsibility for the attack, which unfolded just days after another terror attack unfolded in London. The Islamic State also reportedly took responsibility for the violence in London, despite evidence emerging that the three suspects involved were long-known to British security and intelligence agencies and were simply allowed to plot and carry out their attacks.

It is much less likely that Tehran’s government coddled terrorists -as it has been engaged for years in fighting terrorism both on its borders and in Syria amid a vicious six-year war fueled by US, European, and Persian Gulf weapons, cash, and fighters.

Armed Violence Targeting Tehran Was the Stated Goal of US Policymakers

The recent terrorist attacks in Tehran are the literal manifestation of US foreign policy. The creation of a proxy force with which to fight Iran and establishing a safe haven for it beyond Iran’s borders have been long-stated US policy. The current chaos consuming Syria and Iraq – and to a lesser extent in southeast Turkey – is a direct result of the US attempting to secure a base of operations to launch a proxy war directly against Iran.

In the 2009 Brookings Institution document titled, “Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran,” the use of then US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) as a proxy for instigating a full-fledged armed insurgency not unlike that which is currently unfolding in Syria was discussed in detail.

The report explicitly stated:

The United states could also attempt to promote external Iranian opposition groups, providing them with the support to turn themselves into full-fledged insurgencies and even helping them militarily defeat the forces of the clerical regime. The United states could work with groups like the Iraq-based National council of resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its military wing, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK), helping the thousands of its members who, under Saddam Husayn’s regime, were armed and had conducted guerrilla and terrorist operations against the clerical regime. although the NCRI is supposedly disarmed today, that could quickly be changed.

Brookings policymakers admitted throughout the report that MEK was responsible for killing both American and Iranian military personnel, politicians, and civilians in what was clear-cut terrorism. Despite this, and admissions that MEK remained indisputably a terrorist organization, recommendations were made to de-list it from the US State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization registry so that more overt support could be provided to the group for armed regime change.

Based on such recommendations and intensive lobbying, the US State Department would eventually de-list MEK in 2012 and the group would receive significant backing from the US openly. This included support from many members of current US President Donald Trump’s campaign team – including Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and John Bolton.

However, despite these efforts, MEK was not capable then or now of accomplishing the lofty goal of instigating full-fledged insurrection against Tehran, necessitating the use of other armed groups. The 2009 Brookings paper made mention of other candidates under a section titled, “Potential Ethnic Proxies,” identifying Arab and Kurdish groups as well as possible candidates for a US proxy war against Tehran.

Under a section titled, “Finding a Conduit and Safe Haven,” Brookings notes:

Of equal importance (and potential difficulty) will be finding a neighboring country willing to serve as the conduit for U.S. aid to the insurgent group, as well as to provide a safe haven where the group can train, plan, organize, heal, and resupply.

For the US proxy war on Syria, Turkey and Jordan fulfill this role. For Iran, it is clear that US efforts would have to focus on establishing conduits and safe havens from Pakistan’s southwest Balochistan province and from Kurdish-dominated regions in northern Iraq, eastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey – precisely where current upheaval is being fueled by US intervention both overtly and covertly.

Brookings noted in 2009 that:

It would be difficult to find or build an insurgency with a high likelihood of success. The existing candidates are weak and divided, and the Iranian regime is very strong relative to the potential internal and external challengers.

A group not mentioned by Brookings in 2009, but that exists in the very region the US seeks to create a conduit and safe haven for a proxy war with Iran, is the Islamic State. Despite claims that it is an independent terrorist organization propelled by black market oil sales, ransoms, and local taxes, its fighting capacity, logistical networks, and operational reach demonstrates vast state sponsorship.

The Ultimate Proxy, the Perfect Conduit and Safe Haven

The Islamic State reaching into Iran, southern Russia, and even as far as western China was not only possible, it was inevitable and the logical progression of US policy as stated by Brookings in 2009 and verifiably executed since then.

The Islamic State represents the perfect “proxy,” occupying the ideal conduit and safe haven for executing America’s proxy war against Iran and beyond. Surrounding the Islamic State’s holdings are US military bases, including those illegally constructed in eastern Syria. Were the US to wage war against Iran in the near future, it is likely these assets would all “coincidentally” coordinate against Tehran just as they are now being “coincidentally” coordinated against Damascus.

The use of terrorism, extremists, and proxies in executing US foreign policy, and the use of extremists observing the Islamic State and Al Qaeda’s brand of indoctrination was demonstrated definitively during the 1980’s when the US with the assistance of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – used Al Qaeda to expel Soviet forces from Afghanistan. This example is in fact mentioned explicitly by Brookings policymakers as a template for creating a new proxy war – this time against Iran.

For the US, there is no better stand-in for Al Qaeda than its successor the Islamic State. US policymakers have demonstrated a desire to use known terrorist organizations to wage proxy war against targeted nation-states, has previously done so in Afghanistan, and has clearly organized the geopolitical game board on all sides of Iran to facilitate its agenda laid out in 2009. With terrorists now killing people in Tehran, it is simply verification that this agenda is advancing onward.

Iran’s involvement in the Syrian conflict illustrates that Tehran is well aware of this conspiracy and is actively defending against it both within and beyond its borders. Russia is likewise an ultimate target of the proxy war in Syria and is likewise involved in resolving it in favor of stopping it there before it goes further.

China’s small but expanding role in the conflict is linked directly to the inevitability of this instability spreading to its western Xianjiang province.

While terrorism in Europe, including the recent London attack, is held up as proof that the West is “also” being targeted by the Islamic State, evidence suggests otherwise. The attacks are more likely an exercise in producing plausible deniability.

In reality, the Islamic State – like Al Qaeda before it – depends on vast, multinational state sponsorship – state sponsorship the US, Europe, and its regional allies in the Persian Gulf are providing. It is also sponsorship they can – at anytime of their choosing – expose and end. They simply choose not to in pursuit of regional and global hegemony.

The 2009 Brookings paper is a signed and dated confession of the West’s proclivity toward using terrorism as a geopolitical tool. While Western headlines insist that nations like Iran, Russia, and China jeopardize global stability, it is clear that they themselves do so in pursuit of global hegemony.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image: New Eastern Outlook

“Without the jihadists, the U.S. would have to resort to massive deployment of its own troops to the region — a mission that the American people will not accept.”

The international Islamic jihadist network, created nearly four decades ago in Afghanistan by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, is unraveling in full view of a planetary audience. Donald Trump thinks it’s all his doing — but he’s wrong, of course.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has rallied most of the Gulf Cooperative Council to isolate — and possibly overthrow — the emir of neighboring Qatar, the world’s third largest natural gas producer. The dispute between Qatar and the House of Saud — the two main funders of al Qaida and its spawn, the Islamic State — is rooted in rivalries beyond the mental grasp of the idiot in the White House, but Trump nevertheless takes full credit.

“During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology,” Trump tweeted. “Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!”

Trump appears to actually believe that the Saudis — the godfathers, along with U.S., of international jihadism –- have renounced their bankrolling of Islamist holy wars.

“So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” tweeted Trump. “They said they would take a hard line on funding. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”

Screenshot from Donald Trump’s Twitter Account

“The dispute between Qatar and the House of Saud is rooted in rivalries beyond the mental grasp of the idiot in the White House.”

The Saudis are blaming their fellow Wahhabist, the Emir of Qatar, for “adopting various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilizing the region including the Muslim Brotherhood Group, Daesh (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda, promoting the ethics and plans of these groups through its media…supporting the activities of Iranian-backed terrorist groups in the governorate of Qatif of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Bahrain, financing, adopting and sheltering extremists who seek to undermine the stability and unity of the homeland at home and abroad, and using the media that seek to fuel the strife internally….”

In addition to shutting off trade, travel and diplomatic relations with Qatar, a tiny peninsula jutting out from the Persian Gulf side of Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud has excommunicated Qatar’s emir from the Wahhabist fold — a heavy sanction among hereditary rulers whose legitimacy is bound up in their relationship to The Faith. However, the key point of the Saudi indictment involves Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Saudi royal family opposes all forms of political Islam as a threat to its own legitimacy as Protector of the Two Holy Cities, Mecca and Medina. Since its final conquest of most of the Arabian peninsula in the early 20th century, and in subsequent alliance with British imperialism, the House of Saud has ruled with the assent of the Wahhabi clerical class. It is a delicate arrangement, in which the hereditary royals are allowed control of the state and national resources in return for the Saudi state’s support of the clerics’ ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi ideology, which sanctions the killing of Muslims deemed heretics and “idolators,” mainly Shia. The House of Saud views the Muslim Brotherhood, the godfather of modern political Islam, as a challenge to the legitimacy absolute royal rule. The Brotherhood has influenced the widest range of Islamist political tendencies, from bourgeois electoral party politics to advocacy of a unified, Muslim-wide caliphate. But Saudi Arabia does not tolerate political pluralism, and royal rule is ultimately antithetical to a caliphate. And therein lies the political-theological contradiction.

“The hereditary royals are allowed control of the state and national resources in return for the Saudi state’s support of the clerics’ ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi ideology.”

The House of Saud has trod a perilous path to maintain its family’s monopoly on the riches beneath its soil. (Actually, most of the oil lies in land populated by the Kingdom’s Shia minority.) The deal requires the Saudi state to provide massive support for the export of the clerical class’s Wahhabist ideology to the far reaches of the Muslim world, yet it holds temporal power firmly in the hands of the princes, not the clerics.

The other pillar of royal rule is western imperialism. The Brits, and then the Americans, partnered with the House of Saud as a bulwark against secular nationalism in the Arab and Muslim world. It was only logical that the Saudis would ally with the American CIA to create the world’s first international jihadist network to overthrow a secular leftist government in Afghanistan in the late 1970s, thus bringing forth al Qaida and its many offspring.

The royal family of Qatar, with a citizen population of only 200,000 (the rest of the 2 million inhabitants are non-citizens, mostly low-wage workers, a plurality from India), is also nominally Wahhabist. But they chose a different path to political legitimacy — while also becoming exporters of jihadist terror. The tiny state’s emirs tried to establish a pan-Arab and pan-Muslim political presence commensurate with their wealth — the highest per capita in the world — through an aggressive strategy including generous support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar gave billions to the short-lived government of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, before he was overthrown by the military in 2013. (The Saudis then funneled billions to his jailer, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who, predictably, has joined in the isolation of Qatar.)

“They wishfully believe that by exporting terror, they insulate themselves from jihadist wrath.”

The emirs garnered considerable global prestige through their news and analysis outlet, but Al-Jazeera was often a source of irritation to the Saudi, Kuwaiti and Emirati royals, as well as western imperialists. Al-Jazeera was accused of blatantly favoring the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and kicked out of the country. The next year, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states severed relations with Qatar for eight months, as punishment.

Despite their differences, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are all partners with the U.S. in the proxy, terror war against Syria. It’s a matter of self-preservation. As hereditary regimes, they reject democracy of any flavor. As clients of western imperialism, they oppose Arab nationalism and are ultimately subservient to Washington. They are allied with the most reactionary elements of the clergy, who demand support for Islamist war. And, they wishfully believe that by exporting terror, they insulate themselves from jihadist wrath. But, the weight of contradictions spell doom for all of these autocrats — and looming defeat for the United States.

Donald Trump seems honestly giddy, apparently believing he has forced the Saudis to reject jihadist terror and to punish Qatar for its support of ISIS and al-Qaida. Perhaps he truly does not know that the main actor in the proxy war is not Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, or Qatar –- it is the CIA, the other, and most important, godfather of Islamist jihad. (The CIA is not a friend of Trump, so maybe they are not talking to each other.) The United States has become dependent on al-Qaida and its cousins as foot soldiers of imperialism in southwest Asia. If the fighters are decommissioned, through the denial of arms, money and protection, then the war against Syria is lost, and the U.S. military offensive begun by President Obama in 2011, with the unprovoked attack on Libya, will have ended in defeat. Without the jihadists, the U.S. would have to resort to massive deployment of its own troops to the region — a mission that the American people will not accept.

“The main actor in the proxy war is not Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, or Qatar –- it is the CIA, the other, and most important, godfather of Islamist jihad.”

The Saudi regime, in particular, may not survive an end to the Syria war. During the course of the conflict, the Islamic State faction of al-Qaida crossed a political Rubicon, declaring war on Saudi Arabia in 2014 and proclaiming itself a caliphate. The only ideological difference between the Islamic State and al-Qaida in Syria is that al-Qaida is willing to postpone the establishment of a caliphate, while ISIS is not. Otherwise, the two factions are identical in their political theology. If the jihadists are defeated in Syria — and, especially, if they feel they have been betrayed — they will vent their most intense fury on their co-religionists and former sugar daddies in the Gulf. Al-Qaida will become an ISIS, with no mercy on its former patrons.

So, don’t believe for a second that the Saudis are abandoning ISIS and al-Qaida, or are attempting to force Qatar to do the same. Neither is the CIA, which simply rebrands its jihadists when their names become too notorious.

Does Donald Trump know that the Saudis are blowing smoke in his face? Does he realize that his own CIA and military have no intention of giving up their jihadists, whom they cannot do without? Who knows? Does it really matter? The criminal U.S. war against Syria will unravel from the weight of its own contradictions. In the end, Washington’s Gulf “partners” necks will be on the chopping block.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
Glen Ford’s blog

Featured image: Black Agenda Report

The latest in a long series of bloody terrorist attacks attributed to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) unfolded in Iran early Wednesday with coordinated armed assaults on the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) and the mausoleum of the late supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini. At least 12 people were killed and 43 wounded.

The reactions of the US government and the Western media to the attacks in Tehran stand in stark contrast to their response to the May 22 bombing that killed 22 people at the Manchester Arena and the London Bridge attacks that claimed nine lives last Saturday.

The Trump White House released a vicious statement that effectively justified the killings in Iran, declaring,

“We underscore that states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote,” an attitude that found its reflection in the relative indifference of the media to the loss of Iranian lives.

It is clearly understood that terrorism against Iran serves definite political aims that are in sync with those of US imperialism and its regional allies.

For its part, Tehran’s reaction to the attacks was unambiguous. It laid the responsibility at the door of the US and its principal regional ally, Saudi Arabia.

“This terrorist attack happened only a week after the meeting between the US president (Donald Trump) and the (Saudi) backward leaders who support terrorists,” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement, published by Iranian media.

The attack was understood in Tehran as a political act carried out in conjunction with identifiable state actors and aimed at furthering definite geostrategic objectives.

The same can be said of the earlier acts of terrorism carried out in Manchester and London, as well as those in Paris, Brussels and elsewhere before them.

The Western media routinely treats each of these atrocities as isolated manifestations of “evil” or religious hatred, irrational acts carried out by madmen. In reality, they are part of an internationally coordinated campaign in pursuit of definite political objectives.

Underlying the violence on the streets of Europe is the far greater violence inflicted upon the Middle East by US, British and French imperialism, working in conjunction with right-wing bourgeois regimes and the Islamist forces they promote, finance and arm.

ISIS is itself the direct product of a series of imperialist wars, emerging as a split-off from Al Qaeda, which got its start in the CIA-orchestrated war by Islamist fundamentalists against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan. It was forged in the US war of aggression against Iraq that killed close to a million Iraqis, and then utilized in the 2011 war to topple Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi. Fighters and arms were then funneled with the aid of the CIA into the war for regime change in Syria.

The latest round of terror has its source in growing dissatisfaction among Washington’s Middle Eastern allies and its Islamist proxy forces over the slow pace of the US intervention in Syria and Washington’s failure to bring the six-year war for regime change to a victorious conclusion.

The people giving the orders for these attacks live in upper-class neighborhoods in London, Paris and elsewhere, enjoying close connections with intelligence agencies and government officials. Far from being unknown, they will be found among the top ministers and government officials in Damascus if the US-backed war in Syria achieves its objectives.

Those who carry out the terrorist atrocities are expendable assets, foot soldiers who are easily replaced from among the broad layers enraged by the slaughter carried out by imperialism in the Middle East.

The mass media always presents the failure to prevent these attacks as a matter of the security forces failing to “connect the dots,” a phrase that should by now be permanently banned. In virtually every case, those involved are well known to the authorities.

In the latest attacks in the UK, the connections are astonishing, even given the similar facts that have emerged in previous terrorist actions. One of the attackers in the London Bridge killings, Yousseff Zaghba, was stopped at an Italian airport while attempting to travel to Syria, freely admitting that he “wanted to be a terrorist” and carrying ISIS literature. Another was featured in a British television documentary that chronicled his confrontation with and detention by police after he unfurled an ISIS flag in Regent’s Park.

The Manchester suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was likewise well known to British authorities. His parents were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), who were allowed to return to Libya in 2011 to participate in the US-NATO regime-change operation against Muammar Gaddafi. He himself met with Libyan Islamic State operatives in Libya, veterans of the Syrian civil war, and maintained close connections with them while in Manchester.

What has become clear after 16 years of the so-called “war on terrorism”—going all the way back to the hijackers of 9/11—is that these elements move in and out of the Middle East, Europe and the US itself not only without hindrance, but under what amounts to state protection.

When they arrive at passport control, their names come up with definite instructions that they are not to be stopped. “Welcome home, sir, enjoy your vacation in Libya?” “Bit of tourism in Syria?”

Why have they enjoyed this carte blanche? Because they are auxiliaries of US and European intelligence, necessary proxies in wars for regime change from Libya to Syria and beyond that are being waged to further imperialist interests.

If from time to time these elements turn against their sponsors, with innocent civilians paying with their lives, that is part of the price of doing business.

In the aftermath of terrorist actions, governments respond with stepped-up measures of repression and surveillance. Troops are deployed in the streets, democratic rights are suspended, and, as in France, a state of emergency is made the overriding law of the land. All of these measures are useless in terms of preventing future attacks, but serve very well to control the domestic population and suppress social unrest.

If the mass media refuses to state what has become obvious after more than a decade and a half of these incidents, it is a measure of how fully the linkage between terrorism, the Western intelligence agencies and the unending wars in the Middle East has become institutionalized.

Innocent men, women and children, whether in London, Manchester, Paris, Tehran, Baghdad or Kabul, are paying the terrible price for these imperialist operations, which leave a trail of blood and destruction everywhere.

Putting a stop to terrorist attacks begins with a fight to put an end to the so-called “war on terrorism,” the fraudulent pretext for predatory wars in which Al Qaeda and its offshoots are employed as proxy ground forces, operating in intimate collaboration with imperialist intelligence services and military commands.

Featured image: credits to the owner