Detention comes in various forms, and all have a basic premise: the removal of liberty of the subject, the presence of permanent control and surveillance, the utter reduction of rights to life to obligations to the state.
The suggestion of internment of terror suspects by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson hints at a historical awareness of one thing: that rounding up citizens and keeping them under lock and key, assisted by firearms, is one way of dealing with a threat. That such an idea is dangerously flawed is not something that enters the One Nation party room.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson (Source: ABC News via Spook Magazine)
On the Sunrise program, Hanson insisted that Yacqub Khayre’s attack in Brighton had been motivated by religion. Then came her suggestion.
“It is an ideology and with these people, you know what? Intern them. I don’t want to see one more Australian killed or one more person in far of their life or their kids lives.”[1]
In the United States, this form of internment was on practised on a massive scale during the Second World War. Citizens were held up; rights were trammelled and even muted. In Korematsu v United States, such internment was subjected to Supreme Court scrutiny.[2] Given the times, the verdict was not favourable for US citizens of Japanese ethnicity and ancestry.
While it is commonly mistaken to be a case decided solely on whether internment was legal (it had, in fact, to do with a bureaucratic matter of excluding persons from various zones on West Coast of the US), the result was not pretty.
Even by the admission of the court, exclusion and detention were knotted to begin with, and only superficially distinct. As David Cole explained, the majority in Korematsu, in upholding the legality of mass exclusion based on racial and ethnic identity, would “as a logical matter, extend to detention.”[3]
Hanson has not had a good time with the law of late, and the belligerent language in her open letter to the prime minister shows a distinct disdain for meddlesome members of the legal profession. They, she suggests, ought to be frozen out, paving the way for more robust executive action.
“It is imperative that the final decision in these cases should sit with the Minister and not with unelected lawyers and bureaucrats as is presently the case.”
Leave it to the executive – they know best.
Despite the relative insignificance of Australia in the global terror stakes (the latest attack in Melbourne hardly elevates it), Australian politicians wish to muscle in and make themselves count in the security debate. Far better to be entirely forceful, because there is always strength in unquestioning unity rather than questioning thought.
This ignores dangerous trends in law and practice that have effectively permitted the indefinite detention or monitoring of Australian and non-Australian citizens. An actuarial, risk assessment model has already been dominating penal and detention practice for some years, be it in terms of assessing paedophiles’ propensity to reoffend or the use of control orders on those who have already served their sentence. Rather than expanding such powers, these should be reined in.
It is also worth noting that Hanson is by no means the only one suggesting a vigorous pruning of civil liberties. Her extreme stances merely reflect a broader tendency in Australia’s political classes.
Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews (Source: ABC News)
The Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, is suggesting what amounts to a surrender of judicial worth and wisdom: the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and the security community should be part of the decision making process on “persons of interest”. The inexorable shift to the unaccountable executive is fluttering in the wings.
This reactive jolt provides a snifter of totalitarian creep: the more cooks in the establishment attempting to make sure that a person remains in a state of permanent incarceration. The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull does little to disabuse us of this.
“What I want to make sure is that people with these characteristics – with a history of violence and a connection with extremism – that that is taken into account and they should not be let out on parole unless the decision is taken at a higher level.”[4]
Coming from an accomplished lawyer long engaged in arguing before gowns, grey wigs and bound volumes of legal precedent, such argument is disheartening. Sniffing the glue of populism and fear has left its mark. The only ones to profit will be deskbound bureaucrats with greater powers.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge and lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected].
Britain is gripped by fear, panic and anger, after being struck by three terror attacks in the space of three months. Innocent men, women and children have been killed in the terror rampage, filling many homes with tragedy and despair. Martial law has practically been declared in many regions of the country, with troops now being a common site on the streets of Royal Britannia. Many are looking for someone or something to blame, as rage is increasingly triumphing over reason.
Lost in all this hysteria however, there sits a glaring connection that needs to be illuminated: the connection between these terror attacks and British foreign policy in Syria. Although Jeremy Corbyn has correctly highlighted the link between British wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, and the growth of terrorism at home, there is a still a conflict – arguably the most important in the rise of terrorism – that no one dares speak about; namely, the war in Syria.
Sadly, most people in Britain are still completely ignorant of the real truth of the Syrian war, and the role that the British establishment has played in supporting an array of terrorist groups, including ISIS. Even if we accept for a moment that all the official stories of the last three terror attacks are 100% true (something I don’t believe, see here for instance), a significant portion of the blame should still be directed towards the British establishment for the policies it has pursued overseas.
Source: RT via The 4th Media
The Syrian proxy war has provided fertile ground for the rise of ISIS and other extremist groups, with ISIS claiming responsibility for the last three terror attacks in Britain; namely, the London Bridge attack, the Manchester Arena attack and the Westminster attack. Britain has been part of a nefarious troika that have supported an array of terrorist groups in Syria for years now, a fact that legendary journalist and documentary filmmaker, John Pilger, highlighted in an interview at the end of 2015. In response Afshin Rattansi – the host of the RT show, Going Underground – asking “how are ISIS the progeny of Washington, London and Paris?”, Pilger said:
“They are not only the progeny, they are the fully grown-up, manic, adolescent creature belonging to Paris, London and the United States. Without the support of these three countries, without the arms that have been given to ISIS – either they have been given directly to Jabhat al-Nusra and have gone to ISIS; or they have gone the other way; or they have gone to the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia or in Qatar- but the French, the British, the Americans and the Turks have all supplied those that have kept ISIS going. You know, if David Cameron had won his Commons vote a couple of years ago, ISIS would now be in charge in Syria… The Middle East’s most multi-ethnic, multi-cultural state, would be finished, and these fanatics would be in charge, and that would-be thanks entirely to Western actions.”
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.
ISIS Has Always Been a Major Part of the Syrian Opposition
But who exactly are these Syrian rebels? According to a declassified US military intelligence report – by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) – from August 2012, the opposition largely consisted of terrorists and extremists, including ISIS (emphasis added):
“The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq], are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” The report added that “AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media,” and that “events are taking a clear sectarian direction.”
Al-Qaeda in Iraq was the main precursor to ISIS, as a summary from Stanford University explains (emphasis added):
“The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL), is a Salafi-Jihadist militant organization in Syria and Iraq… The group has its origins in the early 2000s, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi began training extremist militants. The group was a major participant in the Iraqi insurgency during the American occupation, first under the name Jama’at al-Tawhid wa’al-Jihad and then, after swearing fealty to Al Qaeda, as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
Facing backlash from the community and increased pressure from U.S. and Iraqi forces, the group declined until 2011, when it began to grow through its involvement in the Syrian Civil War. In 2013, it changed its name to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Over the course of 2013 and 2014, ISIS quickly took over territory in Syria and Iraq… On the ground, ISIS fought the Assad Regime and allied Shiite forces, Syrian opposition groups, the Iraqi military and militias, and the Kurdish peshmerga.”
So, according to US military intelligence in August 2012, AQI – later to be known as ISIS – was a major part of the Syrian opposition, and Britain was officially supporting the Syrian opposition by means of non-lethal aid. According to some reports, Britain was also directly arming the opposition, but we know for sure that Britain’s partners in crime – France and the US – were certainly arming the opposition directly, not to mention British allies in the Middle East. Britain was also involved in training the Syrian rebels in Jordan, with British intelligence teams on the ground, according to the Guardian. If this is just what is admitted, imagine how many clandestine operations Britain has been involved in but never have been officially recognised.
It isn’t just US military intelligence that has acknowledged that a large percentage of the Syrian rebels are terrorists. Even the former Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron, who was always a strong proponent of forcing regime change in Syria, admitted in early 2016 that many of the ‘moderate’ rebels actually belonged to “relatively hardline Islamist groups” (i.e. terrorist groups):
“But if you’re arguing: are all these people impeccable democrats, who would share the view of democracy that you and I have: [then] no. Some of them do belong to Islamist groups, and some of them belong to relatively hardline Islamist groups.”
Britain’s collusion with terrorist forces in Syria was further highlighted during a court case at the Old Bailey in 2015. Bherlin Gildo, a Swedish national, was accused of fighting for Syrian militant groups – including Jabhat al-Nusra (or al-Qaeda in Syria), who have now changed their name multiple times – but the case was quickly dropped after his lawyer’s argued that British intelligence was involved in arming and providing non-lethal aid to the very same terrorist groups he was allegedly fighting for.
Britain’s Long-held Desire to Force Regime Change in Syria
Britain has a long history of wanting to force regime change in Syria, and install a regime that would be subservient to the Anglo-American (and by extension, Israeli) establishment. In 1957, the British Prime Minister at the time, Harold MacMillan (no relation by the way), approved a joint CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents in order to provide a justification for an invasion of Syria, and the assassination of prominent Syrian political figures. Although this plan was never acted upon – mainly due to resistance from Syria’s Arab neighbours – it illustrates how long Britain has had Syria in its sights.
In more modern times, there is strong evidence to support the notion that Britain was one of the main architects of the engineered Syrian ‘civil war’ that began in 2011. In an 2013 interview, the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Roland Dumas, stated that he was approached in the UK “two years before the violence” erupted in Syria, to see if he would like to participate in organizing “an invasion of rebels” into the country (emphasis added):
‘’I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I’m French, that doesn’t interest me…
This operation goes way back. It was prepared, preconceived and planned… In the region, it is important to know that this Syrian regime has a very anti-Israeli stance. Consequently, everything that moves in the region – and I have this from the formerIsraeli prime minister who told me: ‘we’ll try to get on with our neighbours, but those who don’t agree with us, will be destroyed.’”
Interestingly, even the BBC admitted that there was a plan circulating around the British establishment in 2012 to “train and equip a 100,000-strong Syrian rebel army” to fight against Bashar al-Assad. The BBC tried to spin the story by saying the plan was deemed too risky by the Prime Minister and ultimately rejected, but considering that is exactly what happened (was happening, and is happening), albeit in conjunction with the US, France and Britain’s Middle Eastern allies, it hardly seems the plan was rejected.
May Pushes for Internet Regulation
Internet censorship (credits to the owner of the photo)
In the wake of the most recent (at the time of writing anyway) terrorist attack at London Bridge – which, as always, was carried out by extremists who were known to the authorities – the British Prime Minister has advocated internet regulation. May said that the internet provides a “safe space” for terrorist ideology to spread, and called for governments to “reach international agreements” to regulate the internet:
“We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed; yet that is precisely what the internet, and the big companies that provide internet-based services, provide. We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace, to prevent the spread of extremist and terrorism planning.”
The truth may never come to light regarding these three terror attacks, but we know for sure that the establishment will exploit these atrocities in order to further their agendas. May’s call for internet regulation has been an objective of the British establishment for years, with May’s proposal further proving that the elite never let a crisis go to waste.
Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Prime Minister Theresa May laid an egg. Calling for a snap election proved a huge mistake, perhaps her political undoing.
She believed Tories could gain additional majority control of parliament, making it easier to pursue her agenda.
Results proved otherwise as follows:
Needing 326 for majority rule, Tories won 315, Labour 261, the Scottish National Party 35, Lib Dems 12, Democratic Unionist Party 10 and others 13, four seats to be determined from final vote tallies.
Commenting on the outcome, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said
“(p)olitics has changed. (It’s not) going back into the box where it was before. What’s happened is people have said they’ve had quite enough of austerity politics.”
May “wanted a mandate. Well, the mandate she’s got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes, lost support and lost confidence. I would have thought that is enough for her to go.”
“Whatever the final result, we have already changed the face of British politics.”
For now, May’s given the chance to form a government – either a formal coalition with one or more partners, or an informal “confidence and supply” arrangement – under which smaller parties agree to support her main agenda.
Clearly her future is uncertain. Tories may ask her to resign. One already did, MP Anna Soubry said she should “consider her position.”
“It is bad. She is in a very difficult place…It was a dreadful night…a very bad moment for the Conservative party and we need to take stock and our leader needs to take stock.”
Senior Tories are angry and uneasy, an unnamed one saying
“(t)here are a lot of very very pissed off people in the cabinet…”
Former chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne called Thursday’s result “catastrophic.”
It’s up to Tories to decide if May stays or goes. Clearly she’s damaged goods – weakened, not strengthened as she hoped.
A Final Comment
Reports by UK media indicate Tories and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) agreed to form a new government following late night talks.
An unnamed DUP source said
“(w)e want there to be a government. We have worked well with May. The alternative is intolerable. For as long as Corbyn leads Labour, we will ensure there’s a Tory PM.”
It’s unclear if what was agreed on is coalition governance or a “confidence and supply” arrangement explained above.
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.”
The Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are rapidly advancing against ISIS terrorists in the border area with Syria.
Since the start of the Operation of Muhammad the Second Messenger of Allah the PMU has liberated about 3,500 km2 and over 110 villages from ISIS terrorists in western Iraq. Now, the PMU is clearing area southwest of the recently liberated town of al-Baaj.
Iraqi security forces have been putting pressure on terrorists in the remaining ISIS-held area of western Mosul. However, ISIS keeps a fierce resistance to the advancing government forces. Eleven Iraqi soldiers were killed in an explosion of a booby-trapped house in al-Zanjili.
Meanwhile, the leadership of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region announced that the region will hold a referendum on independence on September 25th, 2017. Iraqi Kurdistan gained autonomous governance based on the 2005 constitution. It has own armed force called Peshmerga. If the independence referendum takes place, it may lead to further destabilization of Iraq and the whole Middle Eastern region.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are storming the ISIS-held city of Raqqah. After the first gains, SDF units faced some resistance from ISIS terrorists and now they are engaged in an intense fight in the eastern and western parts of the city.
The Syrian Army and its allies have captured the Zenobia Resort located 4 km east of the Al-Sukkari quarries and the Tal Al-Fari area 30km east of Swanih village near Palmyra. They have also taken control of the strategic Mustadirah mountain chain near the village of Arak.
Some pro-government sources argue that this was the first sign of a wider advance in the direction of Deir Ezzor. However, this still has to be confirmed. According to available information, the Syrian military does not have enough manpower in the area to launch the operation right now. Liwa al-Quds fighters actively participate in this campaign.
“Hey Hey Fascist Scum, You’re Outnumbered 10 to 1″ -chant at Portland’s June 4th counter-protest
Portland Oregon had its collective mind blown in recent weeks. A Nazi murdered two people on public transit and a week later, on June 4th, Portland police were ‘protecting and serving’ a rally of 300+ ‘Alt-Right’ white supremacists from a counter-protest of over 3,000.
A crushing tension gripped Portland as the protests neared; people were understandably scared that more deaths would occur during the confrontation. The far-right rally organizer– local demagogue Joey Gibson— announced that a local far-right militia would provide security, while alt-right ‘celebrities’ from around the country descended onto Portland, many of them decked out in protective gear for street fighting. One of these celebrity fascists who goes by ‘Based Stick Man’ (real name Kyle Chapman) tweeted:
“I declare open season on Antifa [anti-fascists], squash on sight”.
Other far-right groups at the rally were the Oath keepers, Three Percenters , Proud Boys, and the Warriors for Freedom. This loose coalition of fascist-minded groups are being led by genuine fascists: the person who coined the term Alt-Right, Richard Spencer, has been quite open about his White Supremacy, which is the dominate ideology among alt-right groups.
The alt-right’s strategy has been mobilizing in key ‘progressive’ cities and provoking anti-fascists into a fight, while using ‘freedom of speech’ as a populist tool to demonize those who ‘oppose the first amendment’. This strategy has proven effective as a way to push public sentiment against ‘black bloc’ anarchists, making the fascists appear to be ‘the good guys’ that are being attacked by authoritarian anarchists that seek to squash unpopular ideas. Ultimately the fascists do well when they fight with anarchists in the streets; the fascists stand a fighting chance so long as the size of both groups are small. Even a ‘draw’ is a victory for the fascists, who for years have stayed underground due to their small numbers.
In Portland the alt-right rally–and counter protests– were scheduled before Portland’s Nazi murders took place, and after the murders the the dynamic changed everything, raising the stakes. Before the killings three different counter-protests were already planned:
Across the street (to the south) at city hall a coalition of 70+ labor and community groups rallied, lead by the International Socialist Organization, whose aim was a united front to rally the biggest number of people against the fascists. This group organized, in part, because they believed, correctly (in this writer’s opinion), that a smaller group of ‘militant’ counter-protesters clashing with the far-right would amount to folly, and play directly into the hands of the fascists that came to fight.
Across the street (to the east) of the fascist rally was a counter-protest organized by Rose City Antifa and the Anti-Fascist Workers Collective. This protest attracted nearly a thousand people (many who who dressed in ‘black bloc’ clothing), and was billed as the more aggressive of the protests. Many in this group sought to give ‘no platform’ to the fascists and were expected to take a more physically confrontational approach.
Across the street (to the south) was another counter-protest, organized by another socialist group, Class Struggle Workers, which was endorsed by several labor unions and attracted hundreds of people. In reality many counter-protesters walked seamlessly between the rallies, not realizing (or caring) about the political-tactical differences.
There was a lot of talk about occupying the park before the fascists showed up in order to prevent them from having their rally. This tactic was likely impossible before the Nazi killings, simply because there wouldn’t be enough people to make it a reality. After the Nazi murders the balance of forces shifted sharply in favor of the counter-protesters: people were disgusted that the alt-right would act so provocatively after such a tragedy; and the broader community felt a need to take a stand.
Thus, the conditions for mobilizing to stop the rally–and defeat the alt-right fascists outright– became more possible, though unrealizable due to lack of organization: the competing rallies had already divided the forces, and it remains questionable how many attendees would have been ready to risk that level of confrontation.
If thousands had occupied the square the fascists may have faced total defeat; but if only hundreds occupied the square the fascists may have had the brawl they wanted and could have declared victory, rally or no rally. The organizational wheels of the counter-protesters were already set in motion, and were not flexible enough to adjust to the new circumstances.
This gets to the heart of the matter: tactics cannot be separated from power. More power equals more options for tactics. The Left, however, cannot exercise maximum power without mobilizing the broader community, and this requires the United Front strategy, where a broad coalition of groups agree to come together around a single issue that they agree on. More people = more power; this truism is the foundation for successful anti-fascist organizing.
In Portland there was exhaustive debate leading up to the rallies about preventing the fascist rally from proceeding. Mayor Ted Wheeler asked the Trump Administration to pull the rally permit (which was on Federal property; of course Trump did not oblige). Leftist Portland City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly took a more militant stance against the alt-right rally, and the Left were divided against themselves on whether or not it was ok to try to prevent the rally. The conversation had an educational effect on Portland’s Left while also, unintentionally, galvanizing the fascists, who were successfully able to paint themselves as ‘victims of government repression’.
The rally itself proved that asking the government to repress fascists is folly, because during the rally the police were so blatantly pro-fascist that local mainstream media were forced to ask provocative questions:
2) why did the police use rubber bullets and tear gas against hundreds of counter-protesters?
3) why were the police so obviously chummy with the far-right protesters?
The answer is that the majority of police share a far-right political outlook, and are very sympathetic to these movements if not actual members of alt-right groups themselves. A further reason to distrust government action against fascist movements is that, historically, the ruling class has directly supported fascist movements as a hammer against the Left in times of social-economic crisis. The police’s actions in Portland are a microcosm of what to expect from the national establishment in relation to fascism.
There is a big difference between asking the government to stop a fascist rally versus mobilizing independently to stop it. But even with this distinction many Portland liberals –and the Oregon ACLU — loudly protested that the fascists have a right to ‘freedom of speech’.
A very similar debate occurred the last time a real fascist movement existed in the United States, which grew alongside Hitler’s rise to power. In 1939 a mass Nazi rally was organized at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Liberals loudly defended the Nazis’ right to organize, since it was ‘freedom of speech’. Meanwhile in Germany Hitler had already consolidated dictatorial powers and annexed Austria, already having decapitated the Left with concentration camps filled with leaders of the labor union, socialist and communist movements. The Jewish holocaust was just gaining its legs while U.S. liberals demanded that U.S. Nazis be give space to organize.
Ultimately the liberals of today decrying ‘freedom of speech’ for fascists don’t understand what fascism is and the very real threat it represents. The hate crimes exploding across the country–including Portland’s Nazi double murder– are being perpetrated by the vanguard of this fascist movement. They are not ‘crazy’ or ‘deranged’ individuals, but true believers in white supremacy who are emboldened by a movement that is fighting a race war. They are the shock troops.
“Alt-right” supporters were heavily opposed at rally on Sunday (June 4). — (Source: Corey Pein via Vocativ)
Liberals also don’t realize that an actual fascist movement was birthed alongside Trump’s election; the cockroaches have boldly crawled up through the floorboards, and they are organizing for power in a strategic way. Who are their enemies? They say it loudly: “the liberals, socialists, Communists, anarchists”. They are a politically conscious movement that is following the footsteps of successful fascists before them.
But this ignorance of liberals is, in part, why the debate about ‘freedom of speech’ must be secondary to organizing a united front against fascism. An abstract debate around democratic rights will not win the broader community to act against fascism.
Ultimately the only way to crush a rising fascist movement is a larger movement of labor and community groups, requiring that a United Front strategy. A variety of tactics can be implemented under the umbrella strategy of a united front, but without mobilizing the broader community winning is impossible.
Organizing a powerful united front offers the opportunity to educate the broader community about the real threat that fascism represents. Without understanding how fascism crushes working families and ethnic and religious minorities, sections of the broader community will be sympathetic to the alt-right’s ‘freedom of speech’ rhetoric, while others will remain confused or ambivalent about the political issues at stake.
Once the broader population is educated about the issues via a united front, the more likely they’ll be willing to engage in more militant mass action; people also feel more confident about engaging in actions when there are thousands of people involved, rather than dozens or hundreds.
Ultimately the fight for the hearts and minds of the broader community is critical in this struggle, too often ignored by the Left. The United Front makes the broader community its focus; millions of people are watching these demonstrations on TV, and our signs, banners, and chants need to be directed to the TV cameras, so that those watching at home know what side to choose (and perhaps join in the streets).
It’s arguable that the far-right in Portland did a better job promoting its message to the community. The rally’s organizer, Joey Gibson, is a committed activist and excellent public speaker who is serious about growing his movement by any means necessary. His speech was intended to inspire those present while appealing to the broader community. He also appealed to the different factions of the alt-right to come together and stop their petty difference (essentially a ‘united front’ of the far-right).
Meanwhile, many of the counter-protesters seemed uninterested in public opinion, conceding the TV cameras to the fascists. An ongoing chant from the more radical anti-fascist protest was “A-C-A-B, All Cops are Bastards”. And although disliking cops is fine, such chants do very little to gain broader support and show a lack of seriousness in organizing and confronting the alt-right. The united front rally at City Hall was more focused on strategic messaging and appealing to the broader community.
The counter-protests were ultimately successful in proving that the public was against the far-right, and that was itself a victory. However the fascist rally was allowed to continue, and the far-right was able to declare victory through their inspiring speeches that kept morale high as they continue to organize to win.
Actually stopping fascist movements in their track is possible, as opposed to simply protesting them. There are many examples in the U.S. and Canada of crushing incipient fascist movements using the united front strategy, though a larger movement has not been present in the U.S. since the 1930’s.
The most famous case of mass united front action to shut down a fascist movement happened in 1936 in London, when the English Nazis attempted a march and rally through East London (a working class area with a large Jewish population). The ‘Battle of Cable Street’ showcased 20,000+ anti-fascists mobilized against 2,000 fascists and the thousands of police who attempted to clear a march route for the Nazis.
It was a total victory for the anti-fascists: the march was cancelled and the fascist movement lost momentum, since it was exposed as being hated by the vast majority of people who were willing to take bold action against them. The cost to become a fascist was simply too high after the defeat at Cable Street.
The battle for Cable Street has a lot to offer for anti-fascist mobilizations. But before mass direct action is possible, we need a united front movement. The anti-fascist coalition protest in Portland was an important step forward in this regard.
Source: San Francisco Bay View
A further step might be what the Black Panthers did in 1969, when they organized a United Front Against Fascism conference in Oakland that attracted thousands of people from across the country, which spawned organizing committees in different cities. In Portland the coalition that organized the counter-protest could organize a citywide or regional conference. To ensure that such a conference is a genuine united front, it should be co-organized by several Left, Labor and community groups, rather than giving the impression that one group is using the conference for notoriety or recruitment, etc.
Although the Portland protest showed promise in anti-fascist organizing, it also showed that the fascists are stronger than we expected. The alt-right still has momentum and will strive to bait smaller anarchist contingents into street fights, which ultimately benefit the fascists at this stage. With Trump in office the fascists will have plenty of opportunity to engage with a larger base of Trump supporters, defending “their President” against a “dangerous and unreasonable” grouping of “liberals and Communists”. Such a complicated dynamic requires that the left take the situation seriously and organize for power by mobilizing the broader community, by any means necessary.
For 66 years the Glass-Steagall act reduced the risks in the banking system. Eight years after the act was repealed, the banking system blew up threatening the international economy. US taxpayers were forced to come up with $750 billion dollars, a sum much larger than the Pentagon’s budget, in order to bail out the banks. This huge sum was insufficient to do the job. The Federal Reserve had to step in and expand its balance sheet by $4 trillion in order to protect the solvency of banks declared “too big to fail.”
The enormous increase in the supply of dollars known as Quantitative Easing inflated financial asset prices instead of the consumer price index. This rise in bond and stock prices is a major cause of the worsening income and wealth distribution in the United States. The economic polarization has undercut the image and reality of the US as a land of opportunity and has introduced political and economic instability into the life of the country.
These are huge costs and for the benefit only of the rich who were already rich.
So, what we can say about the repeal of Glass-Steagall is that it turned a somewhat egalitarian democracy with a large middle class into the One Percent vs. the 99 percent. The repeal resulted in the destruction of the image of the United States as an open prosperous society. The electorate is very much aware of the decline in their economic situation, and this awareness expressed itself in the last presidential election.
Americans know that the nonsense from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics about a 4.3% unemployment rate and an abundance of new jobs is fake news. The BLS gets the low rate of unemployment by not counting the millions of discouraged workers who cannot find employment. If you haven’t looked for a job in the last 4 weeks, you are not considered unemployed. The birth/death model, a purely theoretical construct, accounts for a large percentage of the non-existent new jobs. The jobs are there by assumption. The jobs are not really there. Moreover, the replacement of full time jobs with part time jobs proceeds. Pension and health care benefits that once were a substantial part of the pay package are being terminated.
It makes perfect sense to separate commercial from investment banking. The taxpayer insured deposits of commercial banking should not serve as backing for investment banking’s creation of risky financial instruments, such as subprime and other derivatives. The US government understood that in 1933, but no longer did in 1999. This deterioration in government competence has cost America dearly.
By merging commercial banking with investment banking, the repeal of Glass-Steagall greatly increased the capability of the banking system to create risky financial instruments for which taxpayer backing was available. So, we have the extraordinary situation that the repeal of Glass-Steagall forced the 99 percent to bail out the One Percent.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall has turned the United States into an unstable economic, political, and social system. We have a situation in which millions of Americans who have lost full time employment with benefits to jobs offshoring, whose lower income employment in part time and contract employment leaves them no discretionary income after payment of interest and fees to the financial system (insurance on home and car, health insurance, credit card interest, car payment interest, student loan interest, home mortgage interest, bank charges for insufficient minimum balance, etc.), are on the hook for bailing out financial institutions that make foolish and risky investments.
This is not politically viable unless Congress and the President are going to resign and turn over the governance of America to Wall Street and the Big Banks. A growing cresendo of voices are saying that this has already happened.
So, where is there any democracy when the One Percent can cover their losses at the expense of the 99 Percent, which is what the repeal of Glass-Steagall guarantees?
Sen. Carter Glass (D–Va.) and Rep. Henry B. Steagall (D–Ala.-3), the co-sponsors of the Glass–Steagall Act. (Source: Wikipedia)
Not only must Glass-Steagall be restored, but also the large banks must be reduced in size. That any corporation is too big to fail is a contradiction of the justification of capitalism. Capitalism’s justification is that those corporations that misuse resources and make losses go out of business, thus releasing the misused resources to those who can use them profitably.
Capitalism is supposed to benefit society, not be dependent on society to bail it out.
I was present when George Champion, former CEO and Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank testified before the Senate Banking Committee against national branch banking. Champion said that it would result in the banks becoming too large and that the branches would suck savings out of local communities for investment in traded financial assets. Consequently, local communities would be faced with a dearth of loanable funds, and local businesses would die or not be born from lack of loanable funds.
I covered the story for Business Week. But despite the facts as laid out by the preeminent banker of our time, the palms had been greased, and the folly proceeded.
As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan Administration, I opposed all financial deregulation. Financial deregulation does nothing but open the gates to fraud and sharp dealing. It allows one institution, even one individual, to make a fortune by wrecking the lives of millions.
The American public is not sufficiently sophisticated to understand these matters, but they know when they are hurting. Few in the House and Senate are sufficiently sophisticated to understand these matters, but they do know that to understand them is not conducive to having their palms greased. So how do the elected representatives manage to represent those who vote them into office?
The answer is that they seldom do.
The question before Congress today is whether they will take the country down for the sake of campaign contributions and cushy jobs if they lose their seat, or will they take personal risks in order to save the country.
America cannot survive if excessive risks and financial fraud can be bailed out by taxpayers.
US Representatives Walter Jones and Marcy Kaptur and members of the House and staff on both sides of the aisle, along with former Goldman Sachs executive Nomi Prins and leaders of citizens’ groups, have arranged a briefing in the House of Representatives on June 14 about the importance of Glass-Steagall to the economic, political, and social stability of the United States. Let your representative know that you do not want the financial responsibility for the reckless financial practices of the big banks. Let your representative know also that you do not want big banks that dominate the financial arena. Let them know that you want the return of Glass-Steagall.
The effort to reduce the financial risks arising from the commingling of commercial and investment banking by requiring stronger capital positions of financial corporations is futile. The 2007-08 financial crisis required the taxpayers and the printing press and an amount of money that exceeded any realistic capital and liquidity requirements for financial institutions.
If we don’t re-enact Glass-Steagall, the risks taken by financial greed will complete the economic destruction of America.
In the capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, a meeting of the defense ministers of the member countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was held on June 7. At the meeting, the members of the delegations made a number of statements concerning both the situation in Syria and the fight international terrorism in general.
First of all, all the representatives agreed that Indian and Pakistani membership that will become true tomorrow will enhance SCO’s security capabilities.
Referring to international problems, the SCO participants concurred that the terrorism in a short time turned into the biggest threat to the global security. At the same time, all the members of the delegations noticed that the situation is aggravating with every passing day by numerous local conflicts in the world and by inability of the Western countries to overcome differences, to form a common and united front against this evil and to work together to build a bastion against terrorism.
In this regard, the Syrian issue has become a key topic of the agenda during the meeting. The SCO-countries gave the highest priority to the question. A detailed briefing session was held for new Member States (India and Pakistan) on the common attitude of the participating countries to the key crisis in the Middle East. As it was noted at the meeting, it is in the Syrian Arab Republic the main forces of the Islamic State are concentrated. It was also stated that the Syrian Arab army coordinating its activities in order to ensure the success operations undermined in the end the potential of the IS fighters and Syria has been “at the forefront of fighting international terrorism” for a long time.
Special attention was paid to the creation of de-escalation areas in Syria, which could contribute to ending the civil war and thus intensifying efforts to combat ISIS and Al-Nusra.
The representatives of SCO-Member countries also noticed that practical steps are being taken to implement the agreements reached at the moment. The priority tasks, namely ensuring the monitoring of all the commitments undertaken, as well as creating conditions for the restoration of the destroyed infrastructure were also highlighted.
The countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization agreed to provide support to each other in Syria and to exchange military experience in conducting counter-terrorism operations. Interaction within the SCO in the future was decided to focus on identifying and anticipating any terrorist activities.
Inside Syria Media Center experts reasonably assume that the Member states will need to create joint effective managing tools to stop penetration of terrorism and radicalism into the SCO’s area of responsibility. A fair guess would be that the special attention would be paid to an operative exchange of the information available on the activities of terrorist groups.
Such a summit is clearly useful for Syria from the point of view of practicality. People in Syria hope the talks will equip the SCO-members better to meet the challenges of terrorism. Syria needs support to be able to tackle the difficulties and to take the steps necessary for a just and lasting peace.
Summary
To be noted is that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), or Shanghai Pact, is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organization which was founded in 1996 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. These countries, except Uzbekistan, had been members of the Shanghai Five, founded in 1996; after the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, the members renamed the organization. On 10 July 2015, the SCO decided to admit India and Pakistan as full members. India and Pakistan signed the memorandum of obligations on 24 June 2016 at Tashkent, thereby starting the formal process of joining the SCO as the full members. Now in Astana the countries are going to become full members.
The meeting of the SCO-defense ministers takes place once a year and the heads of the military departments have the opportunity both to share their views on the events taking place in the world and to work out a common strategy. In addition it is possible to hold bilateral meetings to discuss in detail the plans of military cooperation on the margins of the meeting.
On Sunday, June 7th, Megyn Kelly’s new NBC hour, “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly,” debuted after much advance hoopla about her exclusive interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. LA Times television critic Lorraine Ali wrote that Putin outmaneuvered her, grimacing and smirking all the way, and that it was “a poorly planned match.”
Hell yes. The simple truth is that Kelly asked stupid questions and Putin answered intelligently. How could he not grimace or smirk at Kelly’s appeal to the expertise of U.S. spooks and politicians with classified information that none of the rest of us have seen regarding the alleged Russian hacks that allegedly gave the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump?
“What the experts say is that this couldn’t have been faked, that it’s 100 factors that point to Russia, they say it’s the forensics, it’s the digital fingerprints, it’s the IP addresses, the malware, the encryption keys, the specific pieces of code, that all of them, all of them, point to Russia, and none of them points to anyone other than Russia.” [Megyn Kelly]
During a key session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Pres. Putin was asked repeatedly about accusations of Russian meddling in the presidential election. (Screenshot from NBC News video.)
The audience seemed to enjoy Putin’s response as much as I did:
“What fingerprints? Or hoof prints? Or horn prints? What are you talking about? IP addresses—they can be invented, you know. There are a lot of specialists who can even make it so it comes from your home IP address, as if your three-year-old daughter carried out the election.”
This exchange actually took place at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which began on June 1st and concluded on June 3rd, the day before Putin sat down for the video of his one-on-one interview with Kelly, but NBC editors inexplicably chose to include it in the interview aired Sunday night.
Megyn Kelly had for some reason been invited to moderate at least one panel of the St. Petersburg forum, perhaps because its organizers knew that she would make us—Americans—even more of a laughingstock for allowing our public conversation to be swamped by the ridiculous story that Russians hijacked our election.
In Kelly’s ham-fisted narration of the rest of the interview—which lasted all of 11 minutes—she referred to Putin as a “former KGB spymaster,” “Russia’s strongman for 17 years now,” “the former KGB agent,” etc.
The most successful propaganda ever convinces us that “Western interests” or “U.S. interests” coincide with ours, but “Kremlingate” now rivals the Tonkin Gulf Incident and weapons of mass destruction. If it trips off a nuclear war, it’ll win the prize, even if none of us ordinary folks without nuclear bomb shelters survive to award it.
Putin on defending the Syrian state
Vladimir Putin and Megyn Kelly had a far more interesting exchange about Syria and sarin gas at the St. Petersburg forum. NBC did not include this in the 11 minutes that aired Sunday, but RT America filmed and posted it to YouTube. In this one, Kelly echoed former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, NPR commentator Scott Simon, and other American politicians and pundits who have characterized Bashar-al-Assad as “evil.” She noted that even his alleged co-conspirator Donald Trump called Assad an “evil guy,” as he did after the alleged chemical weapons attack by the Syrian army.
“Our president has said that you’re backing an evil guy there. He said Assad is an evil guy. Do you believe that?”
Putin dismissed the silly question about “evil” with a comic response, then responded that Russia is not defending Assad; it is defending the Syrian state from the fate of Libya, Somalia, and Afghanistan.
“It is not Assad whom we are protecting there. We are protecting the Syrian statehood. We don’t want their interior to be a situation similar to that in Libya, or in Somalia or in Afghanistan, and in Afghanistan, your army has been present for many years, but the situation is not changing for the better. We want to preserve the Syrian statehood. And on the basis of resolving this fundamental issue, we would like them to move towards settling the Syrian issue through political means. Yes, probably everyone that’s there is to blame for something, but let’s not forget that were it not for an active interference from outside, the civil war would probably not have broken out.”
Kelly refused to entertain the idea that preserving the secular Syrian state might help to stabilize the region, or that its collapse would destabilize the region.
Putin also said the same thing that Theodore Postol, MIT Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security, has said— that there is absolutely no evidence that the Syrian army committed the August 4th chemical weapons attack.
“What has President Assad been accused of recently? We know he’s accused about using chemical weapons, but there’s no evidence to support that whatsoever. Right after the incident, we suggested that an inspection should be carried out at the air base from which allegedly the aircraft of President Assad had taken off carrying chemical weapons. If the chemical weapons had been used, then those weapons would have been loaded onto the aircraft, and the cutting edge analyzing equipment would have detected that. But they refused to conduct this kind of inspection, so they are talking a lot, but not doing much.
“We suggested that an inspection should be carried out at the place where the strike took place. They [the Americans] are saying it’s too dangerous. Why is it dangerous if the strike was against the good part of the opposition [according to the Americans]? No, they say, it’s too dangerous.
“There is a representatives of Iraq here, whom we welcome, and Iraqi Kurdistan. The militants used chemical weapons [against Iraqi and Kurdish troops] and the world community recognized it, [as confirmed by Newsweek]. So we know that the militants have chemical weapons, but the OPCP [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] tells us that Syria has destroyed its stocks of chemical weapons.”
Kelly said that we know Assad has used chemical weapons before, and that Russia had acknowledged that in 2013, so the only question is whether or not Assad used chemical weapons on April 4th this year. She then asked whether we weren’t compelled to believe the video evidence of the suffering, dying children.
Putin responded first by asking her to please be precise. Russia, he said, had acknowledged that Assad had chemical weapons, but not that he had used them in 2013. After that, he and President Obama had joined the agreement to dispose of them. Why, again, he asked, had there been no expert inspection after this year’s April 4th chemical weapons attack?
Kelly asked whether we were to believe that this had all been a conspiracy, involving even the World Health Institute and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, who had been involved in the autopsies of the bodies of the victims at Turkey’s Forensic Medicine Institution.
“Are we really to believe that the whole thing was staged, that everybody was in on it? The World Health Organization? The Forensic Medicine Institution? The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons?”
Putin accused Kelly of pretending not to understand the obvious—that the autopsies proved nothing about who had actually used sarin gas.
“The answer is very simple and you know it. Yes, sarin could have been used by someone, but not by Assad. It could have been used by someone in order to accuse President Assad. So we have to understand who is to blame and otherwise, if there is no true investigation, it’s only going to play into the hands of those who orchestrated it.
“I’d like to ask you a question, why didn’t everyone go right away to inspect the air base, to the spot where chemical weapons allegedly had been used? Why didn’t they want to go to see the aircraft that had been allegedly used to perform this strike? The answer is very simple. Because they were afraid that everything, the truth, would come to light.
“What you are telling me doesn’t convince me of anything. It just persuades me that we’d better not engage in a tug of war there or speculate. We’ve got to pull our efforts together to counter real threats, and we know what these real threats are.
“The U.S. has very far—yes, there was an explosion there, people suffered, for which we offer our condolences. But we also know what terrorism is all about. We have seen its manifestations, and no one should try to use terrorists to address short term political interests, and there are attempts at that. Yes, there are attempts at using terrorists against—say, Assad.
“Why use them? Because no one else would fight. I do not think it’s worthwhile using these terrorists today, because tomorrow it’s going to cost you a lot. When Al-Qaeda was created in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union, they [U.S. policymakers] didn’t know that it would strike the U.S. on 9/11. We’ve got to think about negative ramifications in the long term.”
Using terrorists? Really? Vladimir Putin said that the U.S. is using terrorists against Assad and that the same terrorists are likely to bite back.
Shouldn’t Megyn Kelly challenge that? RT cut the video they posted to YouTube at the end of Putin’s statement, but NBC no doubt had video of the entire event, though they used only one short clip.
Don’t most American who watch NBC imagine that the U.S. is fighting terrorists in Syria? Shouldn’t they know that Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of instead “using terrorists” against Bashar-al-Assad? Wouldn’t they want to hear Megyn Kelly respond to that? Or ignore it? But damn if that video wasn’t left in the trash on NBC’s hard drive.
This text is prepared in the context of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s presentation the Korea International Peace Forum’s June 10th commemoration conference, marking the 30th anniversary of the 1987 June Democratic Uprising (6월 민주항쟁), ROK National Assembly, Seoul, June 10, 2017.
The 1987 June Democratic Uprising was a nationwide grassroots movement in the Republic of Korea (ROK) directed against the military regime of president Chun Doo-hwan, a ROK army general who came to power in 1979 following a military coup and the assassination of President General Park Chung-hee.
Chun Doo-hwan (1979-1987) had announced the appointment of a new military dictator: Army General Roh Tae-woo as the next unelected president of the ROK.
This self-proclaimed decision in defiance of public sentiment was conducive to the June 1987 mass movement in support of constitutional reform with a view to instating the holding of direct presidential elections. While the June movement put an end to unelected military rule, what was achieved was a military-civilian transition whereby General Roh-Tae-woo, was instated through the conduct of presidential elections. (In 1996, Roh was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison on bribery, mutiny and sedition charges.)
While the June movement was a landmark, it did not modify the social hierarchy, the corrupt political and corporate networks, the authoritarian nature of the leading corporate giants (Chaebols), not to mention the shadow decision making processes within the military and intelligence apparatus, conducted in liaison with Washington.
Thirty years later, the irony of history is that another grassroots protest movement, The Candle Light Movement in part inspired by the 1987 June Uprising successfully sought the impeachment of president Park Guen-hye, daughter of General Park Chung-hee who ruled the ROK from 1963 to 1979. According to media reports, the mega protests gained impetus on November 12, 2016 with one million protesters, rising to 1,9 million on November 19, and culminating on December 3, with 2,3 million. “The 2.3 million mega-protest … was a critical turning point that halted Park’s last attempt to escape impeachmentUPP Rep. Lee Seok-ki.(right)
The government backlashed on grassroots organizations and the labor movement. In turn, under Mrs. Park’s presidency, the neocolonial relationship exerted by the US was reinforced with particular emphasis on expanded militarization.
Rep. Lee Seok-ki of the United Progressive Party (UPP) was accused without evidence of “plotting to overthrow the ROK government” of president Park Guen hye.
That government was indeed overthrown, by the people’s Candlelight movement, by a democratic process which was ratified by the constitutional court.
If convicted on charges of bribery, corruption, abuse of power, coercion and leaking government secrets (in a total of 18 cases), Park Guen-hye faces between 10 years to life in prison. Bear in mind, these accusations are but the tip of the iceberg, they do not include Ms. Park orders to arbitrarily arrest her political opponents and repeal fundamental civil rights.
In a bitter irony, it was the constitutional court under pressure from the Conservative Party, which ratified president Park’s baseless accusations against Rep. Lee Seok-ki, which led to his imprisonment. That erroneous decision by the Constitutional Court, which was in part upheld by the Supreme Court, invoking the 1948 National Security Act must be challenged and annulled.
Park Geun-hye at the Seoul central district court in South Korea. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
Reunification and The Sunshine Policy
The Sunshine policy initially established under the government of Kim Dae-jung with a view to seeking North-South cooperation had already been abolished by Park Guen hye’s predecessor president Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013). In turn, this period was marked by a heightened atmosphere of confrontation between North and South, marked by successive war games.
The administrations of both presidents Lee and Park were largely instrumental in repealing the Sunshine Policy which had been actively pursued during the Roh Moo-hyun administration (2003-2008), with increased public sentiment in favor of reunification of North and South Korea.
Sunshine 2.0. The Demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula
The legacy of history is fundamental: From the outset in 1945 as well as in the wake of the Korean war (1950-53), US interference and military presence in the ROK has been the main obstacle to the pursuit of democracy and national sovereignty.
Washington has consistently played a role in ROK politics, with a view to ensuring its hegemonic objectives in East Asia. The impeached president Mrs. Park served as an instrument of the US administration.
Will the popular movement against the impeached president prevail?
It was conducive to the conduct of new presidential elections leading to the election of Moon Jae-in as president of the ROK.
Supported by the Candle Light movement, Moon Jae-in’s presidency potentially constitutes a watershed, a political as well as geopolitical landmark, an avenue towards national sovereignty in defiance of US interference, a potential break with a foregone era of authoritarian rule.
President Moon Jae-in had worked closely with president Roh Moo-hyun as his chef de cabinet. He has confirmed his unbending commitment in favor of dialogue and cooperation with Pyongyang, under what is being dubbed Sunshine 2.0 Policy, while also maintaining the ROK’s relationship with the US.
While President Moon Jae-in (left) is firmly opposed to the DPRK’s nuclear program, he has nonetheless taken a firm stance against the deployment of the US-supplied Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence Missile Defence System (THAAD).
In recent developments, the ROK Defense Ministry acting behind his back took the initiative (May 30) of bringing in four more launchers for the THAAD missile system. “President Moon said that it’s ‘very shocking’ after receiving a report” on the incident from his national security director” (Morningstar, May 30, 2017)
President Moon’s commitment to cooperation with North Korea coupled with demilitarization, will require redefining the ROK-US relationship in military affairs. This is the crucial issue.
The World is at a dangerous crossroads: How will the policies of President’s Moon’s administration affect the broader East Asia geopolitical context marked by US threats of military action (including the use of nuclear weapons) not only against North Korea but also against China and Russia?
In the present context, the US has de facto control over ROK foreign policy as well as North South Korea relations. Under the OPCOM agreement, the Pentagon controls the command structure of the ROK armed forces.
Ultimately this is what has to be addressed with a view to establishing a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula and the broader East Asian region.
The Repeal of OPCON and the ROK-US Combined Forces Command (CFC)
In 2014, the government of President Park Geun-hye postponed the repeal of the OPCON (Operations Command) agreement “until the mid-2020s”. What this signified is that “in the event of conflict” all ROK forces are under the command of a US General appointed by the Pentagon, rather than under that of the ROK President and Commander in Chief.
It goes without saying that national sovereignty cannot reasonably be achieved without the annulment of the OPCON agreement as well as the ROK – US Combined Forces Command (CFC) structure.
As we recall, in 1978 a binational Republic of Korea – United States Combined Forces Command (CFC), was created under the presidency of General Park (military dictator and father of impeached president Park Guen-hye). In substance, this was a change in labels in relation to the so-called UN Command.
“Ever since the Korean War, the allies have agreed that the American four-star would be in “Operational Control” (OPCON) of both ROK and US military forces in wartime …. Before 1978, this was accomplished through the United Nations Command. Since then it has been the CFC [US Combined Forces Command (CFC) structure]. (Brookings Institute)
Moreover, the Command of the US General under the renegotiated OPCON (2014) remains fully operational inasmuch as the 1953 Armistice (which legally constitutes a temporary ceasefire) is not replaced by a peace treaty.
The 1953 Armistice Agreement
What underlies the 1953 Armistice Agreement is that one of the warring parties, namely the US has consistently threatened to wage war on the DPRK for the last 64 years.
The US has on countless occasions violated the Armistice Agreement. It has remained on a war footing. Casually ignored by the Western media and the international community, the US has actively deployed nuclear weapons targeted at North Korea for more than half a century in violation of article 13b) of the Armistice agreement. More recently it has deployed the so-called THAAD missiles largely directed against China and Russia.
The US is still at war with North Korea. The armistice agreement signed in July 1953 –which legally constitutes a “temporary ceasefire” between the warring parties (US, North Korea and China’s Volunteer Army)– must be rescinded through the signing of a long-lasting peace agreement.
The US has not only violated the armistice agreement, it has consistently refused to enter into peace negotiations with Pyongyang, with a view to maintaining its military presence in South Korea as well as shunting a process of normalization and cooperation between the ROK and the DPRK.
Towards a Bilateral North-South Peace Agreement
If one of the signatories of the Armistice refuses to sign a Peace Agreement, what should be contemplated is the formulation of a comprehensive Bilateral North-South Peace Agreement, which would de facto lead to rescinding the 1953 armistice.
What should be sought is that the “state of war” between the US and the DPRK (which prevails under the armistice agreement) be in a sense “side-tracked” and annulled by the signing of a comprehensive bilateral North-South peace agreement, coupled with cooperation and interchange.
This proposed far-reaching agreement between Seoul and Pyongyang would assert peace on the Korean peninsula –failing the signing of a peace agreement between the signatories of the 1953 Armistice agreement. The legal formulation of this bilateral entente is crucial. The bilateral arrangement would in effect bypass Washington’s refusal. It would establish the basis of peace on the Korean peninsula, without foreign intervention, namely without Washington dictating its conditions. It would require the concurrent withdrawal of US troops from the ROK and the repeal of the OPCON agreement.
Bear in mind, the US was involved in the de facto abrogation of paragraph 13(d) of the Armistice agreement, which forecloses the parties from entering new weapons into Korea. In 1956, Washington brought in and installed nuclear weapons facilities into South Korea. In so doing, the U.S. not only abrogated paragraph 13(d), it abrogated the entire Armistice agreement through the deployment of US troops and weapons systems in the ROK.
Moreover, it should be noted that the militarization of the ROK under the OPCOM agreement, including the development of new military bases, is also largely intent upon using the Korean peninsula as a military launchpad threatening both China and Russia. Under OPCOM, “in the case of war”, the entire force of the ROK would be mobilized under US command against China or Russia.
The THAAD missiles are deployed in South Korea, against China, Russia and North Korea. Washington states that THAAD is solely intended as a Missile Shield against North Korea.
Similarly, the Jeju island military base is largely intended to threaten China.
THAAD System
The Jeju island military base is also directed against China.
Less than 500km from Shanghai
Moreover, Washington is intent upon creating political divisions in East Asia not only between the ROK and the DPRK but also between North Korea and China, with a view to ultimately isolating the DPRK.
In a bitter irony, US military facilities in the ROK (including Jeju Island) are being used to threaten China as part of a process of military encirclement. Needless to say, permanent peace on the Korean peninsula as well as in the broader East Asia region as defined under a bilateral North-South agreement would require the repeal of both the Armistice agreement as well as OPCOM, including the withdrawal of US troops from the ROK.
It is important that the bilateral peace talks between the ROK with DPRK under the helm of President Moon Jae-in be conducted without the participation or interference of outside parties. These discussions must address the withdrawal of all US occupation forces as well as the removal of economic sanctions directed against North Korea.
The exclusion of US military presence and the withdrawal of the 28,500 occupation forces should be a sine qua non requirement of a bilateral ROK-DPRK Peace Treaty.
The Republic of Korea’s Relationship with the United States
Military rule was imposed by the United States starting in the immediate wake of World War II. At the Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945), the US and the Soviet Union agreed to dividing Korea, along the 38th parallel.
There was no “Liberation” of Korea following the entry of US forces. Quite the opposite. A US military government was established in South Korea on September 8, 1945, three weeks after the surrender of Japan on August 15th 1945. Moreover, Japanese officials in South Korea assisted the US Army Military Government (USAMG) (1945-48) led by General Hodge in ensuring this transition. Japanese colonial administrators in Seoul as well as their Korean police officials worked hand in glove with the new colonial masters.
While Japan was treated as a defeated Empire, South Korea was identified as a colonial territory to be administered under US military rule and US occupation forces. America’s handpicked appointee Sygman Rhee [left] was flown into Seoul in October 1945, in General Douglas MacArthur’s personal airplane
US Sponsored Military Dictatorship
The underlying model of military dictatorship applied in the ROK from 1945 to 1987 was not substantially different to what was imposed by Washington in Latin America and South East Asia.
At the same time, as of the 1980s, a major shift in US foreign policy occurred. US interventionism was geared towards the replacement of military regimes by compliant “democratic governments”, which would not in any way weaken or jeopardize America’s interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.
Most of the US sponsored military dictatorships in the course of the 1980s were replaced by US sponsored democracies, (e.g. Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Philippines, Indonesia). Meanwhile, US increasingly intervenes in national elections, promotes political leaders and instigates “regime change”.
What has developed in many countries is a facade of democracy, what might be described as a “democratic dictatorship”.
Sweeping macro-economic reforms are often imposed. Democratically elected leaders continue to be threatened if they do not conform, heads of state are often co-opted.
What the foregoing suggests is that the repeal of authoritarian rule in the ROK, with government’s run by the military replaced by an elected president, does not necessarily imply a shift in the structure of the State.
Financial warfare directed against the Republic of Korea
As we recall, in the ROK, the democratically elected president Kim Dae jung had been instructed by Washington in no uncertain terms (prior to the elections) to implement sweeping macro-economic reforms in response to the speculative onslaught against the Korean Won in 1997 at the height of the Asian crisis.
Succumbing to political pressure, president Kim Dae-jung, a former dissident, political prisoner and starch opponent of the US backed military regimes of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, had caved in to Wall Street and Washington prior to his formal inauguration as the country’s democratically elected president.
In fact Washington had demanded through its embassy in Seoul that all three candidates in the presidential race commit themselves to adopting the IMF sponsored “bailout”. Kim Dae-jung was committed to democracy and national sovereignty. He had the support of the Korean people. Yet what occurred was a process of political arm twisting both prior as well as in the wake of the 1997 presidential elections. Kim Dae jung remained firmly opposed to the IMF bailout agreement. He candidly warned public opinion and accused the outgoing government of organising a massive sell-out of the Korean economy:
“Foreign investors can freely buy our entire financial sector, including 26 banks, 27 securities firms, 12 insurance companies and 21 merchant banks, all of which are listed on the Korean Stock Exchange, for just 5.5 trillion won,’ that is, $3.7 billion.” (quoted in Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003)
The 1997 Asian crisis was engineered. It was the result of financial manipulation. The ROK had been the object of a deliberate process of economic destabilization instigated by powerful financial institutions. Yet in the wake of the election president Kim Dae-jung was obliged to conform to Washington’s demands.
What the foregoing signifies is that a democratically elected government does not in itself ensure democracy and national sovereignty.
Reunification. The Road Ahead
America’s neo-colonial practice applied both prior and in the post World War period has been geared towards weakening the nation state. Washington seeks through military and non-military means the partition and fracture of independent countries. (eg. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Central America, Iraq, Syria, Sudan). This foreign policy agenda focussing on fracture and partition also applies to Korea.
There is only one Korean Nation. Washington opposes reunification because a united Korean Nation would weaken US hegemony in East Asia.
Reunification would create a competing industrial and military power and nation state (with advanced technological and scientific capabilities) which would assert its sovereignty, establish trade relations with neighbouring countries (including Russia and China) without the interference of Washington.
It is worth noting in this regard, that US foreign policy and military planners have already established their own scenario of “reunification” predicated on maintaining US occupation troops in Korea. Similarly, what is envisaged by Washington is a framework which would enable “foreign investors” to penetrate and pillage the North Korean economy.
Washington’s objective is to impose the terms of Korea’s reunification. The NeoCons “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC) published in 2000 had intimated that in a “post unification scenario”, the number of US troops (currently at 28,500) should be increased and that US military presence should be extended to North Korea.
In a reunified Korea, the military mandate of the US garrison would be to implement so-called “stability operations in North Korea”:
While Korea unification might call for the reduction in American presence on the peninsula and a transformation of U.S force posture in Korea, the changes would really reflect a change in their mission – and changing technological realities – not the termination of their mission. Moreover, in any realistic post-unification scenario, U.S. forces are likely to have some role in stability operations in North Korea. It is premature to speculate on the precise size and composition of a post-unification U.S. presence in Korea, but it is not too early to recognize that the presence of American forces in Korea serves a larger and longer-range strategic purpose. For the present, any reduction in capabilities of the current U.S. garrison on the peninsula would be unwise. If anything, there is a need to bolster them, especially with respect to their ability to defend against missile attacks and to limit the effects of North Korea’s massive artillery capability. In time, or with unification, the structure of these units will change and their manpower levels fluctuate, but U.S. presence in this corner of Asia should continue. 36 (PNAC, Rebuilding America`s Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, p. 18, emphasis added)
Washington’s intentions are crystal clear.
Concluding Remarks
It should be understood that a US led war against North Korea would engulf the entire Korean nation.
The US sponsored state of war is directed against both North and South Korea. It is characterised by persistent military threats (including the use of nuclear weapons) against the DPRK.
It also threatens the ROK which has been under US military occupation since September 1945. Currently there are 28,500 US troops in South Korea. Yet under the US-ROK OPCOM (joint defense agreement) discussed earlier, all ROK forces are under US command.
Given the geography of the Korean peninsula, the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea would inevitably also engulf South Korea. This fact is known and understood by US military planners.
What has to be emphasized in relation to Sunshine 2.0 Policy is that the US and the ROK cannot be “Allies” inasmuch as the US threatens to wage war on North Korea.
The “real alliance” is that which unifies and reunites North and South Korea through dialogue against foreign intrusion and aggression.
The US is in a state of war against the entire Korean Nation. And what this requires is the holding of bilateral talks between the ROK and the DPRK with a view to signing an agreement which nullifies the Armistice and sets the term of a bilateral “Peace Treaty”. In turn this agreement would set the stage for the exclusion of US military presence and the withdrawal of the 28,500 US forces.
Moreover, pursuant to bilateral Peace negotiations, the ROK-US OPCOM agreement which places ROK forces under US command should be rescinded. All ROK troops would thereafter be brought under national ROK command.
Bilateral consultations should also be undertaken with a view to further developing economic, technological, cultural and educational cooperation between the ROK and the DPRK.
Without the US in the background pulling the strings under OPCOM, the threat of war would be replaced by dialogue. The first priority, therefore would be to rescind OPCOM.
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This text is prepared in the context of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s presentation the Korea International Peace Forum’s June 10th commemoration conference, marking the 30th anniversary of the 1987 June Democratic Uprising (6월 민주항쟁), ROK National Assembly, Seoul, June 10, 2017.
The 1987 June Democratic Uprising was a nationwide grassroots movement in the Republic of Korea (ROK) directed against the military regime of president Chun Doo-hwan, a ROK army general who came to power in 1979 following a military coup and the assassination of President General Park Chung-hee.
Chun Doo-hwan (1979-1987) had announced the appointment of a new military dictator: Army General Roh Tae-woo as the next unelected president of the ROK.
This self-proclaimed decision in defiance of public sentiment was conducive to the June 1987 mass movement in support of constitutional reform with a view to instating the holding of direct presidential elections. While the June movement put an end to unelected military rule, what was achieved was a military-civilian transition whereby General Roh-Tae-woo, was instated through the conduct of presidential elections. (In 1996, Roh was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison on bribery, mutiny and sedition charges.)
While the June movement was a landmark, it did not modify the social hierarchy, the corrupt political and corporate networks, the authoritarian nature of the leading corporate giants (Chaebols), not to mention the shadow decision making processes within the military and intelligence apparatus, conducted in liaison with Washington.
Thirty years later, the irony of history is that another grassroots protest movement, The Candle Light Movement in part inspired by the 1987 June Uprising successfully sought the impeachment of president Park Guen-hye, daughter of General Park Chung-hee who ruled the ROK from 1963 to 1979. According to media reports, the mega protests gained impetus on November 12, 2016 with one million protesters, rising to 1,9 million on November 19, and culminating on December 3, with 2,3 million. “The 2.3 million mega-protest … was a critical turning point that halted Park’s last attempt to escape impeachmentUPP Rep. Lee Seok-ki.(right)
The government backlashed on grassroots organizations and the labor movement. In turn, under Mrs. Park’s presidency, the neocolonial relationship exerted by the US was reinforced with particular emphasis on expanded militarization.
Rep. Lee Seok-ki of the United Progressive Party (UPP) was accused without evidence of “plotting to overthrow the ROK government” of president Park Guen hye.
That government was indeed overthrown, by the people’s Candlelight movement, by a democratic process which was ratified by the constitutional court.
If convicted on charges of bribery, corruption, abuse of power, coercion and leaking government secrets (in a total of 18 cases), Park Guen-hye faces between 10 years to life in prison. Bear in mind, these accusations are but the tip of the iceberg, they do not include Ms. Park orders to arbitrarily arrest her political opponents and repeal fundamental civil rights.
In a bitter irony, it was the constitutional court under pressure from the Conservative Party, which ratified president Park’s baseless accusations against Rep. Lee Seok-ki, which led to his imprisonment. That erroneous decision by the Constitutional Court, which was in part upheld by the Supreme Court, invoking the 1948 National Security Act must be challenged and annulled.
Park Geun-hye at the Seoul central district court in South Korea. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
Reunification and The Sunshine Policy
The Sunshine policy initially established under the government of Kim Dae-jung with a view to seeking North-South cooperation had already been abolished by Park Guen hye’s predecessor president Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013). In turn, this period was marked by a heightened atmosphere of confrontation between North and South, marked by successive war games.
The administrations of both presidents Lee and Park were largely instrumental in repealing the Sunshine Policy which had been actively pursued during the Roh Moo-hyun administration (2003-2008), with increased public sentiment in favor of reunification of North and South Korea.
Sunshine 2.0. The Demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula
The legacy of history is fundamental: From the outset in 1945 as well as in the wake of the Korean war (1950-53), US interference and military presence in the ROK has been the main obstacle to the pursuit of democracy and national sovereignty.
Washington has consistently played a role in ROK politics, with a view to ensuring its hegemonic objectives in East Asia. The impeached president Mrs. Park served as an instrument of the US administration.
Will the popular movement against the impeached president prevail?
It was conducive to the conduct of new presidential elections leading to the election of Moon Jae-in as president of the ROK.
Supported by the Candle Light movement, Moon Jae-in’s presidency potentially constitutes a watershed, a political as well as geopolitical landmark, an avenue towards national sovereignty in defiance of US interference, a potential break with a foregone era of authoritarian rule.
President Moon Jae-in had worked closely with president Roh Moo-hyun as his chef de cabinet. He has confirmed his unbending commitment in favor of dialogue and cooperation with Pyongyang, under what is being dubbed Sunshine 2.0 Policy, while also maintaining the ROK’s relationship with the US.
While President Moon Jae-in (left) is firmly opposed to the DPRK’s nuclear program, he has nonetheless taken a firm stance against the deployment of the US-supplied Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence Missile Defence System (THAAD).
In recent developments, the ROK Defense Ministry acting behind his back took the initiative (May 30) of bringing in four more launchers for the THAAD missile system. “President Moon said that it’s ‘very shocking’ after receiving a report” on the incident from his national security director” (Morningstar, May 30, 2017)
President Moon’s commitment to cooperation with North Korea coupled with demilitarization, will require redefining the ROK-US relationship in military affairs. This is the crucial issue.
The World is at a dangerous crossroads: How will the policies of President’s Moon’s administration affect the broader East Asia geopolitical context marked by US threats of military action (including the use of nuclear weapons) not only against North Korea but also against China and Russia?
In the present context, the US has de facto control over ROK foreign policy as well as North South Korea relations. Under the OPCOM agreement, the Pentagon controls the command structure of the ROK armed forces.
Ultimately this is what has to be addressed with a view to establishing a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula and the broader East Asian region.
The Repeal of OPCON and the ROK-US Combined Forces Command (CFC)
In 2014, the government of President Park Geun-hye postponed the repeal of the OPCON (Operations Command) agreement “until the mid-2020s”. What this signified is that “in the event of conflict” all ROK forces are under the command of a US General appointed by the Pentagon, rather than under that of the ROK President and Commander in Chief.
It goes without saying that national sovereignty cannot reasonably be achieved without the annulment of the OPCON agreement as well as the ROK – US Combined Forces Command (CFC) structure.
As we recall, in 1978 a binational Republic of Korea – United States Combined Forces Command (CFC), was created under the presidency of General Park (military dictator and father of impeached president Park Guen-hye). In substance, this was a change in labels in relation to the so-called UN Command.
“Ever since the Korean War, the allies have agreed that the American four-star would be in “Operational Control” (OPCON) of both ROK and US military forces in wartime …. Before 1978, this was accomplished through the United Nations Command. Since then it has been the CFC [US Combined Forces Command (CFC) structure]. (Brookings Institute)
Moreover, the Command of the US General under the renegotiated OPCON (2014) remains fully operational inasmuch as the 1953 Armistice (which legally constitutes a temporary ceasefire) is not replaced by a peace treaty.
The 1953 Armistice Agreement
What underlies the 1953 Armistice Agreement is that one of the warring parties, namely the US has consistently threatened to wage war on the DPRK for the last 64 years.
The US has on countless occasions violated the Armistice Agreement. It has remained on a war footing. Casually ignored by the Western media and the international community, the US has actively deployed nuclear weapons targeted at North Korea for more than half a century in violation of article 13b) of the Armistice agreement. More recently it has deployed the so-called THAAD missiles largely directed against China and Russia.
The US is still at war with North Korea. The armistice agreement signed in July 1953 –which legally constitutes a “temporary ceasefire” between the warring parties (US, North Korea and China’s Volunteer Army)– must be rescinded through the signing of a long-lasting peace agreement.
The US has not only violated the armistice agreement, it has consistently refused to enter into peace negotiations with Pyongyang, with a view to maintaining its military presence in South Korea as well as shunting a process of normalization and cooperation between the ROK and the DPRK.
Towards a Bilateral North-South Peace Agreement
If one of the signatories of the Armistice refuses to sign a Peace Agreement, what should be contemplated is the formulation of a comprehensive Bilateral North-South Peace Agreement, which would de facto lead to rescinding the 1953 armistice.
What should be sought is that the “state of war” between the US and the DPRK (which prevails under the armistice agreement) be in a sense “side-tracked” and annulled by the signing of a comprehensive bilateral North-South peace agreement, coupled with cooperation and interchange.
This proposed far-reaching agreement between Seoul and Pyongyang would assert peace on the Korean peninsula –failing the signing of a peace agreement between the signatories of the 1953 Armistice agreement. The legal formulation of this bilateral entente is crucial. The bilateral arrangement would in effect bypass Washington’s refusal. It would establish the basis of peace on the Korean peninsula, without foreign intervention, namely without Washington dictating its conditions. It would require the concurrent withdrawal of US troops from the ROK and the repeal of the OPCON agreement.
Bear in mind, the US was involved in the de facto abrogation of paragraph 13(d) of the Armistice agreement, which forecloses the parties from entering new weapons into Korea. In 1956, Washington brought in and installed nuclear weapons facilities into South Korea. In so doing, the U.S. not only abrogated paragraph 13(d), it abrogated the entire Armistice agreement through the deployment of US troops and weapons systems in the ROK.
Moreover, it should be noted that the militarization of the ROK under the OPCOM agreement, including the development of new military bases, is also largely intent upon using the Korean peninsula as a military launchpad threatening both China and Russia. Under OPCOM, “in the case of war”, the entire force of the ROK would be mobilized under US command against China or Russia.
The THAAD missiles are deployed in South Korea, against China, Russia and North Korea. Washington states that THAAD is solely intended as a Missile Shield against North Korea.
Similarly, the Jeju island military base is largely intended to threaten China.
THAAD System
The Jeju island military base is also directed against China.
Less than 500km from Shanghai
Moreover, Washington is intent upon creating political divisions in East Asia not only between the ROK and the DPRK but also between North Korea and China, with a view to ultimately isolating the DPRK.
In a bitter irony, US military facilities in the ROK (including Jeju Island) are being used to threaten China as part of a process of military encirclement. Needless to say, permanent peace on the Korean peninsula as well as in the broader East Asia region as defined under a bilateral North-South agreement would require the repeal of both the Armistice agreement as well as OPCOM, including the withdrawal of US troops from the ROK.
It is important that the bilateral peace talks between the ROK with DPRK under the helm of President Moon Jae-in be conducted without the participation or interference of outside parties. These discussions must address the withdrawal of all US occupation forces as well as the removal of economic sanctions directed against North Korea.
The exclusion of US military presence and the withdrawal of the 28,500 occupation forces should be a sine qua non requirement of a bilateral ROK-DPRK Peace Treaty.
The Republic of Korea’s Relationship with the United States
Military rule was imposed by the United States starting in the immediate wake of World War II. At the Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945), the US and the Soviet Union agreed to dividing Korea, along the 38th parallel.
There was no “Liberation” of Korea following the entry of US forces. Quite the opposite. A US military government was established in South Korea on September 8, 1945, three weeks after the surrender of Japan on August 15th 1945. Moreover, Japanese officials in South Korea assisted the US Army Military Government (USAMG) (1945-48) led by General Hodge in ensuring this transition. Japanese colonial administrators in Seoul as well as their Korean police officials worked hand in glove with the new colonial masters.
While Japan was treated as a defeated Empire, South Korea was identified as a colonial territory to be administered under US military rule and US occupation forces. America’s handpicked appointee Sygman Rhee [left] was flown into Seoul in October 1945, in General Douglas MacArthur’s personal airplane
US Sponsored Military Dictatorship
The underlying model of military dictatorship applied in the ROK from 1945 to 1987 was not substantially different to what was imposed by Washington in Latin America and South East Asia.
At the same time, as of the 1980s, a major shift in US foreign policy occurred. US interventionism was geared towards the replacement of military regimes by compliant “democratic governments”, which would not in any way weaken or jeopardize America’s interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.
Most of the US sponsored military dictatorships in the course of the 1980s were replaced by US sponsored democracies, (e.g. Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Philippines, Indonesia). Meanwhile, US increasingly intervenes in national elections, promotes political leaders and instigates “regime change”.
What has developed in many countries is a facade of democracy, what might be described as a “democratic dictatorship”.
Sweeping macro-economic reforms are often imposed. Democratically elected leaders continue to be threatened if they do not conform, heads of state are often co-opted.
What the foregoing suggests is that the repeal of authoritarian rule in the ROK, with government’s run by the military replaced by an elected president, does not necessarily imply a shift in the structure of the State.
Financial warfare directed against the Republic of Korea
As we recall, in the ROK, the democratically elected president Kim Dae jung had been instructed by Washington in no uncertain terms (prior to the elections) to implement sweeping macro-economic reforms in response to the speculative onslaught against the Korean Won in 1997 at the height of the Asian crisis.
Succumbing to political pressure, president Kim Dae-jung, a former dissident, political prisoner and starch opponent of the US backed military regimes of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, had caved in to Wall Street and Washington prior to his formal inauguration as the country’s democratically elected president.
In fact Washington had demanded through its embassy in Seoul that all three candidates in the presidential race commit themselves to adopting the IMF sponsored “bailout”. Kim Dae-jung was committed to democracy and national sovereignty. He had the support of the Korean people. Yet what occurred was a process of political arm twisting both prior as well as in the wake of the 1997 presidential elections. Kim Dae jung remained firmly opposed to the IMF bailout agreement. He candidly warned public opinion and accused the outgoing government of organising a massive sell-out of the Korean economy:
“Foreign investors can freely buy our entire financial sector, including 26 banks, 27 securities firms, 12 insurance companies and 21 merchant banks, all of which are listed on the Korean Stock Exchange, for just 5.5 trillion won,’ that is, $3.7 billion.” (quoted in Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003)
The 1997 Asian crisis was engineered. It was the result of financial manipulation. The ROK had been the object of a deliberate process of economic destabilization instigated by powerful financial institutions. Yet in the wake of the election president Kim Dae-jung was obliged to conform to Washington’s demands.
What the foregoing signifies is that a democratically elected government does not in itself ensure democracy and national sovereignty.
Reunification. The Road Ahead
America’s neo-colonial practice applied both prior and in the post World War period has been geared towards weakening the nation state. Washington seeks through military and non-military means the partition and fracture of independent countries. (eg. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Central America, Iraq, Syria, Sudan). This foreign policy agenda focussing on fracture and partition also applies to Korea.
There is only one Korean Nation. Washington opposes reunification because a united Korean Nation would weaken US hegemony in East Asia.
Reunification would create a competing industrial and military power and nation state (with advanced technological and scientific capabilities) which would assert its sovereignty, establish trade relations with neighbouring countries (including Russia and China) without the interference of Washington.
It is worth noting in this regard, that US foreign policy and military planners have already established their own scenario of “reunification” predicated on maintaining US occupation troops in Korea. Similarly, what is envisaged by Washington is a framework which would enable “foreign investors” to penetrate and pillage the North Korean economy.
Washington’s objective is to impose the terms of Korea’s reunification. The NeoCons “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC) published in 2000 had intimated that in a “post unification scenario”, the number of US troops (currently at 28,500) should be increased and that US military presence should be extended to North Korea.
In a reunified Korea, the military mandate of the US garrison would be to implement so-called “stability operations in North Korea”:
While Korea unification might call for the reduction in American presence on the peninsula and a transformation of U.S force posture in Korea, the changes would really reflect a change in their mission – and changing technological realities – not the termination of their mission. Moreover, in any realistic post-unification scenario, U.S. forces are likely to have some role in stability operations in North Korea. It is premature to speculate on the precise size and composition of a post-unification U.S. presence in Korea, but it is not too early to recognize that the presence of American forces in Korea serves a larger and longer-range strategic purpose. For the present, any reduction in capabilities of the current U.S. garrison on the peninsula would be unwise. If anything, there is a need to bolster them, especially with respect to their ability to defend against missile attacks and to limit the effects of North Korea’s massive artillery capability. In time, or with unification, the structure of these units will change and their manpower levels fluctuate, but U.S. presence in this corner of Asia should continue. 36 (PNAC, Rebuilding America`s Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, p. 18, emphasis added)
Washington’s intentions are crystal clear.
Concluding Remarks
It should be understood that a US led war against North Korea would engulf the entire Korean nation.
The US sponsored state of war is directed against both North and South Korea. It is characterised by persistent military threats (including the use of nuclear weapons) against the DPRK.
It also threatens the ROK which has been under US military occupation since September 1945. Currently there are 28,500 US troops in South Korea. Yet under the US-ROK OPCOM (joint defense agreement) discussed earlier, all ROK forces are under US command.
Given the geography of the Korean peninsula, the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea would inevitably also engulf South Korea. This fact is known and understood by US military planners.
What has to be emphasized in relation to Sunshine 2.0 Policy is that the US and the ROK cannot be “Allies” inasmuch as the US threatens to wage war on North Korea.
The “real alliance” is that which unifies and reunites North and South Korea through dialogue against foreign intrusion and aggression.
The US is in a state of war against the entire Korean Nation. And what this requires is the holding of bilateral talks between the ROK and the DPRK with a view to signing an agreement which nullifies the Armistice and sets the term of a bilateral “Peace Treaty”. In turn this agreement would set the stage for the exclusion of US military presence and the withdrawal of the 28,500 US forces.
Moreover, pursuant to bilateral Peace negotiations, the ROK-US OPCOM agreement which places ROK forces under US command should be rescinded. All ROK troops would thereafter be brought under national ROK command.
Bilateral consultations should also be undertaken with a view to further developing economic, technological, cultural and educational cooperation between the ROK and the DPRK.
Without the US in the background pulling the strings under OPCOM, the threat of war would be replaced by dialogue. The first priority, therefore would be to rescind OPCOM.
It was late at night but the new Terminal 3 at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport outside Jakarta was still bustling with families and friends waiting for their loved ones returning from abroad.
My friend Noor Huda Ismail was just arriving from Singapore, and I decided to pick him up and discuss ‘certain issues’ with him in the car, on the way to the capital. Lately he and I were busy, awfully busy, and a one-hour journey seemed to be the most appropriate setting for the exchange of at least some essential ideas and information.
Huda could easily pass for the most knowledgeable Indonesian “expert on terrorism”; a Muslim man who grew up and was educated in the madrasahs that have produced some of the most notorious jihadi cadres in the country. Later he became the man who managed to ‘get away’ from the extremism, to study, and to finally become a respected filmmaker and a thinker.
Noor Huda Ismail and Andre Vltchek
For years, both of us have been studying a complex web produced by Western imperialism – a web, which has literally destroyed entire countries, while locking other ones ‘behind bars’, in virtual neo-colonialist slavery. All this done in the name of ‘freedom’ and democracy, naturally, and often using various religions as tools, even as weapons.
Inside the car we managed to quickly ‘compare notes’. Huda filled me in on his groundbreaking film ‘Jihad Selfie’, while I informed him about my political revolutionary novel ‘Aurora’, and my big work in progress, a book about Afghanistan. I also mentioned my future ‘Afghan’ film, a dark love story, a drama about betrayal, collaboration and the virtual collapse of one family; a film which I’m preparing to produce and direct sometime during the next year.
“Afghanistan,” he says, “that’s where the roots of so many things lie… You recall that in the 80’s, the U.S. was using some local, Indonesian, jihadi cadres, sending them to Afghanistan…”
I knew about it; I knew something, but not everything. The fact that both Indonesian and Malaysian citizens went to fight against the Soviet Union, Karmal, and then Mohammad Najibullah’s government in Afghanistan, was something that I have never yet addressed in my books or films. Now I suddenly felt that it was important, extremely important, to address this fact.
“Huda,” I asked, as we were slowly progressing through perpetual traffic jam of Jakarta, “how many Indonesian men went to fight in Afghanistan, after the 1979 Soviet intervention?”
Huda didn’t hesitate. He always knows the numbers:
“Just from one group, there were 350 fighters. Indonesians fought in Afghanistan, and were based in a camp belonging to Ittehad-al-Islami (Islamic Union). Ustad Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf ran the camp. Of course Rab Rasul Sayyaf is Wahhabi, and the Wahhabis have been fully funded by the U.S. What we are seeing now, all those ‘terrorist threats’, is a blowback effect, of what the U.S. has done in the region, specifically in Afghanistan. And even the ISIS now: in 2003 they came to topple Saddam…”
Could I meet one of the Afghan ‘alumni’ here in Jakarta?
“Of course you can,” he nodded, “I’ll arrange it, while you are here.”
***
Before an encounter with an “Afghan” jihadi cadre, I traveled to the city of Bandung, where I met Iman Soleh, a professor at the Faculty of Social and Political Science (University of Padjadjaran- UNPAD). He is yet another renowned authority on ‘terrorism’. He came to my hotel, accompanied by his wife, Professor Antik Bintari, a conflict management expert who teaches at the same university.
Professor Iman Soleh and his wife, Professor Antik Bintari
For quite some time, professor Iman Soleh and I discussed the link between the ‘old guard’ Southeast Asian (mainly Indonesians and Malaysians) jihadi cadres, so-called ‘Afghan alumni’, and the vanguard, a ‘new wave’, that which is now trying to destabilize, even destroy both Syria and the Philippines.
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.
Professor Soleh has explained the latest ‘dynamics’:
“Since World War Two, the U.S. was afraid of so-called ‘domino effects’. Among other things that are now happening in the Philippines under president Duterte, the government is curbing activities of the multi-national mining conglomerates, and the West cannot accept that. Philippines are putting its environmental concerns above the short-term profits! For the millions of left-wing activists here in Indonesia and all over Southeast Asia, Duterte is a role model.”
Therefore, following the imperialist logic, the Philippines have to be attacked and destabilized, as has already been done to Syria. Defiance is punishable by death. And how else other than through the most effective weapons which the West has been utilizing for years and decades: extremist religious terrorist groups. What better assembly of fighters to choose for that difficult task than the jihadists from the groups that had already proven to be so effective and lethal in places such as Afghanistan?
By now, almost nobody who is at least to some extent informed on the subject has any doubts that the West is mainly interested in maintaining ‘perpetual conflict’ in several regions of the world. As Professor Soleh observes:
“I think all this is not just to ‘destabilize’ the Philippines, but also because the country has conflict areas that could be ‘nurtured’. The best example is predominantly Muslim island of Mindanao, vs. the rest of the Philippines, which is predominantly a Catholic country. As we know, the Philippines is also involved in the South China Sea dispute with the PRC, and the U.S. is trying to fully dominate the region…”
And President Duterte is committing an ‘unpardonable crime’ in the eyes of Washington and London, by trying to resolve the territorial conflict with China, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
***
But back to the “Jihadi Express…” It is important to understand the background:
The Indonesian jihadi, Salafi group Darul Islam, fought for a caliphate and against the secular and socialist state headed by President Sukarno, in the 1950’s and well into the 1960’s. “Terror is halal”, they used to say.
Professor Saleh further clarifies:
“Eventually the Indonesian state dismantled ‘Darul Islam’, but there was an off-shoot of it created soon, ‘Komando Jihad’.”
Komando Jihad later transformed into a transnational Southeast Asian group Jamaah Islamiyah (with its spiritual leader Abu Bakar Bashir). The group has been maintaining active links and cooperation with al-Qaeda and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines, to name just two religious guerrillas.
“Fighters from Komando Jihad then went to Afghanistan. Ideologically they were hard-core Salafis, but with the Western support. They received Western help to acquire weapons and other basics. According to my contacts in the Indonesian intelligence community, the U.S. was backing this infiltration of Afghanistan by ‘Komando Jihad’ and by others. I’m also in possession of a piece of information that the Indonesian army (TNI) commander in the 1980’s, General Moerdani, was supporting Indonesian and Afghan jihadists, by supplying them with the weapons (including the AK-47’s).”
“Again, according to my Indonesian intelligence sources, the ‘departure’ itself of the Indonesian jihadists for Afghanistan was also directly helped by the U.S., under the cover of ‘Islamic study groups’ and other ‘communities’, and the route that was utilized was: Indonesia – Malaysia – Philippines – Afghanistan”.
These are not well-publicized facts, but they should not surprise anyone familiar with Indonesian history: after the brutal 1965 U.S.-sponsored military/religious coup, Indonesia rapidly transformed itself from an anti-imperialist, internationalist and progressive country into the closest Western ally in the entire Southeast Asia. The main ‘ideology’ of the new fascist pro-Western regime of General Suharto became “anti-Communism”. For months and years, the Communists as well as alleged ‘Communists’were slaughtered all over the archipelago, while Communist ideology was banned, as were the Chinese language and culture, including dragons and cakes. The anti-Communist propaganda became the main sample of the ‘intellectual’ diet. The fourth most populous country on Earth went through a total reset, became one of the most ‘religious’ places on Earth, and soon after collapsed both socially and intellectually.
Allegations of “atheism” against the Communists were used in Indonesia in order to stir and radicalize thousands of potential and already existing jihadi cadres. Anti-atheism, even anti-secularism, became the rallying cry of those who were ready to sacrifice their lives for the ultimate goal and dream -a caliphate.
The West in Afghanistan played the same ‘game’, during the “Soviet era”, as it did in Indonesia after 1965, and elsewhere. It is clear and obvious that the imperialist scheme designed in Washington and London has been interchangeable and successfully applicable in many different geographical locations.
In Kabul, in March 2017, a legendary Afghan intellectual, Dr. Omara Khan Masoudi, explained to me:
“The biggest mistake the Soviet Union made here was to attack religion outrightly. If they’d first stuck to equal rights, and slowly worked it up towards the contradictions of religion, it could perhaps have worked… But they began blaming religion for our backwardness, in fact for everything. Or at least this is how it was interpreted by the coalition of their enemies, and of course by the West.
Now, why is the present Western invasion so ‘successful’; why is there so little in terms of intellectual opposition? Look at the regime in Kabul… During its rule, the US convinced people that Western intervention was ‘positive’, ‘respectful of their religion and cultures’. They kept repeating ‘under this and that UN convention’, and again ‘as decided by the UN’… They used NATO, a huge group of countries, as an umbrella. There was a ‘brilliantly effective’ protocol that they developed… According to them, they never did anything unilaterally, always by ‘international consensus’ and in order to ‘help Afghan people’. On the other hand, the Soviet Union never had the slightest chance to explain itself. It was attacked immediately, and on all fronts.”
US Air Force, Bagrani Base, Afghanistan
In reality, the West has always been using(and finally it has managed to divert) Islam. Some great Muslim scholars, including those that I met in Tehran,a ctually believe that Washington, London, Paris and other centers of the Western imperialism and neo-colonialism, actually succeeded, in many parts of the world,to create a totally new and (to many true and intellectual Muslims) unrecognizable religion.
***
Indonesian jihadi cadres hardened in Afghanistan and trained by the Pakistanis eventually returned to their country. There, they went to “work”, participating in such bloodlettings and killings as those in Ambon (Maluku) and Poso (Sulawesi). In Ambon the conflict continued from 1999 to 2002, and while it lasted, allegedly 8,000 people died, while thousands belonging to both sexes were involuntarily and brutally circumcised and genitally mutilated. In Ambon, I saw the jihadi cadres in action, hacking to death a young innocent boy, right in front of the eyes of a cheering crowd of onlookers. I later described the horror of this incident in my novel “Point of No Return”.
Little did I know, then, what I was really witnessing and trying to document. Only much later, in Bandung, in May 2017, a couple of professors, Iman Soleh and Antik Bintari, explained to me:
“Poso and Ambon, that’s the “Afghani Link”. During those massacres, there were still some ‘old jihadists’ from the Afghan days, participating in the actual fighting. However, there were also some ‘fresh’ fighters there, many of them undergoing exercises with the Indonesian ‘Afghans’. Poso and Ambon conflicts were in fact serving as two training grounds. After that, a new generation of combatants had risen”.
***
Mr. Farihin, Jamaah Islamiyah Fighter
That same night – very late at night – after driving for hours on hopelessly congested highway that connects the cities of Bandung and Jakarta, I met Mr. Farihin, an active member of the outlawed “JI” (Jamaah Islamiyah), a man who personally met Osama bin Laden, a warrior who fought in Paktia and other provinces in Afghanistan, a former Mujahideen, an unapologetic jihadist.
I was longing to know, to understand, how the old ‘Afghan alumni’ were thinking, how they saw the world, and what their goals were.
Mr. Farihin was actually an impressive human being: upright, strong, manly, proud, extremely polite, and totally brainwashed…
His hatred for Communism knew no boundaries; it was epic. He dreamed, he ‘saw’ Communists everywhere, all over the world: in Syria, in the present-day Russia, even in Karzai’s and Ghani’s Afghanistan. Anything remotely secular, anything that was not a caliphate, was “Communist” in his simple but determined mind of a combatant.
We began with Osama bin Laden:
“I met Osama fleetingly, in 1987 and 1988, but in those days he was not an ‘ulama’. He was funding Mujahideen. He was a contractor in Paktia Province and he was based in the north of that province, in an Arab camp, helping Mujahideen and also building the roads. After Soviets entered Afghanistan, Osama’s people made a ‘council’; it was like a shadow Mujahideen government.”
Mr. Farihin came to Afghanistan in 1987. After his group NII (Negara Islam Indonesia – Islamic State of Indonesia) received ‘an invitation’ from Mujahedeen.
What prompted him to go to Afghanistan?
“There was news all over Indonesia, that a Muslim country was attacked by the Soviet Union. My initial desire was to fight the USSR. At the beginning I was not allowed to fight, and it was not Afghanistan where I was sent; it was Pakistan. I was ordered to study at Etihad Islami Military Academy there. At some point, all foreign jihadis had to leave Pakistan, so we were moved directly to Afghanistan. In Paktia Province they built an entire camp for us. We were attacked by the Soviets there, on several occasions; us, as well as the ‘Arab Camp’. MIG-21 jet fighters were used. But by then, Russians were already beginning their withdrawal. After the Soviets left, Afghanistan was still governed by a Communist government, so we fought it, too. I was ready to fight: first the Soviets, than that Communist Afghan governments. I saw Russian prisoners, pilots, shackled, in Pakistan. I was not afraid of them.”
I quickly noticed that Mr. Farihin was not proud of the support his group and Mujahideen in general were receiving from the United States and the rest of the West. He kept repeating that he did not “see” any direct U.S. support, that supplies just kept coming from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Muslim countries. For him, it was essential that his fight in Afghanistan would be seen as a ‘pure’, pan-Islamic struggle.
I was not there to contradict him, I was there to listen.
He spoke about the fronts on which he had fought: Nangarhar, Jalalabad among others:
“I was rotating between the fronts. The war, the battles were ‘orderly’”.
“But what was the goal?” I asked.
He didn’t hesitate one single moment.
“The goal was simple: in Afghanistan we wanted to prevent the Communist ideology from being accepted.”
How much did he know about the Communism?
“Actually, my knowledge about it was very shallow. That’s fine: we were war machines for Mujahideen. What we were told was that the Communists don’t believe in God, and that they are professing secularism.”
I wondered whether they knew anything about the improving medical system, about the all of a sudden decent education, about public housing, transportation, and culture?
“Almost everything done by the Communists was good, I know… But because they believed in Communism and socialism, it was not right, it was ‘haram’. Our pledge to God was what really mattered. In terms of importance, God was Number 1, and only then came the world of humans.”
I asked him how he sees Afghanistan now.
“As long as their government is Communist, we’ll fight it… And I pray that Taliban wins.”
For a moment I thought that I had misunderstood: the Afghanistan government is Communist? Doesn’t he know anything about the U.S., about the Western occupation?
“Yes but the U.S. went to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, not Communism. The government is still Communist; a puppet regime of Russia.”
I quickly changed the subject, but things did not improve. I asked him about Syria, about Iraq. He replied politely:
“I train, we train volunteers who are ready to go and fight in Syria. It is because Syria is not only Communist, you know – Assad and Russians – but also it is Shi’a.”
Being Shi’a is an arch crime in today’s Indonesia. People are getting killed, ostracized, and intimidated for being Shi’a. I witnessed it once, on the island of Madura.
“’Aghan alumni’ are training fighters that are ready to go abroad, both ideologically and militarily. Whether the government knows, I’m not sure. Perhaps intelligence knows. During Suharto era, the fight against Communism was supported. I saw Indonesian intelligence operating in the Afghan refugee camps in Peshawar, Pakistan. We were told by the Pakistani intelligence that the Indonesian intelligence was deployed in the region. Indonesia was then supporting Mujahideen, and we were receiving some Indonesian supplies, including food. Indonesia and Pakistan were then very good friends; Pakistani intelligence made our life very easy: we were going back and forth, freely, between Afghanistan and Pakistan, across the border, while civilians were not allowed…”
And what was their fee? Certainly jihad is not fought for free?
The lowest pay was then US$150 per month, a lot of money in poor Indonesia, in the late 1980’s. Between US$300 and US$400 for the officers.
Islamic Defender’s Front (FPI) goodies on display in Jakarta
Before we parted, we talked about Afghanistan, the country. He remembered it fondly:
“I like the country, it is beautiful. I liked religious life there. Afghans were very kind to us, treated us like guests… We were offered their women, too, to marry, but the dowry was too high. Some had blue eyes, and we wanted to marry them, badly, but really: we couldn’t afford their women with our modest ‘salaries’.”
Does he miss Afghanistan?
“Yes.”
“Me, too,” I nodded. “But I’m going back, soon.”
We didn’t embrace. By then he sensed that we belonged to the opposite sides of the barricade, and that most likely we were arch enemies. But until we parted, both of us remained polite, excessively polite: the Afghan way.
***
Dina Y. Sulaeman
“Jihad in Indonesia – against the Western imperialism? Oh no, no way…” smiles Dina Y. Sulaeman, an Indonesian political analyst, an author of the book “Salju Di Aleppo” (Snow of Aleppo):
“Jihad in which Indonesians want to participate is based on hate…In my book, I explain that the Indonesian fighters in Syria are mainly affiliated with several groups: ‘Ikhwanul Muslimin’, ‘Hizbut Tahrir’ and Al Qaeda/ISIS. Unfortunately these groups have supporters in Indonesia. They keep spreading fake photos and videos about Syria, to ignite sympathy, even anger of Indonesian people, so they give donations or even join jihad. It’s a good deal for them. They are waging ‘holy war’, they’ll go to heaven, and plus they get paid. They accuse president Assad of being ‘infidel’. That’s their rallying cry.”
“Indonesian mass media ‘coverage’ is only directly translating what is said by the Western media: the CNN, the BBC and others…. If not those, then at least Al-Jazeera which is often even worse… As a result, Indonesians are ‘very concerned’ about Syria.’ Of course, in my books I’m trying to correct the misconceptions, but the propaganda apparatus is so powerful.”
“Like in Afghanistan,” I add.
Earlier I asked Noor Huda Ismail:
“But the Afghan ‘alumni’ and the ISIS do not necessarily like each other, do they?”
Huda nods, but then he adds:
“Al-Qaeda and ISIS do not get along well. In the context, most of the fighters, those who support ISIS, they have been gathering in the same mosque. They are using social media. Maybe the Afghan ‘alumni’ and the ISIS supporters do not like each other, but they share the same ideology; the root, the matter is the same, which is toppling and challenging the secular systems.”
“Including the one in Indonesia.”
“Yes, including the one here.”
Jihadi Express is now rolling, gaining speed. One country after another is being shred to pieces under its merciless wheels.
Destroyed Aleppo
Those who think that it is “all about oil” are mistaken. The West is of course trying to control, fully and brutally, all that moves in the Middle East, North Africa and as far as Iran and Afghanistan. But that’s definitely not all: jihadi groups, created by the West and its allies in the Gulf, have been used to destabilize the two greatest adversaries of the West: Russia and China.
Soviet Union was tricked into Afghanistan in 1979, and then brutally destroyed. Afghanistan itself was ‘sacrificed’ in the process, its social structures broken, and all hope its people were enjoying, choked. China is now also greatly suffering from the operations of several Muslim terrorist groups, as well as from other religious implants, which are without exception supported by the West.
The Philippines is most likely the next ‘front’. It has been for years and decades, in Sulu and elsewhere, but as this report goes to print, things are deteriorating, getting more and more desperate there.
To fight terrorism in such places like Syria and Afghanistan, has been and will be increasingly, one of the main foreign policy goals of both Moscow and Beijing; in order to help those countries under siege, but also in order to prevent them from becoming the training grounds of the ‘anti-Communist’ and anti-secularist terrorist armies.
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.
I have to admit I took my eye off the ball. My desire to see the back of this awful government overwhelmed my powers of reasoning but hopefully it’s only temporary.
That’s the problem: We want Corbyn to be real.
So it’s just wishful thinking on my part and on the part of others, (here and here for example) to put so much faith in Jeremy Corbyn. As I pointed out in my previous piece, you’re not voting for Corbyn, you’re voting for the Labour Party, the bulk of whose candidates were utterly opposed to most of Corbyn’s (draft) Manifesto (see below). So the question has to be asked, what chance does Corbyn have of enacting nothing at all but a small part of his manifesto, e.g., funding the NHS or perhaps tuition fees? But once on the slippery slope of compromise in order to save the Labour Party as an agent of capital, it’s game over.
But of course, nothing he does, within the straightjacket of existing Parliamentary politics, can address not only our immediate concerns but the already present combined global crisis of capitalism and climate change. The double whammy of the 21st century.
It’s nothing if not a novel situation. A friend (and comrade) has compared Corbyn to Bernie Sanders, Syriza, Podemos and even gone back to Allende’s Chile. And it’s true, all have failed, and mostly, if not all, for the same reasons.
He says:
Now we have some experience, called history, to make that determination. So can you point to any example in recent history; say in the last 100 years where supporting such a candidate of such a party that pledges its allegiance to the political institutions of capital has led to anything other than defeat? I mean, Lula? You vote for Rousseff and you get….Temer; you vote for Chavez and you get Maduro and the collapse of the economy; you vote for Syriza and you get the Troika; you vote for Podemos and guess who they prop up in power? And I surely don’t have to tell you about the path of the ANC.
Gulp.
It’s true of course, all of it. I assisted the ANC in its ’94 election campaign, but should I not have done given the results of our collective efforts? Zuma and his gang of thieves. Easily said in hindsight of course.
Is it over before it’s over?
Of course it is, in the unlikely event of a Labour victory, the deal has already been done and dusted:
Tuesday saw the official launch of the Labour Party’s manifesto for the June 8 snap General Election. The manifesto contained a number of highly significant amendments from the draft version leaked just days earlier.
The draft, produced by the team around Labour’s nominally left leader Jeremy Corbyn, was subject to ratification by the party’s top officials on May 11. It sought to marry a watery commitment to certain social reforms and a slight relaxation in the Conservatives’ austerity agenda with a raft of measures demanded by the Blairite right wing. In particular, it committed Labour to the £200 billion renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system, and to supporting NATO, and included a declaration that Corbyn would be prepared to launch a nuclear attack—albeit while being “extremely cautious” about it.
/../
However, the concessions contained in Labour’s draft manifesto have since been revealed as only a staging post for Corbyn in what his shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, described as a “journey” towards accepting NATO and nuclear war.
The qualification on the use of the armed forces contained in the draft version, “That’s why we will never send them into harm’s way unless all other options have been exhausted,” is removed in the final manifesto. – ‘Labour’s manifesto amended to stress commitment to militarism and war‘ By Robert Stevens, WSWS, 19 May 2017.
It’s not looking good, is it? Further on we read in the same article:
The draft manifesto said Labour would “end support for aggressive wars of intervention.” This also had to be amended so that the final version reads only that Labour will oppose “unilateral aggressive wars of intervention” (emphasis added) so as to reassure all concerned of the party’s support for future wars of aggression under the imprimatur of NATO and the United Nations.
It gets just as worse and depressing the more I read, but at least it disabused me of any illusions I seemed to have acquired:
Corbyn is often portrayed by his advocates as a man of principle—a good man fallen among thieves. His every action since being elected leader in September 2015 confirms that his only “principle” is unswerving loyalty to the Labour bureaucracy.
Corbyn’s infinite malleability is not a personal characteristic, but is an essential feature of the Labour “left” in providing the necessary progressive window dressing to sell what is a capitalist party of big business, militarism and war to the working class.
Heavy stuff but essentially true. I suppose the real question is whether or not the grassroots movement the various agencies have created for Corbyn (38 Degrees, Momentum, Peoples Assembly and so on), once they realize they’ve been conned will demand some answers? Can something be rescued from the wreckage?
Again, I’m probably fishing for some kind of face-saving feature from the rise of Corbyn and the reality that he is as I’ve long said, a professional politician and his primary objective is saving the Labour Party for the creation of some mythical, nay non-existent socialism at some distant point in the future, just as it did back in 1910.
I was also chided by my NY comrade on my exasperated cry to see the back of May and the Tories:
That’s the point. You’re not going to get rid of them by voting for Corbyn. You’re not going to get rid of them without getting rid of the Labour Party. You’re not going to build a thing that can withstand the bourgeoisie for ten minutes when you’re voting to collaborate with the bourgeoisie.
He went on:
Nobody is advocating “purity.” But if the British working class is, in your view thoroughly “imperialized,” the main mechanism for accomplishing that has been the adherence of the Labour Party to the maintenance of imperialism. That’s an institutional allegiance; not a personal one. I have never argued for purity, or all or nothing. I’m arguing simply for the first step, which is opposition to class collaboration. Nobody’s advocating “not acting;” I’m advocating not acting on behalf of the maintenance of British capitalism.
Which is another way of saying don’t vote for Corbyn, I mean the Labour Party but work toward building an alternative to this awful madness before it’s far too late.
The Chiostro Del Bramante, a cloister-turned-gallery in the heart of Rome, is currently presenting “Jean-Michel Basquiat: New York City” – a generous selection of work spanning the short, but immensely prolific, career of this extraordinary artist. The extensive exhibition includes nearly one hundred significant works on loan from the Mugrabi Collection, which includes acrylics and oils, as well as drawings, silkscreen prints, and ceramics completed between the years of 1981 and 1987.
Born in Brooklyn, New York to a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat’s stunning and breathtakingly rapid ascent to fame and stardom was paralleled by few, if any, other artists in the twentieth century. At Sothebys recently, Basquiat’s painting of a skull, Untitled (1982) sold for $110.5 million – a record price for an American painter, placing him in the art history pantheon alongside Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon. We can be pleased that Yusaku Maezawa, the Japanese billionaire who bought the painting, intends to share his taste for art with the public. However, if we are to truly approach these works at all, it is necessary to get beyond the din of the market – the “screeching vultures” as the late John Berger puts it – and give our attention to the sophistication and wit of this painter, the sincerity and exuberance of his canvases.
Untitled, 1982 (Source: Sotheby’s New York via artnet News)
From the first early portraits in the exhibit, we see Basquiat’s confident and energetic “line”, which he used to tremendous expressive effect throughout his career. We also find Basquiat’s characteristic use of haloes; and most recognizably, the three-pronged gold crown, which he would use to establish the dignity and worth of something or someone, or simply as an assertion of the artist’s power.
The crown features prominently in Loin (1982), a painting of a horned bull alongside a bloody knife. On the one hand, we seem to have a sacrificial offering: “loin” as in a cut of beef, a tenderloin. On the other hand, a symbol of sacred strength and power (the bull was in fact one of Zeus’ divine manifestations, a form he took when he seduced and abducted Europa). In this case, the “loin” is the creative, generative potency of the artist himself, in what amounts to a kind of self-portrait. Similarly, Pablo Picasso, who influenced Basquiat greatly, depicted himself as a quadruped in his etching Minotauromachy (1935) and included an image of a bull in Guernica (1937), a painting which Basquiat credited as being among one of his all-time favorites.
Loin, 1982 (Source: David Bird / Pinterest)
There is no escaping violence in Basquiat, and while it is sometimes presented upfront – with the intention to arrest and confront the viewer – there is often an indeterminate sense of menace. In “Side View of an Oxen’s Jaw” (1982) Basquiat may be invoking the story of Samson – a Biblical figure who slew the masses of Philistines armed with only the jawbone of an ass. Basquiat would explicitly revisit Samson in one of his most successful paintings, Obnoxious Liberals (1982) – identifying himself with the black hero/martyr that reappears in so much of his work.
Hand Anatomy (1982) brings our attention to one of the fundamental themes of the show and Basquiat’s work throughout his career. Basquiat’s knowledge of art history was apparently encyclopedic: he painted in dialogue with many of the masters who preceded him and his works are full of such references. Leonardo da Vinci looms large in this sense, not only as a painter (Basquiat seems to have regarded Da Vinci as among his favorite artists), but as a student of human anatomy and physiology. Da Vinci is known to have secretly dissected human cadavers (a practice widely condemned at the time) to understand more fully the inner workings and processes of the human body. Basquiat may have been attracted to this readiness to go underground, as it were; and like da Vinci, he had to escape and outmaneuver the conventions of ordinary social morality to bring to light something that we are almost afraid to see; something that by its very nature interrogates our tendency to conform to established modes of understanding and discourse.
The exhibition includes several works that Basquiat and Andy Warhol painted together. The two had a highly-publicized friendship which led to an exhibition of their collaborative works at the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in Soho in 1985. “Warhol and Basquiat: Paintings” was panned by the critics, a reception which contributed to the dissolution of their personal and professional relationship. In Thin Lips (c. 1984-1985) (which is to say, “false promises”) the two artists satirize Reaganomics. Basquiat’s work was political throughout, and sometimes his works are most-effectively political when the content is not explicitly so.
Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat (Source: WideWalls)
At his best, Basquiat can be viewed as an American shaman: an artist who brought meaning to a fragmented society by acting as a conduit to another realm of consciousness. In his appropriation of so-called primitive art and renaissance iconography – especially the halo (which sometimes becomes a crown of thorns) – he created a unique vocabulary that he developed as a way of exploring a broken world. Much like the writer William Burroughs, who was a profound influence on the painter, Basquiat is charting a kind of “guide” to the underworld – employing Ancient Egyptian glyphs and petroglyphs, as well as hobo signs, in his mapping of the “in”-visible.
Basquiat’s art is inseparable from language – that is, from the power and sometimes the impotency of names, lists and phrases: and even among his earliest pieces we find him charting words and letters in semi-incantatory ways. He saw the disintegration and brutality of everyday life in America: for Basquiat, the world is in tatters, and because of this, his work tends to lack a center as well as a “privileged” point of reference. If we could talk about the metaphysics of Basquiat’s world, then it was one of violent explosiveness – he taps into the ‘dehiscence of being’ to create something altogether unsettling, evocative, and distinct.
Basquiat does not abandon, but transforms, the project of high modernism – inasmuch as his paintings are indeed an “autobiographical search for wholeness”. There is, we might say, a therapeutic intention underlying his work: he seemed to want (at least at times) to heal the self – “to repel ghosts” (as one of his late works states).
Some of the later paintings seem to suggest that he saw the end was near: for example, the extraordinary painting Riding with Death (1988), or the final piece included in this show Gravestone (1987), a work which consists of three doors joined together and the word “perishable” partially blotted out at the top center. This was, on the one hand, a tribute to Andy Warhol (who died that year), and it evokes the painted panel altars of medieval and renaissance art. Like so much of his work, it represents Basquiat’s pattern of salvaging and resurrecting the rejected and discarded. But one must wonder if this piece could also be seen as a requiem for the artist himself, as he was coming to terms with his own self-destruction (he died in 1988 from a heroin overdose).
Gravestone, 1987 (Source: Cie Cefeg / Pinterest)
Much of this exhibition concerns, we might say, the anatomy of suffering, and at the same time the strength, resilience and protest that comes from the stripping down, the peeling away of the outer layers to reveal the blood vessels, the muscles and tendons, and the skeleton itself. In Rusting Red Car in Kuau (1984) with its engine (that is, its anatomy) visible, we are witness to another form of Basquiat’s self-portraiture.
Basquiat’s work remains immensely provocative, often disconcerting, barbed and defiant – scathing in his critique of the racism, greed and moral apathy of American society. He takes a wrecking ball not only to false barriers between conceptualism and expressionism, painting and writing, improvisation, and composition; but to the various social, political, and artistic edifices we have built atop lies. As Berger observed, if Basquiat is an artist whose work is about “seeing through lies,” then we cannot deny his timeliness and the claim his work ultimately makes on us.
Sam Ben-Meir, PhD is an adjunct professor at Mercy College. His current research focuses on environmental ethics and animal studies. [email protected] Web: www.alonben-meir.com
He nominated Christopher Wray to replace James Comey, a position needing Senate confirmation.
He’s a former assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division under Bush/Cheney from 2003 – 2005.
In May 2001, he served as deputy attorney general Larry Thompson’s aide, later promoted to his post. Post-9/11, he was heavily involved in Bush/Cheney’s war on Islam.
Ignoring the mother of all false flags, during his 2003 Senate confirmation hearing, he said
“(w)e have never…experienced anything as savage and cowardly as the (9/11 attack), and we must do everything within our power, within the Constitution and the law, to make sure it never happens again.”
During his tenure as assistant attorney general in charge of the Criminal Division, he was involved in witch-hunt plots, persecution and entrapment of targeted Muslims – for their faith, ethnicity, and at times prominence and charity.
They were ruthlessly vilified and exploited as war on terror scapegoats for political advantage, due process and judicial fairness consistently denied.
Numerous Muslims on Wray’s watch were hunted down, rounded up, held in detention, kept in isolation, denied bail, restricted in their right to counsel, tried on secret evidence, convicted on bogus charges, given long sentences, then incarcerated as political prisoners.
The FBI employs thousands of undercover agents, many times involved in sting operations, designed to entrap law-abiding people, Muslim targets of choice – victimized to claim victories in the phony war on terrorism.
Virtually all post-9/11 homeland terrorist plots were invented ones, innocent Muslims imprisoned to create the illusion of keeping America safe.
From inception, the FBI was a rogue agency, along with DHS America’s Gestapo, harming ordinary people to protect privilege – instruments of powerful interests, operating extrajudicially.
Post-9/1l police state laws unleashed the power of the state against constitutional protections – on the phony pretext of national security, the FBI, CIA, DHS and NSA playing leading roles.
If confirmed as FBI director, Wray will be in charge of the agency’s war OF terror on Muslims and other designated enemies of the state.
Inventing reasons to bash Russia, China and Iran will be part of his mandate.
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.”
The Iraqi military, who were filmed torturing and abusing civilians, are “mainly supervised by US commanders,” a member of the Baghdad Security Committee, has said, telling RT that American military personnel have “some type of immunity” in such cases.
Saad Al-Muttalibi was responding after damning photos by freelance photographer Ali Arkady were released to the media. The pictures show Iraq’s elite Emergency Response Division (ERD) in Mosul torturing and abusing their captives suspected of having links with Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL).
“It is a war and a war is a horrible thing… It is a fact of war that innocent people will pay with their lives. Such action [torture and abuse] by army is definitely unsanctioned by the [Iraqi] government. We have a number of officers either facing trial or spending prison sentences here in Baghdad because of human right violations,” he said.
However, the problem is that military groups carrying out such violations are “mainly supervised by US commanders,” according to Al-Muttalibi.
“The rapid response units were trained by the Americans and are close to the US command,” he said. “They [US commanders] have some type of immunity that we can’t question them,” he added.
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.”
A US military spokesman, cited by ABC News, said that although an investigation into new evidence of ERD’s alleged atrocities is warranted, there is no legal reason why the US cannot continue to work with the unit.
“Leahy vetting does not prevent the US from working with the ERD, as we do with other elements of the Iraqi Security Forces, to help ensure a coordinated effort among different elements of the ISF in the fight to defeat ISIS in Mosul,” US Army Col. Joe Scroccatold ABC News.
In one photo series released by Akardy, the EDR soldiers are seen torturing a man in what is known as the strappado. It shows horrendous images where a detainee is hanged by his arms to the ceiling, blindfolded, with officers standing next to him and adding weights to his back to intensify the agony.
Al-Muttalibi told RT that the man in the picture “wasn’t murdered” and he “is alive.”
“The problem with that particular individual is that his son and his brother are members of ISIS. Unfortunately the officer in charge took matter into his own hands,” he said, adding, that the authorities are currently conducting an investigation into the matter.
Al-Muttalibi questioned if the pictures were taken in context, drawing an example of the “quality of the photos” and “the angles of light.”
“As if they [the photos] were orchestrated. The cameraman took a dramatic position to take the picture,” he suggested, adding that the officer who tortured the man and other troops are currently in custody.
Baghdad has taken full responsibility for the case, Al-Muttalibi said.
“Iraqi side is taking steps [to handle the situation], I can’t say the same about the Americans. We don’t know what they are doing.”
RT contacted the press service of General Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF–OIR) which said that the Coalition “does not condone or support any violation of the laws of armed conflict.”
“Any violation of the law of armed conflict would be unacceptable and should be investigated in a transparent manner and those deemed responsible held accountable in accordance with due process and Iraqi law,” the statement said.
According to OIR, the US government’s
“support to the counter-ISIS campaign is conducted by, with, and through the central government of Iraq.”
“…At no time were US forces aware of or informed of these allegations until you brought them to our attention. At which point, we brought them to the attention of the government of Iraq and it is our understanding that they have already opened up an investigation into the allegations.”
Earlier, Human Rights Watch said the photos could possibly also cast a shadow on US and other members of the coalition in the Middle East.
“The US and other members of the anti-ISIS coalition risk complicity in Iraqi abuses given their participation in military operations with the country’s security forces,” HRW statement said.
Communications and Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch in Middle East & North Africa, Ahmed Benchemsi, has called on international governments to be careful when granting military support.
“What we recommend to the US and other international governments is to condition all military support on demonstrable and measurable steps to end abuses. Promises are not enough,” he said.
Former FBI head James Comey told a Congressional hearing today that he gave his memos regarding conversations with Donald Trump to a friend – Columbia law school professor Daniel Richman– so his friend would get it to the press.
The reason Comey gave the memos to his friend to leak to the press?
Comey hoped that it would cause a special investigator would be appointed.
This article is based on a talk by Richard Becker at a PSL forum in San Francisco on June 3, 2017
June 5 marks the 50th anniversary of Israel’s Six-Day War of conquest. Any objective examination of that war, and the events leading to and following it, make clear that the dominant narrative in the United States is reality turned upside down. It is “fake news” that is perpetrated on the public by the corporate media continually, right up to the present day.
The Six Day War began on June 5, 1967. Israel launched the war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan with what could correctly called a “sneak attack,” although it is never referred to that way here. In the vocabulary of imperialism, there was one “sneak attack” in history, that was, of course, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.
U.S. corporate media sometime refers to the Israel lightning assault on Egypt, Syria and Jordan as a “pre-emptive” strike, implying that Israel was about to be attacked, and only headed it off by attacking first, and was thus acting in self-defense.
Israel, as this one goes, was surrounded and about to be attacked by a “sea of Arabs” – another favored and demonizing expression common in the corporate media. So, as this false narrative goes, Israel had no choice but to launch massive air, land and sea assaults on neighboring countries, conquering the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Syria’s Golan Heights. Israel has held on to all those areas except Sinai for the past half-century.
In the opening hours of its attack, Israel destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian air forces, basically determining the outcome.
A war of conquest – testified to by Israeli leaders after the fact
Most of the mainstream media, along with Israel’s apologists in the United States, propagated the notion that the war was a rerun of the biblical “David versus Goliath” battle. Israel was pictured as the heroic underdog, with God once more on its side.
Palestinian refugees flee across Jordan River, 1967
The misnamed, U.S.-based “Anti-Defamation League,” which has long served as propagandist for the Israeli regime, said that “Israel launched a preemptive strike against Egypt,” suggesting that it only did so to avert annihilation.
None other than the extreme right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin later exposed the utter falsity of such claims. Fifteen years after the war, in an Aug. 2, 1982, speech to the Israeli National Defense College, Begin said:
“We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him [Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser].”
It was not just Begin who exposed the myth. Ten years earlier, Gen. Mattiyahu Peled, one of the Israeli commanders in the 1967 Six-Day War, told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz:
“The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only a bluff, which was born and developed after the war.”
In 1997, Israel’s minister of defense at the time of the Six-Day War, Moshe Dayan, talked to the New York Times about the events leading up to the war on the Syria-Israel front. He stated that the Israeli kibbutz (cooperative farm) residents in the area wanted to take over the rich farmland of Syria’s Golan Heights:
“They didn’t even try to hide their greed for that land.”
Describing Israel’s tactics on its border with Syria, Dayan told the Times:
“We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and 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. … The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war [June 9, 1967], were not a threat to us.”
By the 1967 war, Israel succeeded in achieving its long-held objective of expansion. The remaining 22 percent of historic Palestine—the West Bank and Gaza—was conquered by Israel’s surprise attack, along with Syria’s Golan Heights and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
More than 35,000 Arabs were killed, many of them burned to death by Pentagon-supplied napalm bombs. Thousands more were wounded. Most of the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian air and armor forces were destroyed in the opening days of the surprise attack. The Israeli army drove more than 90,000 Syrians and Palestinians out of the Golan Heights, an agriculturally rich region north of the Sea of Galilee.
Many of the Syrian villages and Golan’s main city, Quneitra, were bulldozed by the Israeli military. Israeli settlers began arriving in Golan in July 1967. In 1981, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) passed a law annexing the Golan Heights. The continuing occupation of Golan, as well as the West Bank and Gaza, defies scores of United Nations resolutions.
Israel’s long-sought “second round”
Israeli leaders had been seeking a “second round,” that is another war to expand their territory, since the formation of their state in 1948.
Moshe Dayan, a young military officer and protégé of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was quoted by a Tel Aviv-based U.S. diplomat in 1949 as saying:
“Boundaries-Frontier of Israel should be on Jordan [River]. … Present boundaries ridiculous from all points of view.” To achieve that aim meant taking over the West Bank.
In the first years after their expulsion, Palestinians frequently crossed the illegal and artificial border separating the territory under Israeli control from the West Bank, usually to return to their stolen lands and homes. Most often this happened during the planting and harvest season. Smaller numbers returned as groups of fighters, or fedayeen, seeking to continue the struggle. Israeli army orders were to kill any “infiltrators,” including those who were unarmed.
In response to fedayeen operations, the Israeli army would often carry out large-scale “retaliation.” The aim was not only to punish – “retaliation” actually meant provocation. The intent was to get Jordan, then administering the West Bank, to react militarily, which could then be used by Israel as a pretext for a new war of conquest.
In October 1953, a unit of the Israeli military under the command of war criminal and future prime minister Ariel Sharon carried out one such assault on the small border village of Qibya, wiping out the entire population of 69 people, mostly women, children and elderly men, many of whom were burned alive inside their homes. The Israeli forces suffered no casualties.
The Qibya massacre elicited world condemnation, but not the new war with Jordan that Israeli leaders were seeking as a pretext to seize the West Bank.
Israel’s next major attempt at territorial expansion came in 1956, when the Israeli, British and French governments met in secret to plan a new war on Egypt. The three each had their own objectives.
When the progressive government of Gamal Abdel Naaser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956, the British ruling class’s reaction was rabid fury. The canal was a central symbol of British imperial power. It was also the key economic route to the British colonies and neo-colonies in Asia and East Africa.
The French government believed that overthrowing the Egyptian government would strike a lethal blow to the Algerian Revolution.
Israel’s aim was to vastly expand its territory.
The 1956 War and Ben-Gurion’s ‘fantastic proposal’
From Oct. 22 to 24, 1956, a secret conference was held in Sevres, near Paris, to put the final touches on the war plans. Ben-Gurion surprised the other leaders present by presenting what he called a “fantastic proposal” for the complete reorganization of the Middle East. Jordan, he suggested, was not a viable state and should become part of Iraq—which was still under British domination—with one condition: The new Iraq would have to agree to resettle all the Palestinian refugees from 1948 on the East Bank of the Jordan River. The West Bank, minus the Palestinians living there, would become part of Israel. (Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall, New York, 2001, p. 172)
Next, Ben-Gurion proposed, Israel would take over southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. The rest of Lebanon would become a “Christian state” with the restoration of French domination. Lebanon had been a French colony until 1943.
The Nasser government would be overthrown, the Suez Canal would be “internationalized,” and British influence would be restored in Egypt. This would mean, in effect, British control of the canal. Israel would take over the Sinai Peninsula, the Straits of Tiran, and the Gulf of Aqaba leading to the Red Sea.
The downfall of Nasser, according to the Israeli plan, would undermine both the Pan-Arab movement and the Algerian Revolution, to the benefit of all three conspiring states.
Palestinians at Israeli checkpoint in West Bank, 2016
Israel’s territory would be tripled in size by this plan. And while Ben-Gurion himself called the plan “fantastic,” he was dead serious about it.
Ben-Gurion’s proposal was too overreaching for the imperialist leaders of Britain and France. The plan they agreed on, however, was only slightly less ambitious.
On October 29, 1956, the tri-partite alliance attacked without warning. Israeli forces quickly swept across the Sinai, and British troops re-occupied the Suez Canal Zone. Ben-Gurion euphorically proclaimed that Sinai and Gaza would become “part of the third kingdom of Israel.”
But it was not to be. The 1956 Suez War was seen widely as a blatant attempt to resurrect colonialism—especially in the Middle East, but also across the world. Israel was widely condemned as a pawn of imperialism.
Both the United States and Soviet Union responded swiftly and strongly to the Tripartite Invasion—but for very different reasons. The Eisenhower administration reacted furiously for not having been informed in advance by either its imperialist allies or Israel.
More fundamental than any emotion was the U.S. ruling class’s opposition to the restoration of British and French imperial power in the strategically key and oil-rich Middle East. From World War II to the present day, every administration—including Eisenhower’s—has held U.S. domination of the region as a central objective.
Nor would Washington tolerate Israel serving as proxy for other imperialist powers. The message was sent to the Israeli government that if it did not withdraw from Egypt, all aid from official sources as well as private fundraising efforts in the United States would be cut off. Further, the United States would allow Israel to be expelled from the United Nations.
Soviet premier Nikolai Bulganin warned the British, French and Israeli governments that his country would unleash rocket attacks on their cities if they did not immediately withdraw. These warnings had to be taken very seriously, particularly because Eisenhower had ordered the withdrawal of the U.S. protective nuclear shield over the three countries.
Facing such irresistible pressures, the invading powers were forced out. As they withdrew, the Israelis waged a scorched-earth campaign, destroying every road, railroad and structure of any value in Egypt’s Sinai.
For the Israelis, while their “third kingdom” would have to be put on hold, significant gains were made from the episode. Israel acquired both vital military aid and the beginning of a nuclear weapons program.
The 1956 Suez War led within a very short time to Israel being brought fully into the U.S. camp. By its next war against the Arab world in 1967, Israel was closely aligned with and supplied by the U.S. military, and gained territory it had long been seeking.
Aftermath of 1967 – Rise of the Palestinian Resistance
With the conquest of the remaining 22 percent of Palestine in 1967, it appeared that the fate of the Palestinian people had been sealed. But in a seeming paradox, the Six Day War led to the rise of the Palestinian resistance movement and new wave of popular radicalization across the region.
Until the 1967 war, organizations such as Fatah- Palestine National Liberation Movement, and the Arab National Movement led by George Habash, had placed their main hope for the liberation of Palestine with the Arab armies. The outcome of the war brought that period to a close. In 1968, Fatah and two organizations which emerged from the ANM, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine, took control of the Palestine Liberation Organization and launched mass resistance against the occupiers.
Since then, the struggle has continued in many forms and the vicious Israeli repression funded by the U.S., has taken an enormous toll. The dispossession of the Palestinian, the killings, systematic torture, the illegal settlements, the house demolitions, the destruction of olive and fruit groves, the theft of water, the lethal blockade and isolation of Gaza, the apartheid practice of the right of return, the apartheid roads, the apartheid everything – continue day after day.
Since the 1967 war, according the Addameer prisoner rights organization, 800,000 Palestinian men, more than 40% of the adult male population, have been imprisoned. Today, there are more than 6,300 Palestinians in Israeli prisons – every one of them held in violation of international law. And there are 0 Israelis held in Palestinian prisons. If that were the one and only fact one knew about the conflict there, one would know who is the colonizer and who is the colonized, who is the oppressor and who are the oppressed.
The Palestinian liberation struggle continues under the most difficult conditions. Many times since 1948, the Palestinians have been counted out, but they have never surrendered.
Note: This paper was prepared and presented in part for a panel at the Left Forum which was held during the weekend of June 2-4, 2017 at John Jay College of the City University of New York (CUNY). The session was sponsored by Workers World Newspaper and also included presentations by Taryn Favik of the International Action Center, Andrew Mayton of the Baltimore Antifascist Community Defense and John Steffin of the New York Branch of Workers World Party.
A series of conferences involving African Union (AU) member-states and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has highlighted the dynamic evolving political and economic character of relations between the two geo-political regions.
Known as the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the organization was formed in 2000 in Beijing. Over the last 17 years the volume of trade and investment taking place has accelerated.
Both the PRC and AU member-states have forged stronger links since the beginning of the 21st century due to the needs of both areas. China requires energy resources, agricultural commodities and outlets for its products. The African continent must find states and other entities to provide investments for infrastructural, technological, scientific, healthcare, educational and services development.
Today China is the second largest economy in the world. Since the Revolution of 1949, the country has been transformed from a semi-colonial underdeveloped state to a power to be reckoned with by the imperialist powers of the United States, European Union (EU) and Japan.
Africa has far more land mass than China, and less people. Nonetheless, the continent is rich in mineral and natural resources which if properly harnessed and utilized for development purposes could place the AU member-states as a leading force in economic growth and consequently world politics.
The recently constructed AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was built by Chinese architects and workers. This is a state-of-the-art facility that positions Africa for achieving unprecedented heights in the present period.
Chinese investment and assistance to AU member-states is based upon respect and refrains from interference in the internal affairs of all governments. This represents a sharp departure from the legacy of western domination through the periods of the Atlantic Slave Trade to colonialism and neo-colonialism.
The Struggle Against Slavery and Colonialism
Slavery and colonialism sought to divide African people for the sole purpose of exploitation and national oppression. The false notions of benevolent intent aimed at bringing Christianity, European values and trade have long been debunked as a result of the research of progressive African historians and social scientists.
China-Africa American liberation poster
At the beginning of the contact between Western Europe and Africa in the 15th century, there was no significant gap in development. In fact prior to the 15th century, the center of the world economic system was not in Europe. The key areas of trade and nation-building were located in the Indian Ocean basin extending west and north in Africa and across the areas now considered the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific regions.
China has also been subjected to attempts at colonial domination and enslavement. Both Britain and Japan sought to utilize China for its own benefits. Characteristic of imperialism, wars of conquest were waged against China in the 19th and 20th centuries.
China and Africa have fought national liberation struggles against imperialism. Beginning in the years after the conclusion of World War II, the potential for socialist transformation through national liberation movements emerged. These phenomena were manifested in Vietnam after the August Revolution of 1945 led by Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party. In Korea, the Communist Party led by Kim Il-sung spearheaded tremendous victories in the anti-Japanese liberation war in alliance with the Communist Party of China (CPC) headed by Mao Tse-tung as well as the Soviet Union under Joseph V. Stalin.
The historical development of slavery and colonialism in Africa balkanized the region. Although China, Korea and Vietnam were divided, the emergence of strong communist-led movements was essential in fostering their social trajectories. African liberation movements in some areas of the continent also produced socialist-oriented independence fronts and states. However, the magnitude of the African land mass divided by imperialism posed monumental challenges in constructing socialism. Consequently, AU member-states can learn from the history of China over the last century.
FOCAC Meeting in South Africa During December 2015
A second full summit of FOCAC was held in Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa on December 8-9 of 2015. At this important gathering, commitments were made to initiate joint projects in ten sectors of economic activity. PRC President Xi Jinping announced $US60 billion in financial projects on the African continent.
The disbursements of these funds include five billion of direct and along with interest free loans. Another 35 billion is allocated for what are described as preferential loans and export credit on favorable terms. An additional five billion in capital is slated to replenish the China-Africa development fund. Five billion more in initial capital will go for special loans to small and medium-sized enterprises each. Finally, ten billion was allocated to enhance the China-Africa production capacity cooperation fund. (AU.int, Aug. 2, 2016)
Chinese Leader Chairman Mao with African American Freedom Fighter Robert F. Williams
To ensure the implementation of these projects a coordinator’s meeting was held on July 28-29, 2016 in Beijing. The meeting was co-chaired by South Africa and the PRC.
The AU Commission was represented by H.E. Fatima Haram Acyl who is the Commissioner of Trade and Industry. Chadian Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat represented the AU, since the Central African state was the chair of the regional body at the time. Over 300 ministerial and senior-level officials participated in the deliberations in Beijing.
South African Minister of International Cooperation, Maite Nkoana Mashabane, stated that:
“In a matter of months since the summit in Johannesburg we are busy with implementation, unlike past partnerships whose implementation would take a long time. By 2018 we shall have completed the first phase of action and ordinary Africans will be feeling the difference made by the partnerships.”
Minister Mahamat drew the link from FOCAC’s Johannesburg summit, the coordinator’s meeting and the ambitious Africa 2063 plan adopted at the Jubilee gathering of the AU in 2013. This event commemorated the 50th anniversary of the founding of the OAU. Although the events of May 24-25, 1963 constituted a compromise within the political context of the post-colonial inter-state African relations, the OAU at least provided a rudimentary framework for enhanced cooperation.
The establishment of the OAU Liberation Committee provided a mechanism for the channeling of aid from African states and other fraternal governments into the national liberation movement organizations for the procurement of political training and the establishment of armed revolutionary structures which effectively fought the existing colonial and settler-colonial regimes.
Historical Background and Future Prospects
In the 1960s, China under Chairman Mao and Premier Chou En-lai expressed maximum solidarity with the African Revolution. A 1963 gathering of African freedom movement representatives in China served as the back drop for the issuance of the PRC’s first comprehensive declarations of support for the African American struggle against racism, national oppression and repression.
Mao’s statement, which was published in the Peking Review on August 12, 1963, said in part:
“The speedy development of the struggle of American Negroes (African Americans) is a manifestation of sharpening class struggle and sharpening national struggle within the United States; it has been causing increasing anxiety among U.S. ruling circles. The Kennedy administration is using dual tactics. On the one hand, it continues to connive and take part in discrimination against Negroes and their persecution and even send troops to suppress them. On the other hand, in the attempt to numb the fighting will of the Negro people and deceive the masses of the country, the Kennedy administration is parading as an advocate of ‘the defense of human rights’ and ‘the protection of the civil rights of Negroes’, calling upon the Negro people to exercise ‘restraint’ and proposing the civil rights legislation to Congress…. The fascist atrocities of the U.S. imperialists against the Negro people have exposed the true nature of so-called American democracy and freedom and revealed the inner link between the reactionary policies pursued by the U.S. government at home and its policies of aggression abroad.”
Mao then makes a significant appeal to the international community saying:
“I call on the workers, peasants, revolutionary intellectuals, enlightened persons of all colors in the world, whether white, black, yellow, or brown, to unite to oppose the racial discrimination practiced by U.S. imperialism and support the American Negroes in their struggle. In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle.”
No such statement was ever made by imperialism both inside and outside the U.S. since 1963. Therefore, the Chinese Revolution has made a profound contribution to the quest for liberation and social justice for the African people on a global scale.
Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.
Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.
TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before, Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.
Bush Administration officials had circled the wagons and refused to publicly own up to what the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded, “that the system had been blinking red.” Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness termed “criminal negligence” in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)
Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to “roll out” their misbegotten “war on terror,” which only served to exponentially increase worldwide terrorism.
Unfulfilled Promise
I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar situation to what was behind the FBI’s pre 9/11 failures.
A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney’s ginning up intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took Mueller up on his offer, emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice President Dick Cheney’s claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He also never responded to my email.
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.
A History of Failure
Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller’s role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI’s illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other “top echelon” informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.
This 1953 Boston police booking photo shows James “Whitey” Bulger after an arrest. Bulger and his girlfriend Catherine Greig, were apprehended June 23, 2011, in Santa Monica, Calif., after 16 years on the run. (Boston Police /AP via washingtonpost.com)
For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and torture of captives. Comey also defended the Bush Administration’s three-year-long detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.
Attorney General John Ashcroft (Source: Wikipedia)
Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital room, both Comey and Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo’s singular theories of absolute “imperial” or “war presidency” powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to renew certification of a “state of emergency.”
The Comey/Mueller Myth
What’s not well understood is that Comey’s and Mueller’s joint intervention to stop Bush’s men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans.
The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn’t. Only the legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.
Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.
Neither Comey nor Mueller — who are reported to be “joined at the hip” — deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like “G-men” with reputations for principled integrity, the two close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director George “Slam Dunk” Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.
It seems clear that based on his history and close “partnership” with Comey, called “one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,” Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.
Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”
Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition to launching the Iraq War is archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled “Questions for the FBI Nominee” was published on the day of James Comey’s confirmation hearing. This piece will also be cross-posted on Rowley’s Huffington Post page.
Featured image: AP Photo/Susan Walsh via us.pressfrom.com
The London Bridge attack story continues to spin wildly out of control, as the third attacker named in the terror atrocity, another known wolf, was placed on an EU-wide database and according to security officials, openly acknowledged the will to carryout terror in March of 2016.
The UK’s prior warning of the third London attacker only raises more questions about the intelligence world at large and the true nature of terror in the West. Here at 21WIRE, we’ve outlined key elements in the London Bridge attack narrative and have analyzed the last three UK attacks in great detail, as the relationship between MI5 British security services and the European Union was found to be inextricably linked to two of the three terrorists involved in the London Bridge terror event.
Let’s take a look at some of the latest details in this case, while examining the historical bond between terror, security and media…
‘PRIOR WARNING’ – The London Bridge attack revealed two Known wolf terrorists (Photo Illustration 21WIRE’s Shawn Helton)
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.
“Two former European intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, confirmed that Mr. Zaghba had been stopped by the authorities at the airport near Bologna, Italy, in March 2016 while he was trying to travel to Turkey and on to Syria to fight for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. He was carrying an electronic device with Islamic State propaganda, they said.
Mr. Zaghba told a security guard that he was “going to be a terrorist,” according to Giuseppe Amato, the chief prosecutor in Bologna. The police arrested him, and also flagged Mr. Zaghba as a “suspicious person” to the British and Moroccan authorities, according to Mr. Amato, but there was not enough to justify criminal charges.”
According to Giuseppe Amato, the chief prosecutor in Bologna, Italy, authorities did everything they could, as Zaghba was only a “suspicious person” and “there was no proof he was a terrorist.” This prompted the media to focus their attention on alleged ISIS propaganda on the attacker’s cell phone as his main offense, most likely in an effort to rally public support for new sweeping security changes, as well as gain further access into personal devices as pursued in the aftermath of the dubious San Bernardino shooting case.
This directly dovetails PM Theresa May‘s recentdeclaration’s concerning ‘online extremism’ – a vague concept that could be loosely applied to all kinds of acts, beliefs or statements – whether criminal or not.
During the apparent encryption saga between Apple and the FBI, we stated that there are no guarantees in the security world, especially if a digital master-key were to be used, as it would potentially make it easier for invaders (either the government, or various hackers) mining for data moving forward into the future.
While prosecutor Amato attempted explain the release of Zaghba over the perception of Italian law, it appears according to Italian anti-terror measures on the books since 2015, police may have been able to prevent Zaghba. Most notably, Italian officials may have had the ability to detain him for further questioning, in addition to potentially drafting charges for his attempt to join and support ISIS, as well as withdrawing his passport. One could argue that a tough prosecutor could have made this case.
Here’s a screenshot of the anti-terror legislation in Italy for review…
Given Zaghba’s terror declarations and his plan to join ISIS, it seems based on Italian law, one of the main suspects in the London Bridge attack very well could have been charged with a serious crime prior to committing terror.
While mainstream media outlets appear to deflect security responsibility over Zaghba, as he was not a ‘subject of interest’ to MI5 or London police, the fact remains he was on an EU-wide database, and based on what we’ve shown above, should have had his passport revoked at the very least, in addition to being detained with the threat of other terror-related charges. While the legal wrangling may have not entirely prevented a crime, it would have certainly been a huge roadblock for Zaghba’s involvement in the London Bridge attack.
In addition to the unexplained security links to known wolves in the UK and the laws that failed to prevent terror, it appears that once again Britain’s Channel 4 is at the forefront after revelations of Zaghba’s accomplice, Khuram Butt (well-known to MI5),had been featured in the documentary ‘The Jihadist Next Door’ that airedin the UK in 2016. Not only was this whole aspect to the case reminiscent of the Orlando shooting saga, where the apparent Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen,was found to have been featured in two high-profile documentaries, it also recalled Channel 4’s links to Mohammad Emwazi, the man purported to be the terror avatar Jihadi John in 2015. Curiously, we find UK mainstream media outlet Channel 4 at the center of the known wolf web. Here’s a passage from our unmasking of Jihadi John in 2015 for comparison:
“Back in 2009, UK intelligence services in partnership with Metropolitan Police, announced the existence of a covert social engineering effort known as the The Channel Project, which was being run in hopes to target children with traits which may indicate an attraction to “extreme” views and a susceptibility to being groomed by “radicalisers” in the future. It goes without saying, that a secret program of this kind could just as easily be used to groom future ‘radicals’ and informants too.”
Here’s a video provided by Britain’s Channel 4, that depicted a camera shy Emwazi in his teenage years…
Surrounding many large-scale terror incidents in the West these days is the strange existence of suspected terrorists being attached to the entertainment industry, other past terror connections, while simultaneously linked to various ongoing terror operations.
This was certainly the case as Emwazi’s longtime West London associate, former UK rapper (turned Jihadist) Abdel Bary, the initial ‘Jihadi John’ suspect, had also been linked to the ‘London Boys’ terror network, along with Emwazi.
In early 2013, we were told that Emwazi had “fled the gaze of MI5” to head for Syria, at that same time the BBC Radio 1 featured Bary, disappeared from London – as another high-profile suspect, Ahmed Mohamed (tied to Somali militant group al-Shabab), the man who allegedly recruited Emwazi in 2012, gave MI5 the slip after changing into a ‘burka’ at a mosque.
In 2011, the Daily Mail reported the following regarding the sleeper cell known as the London Boys:
“A group of terrorists who trained in Somalia returned to Britain to carry out a wave of attacks which were demanded by Osama Bin Laden before his death.
The gang, dubbed the ‘London Boys’, were taught by a top Al-Qaeda explosives expert in the war-torn country and include Reza Afsharzadegan, a former IT student from Ladbroke Grove, West London.”
The article continued, stating the following:
“Leaked documents reveal how the ‘sleeper operatives’ were trained by an Al-Qaeda official who is wanted by the FBI with a £3m ($5m) reward for his capture.”
As we’ve stated many times, Western political leaders and their media publicly discuss the idea of so-called terror‘sleeper cells’ hiding in a nation near you, but none of them acknowledge the historical fact that they themselves have helped to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through various secret counter-terrorism operations. Allied nations of course, will bring up the fact that Western intelligence regularly uses double agents and informants, under the banner of ‘security’ to obfuscate the true intentions of such programs – always careful as to how they paint Western foreign policy aims.
QUESTION: Are we seeing a new network of London and ‘Manchester Boys’ sleeper cells in the UK today, if so, why?
Recently the well-known Australian journalist and documentary film maker John Pilger also weighed in on the collusion of terror and security in an article that was republished here at 21WIRE:
“In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys”. Implacably opposed to Mu’ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.
Suddenly the control orders were lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.
The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa’s largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gadaffi in the 1990s – bank-rolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain and the US seized the opportunity of a “humanitarian intervention” and attacked Libya. They were joined by Nato under cover of a UN resolution to “protect civilians”.”
The London Bridge attack leaves a number of questions unanswered – will we ever know the complete story for an event that lasted only 8 minutes total?
The latest polls suggest that the Tories will secure some 314 out of 650 seats in the House of Commons. The Labour Party would secure 266 seats.
What this means is that the Conservative Party would not reach the required majority of 326 seats to form a government.
The underlying prediction is a hung parliament.
The Scottish National Party is forecast to take a hit, winning 34 seats, 22 fewer than in the last election.
The Liberal Democrats with a forecasted 14 seats is slated to play a key role in the formation of a coalition government.
The official results should be forthcoming in the coming hours.
According to the NYT
According to the exit poll, Mrs. May may have lost the extraordinary gamble she made in calling the election — and Britain may be headed for a hung Parliament, in which no party has a majority.
Poll results found that the Conservatives would remain the largest party, but they were projected to win only 314 seats, down from 331 won in 2015, and 12 votes short of a majority.
the BBC poll estimates that the Tories would be short of a majority of 17 votes.
According to The Guardian:
Theresa May’s gamble at calling an early general election following a massive Conservative lead in the polls appeared not to have paid off after a 10pm exit poll predicted that Britain was headed for a hung parliament.
The shock result, which followed forecasts of a Tory majority of up to 100 seats, came after Jeremy Corbyn enthused Labour supporters who had flocked to almost 100 rallies across the country.
The poll suggested the Conservatives were on track to be the largest party, but were 12 seats short of an overall majority. Party sources insisted it was early days, stressing that the prediction in 2015 had also been for a hung parliament but finished with a Tory majority.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, hit out at the negative and “nasty” tactics of his opponents, insisting Labour had stuck to upbeat arguments, saying that if the result was “anywhere close” to the exit polls then it would be a massive vindication for positive campaigning.
Key is asking who most has motive? Who benefits most? Why was Iran attacked? Why now?
Perpetrators of incidents like Wednesday’s twin terrorist attacks in Tehran likely have backers – planning and orchestrating things with specific objectives in mind.
The Tehran attacks killed at least 16, injuring dozens more, the severest incident in many years, targeting key symbols of the 1979 revolution, suggesting more of the same may follow.
Heavy security protecting Iran’s Majlis (parliament) was penetrated. Henceforth, Ayatollah Khomeini’s shine will be more diligently guarded.
Attacking it was the equivalent of terrorists targeting the Statue of Liberty, Lincoln Memorial or Washington Monument in America.
Security always is heavy in Tehran and other key areas in the country, likely to be stepped up henceforth. Since its 1979 revolution, Iran has been targeted by America and Israel for regime change.
Saudi Arabia is a key adversary. On Wednesday, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) issued a statement, saying Wednesday’s attacks came days after Trump’s meeting with “the rulers of a regional reactionary regime” involved in supporting takfiri terrorists – blaming Riyadh and Washington for what happened, adding:
The “IRGC has proved that it would not leave unanswered the shedding of innocent blood.”
The IRGC’s second-in-command General Hossein Salami said
“(w)e will remain steadfast in fighting terrorists, and we will surely take revenge on terrorists, their affiliates and their supporters for the blood of the martyrs of today’s two terrorist attacks.”
President Hassan Rouhani (credits to the owner of the photo)
A statement by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said
“(t)he Iranian nation…will prove once again that it will crush any plot or scheme by ill-wishers through unity and solidarity and its powerful security structure.”
Iranian Islamic Revolution leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei made similar comments, expressing resolve to defend the nation effectively.
Hours before the attacks, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said
“Iran must be punished for its interference in the region.”
Weeks earlier, Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman vowed to battle Iran in its territory, not the kingdom’s homeland.
Saudi Arabia is the epicenter of regional terrorism sponsored by rogue Arab states. Following Wednesday’s incidents, al-Jubeir turned truth on its head, saying
“(w)e condemn terrorist attacks anywhere they occur and we condemn the killing of the innocent anywhere it occur” – denying Riyadh involvement.
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.
Iran is targeted for its sovereign independence, its vast oil and gas reserves Washington wants to control. It’s Israel’s key regional rival.
It’s involved in defending Syria from US-orchestrated aggression, wanting regime change in both countries.
Wednesday’s incidents followed President Rouhani’s reelection. It came at a time when Iran, Hezbollah, Russia and government forces continue making progress against America’s imperial project in Syria.
Trump outrageously blamed Iran for what happened, a White House statement turning truth on its head, saying
“states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote.”
Washington, NATO, Israel and Saudi Arabia are its leading perpetrators – Iran one of its key opponents.
It’s opposition to the imperial projects of America and Israel leaves it vulnerable to hostile acts by both countries and their rogue allies.
Terrorism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Without foreign backing, it can’t exist.
Incidents similar to Wednesday’s coordinated attacks in Iran can happen anywhere sponsors of ISIS and like-minded groups wish to target.
Washington seeks unchallenged global dominance, using these groups as imperial foot soldiers.
As long as its ruthlessness persists, the scourge of terrorism will continue threatening humanity.
A Final Comment
On Thursday, Iran’s Security Ministry said five of the terrorists involved in Wednesday’s coordinated incidents in Tehran “earlier left Iran and conducted terrorist activity in Raqqa and Mosul.”
“Last year, they returned to the country under the leadership of the commander, Abu Aish, to carry out terrorist attacks in the holy places of Iran.”
Iranian “security services eliminated Abu Aish.” Its intelligence ministry said three teams were involved in Wednesday’s attacks, some of their members arrested before the incidents occurred.
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.”
In memory of the USS Liberty attack by the Israeli Air Force 50 years ago today, Global Research introduces to you a compilation of comprehensive articles whose aim, by and large, is to unmask the truth about “what really happened in 1967”.
In the words of Philip Giraldi,
The most disgusting part of the tale relates to how U.S. warplanes sent to the Liberty’s aid from an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean were called back by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acting under orders from President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who declared that he would rather see the ship go to the bottom of the sea than embarrass his good friend Israel. Ironically, the first ship to reach the Liberty and offer assistance was from the Soviet Union, an offer that was declined.
The Israeli military returned to carry out an unprovoked two-hour air and naval attack on the basically defenseless ship. The idea was to sink the Liberty, leaving no survivors. Yet due to the great courage and efforts of the ship’s crew and captain, William L. McGonagle, the Liberty survived and stayed afloat.
Twice, US warplanes from the US Sixth Fleet responded to distress calls from the Liberty, only to be recalled by direct order of the White House and the US Department of Defense. In retrospect, it is clear that Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara in turn got their orders from the Israel Lobby and the Israeli leadership. 34 were killed and 174 wounded, with many permanently disabled.
The attack was followed by a cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States even back nearly fifty years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country.
In order to establish Israel as a Jewish state in 1948, nearly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their homes and their land. They call it the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic.
For fifty years, Israel denied the Palestinians self-determination, justifying it in the name of national security—but nothing threatens its security more than the continuation of the occupation. Breaching the moral law and flouting the Palestinians’ human rights only nurtures another generation who live to resent, live to hate, and live to harm, for there is nothing left for them to lose.
* * *
Truth in media is a powerful instrument.
Global Research is a small team that believes in the power of information and analysis to bring about far-reaching societal change including a world without war.
Backed by intense US airstrikes and accompanied by beefed-up contingents of US special operations troops, an armed force dominated by the YPG (People’s Protection Force) Kurdish militia crossed into the eastern sector of the Syrian city of Raqqa Tuesday.
The offensive against the so-called capital of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria represents a major escalation of the US military intervention in Syria. Ostensibly aimed at crushing ISIS and countering terrorism, the American escalation is bound up with the broader strategic aims of US imperialism, principally, confronting Iran, which is seen as an obstacle to US hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.
While declining to specify the precise number of US troops now on the ground in Syria, the Pentagon has acknowledged that the number of US “advisers” deployed with the YPG has been increased substantially in the wake of last month’s decision by the Trump administration to directly arm the Kurdish militia.
Thousands of assault rifles, heavy machine guns and antitank weapons along with armored vehicles have been delivered to the YPG. A Pentagon spokesman told the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes that part of the mission of the special operations troops deployed with the Kurdish militia is to
“closely monitor the equipment provided to the Syrian Kurds” and “ensure it’s not going to be pointed in any different direction other than ISIS.”
Turkey, Washington’s NATO ally, has bitterly denounced the arming of the Kurdish militia, which Ankara regards as a “terrorist” force and a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), with which it has been in armed conflict for decades.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim (Source: thegazapost.net)
The Turkish government has threatened to intervene in Syria if it perceives the Kurdish offensive in Raqqa posing a threat to its interests. At the same time, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim reported that Washington had assured Ankara that its support for the YPG would end once the Raqqa offensive was completed. A senior State Department official recently described the US relation to the Syrian Kurds as “temporary, transactional and tactical,” signaling that Washington will betray the Kurds as soon as they have served their purpose.
While the number of American troops deployed in Syria had officially been capped at 500, they are now believed to number well over 1,000. In addition to the special operations troops fighting alongside the YPG, a US Marine artillery unit is pouring howitzer fire into the besieged city and US Apache attack helicopters are providing close air support.
The main factor in the steady advance of the YPG on Raqqa, however, has been an intense US bombing campaign that has exacted a growing toll in terms of civilian lives. The monitoring group Airwars has conservatively estimated over 3,800 killed since the US first launched its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in 2014. Over 60 percent of these casualties have been inflicted since the beginning of this year.
US and allied warplanes have dropped leaflets over Raqqa telling residents to leave their homes. Those who attempt to do so, however, face the prospect of being killed by US warplanes, being shot by ISIS militants or being blown up by mines planted around the city.
On Tuesday, there were reports from both Syrian government media and opposition sources that a US strike killed at least 12 civilians, including women and children, as they attempted to flee the city by boarding boats to cross the Euphrates River. A total of 21 civilians were killed Monday night in air strikes on Raqqa, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Also on Tuesday, a school housing civilians displaced by the fighting was hit by US bombs in the eastern Mashlab district of Raqqa, causing an unknown number of civilian casualties.
Last Saturday, a US airstrike hit a residential building in Raqqa, killing 43 civilians, most of them women and children. The al-Mawasah hospital in the city was also reportedly hit by warplanes from the US-led coalition, with a number of civilians, including women and children, killed and wounded.
The assault on Raqqa comes barely one week after US Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the media that the Pentagon has adopted “annihilation tactics” in its anti-ISIS campaign, centered on the parallel sieges against the Syrian city of some 300,000 people and Mosul, the Iraqi city 230 miles to the east, which previously had a population of 1.6 million people.
“Civilian casualties are a fact of life in this sort of situation,” Mattis, a former Marine general, said of the ongoing US-led offensives.
The comments, it is now undeniably clear, represented a green light to US commanders to carry out mass slaughter.
Media reports and statements from the Pentagon and the YPG have all indicated that Raqqa is besieged from the north, east and west. Reports from both the Russian and Iranian media, however, have suggested that the US and its proxy forces have deliberately left an escape route for ISIS fighters to the south, allowing them to flee to the city of Deir al-Zour, about 85 miles down the Euphrates, where the Islamist militia has launched an offensive against Syrian army forces. The surrounding province of Deir al-Zour is almost entirely controlled by the Islamist militias that have served as proxy forces in the six-year-old US-backed war to topple the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Heavy fighting has also taken place between ISIS and government forces around the ancient city of Palmyra, 100 miles south of Raqqa.
Even as Syrian government forces were fighting ISIS in Deir al-Zour and Palmyra, further south, in the al-Tanf area near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan, the US carried out an airstrike against pro-government forces, attacking a column the Pentagon claimed included a tank, artillery, antiaircraft weapons, vehicles and more than 60 soldiers. It was not clear how many were killed and wounded in the US bombing. The US military has illegally established a base on Syrian territory there to train so-called “rebels,” allegedly to fight ISIS. The US military carried out a similar attack on pro-government militia forces in the same area last month.
In reality, the Pentagon is training these forces as part of the regime-change operation against Damascus that Washington has orchestrated since 2011, with Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias serving as its proxy forces.
The simultaneous combat in Deir al-Zour, Palmyra and al-Tanf make clear that Washington is in a de facto military alliance with ISIS, so long as it is attacking government forces.
US military aims in Syria are driven not by a determination to crush ISIS, which is itself the product of US interventions in the region and the CIA’s support for Islamist militias in both Libya and Syria, but rather to overthrow the Syrian regime and militarily confront its principal regional ally, Iran.
The duplicity of US policy in the region has only been underscored by the ongoing crisis in the Persian Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and its allies have imposed a blockade that falls just short of a state of war against Qatar. US President Donald Trump signaled his support for Riyadh in the conflict Tuesday, using his Twitter account to portray the move against Qatar as driven by concern over the Qatari regime’s funding of “Radical Ideology.”
Screenshot from Trump’s Twitter Account
This is patent nonsense. The Saudi regime is itself the principal ideological font of outfits like Al Qaeda and ISIS. Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar have provided billions of dollars worth of support to the Islamist militias that have laid waste to Syria.
Qatar, meanwhile, hosts the forward operating headquarters of the US Central Command, along with over 8,000 US troops and the main American airbase in the region, from which most of the US airstrikes are being launched.
The show of support from the Trump White House for the anti-Qatar campaign is driven by the centrality of war preparations against Iran, with which the Qatari regime has failed to align itself unequivocally.
The episode has served to expose the threat of the US interventions in Iraq and Syria rapidly exploding into a region-wide war drawing in not only Iran, but potentially nuclear-armed Russia.
Are we in need of distractions? The political masters obviously think so. There have been hackings, cuttings, slayings and crushing events. As battles continue raging in Syria and northern Iraq, European cities face the next round of urban slayings.
As that was taking place, eyes in the western media were taken off brewing troubles among the Gulf States. Eager pots have been calling kettles the most unspeakable things. (Not so much black as crispy charred.) No one would have been surprised by calling out that tenured terrorist state known as Saudi Arabia for its various actions in Yemen and its own vicious brand of fundamentalism advertised globally.
Yet it was Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya insisting that Qatar was the destabilising influence in the region. (The others were naturally innocent of that.) All land, air and sea traffic would be halted with the state, while diplomatic missions would be removed. Qatari citizens would also be given their marching orders, having to leave within 14 days.
Disagreements between Doha and Riyadh are far from new. Being eager practitioners of censorship and media control, Riyadh has shown little time for such bold media efforts as Al-Jazeera. Bristling at what it has deemed negative coverage, officials in Riyadh have repeatedly insisted that Qatar be rebuked for backing its own horses in the Islamist struggle, much of this borne by the rumblings of the Arab Spring.
The Islamic Brotherhood is top of that list, and what is not surprising by looking at the list of states intent on strangling Qatar is that they have taken a dim view about the populist aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood.
In Egypt, an elected head of state from the organisation was deposed in a coup that re-established the primacy of the military. Qatar’s backing of Mohamed Morsi’s short stint at the helm was well and truly noted. In a measure of placation, Qatar closed down Al Jazeera Mubashir Misr, its twenty-four hour news channel in Cairo.
Since then, spats have grown in number. Ambassadors have been sporadically recalled. In September 2002, Saudi Arabia did so over what it regarded as unfavourable coverage of a Saudi plan which entailed normalising ties with Israel in exchange for a peace deal with the Palestinians.[1]
In 2014, the three Gulf States intent on punishing Qatar also withdrew their ambassadors citing the usual grounds of interference in internal affairs and “jeopardizing regional security”. Those concerns have not changed, and the move of severing ties and effectively shutting off Qatar is a measure of how dissatisfied the other state have been towards Doha’s efforts.
More recently, Qatar’s efforts to secure the release of a group of falconers, among them members of the royal family, captured by a Teheran-backed Shia group in Iraq, drew attention from Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. The intended ransom could well have run into a billion dollars.[2]
The isolating move has triggered obvious consequences. Qatar has become a place of strategic importance for various powers. The US, for one, has its largest airbase in the Middle East located in the state.
Nor has the provocative move gone unnoticed by others who have thrown their weight behind Doha. The Turkish parliament has passed legislation drafted in May permitting the deployment of troops to the country’s military base in Qatar. In 2015, Turkey’s ambassador to Doha, Ahmet Demirok, forecast an eventual troop number of 3,000.[3]
Then comes that important matter of aviation. Qatar’s flag carrier, Qatar Airways, has had to re-route flights over Turkey, Iran and Oman, given the forced closure of airspace to their planes. On Tuesday, 70 flights were grounded.
Source: ICAO, CAPA, flightradar24, Al Jazeera
Other airline carriers will be delighted by the move, given the relentless rise and appropriation of key routes of travel from Europe to Asia and Australasia by the Middle Eastern carriers. The gesture of isolating Qatar is looking, at best, one of economic self-harm, affecting such carriers as Bahrain’s Gulf Air, Dubai’s Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s Saudia and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways.
The demands this time for resolving this monumental tiff are bound to be even steeper than they were in 2014. Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi makes his own hazard at a set of guesses, and it involves a conventional, authoritarian ploy: muzzle media coverage, entailing the “shuttering of the Al Jazeera TV Network before any mediation can take place” (Newsweek, June 5).
That will just be the beginning. The main course will feature the expulsion of Hamas figures and affiliates, along with such undesirables as Islamist writer Yasser Al-Za’atra and Azmi Bishara. For dessert, the Egyptians will wish for a cessation of any pro-Morsi coverage, while the entire collective will push for shackles to be placed on charitable organisations.
Such demands are what is conventionally called unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of another state, but the despots of the Gulf are bound to miss that irony. What Qatar is accused of will not only be matched but surpassed.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge and lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected].
“The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, ‘just to keep people frightened.’” – 1984
There is much to say about the attacks that took place in London last night. If Theresa May has her way, however, there will be little chance to say anything. The ice queen of the common people has, in the wake of the horrific attacks, not only called for a suspension of the general election but also for greater control over the Internet. Now, with British SAS troops moving into London and much of the city already acclimated to seeing fully armed British soldiers on the streets, Britain has abandoned all pretense of the “Western freedoms” it once inaccurately portrayed itself as representing. The U.K. is now openly embracing the commune-fascism it once went great lengths to keep hidden.
Prime Minister Theresa May (credits to the owner of the photo)
May, in her totalitarian speech, claimed that the Internet needed more control because terrorists were allowed “safe spaces” online where their ideology could take root and blossom. Therefore, May wants the U.K. to bring legislation and pressure to bear on private companies to regulate and censor content and spaces online under the guise of preventing terrorism.
Of course, the U.K. could stop funding ISIS and other terrorists and terrorist organizations across the world. It could immediately ban Saudi Arabia from funding Wahhabist mosques all across England. It could cease allowing more immigrants from entering a country that has long suffered from an enormous shortage of jobs and whose communities are the locales from which these terrorists almost solely come from. The U.K. could even re-prioritize police efforts to arrest and prosecute victimless drug crimes and focus on actual violence and terrorism but, I digress. It appears that freedom, economics, and reason are now passé, while shutting down free speech and free thought sounds like a much better option.
There are, however, at least three points that need to be made about these acts of terrorism as well as the previous ones in relation to the U.K. Indeed, there are three levels to any discussion of the attacks at London Bridge.
First, after decades of unfettered immigration from cultures often far different than that of the U.K., the British people are now reaping what has been sown by their government in the form of often violent hostility to anything British and British culture in general. Granted, many of the immigrants have entered Britain from lands that jolly ol’ England bombed, occupied, or generally terrorized for decades and, thus, you can see why British patriotism might not be the highest on their priority list. Still, after decades of such policies which were admittedly implemented for the purpose of changing British culture forever, England’s cities contain areas where white Britons are now afraid to go for fear of being attacked by “immigrants,” and members of council who refuse to shake the hands of their female constituents because it violates their extreme form of religion. Anyone who has traveled to England and especially London in the last few years can attest to the vast demographic changes that have taken place as a result of Britain’s open immigration policies.
The elephant in the room is that the overwhelming majority of terror attacks are coming from these communities. Most Westerners, however, are afraid to state the obvious because doing so will undoubtedly open them up to catcalls of “racism” and “xenophobia,” the punishment for questioning the sacred cow of “cultural diversity.”
But the question of terrorism in the U.K. is not that simple. Right wingers would have everyone believe that such terror is the work of “Muslims” and immigrants and that the issue doesn’t go any deeper than that. Some people, according to them, are just bad seeds at the macro level and so “they” are the problem and “we” are the good guys. “Muslims” are taught from day one to hate Westerners, Christians, Jews, and all non-Muslims. Even the ones who aren’t violent and who act like any other Westerner, according to the right wingers, are just acting, waiting for their chance to destroy Western society and impose the caliphate from within.
But where does radical Islamic terrorism really have its roots? It certainly is not in Syria since both the Syrian government and the Syrian people have been the greatest force against it for the last six years. It certainly wasn’t Saddam Hussein and it isn’t Iran. In fact, it’s nowhere that the United States and the U.K. have been bombing for the past several decades. The roots of extremism come from British allies like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
source: yournewswire.com
More importantly, the roots of extremism are firmly planted in the halls of MI-6, the CIA, and other Western intelligence agencies as well as the halls of the British government who not only manipulate jihadists, but actually create, fund, and direct them throughout the entire world, including on British soil.
Simply put, the U.K. is experiencing the results of the arming of terrorists across the world, allowing Saudi Arabia to fund Wahhabist mosques throughout England, and engaging in imperialist wars all over the planet. Whenever you dump money into terrorism and incubate it on your soil, shit tends to happen.
After all, when you allow a foreign country to pour millions of dollars into mosques that teach children and angst-ridden young people in the ways of extremism as well as hatred for an authoritarian government that keeps them down, all the while dropping bombs on their next of kin overseas, what exactly do you expect to follow?
Lastly, we cannot ignore the history of terrorism in the Western world, particularly the terrorist acts that have taken place in the years after 9/11. Almost all of these attacks appear to have been the result of pre-planning by Western intelligence agencies much more so than any that are organic “homegrown” or simply jihadist-based terrorism. That is not to say that the will, desire, and means to conduct such attacks against British society do not exist. Quite the contrary. However, in the vast majority of the attacks in Britain, the assailants were well known to authorities, many having even been arrested, released (from rather serious crimes), and monitored before, during, and up until the very moment the attacks took place. Such is a hallmark of false flag government-sponsored terror.
Labour candidate, Jeremy Corbyn (credits to the owner of the photo)
These attacks are much more often than not, completely engineered by Western intelligence agencies or, at the very least, known about beforehand and allowed to happen for political purposes. Whether it is terrifying the domestic population into accepting a greater police state or more foreign wars, or whether is simply an attempt to change and direct the public’s mood in one direction or other, false flag terror has been used expertly throughout the post-9/11 Western world. Thus, it would be entirely naïve to suggest the timing of the attacks is not intentional. Indeed, only a week before the general election as the wave of popular sentiment appeared to be leaning to the apparent anti-war Jeremy Corbyn when ISIS attacks innocent people in the most grotesque fashion, not only inspiring a “crackdown on the Internet” but also a suspension of the general elections. This suspension is likely to last just long enough to smear Corbyn as a weakling and a naïve peacenik who isn’t fit to lead in the modern world of domestic terror and constant violence.
But if it is not a coincidence that the attacks occurred when they did, what does that mean? Clearly, it means that the real organizers were members of a deeper state apparatus than anything resembling bearded freaks in a London flat, obsessing over jihadists forums.
The UK has never been known for freedom and democracy but now even the semblance of normalcy and relative calm has disappeared from England and, once again, British people will be living in a country full of troops on the street where the freedoms of thought, speech, and even expression will be suppressed. The troops will serve to remind them that they live in a truly authoritarian country and to make sure that anyone who doubts the new reality will be relieved of their disbelief.
The wars will not stop, however, and neither will the terrorism unless the British people initiate a revolution of their own which brings about an end to the U.K.’s foreign wars, funding of terrorism, trampling of rights at home, and destructive immigration policies.
If there is one thing you can be certain about in any UK election, it is that the vast majority of the press will be hostile to Labour. The likes of the Times, Daily Mail and (of course) the Sun will claim to be “fair-minded” and “considered”, etc. before announcing yet again that they are backing the Tories. The current election is no exception to this rule.
The only anomaly to this was during the Tony Blair years, when the Tories were considered so unpopular that some national titles decided to give critical support to Labour. However, they were comforted by how right-wing New Labour and Blair were; offering support was therefore deemed an acceptable risk by the press barons who in truth actually decide editorial policy.
The support by the press for the Tories this time round has, if anything, been even more emphatic than usual, mainly due to their mutual hatred of the EU, but also because of Jeremy Corbyn and what he represents. No lie, no personal insult, and no twisting of the facts are considered too great for these guardians of free speech.
Just as the bosses’ press now fawns over Theresa May (echoing the same toadying that we saw when Maggie Thatcher was in office), so they all rush to stick the knife in to Corbyn at each and every opportunity. They have certainly had practice, as this has been their approach to Corbyn ever since he was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015.
So vicious has this hostility been that former newspaper editor Paul Connew felt moved to say, as Corbyn was about to be confirmed as Labour’s new leader,
“Well, even as someone hostile to Jeremy Corbyn’s run for leader, I have to admit his treatment by the Mail, Sun, Telegraph, Times and Express and their Sunday sisters has been as savage as anything dished out to Ed Miliband.”
When people talk about Corbyn, it is the image presented by the Tory press that they often see.
Tories and media in cahoots
Of course this hostility to the Left on the part of the right-wing press will come as no surprise to anyone. In the 1980s it was said that the Tory Party was in daily contact with Fleet Street, coordinating how the media reported events, particularly during elections. Every attempt was made to shape people’s opinions and views.
No doubt similar arrangements exist today. Indeed, all the press barons quickly came on board in supporting May’s U-turn about calling a snap election. Even the Daily Express – whose owner decided to back UKIP last time around in revenge for the Tories not giving him a knighthood – has been toeing the Tory line.
Interestingly, the Tory manifesto includes scrapping the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry and Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act (which would have required newspapers to pay the legal costs of action taken against them, if they didn’t sign up to an approved regulator), both of which the press barons have been demanding. As BBC Media editor Amol Rajan put it on the BBC news website:
“Obviously there is no suggestion or evidence of some kind of deal between the prime minister and the press – but clearly she has a more constructive relationship with many of Britain’s top titles than even her predecessor.”
The “progressive” press
So what about the alternative “liberal” press? The Daily Mirror has backed Labour so far, but again they have been hostile towards Corbyn over the last two years. The Guardian, that beacon of the wet middle-classes, continues its love affair with the Lib-Dems, despite the bitter experience of the coalition government. If anything, they have led the way in attacking Corbyn at every opportunity, usually linked to endless calls for a new centre-left re-alignment. In this task, the Guardian have been aided by a mob of Blairite rent-a-quote MPs, who have popped up at every opportunity to add their moans to that of the paper’s regular columnists.
For all their liberal-minded credentials, both the Mirror and the Guardian have, when the capitalist chips are down, backed the status quo and the rule of the rich. Their non-stop talk on how badly Corbyn is doing and how much better it would all be if Labour was to be returned to nice, safe, “centre ground” hands once again flies in the face of reality. These people have no answer to the millions of lost votes incurred during the Blair/Brown/Miliband years.
They are happy to endlessly go on about Corbyn’s “unelectability” and Labour’s low poll ratings (until recently of around 30% to 32%), yet have nothing to say about the terrible results scored by the more acceptable Dutch socialists (5.7%) or the French socialists (6.4%) in other recent elections – both of which have recently discovered just how popular their more “mainstream” approaches actually are. Yet the experts of the press demand that Labour takes the same route over a cliff as the French and Dutch socialist parties. (In passing, we should also note the ongoing hostility on the part of the Guardian towards the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, with its open calls for the Maduro government to be replaced.)
BBC bias
We should also comment on the pernicious role of the television news media. They are supposed to be impartial when it comes to reporting, above all during an election. Yet over the last two years we have seen a clear tendency to push these “impartial” boundaries to their limits and beyond, not least when dealing with Jeremy Corbyn.
The BBC has been under attack for several years now from a Tory government, intent on holding a gun of privatisation and budget cuts to its head. As a result, the BBC has become far less willing to ruffle the government’s feathers. The BBC has been using the same tactics that we have seen from papers like the Guardian, with Blairites popping up like magic everywhere on their channels to attack Corbyn.
The BBC says they are just reporting the news as they see it – but, as a wing of the establishment, they are also shaping it. They often emphasise negative rather than positive aspects when dealing with Corbyn, being more than a little selective over their reporting and the tone used.
This is nothing new either; ask the miners how they were treated by the BBC during the great strike of the 1980s. No wonder people have turned to social media to get their news, as an antidote to the tame reporting on our TV screens of what this government is doing. Interestingly, even this mock impartiality is not enough for some in the establishment. Murdoch’s News Corp want to change the laws in Britain so that Sky News can be as biased in their reporting as its counterpart, Fox News, is in America.
Monopolies and the media
So far nothing that has been said here will come as a shock to trade unionists or Labour activists. It reflects the nature of the press and the key question of ownership. When was the last time any major national newspaper ever supported a strike for example? Indeed, it is only when you look closer at the facts of media ownership that things start to become all too clear.
The media industry is one of the most monopolised on earth. Two rich billionaires, Rupert Murdoch and Jonathan Harmsworth, 4th Viscount of Rothermere, control over 50% of all national papers sold in the UK. According to the Media Reform Council, Britain has one of the most concentrated media environments in the world, with titles owned by just three companies representing 71% of national newspaper circulation and five companies owning 81% of all local newspaper titles on sale.
As of 2015: News Corp had 33.6% of the national newspaper market; Associated Newspapers 24.1%; Express Group 12.1%; and Telegraph Media Group 7%. If you add the FT at 2.6% and Independent Print Ltd at 4.5% (before the closure of the Independent as a print newspaper) then this gives a huge share of the market to papers that have tended to support the Tory Party over the years. Against this we have just the Guardian Group at 2.5% and MGN at 13.6%, although their support for Labour has always been somewhat conditional, as already outlined.
This monopolisation continues into the local press. As of July 2015, Johnson Press owned 21.9% of all local titles, Garnet Group (Newsquest) 18.9%, and Tindel 11.2% – representing 52% of all titles between them. Add Local World, Trinity Mirror and Archant to the list and you account for 81% of all papers on the market.
Is this monopolisation just a British phenomenon? Turn to the USA where the principle of freedom of the press is enshrined in the constitution and you find that six companies now dominate the whole media industry as against 50 in 1983. These in turn are owned by 15 billionaires.
“Freedom of the Press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
This famous saying by legendary US media critic A.J. Liebling in 1960 is evidently as true now as ever. The same story could be repeated in countries all around the world.
Media for the billions, not the billionaires!
When Lenin, long ago, said:
“In capitalist usage, freedom of the press means freedom of the rich to bribe the press, freedom to use their wealth to shape and fabricate so-called public opinion,” he could have been writing about the situation today.
Many people talk about press regulation as being the solution to the problem. Certainly what we have seen up to now has been pretty ineffective, as we saw with the phone hacking scandal. However, the question must be asked: how effective would any new system be? At worst it would be used by the government to muzzle the press in the same way that British libel laws are used. At best it would be just as ineffectual as previous arrangements, as the wealthy elite would still own and control the press, thereby changing nothing.
A good example of how useless regulation is can be seen from the “Jezster” article that appeared on the front page of The Sun, claiming that Corbyn had agreed to join the Privy Council as leader of the opposition to get money for the party. The claim had no basis in fact, but all that happened was that the paper was obliged by the regulators to publish an “adjudication” some months later, buried away in a small box inside the paper. Where is the justice in this? The Sun repeated lies over the Hillsborough disaster without being punished, apart from people rightly refusing to ever buy that rag again.
Socialists must stand up against the disgraceful bias of the capitalist media, but also recognize that the issue of ownership must be addressed. Without this, real freedom of the press is meaningless.
Regulation and ownership controls are not enough. The media industry should be nationalised and its resources opened up to all political trends and groups within society. This fair allocation – to the billions not the billionaires -– would open up the media as a real and valued resource for all, in which quality journalism would thrive and develop. Under socialism, the media could be a defender of our rights, not a defender of privilege.
All images in this article are from In Defence of Marxism.
A new report exposes the devastating consequences of land grabs for indigenous communities in Preah Vihear province, in northern Cambodia. The report reveals how Chinese companies, attracted by the Cambodian government to invest in local agro-industry, have been violating the fundamental rights of communities and destroying livelihoods and ecosystems over the past six years.
The report is a joint collaboration between Community Network in Action (CNA), Ponlok Khmer, GRAIN, Cambodia Indigenous Youth Association (CIYA), and the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP).
Tens of thousands of people have been affected by a 2011 land grab in the Cambodian province of Preah Vihear in which five Chinese-owned companies were granted economic land concessions (ELCs) occupying more than 40,000 hectares. The firms, all believed to be subsidiaries of a single Chinese state-owned company (Hengfu) in partnership with another (Huada), were clearly set up to circumvent Cambodian legislation that prohibits a single company from holding more than 10,000 hectares.
ELCs are part of Cambodia’s efforts to transform small-scale farmer landscapes into agro-industrial ones. The government promises that this transformation will bring about development and increased profits from agriculture. In practice, however, it is achieved at great human and environmental cost, with little recognisable benefit to communities in the concession areas. This is especially true in the case of the sugarcane concessions in Preah Vihear. In exchange for destruction of local livelihoods and culture, the companies produce sugar for export, contributing nothing to food production for the province or for Cambodia.
“Since they started, ELCs have facilitated the transfer of over 2.1 million hectares of land from small farmers and indigenous groups to large scale corporations and agribusiness. The arguments about the productivity and efficiency of large-scale plantations are false. The truth is that it is small farmers who feed countries like Cambodia”, said GRAIN’s Kartini Samon.
Due to ELCs in Preah Vihear, families have lost the means to produce food and earn a living as the companies have converted rice fields, forests, pasture lands, and streams into sugarcane fields. Waste and harmful chemicals flow into streams communities rely on for water or to support their livelihoods. With the enclosure within the concessions of the sites of at least 19 ancient temples, Cambodia has also lost part of its cultural heritage.
“Instead of stimulating development, ELCs disrupt local and indigenous livelihoods. They destroy biodiversity and natural ecosystems; they hinder priceless culture, harmonisation and solidarity among the local and indigenous people. It is painfully evident to me that sustainable development supposedly brought by ELCs is nothing more than rhetoric”, stated Ang Cheatlom, Executive Director of Ponlok Khmer.
The landscape in the concession area is being permanently altered as the companies convert rice fields, forests and streams in vast seas of sugarcane. (Source: Prame community)
Through the years, affected communities in Preah Vihear have engaged in sustained resistance to the destruction of their livelihoods and culture, and exposed land grabs for what they really are: violent, devastating, and unlawful. They have called for the concessions to be cancelled and the land returned to them since the arrival of the companies. So far, they have managed to slow but not stop the onslaught from the concessions. But they have not given up.
“We call for immediate attention of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, through its Embassy in Cambodia, on the ongoing violations of the Guidelines for Environmental Protection in Foreign Investment and Cooperation of the People’s Republic of China by two Chinese companies in their sugarcane concessions in Preah Vihear province, in Cambodia. These companies violate the international and national legal frameworks which promote and protect the rights to land, territories, economy, culture, tradition, and natural resources of indigenous peoples. On the other hand, we strongly demand the Royal Government of Cambodia to return the land back to the indigenous communities”, said Samin Ngach, president of CIYA.
“It is high time that the Cambodian government addresses the demands of the communities, including with respect to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Chinese government and the companies and their investors should also take the necessary steps to protect the rights of and provide remedy to the communities as the ELCs infringe their responsibilities to respect human rights as per the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights,” said Gam A. Shimray, Secretary General of AIPP.
There are two documented incidents that form the foundation of modern-day terrorism: the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem perpetrated by Zionist Irgun militants on July 22nd 1946 and the massacre of the inhabitants of the Arab village of Deir Yassin by Zionist paramilitaries on April 9th, 1948. Tragically, 91 men women and children were killed in the former incident and 107 in the latter.
The terrorists claimed they were justified in killing civilians in order to achieve their political aim of an independent Zionist state. These acts by paramilitaries, however, were never officially approved by anyone.
However, that which was officially approved by a subsequent Israeli government in a secret pact with France and Britain’s Conservative Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, in 1956, was an abortive attack on the Egyptian-owned Suez Canal. Under dire threats from the United States as to the consequences, Israel and its conspirators were forced to withdraw from that specific act of state-sponsored terrorism, chastened in the realisation that the world of colonial land grabs and subjugation of native indigenous populations, had then changed. That is, apart from in Israel.
In November 1947, the Resolution of the then recently formed United Nations, (which represented substantially less than half of today’s UN Assembly), in voting by just 33 votes for the partition of Palestine, was a tragic error of the post-war years by a heavily Zionist-influenced American President. The rest is history and we now suffer the tragic consequences.
The images of the dead and dispossessed after the forced establishment of the Israeli state in May 1948 – notwithstanding the public condemnation at the United Nations by all of the Arab states affected – dramatically hardened Muslim opinion throughout the world.
That political operation was subsequently named The Naqba, (The Catastrophe), as a result of which, the ideologies and politics of radicalisation were born throughout the Middle East, the results of which we see on our streets today, nearly 70 years later as the refugee camps holding millions of Palestinian refugees. These still grow and fester as a constant reminder of our colonial past and Israel’s post-colonial present, both of which are indelible factors in today’s political instability in the Middle East that now manifests itself in the terrorist killing of innocent civilians in London, Paris and other cities.
However, this is not to apportion all blame to modern-day Israel, or even to its extreme Zionist leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. The original proponents of the colonial doctrine that helped bring about today’s violent ideology, both in Britain and in Europe, are all long since dead.
We cannot turn time back but we can ensure that the UN passes a Resolution insisting on the ending of Israel’s illegal 10-year old blockade against two million civilians in Gaza and the immediate establishment of a fully independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Nothing less will help erase the injustices of past colonialism. But that erasure will take at least a generation to complete from the date of its commencement.
If we act now, we should see positive results in 20-30 years. The longer the Middle East is kept unstable, the longer will we and our children have to endure the tragedy of murderous terrorism on our streets. The solution lies squarely with action by the United Nations Security Council. And if the United States should (once again) use its veto to prevent UN action, then there will doubtless be continuing global consequences now and in the years to come.
The Telegraph reports that London attacker Rachid Redouane fought in the 2011 British/NATO war against Qadafi – as did Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber – and joined a militia which went on to send jihadist fighters to Syria. In Libya, he is believed to have fought with the Liwa al Ummah unit.[1]
The Liwa al Ummah was formed by a deputy of Abdul Hakim Belhaj, the former emir of the al Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. In 2012, the Liwa al Ummah in Syria merged with the Free Syrian Army (FSA)[2], which was formed in August 2011 by army deserters based in Turkey[3] whose aim was to bring down Assad.
In Syria, the Liwa al Ummah was often referred to as an ‘FSA unit’[4] and sometimes teamed up with al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria. [5]
The UK has been reported as covertly supporting al-Nusra in Syria.[6] Moreover, the UK backed and supplied the FSA. In February 2012 Britain pledged to send advanced communications equipment to the FSA to help coordinate its forces.[7] In August 2012, it was reported that British authorities “know about and approve 100%” intelligence from their Cyprus military bases being passed through Turkey to the rebel troops of the FSA.[8] In August 2013, the UK announced £1m support to the FSA in form of communication and other equipment.[9]
The FSA has been covertly armed by the US and Gulf states[10] and trained by Turkey[11] – all as part of the UK-backed covert operation to oust Assad which began in 2011.
There is evidence to suggest that the anti-Qadafi fighters who fought on Britain’s side to oust Qadafi in 2011 – for which the British authorities allowed an ‘open door’ for them to travel from the UK to Libya – then simply moved on to Syria.
In December 2011, it was reported that “with explicit consent from Transitional National Council (TNC) chairman” (supported by the UK and NATO) “600 highly motivated troops fresh from toppling the Gaddafi regime” were shipped to Syria to fight alongside the FSA. “The trigger-happy Libyans have access to a wealth of weapons plundered from the Gaddafi’s regimes military depots or gently ‘donated’ by NATO and Qatar”.[12]
US President Donald Trump could not possibly have predicted the game-changing after-effects of his triumphal sword dance in Riyadh.
Or could he?
The fact is the House of Saud went amok, in a flash, going after Qatar and bombing from the inside that glorious Arab NATO project – call it NATOGCC — sworn with pomp over a glowing orb.
An excited Trump tweeted three times his approval for Riyadh going after Doha.
Trump and NATOGCC had equaled Daesh and Iran as “terrorists”. The House of Saud went one up — and denounced Qatar for top terror financing, which equals Don Corleone hurling Mafioso accusations against Tony Soprano.
Screenshot from Trump’s Twitter Account
But then, in an unexpected plot twist, Daesh, handily, graphically, underlined the cosmic stupidity of the whole charade – staging, or at least claiming to stage a terror attack against the Parliament and the Imam Khomeini shrine in Tehran.
The current Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, now “guilty” for not blaming Iran as the root of all evils in the Arab peninsula, might even be following the steps of his own father, Hamad, who invented modern Qatar and deposed himself – under Saudi pressure – in favor of his son in 2013.
We can’t forget that Bandar bin Sultan, a.k.a. Bandar Bush, notorious former top assembler/weaponizer of jihadis, and frustrated “liberator of Syria”, had famously described Qatar in the past as “300 people and a TV station”.
So what is really going on in this noxious petrodollar swamp?
The Israel-UAE connection
Let’s cut to the chase and establish that this nasty inter-GCC cannibalization has nothing to do with the Global War on Terror (GWOT).
Among massive disinformation crossfire, a trail of evidence points to a concerted strategy elaborated by the Israeli lobby (via the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, founded, among others, by nefarious casino schemer Sheldon Adelson, and very close to Bibi Netanyahu); US neocon/Ziocon/neoliberalcon elements; and the UAE ambassador in Washington, Yousef al-Otaiba.
Leaked emails have shown how Otaiba – widely idolized in the Beltway because of his “largesse” – and the neocon Foundation for Defense of Democracies have discussed means of teaching Qatar a lesson for its support of Hamas, and overall non-confrontational policies towards Iran. Otaiba also happens to be close to Jared Kushner – which would explain Trump’s reaction to the anti-Qatar blitzkrieg.
Unlike Qatar, the House of Saud and the UAE are one step away from establishing diplomatic relations with Israel – the sine qua non condition imposed by Washington to insert Israel in an anti-Iran Arab NATO guided by Riyadh.
A previous row in 2014 offers additional background. Regional intel operatives confirm at the time there were military Emirati maneuvers not far from the Qatari border; London and Paris, for instance, knew all about it.
Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (Source: islamhere.org)
But the head of the House of Saud in charge at the time was the late King Abdullah, who was in fact an appeaser. The Head-Chopper-in-Chief now is Warrior Prince Mohamed bin Salman, a.k.a. MBS, an arrogant twat who’s already, miserably, losing a war on Yemen — conducted with billions of dollars in US and UK weapons — that has provoked a horrific humanitarian crisis in the poorest nation in the region. It is MBS who ordered the Saudi demonization of Qatar.
Let me out of the terror train
The “terra terra terra” shorthand, for the House of Saud, applies mostly to the accusation of Qatar supporting Shi’ite protest movements in eastern Saudi Arabia. That’s ridiculous; Doha is not involved.
And then there’s the accusation of Qatar supporting Islamists. That’s exactly what powerful Saudi donors – many linked to the monarchy – do.
Doha does support, big time, the Muslim Brotherhood – which has not much to do with al-Qaeda and/or Daesh, and is hated with a vengeance by Riyadh and its puppet al-Sisi in Cairo, who survives on Saudi handouts. What powerful Qatari donors did (up to $3 billion) was support al-Qaeda in Syria, a.k.a. Jabhat al-Nusra, which vast US neocon/neoliberalcon sectors brand as “moderate rebels”.
The Saudis, meanwhile, supported their own jihadis in Syria – and elsewhere. WikiLeaks has unequivocally proved how “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide”.
Apart from complex tribal rivalry issues, the key religious factor is that Qatar – unlike Saudi Arabia – is tolerant towards non-Salafis, or “revolutionary” Salafis like the Muslim Brotherhood, and does not try to globally export its version of Wahhabism. For all practical purposes, hardcore Saudi imams consider Qataris heretics. As if they’re almost as bad as “apostate” Shi’ites.
The schism has translated, in practice, into a proxy war in Libya for example. Doha supports Islamic militias in Misrata as well as those faithful to the “Mufti of Qatar” Sadiq al-Ghariani. The Emirates and Egypt support Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the chief of the self-styled Libya National Army (LNA).
It’s a gas, gas, gas
Saudi intel disinformation agents are spreading that
“Turkey and Qatar are the last two states run by the Muslim Brotherhood. Most probably Qatar will experience a change of regime and exit being the bankroller on behalf of Britain to support all kind of chaos in the region, and that include playing from behind the scenes with Teheran.”
Utter diversionist nonsense. The plain fact is the House of Saud is absolutely desperate. Oil price remains low, around $50 a barrel. The monster Saudi IPO on Aramco is only 12 months away. The House of Saud needs to move the markets towards a higher oil price by any means necessary – ultimatums and threats of war included.
A non-ideological US intel source goes further, stressing how
“Turkey, Iran and Russia are moving closer together. The question remains who will control the Gulf States and the oil price — which was being manipulated so far to destroy Russia. The deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia is really just a minor improvement.”
So no wonder obfuscation remains the norm – with narratives taking attention away from the House of Saud and placing it on Iran, and now also Qatar.
And then there’s the key Pipelineistan angle, mixed with how Qatar as a natural gas powerhouse is immensely annoying OPEC producers Saudi Arabia and UAE.
Source: EIA via persiangulffund.com
Source: Oil & Gas Journal via persiangulffund.com
Qatar is the largest global exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). That’s what has allowed it to shape a foreign policy completely independent from the House of Saud. Add to it that Qatar’s fabulous gas wealth yields from the massive offshore North Field, shared with Iran (who controls what it calls South Pars).
There’s been speculation, obviously unconfirmed by Tehran and Doha, that Iran and Qatar may have reached an agreement on sharing the rights for a gas pipeline from North Dome/South Pars to the eastern Mediterranean in Syria, as long as Doha stops supporting al-Nusra.
Were that to happen, it would signal the spectacular closure of one of the key motives for the Syrian tragedy. The Obama administration had fully approved a Qatar to Turkey – via Saudi Arabia and Syria – gas pipeline as a means of trying to undermine Gazprom. It took a lot of dead bodies and horrific destruction for Doha to realize Moscow would never allow it.
Thus Qatar’s strategic pivot towards Russia – materialized, for instance, via Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund investing $2.7 billion in Rosneft. This may be spelling out, in the medium term, a Qatar way more amenable to the Russia-Iran-Syria connection. Considering that Qatar hosts CENTCOM and is home to Al-‘Udayd, the largest US military base in the Middle East, that certainly does not go down very well at the Pentagon.
As far as the US game is concerned, it’s terminally naïve to believe Washington would not have provided a green light to its Saudi satrap to go after Doha.
Add to it Qatar opening the first yuan clearing center in the Middle East; that’s something that did not go down well with financial Masters of the Universe. In parallel, the much-lauded Trump $100 billion weapons deal announced in Riyadh may have been devised in exchange for the House of Saud delaying as long as possible Chinese oil payments in yuan that would bypass the petrodollar.
To weave conspiracy theories is an idle undertaking. “T.Rex” Tillerson, from his ExxonMobil days, knows the Qatari leadership quite well. And so does “Mad Dog” Mattis, former head of CENTCOM. Watch them; how they act in the follow-up will unveil at least some layers of the current shadow play – and whether the whole charade packs way more punch than mere House of Saud desperation.
The Representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO) said the hospitals in Syria are now in a critical situation because of Western sanctions.
The WHO’s representative in Syria, Elizabeth Hoff, said there aren’t enough equipment and replacement parts for X-ray, ultrasound machines, endoscopes and other scanners in the hospitals because of restrictive measures against the republic. According to the World Health Organization’s research, the equipment for providing diagnostic care in fact is not in a serviceable condition or some cases completely unavailable.
In addition, the Syrian Ministry of Health reports there is a catastrophic shortage of many drugs, in particular, immunosuppressive drugs and oncology treatments.
To be noticed is that the European Union extended imposing the sanctions against Syria until June 1, 2018. The updated ‘black list’ includes 240 individuals and 67 legal entities. Current sanctions against Syria will be extended, for instance, and will also affect the oil embargo, investment restrictions, an assets freeze of Syria’s Central Bank inside the EU, and prohibition of sale or supply of equipment and technology to the country.
Meanwhile, according to the rector of the Chemistry and Pharmacy Institute at the University of Aleppo, Mahar Harman, only friendly to Syria countries are trying to help.
“Our arguments that spare parts for medical equipment are needed exclusively for peaceful purposes are not accepted, we are doing our best to resolve the situation, we are asking for help from friendly countries, primarily to Russia, as well as to India, Armenia and China.”
Apparently, the Western countries are not ready to realize that civilian population of Syria first of all suffers due to the shortage of medicines, medical equipment and scanners.
There aren’t enough polio vaccinations, insulin, painkillers and anti-inflammatory medications and other life-saving medicines. Thus, the EU sanctions against Syria only aggravate the humanitarian catastrophe in the country.
June 8, 1967. The USS Liberty, a U.S. Navy intelligence ship, was stationed in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea off the Sinai coast, while the U.S. ally Israel was engaged in its Six-Day War with the Arab nations.
Israeli planes had flown over the Liberty many times that morning, sometimes close enough that crewmen could see the Israeli pilots wave back to them as the crewmen casually sunned themselves on the ship’s deck.
However, later in the day, the Israeli military returned to carry out an unprovoked two-hour air and naval attack on the basically defenseless ship. The idea was to sink the Liberty, leaving no survivors. Yet due to the great courage and efforts of the ship’s crew and captain, William L. McGonagle, the Liberty survived and stayed afloat.
Rescue aircraft from the nearby 6th Fleet were launched to aid the Liberty, but were recalled by direct orders from President Lyndon B. Johnson. Never before in the history of the U.S. Navy had a rescue mission been recalled when an American ship was under attack.
The White House proceeded to cover up the truth about the attack on the Liberty, and to this day, the corporate media and our U.S. representatives and senators who would rather not deal with it continue to cover it up.
In October 2003, an Independent Commission of Inquiry Into the Attack on the USS Liberty, co-chaired by the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff retired Adm. Thomas J. Moorer, and former assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, Medal of Honor recipient Gen. Raymond G. Davis, issued the following statement among its findings:
“Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States.”
“Freedom isn’t free” is more than sending American troops into harm’s way. It requires participatory citizenship from the American people here at home, which entails holding accountable those in our servant government who have violated the U.S. Constitution and otherwise broken the law.
It is when we the people do not hold those in our government accountable for their crimes that we allow for similar or worse crimes against the American people to continue, and there have been many since that shameful day in June 1967.
Right now, justice for the men of the USSLiberty is long overdue. We owe them.
“Thank you for your service” and singing “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch don’t cut it. Demanding from our servant government full and proper accountability for the 34 American servicemen killed and 174 wounded by the foreign state of Israel is the test before you, the reader. Let’s see how you do. So far, we’ve been failing miserably.
Phil Restino, who lives in Port Orange, is a member of the Dr. Bob Bowman Memorial Chapter of the nonprofit peace-and-justice organization We Are Change-Central Florida. For more information about the organization, email [email protected].
On June 6, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), mainly consisting of the Kurdish formations, began an active phase of the operation to liberate Raqqa from ISIS terrorists. This was announced by the official spokesperson of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Talal Silo, in his interview to AFP. He also stressed that the Kurdish forces have already entered the city of Raqqa from the eastern district of Al-Meshleb.
It also should be mentioned that the SDF are supported by the US-led coalition. However, in fact, the real fight against terrorists is carried out only by the Kurdish forces. The U.S. Air Force often conducts indiscriminate air strikes not against terrorists, but against civilians in Raqqa.
According to many Syrian experts, there are only two ways for the development of the operation in Raqqa.
First, it is assumed that taking the city won’t only weaken the positions of ISIS terrorists, but will also strengthen the U.S. influence in Syria. According to experts, if Raqqa was liberated by the U.S.-backed SDS, the Kurdish units, using the patronage of Washington, would unlikely to return to their former positions. Besides, it is unlikely to be well received in Damascus. Subsequently, such a scenario, obviously, will cause new clashes and escalate the situation in the country.
Second, Turkey strongly objects to the involvement of a Syrian Kurdish group in any military operations in Syria. In addition, the U.S. support of Kurds is an extremely sensitive issue for Turkey. The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) is considered by the Turks as a terrorist group. In addition, Ankara is worried that if Kurds succeed in Raqqa, they would activate an anti-government movement on the Turkish territory.
In this regard, Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, claimed that Ankara reserved the right to an immediate response if the operation in Raqqa posed a threat to Turkey.
Thus, it is obvious that both of these scenarios will lead operation in Raqqa to the scenario of Mosul. It also can turn into another hotbed of tension. A similar result can be preceded by two scenarios.
At the same time, it is possible that afterwards the U.S. simply can abandon its earlier promises to the Kurdish side, which conscientiously fights against terrorists. Washington has never taken the steps that would be contrary to its interests.
Anna Jaunger is a freelance journalist at Inside Syria Media Center.
An estimated three million Muslims live in Britain, and in many constituencies who they vote for can help shape the country’s future.
A research by Geo.tv establishes that in around 38 constituencies, across the length and breadth of United Kingdom, Muslim voters can play a vital role in the outcome of the general election — to be held on June 8.
Nearly 60% — possibly more — Muslims in Britain originate from Pakistan/Azad Kashmir; followed by Muslims from India, Bangladesh, Middle East, North Africa, European origin and converts.
Interestingly, in all these constituencies where at least 1,000 Muslim voters are registered, Labour party is defending 27 seats and the Tory party is defending 12 as other major political parties have failed to attract Muslim voters.
Bradford
Bradford, which is known as ‘little Pakistan’, has a large number of Kashmiris, who trace their roots back to Azad Jammu and Kashmir, hailing mainly from Mirpur and Kotli districts.
Naz Shah’s Bradford West constituency has more Muslim voters than any other constituency in Britain. The number of registered voters in Bradford stands at 40,290, out of which 20,669 are eligible Muslim voters which is nearly 51% Muslim votes.
Shah won from this constituency in 2015 with a margin of 11,420 votes. This seat was previously held by George Galloway for one term until Labour’s Shah defeated him.
Neighbouring Bradford East constituency has the second most Muslim votes. In total, there are 41,406 voters, 15,299 eligible registered voters are Muslims which means 37% Muslim votes.
Labour candidate Imran Hussain will be defending his seat here. In the 2015 election, he won this constituency with a margin of 7,084 votes.
Luton
With 25% of Muslim votes, Luton South is the third constituency with the highest number of most Muslim voters. Luton South has a total of 42,216 electorates with 10,680 Muslim votes. Gavin Shuker of Labour grabbed Luton South in 2015 with a margin of 5,711.
Luton North is another constituency where Muslim votes can play a deciding role with 22% of voters being Muslim.
The total number of votes registered is 42,571 of which 9,526 are Muslim votes. Kelvin Hopkins of Labour, who won in 2015 with a majority of 9,504, will be hoping for the Muslims’ vote to be in his favour this time around.
Slough
On the other hand, Slough is on number four. It has a total number of 48,275 eligible votes with 11,503 votes being those of Muslims, which is about 24% of the total votes.
In the 2015 General Elections, these votes did play a major role in Fiona Mctaggart’s victory with a majority of 7,336. She announced to stand down earlier this year and so the Labour’s ticket has gone to Tanmanjeet (Tan) Dhesi.
A group of locals is campaigning against him and claim that the Labour Party has not made the decision on merit and ignored the deserving Pakistani-origin candidates. Campaigners also cite that Tan Dhesi endorsed a manifesto which bashes Muslims and disrupted community relations.
Westminster
In Westminster North, Karen Buck of Labour won in 2015 with a majority of 1,977. Total number of votes in this constituency is 39,514 and eligible Muslim voters are 8,944, which is nearly 23% of the total number of votes.
Muslim votes in this constituency will be very vital for any candidate.
Birmingham Yardley
Birmingham Yardley is another constituency with a decisive Muslim vote bank. The Conservative Party has fielded Mohammed Afzal to attract Muslim voters from this constituency but the Labour Party remains a favourite in this area.
Jess Phillips defeated Lib Dems with a 6,556-vote majority in 2015 and will be hoping to repeat the same. The total number of votes in this constituency stands at 41,151, with nearly 8,500 Muslim voters.
Bately, Spen
Bately and Spen constituency with 19% Muslim votes will be another tough battle between Labour and Tory.
Around 9,500 Muslims are eligible voters in this constituency, while the total number of votes stands at 50,479. Tracy Brabin of Labour won from this constituency in 2015 with a majority of 6,057.
Walsall
Valerie Vaz of the Labour Party, the sister of Keith Vaz, has always enjoyed the backing of the Muslim community residing in Walsall South. She won with a majority of 6,007 in the 2015 General Elections.
Walsall South Constituency has a 19% percent (7,800 voters) Muslim voter share with the number of registered voters at 41,838.
Dewsbury
Dewsbury constituency has 18% Muslim voting share, with the total number of registered voters at 53,630. About 9,906 are Muslim voters and the margin of victory votes for Paula Sherrif of Labour was 1,451 in the 2015 elections.
Illford North
Illford North in East London has an estimated registered Muslim votes numbered at 7,446 which is nearly 15% of the voting share.
The total number of registered voters in this constituency is 48,932. In 2015, Labour’s Wes Streeting won it with a margin of just 589 votes.
Muslim votes in this constituency have always played a big part in the end result and it is expected that Labour will attract the most Muslim voters from this constituency as Conservatives have made no effort to win over Muslim voters.
Small but significant voting share
Henden constituency has an estimated 14% Muslim voting share. The total number of registered voters is 49,630, out of which about 6,904 are registered Muslim voters.
In five parliamentary seats across the UK, the share of Muslim votes stands at 13% In Ealing Central and Acting, where Rupa Haq won in 2015 with a margin of only 274 votes, it will be another tough challenge for Labour this time around. Total number of registered voters is 50,894 of which 6,801 are Muslims.
Halifax constituency has total voters of 43,753 of which 5,888 are Muslim.
In Enfield North, total registered voters are 46,137 of which 6,214 are Muslim. The total number of registered voters in Harrow West stands at 46,603 with 6,219 Muslim voters. Gareth Thomas won from this constituency in 2015 with a handsome margin of 2,208 votes.
Keighley has an estimated registered vote bank of 49,123. Amongst these, 6,428 are Muslim voters and the victory margin was 3,053 for Conservative Party’s Kris Hopkins in 2015.
Oldham East and Saddle worth has 14% Muslim voting share with Debbie Abraham defending her seat, which she won in 2015 General Elections with a majority of 6,002 votes. The total number of votes in this constituency is 44,483 with 6,904 Muslim votes.
Brentford and Isleworth, and Bolton Northeast have 14% Muslim voting share. Ruth Cadbury of Labour won from Brentford in 2015 with a margin of just 465 votes. The total number of votes in this constituency is 57,355 and 7,150 are Muslim votes.
Constituencies of Hampstead and Kilburn, Tooting, Enfield Southgate and Hyndburn have 11% Muslim voting share. Tulip Sadiq, Rosena Allen Khan, David Burrowes and Graham Jones will be defending their seats here.
Bristol West and Burnley stands at 10% Muslim voting share. Bristol has 64,218 registered voters with 6,221 votes being those of Muslims and the margin of victory for Labour’s Thangam Debonaire was 5,673 in 2015.
Burnley, on the other hand, has only 39,746 total registered voters and 3,917 Muslim votes. Labour’s Julie Cooper won from here in 2015 with a majority of 3,244 votes.
Bedford and Bury North constituencies have an eight percent Muslim voting share. Richard fuller of the Tories will be defending his seat which he won previously with a majority of 1,097. Bedford’s registered eligible voters are 46,086 which includes 3,652 Muslims.
The Muslim votes’ share in three constituencies of Coventry South, Birmingham Edgbaston and Wolverhampton Southwest is at seven percent with total number of registered voters 43,699, 41,293 and 40,209, and Muslim voters 3,221, 2,898, and 2,743 respectively.
Croydon Central has six percent of Muslim voting share with total registered voters at 52,941 while Muslim voters are 3,148. The margin of victory for Tory’s Gavin Barvel was only 165 in 2015.
Late on June 6, the US-led coalition once again bombed pro-government forces in the area of At Tanf in southern Syria near the border with Iraq. According to the coalition statement, warplanes targeted a group of over 60 soldiers with battle tanks, technical vehicles and artillery pieces “posing a threat to Coalition and partner forces based at the At Tanf Garrison”. The airstrikes reportedly destroyed two artillery pieces, an anti-aircraft weapon and damaged a battle tank.
This was the second time when the coalition’s airpower bombed government forces in the area and a uncountable time when US-backed proxies preferred to combat the Syrian army and its allies instead of ISIS. The coalition previously struck a pro-government convoy in the area on May 18. It also has two military facilities in the border area: one is near At Tanf and other is near Al-Zquf.
Thus, the new coalition strategy is to use US troops as a buffer in order to prevent Damascus forces from reaching the border.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) declared a start of the storm of the ISIS-held city of Raqqah. According to the SDF spokesman, Talal Silo, the SDF will storm the city from the northern, western and eastern direction. Thus, the SDF claims that it is going to prevent ISIS terrorists from fleeing to the south have proven to be untrue.
Following the announcement, the SDF captured the Naznah and al-Mashalab areas in the eastern part of Raqqah and attacked the Harqalah area west of it. The remaining ISIS fighters, many of them had been redeployed to Deir Ezzor and Homs provinces, will concentrate their defenses in the center of Raqqah.
The George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group has resumed strike missions against ISIS targets from eastern Mediterranean, the US Navy said in a statement at its website on June 6. The Raqqah storm is ongoing amid endless military strikes by the coalition airpower and artillery. The US Special Forces also play an important role in the operation.
The Syrian Army Tiger Forces continued advancing against ISIS south of Maskanah and liberated the villages of Sulayhiyah, Khirbat al-Muftahiyah, Khirbat Muhsin, Khirbat al-Hassan, Khirbat as Sab and Tarfawi. Near the town of Ithriyah, government troops captured the area of Maksar ash Shamali. Summing up these developments, some experts say that the army and its allies may attempt to reach the Ithriyah-Tabqa road south of the SDF-held area.
In the city of Deir Ezzor, government forces have repelled the ISIS advance in the Panorama Roundabout area and stabilized the defense line. However, the situation remains tense.
Many people believe that Qatar will soon give in to recent Saudi demands and threats. I first though so too but have changed my opinion. Qatar will likely hold out way longer than anyone assumes and fight more intensive and much longer than foreseen.
The Saudi “young leader” has now given Qatar 24 hours to submit to 10 demands. These include (unconfirmed) the dismantling of Al Jazeera, breaking off of all diplomatic relations with Iran and (the Israelidemand of) ending all support for the Muslim Brotherhood and especially Hamas. The Saudis threaten with a military invasion.
But Qatar is not like Bahrain where 1,000 Saudi troops could easily take over to save a dictator from a mostly unarmed uprising of his people. It has way more resources and capable allies on its side and recent news shows that it knows how to use them.
Two days ago we extensively described the complex conflict between Qatar and some of its neighbors that has recently been escalating. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the main forces on one side, joined yesterday by Donald Trump but not by the Pentagon. On the other side is Qatar, geographically isolated and seemingly without any real allies even though it hosts a very large U.S. command center and air-base.
The conflict has been simmering for years. Qatar has a strong media arm with Al Jazeera TV and other prominent news outlets. Qatar and its media support the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood which won elections in Egypt before being kicked out in a Saudi financed military coup. The ruling Turkish AK Party is a Muslim Brotherhood branch as is Hamas in Palestine. Muslim Brotherhood parties have thereby proven that it’s possible to have an Islam(ist) aligned government without a hereditary dictatorship. Their pure existence de-legitimates the al-Saud clan and other dictatorial family enterprises in the wider Middle East.
Qatar (Source: visitqatar.qa)
There is little reason to waste tears on Qatar. It is a small country with only 200,000 original inhabitants but with 2,000,000 expatriates living there too. Thanks to its large natural gas reserves Qatar is ultra rich and has a very modern (but also vulnerable) infrastructure. The country is way more liberal than Saudi Arabia. Its cities are somewhat cosmopolitan. Unlike in Saudi Arabia women are allowed to drive and other religions than Islam can build their places of worship. But the rulers of Qatar officially follow the same ultraconservative and proselytizing Wahhabi cult as the al-Sauds. They support terrorists of the worst kind in the war against the Syrian people and elsewhere (just as the al-Sauds do).
The Saudis currently lack money. Oil prices are too low to finance the needs of its 26 million people and the exorbitant expenditures of its ruling family. The Qatari gas fields would be a very profitable extension of their oil empire. The UAE would like to take over strategic Qatari islands in the Gulf (and the hydrocarbon fields around them). Taking over Qatar would bring both countries into a better position to fight their presumed enemy in Iran.
As we wrote:
The extreme bullying of Qatar by the Saudis and the UAE, with total closure of all its borders, is designed to create an immediate capitulation. So far Qatar holds onto its course but in the end it is likely to fold. It will have to stop its support for “terrorism” i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood. Another scenario is a putsch in Doha with some Saudi puppet prepared to take over the realm. If that is unsuccessful a military move could follow. Qatar has little capabilities to withstand a potential Saudi invasion.
I have since changed my opinion and said so in a few conversation on Twitter. Qatar will hold out way longer than anticipated. It may not fold at all:
Elijah J. Magnier @EjmAlrai – 2:03 PM – 6 Jun 2017 If @realDonaldTrump is suddenly discovering that “Qatar is financing terrorism” it means he is ready to move forward beyond his statement. Trump’s statement will push #Qatar to speed-up the reconciliation w/ #SaudiArabia (through #Kuwait) to save its skin.
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA – 2:21 PM – 6 Jun 2017
Replying to @EjmAlrai I do not yet bet on Qatar reconciliation – still has lots of cards to play. Saudis demand total capitulation. Crisis can extend for a while.
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA – 5:35 PM – 6 Jun 2017
Replying to @salamamoussa @Ibishblog Agree with your bet but note that most other people don’t.
Hussein Ibish @Ibishblog – 5:44 PM – 6 Jun 2017
Replying to @MoonofA @salamamoussa They might try it but it won’t work or last. No way, unless Washington agrees. You think it would? I’m SURE not!
Moon of Alabama @MoonofA – 5:49 PM – 6 Jun 2017
Replying to @Ibishblog @salamamoussa Strategy must be -set up defenses; -muddle issues; -skirmish; -sew discord into Saudi coal.; -wait til times/policies change; meanwhile:
The map shows Qatar having moved from the Arab coast of the Gulf to the Persian one.
Our piece on the Qatar crisis two days ago also included this graph:
For Iran this is a chance to further blow up the GCC by intensifying its relations with Qatar. It could increase its food exports to the country and host Qatar airline flights. This in exchange for a Qatari retreat from Syria. The U.S./Saudi plan of confronting Iran through the GCC would then be in complete jeopardy.
A top Iranian agricultural official responded by announcing Monday that Iran could send food shipments to Qatar by ship. He said the shipments would take 12 hours to reach Qatar. It is not known if any shipments have yet arrived.
…
An Iranian transportation official said Tuesday that Qatari flights bound to North Africa and Europe that used to cross Saudi, Egyptian or Kuwaiti airspace can now travel over Iran, Iraq and Jordan. Flights to Northern Europe can cross Iran.
Today Qatar officially asked Iran and Turkey for additional food supplies.
But Iran can not send military support to Qatar – at least not openly and not yet. The Yemeni Houthi, who until very recently fought against Qatari soldiers on the Saudi side of the Yemeni border, now offer their support to Qatar. The Muslim Brotherhood ruled Turkey had planned since 2015 to set up a large “training base” in Qatar. Currently only 150 Turkish soldiers are there to prepare the ground. That will soon change:
Lawmakers from Erdogan’s AK Party have proposed debating two pieces of legislation: allowing Turkish troops to be deployed in Qatar and approving an accord between the two countries on military training cooperation, AKP and nationalist opposition officials said.Both draft bills, which were drawn up before the spat between Qatar and its Arab neighbours erupted, are expected to be approved by the Ankara parliament later on Wednesday.
The large Qatar Airways fleet is able to bring 10,000nds of Turkish troops to Qatar within days. It is somewhat amusing that these will use Iranian airspace while Iran financed proxy fighters in Syria are fighting Turkish and Qatari supported “insurgents”.
The Saudi/U.S. strategy of bringing Qatar fully into the anti-Iran and anti-Muslim Brotherhood camps seems to have the opposite effect.
The U.S. controlled Al-Udeid air-base in Qatar is leading the fight against ISIS. The Pentagon surely does not want any interruption of its functioning. Many buildings and institutions in London are owned by Qatar. 90% of British gas imports, 17% of its total consumption, comes from Qatar. Qatar is an important industrial investor in Germany where it owns the largest minority share of the huge Volkswagen Group. It has friendly relations with Russia. Yesterday the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thanitalked with President Putin:
Russian-Qatari cooperation, primarily in the trade, economic and investment areas, was discussed, and the results of the meeting of the bilateral Intergovernmental Commission in April 2017 were highly praised.International issues were also discussed. Vladimir Putin reaffirmed Russia’s principled position in favour of settling crises by political and diplomatic means, through dialogue.
Translation: Qatar offered additional money for Russia’s support. A preliminary deal was made but there was no promise (yet) of full Russian support in a military conflict.
The Saudi coalition may have the backing of minor (paid off) nations and from tweets by Donald Trump. But the U.S. military is against a Saudi war on Qatar. It does not want to strengthen the Saudi position in the Gulf at the cost of other allies. The British government and other Europeans have also many reasons to not let Qatar fall into the hands of the al-Sauds.
Qatar is quite fast in getting its ducks into a row. It quickly solved the most immediate problems resulting from the Saudi border blockade. It called in Turkish military reinforcement to stave of a Saudi invasion. Iranian and Russian (military) supplies will be very valuable in any longer fight. Europe will not back the Saudis and will not support a Saudi annexation. It will press for solving the issue peacefully. Qatar has enough financial capabilities and reserves to withstand a longer crisis.
There is no reason for Qatar to give in soon to the overbearing Saudi demands. The ruling “young leader” – Deputy Clown Prince Mohammad bin-Salman – has (again) overestimated his capabilities. The Saudis were sure that Bashar Assad in Syria would leave in 2011 or 2012. The Houthis in Yemen would be defeated in a few days or weeks they thought. Years and billions of Saudi dollars later both are still in place.
Now the Qatari ruler Tamim bin Hamad is expected to fold in a day or two. Qatar may eventually have to submit to the Saudi demands and rule, but I sincerely doubt that this will happen anytime soon.
In 2015 as home secretary, Theresa May introduced draconian investigatory powers legislation, authorizing enhanced surveillance – on the phony pretext of combating terrorism ruling Tories support.
Sacrificing fundamental freedoms for greater security assures losing both, May at it again as prime minister – ahead of June 8 snap elections.
“I’ll rip up human rights laws that impede new terror legislation,” she roared, her declaration coming 36 hours before polls open.
Muslims are enemies of choice in America, Britain and other European countries, justifying the unjustifiable, waging war OF terror, not on it as claimed.
May favors greater domestic war on Muslims living in Britain, including the right to deport alleged terrorist suspects, even without evidence suggesting it.
In an effort to bolster her sagging support pre-election, she said
“I can tell you a few of the things I mean, (urging) longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offenses.”
“I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries.”
“And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full.”
“And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.”
Britain already has draconian tools in place, headed by so-called Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (TPIMs), enhanced for added toughness in September 2011.
They permit forced relocation of individuals to government-owned accommodations elsewhere in the country, based solely on suspicions, nothing indicating they pose a threat – an extrajudicial practice grossly infringing on fundamental civil liberties.
In March 2005, so-called control orders were instituted – a social control system placing suspects under virtual house arrest, including restrictions on movement, association and employment, along with electronic tagging. Forced relocation is permitted.
These orders were issued in closed court hearings, individuals affected and their lawyers not allowed to attend – punishing people unfairly, denying them due process, based on secret “evidence” not subject to appeal.
This practice undermines judicial fairness, the presumption of innocence unless proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt denied – the defining feature of police state governance.
Control orders were later struck down judicially and abandoned. May wants TPIMs toughened, restoring some or perhaps all abhorrent practices control orders authorized – making Britain more of a police state than already.
Earlier promising not to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (1950), perhaps Tories now have second thoughts.
They could amend or replace the 1998 UK Human Rights Act. Following last Saturday’s London Bridge/Borough Market attack, May promised to introduce new anti-terrorism laws, without elaboration.
In response, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said
“(i)n her years as home secretary, she was willing to offer up the police for cut after cut.”
“We have been here before. A kind of nuclear arms race in terror laws might give the appearance of action, but what the security services lack is not more power, but more resources. And responsibility for that lies squarely with Theresa May.”
For the moment, focus is on Thursday’s snap elections, polls suggesting a possible hung parliament, coalition governance needed if things turn out this way.
If Tories retain power individually or with a hardline partner, Britain looks headed toward becoming more of a police state than already.
Perhaps other European countries and America will follow the same path.
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.”
On June 8th, 1967, with cold-blooded mass murder as the objective, Israeli warplanes and warships made every effort to sink the USS Liberty, a mostly unarmed US intelligence vessel off the coast of Gaza, and to kill all 294 on board. Thanks only to the heroism of the Liberty crew and possibly a Soviet vessel’s offer of assistance (refused), the attack was called off before completion, although the attackers had plenty of reason to think that the sea would do the rest of the job for them.
Twice, US warplanes from the US Sixth Fleet responded to distress calls from the Liberty, only to be recalled by direct order of the White House and the US Department of Defense. In retrospect, it is clear that Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara in turn got their orders from the Israel Lobby and the Israeli leadership. 34 were killed and 174 wounded, with many permanently disabled.
The subsequent coverup, the suppression of investigation, the falsification of evidence, the manipulation of history and the denial of justice to loyal US servicemen on board is now well documented and readily available to all who wish to see (which many do not). Nevertheless, the attack continues to this day, with Israeli and US resources devoted to maintaining a variety of false and often conflicting narratives to hide the truth.
Of course, Israel’s attack on liberty itself goes far beyond this one incident, however outrageous, arrogant, blatant and hideous it may be. Israel’s owes its very existence to Plan D, a detailed and carefully prepared military strategy for depopulating Palestine of its non-immigrant Palestinian population and replacing it with immigrants in order to create a majority (and ultimately exclusive) Jewish state, according to a racist agenda. Since late 1947 (and even before) and up to the present, Palestinians have had and are still having many Liberty incidents, without benefit of a Sixth Fleet, recalled or not. It is clearly Israel’s intention to continue until there are no Palestinians left in Palestine.
Liberty assaults are continuing in the US and other powerful countries, as well, as Israel and its Zionist interests in these countries wield sufficient power on their governments to bend military and political power to their ends. Thus it is no accident that US and western might has been used to destroy Israel’s potential enemies and rivals in the region, such as Iraq, Libya and Syria, and to bring to heel others, such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies. The people of half the world are paying the price for Israel’s ambitions, not least in countries like the US, whose military budgets swallow funds for infrastructure, health, and education, and create an ongoing supply of shattered veterans who are neglected by the very government they served.
But millions of people that have also been killed and tens of millions made refugees in the wars for Israel, for the purpose of weakening Israel’s enemies, enabling Israel’s capture of territory, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of populations that Israel considers undesirable, and confiscation of resources. By allying itself with the most destructive elements in the US and other countries it wishes to influence and manipulate, Israel is able to multiply its destructive capability far beyond its own borders.
We are all Palestinians. Israel is crushing us all, robbing us of our resources, our livelihood and our liberty. Fifty years on, let us remember and honor the crew of the USS Liberty, who paid a high price for liberty, never receiving proper remuneration. Let us also remind ourselves that we continue to pay this price.
Experts all across the world are trying to figure out what’s really fueling the Qatari-Saudi Cold War, but the answer is simple – the US. As it’s always prone to do, Washington is masterfully playing a game of divide and conquer in the Mideast, doing the same thing to its Gulf allies as it did to its North African ones during the theater-wide “Arab Spring” Color Revolutions, except this time pitting them against one another on a state-to-state level as opposed to an intra-state one between the government and some of its citizenry.
The long-term purpose behind all of this is to usher in Ralph Peters’ 2006 “Blood Borders” blueprint for the “New Middle East”, wherein the Gulf eventually undergoes a geopolitical reengineering just like “Syraq”, Turkey, and the Balkans are slated to do as well. All in all, the fracturing of the region into a myriad of internationally recognized and de-facto statelets is expected to facilitate the prolongation of American hegemony in the broad interconnected space that the late Brzezinski described as the “Eurasian Balkans,” while simultaneously creating major complications for its Russian and especially Chinese rivals’ access to this geostrategic pivot space at the heart of Afro-Eurasia.
That’s a lot to digest all at once, so let’s break everything down piece by piece so that it’s easier to understand.
Source: 21st Century Wire
“Little Machiavelli”
First off, the Qatar-Saudi Cold War was sparked by the mischievous workings of what the US military once called “Little Sparta”, the UAE (United Arab Emirates), which can nowadays be described as a “Little Machiavelli”. The Hotmail account of the Emirates’ Ambassador to the US was recently compromised and it reveals that Mr. Yousef al-Otaiba has been working overtime to destroy Qatar’s reputation in the eyes of influential American decision makers.
Abu Dhabi has been in a fierce rivalry with Doha since the turn of the century as the two ultra-rich Gulf States compete with one another to court the largest amount of foreign investment and become the ultimate “to-go” destinations in the Mideast. Moreover, the two countries are also engaged in a proxy war in Libya, where the UAE backs General Haftar’s Tobruk government whereas Qatar is behind Muslim Brotherhood factions in Tripoli.
Doha’s sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood – which is designated as a terrorist organization by GCC members the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Gulf-ally Egypt, and also Syria and Russia incidentally – has long been the bane of regional distrust within the Riyadh-led “Council of Kings”, and intra-organizational tensions reached a boiling point all throughout 2014 but were finally resolved by the end of the year. During that time, Doha promised to radically downscale its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, but it apparently never fulfilled its promise. Even so, none of the GCC members seemed to care too much until just a few weeks ago, which means that something else must have triggered this major Gulf Crisis.
Accepting that the UAE leaks are true and that its Ambassador to the US is indeed doing all that he can to besmirch Qatar, then it’s very likely that Abu Dhabi hatched a plan to “kill many birds with one stone” earlier last month. The Emirate brokered a de-facto peace deal between the two main sides in Libya’s Civil War at the beginning of May which essentially quashed Qatar’s chances of taking over the country by proxy.
This fragile agreement was nearly sabotaged shortly thereafter by “rogue” troops from the UN-backed government who opened fire on Haftar’s forces at an airbase in southern Libya and killed 141 of them. Nearly a week later, Libyan-based terrorists slaughtered 29 Coptic Christians in Egypt and prompted Cairo to take decisive action by ordering airstrikes against their camps across the border. Taken together, and considering that Qatar is clearly on the losing side of the Libyan Civil War nowadays, the UAE may have found it convenient to pin the blame for both the Libyan and Egyptian terrorist attacks on Qatar, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
Trump in Riyadh (Source: 21st Century Wire)
The Trump Factor
US President Trump visited Riyadh in the time between both attacks and urged the 50+ Muslim leader attendees to “drive out” the terrorists among their ranks. Apparently, Qatari Emir al-Thani had earlier given an unpublicized speech at the event where he spoke out against the “Arab NATO’s” increasingly obvious anti-Iranian agenda, but this allegedly was supposed to have been kept under wraps in order to avoid debunking the myth of Gulf unity.
Nevertheless, the very fact that the Qatari leader would dare speak in such a non-aggressive way about Iran in front of the infamously Iranophobic American President while being hosted in Saudi Arabia of all places made him the man that the “Arab NATO” decided to pin the blame on for Wahhabi terrorism all across the Mideast. Saudi Arabia would have probably invented a ‘pretext’ had one not fortuitously come up due to none other than Qatar itself just a week later when one of its public broadcasters reported on Emir Thani’s words in what must have been interpreted by the Saudis as one of the greatest humiliations against them in recent history.
Although Qatar quickly retracted the reporting and claimed to have been the victim of “hacking”, Saudi Arabia and its allies obviously didn’t believe it because they heard the country’s leader utter those very same statements about Iran and the “Arab NATO” that Qatar now claimed were fabricated.
This gave Riyadh the public cover for moving forward with its prearranged plans to make Doha the ‘fall guy’ for all of the Mideast’s problems, likely due to the advice being whispered in King Salman and his deputy crown prince Defense Minister Mohammed Bin Salman’s ear by the UAE, obsessed as they are to undermine their Qatari rival every step of the way.
The UAE already had an axe to grind with Qatar because of Libya, Egypt as is known totally despites the peninsular country for supporting former Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, and the Saudis will never forgive Emir Thani for speaking the way that he did about Iran while being hosted by the Kingdom.
From the UAE’s perspective, all the right pieces were in play for getting Saudi Arabia to marshal the GCC and its wider allies against Qatar, but Abu Dhabi – the “Little Machiavelli” that it is – ensured that Riyadh would do its bidding by making a personal appeal to the young Saudi Defense Minister.
Mohammed Bin Salman is widely regarded as the “mastermind” behind the disastrous War on Yemen which sapped so much of his Kingdom’s finances and prestige, and he’s clearly desperate for a “quick victory” which can help reclaim the carefully crafted perception among the Sunni community of Saudi hegemony in the Mideast. It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that UAE Ambassador to the US or one of his fellow Emirati “deep state” allies convinced the Defense Minister that a “quick campaign” against Qatar could not only achieve just that, but it would also help reshape the historical narrative about the Mideast by blaming all of its Saudi-inflicted woes on Qatar instead.
Additionally, the timing of events is such that ego-centric Trump could also take a piece of credit for this too, as he was more than eager to do on Twitter earlier this week.
Target: Iran
All told, the “Little Machiavelli” hatched the type of plan that would have made its medieval namesake proud. The UAE was able to get regional and confessional heavyweight Saudi Arabia to take the lead (and therefore, the blame if anything goes wrong) in marshaling some of the “Arab NATO’s” countries against Qatar in order to pin the blame for years of Wahhabi terrorism in the Mideast right on its leadership’s doorstep, obviously intending to initiate a game for keeps whereby the Kingdom either turns Thani into a puppet or outright deposes of him by prompting either a Color Revolution, Hybrid War, and/or royal coup against him.
The days of an LNG-rich Qatar thumbing its nose at the rest of the GCC and subsequently pioneering a somewhat independent foreign policy by patronizing the hated Muslim Brotherhood and pragmatically interacting with Saudi archenemy Iran could become history, and the fact that this “quick victory” could also distract from the disastrous War on Yemen was too tempting of an opportunity for King Salman and his gray-cardinal-Defense-Minister-son to turn down.
That being said, there are certainly risks inherent with enacting a de-facto embargo against Qatar and isolating it on the partial grounds that it’s becoming too close to Iran, and the most obvious of them is that this will become a self-fulfilling prophecy by driving Doha into Tehran’s arms.
The Islamic Republic already offered humanitarian aid to the peninsular emirate in the form of food supplies and said that it could make use of its airspace to get around the GCC’s embargo, which was clearly unacceptable for Saudi Arabia.
Just a few days later, Daesh carried out an unprecedented series of terrorist attacks against the Iranian parliament and Ayatollah Khomeini’s mausoleum, which the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps blamed on its Saudi rival who promised last month to take the regional proxy battle between the two to Iran’s home turf.
Evidently, Riyadh wanted to prevent a Qatari-Iranian Strategic Partnership from forming and potentially coalescing around a “gas OPEC”, but the Kingdom might have unintentionally made this an accelerated fait accompli so long as Emir Thani can hold onto power and doesn’t back down.
Doha, Qatar (Source: 21st Century Wire)
The Russian Red Herring
This entire episode was interestingly interrupted by the US’ ridiculous claims that Russian hacking was behind the revived Qatari-Saudi Cold War. It’s laughable that the American “deep state” establishment (the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies) feels the need to obsessively try to link everything that “goes wrong” in the world with Russia, but there might actually be a little something more to it this time around.
The author explained in his latest research article about “Russia’s Energy Diplomacy In The Mideast: Boom Or Bust?” that Russia has recently – and to the surprise of all but the most astute observers – cultivated very positive relations with its former Saudi and Qatari rivals, both of whom it ordinarily competes with in their respective oil and gas energy markets, but also in Syria as well. That state of affairs might be changing, however, since the author forecasted that Russia would be able to mediate between Saudi Arabia & Qatar and Iran & Saudi Arabia so long as it continues to maintain great relations with all of them.
In fact, about the first pair of rivals, President Putin even called Emir Thani earlier this week and the Russian leader himself was besought by Turkish President Erdogan a day before that over this very same topic too. Clearly, Russia was – and still is – on track to position itself as the ultimate neutral arbitrator in this spat, seeing as how it’s not a Muslim-majority country like potential mediators Turkey or Kuwait are, nor does it have any self-interest in taking sides among either of the two Wahhabi-exporting countries.
Additionally, given that the Saudis likely didn’t plot their terrorist attack in Tehran overnight and probably put some prior planning into it which involved some degree of American complicity or another, the US might rightly have predicted that Russia could be the only country which would have any feasible chance at preventing the forthcoming spike in sectarian tensions between the two antagonistic countries from boiling over into a hot war.
Accordingly, this prompted the US to try and attribute responsibility for the Qatari-Saudi Cold War – and by extent, the preemptive Saudi-supported terrorist attack in Iran – to Russia by cleverly giving Qatar a “face-saving” way out of this mess if only Emir Thani would bite the bait and blame the whole “misunderstanding” on Russian hackers.
The Gulf leader, however, seems to be much wiser than the Americans give him credit for, knowing that he’s indeed playing a game of keeps with Saudi Arabia and that he will either be deposed or make his country strategically powerless if he backs down and capitulates in the face of the Kingdom’s unyielding pressure.
As for Saudi Arabia, it also doesn’t seem to be too eager to advance the sloppy conspiracy theory of Russian culpability, especially since Qatar didn’t take the first step in this direction. Either actor might change their positions on this matter as time goes on, or this desperate American move might soon fizzle out and be forgotten about if neither of them gives it much attention.
Provided that the current trajectory on this sub-tangent continues, then Russia could eventually play a very important role in avoiding a larger conflict, much as it did nearly 4 years ago when it came to the US’ false flag chemical weapons attack in Ghouta and consequent run-up to war.
Saudi Arabia As The “Next Syria”
Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Source: FarsNews)
Russia is keenly aware of the US’ plans to “balkanize” the “Eurasian Balkans”, and it knows that this would be disastrous for the emerging Multipolar World Order. On the one hand, Moscow is both unable to completely stop some of the centrifugal forces that Washington already initiated and balks at the military commitment needed to delay them, which explains for example why it’s promoting Kurdish “decentralization” in the Russian-written “draftconstitution” for Syria as a compromise to this pro-American group’s unilateral “federalization” attempt.
On the other hand, though, this obviously doesn’t mean that Russia is indifferent to the fragmentation process at large. How this relates to the ongoing Qatari-Saudi Cold War and the Wahhabi Kingdom’s utilization of Daesh proxy terrorists against the Islamic Republic is that Moscow believes that this is the American-provoked external catalyst needed to initiate the irreversible but potentially long-term processes of state dissolution in this part of the Mideast just like what happened in North Africa and “Syraq” over the past six years. Bearing in mind that the Mideast’s two most religiously influential states are directly involved this time around, the geopolitical consequences could shatter the balance of power in Eurasia.
The author explained Iran’s structural HybridWar vulnerabilities in his summer 2016 article about “The US-Saudi Plan To Prompt An Iranian Pullback From Syria”, which focused on how Daesh, the Baloch, Kurds, Arabs, and Azeris could all be leveraged within Iran’s borders as tools to undermine the state and induce desired concessions from its leadership, so the reader should review that analysis if they’re unfamiliar with these concepts.
As for Saudi Arabia, its sectarian leadership provoked serious Shiite unrest in the oil-rich Eastern Province after carrying out state-sponsored oppression against its confessional minorities. A similar scenario is slowly unfolding but isn’t yet imminent in the southwestern part of the Kingdom along the Yemeni border in Shiite-majority areas which used to be part of its neighbor prior to the 1934 Treaty of Taif that ended the Saudi-Yemeni War. It’s therefore not without cause that the majority-Shiite Houthi national liberation group regularly targets Saudi military positions in this part of the country. Finally, the last main structural vulnerability in Saudi Arabia is the royalist divisions over crown prince and grey cardinal Mohammed Bin Salman.
The Defense Minister and aspiring king is doubly hated by some in the monarchy for the self-inflicted financial and reputational wounds to his country brought about by his decision to launch the War on Yemen, and also for his internal “reform” (in a relative sense) agenda of Vision 2030 which aspires to modernize the economy into a real-sector one and away from its oil-exporting dependency.
If his signature domestic project is carried out to its full extent, then it could initiate piecemeal socio-cultural changes which provocatively go against the hardline Wahhabi teachings of the Kingdom’s influential clerical class. Many observers were too busy (rightly) talking about Saudi Arabia’s many foreign policy follies to notice the one thing which it “did right”, and that’s strengthen its relations with China to the level of a de-facto strategic partnership during King Salman’s visit to the People’s Republic earlier this spring.
What’s meant by the author’s cited article from last fall is that China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity envisions the GCC playing a pivotal role in the larger paradigm as Beijing builds factories and railroads in the region in exchange for the Kingdoms investing some of their copious cash in the People’s Republic for the ultimate win-win outcome. In fact, the successful pairing of Mohammed Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 with China’s OBOR could lead to the moderation of Saudi Arabia’s sectarian-centric regional foreign policy if the influence of the clerics is diluted as a result, and this in turn could seriously increase the prospects for a multipolar Mideast.
The author wrote about this and even mapped out the many interlinked New Silk Road corridors which could realistically sprout from this new regional dynamic in his piece titled “Eurasianism: How A Better Mideast Would Look” from last fall, and the reader should certainly skim through it to get a clear picture of why Russia is so strongly opposing the US’ “Blood Borders” blueprint in the “Greater Mideast” and believes that even the troublesome Gulf is worth saving in terms of how it relates to the “bigger picture” of promoting multipolarity all throughout the supercontinent.
All of this, however, could be jeopardized if Qatar & Saudi Arabia and Iran & Saudi Arabia enter into an existential proxy struggle within their rival’s borders and turn the Wahhabi Kingdom – among other countries – into the “next Syria”.
Concluding Thoughts
The US is intent on destabilizing Afro-Eurasia in order to more easily control the Eastern Hemisphere by proxy, hence why it’s recently resorted to the combined approach of employing Hybrid War alongside its “Lead From Behind” regional strategy of local lackeys in order to bring this about.
Although all of the involved parties in the current Gulf Crisis stand to experience multilaterally beneficial gains if they can peacefully contain themselves long enough to reap tangible dividends from China’s OBOR projects, the unfortunately reality is that regional dynamics and the history of distrust between several sides means that the US can more easily manipulate them all into a Hobbesian asymmetrical conflict against one another.
The UAE, also known as “Little Machiavelli”, is playing a key role fanning the flames of conflict via its masterful intrigue because it envisions itself receiving the US’ blessing in becoming the post-fragmentation consolidating force in this part of the “Eurasian Balkans” due to its unique nature in being a collection of separate emirates. From the American perspective, the UAE could become a pivotal center of gravity after the Mideast is redrawn with “Blood Borders” (likely adjusted from the frontiers that Ralph Peters originally had in mind 11 years ago due to changed circumstances in some areas) because it could exert centripetal influence in amalgamating some of the post-Saudi emirates left over in the wake of the Kingdom’s collapse. With this in mind, the UAE’s plans look especially cynical because it’s basically setting up the Saudis to fail in order to replace their regional role when the dust settles.
Russia and China are well aware of what’s going on, however, since they wised up a few years ago during the US’ coordinated proxy assaults against each of them in Ukraine and the South China Sea in realizing that their chief geopolitical rival will wield the weapon of Hybrid War in trying to sabotage their 21st-century competitive connectivity projects in a desperate attempt to indefinitely prolong the fading “unipolar moment”.
For this reason, both Eurasian Great Powers are especially concerned about the US’ latest efforts to manipulate the Gulf States and Iran into a self-perpetuating cycle of destabilizations against one another as it attempts to trick them in turning the “Blood Borders” blueprint into a reality. Regrettably, Saudi Arabia is much too gullible and easily guided in the direction of the US’ grand strategic interests, so it’s uncertain at this time whether the warned-about scenario can still be avoided.
Nevertheless, the US certainly thinks that Russia stands the best chance of anyone at stopping its plans, which is why it tried to destroy its recent reputational gains in the Gulf by accusing it of “hacking” Qatar and therefore instigating the whole crisis. The fact that neither Doha nor Riyadh have bit the bait, or at least not yet, leaves hope that Moscow might be able to use its positive relations with both countries and neutral status between them to mediate a peaceful solution to the first stage of this spat, and then possibly expand upon its gains to ease the aggravated tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
It’s admittedly an ambitious task, and one which definitely doesn’t have any guaranteed chance of achieving even the most modest symbolic success, but it’s still Russia’s – and to an extent, also China’s – geopolitical responsibility as one of the dual engines of Eurasian integration and the emerging Multipolar World Order to at least exert its best behind-the-scenes efforts in trying before it’s too late.
The “Macedonian Question” is today actual for several reasons of whom two are of the fundamental importance:
1. The Albanian secession in the FYROM; and
2. The Greek dispute with the FYROM authorities over several issues.[1]
For the matter of illustration, for instance, Greece is so far blocking Macedonia’s joining NATO and the EU because of an on-going dispute between the FYROM and Greece. The main disputable issue is the title of “Macedonia” used in the country’s Constitution in the form of the official state-name as the Republic of Macedonia.[2] When the ex-Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia voted for independence on September 8th, 1991[3] as the Republic of Macedonia that was confirmed as the official constitutional name in November 1991[4], Greece became with a great reason immediately reluctant of recognising the country under such official name in addition to some other significant disputable issues in regard to the independence of FYROM.
In essence, according to the Greek administration, the use of this name is bringing direct cultural, national and territorial threat to Greece and the Greek people. The Greeks feel that by using such name, the FYROM imposes open territorial claim on the territory of the North Greece that is also called (the Aegean) Macedonia. To make things clear, Greece claims and with a right reason, to have an exclusive copyright to the use of the name of Macedonia as the history and culture of ancient Macedonia were and are integral parts of the Greek national history and civilization and nothing to do with the present-day “Macedonians” who are the artificial creation by the Titoist regime of the Socialist Yugoslavia after the WWII.[5]
The FYROM (the Republic of Macedonia)
A Basic Historical Background
A present-day territory of FYROM was formerly part of the Byzantine, Bulgarian and Serbian Empires until 1371/1395 when it became included into the Ottoman Sultanate followed by the process of Islamization. The Christian population of the land was constantly migrating from Macedonia under the Ottoman rule especially after the Austrian-Ottoman wars and uprisings against the Ottoman rule. After the 1878 Berlin Congress, Bulgaria started to work on annexation of all historical-geographic Macedonia and for that reason it was established in 1893 openly pro-Bulgarian Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (the IMRO).
After the Second Balkan War in 1913 Macedonian territory became partitioned between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria. During the WWI, Macedonia was a scene of a heavy battles between the forces of the Central Powers and the Entente (the Salonika Front or the Macedonian Front). After the WWI, according to the Treaty of Neuilly, the territorial division of historical-geographical Macedonia between Serbia (now the Yugoslav state), Greece and Bulgaria was confirmed followed in the next years by a large population movement which transformed the ethnic and confessional composition of Macedonia’s population primarily due to the population exchange between Greece and Turkey after the Greco-Turkish War of 1919−1922. In the interwar period, despite continued activism by the IMRO terrorists from Bulgaria, the aim to annex the Yugoslav (Vardar) Macedonia became unfulfilled. After WWII, the Vardar Macedonia became transformed into one of six Yugoslav socialist republics (the Socialist Republic of Macedonia) followed by the official recognition of the Macedonian nation, language and alphabet by the Yugoslav communist authorities – a decision which alienated Bulgaria and Greece from Yugoslavia.[6]
The FYROM flag from 1995
The proclamation of state independence of the Yugoslav portion of Macedonia under the official name the Republic of Macedonia immediately created an extremely tense relationship with the neighbouring Greece as Macedonia developed rival claims for ethnicity and statehood followed by the appropriation of the ancient Macedonian history and culture. This Greco-Macedonian rivalry became firstly epitomized in a dispute on Macedonia’s official state-name for the very reason that Greece objected to the use of the term Macedonia in any combination of the name of the state of its northern neighbour.
An Origin of the Dispute
The dispute between Greece and the FYROM regarding the Macedonian official state-name came on agenda when ex-Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia adopted its new Constitution in November 1991 in which the country official name was declared as the Republic of Macedonia. As a matter of political fight against the FYROM Government, Greece blocked the European Union (the EU) to recognize Macedonia’s independence[7] and on December 4th, 1991, the Greek Government officially declared its good will to recognize the independence of ex-Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia but only if it would:
Made a clear constitutional guarantee of having no claims to the Greek territory.
Stop a hostile propaganda against Greece.
Exclude the term “Macedonia” and its derivatives from a new official name of the state.
The first of these three conditions was a Greek reaction to the disputable Article 49 in Macedonia’s new Constitution which declared that the Republic of Macedonia cares for the status and rights of those persons belonging to the Macedonian people in all neighbouring countries as well as the Macedonian expatriates, assisting in their cultural development, and promoting links with them.[8] This article was interpreted by Greece as an indirect reference to the (unrecognized) Macedonian minority (i.e. “Slavophile Greeks”) in the North Greece (the Aegean Macedonia) and it was perceived as a threat to the territorial sovereignty and integrity of Greece. The EU concerning this matter supported Greece and stated in the same month that it would only recognize a new Macedonian state if it guaranteed to have no territorial claims against any neighbouring EU member state[9] and not to engage in any act against such state, including and the use of a state-name that potentially can imply the territorial claims.
Basically, only under the pressure by Brussels, the Parliament (Sobranie) in Skopje amended Macedonia’s Constitution in January 1992 and as the results, the formal constitutional guarantees were provided that the country would not interfere in the internal affairs of other states and would respect the inviolability of the international borders of any state. Macedonia’s authorities fulfilled only the minor EU requirements, hopping to be soon recognized by the same organization, but two crucial problem-issues (the state-name of Macedonia and the Article 49 in the Constitution) which caused the fundamental Greek dissatisfaction, still remained unchanged. Therefore, the EU sided with Greece and decided in June 1992 not to recognize the republic if it uses the term Macedonia in its official state title.[10]
However, at the first glance, it may seem that the EU supported the Greek policy in 1991 toward the Macedonian Question as it aligned itself with Greece as a member state of the bloc, but in fact, it was not the case. Greece’s position and arguments have been publicly rejected and even ridiculed by the officials from several EU member states, but three crucial real politik reasons made the EU to officially side in 1992 with Greece in her dispute with the FYROM:
In an exchange for the EU support on the Macedonian Question, Greece promised to ratify the Maastricht Treaty (signed in February 1993), to participate in sanctions against Serbia (its traditional ally), and to ratify the EU financial protocol with Turkey.
By taking the same position as Greece, the EU demonstrated its own internal political cohesion and unity, trying at the same time to thwart the use of Greek veto right in order to protect its own national interest within the EU.
A last factor that contributed to the EU support for the Greek case was a fear that the Greek Government might fall if the Republic of Macedonia would be recognized under that name.[11]
Alternative Official Names for Macedonia
A variety of alternative names for ex-Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia were proposed after 1991 in order to solve the problem and normalize relations with Greece – a most important Macedonia’s neighbour and economic partner. It was quite clear that Greece herself would not accept any kind of state-name that includes a term “Macedonia” and therefore a variety of solutions without a term of “Macedonia” were suggested by Athens, ranging from Dardania and Paeonia (used in antiquity to name regions to the north of the ancient Macedonia) to the names of the South Slavia, the Vardar Republic[12], the Central Balkan Republic and the Republic of Skopje (named after Macedonia’s capital). All other name suggestions which used the designation Macedonia, mainly proposed by the Macedonian side, were in no way acceptable to Greece from political, historical and moral reasons.
What Greece could accept as a kind of temporal solution was the state-name of the country with the designation Macedonia but only to make clear difference between Macedonia as a former republic of Yugoslavia and Macedonia that is a region in (the North) Greece. These solutions included names, for instance, the North Macedonia, a New Macedonia or the Slavic Republic of Macedonia.[13] Greece even suggested that a new state of Macedonia could adopt two names: 1. One official for the external use, without mentioning designation Macedonia, and 2. One unofficial for internal use, which could include designation Macedonia. However, all these Greek solutions were rejected by the Macedonian authorities who insisted on the recognition of Macedonia’s independence exactly under the constitutional name of the Republic of Macedonia.[14]
Ancient Vergina in Greece
The FYROM and the “Sun of Vergina”
The ex-Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia was gaining the international recognition step by step, although not in majority cases under its constitutional name as the Republic of Macedonia. By early 1993 the new state was able to become a member of the International Monetary Fund (the IMF) under the name the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (the FYROM)[15] and by April 1993 the United Nations (the UN) also admitted Macedonia under such provisional name as a temporal compromise between the Macedonian and the Greek authorities. It was agreed that a permanent state-name of Macedonia that is going to be used in the foreign affairs had to be decided later through a process of mediation by the UN. However, the FYROM was not allowed to fly its original state flag (from 1991) at the UN headquarters as the official state emblem as Greece strongly opposed such idea.
The real reason for this Greek decision was basically of the essential nature of the political conflict with the authorities in Skopje as the flag was composed by the yellow-coloured sixteen-ray sun of star from Vergina on the red-coloured background. The background colour was not a problematic issue, but the yellow “Sun of Vergina” on the flag, however, created the fundamental dispute between two states together with the issue of the official state-name of Macedonia. The Greek Government strongly opposed the Macedonian authorities to use the “Sun of Vergina” as a state emblem at least for two good reasons as:
It was an insignia of the ancient Macedonians of the Macedonian Empire.
It was found between two world wars in Vergina that is an ancient town on the territory of the present-day Greece but not of the FYROM.
The Greek authorities is understanding the “Sun of Vergina” as a symbol which has nothing to do either with the territory of the FYROM or with the ethnic Macedonians, or better to say, with Macedonia’s Slavs.[16] The Greeks are clear in this matter having a position that the history and culture of the ancient Macedonians does not belong to the historical and ethnic heritage of the FYROM but quite contrary, they belong to the Greek (Hellenic) inheritance. Therefore, the use of the “Sun of Vergina” by the FYROM authorities is seen by Greece as an act of falsification of history and a cultural aggression on the state territory of Greece with unpredictable political consequences in the future. That is the same as well as with the cases of naming certain institutions and public objects with the names of Philip II (national soccer stadium in Skopje) or Alexander the Great (the highway in the FYROM and the Skopje airport) or with erections of the monuments devoted to them (on the main city square in Skopje).
The Embargo and Further Negotiations
In 1993 several states recognized Macedonia under the official state-name as the FYROM but there were also and those states who recognized the country as the Republic of Macedonia. Macedonia was recognized by six EU members followed by the United States of America (the US) and Australia by early 1994. However, the Greek Government experienced Macedonia’s recognition of independence without the final fixing the question of Macedonia’s administrative name for the external usage as her own great diplomatic and national defeat, and as a response to such situation, Athens imposed a strict trade embargo to the FYROM on February 17th, 1994 for the sake to more firmly point out its unchanged position regarding several problematic issues in dealing with its northern neighbour. The embargo had a very large, and negative, impact on Macedonia’s economy as its export earnings became reduced by 85% and its food supplies dropped by 40%. On the other side, the economic blockade was very much criticised by the international community including and the EU and, therefore, not much later became lifted in 1995, but after successful negotiations between Greece and the FYROM, when these two countries finally recognized each other and established diplomatic relations. The FYROM, as a part of a settlement package with Greece, was also forced to change the official flag of the state on which the “Sun of Vergina” was replaced with the “Macedonian Sun”.[17]
The flag of Greek Macedonia (the Aegean Macedonia) with the Sun of Vergina
However, the negotiations between the FYROM and Greece in regard to a permanent state-name of Macedonia are still being conducted by the UN, and this problem is not solved properly up today on the way that the both sides are going to be fully satisfied. The issue arose several times concerning the FYROM possibility to join both the NATO and the EU as Greece (member state of both organizations) threatened to use a veto right in order to stop Macedonia’s admission if previously the problem of Macedonia’s state-name is not solved in the Greek favour. Talks between the FYROM and Greece are permanent up to now with some new alternative state-name proposals by both sides as, for instance, the Constitutional Republic of Macedonia, the Democratic Republic of Macedonia, the Independent Republic of Macedonia, the New Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Upper-Macedonia.
Nevertheless, the talks proved that no one of these proposals is acceptable for both parties. The FYROM proposed as a workable solution to use changed state-name only in relations to Greece, but at the same time to keep its constitutional state-name in all other international relations. However, even this proposal did not lead to a final and sincere solution as Greece insisted that a final deal must be applied internationally. The UN mediator’s compromising proposal to rename the state was as the Republic Macedonia-Skopje. Nevertheless, despite all possible efforts that were made to solve the problem, no agreement could be reached so far and, therefore, the NATO and the EU memberships of the FYROM are very problematic as one of the membership requirements is to reach agreements with Greece on all disputable political questions including and the official Macedonia’s state-name.[18]
Concluding Remarks
It is quite remarkable that a dispute between the FYROM and Greece on Macedonia’s official state-name after 1991, which looks probably quite trivial on the first sight, can have so large political and other implications with unpredictable consequences in the future. One can wonder how Greece and the FYROM became firmly stuck to their positions for a quarter of century. However, the very fact is that this dispute is actually directly connected with their national identities and cultural inheritance.
Sources
Georges Castellan, History of the Balkans from Mohammed the Conqueror to Stalin, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
Loring M. Danforth, “Claims to Macedonian Identity: The Macedonian Question and the Breakup of Yugoslavia”, Anthropology Today, 9 (4), 1993, 3−10.
Nicolaos K. Martis, The Falsification of Macedonian History, Athens: Graphic Arts, 1983.
James Pettifer (ed), The New Macedonian Question, New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Hugh Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict, London: Minority Rights Publications, 1994.
Victor Roudometof, “Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Balkans: Greece and the Macedonian Question”, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 14 (2), 1996, 253−301.
Notes
[1] James Pettifer (ed), The New Macedonian Question, New York: Palgrave, 2001, 15−27.
[2] The term Macedonia is of the Greek origin.
[3] This day is celebrated in the FYROM as the Independence Day.
[4] James Pettifer (ed), The New Macedonian Question, New York: Palgrave, 2001, xxv.
[5] Nicolaos K. Martis, The Falsification of Macedonian History, Athens: Graphic Arts, 1983.
[6] Bulgaria never recognized separate Macedonian nationality, language and alphabet. For Bulgarians, all Macedonia’s Slavs are of the Bulgarian origin. Greece is recognizing only the existence of the Macedonian Slavs but not on its own territory where all Slavs are considered as the Slavophone Greeks [Hugh Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conflict, London: Minority Rights Publications, 1994, 175].
[7] Greece is a member of the EU from 1981.
[8] The Constitution’s day of adopting is November 17th, 1991 and day of entry into force November 20th, 1991.
[9] At that time it was the European Community which became next year the European Union.
[10] Victor Roudometof, “Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Balkans: Greece and the Macedonian Question”, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 14 (2), 1996, 253−301.
[11] Loring M. Danforth, “Claims to Macedonian Identity: The Macedonian Question and the Breakup of Yugoslavia”, Anthropology Today, 9 (4), 1993, 3−10.
[12] The territory of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (the FYROM) is also known as the Vardar Macedonia, contrary to the Macedonian territory in Bulgaria – the Pirin Macedonia, and in Greece – the Aegean Macedonia. A geographical-historical territory of Macedonia became divided between Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria as a consequence of the Balkan Wars of 1912−1913: “…Bulgaria who had only a little piece of Macedonia in her share: the Struma Valley between Gorna Dzumaja (Blagoevgrad) and Petric with the Strumica enclave. Greece received all Macedonia south of Lake Ohrid and the coast with Thessalonika and Kavala. Serbia was given Northern Macedonia and the center up to Ohrid, Monastir (Bitola) and the Vardar” [Georges Castellan, History of the Balkans from Mohammed the Conqueror to Stalin, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992, 381]. In essence, Greece received 60%, Serbia 30% and Bulgaria 10% of the geographic-historical territory of Macedonia. A Present-day FYROM is in fact the Vardar Macedonia that became annexed by the Kingdom of Serbia in 1913 known in Titoist Yugoslavia as the Socialist Republic of Macedonia with the capital in Skopje.
[13] The Greeks are not the Slavs.
[14] Loring M. Danforth, “Claims to Macedonian Identity: The Macedonian Question and the Breakup of Yugoslavia”, Anthropology Today, 9 (4), 1993, 3−10.
[15] Victor Roudometof, “Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Balkans: Greece and the Macedonian Question”, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 14 (2), 1996, 253−301.
[16] Loring M. Danforth, “Claims to Macedonian Identity: The Macedonian Question and the Breakup of Yugoslavia”, Anthropology Today, 9 (4), 1993, 3−10.
[17] The Greeks in the Aegean Macedonia are using regularly a blue flag with the “Sun of Vergina” which is also in many cases put on the state flag of Greece as a historical amblem of the North Greece.
[18] The FYROM is currently a candidate state for the EU membership together with Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked by Megyn Kelly of NBC about the “alleged” Russian interference in the U.S. elections and said that the U.S. intelligence agencies “have been misled,” Putin said that “they aren’t analyzing the information in its entirety. I haven’t seen, even once, any direct proof of Russian interference in the presidential election.” However, the mainstream media (MSM) and the Democrats continue to point the finger at Russia for hacking the email servers from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and obtaining additional emails from John Podesta, the former chairman of the Clinton presidential campaign who also served as counselor to President Barack Obama and as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
The emails were sent to Wikileaks exposing the DNC’s plot to undermine the Bernie Sanders campaign. The DNC still blames Russia for Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump, but that is the furthest from the truth. Revelations from Rod Wheeler, a private investigator hired by Seth Rich’s family to investigate his murder and Kim Dotcom who says that he was in contact with Seth Rich has opened the Pandora’s Box which I will explain shortly.
However, the MSM has published several articles on the death of Seth Rich with “conspiracy theory” included in their headlines, The Washington Post headlined with ‘The life and death of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory’, followed by The New York Times with ‘How the Murder of a D.N.C. Staff Member Fueled Conspiracy Theories’ and ‘The Demented Detectives on Seth Rich’s Case.’
The Seth Rich case is absolutely worth examining since Washington and the MSM claim that Russia “allegedly” hacked the 2016 U.S. presidential elections so that Donald Trump can occupy the White House and do Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dirty work with “no evidence” is truly a bizarre conspiracy theory.
Seth Rich (credits to the owner of the photo)
For starters, there is absolutely NO evidence that Russia hacked the U.S. elections. This is where the importance of the Seth Rich murder case comes into play: First, who was Seth Rich? For two years, Rich was a Voter Expansion Data Director at the DNC who managed a computer application so that voters can locate polling stations in their local districts. On July 10th, 2016, Rich was coming home from a bar and was murdered in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, DC in an apparent robbery, but nothing was taken from him. So was it a robbery that had gone wrong? Or was it revenge for leaking classified emails to Wikileaks? That is the question.
Wikileaks received more than 20,000 emails from an unknown source at the time from the DNC servers including emails from John Podesta. After Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, the DNC conveniently blamed Russian hackers for sending the controversial emails. According to the leaked emails, several top officials in the Clinton campaign were highly critical of Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Senator from Vermont. In one of the emails sent by Mark Paustenbach, a committee communications official to the communications director for the committee, Luis Miranda on the possibility of persuading reporters to say that the Sanders campaign was a “mess”:
“Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess”
Miranda responded with
“True, but the Chair has been advised to not engage. So we’ll have to leave it alone.”
Another email released by Wikileaks was an exchange between Miranda and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (chairwoman of the DNC at the time) debating if they should call CNN to complain about Bernie Sander’s comments on ousting Schultz as chairwoman if he was elected U.S. President. Mr. Miranda asked Schultz
“Do you all think it’s worth highlighting for CNN that her term ends the day after the inauguration, when a new D.N.C. Chair is elected anyway?”
Schultz replied with
“This is a silly story,” she continued “He isn’t going to be president.”
Schultz ended up resigning from the Clinton campaign before the 2016 Democratic National Convention took place. These are just some of the controversial emails that confirm how the Clinton campaign was out to sabotage Bernie Sanders. In one of the Wikileaks emails from John Podesta, it was clear on what he wanted to do to the leaker
“I’m definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it.”
The Seth Rich murder case was reopened when private investigator Rod Wheeler who was hired by the Rich family appeared on Fox5 news in Washington, D.C. and claimed that there is proof on Seth Rich’s laptop that he was the source for the leaked DNC emails sent to Wikileaks during the 2016 election campaign. On May 20th, Zero Hedge published an article titled ‘Kim Dotcom Goes All In: ‘I Knew Seth Rich… I Was Involved’ which stated that “weaponized autists on Reddit” and 4Chan researched the Seth Rich Case and found that Rich was an actual supporter of Bernie Sanders which makes the case even more interesting:
Wheeler walked back his statements the next day, however the fuse was already lit… Weaponized autists on Reddit and 4chan began furiously digging back into the Seth Rich case for clues in the still unsolved murder – and they went deep.
Among the findings were Seth Rich’s Reddit account, email addresses, and Twitter accounts – one of which was in support of candidate Bernie Sanders. As an aside – before joining the DNC, Rich moved to Washington DC to take a job with polling and research firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner – whose founder Stanley Greenberg was a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton
Wheeler’s claim debunks the Russian hacking theory that was based on a report from CrowdStrike, a U.S. cybersecurity firm. The report claimed that Russia hacked the 2016 U.S. presidential elections by two different groups of hackers named “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear” associated with the GRU (Russian military intelligence) and the FSB (Russian security service). According to VOA News report:
The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists. But the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened
Co-Founder and CTO Dmitri Alperovitch (Source: crowdstrike.com)
An important note to consider is that the co-founder of Crowdstrike and CTO Dmitri Alperovitch is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of The Atlantic Council and is head of the ‘Cyber Statecraft Initiative’. The Atlantic Council is funded by the US State Department, several Eastern European governments, the Ukrainian World Congress and of course, NATO (what a surprise!). Crowdstrike’s report on alleged Russian hacking was a false claim especially when the Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense admitted that the “hacking never happened.” One might think that the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense would accuse the Russians of any wrongdoing even if it was a false accusation, and that did not happen either.
Rich (a supporter of Bernie Sanders) realized that the DNC was attempting to steal the Democratic nominee from Bernie Sanders which was most likely the reason Rich leaked the information to Wikileaks. The Wikileaks emails confirm how Hillary Clinton and the DNC played the game of dirty politics during one of the most controversial elections in U.S. history.
Hillary Clinton, an “Untrustworthy” and “Corrupt” Politician from the Start
The release of the Wikileaks emails was not the only reason Hillary Clinton lost the elections, sure it exposed the inner workings of how the DNC operated, but Hillary lost the elections due to her record as the first lady and as a politician. The accusations by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party and their “Russia hacked the 2016 U.S. elections to get Trump elected” conspiracy theory are falling apart. First, let’s look at the most corrupt democratic nominee in modern U.S. history, Hillary Rodham Clinton of the Clinton Crime family. The DNC’s public enemy #1 is Russia followed by Wikileaks who released one of her famous Wall Street speeches. According to Wikileaks, on April 24th, 2013 Clinton spoke at the National Multi-Housing Council and said that you need two different positions, one public and the second, private which infuriated the American public. Here is what she said:
“But If Everybody’s Watching, You Know, All of The Back Room Discussions And The Deals, You Know, Then People Get A Little Nervous, To Say The Least. So, You Need both a Public and a Private Position”
Meaning you tell the public one thing on their financial future which is a complete lie, then you go to a backroom with Wall Street financiers and make a lucrative deal. So Clinton’s statement was not a cause for concern for the public? Clinton even worked for Wall Street which is a conflict of interest when she said
“As Senator, “I represented and worked with” So Many on Wall Street and “Did All I Could to Make Sure They Continued to Prosper.”
Let’s see, a democratically – elected Senator from New York working for Wall Street? One might recall a fascist dictator by the name of Benito Mussolini who once said
“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power”
but I guess that’s irrelevant in Clinton’s world. Clinton was the first democrat to vote for the war in Iraq and as Secretary of State; Clinton presided over the destruction of Libya and approved a coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya with Obama’s approval of course. Clinton also supplied weapons and other components for WMDs from Libya through Turkey to terrorists (ISIS) that killed civilians and hundreds of Syrian Children to justify the U.S. escalation against the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. Hillary Clinton (with her husband Bill) managed to steal billions in contracts awarded to NON-Haitian companies that were supposed to rebuild Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The majority of Haiti is still remains unlivable. Here is a video showing a group of Haitians protesting against Hillary Clinton in 2015:
Hillary Clinton is a war criminal and a representative of Wall Street. She supports Saudi Arabia (one of the worst human rights violators in the world) and Israel (in all fairness, most U.S. politicians support Saudi Arabia and Israel, one way or another). These are just some of the horrible things Hillary Clinton was involved in. But the DNC claims that it was the Russians fault that Hillary Clinton lost the election, not her criminal activities and lies. Hillary Clinton was a seriously flawed candidate in every way imaginable. Undermining Bernie Sanders was the last straw, especially for Bernie Sanders supporters. Not the Russians or Donald Trump can be blamed for Hillary Clinton’s loss; because it was Clinton herself who lost the elections. She was one of the most untrustworthy candidates in modern history. Even the mainstream-media’s polls showed how much Hillary was disliked. The Washington Post reported that a CNN poll in 2016 said that 68 percent and CBS 67 percent said that Clinton was not “honest and trustworthy.” When Hillary was “supposedly” considering running for mayor of New York City, Residents basically said “No, Thank You.” According to a poll by Rasmussen Reports‘Most Don’t Want Clinton to Run for Mayor of New York City’:
But 58% of Likely U.S. Voters don’t want to see the failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate run for mayor of New York City. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 23% think Clinton should seek the mayoralty, while 19% are not sure
Forbes magazine also said that many Bernie Sanders supporters just do not like Hillary Clinton:
“For Hillary Clinton, the diagnosis is much more difficult. While many view the former Secretary of State as “dishonest” or disapprove of her past associations, the prime reason people don’t approve of Clinton is unknown; people just don’t seem to like her”
Hillary Clinton was and still is a corrupt, warmongering, Wall Street servant who was the worst candidate for the Democratic Party. But the DNC and Washington insiders continue to blame Russia for meddling in the 2016 presidential elections. From the corrupt ‘Clinton Foundation”, to her servitude to Wall Street and her various war crimes against sovereign nations, Hillary Clinton’s past criminal history finally caught up to her. Hillary Clinton lost the elections because of Hillary Clinton and no one else. That’s the truth.
Let’s Hope that the truth will be made Public
Julian Assange (credits to the owner of the photo)
Julian Assange has publically denied that the Russians sent him the emails. The MSM and Washington’s establishment want you to believe that Russia hacked the U.S. elections just as France’s new President Emmanuel Macron claimed that the Russians also hacked the French elections but Macron won the election, and Marine Le Pen lost, if it was the opposite, the Russian hack story would also be front page news in France.
Yes, the Russians are the evil-doers according to Washington and their Western allies. One, questions still lingers, why would the Russian government hack the U.S. elections to favor Donald J. Trump? Why would the Russians trust a flip-flopping billionaire businessman who wants to make America feared again? Sure, Hillary was as evil as one can be, but for Russia to interfere in U.S. elections is ridiculous. Putin told Kelly that
“every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” he said. “But, I repeat, we don’t even have to do that. Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change.”
The U.S. government (with help from the CIA) has interfered in numerous elections around the world. Putin said
“put your finger anywhere on a map of the world, and everywhere you will hear complaints that American officials are interfering in internal electoral processes.”
According to Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University, the U.S. has interfered in more than 81 elections worldwide. Levin compiled a database that does not even include military coups and forced regime change by non-government organizations such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
In a 2016 interview on the Dutch television program called ‘Nieuwsuur’, Assange claimed the following:
“Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to give us material, at often very significant risks,” Assange said. “There was a 27 year old, works for the DNC, who was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons other than that he was walking down the street in Washington”
Will Julian Assange provide the necessary evidence that it was Seth Rich who sent the emails to Wikileaks and end the Russian hacking conspiracy theory once and for all? The New York Times (one of the top major fake news organizations in the world) recently published a story on the Seth Rich case as I mentioned at the start of this article titled ‘The Demented Detectives on Seth Rich’s Case’ claimed the following:
Conspiracy theories help people who feel politically disempowered respond to a perceived loss of control. So it made sense, when Mrs. Clinton’s win seemed assured, that supporters of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders were convinced that Mr. Rich’s death showed ruthless corruption in the Democratic Party.
Conspiracy theories have been widespread among Americans for years, but they found particular prominence in the 2016 election because many people felt locked out of the process and distrustful of the news media. Mr. Trump, who repeatedly said that the press was dishonest and that the election would be “rigged” against him, fed and fed off this attitude
The New York Times describes the detective, Rod Wheeler who is investigating the Seth Rich case as “demented” which is defined as insane or mentally ill is as childish as one can get. We know that Mr. Wheeler is not a madman nor is mentally ill.
As for Kim Dotcom who recently tweeted
“I knew Seth Rich. I know he was the @Wikileaks source. I was involved” opened up a can of worms.
Kim DotCom is seeking advice from his attorney’s on how to expose the evidence to the public through proper channels
“I have consulted with my lawyers. I accept that my full statement should be provided to the authorities and I am prepared to do that so that there can be a full investigation.”
Kim Dotcom and Seth Rich (Source: dailydosepolitics.com)
Kim Dotcom’s lawyers sent a letter to Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel appointed to investigate Russian interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential elections explaining the evidence Mr. Dotcom has on the Seth Rich case. One of the points made in the letter was the following:
Mr Dotcom has evidence that he considers relevant to the Investigation. The purpose of this letter is to confirm that, subject to appropriate arrangements being made and his constitutional rights being preserved, Mr Dotcom is willing to provide this evidence to the Investigation. He has instructed us to make this approach to initiate the necessary dialogue as to the required arrangements
One important factor to consider with the murder of Seth Rich is that if the evidence is exposed, it will lead the public to believe that the DNC and the MSM accusing Russia for the 2016 U.S. presidential elections without any evidence has been a lie from the start. So who is spreading conspiracy theories? Is it the Democrats and (and Republicans) who profit from the Military-Industrial Complex by spreading fear that the Russians are coming to get your mama? Blaming Russia is good for the Military-Industrial Complex, so Washington’s witch hunt against President Trump and his “Russian connection” will continue with no conclusive evidence that Russia hacked the presidential elections. Fear is an important justification for the arms industry to continue to manufacture weapons for the U.S. military to confront a menacing Russia in the future.
Can it be that the MSM and the left-wing liberals want to remove President Donald Trump from office by linking his administration to Russia? Yes. Can it be that the DNC is humiliated by losing to a narcissistic former T.V. star of The Apprentice with funny looking hair which is embarrassing for Hillary Clinton? Yes. Clinton has recently claimed that she lost the elections due to “1000’s of Russian Agents” using ‘weaponized data’ on social media is another conspiracy theory without any evidence. Who knows what will come out of her mouth next time.
The bottom line is that Hillary Clinton has herself is to blame for losing the elections not Donald Trump, Russia or Julian Assange. Will Julian Assange show evidence on who really sent him the emails from the DNC and John Podesta? Will the Department of Justice and congress allow Kim Dotcom to testify under oath and expose the truth? Stay tuned.
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Maldives and Mauritania announced on Monday an extraordinary step of cutting off diplomatic ties with the State of Qatar. In this regard, the command of Saudi-led coalition has already decided to exclude Qatar from the members of the alliance, which is fighting the Hussites now in Yemen.
Formed after Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the anti-Qatar coalition intends to act decisively. It is to block land, sea and air links with Doha. The upcoming blockade stimulates the growth of energy prices and jeopardizes the Qatar World Cup in 2022.
Formal Accusations
Officially, the countries have substantiated their decision by the serious violations of the authorities in Qatar. Most of them include:
the destabilization of the situation within the countries of the new anti-Qatar coalition;
the undermining of the national security of the Arab countries;
the interference in the internal affairs;
the division of the society and the spread of chaos;
the encroachment on the sovereignty and the unity of Arab nation;
the promotion of the extremist ideology through the media;
the supporting terrorism and providing financial assistance to Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood;
However, despite all the charges against Qatar, you should try to find out the true reasons of the diplomatic demarche.
Real Reasons
Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani (Source: qatarliving.com)
The Financial Times was the first which started talking about the real reasons. It claims that Qatar paid Al Qaeda about $1 billion to release members of the Gulf state’s royal family who were kidnapped in southern Iraq while on a falconry. It became one of the main reasons to rupture diplomatic relations between the countries.
On the one hand, it seems that you can’t argue with that logic. Qatar took the most direct part in financing and supporting various radical jihadist groups throughout the Middle East and North Africa. A lot of evidence repeatedly appeared proving close links between Qatar and representatives of international terrorist organizations. But this is only part of the truth which the major media considered it necessary to focus attention on.
This accusation may be completely correct, if only we forget the role of the United States and other countries of the Persian Gulf in supporting the same organizations. The thing is that the United States and Saudi Arabia decided to radically change their policy towards ISIS and focus on its elimination. So, the dirty hands of ‘terrorism fighters’ must be laundered before the future triumph over jihadists. In accordance with Saudi Arabia, the U.S. urgently was seeking someone to be accused of what IS had done in the Middle East.
It’s a package deal for Saudi Arabia not to be the main accomplice of terrorism because of its status. Moreover, the Saudis apparently agreed with Trump that the former claims would be forgotten in exchange of huge flows of Saudi money into the U.S. military-industrial complex (Defense contracts worth $110 billion were signed). Thus, Qatar suddenly turned into an official sponsor of Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Perhaps the real reasons are related to the exacerbation of conflict in Yemen. In favor of this version the U.S. postpones Raqqa’s assault together with the Syrian Kurds. It can even be assumed that Trump in Riyadh challenged Tehran by providing the coalition with an unprecedented amount of weapons. And now the situation in the region can only aggravate the tension, which could have an impact on further developments and first of all in Syria and Yemen. The crisis in relations may well shift the confrontation. It would not be surprising if the terrorists in Syria and Iraq also begin an open battle between themselves.
Effect
A knock-on effect has come into force. A number of states decided to take advantage of the situation. Egypt, for example, has blamed Qatar for the support of the Muslim Brotherhood. The shooting of the bus with children in Egypt, apparently, provided the tipping point to blame Qatar for everything. Bahrain accused Qatar of supporting the Shiites and of close ties with Iran.
I wish I couldn’t forget the role of other master minders of the Arab Spring. It’s ridiculous, but Saudi Arabia and Qatar supplied militants in Syria and threatened by joint intervention in Syria side by side just a year ago. The founder and the leader of Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, did come from the family of the Saudi nobility. It turns out that Riyadh threatened Assad to invade his country together with the main sponsor of IS! Moreover, Qatar, as the ‘main sponsor of terrorists’ formally even participated in the operations against ISIS. How is it possible I would like to ask?
A poster showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (L), Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) and Lebanese Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is seen on a micro bus in al-Qardahah town, near Latakia city May 26, 2014. (Source: REUTERS/Khaled al-Hariri)
Probably, this state of affairs is a consequence of the serious strategic changes in the Middle East that occurred after the active accession of Assad’s allies to the Syrian war. The old strategies for the region have collapsed; the plans of Washington, Ankara and Riyadh have gone to pieces, so now new strategies are needed that are adapted to the new reality. Qatar, apparently, does not fit into these plans yet, and they decided to make the country at least a regional outcast. However, it is not worth much regretting this state, given its role in the destruction of Libya and Syria. It remains only to find out whether Qatar will get off with ‘public reprimand’ or will face a more severe punishment for the sins of everyone else.
Major Historical Disagreements
Qatar – Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia has long wanted to implement the annexation of Qatar and supported the protesting Arabs in Qatar during the Arab Spring. Riyadh forbade the broadcasting of Al-Jazeera, which is disintegrative TV channel.
Officials in the Doha in response decided to develop relations with such states as Yemen, Iran and Iraq and provide active support to the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2003, the military base of the US Air Force Central Command Al-Adid was deployed in Qatar and the American air operations’ preparation center in the Middle East was transferred from Saudi Arabia.
Both states finance, arm and train various political, radical and terrorist movements in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Syria. In 2014, a political expert, Nabil Ennasri, stated that the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is also because of the different views on the political crisis in Egypt and Syria, not to mention some economic reasons. Qatar even began to develop a scheme of laying pipelines bypassing Saudi Arabia.
Qatar – Bahrain
Since the 19th century there have been unsolved territorial disputes between the two countries. In the 20th century, countries began to challenge sovereignty over the Hawar islands, the nearest of which is less than 2 km from the western coast of Qatar. There were border incidents connected with this territorial dispute in 1978, 1982 and 1986 (the most serious crisis) between the countries. In 1986, Qatari armed forces crossed the border of Bahrain and captured foreign workers who had been building fortifications on the disputed islands.
Qatar – the United Arab Emirates
In 1995, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani overthrew his father in order to become emir of Qatar. Within a few months the overthrown emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani went into hiding in Abu Dhabi. Official Qatar accused the UAE, along with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain of a conspiracy against the new emir. In September 2014, the government of the Emirates invested $3 billion in a media campaign against Qatar. The campaign was aimed at influencing the point of view of American journalists so that they published critical articles about official Doha. Qatar also financed custom-made articles against the government of the Emirates.
Qatar – Egypt
The relationship between Cairo and Doha has deteriorated sharply after the removal of President Mohammed Morsi from power in Egypt. Egypt accuses Qatar of political, financial and information support of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in the country. The parties repeatedly exchanged harsh statements and diplomatic demarches.
Liberal Democracy is a system of governance conditioned not only by political liberties such as free and fair elections, universal suffrage, and rights to run for office, but also by constitutional liberties such as the rule of law, respect for minorities, freedom of speech, religion and assembly, private property rights, and most importantly, a wide separation of powers. The founding pillar of liberal democracy, therefore, is its citizens’ ability to influence the government’s policy formulation through the exercise of the aforementioned political and constitutional liberties. In other words, while a flawless correspondence between government policy formulation and majority preferences is idealistic, government responsiveness to citizens’ interests and concerns, in the process of policy formulation, is of central importance when evaluating democratic governance.
Ergo, by embracing the Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theory’s perspective, this paper will illustrate how the U.S. system of governance, while providing constitutional, that is, civil liberties to its citizens, espouses more focused and more powerful interests over more diffused and less powerful interests. This inevitably results in the U.S. political system being a liberal oligarchy rather than liberal democracy as it is presumed by many (see Dahl, 1971, 1985, 2006; Tocqueville, 2000; Monroe, 1979; Key, 1961 and famously Lincoln, 1989).
First, the paper will review the Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theory while highlighting some of their most prominent advocates. Next, by briefly reflecting upon the definition of the oligarchs and the elites, the paper will place the concept of political influence that corporate power exerts in context. Subsequently, the paper will survey an eminent empirical study that found a vast discrepancy in the U.S. government’s responsiveness to the majority preferences as opposed to the preferences of the elites. Last, the essay will illustrate how studies confirming an ostensibly desirable degree of government’s responsiveness to the preferences of average citizens neglect the reflection of those preferences to those of wealthy citizens.
The Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theory
Political theory, The Iron Law of Oligarchy, was first proposed by Robert Michels in his book Political Parties (1999) and later developed into The Elite Theory by scholars such as C. Wright Mills, Elmer Eric Schattschneider, G. William Domhoff, etc. Opposing pluralism,the theoryfocuses on the disparity between the political influence exerted by the oligarchs or the elites, actors that control considerable concentrations of wealth, as opposed to that of the average citizen. This school of political thought argues that the U.S. system of governance espouses more focused and more powerful interests over more diffused and less powerful interests. That is, the advocates of the Elite Theory stress that, in the case of the United States’ government policy formulation, influence is conditioned by affluence. Mills (1959), in his magnum opus, The Power Elite, offered a comprehensive description of how U.S. political, economic, military and social elites have dominated key issues in public policy formulation. Similarly, inThe Semisovereign People, Schattschneider asserted that the realm of the pressure system is actually fairly small:
“the range of organized, identifiable, known groups is amazingly narrow; there is nothing remotely universal about it” (1960: 30).
Schattschneider continues by arguing that
“business or upper-class bias of the pressure system shows up everywhere” (ibid: 30), therefore, the “notion that the pressure system is automatically representative of the whole community is a myth” (ibid: 36).
Instead, Schattschneider posits,
the “system is skewed, loaded and unbalanced in favor of a fraction of a minority” (ibid: 36).
G. William Domhoff made a significant contributed to the elite theory with his book, Who Rules America: The Triumph of the Corporate Rich. Domhoff (2013) presented a detailed depiction of how operating through various organizations such as think-tanks, opinion shaping apparatus and lobby groups enable elites to control key issues within policy formulation.
Oligarchs and The Elites
credits to the owner of the photo
According to Aristotle (1996), oligarchs are citizens who control and command an extensive concentration of wealth — who always happen to be ‘the few’. Similarly, people who, due to their strategic positions in powerful organizations, have the ability to influence political outcomes, are classified by most scholars as economic and political elites (Higley, 2006). Therefore, the terms oligarchs and elites are often used interchangeably. These individuals can “affect the basic stability of political regimes, the overall arrangements and workings of political institutions, and the key policies of the government” (Higley and Burton, 2006: 7). Typically, elites and oligarchs consist of the top directors and executives of the major corporations. Nonetheless, they can belong to other essential sectors of the society such as political, military and administrative (Keller, 1963). By owning a wealth-producing property, these individuals make large-scale investment and, therefore, employment decisions, which ultimately regulates the United States’ economy (Higley and Pakulski, 2012). Therefore, a large percentage of American economic assets are disproportionally controlled by a rather small number of corporations.
The degree to which such private and totally unaccountable concentration of wealth has the potential to translate into political power is aptly synopsized by a closer look at Fortune 500 companies. For instance, in 2015, the top 500 corporations had a total revenue of $12 trillion, which represented two-thirds of the United States’ GDP (Fortune 5000, 2015). Therefore, a fairly small number of individuals disproportionally control the economic might of the United States. By obtaining access to influential policy makers, these individuals exercise power through congressional campaigns’ contributions. Consequently, according to Centre for Responsive Politics (2016), campaign donors spent nearly $3.1 billion in 2016’s elections alone. In their study titled Campaign Contributions Facilitate Access to Congressional Officials, Kalla and Broockman (2015) concluded that superior access to policy makers are indeed obtained through political campaign donations.
Empirical Study
Over time, a variety of diverse actors that seem to have influence on U.S. policy formulation have been identified. Coincidentally, normative concerns that the U.S. political system is vastly influenced by capital driven individuals and groups have been growing. Until recently, however, providing empirical evidence that supported these concerns proved to be very difficult, almost impossible. Nonetheless, several, fairly recent empirical studies have demonstrated that, in the case of the United States, the policy making process is influenced, to a great degree, by more focused and more powerful interests compared to more diffused, less powerful interests (see Gilens and Page, 2014; Winters and Page, 2009; Page, Kalla and Broockman, 2015; Jacobs and Page, 2005; Bartels and Seawright, 2013; etc). However, due to its limited scope, this paper will survey only one of these studies.
By employing an imposing data set drawn from a heterogeneous set of policy initiatives, 1,923 in total, Gilens and Page demonstrated that
“economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence” (2014: pp. 565).
By comparing policy preferences of American citizens at the 50th income percentile to that of American citizens at the 90th income percentile, Gilens and Page (2014) found that the United States’ policy formulation is conditioned by the preferences of the latter group far more than it is conditioned by the preferences of the former group. In fact, the influence that the medium voter exerts on the U.S. policy formulation is “near zero” (Gilens and Page, 2014: pp. 576). By including the data that dates all the way back to 1980 the authors illustrated that such state of affairs has been a long-term trend, making it harder for ordinary citizens to comprehend, let alone reverse. However, “ordinary citizens, might often be observed to ‘win’, that is, to get their preferred policy outcomes, even if they had no independent effect whatsoever on policy making, if elites, with whom they often agree with, actually prevail” as policy formulation is not a zero-sum game (Gilens and Page, 2014: pp. 570). Nevertheless, it is crucial to point out that this correlation is erroneous in terms of causal impact and, consequently, provides a false sense of political equality. In other words, the results obtained by the authors demonstrate how the relatively high level of government’s responsiveness to the preferences of average and low income citizens is nothing more than a reflection of the preferences shared by wealthy citizens. However, by incorporation a multivariate analysis of different test groups, Gilens and Page (2014), illustrated how the influence of average citizens’ preferences drops rapidly once their preferences differ to that of wealthy citizens.
The ideal of political equality that average American citizens, as well as many scholars, hold dear, stands in stark contrast to the immense representational biases demonstrated by Gilens and Page. While acknowledging that a perfect political equality has a particularly idealistic character, the enormous dichotomy in the system’s responsiveness to citizens at different income levels reinforces doubt associated with the presumed liberal democratic character of American society and leads this paper to conclude that the U.S. is, contrary to popular belief, a liberal oligarchy as opposed to liberal democracy.
Conclusion
By embracing the Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theory’s perspective, this paper illustrated how the U.S. system of governance, while providing constitutional, that is, civil liberties to its citizens, espouses more focused and more powerful interests over more diffused and less powerful interests. This inevitably results in the U.S. political system being a liberal oligarchy rather than liberal democracy as it is presumed by many. First, the paper reviewed the Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Elite Theory and highlighted some of their most prominent advocates. Next, by briefly reflecting upon the definition of the oligarchs and the elites, the paper placed the concept of corporate power and political influence it exerts in context. Subsequently, the paper surveyed an eminent empirical study that found a vast discrepancy in the U.S. government’s responsiveness to the majority preferences as opposed to the preferences of the elites. Last, the paper illustrated how studies confirming ostensibly desirable levels of government’s responsiveness to the preferences of the average citizen neglect the reflection of those preferences to those of wealthy citizens.
Sources
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Petar Djolic is currently in his final year of Masters of International Relations at University of Sydney, Australia.
The hallmark of any administration worth its corruptly curing salt is making hay while the sun shines its searing rays. Not long after the slashing and running down was taking place in London, moving from London Bridge to Borough Market, the tweets of blame and fire were already coming through.
That nasty sovereign known as social media was already agitating. One of the biggest themes: the rollback on human rights protections, and the marketing of pure fear. Across the Atlantic, President Donald Trump was adding his little rough side to the debate.
“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”
A spokesman for Sadiq Khan (image on the right) was hoping to deflect the Trump tweet as misdirected spittle, preferring to focus on the job at hand:
“The mayor is busy working with the police, emergency services and the government to coordinate the response to this horrific and cowardly terrorist attack and provide leadership and reassurance to Londoners and visitors to our city.”
In short, Khan had “more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks urging Londoners not to be alarmed when they saw more police – including armed officers – on the streets.”
Alarm, however, can be quarried and built upon. The attacks on London Bridge and Borough Market has enabled Prime Minister Theresa May to revive the inner Home Secretary in her, one replete with suspicions and hostility towards free agents and choice in society.
With only hours to go to the polls, May has been promising flintier measures against extremists, notably in terms of controls using risk as a key indicator. Even in the absence of concrete evidence for prosecution, the prime minister fancies making the lot of the state easier in how to control suspects and limit liberties.
More had to be done to
“restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough to show they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.”
If that nuisance known as human rights laws were
“to stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.”
Chillingly, this language would sit rather easily with the next fundamentalist reformer keen to ignore human rights in favour of undeviating scripture and the pure society.
Her words read like a laundry list of security promises and heavy-handedness, much of it pointed in the direction of the Human Rights Act, never a beloved instrument of those keen on trimming civil liberties:
“I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries.”
Tory lawmakers are also pondering the prospect of curbing communications and access to devices, curfews and restrictions on associating between claimed extremists. May is also open to extending the period for which a terrorist suspect can be held without trial. (The current number is 14 days.)
Many of May’s promises are marked by contradiction. The spirit of austerity still haunts the Tory drive to perform its protective duties for Britannia. It wants a fully functioning and efficient security apparatus, but prefers to keep it cash strapped and hobbled.
Khan has reminded the prime minister that talk of robust security is all dandy, until you realise that cuts of up to 10 to 40 per cent in police numbers have been implemented, much of this presided over by May herself when she held the post of Home Secretary.
Steve Hilton (image on the left), former prime minister David Cameron’s strategy chief, decided to also weigh in on that point, suggesting that May throw in the towel for her sloppiness. It was the prime minister, he charged, who had to be held
“responsible for [the] security failures of London Bridge, Manchester, Westminster Bridge.”[1]
Terror suspects had eluded the counter-terror web; radicalisation fears had been ignored.
May’s proposed legal measures will be subjected to judicial scrutiny when the time comes. Labour, when in office, found the issue of control orders a problem, despite their championing by such figures as former home secretary David Blunkett. Blunkett, a sort of amateur fascist, even insisted that May consider restoring such orders in the wake of the suicide bombing in Iraq by British ex-inmate of Guantánamo, Jamal al-Harith.
What is being proposed is a milder variant of permanent surveillance and indefinite control over someone not accused of any crimes, but highlighted as a threat. This is actuarial risk assessment at its worst. Coupled with the badgering of telecommunications companies to do their bit in undermining privacy, and hectoring companies to downgrade their encryption standards, and the world looks ever bleaker. All this will keep human rights lawyers in clover for sometime.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge and lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected].
In the first of an extended three-part interview on the 50th anniversary of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, author and scholar Norman Finkelstein debunks the enduring myths surrounding that historic confrontation — myths that have sustained the ensuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.
TRNN transcript:
Aaron Mate: It’s the Real News, I’m Aaron Mate. June 5th marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war between Israel and neighboring Arab States. In six days of conflict, Israel captured the Egyptian Sinai, the Syria Golan Heights, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Except for the Sinai, Israel still controls all of those territories. In fact, the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is the longest in modern times. In this segment, we’re going to explore what happened in 1967. But this isn’t just a history lesson. The dominant narrative of 1967 is that Israel faced an existential threat, that it fought a defensive war, and didn’t want to occupy Arab lands. That narrative has been repeatedly used to justify Israel’s violence and repression in the occupied territories, so it’s important we get the history right and correct those who misuse it. My guest is someone who’s been doing that task for decades. Norman Finkelstein is a scholar, an author of many books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I’m very pleased he’s here with us. Welcome, Norman.
N Finkelstein: Well thank you for having me, Aaron.
Aaron Mate: Thanks for being here. We’re going to hear a lot of commemorations of the ’67 war, and the narrative we’re going to get is much like this one. This is from the New York Times. The Times writes:
“This year marks half a century since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 in which Israel defied annihilation by its Arab neighbors and also came to rule over Palestinian Arabs in captured areas, including in the old city.”
Norman, that’s The Times saying that Israel “defied Annihilation” in ’67. What’s wrong with that picture?
N Finkelstein: Well, what’s wrong with it is it never happened, and that’s usually a big problem. It’s called “falsifying history.” The record’s very clear on 1967, at least on the point that we’re now going to address. The United States had multiple intelligence agencies monitoring the situation between Israel and its Arab neighbors, probably close to a half dozen intelligence agencies and the US administration under Lyndon Johnson was being kept abreast of everything that was happening there.
Now the big question for Israel in 1967 was not whether they were going to prevail over the Arabs. They knew that was a done deal because they already had the dress rehearsal in 1956 when they conquered the Sinai in about 100 hours, and this is just a decade later and they know they are going to easily prevail. Their big concern was, how would the US react? In 1957, that decade before, the US acted rather harshly. Dwight D. Eisenhower gave Israel an ultimatum: Get out or else. Meaning, get out of the Sinai or you’re going to face a strong reaction from the US Government. The Israelis were afraid there was going to be a repeat of ’57 in ’67.
So, the Israelis are sending over lots of people to feel out the US Administration, asking questions from people who had insight and who were connected to Johnson. Among the people they sent over was Major General Meir Amit, who was the head of the Israeli Mossad, the intelligence agency. Now the US had reached two firm conclusions about 1967. Conclusion number one, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, he was not going to attack. There was no evidence he was going to attack. Conclusion number two, if, against all odds, he did attack, as Johnson said at the time, “You will whip hell out of them if he attacks. That’s what all our intelligence agencies say.”
Now you might ask the question, well that’s what US intelligence says, what did Israeli intelligence say? Well we know, because on June 1, Major General Meir Amit, he came to Washington and he spoke to senior American officials. He said, and now I’m quoting him, there were “no differences in the assessment of the intelligence situation now unfolding in the Middle East. No differences.” Which means the Israelis also knew Nasser wasn’t going to attack and they also knew if he did attack, it was going to be, as Johnson said, “You’ll whip hell out of them.” In fact, that’s what happened-
Aaron Mate: Okay, wait a second-
N Finkelstein: The Secretary of Defense at the time was Robert McNamara and in the internal discussion, he predicted the war would last between seven to ten days. Later on, he would boast how close his estimate was. In fact, the war was over not in six days, the war was over, really literally, it was over in about six minutes. The moment Israel launched its Blitzkrieg strike and flattened the Egyptian Air Force, which was still on the ground, then the ground troops had no air support. It was over. The only reason it lasted six days is because they wanted to grab territory. It was a land grab.
Aaron Mate: Okay, but the narrative that we’ve heard over 50 years, I learned this in Hebrew School, in Sunday School, and at my Jewish summer camp, was that Israel faced an existential threat and it fought a defensive war. So let’s go through some of the key points that are used to advance that argument. Since you mentioned Nasser, let’s start with him. He did order the withdrawal of UN troops that were stationed on his side of the Egyptian-Israeli border. That’s often cited as evidence that he was preparing to attack Israel.
N Finkelstein: Right, well what happened was, in April 1967, there was a dog fight between the Syrian Air Force and the Israeli Air Force. In the course of the dog fight, Israel downed six Syrian planes, including one over Damascus. You might ask, why did that happen? Well, the evidence is perfectly clear why it happened and we got it from an unimpeachable source, namely Moshe Dayan, and Moshe Dayan, in 19-
Aaron Mate: Who was an Israeli General.
Moshe Dayan (Source: Wikipedia)
N Finkelstein: He was the leading figure in ’67, and then he became under Begin the Foreign Minister, when Begin came to power in 1977. But in 1976, Moshe Dayan, he gave an interview and he said, “I’ll tell you why we had all of these conflicts with Syria. There was a demilitarized zone formed after the 1948 war, between Syria and Israel. So what happens in this demilitarized zone?” Dayan said, “At least 80 percent of the time, probably more, let’s just limit ourselves to 80 percent of the time, we would send bulldozers into this demilitarized zone, because Israel was engaged in a land grab.” It was trying to get land inside the demilitarized zone. It would send in bulldozers, the Syrians would react, and then it would escalate. In April ’67, it escalated into a dog fight between the Syrians and the Israelis.
After that, Israel start to threaten, verbally, that it was going to launch an attack on Syria. Many Israeli officials, the most famous statement came from at that point Yitzhak Rabin, but many Israeli officials were threatening Syria. It happened that the Soviet Union got wind of the Cabinet meetings going on in Israel. In mid-May, the Cabinet made a decision. We’re going to attack Syria. The Soviet Union communicated that knowledge to the neighboring Arab States. In the official history, it’s called the false alarm, that the Soviet Union invented this imminent Israel attack.
Aaron Mate: When you say, “the official history,” the history that we’re often taught and hear about in the media, yeah.
N Finkelstein: It’s a history that literally apart from a handful of scholars, including Israeli scholars-
Aaron Mate: Well let me quote one, actually.
N Finkelstein: Yeah.
Aaron Mate: Israeli Historian Ami Gluska, and the Israeli military on the origins of the 1967 war, he writes, “The Soviet assessment from mid-May 1967 that Israel was about to strike at Syria was correct and well-founded.”
N Finkelstein: You know, I often use that quote because it was the first time I ever saw in print. There were rumors that Israel was going to attack, and there were occasional hints of a Cabinet meeting where they reached that decision, but it had never actually appeared in print until I read Gluska’s book. He says yes, the Israelis had made the decision to attack. So Egypt has a defense pact with Syria. Knowing that an Israeli attack is imminent, he has an obligation to rise to Syria’s defense. So he moves Egyptian troops in the Sinai. Separating Egypt from Israel was a peace-keeping force called the United National Emergency Force, UNEF. He asked U Thant to remove-
Aaron Mate: The Secretary General.
U Thant (Source: Wikipedia)
N Finkelstein: Excuse me, yes. The UN Secretary General. He asked UN Secretary General U Thant to remove the UNEF, the United Nations Emergency Force. Under the law, U Thant had an obligation to remove those forces. Now, U Thant was very viscously attacked for that decision. In fact, it wrecked his term of office in the United Nations, because everyone blamed him for the ’67 war. It’s all forgotten now, but that’s what happened. But there was a simple answer. There was a simple response.
Aaron Mate: Put them on the Israeli side.
N Finkelstein: Yeah, because in 1957, when the UNEF was installed, the agreement was it was supposed to be on both the Egyptian side of the border and the Israeli side of the border. So in ’67, once Nasser says, “Remove UNEF from our side,” all Israel had to say was, “Fine, we will reposition it on our side of the border,” meaning the Israeli side. They didn’t do that. If the UNEF really could have averted an Egyptian attack, which is what Israel suggests when it said U Thant committed this monumental blunder by removing it, why don’t you just put it on the other side of the border?
Aaron Mate: Let me go on then to the other reasons that are cited for Israel launching the war. You had guerrilla attacks coming onto the Israeli side from both Jordan and Syria.
N Finkelstein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Aaron Mate: Those are described in the official history as a major threat to Israel’s security.
N Finkelstein: Well, first of all we have to understand what was behind those attacks. These were Palestinian commando raids, mostly supported by the Syrian regime. But the Israeli senior officers acknowledged, the reason Syria was sponsoring those commando raids was because of the Israeli land grab in the demilitarized zones. Secondly, with all due respect, I’m not out to ridicule the Palestinians or the PLO, I recognize these were acts of courage by people who had been dispossessed of their homeland-
Aaron Mate: In ’48.
N Finkelstein: In ’48. These were refugees. Remember, it’s a short time between ’48 and ’67. It’s within a generation. But the record is these commando raids were extremely ineffective. One of the heads of the Israeli intelligence, Yehoshafat Harkabi, he described him after ’67 as by any standard very unimpressive.
Aaron Mate: Okay, the other main historical incident that is cited is Nasser closing the Straits of Tiran.
N Finkelstein: Yeah, so in the middle of May, I think it was May 17th or 18th, Nasser closes … There were also UNEF forces stationed by the Straits of Tiran, and they were removed when Nasser asked U Thant to remove the UNEF. U Thant, again he was very heavily criticized. There was a claim he could have just removed the UNEF from the Egyptian-Israeli border and not from the Straits of Tiran, but he removed all of them. I’ve read his defense. I found his defense very credible. He was an extremely honorable man, U Thant. Probably the most honorable Secretary General of the UN it its history. In any case, the UNEF was removed from around the Straits of Tiran, and Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed. Now, the Straits of Tiran-
Aaron Mate: So UNEF was removed from Sharm El Sheik.
N Finkelstein: Yes. It’s basically the same area.
Aaron Mate: Oh, okay.
N Finkelstein: That was the waterway to Eilat, the Israeli port city of Eilat. Well what do you make of that decision?
Aaron Mate: Yeah.
N Finkelstein: Number one, Abba Eban, who was always given to drama-
Aaron Mate: A famous Israeli diplomat.
N Finkelstein: He was at that time the UN representative. Later, he became foreign minister. He said, very dramatically, “Israel is now breathing with only on lung.”
Aaron Mate: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
N Finkelstein: That was his famous line. In any event, Eilat was barely used. The only significant commodity that came through Eilat was oil, but Israel had several months’ supply of oil accumulated, so the oil supply wasn’t, at least for several months, it wasn’t endangered. But the biggest point is there was no blockade. It happened that Nasser’s a blowhard, he announces a blockade, enforces it it’s usually estimated about two to three days, and then he start to let ships go through quietly. There was no blockade. The issue was not a physical blockade, the issue was political. Namely, Nasser had defied Israel in public. It had sealed a quote unquote “international waterway,” Israel claimed. Whether it was an international waterway, or whether it belonged to Egypt, is also a complex legal question. Nasser said, at the end of May he repeatedly said, “Israel claims it has the right of passage in the Straits of Tiran. We say they don’t. Let’s go to the International Court of Justice to adjudicate it.”
Aaron Mate: That just days before the war breaks out.
N Finkelstein: A few days, yeah. About a week before. Israel says, “No, we’re not going to the International Court, because Israel wants the right to do as it pleases, when it pleases. You don’t go on an equal footing with an Arab to the International Court of Justice. That’s just not the way things work here. We’re in charge.” So it wasn’t a significant waterway. The only significant commodity entering was oil. They had significant supplies of oil. The waterway wasn’t closed. Nasser offered to take it to the International Court of Justice to adjudicate. This is not the technical language, this is not a casus belli, a justification for war.
Then there’s a separate legal questions, which is, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, you’re only allowed to launch a preemptive attack if there is an armed attack against you. Closing a waterway is not an armed attack. That should have gone to the Security Council. So there are 1,000 reasons, you know, it’s a layered question, but in every count, Israel had no case. On every count, it had no case.
Aaron Mate: You touched on this a little bit, but maybe if you can go into more detail: Why did Israel go to such extraordinary lengths to launch this war and take over so much territory? What was their motivation?
N Finkelstein: Well, it is several motivations that converge. The overall picture is, Israel, from its founding in 1948, in particular its Prime Minister and dominant figure, David Ben-Gurion, he always worried about what he called an “Arab Ataturk” rising to power in the Arab World. Namely, somebody like the Turkish figure Kemal Ataturk who modernized Turkey, brought Turkey into the modern world, and there was always the fear by Ben-Gurion that a figure like Ataturk might emerge in the Arab World, and the Arab World would then remove itself from the state of backwardness and dependence on the West, and become a power to contend with in the world and in the region. In 1952, when there was the Egyptian revolution, and eventually Nasser emerges as the dominant figure, and Nasser was a kind of an emblematic figure of that era. It’s obviously been completely forgotten by everybody except historians, but it was a very heady era, it was the post-war era of non-alignment, Third-World-ism-
Aaron Mate: Third World solidarity, yeah.
N Finkelstein: … anti-imperialism, decolonization, and the emblematic figures were Nehru in India, Tito in Yugoslavia, and Nasser. The three of them were not officially the Soviet Bloc. They were a third force.
Aaron Mate: Non-aligned.
N Finkelstein: Non-aligned, exactly. The non-aligned tend to lean toward the Soviet Bloc because the Soviet Bloc was officially anti-imperialist, but it was non-aligned. Nasser was one of the dominant figures in that period, so he was anti-imperialist, he was a modernizer. Israel was seen, not wrongly, as a Western implant in the Arab World, and it was also seen as trying to hold back the Arab World.
So there was a sense of conflict and collision between Nasser and Israel. Beginning, again very scrupulously documented, not by Finkelstein, but by a very reputable mainstream historian, namely Benny Morris. If you look at his book, “Israel’s Border Wars,” it talks about the period from 1949 to 1956, and he shows that around 1952-53, Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan, they’re now determined, and I’m describing it literally from him, to provoke Nasser. To keep hitting him and hitting him until they have a pretext to knock out Nasser. They want to get rid of him, and to keep provoking him, and to some extent, he couldn’t help it after a point, he got caught in the trap essentially. Didn’t work exactly as the Israelis hoped and so in 56, they plotted, colluded with the British and the French to overthrow Nasser. That worked, to a point. They invaded the Sinai, the British and the French played their parts in this collusion-
Aaron Mate: The Americans told them to knock it off, though.
N Finkelstein: For several reasons not worth going into right now, the Americans told Israel to get out.
Aaron Mate: They wanted it delayed, basically.
N Finkelstein: Yes. Dwight Eisenhower didn’t think-
Aaron Mate: It was time.
N Finkelstein: … the time was right.
Aaron Mate: Yeah, yeah.
N Finkelstein: But of course, they also wanted to get rid of Nasser. They all saw him as a pin prick at their side. So ’67 is basically just a repeat performance of 56, with one critical change.
Aaron Mate: American support.
N Finkelstein: The US didn’t oppose it. They were very cautious and careful about how they worded it. Some people call it an amber light, a yellow light, some people call it the green light, but they didn’t openly support it, because it was illegal.
Aaron Mate: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
N Finkelstein: You know, what Israel did. At that point, the United States was fighting a war in Vietnam which was very unpopular, and they didn’t want again to engage themselves supporting Israel, which would also seem like Western Colonialism trying to assert itself over the Third World, the non-aligned world, whatever you want to call it.
The first goal was to knock out Nasser. That was a long-term goal, to keep the Arab World backward. To keep it in a subordinate, primitive state. Secondly, was what happened with the closing of the Straits of Tiran. Namely, Nasser was acting very uppity. He was challenging the Israelis. To some extent, he was goading them, I think that’s true. It was all hot air, and the Israelis knew it was hot air, but they thought, a very revealing phrase from one of the Cabinet meetings came from, at that point he was a Commander, Ariel Sharon. There were some members of the Israeli Cabinet who were still reluctant to launch an attack. He said, “We have to attack now, because we’re losing our deterrence capacity.” That’s a favorite phrase among the Israeli Military.
Aaron Mate: Continues today with Gaza-
N Finkelstein: Yes.
Aaron Mate: And Lebanon.
Nasser (center), King Hussein of Jordan (left) and Egyptian Army Chief of Staff Abdel Hakim Amer (right) at the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces headquarters in Cairo before signing a mutual defense pact, 30 May 1967. (Source: Wikipedia)
N Finkelstein: “Deterrence capacity” means the Arab World’s fear of us, that Nasser was now whipping up the Arabs and they were no longer afraid. For the Israelis, the fear, the deterrence capacity, is a very strong card on their side, to keep the Arabs in their place. So the second reason was that they had to restore, as they call it, their deterrence capacity. The third, I would not quote the reason, all the generals had their own desires about wanting to get back some lands. Everyone was agreed they wanted to get Jerusalem, because they lost part of it in ’48. Large numbers of them wanted the West Bank, others of them wanted the Golan Heights, others wanted the Sinai, so there was a land grab element to the war.
Aaron Mate: Okay, on that point, and a quick question as we wrap part one of this discussion.
N Finkelstein: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Aaron Mate: In terms of the land grab in the West Bank, the presence today in the West Bank of hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers, many of them religious fanatics who believe that they’re there because God promised them that land, was that kind of religious zealotry a strong component in the internal Israeli thinking at that time? Like wanting to-
N Finkelstein: It wasn’t religious-
Aaron Mate: [crosstalk 00:28:05]
N Finkelstein: … but you have to remember that the Zionist movement was overwhelmingly secular, overwhelmingly atheist. In fact, large numbers of them consider themselves socialists and communists and had no truck with a religion. But they still felt they had a legal title to the land, because in their thinking, the Bible was not just a religious document, the Bible was a historical document, and historically, the Jews had been in Palestine, and it was theirs. It was the same mentality in ’67. It was secular, but it was also deep-seated and fanatical. The fact that they had a claim to the land didn’t make it necessarily in their minds a religious claim. It was a secular claim, but still a fanatical claim, that it was their land, because it says so in the Bible, and the Bible is a historical document, you know, for them the Bible is a historical deed.
Aaron Mate: That’s going to wrap this part of the discussion. In the next part, we’re going to get into what changed for Israel after ’67 in terms of American Jewish support and also American government support, and how those two intertwined. My guest is Norman Finkelstein. Join us in the next part of this discussion.
Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He currently teaches at Sakarya University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Turkey. Finkelstein is the author of ten books that have been translated into 50 foreign editions.
Near the end of World War II, the secret collaboration between U.S. spymaster Allen Dulles and Nazi SS officers enabled many German war criminals to escape prosecution and positioned them to fan the flames of post-war tensions between the former allies, the United States and the Soviet Union.
In that way, the Old Nazis — aided by Dulles and other ex-Wall Street lawyers — prevented a thorough denazification of Germany and put the Third Reich’s stamp on decades of atrocities during the long Cold War, spreading their brutal death-squad techniques to faraway places, especially Latin America.
Though the World War II generation has largely passed from the scene and the Cold War ended more than two decades ago, the consequences of Dulles’s actions in those final days of World War II are still reverberating in Germany.
Former CIA Director Allen Dulles (Source: Consortiumnews)
One of the after-shocks was felt in a Munich courtroom just last month, with the opening of the trial of Beate Zschape, a 38-year-old neo-Nazi who is accused as an accessory to two bombings, 15 bank robberies and ten murders between 2000 and 2007 by the terrorist cell, the “National Socialist Underground” (NSU).
Two male fellow gang members reportedly took their own lives to avoid arrest before Ms. Zschape torched their hideout and turned herself in, in November 2011. But the back story is no less disturbing.
Nine of the NSU’s ten murder victims were immigrants, eight of them Turkish, one Greek. All ten were slain execution-style by the same Ceska Browning pistol. Yet it took more than a decade for police forces across Germany and the country’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution (BFV), to connect the dots that would link the homicides to Germany’s xenophobic neo-Nazi netherworld.
Troubling Background
But the question is whether the missed connections resulted from incompetence or complicity. Last summer, following reports of the massive shredding of BFV’s files on right-wing extremists, the head of the agency tendered his resignation. Then in November, Der Spiegelreported:
“Four parliamentary committees [are] dissecting the work of law enforcement units four department heads have already resigned. The government’s failures in fighting rightwing terrorists have plunged [the BFV] into the worst crisis since it was … set up in postwar Germany to stop precisely the kind of extremist thinking that allowed the Nazis to rise to power in the 1930s. The discovery of the NSU and its crimes has shaken the system to its core.
“The more secrets come to light, the clearer it becomes how extensively intelligence agencies had infiltrated right-wing extremist groups. The trio of neo-Nazis that made up the NSU was surrounded by informants linked with [the BFV]. One of the big questions is whether [the BFV] actually strengthened military right-wing groups.”
How the BFV worked at cross-purposes coddling neo-Nazis while supposedly constraining them is not entirely surprising in light of the circumstances surrounding the BFV’s birth.
West Germany’s first parliamentary elections in 1950 propelled into the chancellorship, Konrad Adenauer a stalwart of the same party as that of current German chancellor Angela Merkel, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
When Adenauer named Dr. Hans Globke as his Secretary of State, the West German chancellor laid his cards on the table. Globke’s checkered past included wartime service at the helm of the Nazi Interior Ministry’s Office for Jewish Affairs. He drafted the infamous Nuremberg Laws for the Protection of German Blood and wrote the “Commentary” that provided the rationale for genocide.
The Interior Minister who signed the Nuremberg Laws, Dr. Wilhelm Frick, was sentenced to death at Nuremberg and hanged in October 1946. Globke would appear to have been culpable, too, having advanced his career during Nazi rule. His immediate supervisor, Interior Ministry Legal Counsel Bernard Loesner, resigned following Hitler’s decision to proceed with the extermination of European Jewry. When Loesner stepped down, Globke stepped up and left his fingerprints on the Final Solution.
Source: Amazon
But Globke was not only spared the fate of some colleagues tried at Nuremberg but emerged as an important figure in shaping post-war West Germany. In the 1961 book, The New Germany and the Old Nazis, T.H. Tetens, a German economist who worked for the U.S. War Crimes Commission, noted that Globke controlled every department of West Germany’s government in Bonn and “has done more than anyone else to re-Nazify West Germany.”
Ex-Nazis Everywhere
Der Spiegel revisited the same subject in a March 2012 article headlined “The Role Ex-Nazis Played in Early West Germany.” It reported that two dozen cabinet ministers, a president and a chancellor had belonged to Nazi organizations.
The article reported that historians were poring through voluminous BFV files
“to determine how many of the Nazi dictatorship’s helpers hid under the coattails of the domestic intelligence service in the earlier years of the Federal Republic” and whether “the protection of the young, optimistic constitution [had been] in the hands of former National Socialists.”
Berlin historian Michael Wildt told Der Spiegel he was convinced that the postwar police and intelligence services had been riddled with former Nazis. Entire government departments and agencies, he said, “covered up, denied and repressed” their murky history which evoked the following mea culpa from Der Spiegel’s staff:
“It’s a charge that doesn’t just apply to politicians and public servants, at least not in the early years of the republic. Senior members of the media, including at Spiegel, proved to be unwilling or incapable of sounding the alarm. This isn’t surprising, given the number of ex-Nazis who had forced their way into editorial offices.”
Author T.H. Tetens noted the irony in Dr. Globke, “[the] former key administrator in the Final Solution, [having] full control over the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.” Had he lived long enough, Tetens might have suggested that the BFV be renamed the Office for the Protection of Neo-Nazis.
Tetens might also feel vindicated by recently released CIA documents describing another branch of German intelligence that Globke’s controlled, the vast spy network run by Adolf Hitler’s former espionage czar, Lt. Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, a.k.a. the “Gehlen Organization,” a.k.a. “The Gehlen Org” or, simply, the “Org.”
Until 1955, when West Germany became a sovereign state, the Gehlen Org operated nominally under the aegis of James Critchfield of the CIA which paid for the Org’s intelligence product. In reality, Gehlen ran the Org from its creation in 1946 until his retirement in 1968. In 1956, the Org officially became Germany’s foreign intelligence service and was renamed the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).
Recently, the BND has been declassifying its files to come clean about its postwar origins. Documents released to date by both it and the CIA confirm suspicions that, at least in the Gehlen years, the Org/BND was little more than a U.S.-bankrolled “sheep-dipping” operation for fugitive Nazis.
The U.S. Connection
And this troubling history goes back even further to the days of World War II when the American intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, fell under the control of a group of Wall Street lawyers who saw the world in the moral grays of business deals, measured less by right and wrong than by dollars and cents.
Source: Amazon
In the introduction to The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA, author Burton Hersh identifies this common denominator:
“In 1941 [the year of America’s entry into the war], an extraordinarily nimble New York antitrust attorney named William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan inveigled Franklin Roosevelt into underwriting the first encompassing intelligence instrumentality, the Office of the Coordinator of Information [OCI].
“Donovan’s profession was relevant, and it was no accident that all three [of The Old Boys’] load-bearing protagonists Bill Donovan, Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner achieved status in America by way of important Wall Street law partnerships.
“The faction-ridden [OCI] gave way in 1942 to the [OSS]. From then on a civilian-directed, operationally oriented spy service would top the wish list of America’s emerging power elite.”
These Wall-Street-lawyers-turned-spymasters brought their moral relativism and their ardor for aggressive capitalism to their World War II decision-making. Thus, they created an opening for Nazi war criminals who after Germany’s crushing defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad in February 1943 saw the writing on the wall regarding the future of the Third Reich and started hedging their bets.
As the war ground on for two more years, thousands of them took steps to evade post-war prosecutions, in part, by arranging protection from British and American officials. Most of those American officials served in U.S. intelligence agencies, either Army intelligence or the civilian-run OSS, the CIA’s forerunner.
OSS spymaster Allen Dulles played into this Nazi game in spring 1945, as Soviet, British and American forces were converging on Berlin. Dulles engaged in negotiations for the separate surrender of German forces in Italy with SS General Karl Wolff.
It apparently didn’t bother Dulles that Wolff, like many of his SS brethren, was a major war criminal. After September 1943, when Italy withdrew from the Axis and made peace with the Allies, Wolff’s troops committed an average of 165 war crimes a day executing his orders to liquidate the Italian resistance and terrorize its supporters.
(In 1964, a German judge sentenced Wolff to 15 years in prison for various war crimes, including ordering the deportation of 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp.)
Pushing the Envelope
Initially, Dulles met with Wolff in defiance of orders from the dying President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The contacts also were behind the back of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, whose army had not only turned the tide of the war at Stalingrad but was still doing the bulk of the fighting. As Hitler’s Third Reich neared the end of its days, six out of every seven German divisions were lined up against the Red Army.
Ultimately, Dulles secured authorization for what was code-named “Operation Sunrise,” but his determination to consummate a deal with Wolff didn’t stop at negotiations. When the Italian resistance set a trap for Gen. Wolff, Dulles saved him in what his OSS colleague (and future Supreme Court Justice) Arthur Goldberg described as treason.
Moreover, when Soviet spies informed Stalin about the Dulles-Wolff assignations which continued even as the Red Army suffered 300,000 casualties in a three-week period the ensuing brouhaha played right into Hitler’s own game plan for survival.
Desperate to bolster the morale of his collapsing army, Der Fuehrer seized on the dissension opening in the ranks of the Allies. He gave his generals the following pep talk (as transcribed in Gabriel Kolko’s The Politics of War):
“The states which are now our enemies are the greatest opposites which exist on earth: ultra-capitalist states on one side and ultra-Marxist states on the other. [Their] objectives diverge daily and anyone can see how these antitheses are increasing.
“If we can deal it [the alliance] a couple of heavy blows, this artificially constructed common front may collapse with a mighty thunderclap at any moment.”
Indeed, Wolff’s surrender overtures to Dulles might have been an attempt to both save his own skin and help Hitler drive a wedge into the “artificially constructed common front.”
The overall value of Dulles’s negotiations toward ending the war also was dubious. Less than one week before the general armistice ending the War in Europe, Dulles offered Nazi officers an advantageous deal, letting one million German combatants surrender to British and American forces on May 2, 1945, rather than to the Russians.
By surrendering to the British and Americans, most of these Germans not only avoided harsh treatment from the Russians but high-ranking Nazi officers benefited from the Truman administration’s quick pivot from its war-time alliance with Stalin to the Cold War confrontation with Moscow.
President Harry Truman’s staunchly anti-communist advisers, including Secretary of State James Byrnes, persuaded Truman to default on FDR’s commitment to a thorough postwar denazification of Germany, one in a series of decisions which enabled thousands of war criminals to avoid justice and permitted many to assume key positions in the new West German government.
Steering the Cold War
Yet, the use of Nazis by U.S. intelligence agencies had the additional dangerous effect of letting the Nazis influence how the United States perceived its erstwhile allies in Moscow. Washington formulated much of its early Cold War policies based on information about Moscow’s intentions that originated with Gehlen’s blemished agents.
These infamous Final Solution perpetrators included:
–Willie Krichbaum, reportedly the Gehlen Org’s top recruiter. As the senior Gestapo official for southeastern Europe, Krichbaum managed the deportation of 300,000 Hungarian Jews for extermination.
–Dr. Franz Six, former Dean of the Faculty of the University of Berlin and Adolph Eichmann’s immediate supervisor in the Ideological Combat branch of the SS security apparatus. In 1941, according to a report he wrote (which Christopher Simpson cites in Blowback: The First Account of America’s Recruitment of Nazis, and its Disastrous Effect on our Domestic and Foreign Policy), a Six-led SS commando group murdered 200 people in the Russian city of Smolensk, “among them 38 intellectual Jews.”
Wanted for war crimes, Six joined the Gehlen Org in 1946, but later was betrayed by a former SS officer working undercover for a US/UK dragnet for fugitive Nazis. In 1948, a U.S. military tribunal sentenced him to 20 years for war crimes including murder. After serving four, he was granted clemency by John McCloy, another Wall Street lawyer then serving as U.S. High Commissioner for Germany. Six then rejoined the Org.
–Gestapo captain Klaus Barbie, the infamous “Butcher of Lyon,” who escaped via the so-called “rat lines” to South America, where he then worked with right-wing intelligence services and organized neo-Nazi support for violent coups against elected and reformist governments, including the 1980 “cocaine coup” in Bolivia. After decades of spreading Nazi techniques across Latin America, Barbie was arrested and returned to France where he was given a life sentence in 1984 for ordering the deportation of 44 Jewish orphans to the death camp at Auschwitz
–SS Colonel Walter Rauff, who dodged postwar prosecution for developing mobile gas vans and administering their deployment to murder some 250,000 Eastern Europeans, mostly Jewish women and children. The appearance of Rauff’s name on the list is interesting because, as the Milan-based SS intelligence chief for northwestern Italy in 1945, he was Gen. Wolff’s liaison with Allen Dulles.
According to a 1984 Boston Globe Op-Ed by former U.S. Justice Department lawyer John Loftus, Rauff, after playing his part in Operation Sunrise, calmly turned himself in and told agents of the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) that he had made surrender “arrangements [with] Mr. Dulles to avoid further bloodshed in Milan.”
In Loftus’s words, Dulles
“promised that none of the [surrender] negotiators would ever be prosecuted as war criminals. When Truman and Stalin discovered what Dulles [had been up to], there were outraged orders to call off Sunrise [But] Dulles went ahead anyway, with Truman’s reluctant concurrence [Dulles] kept his bargain Rauff was released.”
Christopher Simpson confirms in Blowback that
“each of the SS officers involved in Operation Sunrise [escaped] serious punishment despite the fact that each was a major war criminal. A U.S. military tribunal tried [SS intelligence chief] Walter Schellenberg, who had helped trap and exterminate the Jews of France. He was convicted but freed shortly thereafter under a clemency [order] from the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, John McCloy…
“Wolff was sentenced to ‘time served’ in a [British] denazification proceeding in 1949, then released without objection from U.S. authorities. Fifteen years later a West German court tried Wolff a second time. He was convicted of administering the murder of 300,000 persons, most of them Jews, and of overseeing SS participation in slave labor programs.”
Fleeing to Latin America
However, when the war ended, neither the Gehlen Org recruitment program nor Wall Street lawyer McCloy’s clemency rulings had begun, leaving tens of thousands of war criminals desperate to relocate in secure foreign outposts. SS Col. Rauff just happened to have the right connections to make that happen.
In Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis and Soviet Intelligence, Australian investigative reporter, Mark Aarons, and former Justice Department lawyer Loftus reconstruct how Rauff became the mass murderers’ travel agent of choice.
Shortly after the Wolff/Dulles surrender negotiations were successfully completed on April 29, 1945, Rauff was arrested by unidentified Americans and delivered to an OSS unit led by James Angleton, the future CIA counter-intelligence chief.
From its description by Aarons and Loftus, Angleton’s team appears to have been tracking communists in the Italian underground which would have been consistent with Washington’s postwar policy of backhanding leftwing resistance leaders, from European partisans to Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh, irrespective of the magnitude of their contributions to the Allied cause.
Angleton’s team reportedly debriefed Rauff at length, probably about what he had learned when he carried out Wolff’s orders to liquidate the resistance. After Angleton’s team released him, Rauff established contact with his former SS colleague Friederich Schwendt who was already on the payroll of the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) and, like Rauff himself, was wanted for murder.
Schwendt was also a master counterfeiter. He laundered his product through banks, obtaining legitimate Western currency in return enough, in fact, that over the next three years, Rauff was able to furnish thousands of fellow war criminals false identities and one-way tickets to South America.
Rauff himself wound up in Chile, where he later reportedly advised Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s ruthless secret police.
As for Allen Dulles, he became director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. Under his leadership, the CIA overthrew democratically elected governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) and replaced them with anti-democratic dictatorships. To this day, neither country has fully regained its democratic footing.
After the CIA’s disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, President John F. Kennedy sacked Dulles, but Dulles did not wander far from the centers of power. After JFK’s assassination two years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Dulles to serve on the Warren Commission’s investigation of Kennedy’s murder.
Dulles died on Jan. 29, 1969. However, even today, seven decades after Dulles opened the door to U.S. collaboration with Nazi war criminals, his decision continues to infect government actions around the globe.
Jerry Meldon, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, is the English translator of The Great Heroin Coup, by Danish journalist Henrik Kruger, and an occasional contributor to ConsortiumNews.com.
François Houtart has passed away. He founded CETRI (Centre Tricontinental) in 1976 and was its director till 2004. We are sadly, painfully mourning. From ‘third-worldism’ to alter-globalism, from liberation theology to the ecology of creation, François Houtart has been and will always remain an important thinker in favour of the emancipation of peoples. He was a reference, a voice and a heart for hundreds of thousands of people all over the world, more particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, from heads of State to the most humble of landless peasants.
Better than any list of all his work, his articles, his speeches, his lectures and conferences, his trips, his qualifications, rewards and recognitions, François Houtart is best remembered for his personal qualities. Most of all, his stubbornness, his energy and his availability.
He stubbornly and systematically was on the side of the oppressed, the alienated, the marginalized. He scientifically and politically shed light on the mechanisms of domination, denouncing them and promoting alternatives for an environment-friendly egalitarian social organisation.
His never flinching energy, his untiring enthusiasm were characteristic. It is an understatement to say he never stopped working, he never counted the hours. Never ever did he stop acting, till just a couple of hours before the end … for the very first time.
His availability was endless, his accessibility proverbial. Never disturbed, always ready to welcome, to listen, to speak, to commit himself in some new initiative, in a new fight for more justice.
François also was the – sociological – conscience of the pregnancy of social relationships, of social determinants which made him humble and lucid concerning his own trajectory.
‘If I were born in a poor family in India, Mali or Nicaragua, I would never have had the social, cultural, symbolic resources that paved my way’.
This is what he said to those who were close to him, at an anniversary some years ago. Yet, the choice was his, better than anyone else he chose the way of condemning injustice and promoting the liberation of the oppressed.
Bernard Duterme, Director of CETRI
***
Dear François,
I thought you were immortal, indestructible. I saw you already at one hundred years old, this is what I hoped, and I was sure it would come true. It took me several hours and several messages of confirmation to really believe you passed away. Qué pena! Your immense light of hope for the world was dimmed. For me, you have been the most human of human beings I ever knew. No one will ever convince me that you did not die of exhaustion. You were fighting and spending all your energy to relieve the misery of others, to protect the damned of the earth from the cruelty and the egoism of their likes. Always listening, always working, always in solidarity with the oppressed, in all corners of the world. Your commitment has been for half a century the example that I obviously was never able to follow, though it has always inspired me and given me courage. I thank you for this and I promise I will always follow the road you have shown us, as best as I can, for the time allotted to me before I will join you.
One of the negative characteristics of the Israeli “Left” is how it terms the military rule over the West Bank and Gaza “The Occupation.” Part of the Left even accuses Palestinians who claim there is no difference between Petah Tikva and Ariel of being like the Right, because “that’s what the Israeli Right claims.” For most Palestinians, however, this exaggerated and Orwellian talk of “The Occupation” blurs Israel’s real shame, and the skeleton buried deep in the closet: The brutal and criminal occupation of 1948.
Ethnic cleansing and massive land expropriation, and then settlement of that land, are the mother of all disgraces — even if Israelis refuse to recognize it as such in public, and even if they try very hard to ignore what most Arabs are saying. Israelis’ designation of the ’67 occupation as “The Occupation” is intended, among other things, to either obscure or prevent any engagement with the Nakba. As such, most of Israel’s pseudo-Left is actually composed of Nakba deniers.
One of the most worn-out claims used to avoid referring to the crimes of ’48 as an “occupation” is that the Nakba, or the “War of Independence” to use the laundered Zionist expression, was necessary for the national project of establishing a state for the Jewish people following World War II.
Another claim, put forward mostly by the Israeli Right, is that Palestinians refused the 1947 UN Partition Plan. This claim has always seemed to me to be void of any foundation or basic logic, and is therefore not worth addressing. Let’s see those who wave this claim around agree to distribute their homes and land to people who have arrived from overseas to dispossess them, and then we can talk about it.
Palestinians participate in a rally marking the 69th anniversary of the Nakba, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, May 15, 2017. (Flash90)
A national project?
The argument that it was necessary to establish a state at the expense of the native population, while justifying it because of the persecution experienced by the occupiers, is pathetic at best. Many good people have already spoken about Zionism’s cynical exploitation of the memory of victims of the Holocaust. But to the ears of Palestinians, these self-justifications along with exaggerated talk of the “The Occupation,” as if there was no other disaster and open wound, sounds more than just pathetic.
These statements are intended to blur Israelis’ responsibility for those bloody events. It’s important to bleeding-heart Zionist left-wingers that Arabs and Jews don’t need to be enemies, but less important to listen to Palestinians and understand how traumatic ’48 still is — and how much impact it still has, even for the third generation after the Nakba.
It’s not just the diaspora of millions of refugees from the Nakba, most of them living in substandard conditions in camps. It’s also the lack of recognition of the greatest injustice ever done to the Palestinian people. When you don’t recognize your direct responsibility for the catastrophe of another, how can you expect them to live with you in peace or believe in your coexistence slogans?
Living in the past
Far too many Israelis, seeking to exempt themselves from Palestinian claims that the lack of recognition over ’48 remains an open wound, feel at ease preaching to Palestinians that they should “let go of the past.” And this is coming from the people who claim to be returning to the land of their ancestors from thousands of years ago. The hypocrisy is boundless.
Thousands of Israelis attend a left-wing rally calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, May 27, 2017. (Flash90)
Ignoring and forgetting the past is another negative feature of the “Zionist Left.” Israelis constantly make use of their biblical right to Palestine and continually remind the world of their past persecution — so it’s precisely the leftists among them whom you would have expected to understand Palestinians’ insistence on remembering the crimes of the past. Especially when those same persecuted people are the ones who caused these injustices.
The Nakba will never disappear from the Palestinian discourse as long as no solution to the distress of Palestinians is found, because it is still ongoing and its implications are still being felt. Arabs are still being kicked out of their homes in order to settle Israelis, and not just over the Green Line (see, for example, Umm al-Hiran, and how mixed cities are being Judaized).
The sad truth is that recognizing the Nakba necessitates recognizing the original occupation of 1948, which Israelis are scared to confront. You can shout peace slogans until the cows come home, but as long as you ignore the rights of the refugees of 1948 to return to their land at the expense of the settlers in Ein Hod, for example, those words are meaningless.
Do you want to engage with Palestinians as equals? Do you want to insist that you refuse to see them as enemies? Do you want to strengthen real leftist values? Then start repeating: The occupation is 69 years old, not 50. When more Israelis come around to this line of thinking and stop denying the Nakba, perhaps then more and more Palestinians will begin refusing to see them as enemies.
In what has emerged as the most significant escalation to result from the Qatar diplomatic crisis – which pits two of OPEC’s largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, against the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas and further disrupts stability in the region – the biggest Middle East oil and container ports banned all vessels sailing to and from Qatar from using their facilities.
According to a notice posted on the website of Inchcape Shipping, Saudi Arabian and Bahraini authorities closed off all of their ports to Qatari-flagged vessels or ships traveling to or coming from the Persian Gulf state, in what has been described as a naval blockade.
Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast is home to the port of Ras Tanura, which state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co. says is the biggest crude terminal in the world. Jebel Ali port, the region’s biggest container terminal, will be restricted from Tuesday until further notice, its operator Dubai’s DP World Ltd. said in an emailed statement according to Bloomberg. In the U.A.E., DP World operates Jebel Ali along with Dubai’s Mina Rashid and Mina Al Hamriya ports. Elsewhere, government-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil closed its crude and refined-product ports to any vessels to or from Qatar. The port at Fujairah, a main oil transit and refined product hub, said Monday it was closed to Qatar-linked traffic.
For now, shipping at Egyptian ports was operating normally as of Tuesday, according to Inchcape. The company also said the Suez Canal Authority has advised that there aren’t restrictions on vessels in the waterway since it is an international route.
Separately, Bloomberg also reported that A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, which owns the world’s biggest container line, said it can no longer get cargo to Qatar as a result of the Saudi-imposed blockade of transport to and from the Gulf state.
Though the situation remains “very fluid,” with updates expected throughout the coming hours, Maersk Line expects “disruptions to our Qatar services,” spokesman Mikkel Elbek Linnet said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
For now, “we have confirmation that we will not be able to move cargo to or from Qatar,” he said.
Maersk Line doesn’t use its own vessels to bring cargo to Qatar, but relies on third-party so-called feeder services from the United Arab Emirates Jebel Ali port in Dubai.
“We will notify our customers on alternatives as soon as possible,” Linnet said.
Maersk ships about 16 percent of the world’s seaborne freight, making it the global leader in container transportation. Maersk, which has been working on splitting off its energy business to concentrate on its transport operations, said last year it lost the biggest oil field in its portfolio when Qatar ended a 25-year partnership with the Danish company. The agreement allowing Maersk to operate the Al Shaheen offshore field expires next month, after the company lost its bid for renewal to Total SA.
In addition to crippling overall Qatar-bound trade, the sea blockade will hurt shipments of oil and refined products from the world’s biggest energy exporting region.
According to Per Mansson, a shipbroker at Affinity Shipping in London, the Saudi ban on vessels going to and from Qatar will create logistical difficulties for some combination charters of crude oil supertankers from the Persian Gulf and will likely increase the use of smaller vessels.
“It will be a little more difficult, it will be a little bit more tricky for certain charters”: Mansson said, noting that there are “not huge quantities” of oil being exported from Qatar relative to other Gulf states.
Afffinty also says that the combination charters, where loading occurs in more than one nation, are popular on routes to Japan, Korea and adds that the use of Suezmax and Aframax ships on Qatar routes may increase. That said, companies could still book combination charters with Qatar and other nations that don’t have restrictions, including Iran and Iraq.
Yet while the shipbroker tried to talk down the potential impact of the shipping ban, according to Bloomberg oil strategist Julian Lee, blocking vessels going to/from Qatar is probably the most important direct move that Saudi Arabia has made in terms of hindering its smaller neighbor’s ability to export crude oil and condensates.
Saudi Arabia’s move mirrors similar restrictions by United Arab Emirates, which will mean ships going to/from Qatar no longer have access to the Middle East’s biggest refueling center at the port of Fujairah.
According to Bloomberg, 27 of 31 vessels that loaded Qatari crude, condensate in May co-loaded in either Saudi Arabia or the UAE.
The good news is that aside from the above, Lee believes that there is little reason – so far – to believe that measures against Qatar will have a materially negative impact on country’s energy exports.
***
Finally, there is the question of LNG shipments. Here, as Reuters reported earlier, LNG traders took a wait-and-see approach, alert to potential disruption of regional energy flows “but erring on the assumption that any trade shocks could be contained given well supplied global markets.”
Qatar’s top clients in Japan and India quickly received reassurances that supplies would continue as usual. Whether this persists is unclear: within hours of the diplomatic break, the UAE barred all vessels coming to or from Qatar using its popular anchorage point off Fujairah. The ban impacts about six LNG vessels linked to Qatar now anchored in the Fujairah zone which may need to be moved out, according to shipping data on Thomson Reuters.
But there was little sign yet of LNG supply being hit.
“I cannot see this impacting exports of Qatari LNG outside the Arab world at all and it won’t likely impact LNG and gas pipeline exports within the Arab world either,” Morten Frisch, an independent LNG and gas industry consultant, said.
Still, traders startled by the development began to plan for all eventualities, especially any upsets to piped gas supplies from Qatar to the UAE.
Egypt, while relying heavily on Qatari LNG brought in by Swiss commodity trade houses, is less vulnerable than the UAE because it has no direct deals with Qatar, domestic gas output is squeezing out the need for imports, and traders would be liable for any moves by Qatar to restrict exports.
“Trafigura, Glencore and Vitol frequently take LNG from Qatar and deliver it to Egypt but they take ownership of the cargoes at the Qatari port and don’t use Qatari ships, meaning technically that Qatar shouldn’t have sway,” one trade source said.
In reality though, Qatar can block exports to certain countries by issuing so-called destination restrictions.
“It’s not clear yet,” another LNG trader said of potential impacts to deliveries from Qatar to Egypt.
***
Can (and will) Qatar respond to the blockade?
Retaliatory measures such as suspending LNG supply deals would leave Qatar free to push more volumes into Europe where it has access to several import terminals. Under that scenario, trade houses with supply commitments to Egypt could turn to the United States, Algeria and Nigeria for replacement cargoes, traders and industry sources told Reuters.
The deterioration in ties between Qatar and Egypt contrasts with 2013 when the producer gifted five LNG cargoes to Egypt – when Mohamed Mursi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, served as president. Ironically, it is Qatar’s support for the MB – if only according to the “official narrative” – that is the catalyst for the current crisis.
The Islamic State group has claimed attacks on Iran’s parliament and the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini a few kilometres south of the capital on Wednesday morning, near simultaneous assaults that killed up to seven people, according to media reports.
A security guard was killed when four gunmen burst into Tehran’s parliament complex, while a gardener was reported dead when several armed assailants entered the grounds of Khomeini’s mausoleum in the south of the city, according to the ISNA news agency.
“Fighters from Islamic State attacked Khomeini’s shrine and the Iranian parliament in Tehran,” IS’s news agency Amaq said.
An official at Khomeini’s mausoleum in south Tehran said “three or four” people had entered via the western entrance and opened fire, killing the gardener and wounding several people, according to the Fars news agency.
Fars said a female suicide attacker blew herself up outside the shrine and published photos showing the explosion. The Mizanonline news agency also said a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside the shrine, while another woman was arrested carrying six grenades.
Source: AFP / Middle East Eye
Lawmaker Elias Hazrati told state television three assailants, one with a pistol and two with AK-47 assault rifles, raided parliament.
Parliament was in session as the attacks unfolded, with live footage showing members continuing with routine business even as gun battles were reported in surrounding office buildings.
Speaker Ali Larijani dismissed the attacks, saying they were a “trivial matter” and that security forces were dealing with them.
Intensified gunfire was heard from the neighbouring offices as Fars news agency reported police had launched an assault.
Parliament in session as attacks unfold
Tasmin news agency said there were unconfirmed reports that the attackers had taken four hostages inside the parliament building, but the state news agency IRNA reported that the situation at parliament is under control and a session is going ahead.
Another lawmaker said one of the assailants was surrounded by security forces and all the doors to the building had been closed, ISNA news agency reported.
Members of Iranian forces run during an attack on the Iranian parliament in central Tehran (Reuters via Middle East Eye)
“I was inside the parliament when shooting happened. Everyone was shocked and scared. I saw two men shooting randomly,” said one journalist at the scene, who asked not to be named.
Several Arab media outlets claimed that the Islamic State group carried out the attacks, but removed the news report from their websites after half an hour, according to the semi-offical Fars News Agency.
— Reza Yeganehshakib (@yeganehshakib) June 7, 2017
Around half an hour later and 19 kilometres away from the parliament building, an armed man opened fire at the Mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini and wounded a number of people, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini launched the Islamic revolution in 1979.
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We need to stand together to continuously question politics, false statements, and the suppression of independent thought.
The Intercept headlined on June 5th,“TOP-SECRET NSA REPORT DETAILS RUSSIAN HACKING EFFORT DAYS BEFORE 2016 ELECTION” and devoted 3,811 words to saying that America’s National Security Agency alleges that “a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure” is the subject of a top-secret “report, dated May 5, 2017,” which “is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.”
While Sirhan still sits in prison to this day, the real killers of Senator Kennedy went free that night. For anyone who studies the case with an impartial eye (see this, this,this, this, and this), the evidence is overwhelming that there was a very sophisticated conspiracy at work, one that continued long after as police, FBI, intelligence agencies, and the legal system covered up the true nature of the crime. That Sirhan was hypnotized to play his part as seeming assassin is also abundantly clear.
London as Manchester are planned state sponsored acts of terror to achieve a multiple goal. Conservative Theresa May must win the elections on 8 June against Jeremy Corbyn the Labor Leader, who even after the purposeful state crime of Manchester has not lost popularity, to the contrary, he has moved up to a neck-on-neck race. He is indeed a big risk for the deep dark Zionist-masonic elite that manipulates the world towards NWO.
While the West poses as the premier champion of free speech, citizen participation, openness, and accountability, the New York Times article reveals an unfolding plan to utterly crush any narrative that deviates from Western media talking points, thus controlling citizen perception, not encouraging “participation,” and ensuring that the West alone determines what is “opened” and held “accountable.”
The ISIS nonetheless has a certain degree of independence in relation to its State sponsors. That is the nature of what is called an “intelligence asset”. But an “intelligence asset” is always on the radar of the intelligence services.
The British government through its intelligence services is known to have covertly supported several Al Qaeda affiliated entities including the Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which was linked to the Manchester bombings.
These days we rush from one media story to another, trying to keep up with the latest terrorist attack. Yesterday Paris; today London; tomorrow, who knows? These attacks are tragic enough when they are acts of violence by religious extremists who have outsmarted our police and intelligence agencies. But, of course, many of them are actually violent acts facilitated by our police and intelligence agencies, directly or indirectly. The tragedy in such cases lies not only in the immediate human suffering but in the way our civil society and elected representatives are betrayed, intimidated, disciplined and stripped of their power by our own security agencies. The War on Terror, which goes by different names in different countries but continues as a global framework for violent conflict, thrives on this fraud.
But if the very agencies that should be investigating and preventing these attacks are involved in perpetrating them, what is civil society to do to protect itself? Who will step in to study the evidence and sort out what really happened? And who will investigate the official investigators? Over the years, civilians from different walks of life have stepped forward–forming groups, sharing information and methods, creating a tradition of civilian investigation.
One such investigator is Elias Davidsson (image on the right). Some readers will be familiar with his meticulous book, Hijacking America’s Mind on 9/11 or his more recent work, Psychologische Kriegsführung und gesellschaftliche Leugnung. Davidsson has now produced a book on the 2008 attacks that occurred in Mumbai, India. The book is entitled, The Betrayal of India: Revisiting the 26/11 Evidence (New Delhi: Pharos, 2017).
To remind ourselves of these attacks–that is, of the official story of these attacks as narrated by the Indian government–we can do no better than to consult Wikipedia, which seldom strays from government intelligence narratives:
“The 2008 Mumbai attacks were a series of attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic militant organization based in Pakistan, carried out a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai. The attacks, which drew widespread global condemnation, began on Wednesday, 26 November and lasted until Saturday, 29 November 2008, killing 164 people and wounding at least 308.”
This description, however faulty, serves to make clear why the events were widely portrayed as a huge crime—India’s 9/11. When we bear in mind that both India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear weapons, and when we consider that these events were widely characterized in India as an act of war supported by Pakistan (Davidsson, 72-74; 511 ff.; 731 ff.), we will understand how dangerous the event was for over a billion and a half people in south Asia.
We will also understand how easy it was, on the basis of such a narrative, to get a bonanza of funds and equipment for the Mumbai police (735-736) and why it was possible, given the framing of the event as an act of war, for India’s armed forces to get an immediate 21% hike in military spending with promises of continuing increases in subsequent years (739 ff.).
Wikipedia’s paragraph tells a straightforward story, but the straightforwardness is the result of much snipping and smoothing. Both Pakistan and Lashkar-e-Taiba denied responsibility for the attacks (65; 513) and, Davidsson argues, they did so for good reason.
In his Conclusions at the end of the book Davidsson encourages us to assess separately the actual attacks and the Indian state’s investigation of the attacks (865 ff.) It is “highly plausible,” he says, “that major institutional actors in India, the United States and possibly Israel, were complicit in conceiving, planning, directing and executing the attacks of 26/11” (873); but the evidence of a deceptive investigation is even stronger:
“The first definite conclusion of this book is that India’s major institutions, including the Central government, parliament, bureaucracy, armed forces, Mumbai police, intelligence services, judiciary and media, have deliberately suppressed the truth regarding 26/11 and continue to do so. I could discover no hint of a desire among the aforementioned parties to establish the truth on these deadly events (865).”
This distinction is useful for civil society investigators. We will frequently find it easier to prove that an investigation is deceptive, and that it is obscuring rather than illuminating the path to the perpetrators, than to directly prove the event itself to have been fraudulent. And there are two good reasons to pay attention to evidence of a cover-up. First, to cover up a crime is itself a crime. Second, those covering up a crime implicate themselves in the original crime. If they were not directly involved in the commission of the crime, they are at least accessories after the fact. To begin by exposing the fraudulent investigation, therefore, will often be wise. When this has been done we shall often find that we can begin to discern the path to the attack itself.
Davidsson gives a wealth of evidence about both the attacks and the investigation, but for this brief review I shall focus on the investigation.
Here are three recurring themes in his study that may serve to illustrate the strength of the cover-up thesis.
(1) Immediate fingering of the perpetrator
When officials claim to know the identity of a perpetrator (individual or group) prior to any serious investigation, this suggests that a false narrative is being initiated and that strenuous efforts will soon be made to implant it in the mind of a population. Thus, for example, Lee Harvey Oswald was identified by officials of the executive branch as the killer of President John F. Kennedy–and as a lone wolf with no associates–on the afternoon of the assassination day, long before an investigation and even before he had been charged with the crime. And we had major news media pointing with confidence, by the end of the day of September 11, 2001, to Osama bin Laden and his group–in the absence of evidence.
In the Mumbai case the Prime Minister of India implied, while the attack was still in progress, that the perpetrators were from a terrorist group supported by, or at least tolerated by, Pakistan (65; 228; 478; 512; 731).
The Taj Mahal Hotel burning after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (Source: Haunted India)
Likewise, immediately after the attacks Henry Kissinger attempted to implicate Pakistan. Three days prior to the attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, one of the main attack sites, Kissinger had been staying in the hotel. He “sat with top executives from Goldman Sachs and India’s Tata group in the Taj to ‘chat about American politics'” (331). Kissinger’s presence on the scene with Indian elites (the Tata family is one of India’s wealthiest, and the Tata Group owns the Taj) would be peculiar enough to cause raising of the eyebrows, but when combined with his immediate fingering of Pakistan it becomes extremely suspect. As Davidsson shows, what investigation there was came much later, and even today the case against Pakistan remains full of contradictions, unsupported allegations, and absurdities.
(2) Grotesque failure by official investigators to follow proper procedures
Incompetence is a fact of life, but there are times when the incompetence theory is strained to the breaking point and it is more rational to posit deliberate deception. In the case of the Mumbai investigation, Davidsson depicts its failures as going well beyond incompetence.
Neither the police, nor the judge charged with trying the sole surviving suspect, made public a timeline of events (188-189; 688-689). Even the most basic facts of when a given set of attacks began and when they ended were left vague.
Key witnesses were not called to testify. Witnesses who said they saw the terrorists commit violence, or spoke to them, or were in the same room with them, were ignored by the court (e.g., 279 ff.).
Contradictions and miracles were not sorted out. One victim was apparently resurrected from the dead when his testimony was essential to the blaming of Pakistan (229-230). A second victim died in two different places (692), while a third died in three places (466). No one in authority cared enough to solve these difficulties.
Eyewitnesses to the crime differed on the clothing and skin color of the terrorists, and on how many of them there were (328-331). No resolution was sought.
At least one eyewitness confessed she found it hard to distinguish “friends” from terrorists (316). No probe was stimulated by this odd confusion.
The number of terrorists who committed the deeds changed repeatedly, as did the number of terrorists who survived (29 ff.; 689).
Crime scenes were violated, with bodies hauled off before they could be examined (682-683).
Identity parades (“line-ups”) were rendered invalid by weeks of prior exposure of the witnesses to pictures of the suspect in newspapers (101; 582).
Claims that the terrorists were armed with AK-47s were common, yet forensic study of the attack at the Cama Hospital failed to turn up a single AK-47 bullet (156).
Of the “hundreds of witnesses processed by the court” in relation to the attacks at the Café Leopold, Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Oberoi-Trident Hotel or Nariman House, “not a single one testified to having observed any of the eight accused kill anyone” (40).
Indian authorities declined to order autopsies on the dead at the targeted Jewish center in Nariman House. The dead, five out of six of whom were Israeli citizens (427), were instead whisked back to Israel by a Jewish organization based in Israel, allegedly for religious reasons (453). Religious sensitivity seems to have extended to a large safe at the crime scene, which the team also transported to Israel (454).
(3) Extreme secrecy and the withholding of basic information from the population, with the excuse of “national security”
The surviving alleged terrorist had no public trial (661).
No transcript of his secret trial has been released (670).
One lawyer who agreed to defend the accused was removed by the court and another was assassinated (670).
The public was told there was extensive CCTV footage of the attacks, despite the mysterious malfunctioning of the majority of CCTV cameras on the days in question (97-98; 109 ff.; 683 ff.); but only a very small percentage of the claimed footage was ever released and it suffers from serious defects–two conflicting time-stamps and signs of editing (111).
Members of an elite Indian commando unit that showed up with between 475 and 800 members to battle eight terrorists (534) were not allowed to testify in court (327; 428-429).
The “confession” of the suspect, on which the judge leaned heavily, was given in secret. No transcript of this confession has been released to the public and the suspect later renounced the confession, saying he had been under threat from police when he gave it (599 ff.; 681).
The suspect, after being convicted and sentenced to death, was presumably executed, but the hanging was done secretly in jail and his body, like the bodies of the other dead “terrorists,” was buried in a secret place (37; 623).
It is difficult to see how the investigation described above differs from what we would expect to see in a police state. Evidently, the “world’s largest democracy” is in trouble.
Meanwhile, motives for the “highly plausible” false flag attack, Davidsson notes, are not difficult to find. The attacks not only filled the coffers of national security agencies, creating as they did the impression of a permanent threat to India, but also helped tilt India toward those countries claiming to take the lead in the War on Terror (809 ff.; 847). The FBI showed great interest in the attacks from the outset. It actually had a man on the scene during the attacks and sent an entire team directly after the event (812 ff.). The Bureau was, remarkably, given direct access to the arrested suspect and to his recorded confession (before he even had a lawyer), as well as to eyewitnesses (651-652; 815). The New York Police Department also sent a team after the conclusion of the event (816-817), as did Scotland Yard and Israeli police (651; 851). There seems to have been something of a national security fest in relation to Mumbai as ideas of closer cooperation in matters of security were discussed (e.g., 822).
In case Israel seems too small to belong with the other players in this national security fest, Davidsson reminds us that India is Israel’s largest customer in defense sales (853).
So, what can we learn from Davidsson’s book? For patient readers, a great deal: this 900-page study is as free of filler and rhetoric as it is rich in detail. (In correspondence the author told me that he was determined to produce a work dense with primary source material so that it could be of maximum help to activists in India striving for an official inquiry.) For readers with less patience, Davidsson has provided regular summaries. And both sets of readers will find that the book discusses not only details of the Mumbai attacks, but patterns of deception common in the War on Terror.
For all these reason, this book is a highly significant achievement and is of objective importance to anyone interested in the War and Terror–the structure and motifs of its ongoing fictions and the methods through which civil society researchers can lay bare these fictions.
Dr. Graeme MacQueen is the former Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Canada. He was an organizer of the Toronto Hearings on 9/11, is a member of the Consensus 9/11 Panel, and is a former co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies.
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According to the official narrative, the reason for the latest Gulf crisis in which a coalition of Saudi-led states cut off diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar, is because – to everyone’s “stunned amazement” – Qatar was funding terrorists, and after Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia in which he urged a crackdown on financial support of terrorism, and also following the FT’s report that Qatar has directly provided $1 billion in funding to Iran and al-Qaeda spinoffs, Saudi Arabia finally had had enough of its “rogue” neighbor, which in recent years had made ideologically unacceptable overtures toward both Shia Iran and Russia.
However, as often happens, the official narrative is traditionally a convenient smokescreen from the real underlying tensions.
The real reason behind the diplomatic fallout may be far simpler, and once again has to do with a long-running and controversial topic, namely Qatar’s regional natural gas dominance.
Recall that many have speculated (with evidence going back as far back as 2012) that one of the reasons for the long-running Syria proxy war was nothing more complex than competing gas pipelines, with Qatar eager to pass its own pipeline, connecting Europe to its vast natural gas deposits, however as that would put Gazprom’s monopoly of European LNG supply in jeopardy, Russia had been firmly, and violently, against this strategy from the beginning and explains Putin’s firm support of the Assad regime and the Kremlin’s desire to prevent the replacement of the Syrian government with a puppet regime.
Now, in a separate analysis, Bloomberg also debunks the “official narrative” behind the Gulf crisis and suggests that Saudi Arabia’s isolation of Qatar, “and the dispute’s long past and likely lingering future are best explained by natural gas.”
The reasons for nat gas as the source of discord are numerous and start in 1995 “when the tiny desert peninsula was about to make its first shipment of liquid natural gas from the world’s largest reservoir. The offshore North Field, which provides virtually all of Qatar’s gas, is shared with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s hated rival.”
The result to Qatar’s finances was similar to the windfall that Saudi Arabia reaped from its vast crude oil wealth.
The wealth that followed turned Qatar into not just the world’s richest nation, with an annual per-capita income of $130,000, but also the world’s largest LNG exporter. The focus on gas set it apart from its oil producing neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council and allowed it to break from domination by Saudi Arabia, which in Monday’s statement of complaint described Qataris as an “extension of their brethren in the Kingdom” as it cut off diplomatic relations and closed the border.
In short, over the past two decades, Qatar become the single biggest natural gas powerhouse in the region, with only Russia’s Gazprom able to challenge Qatar’s influence in LNG exports.
To be sure, Qatar has shown a remarkable ability to shift its ideological allegiance, with the FT reporting as recently as 2013, that initially Qatar was a staunch supporter, backer and financier of the Syrian rebels, tasked to topple the Assad regime, a process which could culminate with the creation of the much maligned trans-Syrian pipeline.
The tiny gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.
The cost of Qatar’s intervention, its latest push to back an Arab revolt, amounts to a fraction of its international investment portfolio. But its financial support for the revolution that has turned into a vicious civil war dramatically overshadows western backing for the opposition.
As the years passed, Qatar grew to comprehend that Russia would not allow its pipeline to traverse Syria, and as a result it strategically pivoted in a pro-Russia direction, and as we showed yesterday, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund agreed last year to invest $2.7 billion in Russia’s state-run Rosneft Oil, even as Qatar is host of the largest US military base in the region, US Central Command. This particular pivot may have also added to fears that Qatar was becoming a far more active supporter of a Russia-Iran-Syria axis in the region, its recent financial and ideological support of Iran notwithstanding.
As a result of the tiny nation’s growing financial and political “independence”, its neighbors grew increasingly frustrated and concerned: “Qatar used to be a kind of Saudi vassal state, but it used the autonomy that its gas wealth created to carve out an independent role for itself,” said Jim Krane, energy research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, quoted by Bloomberg.
Furthermore, Qatar’s natural gas output has been “free from entanglement” – and political pressure – in the OPEC, the oil cartel that Saudi Arabia dominates.
“The rest of the region has been looking for an opportunity to clip Qatar’s wings.”
And, as Bloomberg adds,
“that opportunity came with U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, when he called on “all nations of conscience” to isolate Iran. When Qatar disagreed publicly, in a statement the government later said was a product of hacking, the Saudi-led retribution followed.”
To be sure, in a series of tweets, Trump himself doubled down on the “official narrative”, taking credit for Qatar’s isolation (perhaps forgetting that a US base is housed in the small nation).
So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding…
The cynics may be forgiven to assume that if Trump is tweeting that the reason for Qatar’s isolation is “to end the horror of terrorism”, even as the US just signed a $100+ billion arms deal with the single biggest supporter of terrorism in the world, Saudi Arabia, then indeed the Trump-endorsed “narrative” is to be dismissed outright.
Which again brings us back to nat gas, where Qatar rapidly emerged as the dominant, and lowest cost producer at a time when its neighbors started demanding the commodity on their own, giving the tiny state all the leverage. As Bloomberg adds
“demand for natural gas to produce electricity and power industry has been growing in the Gulf states. They’re having to resort to higher-cost LNG imports and exploring difficult domestic gas formations that are expensive to get out of the ground, according to the research. Qatar’s gas has the lowest extraction costs in the world.”
Of course, with financial wealth came the need to spread political influence:
Qatar gas wealth enabled it to develop foreign policies that came to irritate its neighbors. It backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and armed factions opposed by the UAE or Saudi Arabia in Libya and Syria. Gas also paid for a global television network, Al Jazeera, which at various times has embarrassed or angered most Middle Eastern governments.
And, above all,
“gas prompted Qatar to promote a regional policy of engagement with Shiite Iran to secure the source of its wealth.“
And here the source of tension emerged: because as Steven Wright, Ph.D. Associate Professor at Qatar University told Bloomberg,
“you can question why Qatar has been unwilling to supply its neighboring countries, making them gas poor,” said Wright, the academic, speaking by telephone from the Qatari capital Doha. “There probably was an expectation that Qatar would sell gas to them at a discount price.”
It did not, and instead it took a step backward in 2005, when Qatar declared a moratorium on the further development of the North Field that could have provided more gas for local export, adding to the frustrations of its neighbors.
Qatar said it needed to test how the field was responding to its exploitation, denying that it was bending to sensitivities in Iran, which had been much slower to draw gas from its side of the shared field. That two-year moratorium was lifted in April, a decade late, after Iran for the first time caught up with Qatar’s extraction rates.
As Qatar refused to yield, the resentment grew.
“People here are scratching their heads as to exactly what the Saudis expect Qatar to do,” said Gerd Nonneman, professor of international relations and Gulf studies at Georgetown University’s Doha campus. “They seem to want Qatar to cave in completely, but it won’t call the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, because it isn’t. And it isn’t going to excommunicate Iran, because that would jeopardize a relationship that is just too fundamental to Qatar’s economic development.”
* * *
Whether nat gas is the source of the Qatari isolation will depend on the next steps by both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and Egypt – are all highly reliant on Qatari gas via pipeline and LNG.
According to Reuters, traders startled by the development, have begun to plan for all eventualities, especially any upsets to piped gas supplies from Qatar to the UAE. The UAE consumes 1.8 billion cubic feet/day of Qatari gas via the Dolphin pipeline, and has LNG purchase agreements with its neighbor, leaving it doubly exposed to tit-for-tat measures, industry sources and traders said.
So far flows through Dolphin are unaffected but traders say even a partial shutdown would ripple through global gas markets by forcing the UAE to seek replacement LNG supply just as its domestic demand peaks.
With LNG markets in bearish mood and demand weak, the UAE could cope with Qatar suspending its two to three monthly LNG deliveries by calling on international markets, but Dolphin piped flows are too large to fully replace.
“A drop off in Dolphin deliveries would have a huge impact on LNG markets,” one trader monitoring developments said.
And since it all boils down to who has the most leverage as this latest regional “balance of power” crisis unfolds, Qatar could simply take the Mutual Assured Destruction route, and halt all pipeline shipments to its neighbors crippling both theirs, and its own, economy in the process, to find just where the point of “max pain” is located.
The Intercept headlined on June 5th,“TOP-SECRET NSA REPORT DETAILS RUSSIAN HACKING EFFORT DAYS BEFORE 2016 ELECTION” and devoted 3,811 words to saying that America’s National Security Agency alleges that “a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure” is the subject of a top-secret “report, dated May 5, 2017,” which “is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light. While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying ‘raw’ intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.”
“The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document.”
If the NSA’s conclusions are true, then Russian President Vladimir Putin is lying to say that the Russian government was not involved in any attempt to manipulate the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.
Source: The Intercept
However, The Intercept also provides allegations from its news-sources saying that the only entity that the alleged Russian government effort succeeded in penetrating was
“VR Systems, a Florida-based vendor of electronic voting services and equipment whose products are used in eight states. … According to its website, VR Systems has contracts in eight states: California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.”
The news-report by The Intercept fails to note this key fact, that even if the report is accurate, it’s irrelevant to the key question of whether there exists a possibility that Russian involvement in “hacking” the Presidential election might have affected the election’s outcome. Apparently, the four-reporter team at The Intercept weren’t interested in that question. All of their 3,811 words avoided mentioning it.
The NSA’s allegation that “states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document,” is the news, if there really is any that won’t subsequently be found to have been false. Even taking the document at face value, it isn’t alleging that any of the three states, all three of which would have had to be switched to Clinton’s win-column in order for her to have won the election, was involved in this “news.”
One might speculate that if this NSA report is accurate, then Russia’s GRU botched rather stupidly to be penetrating into the computers of a vendor that had no contract in any of the battleground states, but The Intercept didn’t even make note of that, either.
If you’ve wasted your time reading the present news-report, you’ve wasted reading only 597 words — less than 16% as many as are in The Intercept’s article.
The number of the Syrian refugees from the territories controlled by the Islamic State has increased at the checkpoints located to the north-eastern part of the Aleppo province.
In particular, a group of men of up to 40 people engaged the attention among the refugee stream at the checkpoint near Al Taiarah village, approximately 50 km to the north-east from Aleppo. Most of them answered the questions only in monosyllables. The men claimed they had never had a gun in their hand, but had dug trenches or loaded ammunition under the threat of being shot.
“Jihadists forced us to cooperate with them, and in case of disobedience they threatened to cut out the whole family, they whipped to death those who refused to help them,” one refugee states.
The representative of the Baath party in Aleppo, Yusef Rana, says that the increase in the number of refugees is primarily due to the extension of the amnesty-law signed by B. Assad up to the end of June.
“Many of people decided to take this opportunity and start a new life,” Y. Rana told.
He noted that one of the main aims of the local authorities is to make sure that as many people as possible could rectify, correct or improve their previous way of life.
A refugee-woman saved herself from ISIS (Source: Sophie Mangal)
In the regional office of the Baath party were noted that the people incoming are registered and sent by the buses to the collection point. Men and women then are checked for several days, and if there is no evidence of their participation in the murders of servicemen and civilians, they are amnestied by a court decision.
To be mentioned is that B. Assad issued a decree on the amnesty of militants involved in military operations against government troops last July. The decision was prolonged several times. The decree is an effective way to avoid the fate of being killed or convicted for helping militants. Refugees, therefore, have a real chance to end the war and begin a peaceful life.
Sophie Mangal is a special investigative correspondent and co-editor at Inside Syria Media Center.
As suspected here at 21WIRE, it has emerged that yet another known wolf terror incident is now tied to security services and MI5. This disturbing news comes after another accomplice’s ID was discovered at the crime scene.
Already there have been a number of questions raised following the recent London Bridge attacks, just as there were following the Parliament Square, Westminster Bridge attacks and more recently the Manchester Arena attack. It’s important to note the common thread between each suspicious event and the last three UK attacks are no exception, as there is now indisputable evidence linking the MI5 and MI6 British security services to various individuals prior to carrying out the terror crimes mentioned above.
The London Bridge attack is the third such incident occurring in the UK over the past three months and now subsequently, the third in a row, that has shown ‘prior knowledge’ of attackers before a high-profile act of terror was committed…
‘KNOWN TO MI5’ – The precarious relationship between security and terror is an ongoing pattern seen after almost every major terror attack in the West now (Photo illustration 21WIRE’s Shawn Helton)
After law enforcement purposely withheld sensitive information concerning the identity of the London Bridge attackers, two of the three have now officially been named. It turns out as we suggested, that at least one suspect, 27 year-old Khuram Butt, was already well-known to MI5 and police and had been under investigation over the past two years. Butt’s 30 year-old accomplice, Rachid Redouane, a chef by trade, (aka Rachid Elkhdar) was apparently not known to authorities.
The new revelations arrive after reports linked the MI5 known suspect, Butt to a Channel 4 documentary about jihadis in the UK, something we included in our last report. The whole situation is reminiscent of the Orlando shooting saga, where the apparent Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen,was found to have worked with DHS and the global security firm G4S, while also appearing in two high-profile documentaries.
After paying a role in the Hollywood documentary about the BP oil spill at Deep Water Horizon, The Big Fix (2012), Mateen was also found to have been featured in another documentary called Love City Jalalabad (2013), a picture that appeared to depict progressive Afghani youth and a quest for social change.
QUESTION: What are the chances that another known wolf terrorist would be involved in a well-produced documentary?
Interestingly, the excuse being peddled by Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, is that after a two year investigation into Butt’s activities, there was no evidence of an attack plan even though the alleged ringleader (handler?) of the London Bridge attacks didn’t bother to hide his links to a group known as “Al-Muhajiroun,” a banned terror-linked organization with ties to British intelligence, specifically MI5.
Following a hunch after the insertion of the radical preacherAnjem Choudary (another ‘known wolf’ to security services) in the London Bridge attack narrative by mainstream media, we at 21WIRE suspected that the well-known terror mascot might be directly connected to one of the attackers, as mentioned in our first report about the London Bridge incident.
While most counter intelligence operations have fallen under the umbrella of the so-called War On Terror era, the suspicious relationship between security agencies and ‘known wolves’ who have been triggered into action, continues to be a major problem for Western allied nations.
Additional background on the apparent London Bridge attacker Butt, includes the following mentioned by BBC:
“He went on to work in an administrative role for a company called Auriga Holdings [a technology company], based in East Ham, which manages Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets.
He had also worked for London Underground for just under six months as a trainee customer services assistant, before leaving in October last year, Transport for London said.
And Butt was the sole director of a now-dissolved company called Kool Kosmetics.”
On another note, there appears to have been a staged-managed aspect to the latest London attack. The UK’s Telegraph detailedthe following surveillance of an apparent terror cell that revealed a plot just like the London Bridge attacks, a month earlier:
“Counter-terrorism officers secretly recorded an alleged Isil-inspired terror cell in Barking last month discussing how to use YouTube to plot a van and knife attack in London.”
Not surprisingly an ID was discovered at the London attack crime scene, just like many other terror cases…
“One of the London Bridge terrorists was carrying an identity card issued in Ireland when he was shot dead, security sources in Dublin said.”
If you remember more recently, following the 2015 Paris attacks, 21WIRE outlined the curious connective tissue between various terror incidents, as one of the suspects left an ID inside the getaway vehicle following the first attack – just like last year’s known wolves involved in the Nice truck attack and Christmas Market attack in Berlin.
As the media focus is primarily centered on events in London it was revealed that the ‘brother of Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi has been released without charge by police.’
Only time will tell how long it will take for security services to release the name of the third London Bridge attacker.
Here’s another look at Patrick Henningsen’s initial analysis on the London Bridge attack featured on RT News…
A month ago, a memorandum on the establishment of four de-escalation zones in Syria came into force. According to the agreement, the de-escalation zones were established in the provinces of Idlib, Hama, Aleppo, northern part of Homs, Eastern Ghouta, Daraa and Quneitra. Currently, many parties, including the Syrian government, have recognized the high effectiveness of this agreement.
However, it is not fully known who will control the situation in the de-escalation zones, and whose troops will guarantee the observance of the ceasefire.
We can assume that Turkey is going to monitor the situation in Syria’s Idlib. However, according to Syrian experts, Turkey is already trying to control some part of the Syrian territory through economic and humanitarian ways. When it will be allowed to enter its troops in Syria to guarantee security, Damascus will not be able to withdraw the Turkish troops later either by military or diplomatic methods.
In addition, Turkey’s interference can also be strongly criticized by Saudi Arabia that has supported the armed opposition throughout the Syrian conflict.
Such assumptions are likely exaggerated. Considering the fact that Ankara is now in international isolation, and the West has actually stopped supporting the Turkish side, it is simply not profitable for Turkey to spoil relations with other guarantors of the settlement of the Syrian crisis.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan has no choice but to leave his imperialist ambitions and support those who intend to stabilize the situation in the region.
In addition, it raises many questions to the southern zone. It is still not clear who will control the situation in the south, in the Golan Heights. It is obvious that the Syrian government will support Tehran’s participation in controlling the situation in the de-escalation zones in the south of Syria. This will also allow Iran to get a way to Lebanon. Thus, Iran will be able to strengthen cooperation with Hezbollah and increase influence over the internal policy in Lebanon.
However, this idea is likely to be strongly criticized by Israel, since Tel Aviv opposes any Iranian military presence in southern regions of Syria, and in particular, in the Golan Heights.
Most likely, Israel will offer another candidate, and it probably will be Washington. It’s known that the United States has planned an invasion of the territory of Syria. According to this plan, the U.S. is ready to use both Jordan and Britain (reference). Earlier, Inside Syria Media Center had already touched upon this issue. However, then we said that the Pentagon intended to hide behind the defense of its ally in the coalition. Now the proposal of Israel will be just in place and will not require any efforts from Washington.
Considering all these disputes and assumptions, it is obvious that the issue of monitoring the situation in the de-escalation zones will be opened for a long time. However, confidently, de-escalation zones justify their mission. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, stressed that against the background of the recent coalition’s indiscriminate air strikes in Syria, only four de-escalation zones could normalize the situation in Syria.
Anna Jaunger is a freelance journalist at Inside Syria Media Center.
And again, as in previous terror attacks, the alleged three perpetrators are conveniently shot dead by police. Dead men can’t talk. The same pattern, all over again.
In Manchester, in London, Paris, Nice, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Stockholm, Orlando, San Bernardino – and wherever terror strikes, the alleged culprits are killed. And they usually leave conveniently an ID behind. Dead terrorists can’t testify. They can’t be asked to corroborate the stories of the police and authorities. These stories become truth without questioning.
By the way, has anybody ever seen these dead terrorists? Anybody, I mean, other than the police? Somebody neutral, trust-worthy? – Or are these dead terrorists perhaps invented to hide the real perpetrators behind these awful crimes on society? – Horrific crimes on a government’s own people, with only one purpose – continue and step up wars by military, financial and propaganda aggression throughout the world, to achieve what Washington’s bible, the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), proclaims as ultimate goal: Full Spectrum Dominance?
We are almost there. If we are not careful and wake up soon, the New World Order is already upon us, swallowing us alive, as a Python swallows an okapi.
The International Criminal Court premises in The Hague. (Source: Human Rights Watch)
Such state crime, like the recent Manchester and London murders, and all the ones before, would have to be judged by the Highest Court of Justice, à la Nuremberg. Today this is impossible. The International Criminal Court (ICC) of The Hague is no longer an independent court of justice. It’s been directed since long by Washington and Brussels and by those bloody fingers that pull the strings on these sick power cells. Justice is no longer the right of western citizens. Justice has been abrogated, bought, coopeted by force and by threat. Justice has become a pipe dream. It went the same way as has democracy decades ago. But an oblivious citizenry drunk from propaganda is still fantasizing about justice, equality and liberty.
London as Manchester are planned state sponsored acts of terror to achieve a multiple goal. Conservative Theresa May must win the elections on 8 June against Jeremy Corbyn the Labor Leader, who even after the purposeful state crime of Manchester has not lost popularity, to the contrary, he has moved up to a neck-on-neck race. He is indeed a big risk for the deep dark Zionist-masonic elite that manipulates the world towards NWO.
These state-sponsored attacks are also Gladio-2.0 in full swing; decapitating a new emerging European left, which Corbyn in the UK and possibly Mélenchon in France and the ‘Continent’, may be well poised to lead. Corbyn’s campaign aptly calls for a return to social justice, to health care, including care for the elderly, a reformed and free system of education, and not least, back to labor rights that were fatally decimated by the many years of neoliberal and Tory leaders.
While Theresa May’s election program, announced just a few days before the Manchester horror, called for new and tremendously unpopular social cuts – like the elderly who needed care in the future had to spend their own savings first before the state may intervene helping with the cost for their care. Ruin them first into poverty, before assisting them to survive a gradual death in misery. This campaign ‘promise’ which she eventually withdrew, was a failure that cost Madame May many supporters, who switched to her socialist adversary, Jeremy Corbyn, even if they didn’t particularly like him.
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn (credits to the owner of the photo)
When Theresa May called for snap elections in April 2017, she surprised the world. She then thought she knew what she was doing. She had and has only a small 17 seat majority in Parliament, but had a huge, up to 24-point advantage in the polls over her opponent, Corbyn. She hoped, she might expand that advantage to between 50 and 100 Parliamentary seats to push through effortlessly BREXIT, unpopular social cuts and militarization, in her way.
But Corbyn’s relaxed, laid-back manner in which he propagated more social benefits and sovereignty for the Brits, propelled him rapidly as a serious challenger for PM May. So, a fingered ISIS terror attack, like Manchester, with usual left-behind ID for doubters, was in order. It was expected to avert the worst, a Corbyn win. It didn’t work. Postponing elections would be even worse because with every day that passes Corbyn is gaining more grounds.
As a last-ditch effort, a quickly organized killing spree in London is expected to secure May’s election win. Will it? – At first sight, it looks like the Brits are not so easily swayed. They too, may start smelling a rat. Two consecutive terror attacks, mass killings shortly before elections, both allegedly claimed by the Islamic State (IS) and carried out by Islamists, who as per MI5, Scotland Yard’s and Mme. May’s own admission, were known to authorities – who wouldn’t see through the farce?
A socialist UK leader could not only rock the boat for the financial oligarchs, the Rothschild- Rockefeller clans, the Godfathers of the Bank of England, those who invented and imposed in 1913 the US central bank as a private institution, the Federal Reserve Bank (The FED), from which emerged the fraudulent dollar as an unbacked wild card world currency, and later its offspring, the equally unbacked, fake and deceptive euro. The US dollar, thanks to illegally negotiated deals in the early 1970s with the OPEC leaders, the Saudis, that all hydrocarbons had to be traded in US-dollars, is flooding the world in uncountable hundreds of trillions.
Thus, the US dollar had become willy-nilly (no written agreement anywhere) the world’s key reserve currency, thereby usurping entire continents, countries, societies and peoples, as well as Mother Earth herself, through illegal debt, also called ‘odious debt’, and filthy unsustainable exploitation of unrenewable resources. While steadily losing clout, this monster of legalized fraud is ever more rapidly moving towards total (western elite’s) world monetary hegemony.
But the path of deception on which the western monetary system runs is disintegrating fast. Therefore, state sponsored terrorism, spreading fear, promoting fascist governments with fascist economies is – so the self-styled hegemons – well worse sacrificing a few of your own citizens to prolong the atrocious western odyssey.
Would Corbyn win, he might put a monkey wrench in this wheel of destruction, put a hold on the unquestioned bombing of the Middle East; stop militarization of the UK and by extension of Europe; re-evaluate London’s cooperation with France’s Rothschild President, Macron, whose neoliberal policies are like the death knell for a sovereign Europe and sovereign states.
If Mr. Corbyn were to win – perhaps a miracle of higher forces (especially with all the actual vote manipulation and treachery that western powers have been practicing for decades) – he might gain enough European popularity to derail the German elections in September, already slanted for Madame Merkel to ‘win’ a fourth tour the force. Germany is hosting one of Europe’s largest and most modern military camps, where German and NATO troops will soon be training for urban warfare in European cities – i.e. to fight European citizens who may protest against neo-fascist economic slaughter à la Greece.(http://thesaker.is/germany-and-nato-preparing-for-a-fascist-repression-in-europe/)
This typical financial bankster-oligarch robbery scheme will likely be imposed on other European countries that still have trillions of state assets to be stolen. Consider Greece a mere training ground.
This is clearly what Emmanuel Macron announced with a Lucifer smile, when he talked about greater “European Integration” and “Security” were among his top priorities. He was groomed by the financial mafia to press for rapid privatization of state assets; and by NATO, to make sure a militarized Europe would not allow social protests to the harsh measures of ‘social decapitation’ looming upon Europe. So rapidly, that the average citizen doesn’t even notice the pillage until it’s too late. That’s what’s called economic fascism. Oppressing citizens’ rights to social benefits they earned during their generation-long hard work for a Europe without war, is what the Masters of the Universe are aiming at.
A Europe not for peace but for war – war with the east – the East, where the world’s Future lays – pushed and provoked by the west. As an allegory to Leonard Cohen, ‘First, we take Moscow, then we take Beijing’. Or so ‘their’ dream goes. And on the way devastating what’s left of Europe for the third time in hundred years. The deep dark illuminati masters pull their strings from safe heavens around the globe. But the empire of Wall Street and of Weapons of Mass Destruction and their swamp of corrupted Washington should be spared. Would it?
And thus, the march goes on, towards Full Spectrum Dominance under the dictate of a US dollar hegemony. That’s what Manchester, London, Paris, Brussels — et al, are all about. Calling them mere ‘False Flags’ has become an insult on humanity. They are state orchestrated murders, executed by their sophisticated and highly trained western secret services.
People wake up! – If Manchester’s and London’s screams for help aren’t strong enough, what will shake us to our feet and our deep-down spark of consciousness, We the People?
Calling the murder of seven people and more than 4 dozen injured a ‘False Flag’ is an understatement? Is it a state sponsored criminal act?.
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.
