Global Research

President Donald Trump’s politically incorrect behavior at the gathering of NATO leaders in Brussels on Thursday could, in its own circuitous way, spotlight an existential threat to the alliance. Yes, that threat is Russia, but not in the customary sense in which Westerners have been taught to fear the Russian bear. It is a Russia too clever to rise to the bait – a Russia patient enough to wait for the Brussels bureaucrats and generals to fall of their own weight, pushed by financial exigencies in many NATO countries.

At that point it will become possible to see through the West’s alarmist propaganda. It will also become more difficult to stoke artificial fears that Russia, for reasons known only to NATO war planners and neoconservative pundits, will attack NATO. As long as Russian hardliners do not push President Vladimir Putin aside, Moscow will continue to reject its assigned role as bête noire.

First a request: Let me ask those of you who believe Russia is planning to invade Europe to put down the New York Times for a minute or two. Take a deep cleansing breath, and try to be open to the possibility that heightened tensions in Europe are, rather, largely a result of the ineluctable expansion of NATO eastward over the quarter-century since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Actually, NATO has doubled in size, despite a U.S. quid-pro-quo promise in early 1990 to Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev in early 1990 not to expand NATO “one inch” to the east of Germany. The quid required of Russia was acquiescence to a reunited Germany within NATO and withdrawal of the 300,000-plus Russian troops stationed in East Germany.

The U.S. reneged on its quo side of the bargain as the NATO alliance added country after country east of Germany with eyes on even more – while Russia was not strong enough to stop NATO expansion until February 2014 when, as it turned out, NATO’s eyes finally proved too big for its stomach. A U.S.-led coup d’etat overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installed new, handpicked leaders in Kiev who favored NATO membership. That crossed Russia’s red line; it was determined – and at that point able – to react strongly, and it did.

These are the flat-facts, contrasting with the mainstream U.S. media’s propaganda about “Russian aggression.” Sadly, readers of the New York Times know little to nothing of this recent history.

Today’s Russian Challenge

The existential threat to NATO comprises a different kind of Russian “threat,” which owes much to the adroitness and sang froid of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who flat-out refuses to play his assigned role of a proper enemy – despite the Western media campaign to paint him the devil incarnate.

Over time, even the most sophisticated propaganda wears thin, and more and more Europeans will realize that NATO, in its present form, is an unnecessary, vestigial organ already a quarter-century beyond its expiration date – and that it can flare up painfully, like a diseased appendix. At a time when citizens of many NATO countries are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet, they will be reluctant to sink still more money into rehab for a vestigial organ.

That there are better uses for the money is already clear, and President Trump’s badgering of NATO countries to contribute ever more for defense may well backfire. Some are already asking, “Defense against what?” Under the painful austerity that has been squeezing the Continent since the Wall Street crash nearly a decade ago, a critical mass of European citizens is likely to be able to distinguish reality from propaganda – and perhaps much sooner than anyone anticipates. This might eventually empower the 99 percent, who don’t stand to benefit from increased military spending to fight a phantom threat, to insist that NATO leaders stop funding a Cold War bureaucracy that has long since outlived its usefulness.

A military alliance normally dissolves when its raison d’etre – the military threat it was created to confront – dissolves. The Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 – more than a quarter century ago – and with it the Warsaw Pact that was established as the military counter to NATO.

Helpful History

NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, who had been Winston Churchill’s chief military assistant during World War II, stated that NATO’s purpose was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” But a lot can change over the course of almost seven decades.

The Russians relinquished their East European empire after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and withdrew their armed forces. There no longer needed to be a concerted priority effort to “keep the Russians out,” preoccupied as they were with fixing the economic and social mess they inherited when the USSR fell.

As for “keeping the Germans down,” it is not difficult to understand why the Russians, having lost 25 to 27 million in WWII, were a bit chary at the prospect of a reunited Germany. Moscow’s concern was allayed somewhat by putting this new Germany under NATO command, since this sharply lessened the chance the Germans would try to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.

But NATO became the “defensive” blob that kept growing and growing, partly because that is what bureaucracies do (unless prevented) and partly because it became a way for U.S. presidents to show their “toughness.” By early 2008, NATO had already added ten new members – all of them many “inches” to the east of Germany: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

There were rumors that Ukraine and Georgia were in queue for NATO membership, and Russian complaints were becoming louder and louder. NATO relations with Russia were going to hell in a hand basket and there was no sign the Washington policymakers gave a hoot.

A leading advocate from the Russo-phobic crowd was the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser and remained in the forefront of those pressing for NATO expansion – to include Ukraine. In 1998, he wrote,

“Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

The relentless expansion of NATO greatly bothered former Sen. Bill Bradley, a longtime expert on Russia and a sober-minded policy analyst. On Jan. 23, 2008, in a talk before the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, he sounded an almost disconsolate note, describing NATO expansion a “terribly sad thing” … a “blunder of monumental proportions. …

“We had won the Cold War … and we kicked them [the Russians] when they were down; we expanded NATO. In the best of circumstances it was bureaucratic inertia in NATO – people had to have a job. In the worst of circumstances it was certain … irredentist East European types, who believe Russia will forever be the enemy and therefore we have to protect against the time when they might once again be aggressive, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.”

As tensions with Russia heightened late last decade, Sen. Bradley added,

“Right now we are confronted with something that could have easily been avoided.”

Finally Saying Nyet

A week after Bradley’s lament, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called in U.S. Ambassador William Burns to read him the riot act. The subject line of Burns’s CONFIDENTIAL cable #182 of Feb. 1, 2008, in which he reported Lavrov’s remarks to Washington shows that Burns played it straight, choosing not to mince his own or Lavrov’s words:

“Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement redlines.”

Here what Ambassador Burns wrote in his summary, which the public knows because the cable was among the thousands leaked to WikiLeaks by Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, for which she was imprisoned for seven years and only recently released (yet the cable has been essentially ignored by the corporate U.S. news media):

“Following a muted first reaction to Ukraine’s intent to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan at the Bucharest summit, Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains an emotional and neuralgic issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia.

“In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. Additionally, the government of Russia and experts continue to claim that Ukrainian NATO membership would have a major impact on Russia’s defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally.”

So, it is not as though then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. policymakers were not warned, in very specific terms, of Russia’s redline on Ukrainian membership in NATO. Nevertheless, on April 3, 2008, the final declaration from at a NATO summit in Bucharest asserted: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”

The Ukraine Coup

Six years later, on Feb. 22, 2014, the U.S.-pushed putsch in Ukraine, which George Friedman, then President of the think-tank STRATFOR, labeled “the most blatant coup in history,” put in power a fiercely anti-Russian regime eager to join the Western alliance.

Russia’s reaction was predictable – actually, pretty much predicted by the Russians themselves. But for Western media and “statesmen,” the Ukrainian story begins on Feb. 23, 2014, when Putin and his advisers decided to move quickly to thwart NATO’s designs on Ukraine and take back Crimea where Russia’s only warm-water naval base has been located since the days of Catherine the Great.

U.S. officials (and The New York Times) have made it a practice to white-out the coup d’etat in Kiev and to begin recent European history with Russia’s immediate reaction, thus the relentless presentation of these events as simply “Russian aggression,” as if Russia instigated the crisis, not the U.S.

A particularly blatant example of this came on June 30, 2016, when then U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute spoke at a press briefing before the NATO summit in Warsaw:

“Beginning in 2014 … we’re moving into a new period in NATO’s long history. … So the first thing that happened in 2014 that marks this change is a newly aggressive, newly assertive Russia under Vladimir Putin. So in late February, early March of 2014, the seizing, the occupying of Crimea followed quickly by the illegal political annexation of Crimea. … Well, any notion of strategic partnership came to an abrupt halt in the first months of 2014.”

And so, for the nonce, Western propaganda captured the narrative. How long this distortion of history will continue is the question. The evolution of Europe as a whole (including Russia) over the past half-century, together with the profound changes that this evolution has brought, suggest that those of the European Establishment eager to inject life into the vestigial organ called NATO – whether for lucrative profits from arms sales or cushy spots in NATO’s far-flung bureaucracy – are living on borrowed time.

President Trump can keep them off balance by creating uncertainty with respect to how Washington regards its nominal NATO obligation to risk war with Russia should some loose cannon in, say, Estonia, start a shooting match with the Russians. On balance, the uncertainty that Trump has injected may be a good thing. Similarly, to the degree that his pressure for increased defense spending belatedly leads to an objective estimate of the “threat” from Russia, that may be a good thing too.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  A CIA analyst for 27 years, he specialized in Russian foreign policy.  He led the CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and briefed the President’s Daily Brief one-on-one during President Ronald Reagan’s first term.

Trump’s foreign mercenaries cut a deal with other NATO supplied terrorists, ISIS, for a safe corridor from Raqqa to re-invade Tadmor (Palmyra) and further destroy its ancient history.  According to Syrian television and Russian media, Russian special operation forces were informed of the deal between the two terrorist gangs, and the Russian air force obliterated the entire ISIS convoy in its safe journey.

On 27 May, the RuAF destroyed 32 vehicles equipped with machine guns and other military weapons. One hundred twenty terrorists were also killed in the operation.

Terrorists vehicles permanently out of commission. (Source: Syria News)

Perfect shot: Cab destroyed but stolen oil tanker unharmed. (Source: Syria News)

War criminal Trump’s foreign mercenary militia – previously Obama’s – are wrongly called the “Syrian Democratic Forces” by most international media. This is to brainwash people to believe that the foreign gang is run by Syrians. The name of this gang is “Hezen Suriya Demokratik.”  This is the Azeri language.

The Azeri-language flag of Trump’s foreign merc militia. (Source: Syria News)

HSD’s new spokesman is a not Syrian Swede. Under the leadership of Trump’s foreign mercenaries illegally in Syria, are some Syrian traitors – including separatist ZioKurds – willing to have Syria return to secretions of Sykes-Picot.

Among the foreign mercenaries of the HSD is its new spokesman, Swede Jesper Soder. (Source: Syria News)

Trump’s foreign mercenaries of the HSD wish to hack off Raqqa for empire, which is why they made a deal with ISIS, which also frequently receives weapons from the US, sometimes via fake accidental air drops.

Trump”s foreign mercenaries of the HSD hold many separatist flags. Here is another not Syrian terrorist in Syria. (Source: Syria News)

The agreement between terrorist ISIS and terrorist foreign mercenaries of HSD came 10 days after the terrorist gang of Jaish Maghaweer al Thawra thanked the US for supplying them with 20 trucks, loaded with TOWs and other anti-aircraft weapons to be used against soldiers of the Syrian Arab Army in defending Deir Ezzor.

Russia’s successful bombing of the terrorist convoy from Raqqa to Tadmor was two days after war criminal Trump bombed Deir Ezzor, massacring 35 Syrian civilians. – Afraa Dagher

Featured image: @NorthernStork via Twitter

The Canadian government supports ISIS. So do U.S-led NATO, the Persian Gulf Tyrannies, including Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and of course Apartheid Israel.

After six years of dirty war on Syria, this should be fairly obvious, but of course there is a complex web of propaganda agencies that obscure this fact.

Prof. Mohssen Massarrat explains in “The Fiction of ‘Fighting the Islamic State’, An Entity Created and Financed by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia” ( Global Research, September 2014) that

The U.S. neoconservatives have long been talking about a policy of “creative chaos” in the Middle East. The “creativity” of this chaos consists of the consolidation of U.S. hegemony in the region by causing area-wide instability and generating more “failed states”. Indeed, ethnic, religious, civil and cross-national wars carry the Middle East in that direction.

The term “creative chaos” is a benign sounding name.  What it really means is mass slaughter and wholesale destruction of nations and peoples.

NATO’s terrorist proxies and its criminal airstrikes murder civilians, target infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, destroy the economy, and create chaos. This is what they want. “Going after ISIS” is a false pretext. ISIS, and all the terrorists infesting Syria advance NATO’s strategic interests of mass murder and destruction.

Sometimes, daily news reports about military operations obscure the “big picture”. Journalist Sharmine Narwani explains in “Will America Partition Syria?” some less than transparent ways in which the U.S –led coalition uses ISIS as a strategic asset:

ISIS occupied the areas flanking Syria and Iraq’s northern border. The U.S.-led coalition has had a presence in these territories for several years, without impairing ISIS control. At the right time, under U.S. cover, Kurds are moving in to “recapture” them.

Kurds constitute a minority in all these governorates, which is how the presence of ISIS became a valuable U.S./Kurdish strategic asset. ISIS’s invasion of these areas is delineating the borders of the new entity and depopulating it—creating an opportunity for Washington to champion the Kurds as the primary “liberating” force within those borders, after which Kurds can claim this territorial bounty.

“This is conquest masquerading as liberation,” says Assyrian writer Max Joseph, who explains how KDP Peshmerga forces disarmed Assyrian Christians and Yezidis two weeks before ISIS invaded in August 2014, then retreated from their promise to protect those populations just as ISIS entered Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains.

Similarly, although weapons shipments from the West to the terrorists have been well-documented for years, the West continues to use strategies to conceal its criminality.

A now declassified DoD audit reveals that the US army failed to keep track of $1 billion worth of military hardware in Iraq and Kuwait. Even Amnesty International, which has long-since discredited itself, and generally serves to advance imperial interests in Syria, admits that

“it makes for especially sobering reading given the long history of leakage of US arms to multiple armed groups committing atrocities in Iraq, including the armed group calling itself the Islamic State.”

Naturally, the US would deny that the armaments were intentionally delivered to ISIS and other terrorist groups, but this explanation lacks credibility since there already exists plenty of primary source evidence that the West arms the terrorists.

Despite the propaganda and the opaque military operations, it should be plain as day by now that the so-called “War On Terror” is a fraud that masks the West’s high crimes against international law, against civilization, and against humanity.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47042.htm

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/05/us-military-admits-failures-to-monitor-over-1-billion-worth-of-arms-transfers/

The US Army failed to keep tabs on more than $1 billion worth of arms and other military equipment in Iraq and Kuwait according to a now declassified Department of Defense (DoD) audit, obtained by Amnesty International following Freedom of Information requests.

The government audit, from September 2016, reveals that the DoD “did not have accurate, up-to-date records on the quantity and location” of a vast amount of equipment pouring into Kuwait and Iraq to provision the Iraqi Army.

Read also

US-Led “Counter-Terrorism” Operation in Mosul. Weapons for ISIS, Indiscriminate Air Strikes Directed against Civilians

By Anna Jaunger, May 27, 2017

The years-long, Indigenous-led fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) briefly captured the nation’s attention last fall as images of peaceful resisters being sprayed with water canons and surrounded by police in tanks and other military-grade equipment were spread widely, fueling global outrage and a fierce protest movement against the oil pipeline.

Now that the pipeline is operational and already leaking, internal documents obtained by The Intercept and reported on Saturday reveal the deep collusion between local police forces, the pipeline company, and defense contractors as they executed “military-style counterterrorism measures” to suppress the water protectors.

TigerSwan, described as a “shadowy international mercenary and security firm” that “originated as a U.S. military and State Department contractor helping to execute the global war on terror,” was hired by Energy Transfer Partners to spearhead “a multifaceted private security operation characterized by sweeping and invasive surveillance of protesters,” The Intercept wrote.

Sacred Burial Grounds Destroyed, Judge Halts Construction on Portion of Dakota Access Pipeline (Source: EcoWatch)

Reportedly, one of TigerSwan’s contractors leaked 100 internal documents to reporters Alleen Brown, Will Parrish, and Alice Speri, who were able to assemble roughly 1,000 more via public records requests.

The trove paints a damning picture of the police response to the Indigenous-led effort to block construction of the pipeline on sacred, treaty land and is a shocking example of how anti-terrorist rhetoric and tactics could be applied to any uprising the government would like to suppress.

According to the reporting:

Internal TigerSwan communications describe the movement as “an ideologically driven insurgency with a strong religious component” and compare the anti-pipeline water protectors to jihadist fighters. One report, dated February 27, 2017, states that since the movement “generally followed the jihadist insurgency model while active, we can expect the individuals who fought for and supported it to follow a post-insurgency model after its collapse.” Drawing comparisons with post-Soviet Afghanistan, the report warns, “While we can expect to see the continued spread of the anti-DAPL diaspora…aggressive intelligence preparation of the battlefield and active coordination between intelligence and security elements are now a proven method of defeating pipeline insurgencies.”

“As policing continues to be militarized and state legislatures around the country pass laws criminalizing protest,” Brown, Parrish, and Speri write, “the fact that a private security firm retained by a Fortune 500 oil and gas company coordinated its efforts with local, state, and federal law enforcement to undermine the protest movement has profoundly anti-democratic implications.”

Indeed, in the wake of the 2016 election, Republican legislatures in at least 19 states introduced various anti-protest laws, many with a deliberate nod to the uprising in North Dakota.

Not only that, but Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, who oversaw the police response to the DAPL resistance, has been advising other law enforcement on how to deal with protests and demonstrations.

Indeed, the documents reportedly show that Energy Transfer Partners has “continued to retain TigerSwan,” despite the fact that the anti-DAPL camps have disbanded. The security firm continues to produce so-called situation reports that document “the threat of growing activism around other pipeline projects across the country.” These reports include “intelligence on upcoming protests,” information gleaned from social media, and “extensive evidence of aerial surveillance and radio eavesdropping, as well as infiltration of camps and activist circles.”

In some cases, persons “of interest” were even tracked when they crossed over state lines.

What’s more, the documents obtained via open records requests include “communications among agents from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Justice Department, the Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as state and local police,” that reveals interagency collusion and information sharing on the anti-DAPL protesters.

Read the extensive reporting and several published documents at The Intercept.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Featured image: Dark Sevier/flickr/cc

From his big white bird did the President descend upon his dreading European hosts, looking much like natives waiting to be slaughtered or ravished. As Donald Trump pushed his way through NATO members (the Montenegrin prime minister, for one, felt his forceful shove), representatives shot glances of discomfort and bemusement. In a refreshing blast of brutishness, the Ugly American, made flesh in the incarnation of Trump, was explaining, even hectoring Washington’s allies.

The central irritation was one about, as it always tends to be, money.  In the rueful words of Karen Attiah’s penned piece for the Washington Post,

“Trump was the party guest whom no one really wants to deal with but has to – because he has more money than anyone else.”[1]  

Muscular, military buffoonery comes at a high price, usually to the filched tax payer.  But the issue of where the money goes is almost as important as whether you have it.  The largest military power on earth was tired about having to provide a shield of defence without some local compensation, and here, its President was claiming some form of fictional proprietorship.Why, wondered Trump, were NATO members not pulling their military weight not so much over their defence as the obligations owed to the US?  Back payments were due, and The Donald was under the erroneous impression that they had to be paid directly to the US.

“Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defence than all other NATO countries combined.”

The ever dreaded, misrepresented figures were produced.  23 members of the 28, claimed Trump, “are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defence.” It takes much for the otherwise unadventurous USA Today to stake any claim accurate reportage, let alone tough critique, but in a piece on the president’s NATO adventure, the paper concluded that NATO members were “not in arrears in military spending”, nor were they “in debt to the United States”.[2] 

There was, in fact, no debt to have.A more interesting point for the eye sored arms watcher is that the US, for all its fears about the rising tide of Chinese power, continues to dwarf the combined defence expenditures of the next four powers.  Freedom land remains its own burgeoning arsenal, modernising, acquiring and misspending like a drunken lord.Given such a curtness, the more security-minded among the NATO partnership wondered about whether the celebrated Article 5, one guaranteeing US support in the event of attack from a foreign power on a member state, might be abided by.  They were left disappointed, even as they looked on at the dedication of a memorial to NATO’s invocation of the Article after the 9/11 attacks on US. In this sense, the Trump show reveals itself in all its unpatriotic worth, a case of business before country, of Brand USA before multiple alliances.  That point is missed by those entrusted with the task of reading the tea leaves and deciphering the smoke signals coming from the greatest reality show on earth: the White House. 

“That he couldn’t even say some very benign words that would’ve meant a lot to our allies was really striking,” claimed Loren Schulman, former member of the National Security Council.[3]

The response to storm Trump from European leaders varied.  The Montenegrin prime minister Duško Marković, victim of The Donald’s aggressive shove, responded with a certain amount of conciliatory brown nosing: Trump was merely following the order of standing. 

“This was an inoffensive situation,” claimed a recomposed Marković.  “I do not see it in any other way.”[4]

Then came the chance for France’s newly elected President Emmanuel Macron to make his own show of it.  Aware about Trump’s tendency to draw in his unsuspecting opposite number with his meaty paw, Macron stood his ground. Le Journal du Dimanche subsequently reported how Macron’s “handshake with him, it wasn’t innocent.” From the muck level dross of Twitter, Trump expressed in the aftermath of his visit a degree of satisfaction at what could only be discussed as another illusion. 

“Many NATO countries have agreed to step up payments considerably, as they should. Money is beginning to pour in – NATO will be much stronger.” (Trump remains his own deterrent against reality, whether it be on the liquid existence of money or its pouring.)

On Friday, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokeswoman called upon ISIS militants in Raqqa to surrender till the end of May.

“No harm would come to the group’s fighters in Raqqa who turned themselves in by the end of the month. The safety of ISIS militants’ families is also guaranteed,” Ahmed stated.

According to Inside Syria Media Center’s anonymous source in the SDF command, the U.S.-led coalition is already maintaining corridors to evacuate terrorists towards Palmyra and other towns controlled by the Syrian government.
However, Washington is said to not just capture Raqqa but to lure as much terrorists and their families out of the city to eliminate them with mass airstrikes.

The U.S. will possibly target the unarmed militants to accuse the Syrian government of the attack. If the White House’s plan is implemented, we may soon witness the western media blaming Bashar al-Assad for ‘atrocities’ and ‘killing civilians’ with U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley wrathily shaking the footages of the militant children’s bodies.

Accusing the Syrian AF and the Syrian president personally, Washington will get a motive to invade Syria and initiate a full-scale ground operation against the legitimate government. This is confirmed by the recent proofs of U.S. and Great Britain building up their forces at the Syrian-Jordan and Syrian-Iraqi borders.

Unfortunately, Washington doesn’t seem to be caring for the fact that the conflict will gain momentum as captured Raqqa will become a success the White House can boast with in months. Recently, OIR commander U.S. general Stephen J. Townsend has said he is planning to end the liberation of the city as soon as possible, and if his words come true at last, this will be a present for Donald Trump whose rating is still at the bottom.

Obviously, the ‘liberation’ of Raqqa by pro-American forces shall become a breath of fresh air for the U.S. administration whose ‘achievements’ include for now only airstrikes on civilians.

Anna Jaunger is a freelance journalist at Inside Syria Media Center.

More details have emerged about the prior familiarity of British intelligence agencies with the [alleged] Manchester suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, whose murderous assault Monday evening left 22 people dead.

Given Abedi’s connections and his travel movements leading up to the attack, the only explanation for him being able to remain at large for so long is that he was a protected asset—part of a broad network of operatives utilised by Britain and the US to conduct their nefarious operations in the Middle East.

It is the exposure of these operations which accounts for the fury of Prime Minister Theresa May over the US leaking of intelligence information about the UK’s investigation into the bombing. Whatever the specific reasons for these leaks, they have completely undermined the British authority’s original claims that Abedi was an unknown, “lone wolf”. Rather, it is now clear that those killed and maimed while enjoying a pop concert are the victims of British regime-change policy in the Middle East and North Africa.

We know now that British intelligence had received warnings, on at least five separate occasions in the last five years, that Abedi presented a danger, including that he had discussed committing a suicide bombing.

According to new leaks Thursday, Abedi had travelled extensively in the run-up to the attack, including flying from Istanbul to the UK via Germany’s Dusseldorf airport. For years, Turkey has been used as a transit point into Syria by European jihadists, joining Western-led efforts to topple the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

Several sources, including French intelligence, have made public their conclusions that Abedi had been to Syria and received training there. The Financial Times also reported that a “Turkish official” said that Abedi had traveled through Istanbul on at least two other occasions over the past year. The newspaper reported,

“In mid-April he flew from Amsterdam to Libya, while in late May 2016 he flew from Manchester to Libya, transiting through Istanbul Ataturk airport both times.”

Abedi may have traveled through at least two European Union countries on his way from Turkey to Manchester. Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel reported that Abedi flew from Dusseldorf to Manchester on May 18—four days before the attack. The newspaper cited German intelligence sources who said that he arrived in Germany from Libya via Prague.

The Guardian reported,

“It is known that the 22-year-old traveled to Germany at least twice, including a visit to the financial city of Frankfurt.” It added, “Düsseldorf is in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Anis Amri, the Berlin Christmas market attacker, spent time.”

Further leaks were reported by the German magazine, Focus. Citing German intelligence sources, it said Abedi flew to Frankfurt from Britain in 2015. Focus said that Germany’s intelligence agency BKA had been told by police in the UK that this visit took place before Abedi undertook paramilitary training in Syria. It reported that he had not been apprehended in Germany, as he was not on any watch list.

There is no innocent explanation for the fact that Abedi was able to travel to Libya, Syria, Turkey and the UK unhindered. It has nothing to do with the spurious claims about the UK having “leaky borders”, or too few border guards. Abedi’s ability to pass through customs without interference can only mean that he had been given the all clear.

For decades, successive British governments have worked with jihadi groups, prepared to use atrocities to achieve their objectives. This has meant that, behind the “war on terror” and the relentless assault on democratic rights that it has entailed, UK authorities have been harbouring Islamist extremist operatives and groups who can be set into motion at the required time, in line with British imperialist foreign policy objectives.

Groups such as Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda all had bases in London. Al-Qaeda considered London the nerve centre of its operations in Europe, with the security services collaborating with some of these organisations and their leaders, the most well known being Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada.

Likewise, British imperialism worked closely with Libyan Islamists, supporting them in their opposition to then Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. As former MI5 agent David Shayler revealed, MI6 collaborated with one such organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, in the attempted assassination of Gaddafi in 1996.

For years, a group of LIFG members were active in the Whalley Range district of Manchester, close to Salman Abedi’s home. Salman Abedi’s father, Ramadan Abedi, an airport security officer, was an LIFG member. He and his wife, Samia Tabbal, a nuclear scientist, fled Tripoli in 1991 after he was arrested by the Gaddafi regime. He had been employed in the regime’s internal security service and was reportedly suspected of tipping off members of anti-Gaddafi Islamist groups about pending police raids. The Daily Mail reported,

“It appears that Ramadan’s life revolved at several points around toppling Gaddafi…”

After fleeing Libya, Ramadan and his wife lived in Saudi Arabia for a period. They both then went to the UK and applied for and were granted political asylum. They lived first in London and then moved to the south Manchester area, which had become a centre for many anti-Gaddafi elements with which British intelligence maintained the closest links.

Ramadan returned to Libya some time in 2011 in order to fight in the imperialist proxy war that resulted in the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi in October of that year by US/UK-backed “rebels”. This took place after a NATO bombing campaign in which untold numbers were killed nationwide over the preceding eight months. Ramadan went on to become an administrative manager of the Central Security Force in Tripoli, one of the many militias vying for control of the country.

Samia, Abedi’s mother, is a close friend of Umm Abdul Rahman, the widow of a former Al Qaeda commander, Abu Anas al-Libi. Accused of involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings, the Daily Mail reported that al-Libi “spent five years in Manchester—having won political asylum in Britain in 1995.” The Mail said that

“Abdul Rahman went to college in the Libyan capital with Abedi’s mother, who was studying nuclear engineering. She [Rahman] said the two women also lived together in Manchester for a number of years.”

Al-Libi was seized by US forces in Tripoli in October 2013 and died in 2015 of liver cancer before coming to trial. Following the Manchester bombing, Ramadan Abedi and his youngest son, Hashem, were arrested in Tripoli Tuesday night.

Salman Abedi was also known to have been a close associate of one of the main Islamic State recruiters in the UK, Raphael Hostey, who was killed in a drone strike in Syria in 2016. Hostey grew up in Moss Side, just a mile away from Abedi’s home in the Fallowfield district of the city.

In a statement on the bombing, the government of Abdullah Thinni in Bayda, Libya said it had warned the British government it was harbouring terrorists. Thinni’s government was driven out of Tripoli in 2013 by Islamic extremists, including UK-based Libyan exiles. It accused May’s predecessor David Cameron of backing terrorist groups who

“have been destroying our cities and towns in an attempt to shape Libya into an exporter of terror to the whole planet.”

Featured image: VOA News

One May 20th, the 21 year old vendor from the shanty town of Petare,  Orlando José Figueras, was beaten, stabbed, doused with gasoline and set on fire by opposition militants in the middle class neighborhood of Altamira during an anti-government demonstration reportedly because they took him for a Chavista or a thief. This atrocity has sent tremors throughout the popular barrios and raised the profile of terrorism from the right in Venezuela. The horrific scene was captured on video and by professional photographer, Marco Bello, and described in testimonies of the victim and his parents. Other demonstrators at the scene reportedly urged the attackers not to kill Figueras as he pleaded for his life.  What happened to Figueras, who has lived to tell his story, is impossible to ignore, and it casts light on the hatred and savagery of some radical and extremist supporters of the opposition in Venezuela.

This hostility did not emerge overnight. An intensifying rhetoric aimed at vilifying and stigmatizing  all Chavistas, often mixed with racism and bigotry, has motivated a growing number of hate crimes and assaults as well as the destruction of symbols of Chavismo. This destruction is manifest in recent vandalizing of government buildings; the Hospital Materno Infantil Hugo Chávez (Hugo Chavez Maternity Hospital); a fleet of buses, and the humble house of a Chavista artisan in the state of Merida. There have even been a number of cases recently where Chavistas, their family members, and perceived sympathizers have been harassed by opposition supporters in the U.S., Italy, Spain, and Australia.

Since some of the anti-government violence and road blocks occur in opposition governed municipalities, in too many cases with impunity, eight mayors have been served notice by Venezuela’s Supreme Court to restore order in accord with their legal obligations. There is also growing pressure on a reluctant Attorney General, Luisa Ortega Díaz, whose allegiance to the government appears to be wavering, to vigorously investigate, and where appropriate prosecute, all of these crimes.

Despite the political polarization that has gripped Venezuela, hatred and violence does not garner broad support in this Bolivarian Republic. According to an April 2017 Hinterlaces poll, 80% of Venezuelans are “in disagreement” with the violent demonstrations and guarimbas [street disturbances] as instruments of protest. Most Venezuelans want peace and support talks between the opposition and the government.

Generalizing about either the opposition or Chavismo will inevitably distort the complex political landscape in Venezuela. The opposition to the Maduro administration includes a diversity of political orientations, from extreme right to social democrat and many of the opposition parties come under the umbrella of the United Democratic Roundtable (MUD). There are also a number of dissident groups on the left, including ones that consider themselves Chavista, but unlike the MUD, none of those groups are appealing for U.S. intervention to advance their agendas.

Most anti-government demonstrators are expressing their dissent peacefully and have legitimate concerns and demands. Many in the opposition argue that the government is undemocratic and corrupt, and that the security forces repress lawful protest. The Maduro administration argues that it is fighting corruption; that there is a U.S. backed coup underway in Venezuela; and that security forces are dealing not only with lawful demonstrations, but also with various levels of anti-government violence, including hate crimes, sabotage, barricades, destruction of property, sniper fire, and armed attacks on police and Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), some of which have been lethal. In the midst of these challenges, Chavistas are still able to mobilize sizable peaceful demonstrations, such as the ones on Venezuelan Independence Day (April 19), and on May 1, to defend national sovereignty and the Bolivarian project.

Some of those in the front lines of anti-government street disturbances are minors, equipped with expensive gas masks and helmets, shields, and at times, Molotov cocktails and homemade weapons. In some middle class municipalities governed by MUD politicians, there is growing impatience among residents for having to suffer the indignity of being ruled by masked children and youth, while oftentimes police look the other way. In such communities these one time “heroes of the resistance” have worn out their welcome. The government has described  these children as victims and delivered a report to UNICEF on May 25th documenting violations of the laws that protect children from exploitation.

Government officials in Venezuela reported the arrests of six paramilitaries from Colombia in the state of Tachira last week, who are allegedly contracted by radical right-wing opponents of the government. These claims deserve some serious investigation by an independent body rather than being derisively dismissed as unworthy of consideration. This is critically important because these ultra right-wing elements arguably aim at terrorizing the general population, exacerbating the economic crisis, and ultimately creating sufficient chaos in Venezuela so as to legitimate a so called “humanitarian” intervention by the United States. If this is the case, the Venezuelan people ought to be commended, even at this late date, for not releasing the dogs of war on a large scale. Venezuelans want peace.

A Bolivarian National Police officer throws a tear gas bomb toward demonstrators during a protest in Caracas, Venezuela. (Fernando LLano, STF via Houston Chronicle)

Venezuela Analysis (VA) keeps track, on a daily basis, of the causes of recent deaths in Venezuela.  In a recent summary, VA reports:

“The latest killing brings the death toll in seven weeks of anti-government protests to at least 55, including eight confirmed deaths at the hands of authorities and eighteen people killed by opposition violence. The Public Prosecution has confirmed that at least 972 people have been injured in the unrest to date.

The protests have likewise seen widespread attacks on public and private property, including 115 businesses looted nationwide, reports Últimas Noticias.

In the latest incident of public property destruction, Bolivar state Governor Francisco Rangel Gomez has confirmed that 54 public-operated TransBolivar buses were set on fire early Monday morning, leaving 51 of the units totally destroyed.” (Lucas Koerner, May 22, 2017; see update)

All such violence and killings, incontestably,  ought to draw indignation. A number of police and GNB personnel have been arrested and charged with crimes by Venezuelan authorities for violations of human rights, including homicide. These abuses are widely reported as should all violations of human rights, including those caused by opposition political violence.

With regard to the MUD’s bid to enter popular barrios to recruit for their cause, The MUD is not likely to get significant traction.  Despite the severe economic crisis, which has been exacerbated by an economic war reminiscent of the tactics used to bring down Salvador Allende, Chavistas and most social movements have not jumped on the MUD train and have defended their neighborhoods from the entrance of opposition militants. The image of Figueras on fire; the assassination of the young Chavista legislator Robert Serra and his wife (October 2014); and the historic memory of the Caracazo (February 1989) are all vivid reminders of the fate that could await Chavistas under a MUD “transition”.

Hate crimes, and the terrorist violence of paramilitaries and the ultra right, as well as the presence of so many children in the ranks of opposition militants at the barricades, is not just a problem for Venezuelans; it could soon pose a political problem for Washington and its allies in the OAS, which justify their blatant interventionism in the name of human rights and democratic values. As Patricio Zamorano points out, Secretary Luis Almagro’s extreme partisanship on behalf of the Venezuelan opposition has not only (deliberately or not)  given the green light to hard liners within the opposition camp;  it has also undermined talks being promoted by Pope Francis. Almagro now has the infamous distinction in the region of severely damaging the institutional legitimacy of the OAS in order to do Washington’s bidding.

The State Department views Venezuela as an obstacle to the rehabilitation of United States hegemony in the region and it sees the OAS as an instrument for imposing its agenda. There is no mystery over this. In an unusual display of candor,  the State Department, in its Congressional Budget Justification for FY 2018, states:

“The Organization of American States (OAS) promotes U.S. political and economic interests in the Western Hemisphere by countering the influence of anti-U.S. countries such as Venezuela and by promoting free and fair elections and building international support for the peace accord in Colombia and rebuilding efforts in Haiti.“ (p. 180)

The OAS ought to take issue with such a statement and insist that the organization should be promoting the “political and economic interests” of all the member states in the spirit of new regional organizations that have worked overtime to buttress the region against an excess of U.S. manipulation.

Such manipulation and meddling is obvious in the case of Venezuela. Obama’s executive order declaring Venezuela an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”; targeted sanctions against the government; funding for opposition organizations; as well as recent meetings between opposition leaders and U.S. officials; have provided the opposition with the confidence to stay the course for nothing less than regime change without delay.  Ironically, the MUD rejects the regional elections scheduled for December 10, 2017 for which it previously had been clamoring; repudiates the constituent assembly process; demands the release of “political prisoners”; and refuses talks with the Maduro administration mediated by Pope Francis and supported by the UN, CARICOM and other regional partners, as well as the majority of Venezuelans.

It is urgently important to condemn not only abuses by security forces, but also the selective assassinations and hate crimes against Chavistas.  The MUD leadership’s failure so far to denounce all terrorist violence and to completely repudiate the use of children at the barricades, as well as the continued reluctance of some opposition mayors to act to restore public order in their municipalities, is not consistent with a principled stand on human rights.  Although so far anti-government violence is limited to a few parts of the country, attempts at plunging this South American nation into chaos in order to justify foreign intervention ought to set off alarm bells for all progressive forces.

By Frederick B. Mills, Guest Scholar at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and William Camacaro, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

Featured image: TransBolivar

The Belt and Road Forum held in Beijing on May 14 and 15, 2017 has come to an end, but not the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) per se, so the relevant debate will continue. According to the Chinese government, this forum achieved great success, which has been exemplified by the attendance of 1,500 delegates, including 29 heads of state or government and 270 concrete outcomes (though many were letters of intent or the like, rather than contracts).[1] Some may argue that this forum is more ceremonial than substantial, but a closer look shows that BRI is still backed by some tangible achievement. Below are some examples：

1. The Sino-Myanmar oil pipeline as a pilot project of BRI has started operation in this April;
2. Multiple Sion-European freight railway lines which connecting Chinese cities and London, Madrid, Duisburg, Warsaw, etc. have already opened so far;
3. Gwadar Port in Pakistan which was invested by China opened in November 2016;
4. Chinese-led consortium has won the bidding of Jakarta-Bandung high speed train in Indonesia and the construction is ongoing;

……

When this initiative was announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2013, few expected that up to 70 countries or international organizations would agree to join this initiative or cooperate with China under the umbrella of it three years later.[2] Though a conclusion for such a long term project is too early to be drawn at this moment, a positive trend can be observed so far. Then a question is raised: why was China able to put such an ambitious and yet challenging plan into practice step by step, and garner acknowledgment and endorsement by more and more countries?

Multiple factors contributed to this achievement. First and foremost, many countries in the geographic scope of the Belt and Road, or even beyond, have strong demand to enhance connectivity and better infrastructure, especially those developing countries, and this is a perfect match with the rationale of BRI. In other words, this initiative is based more on real needs than fantasy. Some accidental factors such as Trump’s isolationism also played a role. This policy “helped” China implement its BRI unexpectedly because it made some countries in favor of unimpeded trade and globalization turn to China to certain degree. Between the underlying cause and the accidental factors we can find that the approach that China adopted to carry out this initiative, which is quite different from that of the West, is also an important enabler. Of course, such approach with Chinese characteristics have both pros and cons, but so far it seems to be more positive judging from the result.

Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation on May 15, 2017 in Beijing. (Photo by Jason Lee-Pool/Getty Images)

First, “economy first” is a fundamental principle for the cooperation between China and other countries. It is no secrecy that China has some geopolitical consideration when this initiative was proposed, but cooperation has always centered on the common economic interest, which also coincides with China’s current overall foreign policy. Even for some countries that China has territorial dispute or historical grievance with, such as India and Vietnam, China still showed very positive attitude and sought cooperation with them.

There used to be a long period of time when China’s foreign policy was ideology oriented. But since the Reform and Opening-up policy was adopted in late 1970s, China started to downplay the ideological divergence with other countries and establish rapport with almost all the countries in the world. In the meantime, extensive and almost non-selective economic cooperation with other countries has become an important part of China’s foreign policy, regardless of the political system, ideology or human rights status in other countries. The “economy first” principle is quite effective because this is the field where all the countries have interest and consensus is easily reached. This is a sharp contrast to the strategy of the West, which usually takes democracy and human rights into consideration.

Furthermore, China shows little interest in getting involved in the domestic politics of other countries. It rarely take a position in the struggle among different factions in other countries, nor criticize any of them. On the whole, China’s “no intervention” policy is welcomed by most countries. It mitigates the concerns not only from these countries, but also from other big powers which have significant interest there, all of which facilitates the cooperation between China and these countries. For example, in Central Asia, a key area of the BRI, China proposed “Three Nos” principle, i.e. no interference with Central Asian countries’ internal affairs; no attempt to seek a dominant role in regional affairs; and no desire to create a sphere of influence.[3] This stance made the initiative easier to be accepted by the Central Asian countries and to some extent reduced the worry of Russia, who had traditional interest in this region. As a result, such policy provided more opportunities for both China and relevant countries to develop bilateral cooperation, though some criticized that such cooperation would benefit mainly those in power, rather than the general public in these countries.

Second, the fast and forceful top-down approach also played an important role. Considering that this initiative is a long term project involving more than 60 countries, which have different development level, political and economic institutions, culture and religion, the current progress can be viewed as “normal”, if not “fast”. In fact, the power centralization in China ensured the effectiveness of implementation because the long lasting negotiation and bargaining between the decision makers and those who carry out the decisions can be reduced greatly, be it right or wrong.

The application of this approach is not only in governmental agencies, but also involves state-owned enterprises (SOE). For private companies and investors, their decisions are purely driven by business interest, rather than the mandate from the government. So their participation in the BRI is based on their own calculation, not to cater for the propaganda.

Although the percentage of overseas investment of SOEs among all the enterprises has declined year by year, the statistics shows that it still accounts for more than half (50.4%) of the total investment in 2015.[4] Chinese SOEs by nature are profit-making organizations and to a great degree follow the basic law of market economy. But it is also true that their business strategy is influenced by the government. As regard to the BRI, which is intensively advocated by Chinese government, SOEs need to actively get involved and has a role in realizing this project.

However, it should be noted that the main driver of the investment of these SOEs is still the expected economic gain, not the mandate from the government. The reason why Chinese SOEs are dominant in the relevant projects in the Belt and Road Initiative is that the main areas of bilateral cooperation, such as transportation, energy and infrastructure are those SOEs have more competitive advantage than the private companies from China.

Third, the huge investment, which is largely from Chinese government or state-owed enterprises, provided powerful impetus to the implementation of this initiative. In December 2014, China set up Silk Road Fund (SRF) to support BRI and all the 10 billion RMB fund came from Chinese government and state-owned financial institutions. In 2015, initiated by China, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was established and it attracted 57 founding members.[5] Until now its capital is as much as 92 billion USD.[6] Although the purpose of this bank is not to serve BRI directly, the support on infrastructure projects from AIIB will no doubt benefit BRI. In the recent Forum on the Belt and Road, Xi announced that China would invest another 100 billion RMB to the Silk Road Fund. In addition to that, 60 billion aid will also be provided to the developing countries along the Belt and Road, not to mention the enormous investment from other Chinese enterprises. It is without a question that such huge fund is attractive to those developing countries, who have pressing needs to develop their economy but are short of money.

Why Beijing is able to invest such huge fund in BRI? Of course, the three decades rapid economic growth is the root cause. China became the second largest economy in the world since 2010 and its foreign exchange reserve has been ranked No. 1 since 2006, though the GDP per capita of China is still relatively low.[7][8] But this is not the only reason because there are some other countries who are also competent in term of economy. In fact, public ownership and power centralization of China make it possible for the fund to be used quickly and almost unrestrictedly by the elites so that the relevant projects can proceed. By comparison, the poor economic condition of Russia since Ukraine crisis has impeded the implementation of many projects related to RBI, though the distrust of China is also a reason.[9]

It is obvious that risks are also huge with regard to this investment, in particular those political risks of the developing or authoritarian countries. Even some Chinese scholars have warned that some investment may end up with nothing and this is an important reason why Western investors hold a very cautious position. In the past two decades, failed Chinese investment caused by unsteady political situation was quite common in Asia, Africa and South America. However, there are still some reasons that China decided to seize the “opportunities” and invest regardless of risks. One is the vast market in the developing countries, which is mainly supported by the large population there. The other is complementarity between China and those developing countries. Simply put, China can provide huge quantity of goods and some service to other countries at affordable price and obtain natural resource there at the same time.

Besides, it is interesting that some seemingly too risky investment or unreasonable aid yielded unexpected but quite positive outcome. For example, China used to provide aid to many African countries in 1970s and 1980s, including building of railways, hospitals, stadiums and other facilities. When China gradually shifted the mode of foreign aid and focused more on business cooperation, those Chinese construction companies were still favored by many African countries due to their good performance in the past and thus won in the bidding.

The achievement in economic growth made by China since Reform and Opening-up policy was implemented, in particular 1990s was closely relevant to China’s unique development mode. Unlike the Western mode, China mode is featured by the combination of market mechanism and power centralization. There is little dispute on the economic development that China mode has achieved and some even argue that Beijing Consensus is replacing Washington Consensus. Nevertheless, whether this mode is a real consensus relies heavily on two key issues, i.e. Is it sustainable within China, and is it applicable to other countries outside China? For the second one, academics and practitioners tend to hold that this mode is based on China’s political context and has its deep root in Chinese history and culture, thus is almost not replicable. For the first question, there seems to be more dispute among international observers. On the one hand, alerts have emerged for many times in the past two decades regarding China’s economy and triggered grave concerns one after another. On the other hand, China did successfully get rid of plight each time, or at least keep the “crisis” under control.

In fact, the BRI is another case in point in which China mode is reflected. Roughly speaking, the rationale of this initiative is to maintain the growth of China’s economy so that the country can be developed and the regime can be stabilized. In contrast, many other countries seek democratization before the economy can grow fast. In the meantime, the approach adopted in the implementation of this initiative also shows clear Chinese feature, rather than pure market driven mechanism.

Not surprisingly, the China mode has been viewed as a challenge to the development mode advocated by the West. The former didn’t strictly follow the rule and trajectory designed by the West, which emphasizes democratization and free market economy. But so far it has been proved to be effective in boosting economic growth, at least in China. This inevitably brought negative impact to popularity of Western mode and as a result, triggered big concerns. One major concern is that Chinese SOEs violate the the market competition order because they are backed by the government, it maybe true but we should not overlook the flip side. In many cases, such special relations led to plight or failure, rather than success of overseas investment. For example, in 2016, about 40 Chinese investment projects in Venezuela had to be terminated due to the collapse of economy in this country and most Chinese companies involved were state-owned.[10] If we focus more on the result, we may find that the favor from the government hardly benefit the Chinese SOEs in overseas market, which is quite frustrating for both of them because it is not rare that the negative impact of arbitrary administrative decision usually exceeded the support provided to these enterprises. This also means the “threat” to the Western companies or mode has been greatly overestimated, if there is any.

In addition, it is worth noting that the rise of China as well as its development mode may have different implication for most non-Western countries. To a large extent, China became a balancing power to the West and China mode provided an alternative so that the rest may obtain more opportunities to maximize their own interest.
For either the BRI or the China mode embodied in this initiative, it is still premature to draw a conclusion whether it is successful. The final result is to be tested and only time can tell. It should be noted, however, if neoliberalism is used as the only theoretical framework, we may find that this mode was derived from doubtful theory, followed by seemingly effective but actually problematic implementation, and will probably fail eventually. But such reasoning may have overlooked the fact that China mode has its distinct origin, context and rationale thus the existing evaluation criteria may not be applicable.

Notes

Macron “scooped the pool and decamped” in the second round of the French presidential elections, scoring an easy victory over Marine Le Pen. Her performance was in any case so bad in the last week of the pre-election campaign that it led some commentators to the conclusion that the National Front did not want to be required to govern.

We have to wait and see if Macron consolidates his victory in the parliamentary elections also. But already both the Socialist Party and the Right, the two traditional parties of power in the country, project a picture of total disintegration and decay, with their cadres leaping into the water like rodents from a sinking ship and heading for the safety of Macron.

Consummating the humiliation of France’s political class, former “socialist” Prime Minister Manuel Valls pronounced the Socialist Party dead and affirmed his transposition to the party of Macron, for which he said he intended to be a parliamentary candidate. Only to receive the public answer from the party of his former Minister that he must submit his application through the Internet, following the procedures applicable for everyone. Finally they told him that his services are not required.

But even if in the parliamentary elections he achieves the institutional omnipotence that is his dream, Macron and his ideas remain isolated and espoused by a minority in French society, as indicated by analysis of the results of the first and second round of the presidential elections.  The capture of the GS & M factory by its workers, who threaten to blow it up as these lines are being written, is a reminder that the tasks the new President has been set, or has set himself, will not be in any way easy.

A man of the “Markets” and of “Finance”

Nobody should have any doubts about the determination of this former Rothschild banker to carry out his mission, which is none other than to be the Margaret Thatcher of France. In any case, if he was chosen for this role, it is precisely because he has been trained for decades in the most absolute discipline and because he does not seem to have any particular emotional ties with his own country. It is not a professional politician but a man of “the markets” and of Finance who has come to govern France. If there is anyone who is determined to display as much harshness as is necessary and to take as many risks as are necessary, that person is Macron.

His hagiographers are now proliferating in the French press at the speed of mushrooms in the forest after rain. Many would like to liken him to Napoleon. Aware, though, that they would run the risk of being ridiculed, they confine themselves to reminders that since the Emperor the country has never had such a young ruler.

But this Napoleon does not plan to start any war with the monarchs of Europe, who linked themselves together, funded – it is said – by Rothschild, to strangle revolutionary France. His campaigns will be on the domestic front, like those of Thiers. Recall also that the Paris Commune emerged from the refusal of the people of France to accept their country’s capitulation to Germany.

Macron’s appearance, the day that he won the election, was flawless. Even his arrogance evidently served as a reminder to the French that he came from the class that is destined to govern. His speech was a series of generalities, which could have been delivered a century in the past or a century in the future. Except at one point: where he skewered via the terms “extremisms” the Left and the far Right, serving notice that his aim was war against them.

The only half-way human spontaneous element of M. Macron on his day of victory was at the end of celebrations, his embarrassed laugh when he was the only one in the group not to sing the Marseillaise. Either he did not know the words or he could not sing them.

If there is one song that the ruling class of France hates it is the country’s national anthem, summoning the citizenry “to arms”. And the same applies for the national rallying emblem “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.”

The banker-President has come to disencumber the country of all of this type of thing. His amazing success: entering politics and becoming President of France within three years, is a reflection of the massive power, influence and potential of finance capital, the Empire of Davos, in our era.

At the international level, Macron’s victory discontinues, at least temporarily, the string of successes of the most radical wing of the Western establishment which, persuaded that Fukuyama-type “benign globalization” is not making much progress, decided to place its bets on the “Huntington model” of the war of civilizations.

This is probably Finance Capital’s “Plan B”. But after the election of Trump and the Brexit there came the Dutch, and now the French, elections, to curb (temporarily?) its impetus.

Macron’s victory gives the EU a reprieve, staving off the likelihood of a sudden death, even though it would be a mistake for anyone to assume that its crisis has been overcome.

And how could it overcome it when the predominant political forces on the continent, Berlin and the Commission, persist with insouciance of a Marie Antoinette, in the same policies of administering to the patient the medicine that is killing him.

A minority president

The new president was elected by a minority of French voters in absolute terms and many who voted for him did not endorse his program but wanted to block Le Pen.

• In contrast to Chirac, who won 82% of the vote against Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002, Macron obtained only 65%.

• For the first time since 1969 participation in the second round smaller (by 3%) than in the first.

• Τhe 12% figure for spoiled or blank ballots was an absolute record for the Fifth Republic (in 2012 it was 5.8%)
• 42% of those with the right to vote supported Macron and of those, according to public opinion polls, only 55% agreed with his ideas.

The results of the first round are genuinely representative of the political preferences of the French, half of whom voted for political forces opposed to the European Union in its present form.

If we factor in the votes for “La France Insoumise”, Mélenchon (image on the left), the left-wing Socialist Hamon and the two Trotskyist candidates, we see that they account for 27% of the votes in the first round, slightly more than the proportion of votes that went to the far right and the anti-systemic Right Gaullists of Dupon-Aignan. Even if we do not count Hamon, we are still speaking of more than 50% “anti-systemic” votes, in a European country of central importance.

Hamon, remember, supported policies which, if implemented, would have led to clashes with Brussels. The reason that we include him in an intermediate category is that he was clearly unwilling to proceed to a break with the EU for the sake of imposing  them.

In other words 50-55% of voters favor “antisystemic” parties, whether of the Left, the Right or the extreme Right.

55% was also the percentage of the French who voted against the draft European Constitutional Treaty (in essence the Maastricht structure) in the 2005 referendum. But at that time there were no political subjects in France to articulate this “No”. And the deep structural economic crisis of 2008 had not yet broken.

France became the second country in the EU, after Greece, where the majority of citizens voted for parties declaring themselves to be “antisystemic”. Confirming that we are in a situation of profound and intensifying structural, not cyclical, crisis of Western capitalism and its political system, of a depth, though not of an intensity, comparable to that of the 1929 crisis.

As occurred in the 1930s, the crisis tends to generate radical    political subjects on the left and the far right, particularly in relatively stronger countries such as France, Britain and the United States, which can more easily imagine relying on their own forces. In weaker countries radicalization has manifested itself mainly on the Left, as with SYRIZA and PODEMOS.

A geopolitical Weimar

Not only are there significant structural similarities between the socio-political crisis of today’s Europe and that of the Weimar Republic (1919-33) in interwar Germany. Geopolitically today Europe is also reminiscent of the 1930s and early 1940s. By all indications it is under German hegemony, with only two countries at the opposite extremes challenging the desiderata of Berlin: Putin’s Russia to the east, obliged almost against its will to resist the West. And to the west Britain, whose ruling class dreams of a more powerful role for London, for the benefit always of the rising “Empire of Finance” and the USA.

Italy comes over as the perennial opportunist and vacillator, as in the time of Mussolini, prior to his final decision to side with Hitler. Poland reminds us in some ways of Pilsudski’s heyday. Spain seems to have withdrawn into its own peninsula, as it did then. A special case on the European periphery is Turkey, which is bargaining for its international position, not to mention another non-European country, which did not exist in the interwar period, Israel, but exerts massive influence over European, and even more so Mediterranean, developments.

Of course “German hegemony” over Europe always remains under the supervision of Finance, of the IMF, of the USA and NATO, which take care from time to time to remind Berlin of the limits of the permissible, and to impose them.

France has for some time positioned itself in a stance of submission and subordination to Germany, somewhat reminiscent – naturally with all due allowances for the very different conditions – of the Vichy regime of General Petain.

France is now, mutandis mutandis, in the position Germany was towards the victors of the First World War. This is why there is a potential for developing both a leftist radical and a far right answer, as happened with Germany in the intrawar period, when it vacillated between the Left and Hitler, ending with the Nazis,  given the incompetence and betrayal of both German Social Democrats and Communists.

France, Germany and the EU

In Berlin signs of relief greeted the election of Macron in preference to Le Pen. They were soon followed, however, by warnings both from Germany and from the Brussels Commission to the newly elected President not to expect relaxation of “fiscal discipline”.

Macron has the support of the “International of Finance”, of which he is any case a representative. But despite the fact that Berlin allied itself with this “International” to impose its priorities on Europe, the German Right has no desire to expend the German surpluses on assisting its allies or the revival of the European and international economy, despite the fact that Mr. Gabriel (but not Mr. Schulz) and certain Green politicians are beginning to flirt with the idea, judging that the maintenance of German hegemony requires somewhat greater flexibility.

It remains to be seen what Macron is going to do, given that he must on the one hand confront a very real, albeit dissimulated, “civilized” German nationalism and on the other prepare to proceed with the demolition of labour law in his own country.

The resurrection of the Left

France is a country that has made ten revolutions in two centuries. From the Popular Front to the post-war predominance of the Communist Party, from the Trotskyists’ struggle for the Algerian Revolution up to May 1968 and the Socialist Party’s electoral victory in 1981, the Left has set its seal on the country’s history.

Many believed that this tradition has died, along with the distinction between Left and Right, with the total capitulation of the Socialist Party to neoliberalism, in conditions of progressive cultural decline and “Americanization”. The traditional socialist culture of the popular classes survived, but in a state of perennial defensiveness, without ideological-political representatives or a presence in the media. What remained of social revolt began to emigrate to the far right, the National Front of Marine Le Pen (image on the right).

Until the underlying social demand for a true, authentic left met up with the political drive of Mélenchon and a miracle, a resurrection, occurred, a Left was born that has some connection with its name.

Mélenchon’s result in the first round must be seen as historic. It brings to a close the era of Socialist Party hegemony that opened with the Epinay congress in 1971, a development analogous to SYRIZA’s eclipse of PASOK.

There is nothing accidental about this result for Mélenchon. It reflects the enormous demand in all of the Western  world for an authentic Left wing. A recent poll showed that 45% of American youth would vote socialist and 21% communist, although socialists and communists are almost non-existent in the US (or perhaps also because they are non-existent!). A few days ago a majority of British people opted in opinion polls for the Leftist electoral program of the Labour Party, which provides for renationalization of the railways, the Post Office and water, with corresponding measures to that effect.

It appears to have been pre-planned from the outset that the electoral game in France would go the way it went, with a match between Macron and Le Pen. Only against Le Pen was Macron assured of victory. Only against the Macron-Rothschild and deploying every dissident element in her arsenal could Le Pen have any hope of attaining credibility.

Mélenchon’s  performance, challenging Le Pen’s monopoly over expression of social dissent and revolt, changed the situational data. And we cannot know what would have happened if the terrorist attack had not taken place on the eve of the first round, strengthening Macron, stabilizing Fillon and assisting with exclusion of  Mélenchon.

“La France Insoumise” won more than three times as many votes as the Socialist candidate. Its rise has been as spectacular as that of SYRIZA, Corbyn and Sanders. Of course getting off to a very good start by no means ensures that the sequel will be as propitious. Problems frequently arise in the next stage as the tragic experience of the Greek betrayal and disaster has already amply proven.

In the case of France the problems emerged immediately with the sectarianism and the inability of the French Left as a whole to coalesce for the parliamentary elections.    Given France’s super-majoritarian, two-round, profoundly undemocratic electoral system, this failure may have adverse consequences when it comes to the final number of left-wing members in parliament.

In the final analysis Macron probably won because France did not trust (this time) a lady of the far right,  which seemed dangerous to it, but also because it felt the Left is not yet ready. This delay in the manifestation of the crisis will most probably contribute to its revealing itself more powerfully at a certain point.

This is ensured in any case by today’s European elites, who are more than ever dependent on, and guided by Finance and so persist in precisely the policies that caused the crisis, the discontent and the rebellion.

Note: The sub-heading seems misleading as he would have been only 15 in 2011; however it would apply, if correct, to the father – who was apparently an airport security worker. No wonder there are question marks re airport security, if correct.

The Manchester Bomber is one of Hillary Clinton’s Libyan “Rebels”

Islamic State fighters landed in Libya back in November of 2014, and began work establishing training camps in the Libyan city of Derna before launching a terror offensive which included an attack on a Libyan hotel, attacks on oil field workers, and the execution of 21 Copts in a graphic video which made international headlines.

In early through mid-2015 several extremist jihadist elements in Libya swore allegiance to Bakar al-Baghdadi.  A man named Abdelhakim Belhadj took the position as head of ISIS in Libya.

Abdelhakim Belhadj was critical in forming “Libya Dawn”, essentially a group of Islamic militia forces (LIFG or Libyan Islamic Fighting Groups) who fought under various banners such as Ansar al-Sharia (al-Qaeda in Libya) and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Today the links emerge between the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi (22), and these extremist forces within Libya.  It appears the bombing attack against the Manchester concert venue was directed and coordinated by the family of Abedi and their close contacts within Libya including his father Ramadan Abedi who was arrested earlier today.

Important top-lines:

• Salman Abedi, 22, was the bomber  in Manchester
• Ismail Abedi, 23, is his older brother.  He was arrested in Manchester by British police.
• Hashem Abedi, 20, is Salman’s younger brother. He was arrested in Libya earlier today and confessed during interrogation to knowledge of the plot from April.
• Ramadan Abedi, is the father of Ismael (23), Salman (22) and Hasem (20).  Ramadan was arrested in Libya earlier today.
• There were NO bomb-making materials in the house/apartment of the suicide bomber, Salman Abedi.  This implies the bomb-maker is still around, possibly in England although most likely he exited the country prior to the terrorist attack.
• The bomber, Salman Abedi, returned from visiting Libya only 3 weeks ago.
• 1,000 British military have been activated in response to the heightened terrorist plot.

There’s an interesting dynamic emerging, a very clear picture. The father Ramadan Abedi belonged to the extremist Islamic elements that was being kept in check by Muamar Gaddafi. Ramadan Abedi fled Libya in 1993 to avoid being killed by Gaddafi forces who were pretty good at killing off the domestic terror groups who also worked under the auspices of overthrowing the regime.

In essence, the Abedi family linkage to Libya is directly connected to the radical extremist elements within Eastern Libya that centered near Benghazi. The ideological outlook of the Abedi family aligned with the decision by President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power’s to overthrow Gaddafi in 2011.

After Gaddafi’s ouster, Ramadan was able to go back to Libya and join back with his ideological brethren. The plot to kill the people in Manchester came from this jihadist outlook.  This is a direct consequence of Obama and Clinton’s Libyan intervention.

 

(Via Daily Mail) […]  Earlier today, Manchester’s police chief said it is ‘very clear’ that police are investigating ‘a network’ linked to the bomber.

Police, in tandem with British soldiers, have carried out several raids since Monday night’s atrocity and so far seven people have been arrested, including Salman’s father and two brothers.

A former Libyan security official Abdel-Basit Haroun said Ramadan, a former airport security worker, was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting group in the 1990s. The group had links to Al-Qaeda.

Although the LIFG disbanded, Haroun said the father belongs to the Salafi Jihadi movement, the most extreme sect of Salafism and from which Al-Qaeda and ISIS hail.

Ramadan fled Tripoli in 1993 after Moammar Gadhafi’s security authorities issued an arrest warrant and eventually sought political asylum in Britain.

Haroun said Ramadan, also known as Abu Ismail, had returned to the Libyan capital of Tripoli.  A witness said he was handcuffed by armed men this evening who drove him away in two unmarked vehicles.

Salman’s younger brother, Hashem, now 20, who has also been arrested in Libya, had posted comments on ISIS- supporting sites.

The Special Deterrent anti-terror force said Hashim was receiving cash transferred from his brother, Salman.  The Libyan security force claimed Hashim told authorities both he and his brother belonged to ISIS.

A spokesman for a local counter-terrorism force said the younger brother had travelled from London to Tripoli on April 16.  (read more)

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton installing Mohammed Magariaf – 2012

Small but geopolitically important steps were taken by key members of the European Union from the EU’s Eastern periphery. While largely ignored in Western mainstream media and in Brussels, they could well portend a longer-term alternative economic space to the failing construct known misleadingly today as the European Union with its bankrupt Eurozone single currency and European Central Bank. I refer to the talks recently in Beijing at the major Belt and Road Forum, between leaders of 29 nations and China’s President Xi Jinping with the Prime Ministers of Hungary, Greece, Italy, Spain as well as the President of the Czech Republic and the President-elect of the Republic of Serbia.

The significance of the attendance of these specific European countries is underscored by the conspicuous absence of the leaders of Germany, France (maybe excusable due to presidential elections), and the remaining EU member countries, as well as the absence of the President of the EU Commission.

The list of Beijing attendees confirms that a tectonic fault line is developing across Europe between government leaders opting for national economic growth and development versus the nations whose leaders are still tied to the scelerotic, dying economies of the old Atlanticist order known as the American Century.

‘Historical Cusp’

China made clear to the USA and the EU that their OBOR infrastructure project was not at all exclusionary. Beijing made clear months ago that it genuinely wanted their participation in what Vladimir Putin called the development of an Eurasian Century.

Trump responded by sending a low-level National Security Council civil service bureaucrat named Matt Pottiger. Germany’s Merkel sent her Economics Minister who pompously declared in Beijing that Germany would not sign the Forum Joint Communique, complaining instead that she wanted a “level playing field,” newspeak for the old Anglo-American globalization midel that makes the rules for “less developed” countries and thereby gives superior advantage for the Western G-7 multinational giant corporations and states.

Notably, leaders of the EU countries most strongly objecting to Brussels policies in key areas of the economy and refugees, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, strongly embraced participation in China’s vast $22 trillion infrastructure project called One Belt, One Road or OBOR, more recently Belt and Road, for short.

In remarks in Beijing summarizing his talks there, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (image on the right, source: The Economic Times) spoke bluntly of an emerging global tectonic fault line. Orban declared that the old globalisation model is obsolete, noting that “a large part of the world has had enough of a world where “a few developed countries have been continuously lecturing most of the world on human rights, democracy, development and the market economy,” a direct slap in the face to the US-led “democracy and human rights” NGOs of George Soros and the CIA-tied USAID which have ferociously tried to topple the very popular Orban.

Orban added that the world today has, “arrived at a cusp between historical eras: the old model for globalisation – built on the assumption that money, profit and technological know-how are in the West, flowing ‘from there to less developed, eastern countries.’ That model, Orban stressed, has “lost its impetus.” The Hungarian leader emphasized the crucial point that Washington and the stagnating governments of much of the EU are in denial. “Over the past ten years, the global economy’s engine room is no longer in the West, but in the East. More precisely, the East has caught up with the West.”

The Hungarian Prime Minister noted the fact that in Hungary over the past year or so, “large American and European companies have been bought up by Chinese enterprises, leading to a sharp increase in the number of Hungarian development projects that are now Chinese-owned. This movement of capital is totally different to what we have been used to, and to what we have been taught about how the global economy operates.”

Orban obviously gets the very central point that Washington, Wall Street, Brussels and Berlin are in denial over: The emerging Eurasian Century represents an entire new quality of globalization. No longer are the colonial European powers or their American cousins holding the key cards or calling the shots.

During his private talks in Beijing with Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials, Orban signed Memoranda of Understnding in connection with linking the OBOR infrastructure with the economies of Europe.

For Hungary, Orban signed financial and economic agreements in Beijing. He stated that the “most spectacular” of these agreements was for modernisation of the Budapest, Hungary to Belgrade, Serbia railway line, including the financing. Serbian President-elect Aleksandar Vučić, together with Orban a major target of destabilization protests led by Washington NGOs of George Soros and the National Endowment for Democracy, also participated in the signing.

Notable is also the fact that Hungary’s Orban also met in Bijing with Turkish President Recep Erdogan, a featured OBOR keynote speaker alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin. Orbán told reporters that he had Erdogan, who was also attending the One Belt, One Road forum. The Prime Minister told Erdogan,

“We will always show Turkey respect, especially as European security – including Hungary’s security – is greatly dependent on Turkey, because today Turkey is a stable country that is capable of preventing illegal migration.”

Orban added that “properly maintaining” Hungarian-Turkish relations was one of Hungary’s most important national security interests.

The Greek Connection

In addition to Hungary and Serbia, debt-ridden Greece is also drawing closer to Beijing and her OBOR initiatives. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, until recently a darling of the International Monetary Fund for bringing his Parliament to sign savage pension cuts and other austerity laws so that the EU and IMF debt deals go forward, is finding the Chinese OBOR option increasingly attractive.

In a meeting with Tsipras in Beijing before the opening of the OBOR forum, China’s Xi Jinping offered Tsipras proposals of expanding cooperation in infrastructure, energy and telecommunications. Xi told Tsipras, according to the official Chinese news agency, that Greece was an important part in China’s new Silk Road strategy. He put it in characteristic Chinese language:

“At present, China and Greece’s traditional friendship and cooperation continues to glow with new dynamism.”

Greek infrastructure development group Copelouzos signed a deal with China’s Shenhua Group to cooperate in green energy projects and to upgrade power plants in Greece. The deals are worth more than $3 billion. In 2016, China’s largest shipping company, state-owned COSCO bought majority ownership stake in Piraeus Port Authority as preparation to turn Greece into a transhipment hub for the rapidly growing trade between Asia and Eastern Europe.

It is important to recall that, contrary to the religious dogma of economic simpletons such as Milton Friedman, there exist in nature no such entities as “free markets.” Markets are the careful product of man-made economic infrastructure developments. This is the core of China’s “globalization with Chinese characteristics,” as Deng might have termed Xi’s OBOR idea.

In recent months China has been a major investor in Greece’s economy, a sharp contrast to the demands of the EU and IMF for Greek austerity. The China State Grid last year bought a 24 percent stake in Greek power grid operator ADMIE for 320 million euros.

Many other Chinese investment projects are in discussion with Greece. One of the more interesting and little appreciated is China’s deployment of tourism as a geopolitical instrument. Over the past decade or so a huge number of Chinese have attained a middle income status as China’s economy boomed. This has led to an equally huge rise in Chinese wanting to “see the world” as tourists.

This month, just prior to the OBOR forum, the large Chinese investment conglomerate Fosun International announced that it was planning to make Greece tourism a major goal for Chinese tourists. With this in mind Fosun this March bought a significant 5% share of the European tour group, Thomas Cook, a share now at 8%, tendency rising.

The Shanghai company plans to use its Thos. Cook arm to organize direct flights from Beijing and Shanghai to Athens. Fosun also plans to service the China-Athens tourism rise via her newly-acquired subsidiary, the well-established French-based Club Med. Fosun is also planning to buy or construct major Greek luxury tourism hotels. The Fosun company says it expects at least 1.5 million Chinese tourists will find the Greek islands as their goal, a huge boost to the troubled Greek economy. For Greece, the Chinese tourism engagement is pure honey to the soul. Fully 25% of the Greek GDP is tourism-based.

If we take the developments in Beijing’s OBOR forum of Hungary, Serbia, Greece, Czech Republic, and add to this the fact that Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan was also present and made a major committment to participate in the China-Russian-led OBOR, we have the seed crystal of a world geopolitical renaissance that contains the potential to replace the now-dead Anglo-American globalization model of top-down fascist economic domination, witha model truly based on mutual benefit among sovereign nations. As a traditional Russian saying goes, the select nations of Eastern Europe, along with Russia, China and perhaps also Turkey, are truly “making porridge together,” making rich nutritious Kasha.

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

Featured image: www.williamengdahl.com

Following the script by the experts and strategists of the CIA, specialized in destabilizing and tearing down governments, in Venezuela the counter-revolution produced a “quality jump”: it began with a warm-up on the streets, and transitioned to a non-declared (but nonetheless bloody) civil war.

It grew beyond the guarimbas, occasional skirmishes and violent riots. Attacks on schools, children’s hospitals and maternity wards, destruction of entire bus fleets, lootings and attacks to security forces—who respond only with water and tear gas to the ferocity of mercenaries—, constant murders of social leaders, and more recently the lynching and setting on fire of three youth, are unmistakable signs that the Venezuelan conflict has escalated to a civil war that’s affecting several cities and regions of the country.

And, as if we needed more to realize the seriousness of the situation and the determination of seditious forces to consummate their wishes until the last consequences, the fact that the birth house of Commander Hugo Chávez Frías was set on fire casts all shadows of doubt aside.

It would be naive and suicidal to think that the dynamics of this confrontation, which was conceived to create a devastating humanitarian crisis, can be anything but the prologue to a ‘humanitarian intervention’ of the US Southern Command. This threat demands a quick and effective response by the Bolivarian government, because things will only get worse from here.

The patriotic and democratic calling of President Nicolás Maduro to a Constituent Assembly was met with more violence and savagism of the counter-revolution. The reason is clear: they don’t want a political solution to the crisis they have created. What they want is to increase the dissolution of social order, end the Chavist government and annihilate their leadership, to impose an exemplary punishment on the Venezuelan people for daring to claim ownership over their collective destiny.

Attempts at reaching an agreement with the sector of the opposition that was more open to dialogue were a complete failure. They failed not due to lack of will on the government’s side, but (and that is the dark truth) the most powerful sector of the counter-revolution is now the terrorist fraction, and it is commanded by the United States.

Venezuela is applying, with methodic coldness and under the permanent monitoring of Washington, model they applied in Libya for “regime change,” and it would be fatal not to be aware of their intentions and consequences.

The Bolivarian government has created, countless times, opportunities to achieve peace in the country. Not only were their offers dismissed, but the putschist right-wing escaladed their terrorist activities. In this context, the only sensible and rational option for the government of President Nicolás Maduro is to vigorously defend the institutional order and mobilize the armed forces to dismantle the counter-revolution and restore social order.

Venezuela is now not only the target of economic war, and a brutal diplomatic and media offense, but also of an unconventional warfare that has cost over 50 lives and substantial material losses. “Plan against plan”, Martí used to say. And if a social force declares war against the government, the government must respond militarily. The time for words is over, and the signs are in plain sight.

What’s at stake is not only the Bolivarian Revolution—it’s the national integrity of Venezuela, which is threatened by an anti-patriotic and colonial leadership that crawls in the mud of history to beg the chief of the Southern Command and Washington’s powers at be to come to the rescue of the counter-revolution. If it were to triumph, drowning in blood the legacy of Commander Chávez, Venezuela would disappear as an independent national-state and would become effectively, the 51st state of the United States, grabbing through this conspiracy the most prized oil field of the planet.

We mustn’t idly ponder how big of a setback this would represent for Latin America. There’s  no time, only a finite number of days, in order to eradicate this mortal threat. The criminous intransigence of the opposition closes all paths but complete military defeat. Sadly, it’s time for weapons to talk, before the time comes for Chavism to acknowledge that their attempts have been futile, and that their brave and hopeful attempt to emancipate the country and its people blew into pieces and disappeared without trace. We must direct all our efforts to avoid this disastrous outcome.

Another day, another conspiratorial crime. In this case, the public was witness to yet another known wolf  terror attack allegedly carried out by an ‘ISIS-inspired’ individual who, as with numerous other cases, was under the gaze of MI5. The man named in the Manchester attack, Salman Abedi, has also been tied to a terror group supported by NATO in Libya during the operation to oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

QUESTION: Is the Manchester attack simply blowback from security operations gone awry – or is it more likely that this latest terror event provides further evidence of complicity on behalf of West in the ‘War On Terror’ era?

Though many are still unsettled in the wake of the Manchester arena bombing – key questions have emerged following this latest act of terror in the West.

NOTE: One cannot ignore the political circumstances and timing surrounding the apparent tragedy in Manchester, as it arrived on the heels of a monolithic arms deals with Saudi Arabia worth $110 billion dollars that will total $350 billion over the next 10 years. The questionable arms deal has also dovetailed US aspirations for an ‘Arab NATO‘ headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the largest state-sponsor of terror in the world.

Additionally, rather conveniently over the past week, al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra aka al-Nusra Front, officially changed their operational name (now dubbed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS) to secure its removal from terror watchlists within the US and Canada.

It’s also worth mentioning again, as previously outlined by 21WIRE, the Manchester Arena attack appeared to have been ‘uncannily timed’ as it coincided on the same day as the OSCE-wide Counter-Terrorism Conference 2017 in Vienna, Austria.

In what is a clear military ramp up following the Manchester attack, there have been US-led coalition airstrikes supposedly targeting ISIS in both Syria and Iraq that have killed 121 civilians in the process. The strikes have led to increasing tension that will also place external pressure the Russian-led Astana Peace Agreement in Syria, while continuing to benefit the strategic movements of ISIS in Syria, as recently described in detail by 21WIRE.

Considering the political backdrop outlined above, let’s examine some of the suspicious aspects linked to the recent Manchester arena explosion, while also providing historical context and comparative analysis to get a bigger picture of the events that have unfolded…

The Manchester Attack

On May 22nd at 10:50pm GMT, an apparent ‘explosion’ at US pop star Ariana Grande‘s concert at Manchester Arena cascaded across mainstream media and social media alike. Adding to the confusion, early reports state that there were two ‘loud bangs’ apparently heard as Grande’s concert was coming to an end after an encore.

By 11:15pm roads were closed around the area, while security shutdown and evacuated London’s Victoria train station. Keep in mind, all of this happened within 25 minutes of the initial terror event. This was followed at 12:43 pm where some 60 ambulances responded according to the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust, transporting the injured to the Manchester’s Royal Infirmary Accident & Emergency Department.

This case has also seen its share of eyewitness testimony that conflicts with details from the official story, as one mother, Emma Johnson, was at the top of the foyer protected by glass waiting for her young daughters noticed a suspicious man with “risen bits” under his clothing and as the alleged perpetrator also wore a “bright red top in the crowd with a grey panel down the front,” according to her statement.

What transpired after the US leaks of the Manchester terror incident appeared to muddy the narrative, as the story quickly changed from lone wolf status to that of a ‘larger network’ while the bomber was seen on CCTV with dark clothing, not matching the description above. Also interestingly, like so many other major terror incidents, as pointed out recently by Prof Michel Chossudovsky, was the discovery of the purported terrorist’s ID on his dead body. Since 9/11 this phenomenon has been going on with regularity, specifically with high-profile terror acts in the West. It’s as if terror criminals can’t leave home without a license or passport prior to committing an atrocity – a curiosity that only lends to questions of staging.

Another concern about the events surrounding Manchester, were the reports that the bomb was “…one the most sophisticated set off in Britain since attacks by the IRA.” In fact, it had a ‘remote detonator’ which is simply explained away as if the attacker was unaware of the feature. That may be, but a good point to make is that the bomber did not have to be at the scene upon detonation. This information for some is explained away because of an attacker’s radical religious views, however, as we’ve seen before during other events, some apparent terrorist’s are found not to strictly adhere to those views even around the time of an attack. This evident prior to 9/11 and after 2013’s Boston bombing.

‘ARENA AERIAL’ – The above image depicts the apparent crime scene at Manchester Arena. (Image Source: bbc)

The UK’s Independent provided the following details in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena attack:

“In total, our clinicians treated and took 59 patients to hospital – 9 to Manchester Royal Infirmary, 6 to Salford, 6 to Wythenshawe, 12 to Manchester Children’s, 6 to Stepping Hill, 8 to Royal Bolton, 7 to Royal Oldham and 5 to North Manchester.

“Approximately 60 ‘walking wounded’ were also treated by our crews but did not go to hospital.”

All told, 22 were said to have died with 116 injured, after the man named in the suicide bombing, 22 year-old Salman Abedi, allegedly detonated a bomb in the foyer of Manchester Arena.

Interestingly, UK’s Sun outlet stated “Firefighters’ frustrations were revealed on internal brigade website Save The UK Fire Service.” 

Continuing, in a message written by unnamed firefighters the report also claimed the following “…firefighters didn’t get to the scene till 60-90 mins after the explosion. They were at Manchester Central fire station watching the incident unfold on TV. This station is half a mile from the incident.”

COMMENT: If the above report is true, one should question the very nature of the attack itself, because it would be highly unlikely that fire rescue teams would be told hold back if there was a legitimate explosion in a building full of civilians. Not only would this be a ‘failure of leadership’ it would surely be an obstruction of public safety – would it not?

Almost immediately in the aftermath Manchester attack, UK Prime Minister Theresa May sought to raise the terror threat level from severe to critical, the first such instance since London’s 7/7 bombings. The controversial PM claimed that more attacks could be ‘imminent’ which led to the sudden announcement that thousands of soldiers would be patrolling the streets in an effort to quell a potential attack while also piggy-backing ‘Operation Temperer’ and its counter terror duties. This has subsequently also led growing concerns of what appeared to be a form of martial law in the UK.

In predictable fashion, the military-style patrols ushered in following the Manchester attack, seemed to echo the response following the highly theatrical ‘three days of terror’ the public saw during the Paris attacks of 2015.

Western allied nations along with the GCC have all been culpable in the rise of ‘Islamic’ terrorist groups and incidents, as they are in fact engineers of them. One of the main architects prior to the War On Terror era, is the recently deceased former NSA head, Zbigniew Brzezinski who developed Osama bin Laden as a US intelligence asset and built the al Qaeda network alongside the CIA in Afghanistan against then Soviet Russia.

After reviewing the available evidence, the Manchester attack in scope, also looks similar to other controversial terror atrocities, including aspects of the Brussels airport bombing, the Istanbul airport bombing, the November 2015 Paris attacks and elements surrounding the highly suspicious London attack in March of 2017. 

QUESTION: Is the Manchester Arena bombing another questionable Western attack that will likely increase calls for a NATO-sponsored intervention in Syria? If so, ask yourself – who benefits the most from yet another terror attack on Western soil?

‘BLURRING THE LINES’ – One of a collection blurred, nondescript images of the MI5-watched bomber Salman Abedi presented by mainstream media. (Image Source: telegraph)

Manchester Attacker, Libyan Connections & NATO 

One major UK Government fallout after the Manchester attacks was the revelation that a community of ‘outlawed’ Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) terrorists were in fact living in close proximity to the Manchester attacker Abedi. This is truly a deeply troubling development for a public unaware of the nearby danger, as British security services and officials alike have allowed a ‘thriving’ group of fighters to reside in the UK seemingly without consequence or disclosure of their previous activities until now.

Tony Cartalucci of Land Destroyer recently highlighted the significance of the Libyan links to that of the purported Manchester attacker Abedi, as well as the hazard posed by LIFG members in the UK:

“The Telegraph in its article, “Salman Abedi named as the Manchester suicide bomber – what we know about him,” would report:

Salman Abedi, 22, who was reportedly known to the security services, is thought to have returned from Libya as recently as this week.

While initial reports attempted to craft a narrative focused on a a “lone wolf” attacker who organized and executed the blast himself, the nature of the improvised explosive device used and the details of the attack revealed what was certainly an operation carried out by someone who either acquired militant experience through direct contact with a terrorist organization, or was directed by a terrorist organization with extensive experience.

A Thriving Terrorist Community in the Midst of Manchester 

The same Telegraph article would also admit (emphasis added):

A group of Gaddafi dissidents, who were members of the outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), lived within close proximity to Abedi in Whalley Range.

Among them was Abd al-Baset Azzouz, a father-of-four from Manchester, who left Britain to run a terrorist network in Libya overseen by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaeda.

Azzouz, 48, an expert bomb-maker, was accused of running an al-Qaeda network in eastern Libya. The Telegraph reported in 2014 that Azzouz had 200 to 300 militants under his control and was an expert in bomb-making. 

Another member of the Libyan community in Manchester, Salah Aboaoba told Channel 4 news in 2011 that he had been fund raising for LIFG while in the city. Aboaoba had claimed he had raised funds at Didsbury mosque, the same mosque attended by Abedi.

Thus, the required experience for the recent Manchester attack exists in abundance within the community’s Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) members.

LIFG is in fact a proscribed terrorist group listed as such by the United Kingdom’s government in 2005, and still appears upon its list of “Proscribed terrorist groups or organisations,” found on the government’s own website.

The accompanying government list (PDF) states explicitly regarding LIFG that:

The LIFG seeks to replace the current Libyan regime with a hard-line Islamic state. The group is also part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by Al Qa’ida. The group has mounted several operations inside Libya, including a 1996 attempt to assassinate Mu’ammar Qadhafi.”

Interestingly, the Land Destroyer report continued by detailing that “LIFG also appears on the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Astoundingly, it appears under a section titled, “Delisted Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” and indicates that it was removed as recently as 2015.”

Libya’s militant governor of Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, was also a part of the Mujahideen fighters closely linked to Bin Laden that became known as al-Qaeda, “returned to his home country [in 1995] as head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an underground paramilitary organisation dedicated to Gaddafi’s downfall.” Over the years, Belhadj was incarcerated and turned loose back into the field after being rendered by the CIA and British security services.

So naturally when it was revealed that Ramadan Abedi, the father of the purported Manchester suicide bomber was also a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and was believed to have been a part of LIFG during the NATO-backed regime change operation in Libya in 2011 – it only raised more questions.

Here’s RT discussing the matter…

The UK’s Metro reported the following details regarding the elder Abedi:

“The elder Abedi fled to Britain before returning to Libya in 2011 for the uprising that ended the Gaddafi regime, and later served in the Tripoli police department, a spokesman said.”

It’s important to remember the chain of events following various global and terror operations.

In a NY Times article from December of 2012 entitled,“U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands,” we see the acknowledgement of an arms shipment at the behest of the Obama administration under the watchful eye of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. However, the mainstream media appears to have provided cover for the White House and State Department by blaming just Qatar for the weapons transfer to militants, even though the regime change operation in Libya was overseen by both US and UK intelligence:

“The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.

No evidence has emerged linking the weapons provided by the Qataris during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to the attack that killed four Americans at the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in September.

But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government.”

Those with links to LIFG have often been found to have ties to various branches of al-Qaeda. This also proved to be the case with computer specialist Abu Anas al-libi to who has been allegedly tied MI6 British intelligence since the late 1990’s, having been indicted for his role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings. Other claims have also been reported regarding al-libi:

“The British government suspects he is a high-level al-Qaeda operative, and Egypt tells Britain that he is wanted for an assassination attempt of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In 1996, he is involved in a plot with the British intelligence agency to assassinate Libyan leader.”

So far there have been numerous arrests in the aftermath of the Manchester terror event, including Adedi’s brothers, Ismail Abedi and Hashem Abedi.

‘LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON?’ – Manchester attacker’s father Ramadan Abedi linked to the Libyan terror group LIFG. (Image Source: thesundaily)

Chasing Wolves: The ‘Known Wolf’ Epidemic

As we’ve mentioned at 21WIRE numerous times in recent years, many political leaders and media operatives bang the drums of security over so-called terror ‘sleeper cells’ (see the the London Boys sleeper cell) hiding in a nation near you – none of them acknowledge the historical fact that they themselves have also helped to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through counter-terrorism operations for decades.

Below is screen shot of a timeline of events provided by CNN illustrating that there was much more going on behind the scenes with the Abedi family while security agencies were watching…

21 WIRE has documented over the years, many so-called shooting/terror/attacks that involve individuals being monitored by security services prior to an alleged act taking place. A place where a ‘lone wolf’ graduates into the ranks of a known wolf. In fact, very often those being watched by authorities exhibit all the tell-tale signs of a patsy or an informant, working either for a law enforcement or intelligence agency to potentially avoid jail time for previous criminal activity. Historically, government operators have often made use of low-life criminals, and mentally disturbed individuals to fulfill various role in entrapment stings or sometimes as bonafide actors in an actual attacks.

In any case, alleged attackers and security agencies have a dicey relationship, making any link between them highly suspect in nature.

To provide further background on the existence of state-sponsored terror using proxy agents, here’s a link to a 21WIRE post concerning a BBC documentary entitled, “Operation Gladio.” It describes how a secret army operated by the CIA and MI6 via NATO was used to carryout worldwide political objectives through a “strategy of tension.”

In January of 2015, a strategic security service think-tank known as The Soufan Group, reported that a larger national security threat resides with radicals who’ve had a lengthy criminal background with known ties to security agencies:

“The Soufan Group, a New York think tank, said a better term for “lone wolves” would be “known wolves“, given how many are already known to Western intelligence agencies before they strike.

“These individuals, acting alone or in small groups … have been on the radar of various agencies and organisations, highlighting the difficulty of effectively monitoring and managing people at the nexus of criminality and terrorism,” it said in a report this week…”

In keeping with our running report on ‘known wolf’ actors involved in many attacks Western soil, here’s another look at other suspicious intelligence ‘informant’ cases and other terror stooges that have been implicated over the years:

Tamerlan Tsarnaev (see his story here)
Buford Rogers (see his story here)
Jerad Miller (see his story here)
Naji Mansour (see his story here)
Quazi Mohammad Nafis (see his story here)
Mohamed Osman Mohamud (see his story here)
Timothy McVeigh (see his story here)
Salim Benghalem (see his story here)
Michael Adebolajo (see his story here)
Daba Deng (see his story here)
Elton Simpson (see his story here)
Man Haron Monis (see his story here)
Abu Hamza (see his story here)
Haroon Rashid Aswat (see his story here)
Glen Rodgers (see his story here)
Omar Mateen (see his story here)
Tashfeen Malik (see her story here)
Djamel Beghal  (see his story here)
Anjem Choudary (see his story here)
Cherif Kouachi (see his story here)
Said Kouachi (see his story here)
Amedy Coulibaly (see his story here)
Hayat Boumeddiene (see her story here)
Salah Abdeslam (see his story here)
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (see his story here)
Nidal Malik Hassan (see his story here)
Abdelhakim Dekhar  (see his story here)
Abdelhamid Abaaoud (see his story here)
Samy Amimour (see his story here)
Ismaël Omar Mostefaï (see his story here)
Mohamed Lahouij Bouhlel (see his story here)
Anis Amri (see his story here)
Esteban Santiago-Ruiz (see his story here)
Abdulkadir Masharipov (see his story here)
Khalid Masood (see his story here)

Below is a section worth reviewing again in the wake of the Manchester attack which was also included in my analysis of the London attack back in March…

‘Radical Hate Preacher’ and UK terror media mascot Anjem Choudary (Source: KeywordSuggest.co.uk)

The Terror Factory

In August of 2016, a hyper-propagandized war image of Omar Daqneesh went viral in the West, while the well-known radical preacher Anjem Choudary was ‘protected’ by MI5, despite being linked to major terror plots over the past decade. All in all, they were two narratives that reflected the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘radicalization’ guises of NATO’s international security syndicate that has masked the reality of the War On Terror era.

Here’s a portion of a 21WIRE article written in August of 2016 entitled “COINTEL CHAOS: The MI5’s ‘Known Wolf’ Preacher, Aleppo Agitprop & NATO’s Mask.” The dense report further outlined the historical lens with which to view links between terror operators and counter-terror operations and how both have played a dramatic role in many major acts of terror over the past 16 years:

“It’s worth noting that the contemptible cleric Choudary, now facing jail time for supporting ISIS, crossed paths with Abu Hamza, another radical preacher who subsequently ran the Finsbury Park mosque in North London – a known limited hangout for spooks, criminals and other informants.

In 2015, 21WIRE discussed the dubious role of Hamza at Finsbury Park, as well as his long time connection to MI5, while under the gaze of MI6:

“Hamza’s role as a state instigator and secret custodian of the Finsbury Park’s radical ‘honey pot’, now appears obvious. In a typical honey pot operation, security chiefs will place an outrageously radical character into position in order to attract “the worst of the worst” and then inform on them to authorities. For years Hamza openly preached his overtly radical, over-the-top sermons at Finsbury Park, often praising Osama Bin Laden and glorifying the attacks of 9/11, all the while mocking the police.”

Continuing, the Special Report examined Abu Hamza (photo, left) and his meetings with British security services since the 1990’s:

“…the Daily Telegraph disclosed how Abu Hamza had at least 12 secret meetings with MI5 and police special branch over a six year period, starting in the late 1990’s. Other testimonies also exist that show both Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada – Britain’s two most celebrated radical Islamists, were both informants.”

In May of 2015, the UK’s Independent discussed the almost two dozen terror attacks linked to the group known as “Al-Muhajiroun,” a banned terror-linked organization with ties to British intelligence, specifically MI5. In the passage below, many of the international attacks connected to Al-Muhajiroun had been ‘foiled’ by police prior to happening:

“The 7/7 attacks, the murder of fusilier Lee Rigby, the plot to blow up planes with liquid bombs and the plot to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub are among the 23 planned terrorist attacks that have been linked to one single radical group operating in the UK over the past two decades: al Muhajiroun.

According to a new book by terrorism expert Raffaello Pantucci, al Muhajiroun, a banned network in the UK, has been linked to a number of plots and attacks carried out both in Britain and abroad since 2000.

The book, entitled We love death as you love life – which Pantucci said is a “catchphrase” used by many of the attackers in their propaganda – claims that 23 out of 51 of these terror plots either carried out or foiled by police in the UK and abroad have been linked to al-Muhajiroun.”

Shortly before London’s 7/7 bombings in 2005,  Al-Muhajiroun’s Omar Bakri Mohammed (Anjem Choudary’s co-founder) was outed as an informant for MI5 after the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Ron Suskind spoke to a senior MI5 official. Bakri later ‘conceded’ the connection during an interview in Beirut, which was featured in Suskind’s controversial book, The Way of the World.

In an article written by Nafeez Ahmed entitled,“The circus: How British intelligence primed both sides of the ‘terror war’,” the larger role of Bakri and Choudary is revealed:

“Bakri was regularly in touch with his deputy, Anjem Choudary, over the internet and even delivered online speeches to his followers in Britain instructing them to join IS and murder civilians. He has now been detained and charged by Lebanese authorities for establishing terror cells in the country.

Bakri was also deeply involved “with training the mujahideen [fighters] in camps on the Syrian borders and also on the Palestine side.” The trainees included four British Islamists “with professional backgrounds” who would go on to join the war in Syria. Bakri also claimed to have trained “many fighters,” including people from Germany and France, since arriving in Lebanon. Was Mohammed Emwazi among them? Last year, Bakri disciple Mizanur Rahman confirmedthat at least five European Muslims who had died fighting under IS in Syria had been Bakri acolytes.”

Interestingly, a UK think-tank called the Quilliam Foundation, that focuses on counter-extremism, has functioned alongside the MI5’s counter insurgent programs. Many critics of  Quilliam have suggested the foundation has some controversial bedfellows, in addition to their close affiliation with the Council on Foreign Relations and their connection to the Henry Jackson Society which has been associated with other neoconservative think-tanks.

In the US, many neoconservative republicans have been in favor of escalating the conflict in Syria and Quilliam’s involvement could be seen as another group behind the scenes designing a particular outcome for Western interests.”

Manchester: Big Questions Remain

Here’s a couple of UK Column shows over the past week that pose a number of questions while providing a detailed analysis in order to breakdown the Manchester attack…

Casting Crisis: History of Manufacturing Terror

There has been an uncanny number of attacks preceded by anti-terror/multi-agency fusion drills that theatrically act out violence before an attack. This was something that happened prior to the Brussels attacks of 2016 , as well as London’s 7/7 bombings in 2005.

Watch this ITV interview with Peter Power that reveals the 7/7 rehearsal drills…

Incredibly, Power also predicted the 7/7 attacks a year earlier on BBC Panorama on May 16th 2004…

Here are two YouTube videos by IllusiveExposureRadio that raise a number of interesting questions, including a Manchester drill that we reported on here at 21WIRE a year ago that involved hundreds of civilian actors…

Truth is often stranger than fiction when looking at the bizarre phenomena surrounding many mass casualty incidents – and the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting was no exception, as have been many others. Below is a another look at a report logged at 21WIRE last year that uncovered multiple links to the mass casualty staging company Crisis Cast. It was revealed that the world’s largest security firm G4S, who had employed the man named in the Orlando pulse nightclub shooting, Omar Mateen – was a client of the mass casualty staging company called CrisisCast. Here’s that passage:

‘STAGING REALITY’ – CrisisCast specializes in replicating mass casualty events. (Screen Capture from Crisis Cast)

Training for Disaster

The heavily-stylized company CrisisCast, appears to be a revamped version of the Visionbox Crisis Actors project (a crisis actor production emerging after Sandy Hook), with a professional team of actors, elaborate film crews, expert producers and theatrical effects makeup squads mimicking real-life injuries (additional prosthetics) – all focused to deliver a simulated crisis-like reality to the public, later to be managed accordingly through their public relations division via various forms of social media.

RELATED: (VIDEO) ‘Active Shooter’ and ‘Terror’ Drills: The Truth WILL Shock You

In CrisisCast‘s ‘about’ section we see a sophisticated amalgam of emergency protocol disaster training combined with “internationally credited film crews,” that bring their high-end stagecraft to life, through a collection of “role players, stunts, medical simulations and combat flashpoints,” cloaked in visual tricky, with film techniques out of the UK and Australia, so says the group’s website.

Below is a road traffic collusion demo created by lead CrisisCast producer/founder Brian Mitchell (has worked on Hollywood studios and holds National security clearance) featured on Vimeo. The scenario is filmed from multiple angles, with quick cut editing that disorients, as we see an individual (crisis actor) in the aftermath of a crash – struck by the emotional weight of the scene – screaming out to a gaggle of onlookers after witnessing the staged carnage. The strange episode leaves one with a feeling of phantom trauma that continues to lurk.

When Security Breeds Terror

In an article published at Global Research written by Andrew Gavin Marshall, entitled “State-Sponsored Terror: British and American Black Ops in Iraq,” we see the historical outline and correlation between security agencies and the terror that’s never too far behind:

In January of 2002, the Washington Post ran a story detailing a CIA plan put forward to President Bush shortly after 9/11 by CIA Director George Tenet titled, “Worldwide Attack Matrix,” which was “outlining a clandestine anti-terror campaign in 80 countries around the world. What he was ready to propose represented a striking and risky departure for U.S. policy and would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history.”

As the article continues, we see the growing power of clandestine intelligence agencies and their direct involvement in so-called ‘terrorist’ incidents, most notably with the CIA since 9/11: “the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception.

The intelligence treasure trove outlined by Marshall, also included a Telegraph news release from February 5, 2007: “Deep inside the heart of the “Green Zone” [in Iraq], the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG).”

It turns out that the JSG, also operated under the cover moniker, Force Research Unit (FRU) “which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA.” The FRU turned and blackmailed members of the IRA to work for the paramilitary organization as double agents. All told, the FRU/JSG was able to establish control at the highest levels of the IRA. The unit was renamed in the aftermath of Stevens Inquiry, which investigated allegations of a collusion between the security forces and protestant paramilitary groups:

“The Stevens Inquiry’s report “contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland during the 1980s.”

Former British intelligence agent, Kevin Fulton, who also worked with the FRU, stated that knowledge of the orchestrated unit was known by high level officials, claiming they had been ‘sanctioned’ by former PM Margaret Thatcher.

According to a former British Army mole, the MI5 organized a “weapons-buying trip to America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to murder soldiers and police officers.”

“The technology he obtained has been used in Northern Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have killed British troops.”

When examining the shocking claims of CIA operations, along with stories of British intelligence operatives colluding with the IRA in deep cover terrorist acts in Northern Ireland via the FRU, your reminded of the heavily orchestrated attacks that now occur globally.

In Summary

The Manchester attack appears to be similar to other high profile incidents which have all been used to distort public opinion in the wake of media styled mass-tragedies.

Over the past 24-48 hours, authorities have released a CCTV imagery depicting the apparent Manchester attacker Abedi, which marks a ramp up of emotionally charged imagery used by media to dramatize the bombing, while continuing to obscure other facts and connections observed in the aftermath of the attack itself.

Here at 21WIRE, we’ve discussed the recent political fallout concerning the latest WMD allegations out of Syria, as well as the heavily propagandized imagery brought to us by the US-UK and Gulf state backed White Helmets group that has been parroted by Western media without question. Just like the White Helmets western-oriented war propaganda imagery, whatever the public thinks of the Manchester terror event, it may serve as a sharp catalyst to initiate a more direct NATO intervention into the Syrian conflict sometime in the future.

***
Author Shawn Helton is Associate Editor of 21st Century Wire, as well as an independent media forensic analyst specializing in criminal investigations and analyzing media coverage of terrorist events and theatres of war. 

Featured image: Your News Wire

“What we’ve been undergoing to a large extent is a form of psychological abuse, actually, by very narcissistic, hegemonic governments and officials for a very long time. It’s a form of gaslighting where actually our own faith in our ability to judge a situation, and to some extent even our own identity, has been eroded and damaged to the point where we’re effectively accepting their version of reality.” –Vanessa Beeley

The only thing keeping westerners from seeing through the lies that they’ve been told about Syria is the unquestioned assumption that their own government could not possibly be that evil. They have no trouble believing that a foreigner from a Muslim-majority country could be gratuitously using chemical weapons on children at the most strategically disastrous time possible and bombing his own civilians for no discernible reason, but the possibility that their government is making those things up in order to manufacture consent for regime change is ruled out before any critical analysis of the situation even begins.

Despite the evil and unforgivable invasion of Iraq having happened a mere fourteen years ago, sold to the public based on nothing but lies and mass media propaganda, mainstream America is unwilling to consider the possibility that this is happening again. Unwilling to turn and face the implications of what this would mean for their worldview, their self-image, and the entire system they’ve developed for examining and interpreting their experience of their lives up until this point.

Independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley has emerged from her latest trip to Syria burning with a new kind of fire. There’s something in her voice and the posture she now takes which conveys a new kind of authority, a sense that she has now seen enough and gathered enough evidence to observe unmasked the full picture of this monster of deceit she’s been fighting.

In her recent phenomenal interview on The Sane Progressive, Beeley shreds the entire work of fiction we’re being fed, from small details which show that the “White Helmets” are literally nothing other than Al-Qaeda members wearing special hats, to a breakdown of the way NGOs are used by government foundations and plutocrats to help construct propaganda narratives, all the way up to a big-picture analysis of the general unwholesome dynamic that gave rise to these despicable manipulations in the first place.

If you can set aside one hour of free time in the next few days, please give it to this important interview. If you have more time, watch it again, take notes, pause frequently, and research what she’s saying. You’ll never find such a densely-packed arsenal of weaponry for use in our media war against America’s unelected power establishment.

Beeley’s statements about the White Helmets (who, despite their ubiquitous image in the west, nobody in East Aleppo had even heard of during her time there last year) have now been backed by none other than award-winning journalist John Pilger, who called them “a complete propaganda construct” in a recent interview.

I have lost all patience with people who involve themselves in the conversation about the current Syrian administration by acknowledging the existence of western lies and propaganda about Syria and yet still maintaining that Assad is an evil dictator who needs to be deposed somehow.

This is an astonishingly common perspective in online discourse about Syria even among people who are relatively woke to what’s going on; they see it as the more moderate and well-reasoned position to simultaneously acknowledge that the US power establishment is known to use lies, propaganda and false flags to manufacture public consent for devastating acts of military violence, and also that Assad is horrible and evil.

There’s this odd, unquestioned assumption that the most honest position to espouse when two narratives contradict each other is to stand right in between them. This is a logic fail; it is a result of bad thinking. The midway point between two positions is not always the most truthful ground; when slavery was being debated, the correct position between “slavery is great” and “slavery is evil” was not “slavery is okay sometimes”. The correct position between “kill all Jews” and “don’t kill any Jews” is not “kill some of the Jews”. The correct position between “Our leaders are lying to us about Syria to manufacture consent for a regime change invasion” and “Assad is an evil dictator who needs to be deposed” is not “Well they’re both kinda true, it’s complicated.”

In reality, we cannot know with any degree of certainty how good or bad a leader Assad is. There’s too much smoke in the air, too much propaganda and deliberate deceit clouding our vision to get a clear picture of the complete political dynamic of an entire government. No reasonable, clear-thinking person can justifiably say with any degree of confidence that Assad is an evil dictator. There is no way to know.

What we can know with absolute certainty is that we are being lied to about Syria by western governments and the mass media propaganda machines which promote their oligarchic agendas. The mountains of evidence that are coming out against the White Helmets, the fact that Amnesty International is the same organization that promoted the false Nayirah testimony which was used to manufacture consent for the Gulf War, the fact that CNN recently staged a fake interview featuring a seven year-old girl who can’t speak English reading scripted anti-Assad propaganda to an unsuspecting audience; there is enough there to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the same power establishment that lied to us about Iraq is now lying to us about its neighbor Syria.

The only question is whether or not you have the emotional and intellectual integrity to face this reality.

We can also know that Assad is neither stupid nor insane. If you haven’t seen the interview he gave last month, check out the above video in which he tells his side of the story in perfect English. This is not the slobbering madman we’re asked to believe launched a sarin gas attack on his own civilians for no reason at the most inopportune time possible. Nor is he the strategic brute who gasses children to keep his citizenry fearing that there’s no limit to the savagery he’ll inflict upon them as in the narrative being promulgated by corporate media, since he tells them that he’d ever do such a thing in the interview.

It is possible that he is corrupt, it is possible that he has been needlessly oppressive in some ways; there’s no way to know in the current environment. But he is definitely neither stupid nor insane, as he would have needed to have been to have launched the Idlib gas attacks when he is alleged to have.

As the interviewer Debbie Lusignan said to Beeley

“Even if people are having a hard time because there is such a bombardment of disinformation and it’s very hard to sort it out and the alternative media is being suppressed and censored, basic common sense says that these are the same media outlets and the same political establishment structures that have been lying to us for all these other atrocities that we always find out after the fact were based on disinformation and manipulation and false information,” said Debbie. “So at this point, the American people themselves need to take some responsibility in terms of understanding that we have had such a history of this being the status quo, the way that the United States justifies and launches wars.”

“Our premise should be — they’re going to lie to us. And our burden of real proof should be through the roof.”

Is it possible that there is a power establishment governing your country which is so evil that it would engineer the deaths of children in a false flag attack to manufacture consent for a strategically valuable regime change it’s been seeking for decades? It’s uncomfortable to consider this possibility.

Much easier to believe there’s a depraved nutcase foreigner hurling chemical weapons and barrel bombs at civilians willy nilly who needs to be taken out by Good Guys. Much more difficult to do the rigorous intellectual and emotional work needed to escape from the institutional brainwashing Vanessa Beeley describes in her article “Gaslighting: State Mind Control and Abusive Narcissism” and do the necessary research to get a clear picture of what is going on. But you undeniably have the ability to make that choice, here and now as you finish this article.

Are you the sort of person who can face uncomfortable truths and revise their worldview accordingly, or the type who compartmentalizes and avoids them for the sake of cognitive comfort?

Step into the light.

Featured image: 21st Century Wire

President Barack Obama’s remarks to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 28 (2015) defensively addressed critics of U.S. foreign policy:

“It is not a conspiracy of U.S.-backed NGOs that expose corruption and raise the expectations of people around the globe; it’s technology, social media, and the irreducible desire of people everywhere to make their own choices about how they are governed.”

Yet it is no secret that the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy have been funding dissidents and violent protest movements around the world for the past five decades, hoping to create instability and regime change. And although Zbigniew Brzezinski was not mentioned by name at the recent U.N. General Assembly, the shadow of the 87-year-old global strategist was cast over the body’s proceedings. As the U.S. and its allies attempted to defend or gloss over the existence of the policies that have become Brzezinski’s legacy, rising opponents of the United States around the world loudly castigated them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin compared U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration to that of the former Soviet Union, saying:

“It seemed, however, that far from learning from others’ mistakes, everyone just keeps repeating them, and so the export of revolutions, this time of so-called democratic ones, continues.”

He described the results of U.S. support for so-called “revolutionaries” in Libya and Syria:

“Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life. I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation: do you realize now what you’ve done? But I am afraid no one is going to answer that.”

Drugs, Saudi money, and CIA revolutions

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ascent to the height of power as a crafter of U.S. foreign policy can be largely attributed to the U.S. defeat at the hands of the National Liberation Front of Vietnam. After years of bombing and war that killed millions of Vietnamese people, along with over 58,000 U.S. military fatalities, the U.S. was forced to withdraw from Southeast Asia. In light of this historic defeat, the strategy of all-out war — with B-52 bombers, napalm, and troop deployment, utilized in the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts — was reconsidered

During his presidency, Jimmy Carter pardoned those who had fled to Canada to avoid military conscription, welcomed Chinese President Deng Xiaoping for an extended tour of the country, and attempted to present a new image of U.S. society to the world. During his presidential campaign, Carter described himself as a student of Brzezinski’s, and he later welcomed the well-known Polish-American strategist to the White House as his chief adviser.

Brzezinski’s strategy consisted of utilizing the CIA in place of the Pentagon, and creating instability and chaos to topple governments that defied Washington. As Russian President Putin recently noted, Brzezinski consciously worked to copy the rhetorical style and foreign policing messaging of the Soviet Union, and portray the United States, not as imperialist, but as “aiding revolutionaries” who fought for “human rights.”

Brzezinski directed the Carter administration to adopt the strategies he had pushed for within the Johnson administration and other presidencies throughout the Cold War. He bragged in a 1998 interview that he created “the Afghan trap” for the Soviet Union, funding violent religious insurgents to battle the People’s Democratic Party when it took power in Afghanistan.

In order to make U.S. support for the Afghan forces less obvious, Saudi Arabia was utilized as a middle man. A wealthy Saudi construction firm heir named Osama bin Laden became a key organizer of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, quietly taking U.S. money and weapons while loudly denouncing the “decadence” of Western society and calling for a return to Salafist Islamic society.

Unlike the Vietnam War, U.S. efforts to destabilize and eventually depose the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan were widely popular around the world. This can be credited to the efforts of U.S. media. It was documented by the New York Post and the Columbia Journalism Review that CBS News went so far as to air fake battle footage boosting the image of mujahideen. Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, the first U.S. journalists granted permission to enter Afghanistan after 1979, described the coverage of the Afghan war in Western media as a “Ramboesque struggle of holy warriors against the evil empire.” The less romantic and glamorous aspects of the war, like 2 million deaths and 6 million people fleeing the country as refugees, were ignored.

Most of the leftists who had protested the Vietnam War in the U.S. and Europe were attracted to the romantic Che Guevara-esque image of “holy warriors” in the Afghan mountains. Meanwhile, the minority of radicals who denounced the mujahedeen were labelled “Stalinists” and “Soviet apologists.” With the excuse of “Soviet aggression in Afghanistan,” Carter was able to reinstate draft registration for young men across the U.S., boycott the 1980 Olympic Games, and increase military spending.

Speaking to MintPress News, Sara Flounders, co-director of former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center, noted that U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was not, as is widely believed, a response to Soviet action, saying: “It should be remembered that Brzezinski bragged that U.S. intervention pre-dated Soviet’s 1979 assistance to the Afghan government.”

When asked about whether he regretted aligning with bin Laden, Brzezinski replied:

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

Brzezinski was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981 (Source: Military Times)

Brzezinski was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981, and continued to play a prominent role in setting U.S. foreign policy during the Reagan administration. During this period, the U.S. continued Carter’s Afghan policy, and also supported the violent insurgents who battled against the Sandinistas. U.S.-aligned media portrayed the CIA-trained forces in Nicaragua as “freedom fighters” as they slaughtered entire villages. Saudi Arabia again functioned as the “middle man,” transferring money and weapons to U.S.-aligned anti-government fighters in Nicaragua.

“The extension of Brzezinski’s murderous policies of massive destabilization, arming reactionary religious mercenaries and warlords, and inflaming sectarian, tribal and cultural differences in Afghanistan is now standard U.S. policy,” Flounders observed.

Another tactic utilized for Brzezinski’s projects in Nicaragua and Afghanistan was the trafficking of narcotics. Heroin poppy fields sprouted up across Afghanistan, and cocaine was processed through Central America. It is widely proven that U.S. intelligence was involved in securing their allies’ ability to participate in the drug trade in order to generate additional funding, and further destabilize Afghanistan and Nicaragua.

Brzezinski’s continuing impact on Central America and Afghanistan is by no means small. Though poppy fields were suppressed by the Taliban during in the late 1990s, since the 2001 U.S. invasion, Afghanistan has become the heroin capital of the world. U.S.-aligned countries in Latin America such as Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras remain plagued by the “narcos” and violence surrounding the drug trade, carried out almost exclusively with U.S.-made or -imported weapons. Further, Flounders noted, “In the past 35 years these divide and rule tactics have created millions of refugees in Central and Western Asia and North Africa.”

Opium poppy field in Gostan valley, Nimruz Province, Afghanistan (Source: United States Marine Corps)

Beyond Latin America and Central Asia, Brzezinski advised the CIA and its National Endowment for Democracy as it went to work in Eastern Europe, courting alienated youth. The National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983, as Gerald Sussman of Portland State University explained in his study of the organization: “Unlike the CIA, NED’s extensive operations abroad create opportunities for political operatives who need not assume underground lives and identities.” The NED functions as a private entity, though its actions are completely directed by the CIA, and it works to promote the economic interests of U.S. corporations.

Under Brzezinski’s direction, young artists and writers who criticized the socialist Warsaw Pact governments were funded and promoted, escalating alienation as part of a process that eventually culminated in bringing down governments. The result was economic ruin in most of Eastern Europe, as somewhat stable Marxist-Leninist regimes were replaced by the rule of organized crime, and the rise of drugs and sex trafficking under new pro-Western regimes. Under the control of Western banking institutions, the standard of living rapidly dropped throughout Eastern Europe during the 1990s.

The instability and extreme poverty resulting from Brzezinski’s policies does not end with the destruction of the targeted “rogue state.” It continues indefinitely, ensuring that no stable source of opposition to Western economic dominance can emerge.

Brzezinskism in the 21st Century?

Brzezinski’s tactic of heavily funding and arming anti-government forces and then promoting them in international media with rhetoric about “human rights” is now a permanent staple of U.S. foreign policy. Governments that dare maintain economic and political independence from the U.S. and the International Monetary Fund are routinely targeted by U.S.-directed “human rights organizations” and NGOs, such as Freedom House Inc. and the Albert Einstein Institute, among others. While labor unions in the U.S. grow weaker and face less legal protections, funding from the U.S. props up anti-government labor unions in defiant regimes across the world.

As has been extensively documented by WikiLeaks, the U.S. has spent billions of dollars on funding anti-government fighters in Syria, as have the U.S.-aligned regimes in the region. Religious extremists from as far away as Malaysia have found their way to Syria and joined the anti-government killing spree. The result is a global refugee crisis and humanitarian disaster that has left over 250,000 dead, as money and weapons continue to flow over the Turkish and Jordanian borders.

Libya is in a state of ruin since the U.S. and NATO bombed the country in the name of supporting a U.S.-funded and armed group of “revolutionaries.” It has been revealed that U.S. intelligence forces have been working with Jundallah terrorists to destabilize Iran, in addition to the existing relationship between U.S. officials and the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran. (Also known as the MEK in its Persian acronym, it was recently delisted by the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.)

Like the Russian President, Cuban President Raul Castro touched on Brzezinskism in his U.N. remarks, saying:

“The militarization of cyberspace, and the covert and illegal use of information and communications technologies to attack other states is unacceptable, as likewise is the distortion of the advancement and protection of human rights used with a selective and discriminatory approach to justify and impose political decisions.”

He was likely referring to the recently exposed U.S.-funded plot to create a Cuban version of Twitter to coordinate anti-government protests.

During his recent visit to the U.S., Chinese President Xi Jinping defended China’s new laws restricting the activities of foreign-backed NGOs, saying:

“So long as their activities are beneficial to the Chinese people, we will not restrict or prohibit their operations… On their part, foreign NGOs in China need to obey Chinese law and carry out activities in accordance with the law.”

In his U.N. remarks, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro channeled his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, by offering bold condemnation of U.S. regime change:

“Is Libya a more stable country economically, socially? Is it a united country? Is it a country? Is it a country at peace? And who will pay for the crimes in Libya, and Iraq and Afghanistan? Who will acknowledge them? And Syria? It seems one of those horror films made in Hollywood. A policy of terror, a horror movie: the terrors of war.”

President George W. Bush’s unilateral direct military attack on Iraq in 2003 was wildly unpopular throughout the world. Within the ruling circles of the U.S. many clearly hoped that a shift back to Brzezinski-style “soft coups” under a commander-in-chief named “Barack Hussein Obama” could restore credibility to the U.S. However, aside from Western Europe, the world seems to be equally outraged by these policies. As the Obama presidency draws to a close, Brzezinskism, like Bushism, is now loathed by people across the planet.

In his address to the U.N., Maduro went on to express what millions of people around the world are feeling:

“No one in this world has the right, by the Charter of the United Nations or by any right, to judge, prejudge the political regime of another country or to pretend to overthrow the regime of any government or system in the world. No one is entitled to that.”

Caleb Maupin is a MintPress journalist and political analyst who resides in New York City focusing his coverage on US foreign policy and the global system of monopoly capitalism and imperialism.

Nowadays, the common sense can hardly believe in the tangible fact that NATO is endangering the safety of the two nuclear powers, Russia and China. Judging by the antirussian campaign in the Western media, as well as the deployment of NATO troops in Eastern Europe and the Far East, it is as if the war has already started.

The territories on which NATO entered a series of attacks against sovereign States, launched by bombing Republika Srpska and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, remained in ruins and in chronic ethnic conflicts. The Balkans are now one of the world’s crisis hot spots, along with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Our Balkan concerns are, however, a trifle compared to what is threatening the entire humanity.

What could stop this course of events? The observers who allude to the theory of realism in international relationships, argue that NATO can no longer be stopped. They say that it is not reason, nor kindness, who take decisions in the relationships between the countries, but power and might. Benjamin Disraeli, one of the founders of this ideology, but also of the modern British imperialism, argued that “power can be stopped only by power”, regarding the conflict between Britain and Russia in the Balkans.

The second-best option for humanity would, however, change the foreign policy of the leading NATO member countries. The awareness has grown in Western societies about the fact that small, privileged business, clerical, military and academic circles, located mainly in the US and the UK, led their own countries and the world to the brink of downfall. This idea maturation cannot be seen in the big Western media, but at the elections, the voice of the people is each time louder. Citizens of the United States, Britain, France and Germany are, in fact, frightened and horrified. They are dying in terrorist attacks on their own streets and workplaces, in their homes. Thanks to the mass immigration of refugees from countries that are being destroyed by NATO, the identity of Western countries is changing at a tremendous speed. Along with xenophobia, the ongoing Americanization is gradually shutting down a centuries-old European tradition of unity, solidarity and concern for fellow human beings.

This popular revolt can nowhere be seen so well as in the Anglo-Saxon world, the epicenter of the most important global trends. From the beginning, however, it was clear that Boris Johnson and Donald Trump are not the true alternatives. According to their social relationships and beliefs, they belong to the privileged, neoliberal, belligerent elite. This is confirmed by a series of russophobic statements of Boris Johnson when he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, including those about Russia’s responsibility for causing trouble in Montenegro and in the Balkans. The most powerful man in the world, the US President Donald Trump, under the pressure of the “deep state”, accused of conspiring with the Russians, retreating and staggering, has dragged Montenegro into NATO and escalated the war in Syria.

Should we expect changes from the Left? Bernie Sanders called his astonished followers to vote for the candidate of the military-industrial complex, Hillary Clinton. In the UK elections that will take place on June 9^th, the Labour party will however, as the most powerful opposition party, be led by Jeremy Corbyn. Judging by the polls, although less and less reliable, the Tories will win, because they took the monopoly on the key issues of immigration, identity and the European Union thanks to Brexit. Therefore, is Serbia, the country of poverty, unemployment, corruption, a failed health and education system, bombed and occupied by NATO troops, so indifferent to what is happening in the British left?

Source: stopwar.org.uk

The fact that Jeremy Corbyn is asking for the containment of privatization, the renovation of education, health and social care and that he is warning about the differences between the ever-poorer majority and the ever-richer minority, is not the most important thing for the topic of this article. He was, in fact, along with Tony Ben, Harold Pinter, Tariq Ali, George Galloway and others, one of the founders of the “Stop the War Coalition,” which, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq in February 2003, gathered in the London protests, according to some reports, over a million people. Corbyn was very strongly opposed to the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. Moreover, he said that the crisis in Ukraine was triggered by NATO while encircling Russia and entering the territories that are vital for the Russian security.

Lastly, Jeremy Corbyn was with Tony Ben, the only parliamentary deputy who took part in the protests against the bombing of the FR Yugoslavia in 1999. Together with other 15 deputies, in March 1999, he signed a protest and condemnation of NATO attacks on Yugoslavia. He argued in the Parliament that no sovereign State would ever sign the agreement offered in Rambouillet. He condemned NATO for killing civilians, bombing the Radio Television building (RTS), the use of depleted uranium. With 18 MPs, he demanded in December 1999 to stop the persecution of Serbs and Roma in Orahovac (Kosovo). In December 2004, he was one of 25 MPs who welcomed the article by John Pilger which counter-proved the war propaganda about genocide against the Albanians in Kosovo.

Because of this attitude, Corbyn has not been accused or insulted just once. His social program has further contributed to the fact that, along with Putin and Trump, he is the most attacked public figure in the British media.

Does all this mean that the left has finally become more alive? Does the cake in the face of Bernard Henri Lévy mean that the Serbian leftists are coming out from a macabre embrace of the NATO rhetoric, scholarships and stiftung foundations? With a little patience, we will find out that as well.

Translated from Serbian by Svetlana Maksovic

Milos Kovic is a Serbian historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences and Assistant professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, Serbia.

The areas of his research are international relations (late 18th – early 20th century), history of political ideas (late 18th – early 20th century).

He was at the Oxford University for professional development in 2004-2005. He participated in international conferences in London, Florence, Jena, Sofia, Belgrade.

Source: Belgrade daily newspaper POLITIKA May 22^nd 2017

In the videos and text below is the speech of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah on May 25, 2017, on the occasion of the seventeenth anniversary of the Liberation of Southern Lebanon.

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Transcript:

Let’s evoke the summit (of Riyadh). First, it was said that it was a triple [American-Arab-Muslim] summit, when in fact there was only one summit, Saudi Arabia and the United States, that is, between President Trump and King Salman, and the accompanying delegations.

The summit between the United States and the Gulf countries was nothing but a meeting of courtesy, a presentation, a ceremony. The (alleged) US-Arab-Islamic summit, bringing together 55 or 56 countries, was but a standing ovation to President Trump, and it was not a summit or conference. There were no preparatory committees, no material distributed to participants, no preliminary meeting of foreign ministries or ministries of defense…, neither draft declaration, nor debate, nor negotiations, nor exchanges, nor nothing all.

They brought together the Presidents of all the places of the [world]… most of the Arab and Islamic countries, then the King Salman gave a speech, President Trump gave a speech and then two or three words and that’s it, it was over. Even the rest of the statements were not made, because the King was then tired – at least that is what they have said in the media. And it was over. And everyone went home. This is the true description (of what happened). Everyone has returned to their country. There are even some delegations who have complained that no one took care to accompany them at the airport, “No one has taken leave of us.” And they were then all surprised to hear of what was called the Riyadh Declaration.

Here is the Riyadh Declaration (in my hands). This is only a US-Saudi statement. Of the 55 Arab countries, most were unaware of the existence of the Declaration and its content. And in itself, this is a scandal. Look, for example, on the text in the Declaration, it says that “The leaders present debated…”, “The leaders have confirmed…”, “The leaders stressed…”, “The leaders welcomed…”, “The leaders decided…”, etc. Whereas in reality the leaders have not debated, nor welcomed, nor underlined, they knew nothing, they did not hear anything, and there were even those who were sleeping…

Trump’s arrival in Saudi Arabia (Source: Pakistan Point)

Well afterwards, they became aware of the Declaration through the media. They learned about the statement through the media. The Riyadh Declaration is an American-Saudi Declaration, period. And of course, this is an outrage, and demonstrates a position of weakness, and of the farce that these (pseudo) summits and conferences constitute. Things do not happen like that anywhere in the world. And anyway, it has precedents in Saudi Arabia. Such a thing already happened before a year or two, in front of the resistance of Yemen and the Yemeni people, the Saudi Foreign Minister went out to raise the morals of his supporters and announced an Islamic Military Alliance of some 30 countries. And some countries have had the courage to say “Wallah, we are not aware, nobody told us or asked, we heard that in the media.” Imagine, then, a world Islamic military alliance is being formed (supposedly) with some countries some of which are not even aware of it! And they are informed by the media. It is not new for Saudi Arabia and (it is in accordance with) its (usual) processes. Therefore, the true summit is the bipartite summit (United States / Saudi Arabia).

So much for the background. What needs to be looked at closely, critically and debated is the bipartite agreement and what has been offered to the United States, what the United States has pledged in return and the consequences of this on the region, this is what is really serious. Everything else is speeches, words, stances, dinner, ceremonies, supper, fashion show, everything you want.

Secondly, the so-called summit, which has been called a summit and for which were brought together a great number of countries, leaders and Presidents, we must ask ourselves: “Oh brother, what did happen?” We must first describe it. Why? What Saudi Arabia has organized, what is it and what is its motive?

What was organized, the objectives of this mass meeting, are first to magnify and honor Trump. What happened was an operation of glorification of Trump, it was to honor him and to incense him, with scenes that deserve to be dwelt on but that I do not want to develop now (luxury, indecency,…).

The second objective is to underline the essential role of Saudi Arabia in the Gulf and in the Arab-Islamic world. They wanted to say to the United States:

“We are the heart of the Arab-Islamic world and the Gulf. It is we who bring together all the people, who bring them in, who summon them, who put them in line so that they may listen to your speech.”

So much for the moral and political aspect, with a result that I will soon get to.

The third objective is to intimidate Iran and the Resistance Axis, by saying: “Watch out, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas” (because they have designated us by name, Hezbollah and Hamas), “O Resistance movements”, as well as the Iraqi people, Yemen, everyone, “take heed and watch out, for the United States is coming, and the whole world mass of Arab, Islamic countries and the Gulf are preparing to make war on you.” It’s intimidation. Of course, this has absolutely no weight, I will come back to it.

The fourth objective is to try to push the United States and convince them, by all means, to participate directly in the war. To bring them directly into the conflict, facing Iran and the Resistance Axis. Saudi Arabia, when it organized this whole festival, had as its main objective this one. That’s it.

Then those who had the floor made their speeches, and the Declaration was published.

The question that needs to be asked now is why the Saudis did this, and with that particular Président. Why? Let’s start with the first goal.

Why are these honors, incensing and glorification of President Trump, which has the following characteristics: the President, who for one year during the election campaign most insulted Islam as a religion, who insulted Muslims as supporters of a religion and as a Community, and who is the President who has insulted the Arabs most as a people, and who insulted Saudi Arabia and insulted the Gulf countries. Is not it the President who said that Saudi Arabia is a milking cow that must be milked to the last drop before it is disposed of? This is the most racist President. It was the first President who, when he entered the White House, signed a decree banning Muslims and nationals from 8 Arab and Islamic countries from entering the United States. It is the President most attached to Israel, the greatest supporter and ally of Israel. And it is a President who, apart from that, has done nothing yet.

(Normally), we honor someone, we cover him with gifts and we satisfy his wishes because he has achieved something positive. (If for example) he defended you, if he defended your holy places, if he did things for the Palestinian people. (But) what is Trump’s accomplishment for offering all these rewards? And it is a President sitting on a trembling chair, we do not know when it will fall. What a mess, all this money, if Trump were to be deposed! What logic, what rationality, what understanding are there at work? We are really stunned by the (extravagant) Saudi reception, the follies of the reception ceremony, the tremendous expenses (for arms sales agreements), politics and ovations.

On the Internet, someone has asked a sagacious question to Saudi leaders. He asked them: “Is honoring the Prophet and celebrating his birthday prohibited and innovative, while honoring Trump and celebrating his coming and dancing is permitted and is a way to get closer to God the Most High ?” Let us leave that aside, it is a religious dispute between us (the question of the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday). But from a political point of view, my brother, where is logic?

And this President was offered what no other American President had ever received. The question always comes back, why, why, why? I will talk about it in my fourth point. Why did Saudi Arabia do that?

I hope that [everyone understands that] I am speaking only of facts, I do not use any vehement or satirical language or anything else. I just want to describe things (as they are). And the one who says to me:

“O Sayed, what you say is not true”, no problem, (let him show his arguments).

First, it is to protect themselves. For the Saudi regime to protect itself in Saudi Arabia. To protect itself from the world. Why? Because today in the world, even in the United States, Europe and the whole world, it is no longer a secret that behind the takfiris groups and the takfiri ideology, lies the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The whole world is now aware of it. And Trump himself knows it, he had talked about it during the election campaign. The press and the American, Western and international media (have spoken of it), everyone knows. What does ISIS teach in its schools? The books of Sheikh Muhammad b. Abd-al-Wahhab, the Wahhabi books. What is Al-Qaeda’s ideology? Wahhabism. Who created it? Saudi Arabia.

And that is why the whole world today considers the Saudi regime as the heart of takfiri thought and the essential support of the takfiri organizations in the world whose oppression and knives not only strike the Lebanese, the Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis, Egyptians, Afghans and Pakistanis, but have reached Belgium, France, Great Britain, Germany, the United States and all over the world. And now Indonesia, Somalia… and they still have a long way to go. Saudi Arabia feels that the whole world looks at her angrily. That is why it needs to pay a bribe to the American master to defend it, so that it protects it, so that it presents it as a center of combat of the terrorism that leads the war against Terrorism, and to lift the accusation against it. But it will be to no avail.

Do you see how in this summit all Saudi Arabia’s care and concern was to say what? A sentence pronounced by King Salman: that Iran is the source of terrorism, the heart of international terrorism since the victory of the Khomeini Revolution, according to his words. Since the victory of the Revolution of the glorious Imam Khomeini. These grotesque remarks were pronounced by the King Salman. Iran is the heart of global terrorism? Is it Iran that created Al-Qaeda? Is it Iran that created ISIS? Is it Iran that created the Taliban? Is it Iran that created these Wahhabi movements and armies? Is it Iran that financed them and armed them?

Yes, Iran supported the movement of the Resistance in Lebanon, it is true. Iran has supported the movement of the Resistance in Palestine, it is true. Iran stood by the Iraqi people when ISIS nearly entered Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad. Iran stood with the Syrian people while Saudi Arabia was sending arms and money to these (terrorist) groups in Syria.

Iran is accused of sectarian incitement? Who therefore accuses the Shiites of being disbelievers? Who accuses other Muslims of disbelief? Iran or the Saudi Wahhabi ideology, the Council of the great Saudi scholars and their centers of religious education in Syria? The whole history of Saudi Arabia consists of accusations of disbelief against Muslims. And the whole history of Iran, from Imam Khomeini, has been the bringing together of schools (of Islamic faith), unity among Muslims, rapprochement, dialogue, coexistence, mutual support based on piety and Fear of God.
Launching the accusation against Iran will not benefit Saudi Arabia. A popular phrase says

“The sun rises and people clear their throats.”

The whole world clears its throat, for the sun has risen over all the world, and henceforth the truth cannot be hidden by a discourse here or a conference there.

First, (Saudi Arabia has done all of this) to face this global condemnation. Currently, in the United States, judicial proceedings are being instituted against Saudi princes who are linked to the September 11 attacks organized by Al-Qaeda in the United States. And billions of Saudi dollars in the US will be seized for the benefit of these families.
Secondly… Why did Saudi Arabia do all this with Trump during those two days? Because she also needs the American master to protect her role in the area. She has failed everywhere. All her plans have failed, as have all her wars and all her objectives. In Syria, she has failed so far, as well as in Iraq.

O my brothers, ISIS started in Saudi Arabia, ISIS not only has Saudi ideology, but its money is Saudi, its leaders are Saudi, and the hopes that were placed in ISIS were Saudi. That’s it.

In Yemen, two and a half years of war against a people with the spirit of sacrifice, patient and honorable, and they brought armies of the world (to participate). It is unfortunate that the Sudanese army is involved, as well as other armies. It’s really unfortunate. But for two and a half years, the Yemenis endured and resisted, stronger despite hunger, siege, poverty, and indiscriminate bombardment night and day.

And let us go back to terrorism. Is Iran the basis of terrorism or is it you? This war against Yemen is not terrorism? It is state terrorism. It is state terrorism that has spared no man, no construction, no mosque, no historical vestige, no hospital, no market, no school, no university, no house, no quarter, no field, no farm. And today… now they send some medicine to Yemen… Who is besieging Yemen? Who starves Yemen? Who is responsible for cholera in Yemen? Who massacres the people of Yemen? The Saudi regime. And the whole world is silent. The whole world that keeps silent and dares not speak a word of truth out of fear of Saudi takfir or Saudi media or the cutback of Saudi money – if they give two pennies. And it is a historic ethical and humanitarian crime that commits the world towards what is happening in Yemen.

Thus, Saudi Arabia has failed in all her plans and wars in the region, and these failures have begun to be felt within, on the relations between her princes, her people, her economy. And that is why she needs the Americans to protect it inside Saudi Arabia and preserve her role in the region. So first, to protect themselves. To protect and protect their role.

And second, there is a problem in the Saudi regime and the Saud family, and that is Iran. The praise they gave Iran before Imam Khomeini is incredible. Incredible. The Shah of Iran was an American, an Israeli, a supporter of Israel, and an arrogant and haughty behavior with the kings and princes of the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf countries. Just look at the pictures, you can find them on the Internet, they ate in his hand, and put themselves at his feet. It seems that these people are accustomed to people who mock them, insult and despise them. As for the one who comes to them as a brother, respectful, wanting dialogue, anxious about Islamic relations and the interests of the (Muslim) Community, he is received with this hatred and hostility.

The problem is the question of Iran, yes, and the question of the Resistance Axis. Saudi Arabia has offered Trump everything to wage war against Iran, to isolate Iran, to attack Iran, for the war on the Resistance Axis. That is the reality. And that is why Saudi Arabia was ready to give him everything he wanted. That is what happened. And Trump, what’s important to him? President Trump, in everything that happens in the world, what is it that matters to him? He wants money, and there is Israel. Money and Israel.

Saudi Arabia looked like that and said,

“To protect and preserve my role, and to lead the United States to fight Iran and the Resistance Axis, after all these Organizations, all these movements and all these armies, all have failed, I have no choice but to bring the Americans. Well, how can I win the favors of Americans? God, I know how to get closer to Him: prayer, Ramadan fasting, Hajj, Umrah, invocations, ziyaras (holy visits of Saints), Koran… Well, how do I get closer to Trump? By what he loves. And what he loves is money. So “Take it to satiety, O Trump. Take it to satiety.”

The media talked about $ 110 billion in contracts. After that, they talked about $ 300 billion. What is the total sum officially? The Al-Arabiya channel announced it in its drop-down strip at the bottom of the screen: 480 billion dollars of contracts and agreements with American companies. 480 billion dollars while there is austerity, poverty and an economic crisis in Saudi Arabia. All they had in money, they offered it to Trump.

What about Palestine? And that is why [Saudi Arabia declares]:

“Whatever you decide for Palestine, we agree.”

And Trump brought a letter from King Salman to Netanyahu. That’s it. “Whatever you decide for Palestine, we agree.” And that is why during the triple summit, no one said a word about the Palestinian people, nor about the prisoners on hunger strike for the 38th or 39th day, nor about the hundreds of them who were transported to hospitals as a result of deteriorating health, either on the holy sites, on Al-Quds (Jerusalem), on Gaza, or on the siege of Gaza. Any word that could have disturbed Trump on the Palestinian issue was kept silent. And God knows what they have conceded to him on the Palestinian question.

Rubbles in Palestine

We must wait to see. There is talk of a forthcoming summit in Sharm-el-Sheikh, there is talk of launching new negotiations… Taking into consideration that when Trump arrived at Netanyahu, and even when he saw President Abbas, he has not given the least positive sign to Palestinian causes, not even minimally. Not even minimally, absolutely no positive signs.

That’s it. Saudi Arabia has been given a tremendous amount of money, and Palestine is now offered on a golden plate, and all this glorification and incensing is intended to achieve these ends.

Well, what is going to happen or what can happen? And that is the most important part of the speech. Thank God, we still have a little time.

First, Iran, which was the main topic of the Riyadh Declaration. And I would like to tell you one thing… O my brother, even the words that have been spoken… For example, the Jordanian king spoke. Of course, two and a half pages (barely). He did not talk about Iran. The Egyptian President spoke. He did not talk about Iran. The Prince of Kuwait spoke, he did not talk about Iran. Only the Malaysian (President) mentioned Iran. Only the Malaysian (President) mentioned it. But was not this summit against Iran, this Declaration against Iran?! This is what Saudi Arabia wanted the leaders who were present to say, and who did not know what was going on. What is the result?
First, with regard to Iran. I will tell you what will happen.

First, with regard to Iran, while these people were gathering in Riyadh, the Iranian people renewed their confidence in the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And 42 million people took part in the elections. That is more than 73% of the people entitled to vote. And for clarification, it was presidential and municipal elections. Municipal elections in Iran. If we count only those who hold the ballot boxes, this makes 650,000 people responsible. We know how it works in Lebanon. When municipal elections are held, it cannot be done in one day throughout all Lebanon. It is done by districts. Iran, with 42 million voters, sensitive presidential elections, municipal elections even more sensitive, as is the case for us, and in spite of that, no incident has taken place, neither blows, nor shots, nor accidents of the road, nor wounded, despite all the sensitivity of the event. And Iran has elected its President, renewing its allegiance. Well, this is what Iran is.

Such is Iran that is confronted by countries that do not know the meaning of elections, nor the sense of democracy, nor do they know the electoral ballot box… If you presented them with this white ballot box, they would ask you “What’s in it, eggs, cheese or milk?” They know nothing (of all that). They would like to make war on an authentic Republic, which represents the will of its people, and whose people are so strongly present, through their declarations, their announcements, and so on.

You have tried this in the past. Saudi Arabia is the country that incited Saddam Hussein to the war against Iran, 8 years of war. They are the ones who say they paid $ 200 billion for Saddam Hussein. What was the consequence of the war for the whole region? During the past decades, Saudi Arabia has not neglected any action that could weaken Iran, it has tried everything. What could she do again? Tell me.

So much for Iran. And I tell them that Iran is increasingly powerful, formidable and influential, and the whole world recognizes it.

And as far as I’m talking about Iran, I advise Saudi Arabia… because we do not just describe, we want to give advice. Leave aside the struggle, the hatred and the war. Your only way out in the interest of all Muslims, the whole region, the Gulf countries and the peoples of the region is dialogue with Iran, negotiations with Iran, and Iran has always been ready for that. This path you will take will lead to no result, if not the expenditure of more billions of dollars, the effusion of more blood, and you will be the losers. It is you who will fail, as you have failed so far, as you have lost so far, and as Iran has won so far. This is the advice of a Muslim Arab Lebanese to a Muslim Arab state – which declares itself to belong to the name of Islam. As for this path (which you trod today), it will lead to nothing.

Secondly, in Yemen, this summit will not accelerate nor delay anything. The Yemeni people, the Islamic and patriotic leaders in Yemen, the Yemeni parties, the Yemeni army and the people’s committees are all resolved to face and resist, and so far they resisted (successfully). And all that Saudi Arabia could possibly do militarily for two and a half years, it did. All the mercenaries they could bring, they brought them. All the armies they could bring, they brought them. All they could use in air force, they used it. They besieged, plus the cholera, the hunger, the diseases, of which we have already spoken. But what is the result? A military fiasco and a political fiasco. I do not want to go into the details of southern and northern Yemen and what is happening in Aden. And that is why, as I also know, this Saudi path and the announcement of Riyadh have absolutely no weight with regard to the ongoing battle in Yemen and the resistance in Yemen.

In Iraq, the Iraqi people have made their choice. Iraqi forces are headed for the final victory in Mosul where only small quarters remain (to be liberated). The People’s Committees have finished (liberating) the al-Qayrawan area and are heading towards al-Ba’aj and will continue to all areas. In Iraq, there is a national, official, popular consensus of parties and scholars to put an end to ISIS.

In Syria, there are more victories in the field, as happens in the south of Palmyra, east of Homs and elsewhere, and more defeats and retreats for the ISIS organization.

Let me tell you that this precautionary force, the 38,000 soldiers they are preparing to fight ISIS in 2018, good for you. But God willing, in 2018, there will be no more ISIS, neither in Iraq nor in Syria, at least in our region here. That’s it.

As far as the Resistance movements are concerned, you mentioned Hezbollah and Hamas, but in fact, all Resistance movements are targeted. All those who fight the Zionists and the Occupation. I would also like to say to you: this Summit, these Declarations and these announcements will not accelerate nor delay anything at all. You have to realize that for example, Trump, the President of the United States, in his speech to the so-called summit, he praises Saudi Arabia and says that she resists and combats terrorism, and the evidence that he gave is that yesterday Saudi Arabia placed one of Hezbollah’s top leaders on the list of terrorist organizations. And (that’s it): welcome to you (in the anti-terror front)! And all the money that we [Hezbollah] have in the banks of Paris, London, the United States, Switzerland, and I don’t know where else, we give it to you with a good heart, enjoy it. Take it then (this non-existent money). But that’s part of the war.

What I want to sayto these Lebanese and Palestinian Resistant movements, whether they are called Hezbollah or any other name, Hamas or any other name, from the beginning, they know the path that they have chosen, they know the path they are trodding, and they know what they are going to face along the way. We are registered, our name is on the list of terrorist organizations since the early 1980s! So what’s new for us? (We have been under) sanctions for a very long time. The media war has been going on for a long time, decades before the Riyadh summit. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent to tarnish our reputation. What more can you say than what you have already said? (You accused us) of drug trafficking, stealing cars, terrorists, murderers and criminals. Good job, that’s good for you, what’s next? Tell us. I want to tell you, O my brothers and sisters, there is nothing new that we can fear from them. There is nothing new that we can fear from them. They are just repeating everything they have been doing over and over again for decades.

As for the movements of the Resistance, these movements of the Resistance, where were assassinated Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (Hamas), Doctor Fathi Chiqaqi (Islamic Jihad), Sayed Abbas al-Musawi and Hajj Imad Mughniyah (Hezbollah), they fear no threats of confrontation, fighting, war or death. With what can you come to us (to frighten us)? With martyrdom? We are the lovers of martyrdom! With death? “Ali is more attached to death than the suckling infant to the breast of his mother.” (Word of Imam Ali)

[At your service, O Nasrallah! (audience shouts)]

We are the children of the school advocated by Imam Hussein, peace be upon him, to his son Ali al-Akbar. (Al-Akbar) asked his father: “Are we not on the right path?” “Yes”, replied the Imam. (Al-Akbar) replied, “So little matter if we go to meet death or if death comes to meet us. As long as we are on the right track (we cannot fear death).”
As for Qasim, his 11 or 12 year old son, who is present in each of our houses, in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Bahrain, inside Saudi Arabia itself, and everywhere in the Islamic world, when asked what he thought of death (while fighting oppression), he replied: “It is more flavorful to me than honey.” Are you threatening us with this death?

We are not afraid of death, war, fighting, sanctions, intimidation or media defamation. All this, we have experienced, these means have been exhausted during all the past years. This is why the Resistance movements will not bear any impact, they will not be shaken, weakened or frightened, they will continue their action and movement.

And I’m telling you more than that. We are today, we Resistance movements and within the Resistance Axis, we are today stronger than we have ever been. We are really stronger than we have ever been, absolutely ever. We are more numerous, more experienced, more determined, our faith, hopes and aspirations are higher than ever. Indeed.

We have an example of that that I mentioned in my last speech, the day of (the anti-terrorist summit of) Sharm el-Sheikh. Those who have just met in Riyadh do not even represent half of those who were in Sharm-el-Sheikh in 1996. At the time, there were the United States, Russia, China, European countries, the Arab countries, the African countries, they came from all over the world. And they said there were three organizations they wanted to eradicate: Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And they included Iran and Syria as supporters (of these groups). And they made a conference, organized committees, and the Directors of the Intelligence services then met in Washington.

At that time, the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon was limited in resources and manpower. What we had best was Katyushas with a range of 20 kilometers. That was our maximum in 1996. Hamas and Islamic Jihad were some in prison, some in exile, some were hiding, etc. And Iran was emerging from a war and was in trouble. Syria was imposed a blockade and isolation. Despite this, the Sharm-el-Sheikh Summit and all they did, as a result of the persistence of the Resistance in Lebanon, the persistence of the Resistance in Palestine, the perseverance of Syria, Iran, everything (they schemed) was overthrown. And after a few months, the whole world forgot Sharm-el-Sheikh, after a few months (only), not after a few years.

And today, where is the Resistance Axis in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq? In 1996, Iraq was with Saddam Hussein. Today, Iraq is ruled by its people, and it is the armed forces and people’s committees that brandish its blessed flag. And Iran, and Yemen! And the same in many parts of the world. The situation is different. America at the time was something (formidable), but today it is something else. Israel at the time was something (unbeaten), but today is something else. Israel was attacking (all its neighbors at will), now it builds (defensive) walls (against Hezbollah). So it’s a different matter, the conditions are very different (today).

Axis of Resistance that is comprised of Iran, Syria and Lebanon (Source: whatsupic.com)

As far as we are concerned, I want to tell you this: take things in a truly normal and natural way. I was long in my description, but I wanted to show that this is the reality of things. To speak in a familiar way, no need toget ourselves riled up about all this, there is nothing, nothing happened (that is of concern), really. So the United States would like to be more present in the region? Good for them. The worst thing that can happen, the worst is that the Americans come to the area. But they have already come to the region, bro! They have already come. They occupied Iraq, threatened Syria, threatened Iran… And then the Iraqi Resistance and the persistence of the Resistance Axis in the region forced them to go out and withdraw. What could the United States want to do (that could frighten us)?

Today, when we are peoples in our countries who are determined to live in dignity, to remain on our lands… We have not gone to the other end of the world, (we are right) here (at home), we (only) defend our blood, our women, our honor, our property, our homes, our dignity and the future of our children and grandchildren. And that is why we are stronger than the whole world. There is absolutely nothing that frightens us. We are stronger than ever. I do not say that (our enemies) are weaker than ever, I say they have less strength than ever.

And that is why we must take things with realism, assume our responsibility and continue on our path. We will continue to call to the end of the war against Yemen, to call for an opportunity for the Yemeni to negotiate, to call for an end to the aggression against the people of Bahrain and for the opening of negotiations, for stopping the support of terrorist takfiries in the region and seeking political solutions.

As for those (Saudi Arabia), God the Almighty says about them in a Qur’anic verse: “They spend their wealth to hinder (man) from the path of God, and so will they continue to spend (until they have none left); but in the end they will have (only) regrets and sighs; at length they will be overcome” (Sura 8, verse 36).

So that your money is not wasted in vain, and your efforts are not useless and vain, you can backtrack. I know that my voice will not be heard, but I say this only to have an argument (before God: I would have tried) and for the Last Judgment Day when I will be questioned and judged. And every one of us will be held accountable for his position at this stage. Everyone will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment on Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Holy places in Palestine. And we must assume that responsibility.

O my brothers and sisters, we said in 2006, based on the victory of May 2000 and the victory of July 2006, that the time of defeats is over, and that the time for victories has come. And these victories are before our very eyes, on all battlefields and on all terrains, the bitterest battles and the most difficult terrain. But the horizon, be certain, I repeat, trust in God and place your hopes in Him, trust in yourselves, trust in your people, and trust in your allies. We have confidence in our allies. We have confidence in all those we fight with.

As for you (Saudis)… Anyway, Trump told them, he said, “It’s up to you to take responsibility, do not expect us to come and fight for you.” Yesterday, NATO… Pardon, today, its Secretary General said (It was time ! Anyway.) that NATO will participate in the war against ISIS. But what did he say? “On the other hand, we will fight only from the air, we will not participate with ground forces.” “We will not participate with ground forces.” This (Trump) on which you count, it’s been a while since he left you and sold you to the slave markets.

But in the Resistance Axis, the noble Fighters who are ready to sacrifice themselves, truthful, sincere, who have sent their loved ones to battle, who have stood firm for decades, will never leave this battlefield and never give up neither before the Riyadh summit and its summits, nor after the Riyadh summit and its meetings, speeches and statements.
This Resistance, this resilient (Muslim) Community, these Resistance movements, these resistant peoples, will continue to raise the flag (of the struggle). This flag has been brandished, and it will never fall, until it fully realizes all the victories to which our peoples and our Community aspire.

We have absolute certainty. It is the promise of God, “And the promise of God is always fulfilled.” (Verse inscribed in the background – Koran, 17, 108)

May God bless you and grant you victory, and the peace of God be upon you, and His mercy and blessings.

On Thursday, May 18, an incriminating audio recording surfaced containing the voice of current Brazilian president Michel Temer of the historically centrist, but recently turned right wing, Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party). In this recording, Temer can be heard engaging in discussions of bribery with former House speaker and fellow party member Eduardo Cunha, jailed in 2016 on corruption charges. The recording was acquired by billionaire corporate executive, Joesley Batista. Batista’s subsequent testimony, though lacking concrete evidence thus far, included accusations of bribery implicating 1829 candidates from 28 parties, including former Presidents Luís Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party) (Carta Capital, 2017). This is the latest in the Brazilian political saga following the impeachment of Dilma in 2016, an event best understood as a continuation in the regional tendency toward coup d’etat (Shipley, 2009; Gordon, Webber 2012).

As a result of the audio tape, Temer has lost whatever minimal popular and institutional support he previously had, with almost all sectors of society, including the powerful right wing media, now calling for his resignation.

Furthermore, Brazil’s top prosecutor has now opened an investigation against him on the charges of obstruction of justice, corruption and criminal organization. Lastly, the Brazilian bar association has made a formal demand of impeachment against the embattled President. This volatile political situation coincides with Brazil’s deepening economic recession, now featuring double digit unemployment, a shrinking GDP, and a flailing currency. For these reasons, it is safe to say that Temer’s days in office are numbered.

Protests Against Temer

Responding to the fragility of the Temer government, on May 19, the left organized sizable protests throughout the country, bringing together a wide range of progressive organizations and social movements under the banners of “Fora Temer” (Temer Out) and “Diretas Já” (Direct Elections Now). These mobilizations took place three weeks after a successful general strike organized by the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), Brazil’s most important labour federation. The strike was aimed at stopping the radical neoliberal reforms to labour rights (PL 6787) and social security (PEC 287) proposed by the Temer government.

Brazilians protest the institutional coup against President Dilma Rousseff and the de facto government of Michel Temer. | Photo: AFP

The latest mobilizations took place throughout the country on May 24, with the country’s capital city, Brasilia, serving as their epicenter. On this day, 200,000 people gathered in front of the Presidential Palace reiterating the movement’s central demand of direct elections. Following violent exchanges between police and protestors, including vandalising of public buildings, Temer exponentially escalated the conflict by calling in the armed forces via a Presidential decree last used in 1986. The decree immediately triggered a brawl in Congress, including exchanging accusations between Temer and many of his supporters. Nevertheless, 1500 soldiers were deployed including 200 snipers. The decree was set to remain in effect until May 31. However, due to mounting pressure, Temer revoked the decree less than 24 hours after it was invoked.

Given this political climate, the possibility of a new election in the coming weeks, either as a result of Temer’s resignation or impeachment, is growing fast. Constitutionally, this election would have to be indirect, meaning a new president would be elected by the National Congress. Although, a direct election by the electorate at large is also a possibility, this would require a constitutional amendment, implying a longer time frame of execution. In contrast to the left, the right would prefer indirect elections, as its current command of National Congress would allow it to essentially handpick Temer’s successor. However, the right does not yet have a clear candidate, and their dogmatic and, so far, unwavering commitment to a radical neoliberal program is facing growing contestation. Furthermore, with National Congress totally discredited as a result of the scope of Joesley Batista accusations, it is far from clear that indirect elections would have sufficient legitimacy.

However, the left’s situation is no less difficult than the right’s. Although Lula, the PTs best and only viable candidate, remains highly popular and recent polls show he would win an election, it is far from clear he will survive the current legal proceedings against him that form part of the anti-corruption operation known as Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash). This is particularly true now that Lava Jato, a highly partisan and right wing affair, is acquiring a veneer of non-partisanship, as the mainstream media makes a dubious association between this investigation and the one related to the Temer bribery revelations (Watts, 2017). Furthermore, because Batista’s accusations also implicate Lula and Dilma, lack of evidence not withstanding, the PT’s credibility is likely to be further undermined in the court of public opinion. In short, although the PT does have a viable candidate in Lula, ongoing legal proceedings and the PT’s diminishing credibility stand as major barriers to his political come back.

Perhaps more troubling for the left is that the PT does not have an adequate program for the current Brazilian economic context. It’s politics of class conciliation and conflict avoidance became viable during the country’s economic boom of the past decade, resulting in huge gains for capital and modest improvement for the nation’s poorest (Leiva, 2008; Anderson, 2011). However, these same politics are no longer acceptable to a now radicalized right wing looking to maintain capital’s profit margins in the context of a less favorable global economic outlook and a rapidly worsening domestic economy. Given this, what the left needs to defeat the proposed neoliberal reforms is a project of open class confrontation, a path the PT was never willing to take. Furthermore, after years of being in power, the PT paid a steep political price. As Perry Anderson (2016, p. 22) recently lamented:

“The Workers’ Party believed, after a time, that it could use the established order in Brazil to benefit the poor, without harm – indeed with help – to the rich. It did benefit the poor, as it set out to do. But once it accepted the price of entry into a diseased political system, the door closed behind it. The party itself withered, becoming an enclave in the state, without self-awareness or strategic direction…”

Given this, it would be naive to believe the PT would now suddenly be able to adopt the more radical posture the current moment demands.

Left of the PT?

Finally, the left outside of the PT remains small, confused and fragmented, featuring a recent split in the Trotskyist Partido Socialista dos Trabalhadores Unificado, and rising tensions within the pluralist Partido Socialismo e Liberdade, in both cases related to each party’s support for the impeachment processes against Dilma. Hence, if there’s any hope for the left in this conjuncture, it is in the social movement left and the possibility of them combining the militancy and creativity of the uprisings witnessed in June 2013 (Larrabure, 2013) with the maturity of the current mobilizations against Temer and the coup.

Key in this process will be the strengthening of solidarity between newer social movements, particularly the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Teto (Homeless Workers Movement), and more established movements, such as the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) and organized labour. Also crucial is that these movements prioritize the development of new forms of democratic participation and leadership that can address one of the central political problems to surface in Brazil in recent years, namely a profound crisis of representation, manifesting as a deep mistrust of all elite political parties (Larrabure, 2016). However, the development of new democratic capacities will inevitably be a slow process that, at best, will take years to unfold.

Given the weaknesses of both the left and right, what we are seeing in the current conjuncture is therefore a temporary political stalemate, as each side maneuvers in the context of a steady stream of scandals and deepening crisis. However, this is a situation the right wing is better capable of taking advantage of in the short and medium term, particularly given its control of the media. Unfortunately, what this means is that the neoliberal reforms proposed by the right wing, likely the most radical in the history of the country, will go forward, something that will have ripples across the region and will pose a direct threat to what remains of the ‘pink tide’. In other words, the stakes could hardly be higher. However, what remains unclear is who exactly will lead the passing of these reforms. What capital needs is someone with popular support, trusted and with the ability to demobilize the left. Someone of great political genius who can make neoliberal policies somewhat palatable to the working class. Someone good with words and charismatic, but perhaps also vulnerable and looking for personal revenge. Who would this person be? Your guess is as good as mine.

This is a perilous turn of events in Brazil, but it is also indicative of the wider impasse of the pink tide and left politics in Latin America. For a decade and a half, movements and left governments in much of the region put up a fierce challenge to neoliberalism. In most cases success was limited. However, in Venezuela and Bolivia it at least became possible to seriously discuss what not long ago seemed like a fairytale, namely a vision of a just and radically democratic society, a socialism for the 21st century. With the victory of the right wing in Argentina in 2015, Venezuela in crisis, and Brazil at a boiling point, the only way forward for the left in the region will be to engage in a process of deep reinvention. To do this, it will have to draw on its most democratic impulses, combating the authoritarian character of the new right. This will also mean exploring new alliances and political formations whose goal is, as Guilherme Boulos, the leader of Brazil’s Homeless Workers Movement put it, “the profound transformation of the political system” (Lirio, 2017). •

Manuel Larrabure is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California Santa Cruz. His research is on post-capitalism and social movements in 21st-century Latin America. His work has been published in a number of international journals, including Latin American Perspectives, Historical Materialism, and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies.

References

Anderson, P. (2011). “Lula’s Brazil,” London Review of Books, 33(7), 3-12.

Anderson, P. (2016). “Crisis in Brazil,” London Review of Books, 38(8), 15-22.

Leiva, F. I. (2008). Latin American neostructuralism: the contradictions of post-neoliberal development, U of Minnesota Press.

Carta Capital (2017). “O que diz a delação de Joesley Batista sobre Mantega, Lula e Dilma,” 19 May 2017.

Larrabure, M. (2013). “‘Não Nos Representam!’ A Left Beyond the Workers Party?,” The Bullet, 18 July 2013.

Larrabure, M. (2016). “The struggle for the new commons in the Brazilian free transit movement,” Studies in Political Economy, 97(2), 175-194.

Lirio, S. (2017). “Guilherme Boulos: ‘A gravidade da crise não admite arranjos’,” Carta Capital, 21 May 2017.

Shipley, T. (2009). “Honduras: The Coup That Never Happened,” The Bullet, 22 December 2009.

Watts, J. (2017). “Brazil president Temer vows not to resign as court approves investigation, The Guardian, 19 May 2017.

Webber, J. and Gordon, T. (2012). “Paraguay’s Parliamentary Coup and Ottawa’s Imperial Response,” The Bullet, 26 June 2012.

Featured image: Socialist Project

Dividing Iraq – From Op-Eds, To News, To Truth

Readers of newspapers in 2017 might not remember a time in which they haven’t read about an ongoing war in Iraq – the Iran-Iraq war persisted throughout the 80s, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the Gulf War, and ongoing US bombings reigned throughout the 90s, and the US intervention and the Iraqi civil war that followed ran throughout the first decade of the new millennia.

The imaginary of Iraq in the mind of a common reader of newspapers, Western or Middle Eastern, therefore depicts Iraq as a country in which violent conflicts are widespread, especially when fighting involves its three main ethno-sectarian groups: Iraqi Kurds, Iraqi Sunnis, and Iraqi Shiites. With regards to the internal conflict in Iraq, which has been amplified since 2006, we now talk of partitioning Iraq into three independent states, one for each ethno-sectarian group. This logic of division is however an anomaly: the Middle East has been ripped by several civil conflicts, and yet Iraq is singled out when it comes to the idea of partition. Where has this idea of dividing the sovereign state of Iraq come from? This question is the premise of my attempt to draw a timeline of the partition narrative in both Western and Middle Eastern media. My findings could ultimately help argue against partitioning Iraq, especially if the idea itself serves not the demands of the Iraqi people but foreign interests instead.

I – The First Call for Partition: by Gelb and Biden, from Washington (Post) and New York (Times).

2003

One of the earliest sources I have been able to find online in both Western and Middle Eastern media referring to Iraq’s partition narrative is penned on the 25th of November in 2003 by Leslie H. Gelb, former columnist for the New York Times. The Op-Ed for the newspaper comes months after the USA’s intervention in Iraq, and the writer proposes a “three-state” partition plan by highlighting the conflict’s cause, situation and solution.

Gelb argues that the commitment to a unified Iraq is a “fundamental flaw” because this unity is based on borders “artificially made.” Such artificiality comes in reference to Iraq’s colonial past and British-French treaties such as Sykes-Picot, which, divided the Middle East into British and French mandates after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

The correspondent also placed his proposal within the political climate of US foreign policy in 2003. The division of Iraq indeed curbed the ambitions of “troublesome and domineering Sunnis” that would be “left without oil revenues.” A unified Iraq was no longer “necessary to counter anti-American Iran.” Finally, the model of the Kurds’ autonomy showed no political repercussions since “Ankara has lived with [it].”

Finally, Gelb calls for the US to “correct the historical defect” by “mak[ing] self-governing regions with boundaries drawn as closely as possible along ethnic lines.” With such new borders, the writer believes Iraqis must be given “time [to] go to south or north Iraq,” depending on their ethnic or sectarian identity.

The deconstruction of Gelb’s arguments is necessary since his piece for the New York Times is to become the first widely read reference for subsequent media sources about partitioning Iraq. While Gelb finds historical legitimacy for his proposal with his firm claim that Iraq is “artificially made,” he fails to acknowledge that what he reveals as truth is in fact still debated among scholars today. Sara Pursley’s article for Jadaliyya, highlighting the entwined histories of the old provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra and revealing the existence of a concept of Iraq in pre-colonial times, diminishes the starting point of Gelb’s partition plan.

Gelb’s reasoning, too, is problematic, especially since he ties the narrative of dividing local Iraqis with American interests and foreign policies, which constitutes not only a limited Western view on Middle Eastern affairs but also further confuses political interests foreign to Iraq with apolitical Iraqi identities.

Finally, Gelb’s solution of re-drawing Iraq’s borders “as closely as possible along ethnic lines” and his guarantee for travelers between the southern and northern parts of the country fail to consider the danger of ethnic cleansing, inevitable as per international law in Iraq’s case with the descriptions he provides, and ignore the impracticality of such a transfer of people, as seen with the partition between India and Pakistan. The latter partition was also rooted in a sectarian divide and the lessons learned from the mass migrations entering Pakistan and India are the “many hundreds of thousands [that] never made it.”

One of the first widely read media sources about partitioning Iraq is therefore flawed and may not effectively serve as a methodical starting point to consider the division of a sovereign country. Gelb’s ideas, however, are to inspire three years later another key figure in American affairs to call once again for Iraq’s partition – Joe Biden.

2006

In an opinion piece for the Washington Post in August 2006, Biden (image below) lays out a five-point plan as a solution to Iraq’s situation.

Unlike Gelb, whom he nevertheless mentions in the beginning of his piece, Biden highlights different problems in Iraq, which give him reason and legitimacy for his plan. Such problems are the last Iraqi election, during which “90 percent of the votes went to sectarian lists,” a failed rule of law under the grip of “ethnic militias,” and “massive unemployment.”

The main goal of the plan aims to “give Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds incentives to pursue their interests peacefully” by “decentralizing” and splitting Iraq into three regions. Biden also claims his “plan is consistent with Iraq’s constitution,” and he specifies that constitutional laws already provide Iraq’s different provinces the right measures “to join together,” a claim that suggests a present will in Iraq for division.

Biden’s detailed five-point plan recognizes difficulties with partition but nevertheless fails to provide legitimate reasons for dividing Iraq. Interestingly, Biden’s concern for local Iraqi matters such as elections, the law, and unemployment, might be deemed as admirable, but the lack of contextualization of these problems reveals a naïve understanding of Iraqi affairs from the former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Indeed, although favoring sectarian lists is telling of ingrained sectarian bias among Iraqis, this way of electing is nevertheless popular in other countries with multiple sectarian groups, such as Lebanon, a country that nevertheless does not cede to partition ideas. The division of Iraq into countries, and therefore three armies, could help eradicate “ethnic militias,” but Biden’s solution comes only because the Bush administration, the one he writes to, dismantled the Iraqi army entirely.

What is therefore astonishing about Biden’s piece is its erasure of any American responsibility in Iraq’s problems; he talks about civil war, dissent, internal violence, but never contextualizes nor acknowledges the effects of American troops in Iraq. Indeed, Biden’s will to turn a blind eye on the impact of the US intervention in Iraq only three years earlier serves his portrayal of a self-destructive Iraq.

Biden’s most interesting argument, however, and perhaps the most compelling, is the Iraqi backing he finds for his plan with the example of the Iraqi constitution. A year after Biden’s piece, Reidar Visser’s “The Western Imposition of Sectarianism on Iraqi Politics” warns that

“the US administration intended to weaken Iraq by manufacturing sectarianism and encouraging schisms.”

Biden has indeed forgotten that the Iraqi constitution of 2005, “co-written by US experts,” is among such efforts pointed by Visser, notably by “open[ing] the door for the idea of federalism and a possible future division.”

The second prominent media source – also Western – is as flawed the first; Biden’s solution resonates loudly in a special context with the beginning of the US’s promised withdrawal from Iraqi soil in 2007. This event fuels not only Americans’ rush into fixing Iraq before departure, but also their plan for its partition, a rush effectively demonstrated with a cluster of Western media sources following Biden’s piece, between 2006 and 2007, which, finally, have equivalent Middle Eastern media sources about dividing Iraq.

II – Partition In Motion: From Op-Eds to News

On September 6, 2006, the New York Times published “Shiites Push Laws to Define How to Divide Iraqi Regions” a news piece about new efforts by Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, a Shia political leader, to call for division in Iraq. This call by the political leader had been covered by Iraqi media Buratha News Agency a month earlier, on August 6, with a news piece entitled in Arabic “An increase in voices backing Al Hakim’s call for establishing provinces of center and south Iraq.”

The contrast between these two corresponding articles is interesting. The New York Times reporter dwells significantly on the tensions between Sunnis and Shias, including a history of the conflict between the two, and a supposed ongoing debate about dividing the country. The “anger[ed] Sunnis,” “sectarian executions,” “crimes of rape and murder,” and “perpetual oil shortage” are few of the many images the article draws upon to find hope in Hakim’s call to “breaking the country into autonomous regions.”

Interestingly, the Buratha news piece about the same call for division does not share the same perspective as its Western equivalent. Indeed, while the New York Times places on a pedestal the idea of division, or at least, for the time being, federalism, Buratha news is unable to define this idea of breaking up the country. It chooses to use the word “province” instead of “federal state” for its title, and when it does bring forth the word of “federalism” in Arabic – only through Al Hakim’s tongue – it makes sure to highlight immediately after that “federalism does not whatsoever imply division.” The Iraqi news does recap the war-torn state of Iraq, but instead of using this premise to justify dividing Iraq, as the New York Times has done, it finds in Hakim’s call a “temporary” solution.

The careful tone in the Buratha news piece therefore, in contrast, exposes the zeal found in the New York Times with the idea of dividing Iraq. In fact, the Buratha piece acknowledges the newness of the concept of federalism, “which Iraqis are trying to educate themselves about,” and this contrast comes as no surprise because federalism is after all a concept born in the West, and the New York Times fails to see the impracticality of applying federalism (or complete division, which it seems to be rooting for) in Iraq’s case.

The Western media’s failure is once again one of perspective, assumptions and over-assurance, which becomes dangerous because we are now dealing with news pieces and not Op-Eds. According to the Time magazine in November 2006, the division of Iraq “has already happened.” The wheels of division are indeed already in motion, at least in the perspective of Western media, which reports about Iraq’s conflict from a supposed ‘objective’ distance, and which continues in 2007 with a new set of articles about division, ones that will now not only echo Middle Eastern media but stir them, as well.

2007

On September 26, 2007, Joe Biden’s plan to divide Iraq, published in 2006, and inspired by Gelb’s piece of 2003, was presented to the Senate for approval – and received it. The endorsement was covered by both the Washington Post and Al Jazeera, on the same day. The comparison between these two news pieces is once again telling of the disparity in interests and direction between Western and Middle Eastern media.

The Washington Post reports the endorsement as a success, a “rare bipartisan consensus,” a “political settlement for Iraq that would divide the country.” The newspaper guarantees, once again, that the structure of Biden’s plan is “spelled out in Iraq’s constitution.” Finally, without dwelling on the importance of the division for taming Iraq’s political turmoil, the piece focuses on why Americans “can’t walk away from Iraq” and make “all [their] sacrifices irrelevant.” It describes the endorsement as a “significant milestone.”

The Al Jazeera news piece is very interesting in contrast with its American equivalent. The title of the piece, in fact, is telling, “The Plan to Divide Iraq – Non-Binding but Coming.” Indeed, the distance found in the title reflects the narration of the news piece; whereas a reader of US media would assume to find the same zeal about partition in Middle Eastern media, supposedly a “significant milestone,” there is no mention whatsoever in the source of the importance of the plan or its relevance for Iraq. The Al Jazeera reporter dwells on how important the resolution is for American politics, notably the revealed division among Republicans “because interestingly 26 Republican Senators voted against the endorsement,” or what effect the endorsement has for “Biden’s plan for running for office.” Interestingly, at the end of the piece, the writer includes a recap of the Bush administration’s work in Iraq, especially how the administration, under Paul Bremer, “sought to create a ‘new Iraq’ on a sectarian basis.” The Al Jazeera piece, notably, does not acknowledge whether Bush’s efforts to manufacture sectarianism has been effective or influential in dividing the country. The word ‘partition,’ in fact, is only written when reporting about the Senate’s endorsement.

It is eye-opening to observe that Western media has hailed the approved plan to divide Iraq as a “significant milestone” whereas Middle Eastern media, once again, is not even lucid of the practicality of any division of the kind. But while we could infer about Al Jazeera’s distance from the partition narrative in its description of its impact on American politics, not Iraqi, an article on Al Arabiya published four days later reveals a bigger disparity between Western and Middle Eastern media, and between Western and Middle Eastern politics. The title of the piece comes indeed as no surprise… “Only Kurds Support U.S. Partition Idea.” What was a diplomatic “The Plan to Divide Iraq” for Al Jazeera has indeed become, after Al Arabiya’s referral to “leading Sunni and Shia authorities” about the idea of dividing Iraq, which they rejected, a truly foreign “US Partition Idea.”

III – Partition Complete: From News to Truth

2014

The year 2014 marks the rise of two terms recurrently used in both Western and Middle Eastern media in relation to Iraq: ISIS and division. This paper has indeed showed that the former is not the cause of the latter, given the (short) history of the partition narrative, but the rise of ISIS has nevertheless influenced talks for dividing Iraq. In July 2014, a month after ISIS’s invasion of Mosul, in Iraq, CNN published, with no hesitation, the news piece entitled “Iraq to split into three: So why not?”

Regardless of the firm tone of the title, it is the content of the article that is critical. Indeed, the CNN piece, after ISIS’s capture of Mosul and their earlier proclamation of an Islamic State across the Syrian-Iraqi border in January 2014, lays out all the arguments for dividing the country, and it comes as no surprise that they have mentioned “Gelb’s Op-Ed” and “Biden’s plan” – from which they get credence. CNN dwells on the geo-politics of Iraq, and how ISIS is now re-drawing the borders of Iraq, but it is the final sentence of the news piece that becomes the centerpiece of their arguments for a divided Iraq:

“Some historians argue that Iraq was never really a country anyway, more a colonial confection like British India, and we are now seeing the inevitable consequences.”

Despite my contestation of the many arguments for the partition of Iraq, whether they related to the practicality of re-drawing borders, the (un)popularity of the narrative among Iraqis, or the artificiality of the state of Iraq, the fatalistic tone of CNN’s piece is more powerful, especially with their use of the artificial state narrative, which makes the co-existence between Iraqis a case that wasn’t meant to be, an unnatural unity weak at its core.

“Iraq has gone beyond the point of keeping Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds under one roof,” claims the reporter for the Huffington Post, in a piece published in the summer of 2014, a month apart from the CNN article.

Indeed, a general consensus of the intolerance of Iraqis has been reached among Western media, and what makes this consensus even more dangerous vibrates in the title of the Huffington Post article: “Why It’s Time For Iraq to Split Into Three Countries.” The shocking aspect of this title is not the resolve of the tone, but truly the way it ignores the carefulness of past media sources to qualify the division of Iraq – there are no references of ‘regions,’ or ‘semi-autonomous states,’ nor ‘autonomous federal states,’ as I have noted in previous articles. This jump from regions to countries could well be a mistake or exaggeration from the newspaper, but nevertheless a crucial one.

The crucial repercussions of Western news pieces in relation to Iraq’s division, from the CNN and Huffington Post, or early on with the New York Times and the Washington Post, lie not only in how they influence Iraq’s imaginary for the American reader but also how they critically influence Middle Eastern media and their perception of Iraq.

In June 2016, Al Jazeera published the news piece about Masrour Barzani’s call for “dividing Iraq after defeating ISIS”. The prominent member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party has been vocal about partition talks, which, as noted in Al Arabiya’s piece in 2007, had been exclusive to Iraqi Kurds.

But, Al Jazeera, surprisingly, marks a shift in this perception with the claim in the article that the Kurds’ dream for independence is also shared by a “majority of Shiites since disposing of Saddam Hussein in 2003.” Furthermore, the comparison of Al Jazeera’s headlines between 2007 and 2016 is telling of this odd shift in partition discourses: we have jumped in 2007-2010 from Al Jazeera articles such as “Dividing Iraq in America’s Mind,” “(Shia) Tribes in South Iraq Reject Partition and Demand End of Occupation,” and “Rejecting The Establishment of a Sunni Region,” to 2016 with, somehow, a “majority of Shiites” demanding independence.

One could argue that the shift noted above simply reflects one author’s view, and not those of many at the news agency. That said, a search of the terms “Dividing Iraq” (in Arabic) on Google Trends proves otherwise. The online tool tracks the popularity of Google searches across time by quantifying the results on a scale of 0 to 100; a value of 100 represents the peak popularity for the term and a score of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak. The results for “Dividing Iraq” in Arabic are compelling: the scores for the period 2004-2007 fluctuate between 0 and 39, for 2008-2014 from 0 and 23 and, for 2014, from 5 to 68, and for 2015, remarkably, from 8 and 100. The results not only prove that the idea of dividing Iraq was not at all popular among Arabic-speaking Google users, but they also reflect how the same idea suddenly trended in the years after 2014 among more and more Arabic-speaking Google users, who are in many numbers people living in the Middle East – and follow news agencies like Al Jazeera. The rise of ISIS in 2014 could explain the interest of Middle Easterners in the division of Iraq, but what we cannot disregard about such interest is its sudden nature. Indeed, how is the turmoil caused by ISIS since 2014 any different than the rise of sectarian conflict in 2006 and 2007, a time in which Middle Eastern media such as Al Jazeera, and Arabic-speaking Middle Easterners, did not seem at all interested in partition ideas about Iraq?

A few years, evidently, could not have been enough to shift the Shia’s or Sunni’s consciousness of a united Iraq – for decades, even centuries, the Abbasids, the Ottomans and the British persisted and failed at this endeavor. But what such empires lacked in their efforts to ‘divide and conquer’ is a strong press that influences the perception of states, from without and within. It is precisely in this way of changing perception, from Gelb and Biden’s Op-Eds, to Western then Middle Eastern news headlines, to universal and fatal truth, that the US has found perhaps the greatest weapon of mass destruction in Iraq.

Conclusion

The timeline I have drawn is in no way representative of the ethno-sectarian divide between Iraqis. The findings, after all, are superficial in that they are Op-Eds and news articles written in offices far away from Iraq’s conflict. But then again these headlines find importance in that superficiality – readers from the US and the Middle East can only observe the Iraqi conflict from the surface of headlines, news articles and opinion pieces. As a result, when Gelb and Biden, from 2003 to 2006, have depicted Iraq as the ailing mother of Jacob and Esau, a country in which its own sons irreconcilably fight, their depiction, as flawed and misconstrued and bias as it is, becomes an image engraved in the consciousness of their readers. When the US media exhausts its entire arsenal of presses, from the New York Times, to the Washington Post, to the Time Magazine, to CNN, to the Huffington Post, their blow against the nature of the Iraqi state and the relations between Iraqis is bound to echo with as much resonance in the studios of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. This echo is after all the danger of the westernized society we have reached; a journalist in Iraq speaking a foreign language, often, is considered more credible than one speaking the same mother tongue as the fighters in conflict. The aim of this paper, however, is not to see whether or not the US intently sought to ingrain the idea of partition in Iraqis. The evolution of the partition narrative, indeed, highlights the incredible power of media not politics in shaping the fate of states and people. This power should be regarded as much as a curse as a blessing, perhaps because one can find through the mythmaking process of dividing Iraq the reverse way back to unity.

Rayyan Dabbous is a Lebanese author and playwright. He is the writer of Bad Men (Arab Scientific Publishers, 2015) and writer-director of Up For Grabs America (Medicine Show Theatre, 2017). His research at New York University focuses on communication in media and entertainment industries, particularly in the Middle East.

References

Gelb, Leslie H. “The Three-State Solution.” The New York Times. 23 November 2003.

Pursley, Sara. “Lines Drawn on an Empty Map: Iraq’s Borders and the Legend of the Artificial State.” Jadaliyya. June 02 2015.

Biden, Joe. “A Plan to Hold Iraq Together.” The Washington Post. 24 August 2006.

Al-Rawi, Ahmed K. Media Practice in Iraq. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

Oppel Jr, Richard A. “Shiites Push Laws to Define How to Divide Iraqi Regions.” The New York Times. 6 September 2006.

“Tasaod Al-aswat fi Taiyid Daawat Al-Sayed Abd El-Hakim Biikamat Iklim Alwasat wa Al-Janoub.” Buratha News Agency. 6 August 2006.

Galbraith, Peter W. “The Case For Dividing Iraq.” The Time Magazine. 5 November 2006.

Murray, Shailagh. “Senate Endorses Plan To Divide Iraq.” The Washington Post. 26 September 2007.

Aloush, Ibrahim. “Khotat Takskim AlIraq.” Al Jazeera. 26 September 2007.

“Only Kurds Support US partition idea.” Al-Arabiya. 30 September 2007.

Nuri, Ayub. “Why It’s Time For Iraq To Split Into Three Countries.” Huffington Post. 16 June 2014.

Lister, Tim. “Iraq to split in three: So why not?” CNN. 8 July 2014.

“Al-Barzani Yadou Ila Taksim AlIraq Baad Alkadaa Ala Tanzim Al-Dawla.” Al Jazeera. 16 June 2016.

“Taksim Al-Iraq Fi Alfekr Al-Ameriki.” Al Jazeera. 28 September 2007.

“Ashaer Janoubi AlIraq Tarfod Altaksim Wa Toutaleb BiInsihab AlIhtilal.” Al Jazeera. 8 December 2007.

“Rafd 3irai LiInshaa Iklim AlSunna.” Al Jazeera. 28 November 2010.

Darlymple, Williams. “The Great Divide.” The New Yorker. 18 February 2015.

Memorial Day, May 29th, is his birthday. He died defending his country. A true war hero, a naval officer, he risked his life to save his men. Like so many we should remember on Memorial Day, he goes before us as an exemplar of courage, real patriotism, and a witness to war’s brutality.

But remembering all the war dead is like drifting on a ghost ship in a still sea of burning water. Haunted by the eerie silence of their absent presence, if we listen closely enough, we can hear such victims calling to us: Remember me, Remember me, why did it have to be?

“All warfare is ghostly,” writes Norman O. Brown, “every army an exercitus feralis (a funereal exercise), every soldier a living corpse.”

The world is littered with the corpses of war’s victims, those of the killers and the killed, soldiers of every nation – but the vast majority are innocent civilians who never picked up a gun.  The earth is so saturated with all their blood that one would expect the rivers to run red as a reminder. But that only happens in poems, as with Federico Garcia Lorca:

“Beneath all the totals, a river of warm blood.”

Russian soldier, in his foxhole. Stalingrad. (Source: The Greanville Post)

But what do poets know that the potentates, politicians, and mad generals don’t?  These killers are experts at shedding innocent blood to satisfy their blood lust and then erecting monuments to the killers.  They are necrophiliacs, while all the poets do is to remind us that we will all die and that we should affirm life and love each other before we do – that war is an evil lie, as Wilfred Owen told us:

  If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

            Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

            And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

            His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

            If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

            Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

            Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

            Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

            My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

            To children ardent for some desperate glory,

             The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

             Pro patria mori.

But that was long ago.  War’s victims still fall everywhere, every day they are stilled in deserts, mountains, jungles, cities, houses, hospitals, schools, on the open roads, in bedrooms, in woods, in alleyways, crouched  in basements, killed from the sky, the ground, directly, remotely, by their own desperate hands, slowly in despair.  Why count the ways, why count the victims – the truth is countless.

American casualty, Vietnam. (Source: The Greanville Post)

Yet we can remember a few that we know of and weep. Victims dead and victims alive.

There is that naval officer whose birthday I mentioned.  He survived the south Pacific and Indonesian jungles only to die by enemy fire in an open car on a street in Dallas, Texas.  Let us celebrate and mourn President John F. Kennedy, who would have been 100 years old today, while remembering how hard he fought for peace that the killers within his own government, led by the CIA, didn’t want then and don’t want now.  So they shot him down “over here,” just as the U.S. war machine keeps killing millions “over there.”  George M. Cohan was right: “The Yanks are coming.”  They are always coming, but he was wrong to think it is ever over.  It’s not supposed to be ever over. 

Because he knew the horror of war and grasped the systemic evil of its proponents in his own government, John Kennedy grew out of the war machine – in James Douglass’s words from JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters, when he was assassinated, JFK “was turning, Teshuvah, ‘turning,’ the rabbinic word for repentance,” against war and toward peace as his actions in the last year of his life make clear.  As a result, the “unspeakable” deep state forces murdered him.  But as a military veteran, his courage in turning against the war machine has inspired many other honorable veterans to do the same. 

Like others who followed Kennedy – MLK, RFK, et al. – he died in his own country as a soldier in a non-violent “war” for peace and reconciliation for all people across the world. His enemies were here at home.

And “over there,” Maha Khalil, a one year old Iraqi girl, was killed in the first few months of America’s criminal war against Iraq.  Mrs. Ngugen Thi Tau was slaughtered by U. S. soldiers at My Lai, Vietnam.  Who knows all the dead in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, East Timor, Indonesia, Cambodia, El Salvador, etc?  Who can grasp it? Their names mean nothing to those who didn’t know them, just as the endless names of the U.S. military dead (most drafted into a war they didn’t want or understand) that line the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are a sad blur to those who come to look but didn’t know the fallen.  The same is even truer for anyone who views the Holocaust memorial in Boston where all one sees are rows and rows of concentration camp numbers; for every number a real person, each one reduced by the Nazis to seven-digits tattooed on arms.  When we try to name and count war’s victims, we are overwhelmed and stunned.  Yet the wars persist.  Like the pawns conscripted to fight them, the anonymous ghosts of all the victims murmur in our ears: Why?

Dylan sings:

Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And the land that I live in
Has God on its side.

But not all of war’s victim’s die.  Vast numbers become “living corpses,” also mostly anonymous and forsaken. Across the world wherever the American war machine has set its sights, the lame and crippled struggle on, victims of bombs and bullets, napalm and white phosphorous, nuclear radiation, small pox – all the grotesque weapons the ghouls of the weapons’ industry have conjured up from hell for their paymasters.  Countless living victims, yes, but the weapons industries carefully count their bloody profits, as do those who invest in these companies while turning a blind eye to their own complicity.

And the innocent, too, in great numbers. (My Lai massacre, Vietnam). (Source: The Greanville Post)

Many of the wounds of war are psychological and spiritual.  And so many of the victims suffer silently.   Often misused and abused by their own government, they suffer (to paraphrase Douglass Valentine in his book , The Hotel Tacloban, a son’s riveting tale of his combat veteran father’s haunting by war) “in an anguish so profound and so abiding that they live in torment ever after.”  War’s terrors follow them everywhere down their nights and down their days, and they can often find no escape from the nightmare images that populate their minds, flashing in and out.  It’s beyond imagining the living hell of children worldwide reliving the sight of the bloodied mangled bodies of their parents at their feet, victims of bombs or death squads or perhaps “collateral damage,” as if any words or reasons could undue their everlasting trauma.

We owe it the wounded, dead, and tormented war victims everywhere to memorialize them with the words: 

War is a lie, and only truth will free us.

Then we must devote ourselves to ending war.  Each of us is responsible.

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

Featured image: The Greanville Post

While Americans endlessly battle each other over seemingly important choices like Clinton and Trump or Democrats and Republicans, it is clear that the majority of the population has little understanding of how the U.S. government operates. Yet, for those who pay the price for the apathy and confusion of the general population of the West, it often becomes stunningly obvious that neither presidents nor political parties in America represent any discernible difference in the ongoing agenda of the Deep State and the rest of the oligarchical apparatus. Indeed, that agenda always marches forward regardless of who is president or which political party is in control.

Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad has thus had the unique position of not only being on the receiving end of American imperialism by virtue of not only being a citizen of a target country but also by being the head of the country, steeped in politics in his own right and thus understanding how certain factors come into play at the national level.

With that in mind, it is worth pointing out a recent statement made by Assad during the course of an interview regarding the opinion of the Syrian government on Donald Trump. Assad stated,

The American President has no policies. There are policies drawn by the American institutions which control the American regime which are the intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, the big arms and oil companies, and financial institutions, in addition to some other lobbies which influence American decision-making. The American President merely implements these policies, and the evidence is that when Trump tried to move on a different track, during and after his election campaign, he couldn’t. He came under a ferocious attack. As we have seen in the past few week, he changed his rhetoric completely and subjected himself to the terms of the deep American state, or the deep American regime. That’s why it is unrealistic and a complete waste of time to make an assessment of the American President’s foreign policy, for he might say something; but he ultimately does what these institutions dictate to him. This is not new. This has been ongoing American policy for decades.

Assad also addressed the Western media’s portrayal of him as a “devil” who kills and oppresses his own people. He stated,

Yes, from a Western perspective, you are now sitting with the devil. This is how they market it in the West. But this is always the case when a state, a government, or an individual do not subjugate themselves to their interests, and do not work for their interests against the interests of their people. These have been the Western colonial demands throughout history. They say that this evil person is killing the good people. Okay, if he is killing the good people, who have been supporting him for the past six years? Neither Russia, nor Iran, nor any friendly state can support an individual at the expense of the people. This is impossible. If he is killing the people, how come the people support him? This is the contradictory Western narrative; and that’s why we shouldn’t waste our time on Western narratives because they have been full of lies throughout history, and not something new.

When asked about the allegations made by the United States that the Syrian government has retained some stocks of chemical weapons, Assad responded by saying,

You and I remember well what happened in 2003, when Colin Powell showed the world in the United Nations what he claimed to be the evidence which proves that President Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, nuclear, and other weapons. However, when the American forces invaded Iraq, it was proven that all he said was a lie. Powell himself admitted that the American intelligence agencies deceived him with that false evidence. That wasn’t the first nor will it be the last time. This means that if you want to be a politician in the United States, you have to be a genuine liar. This is what characterizes American politicians: they lie on a daily basis, and say something and do something different. That’s why we shouldn’t believe what the Pentagon, or any other American institution says, because they say things which serve their policies, not things which reflect reality and the facts on the ground.

One can scarcely argue with Assad’s portrayal of the U.S. government and the position of the presidency in 2017. After all, Donald Trump campaigned on keeping America out of foreign wars and the affairs of other countries as well as the WW3 policy of Hillary Clinton. However, not even four months into his presidency, Trump launched 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria and the United States struck a Syrian military convoy en route to liberate the southeast of the country from terrorists only days ago. The Trump administration has repeatedly pushed the envelope even further in Syria and provoked fears that the U.S. aggression in the region and in Asia could result in a confrontation with a nuclear power much in the same way that Hillary Clinton advocated for during the campaign.

While Americans remain more divided than ever and as they ceaselessly argue over which party and political figurehead is better, the war machine marches onward not only in Syria but also in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. If Americans are not capable of understanding that there is more to the system in which they live than two pathetic political parties and clownish presidential personalities, that war machine will march itself clear across the globe until it comes back home.

The transcript of the interview with Bashar al-Assad is included below in this article. Assad addresses the United States involvement in the Syrian crisis, the Israeli role, and the attempt to destabilize Venezuela.

teleSUR (TS): Mr. President, thank you for receiving us.

President Bashar al-Assad (BA): I welcome you and teleSUR TV in Syria. You are welcome.

TS: Let’s start directly with the latest developments. Russia has warned that there might be other alleged chemical attacks. What are the precautionary measures that Syria has taken in order to prevent that?

BA: First of all, terrorists have used chemical materials more than once in the past several years and in more than one region throughout Syria. We have asked the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to send specialized missions to investigate what happened. And every time, the United States obstructed these investigations or prevented sending such missions in order to carry out such investigations. This is what happened last week when we called for investigations over the alleged use of chemical weapons in the town of Khan Sheikhoun. The United States and its allies prevented OPCW from taking that decision. As far as we are concerned, we still insist on an investigation, and we and our Russian and Iranian allies are trying to persuade OPCW to send a team to investigate what happened, because if it doesn’t, the United States might repeat the same charade by fabricating the use of false chemical weapons in another place in Syria in order to justify military intervention in support of the terrorists. On the other hand, we continue to fight the terrorists, because we know that the objective of all these American and Western allegations concerning chemical weapons is to support terrorists in Syria. That’s why we will continue to fight these terrorists.

TS: But the Pentagon says that Syria has chemical weapons. Is it true that Syria has kept one percent of the weapons it has committed itself to hand over and destroy four years ago?

BA: You and I remember well what happened in 2003, when Colin Powell showed the world in the United Nations what he claimed to be the evidence which proves that President Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, nuclear, and other weapons. However, when the American forces invaded Iraq, it was proven that all he said was a lie. Powell himself admitted that the American intelligence agencies deceived him with that false evidence. That wasn’t the first nor will it be the last time. This means that if you want to be a politician in the United States, you have to be a genuine liar. This is what characterizes American politicians: they lie on a daily basis, and say something and do something different. That’s why we shouldn’t believe what the Pentagon, or any other American institution says, because they say things which serve their policies, not things which reflect reality and the facts on the ground.

TS: What is the objective behind Syria’s desire to acquire the latest generation of anti-missile systems from Russia?

BA: We are already in a state of war with Israel; and Israel has been committing aggressions on the Arab states surrounding it since its creation in 1948. So, it’s natural that we should have such systems. However, the terrorists, acting on Israeli, American, Turkish, Qatari, and Saudi instructions have destroyed some of these systems. And it is natural for us to negotiate with the Russians now with a view to strengthening these systems, whether to face any Israeli threats from the air or the threats of American missiles. That has become a real possibility after the recent American aggression on al-Shairat airbase in Syria.

TS: What is the role that Israel, in particular, has played in this war against Syria? We know that Israeli attacks against the positions of the Syrian Arab Army have continued in recent weeks.

BA: It is playing this role in different forms; first, by direct aggression, particularly by using warplanes, artillery, or missiles against Syrian Army positions. Second, it is supporting terrorists in two ways: first by providing direct support in the form of weapons, and second by providing logistic support, i.e. allowing them to conduct military exercises in the areas it controls. It also provides them with medical assistance in its hospitals. These are not mere claims or assumptions. They are facts, verified and published on the internet which you can easily access as proven evidence of the Israeli role in support of the terrorists in Syria.

TS: How do you assess the current policy of Donald Trump in the world, and in Syria in particular?

BA: The American President has no policies. There are policies drawn by the American institutions which control the American regime which are the intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, the big arms and oil companies, and financial institutions, in addition to some other lobbies which influence American decision-making. The American President merely implements these policies, and the evidence is that when Trump tried to move on a different track, during and after his election campaign, he couldn’t. He came under a ferocious attack. As we have seen in the past few week, he changed his rhetoric completely and subjected himself to the terms of the deep American state, or the deep American regime. That’s why it is unrealistic and a complete waste of time to make an assessment of the American President’s foreign policy, for he might say something; but he ultimately does what these institutions dictate to him. This is not new. This has been ongoing American policy for decades.

TS: The American administration has opened a new front now with North Korea. Is it possible that this will affect the current American approach towards Syria?

BA: No, the United States always seeks to control all the states of the world without exception. It does not accept allies, regardless of whether they are developed states as those in the Western bloc, or other states of the world. Every state should be an American satellite. That is why what is happening to Syria, to Korea, to Iran, to Russia, and maybe to Venezuela now, aims at re-imposing American hegemony on the world, because they believe that this hegemony is under threat now, which consequently threatens the interests of American economic and political elites.

TS: Russia’s role in the Syrian conflict is very clear; but what is the role of China, this other great global power?

BA: There is great cooperation with Russia and China in terms of political action or political positions. Viewpoints are similar, and there is cooperation in the Security Council. As you know, the United States and its allies have tried several times to use the Security Council in order to legitimize the role of the terrorists in Syria and to legitimize their role in the illegitimate and aggressive intervention in Syria. That’s why Russia and China stood together, and China’s role, with the Russian role, was essential in this regard.

Moreover, some of the terrorists are Chinese nationals who came to Syria through Turkey. They pose a threat to us in Syria, but they pose an equal threat to China. China is aware of the fact that terrorism in any place in the world moves to any other place; and consequently, whether these terrorists are of Chinese or any other nationality, they might return to China and strike there as they have done in Europe, in Russia, and in Syria. We are now cooperating with China on security issues.

TS: Western and American media talk now about moderate terrorists and extremist terrorists. In reality, is there a difference between the two groups?

BA: For them, a moderate terrorist is that who carries out acts of beheading and slaughter but without carrying al-Qaeda flag, or without saying “Allah Akbar,” while an extremist terrorist is that who carries the flag and says Allah Akbar when carrying out acts of beheading and slaughter. This is the only difference. For the United States, all those who serve its political agenda against other states are classified as moderate opposition and not as extremist and terrorist, even if they commit the worst acts of terrorism. They are freedom fighters and not fighters in the cause of destruction and sabotage.

TS: There have been six years of war in Syria. What is Syria’s position now, particularly in the absence of statistics about human losses?

BA: The most painful loss in any war is human loss, the suffering which is inflicted any family when it loses one of its members; for the whole family is scarred for life. This is the natural feeling in a region like ours, where family ties are very strong. Nothing compensates that loss, and nothing exceeds the pain it causes. There are of course huge economic and infrastructure losses, but this infrastructure has been built for a little over 50 years by Syrian hands, not foreign hands. And we have the capacity to rebuild this infrastructure. The same goes for the economy, for the Syrian economy is based on Syrian capabilities first and foremost; and our economic ties with the West have always been limited. When the war is over, it will all be rebuilt. We do not have a problem with that. It is true that it takes time, but it is not impossible. So, the greatest and most painful loss for Syria is the human loss.

TS: Of the 86 states constituting the alliance waging war on Syria, are there any that would take part in the process of reconstruction?

BA: No, of course not. First of all, they do not want to rebuild Syria, but some companies in those countries, if they see that the wheel of the economy and rebuilding has started to turn, and since they are opportunists, they are certainly prepared to come and have a share of rebuilding Syria in order to make money. The Syrian people will certainly not accept this. All the states which stood against the Syrian people and took part in the destruction and sabotage will never take part in rebuilding Syria. That is final.

TS: But how was life during these past six years in this besieged country?

BA: Life has certainly been tough to every Syrian citizen. The terrorists have destroyed the infrastructure. In certain areas, electricity is on for one or two hours, and there are areas in which there’s no electricity at all. There are areas in which electricity has been cut off for more than two or three years. People don’t know television, children do not go to school, there are no medical clinics or hospitals, and nobody treats the ill. They live a prehistoric existence thanks to the terrorists. There are areas which did not have water for years, like what happened in Aleppo, which did not have water for many long years. Sometimes, they use polluted water for drinking, washing up, and other purposes. Life has been very tough.

TS: One of the main targets during these years has been the person of Bashar al-Assad. Have you ever felt fear during these years?

BA: When you are in the middle of the war, you do not feel fear. I believe this is something common to all people. But you have a general concern for the homeland; for what is the value of being safe, as an individual, as a citizen, while the country is under threat? You cannot feel safe. I believe that the feeling we have in Syria in general is concern for the future of Syria rather than personal fear. The evidence is that mortar shells fall anywhere, on any house; nevertheless, you see that life continues in Syria. The will to life is much stronger than personal fear. As a President, I take strength from the feelings of the general public, not from my personal feelings. I do not live in isolation from the others.

TS: Western media have been waging a media campaign against you. Am I sitting now with this devil portrayed by the media?

BA: Yes, from a Western perspective, you are now sitting with the devil. This is how they market it in the West. But this is always the case when a state, a government, or an individual do not subjugate themselves to their interests, and do not work for their interests against the interests of their people. These have been the Western colonial demands throughout history. They say that this evil person is killing the good people. Okay, if he is killing the good people, who have been supporting him for the past six years? Neither Russia, nor Iran, nor any friendly state can support an individual at the expense of the people. This is impossible. If he is killing the people, how come the people support him? This is the contradictory Western narrative; and that’s why we shouldn’t waste our time on Western narratives because they have been full of lies throughout history, and not something new.

TS: What can Syria, too, do in order to put an end to this war ahead of the sixth round of Geneva talks?

BA: We said that there are two axes: the first is fighting the terrorists; and this is not subject to any discussion, and we don’t have any other choice in dealing with the terrorists except fighting them. The other axis, the political one, includes two points: first, dialogue with the different political forces over the future of Syria; and second: local reconciliations, in the sense that we negotiate with the terrorists in a certain village or city, depending on each case separately. The objective of this reconciliation is for them to lay down their weapons and receive an amnesty from the state, and consequently return to their normal life. This approach has been implemented during the past three or four years, has succeeded, and is ongoing now. These are the axes which we can work on in order to find a solution to the Syrian crisis.

TS: From the perspective of a country in a state of war, how do you see the situation in Latin America, particularly in Venezuela, where a number of acts very similar to those which caused the conflict in Syria have emerged?

BA: Of course, they should be similar, because the party planning and implementing these acts is the same. It is the United States as a maestro and the Western states constituting the choir. Latin America in general, and Venezuela in particular, used to be the backyard of the United States for decades. Through that backyard, Western states, particularly North America, or the United States, used to secure their economic interests through the influence of the big companies in your countries. Military or political coups in Latin America during the 1960s and the 1970s aimed at perpetuating American hegemony over the interests of your people. But Latin America freed itself during the past twenty years and gained its independent decision-making. Governments started defending the interests of their peoples, which is unacceptable to the United States. That’s why they are exploiting what’s happening in the world, starting with the orange revolution in Ukraine up to the recent coup there a few years ago, and what is taking place in the Arab countries, in Libya, Syria, Yemen and others, in order to implement it in Latin America. They started in Venezuela with the objective of overthrowing the national government, and it will spread over to other Latin American countries.

TS: Some people, particularly ordinary citizens in Latin America, think that a scenario similar to what’s happening in Syria could be repeated in Latin America. What do you think?

BA: This is true. That’s why I say since the party planning and implementing is the same, it’s natural that the scenario is not only similar, but identical. Some local elements might be different. In Syria, they said in the beginning that there were peaceful demonstrations, but in fact, when these peaceful demonstrations did not spread wide enough, they implanted individuals who fired on both sides, on the police and the demonstrations, and there were casualties. They started to say that the state is killing the people, and this scenario is being repeated everywhere. The same scenario will be repeated in Venezuela. That’s why the Venezuelan people have to be very careful. There is a difference between opposing the government and being against the homeland, a huge difference. On the other hand, no foreign state can be more concerned about Venezuela’s interests than the Venezuelan people themselves. Do not believe the West, for it’s not concerned either about human rights or about the interests of states. It is only concerned about the interests of part of the governing elites in its countries. And these governing elites are not necessarily politicians, they are economic companies too.

TS: I’m talking about Latin America, Venezuela, the Bolivarian Revolution which was your strong ally. How do you remember the late Hugo Chavez?

BA: President Chavez was a world-class distinguished personality. When we talk about Latin America, we immediately remember the late President Chavez and the late leader Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban Revolution. They are distinguished personalities who changed the face of Latin America. But of course the leader I knew personally and whom I met more than once and had a personal relationship with was President Chavez, when he visited us in Syria and I visited him in Venezuela. He visited us twice. When you meet him, you can tell that he is the son of the people. You do not feel that you are meeting a president or a politician, but a person who lived the suffering of his people. Everything he said, and every minute of his time, was about the details related to the people of his country. And when he talked with a head of another state, or an official from another state, he always thought of how to create common interests which reflect positively on his people. He was a real and strongly charismatic leader. And he was an extremely genuine person.

TS: They demonized Chavez before; and it is clear that it is Nicolas Maduro’s turn now.

BA: Of course, as long as President Maduro is walking the same patriotic line, the line of Venezuela’s independence, and acting in the best interest of his country’s people, it is natural that he should be the first target of the United States. This is self-evident.

TS: How does Bashar al-Assad envision the end of the war?

BA: Today, foreign intervention in Syria aside, the problem is not complicated, for the majority of the Syrians are tired of the war and want a solution. They want to return to safety and stability. There is a dialogue between us as Syrians, there are meetings, and people live with each other, i.e. there is no real barrier. The problem now is that with every step we make towards a solution and regaining stability, the terrorist gangs receive more money and weapons in order to blow the situation up. That’s why I can say that the solution should be stopping outside support to the terrorists. As far as we are concerned in Syria, reconciliation among all Syrians, and forgetting and forgiving all that happened in the past throughout this war, is the way to restore safety to Syria. Rest assured that Syria will be then much stronger than it was before the war.

TS: Are you prepared to have reconciliation with those who carried arms against the Syrian people?

BA: Of course, and this has actually happened in many and different places, and some of them have fought side by side with the Syrian Army, some fell martyrs, and some returned to their cities and live in the part under government control. We don’t have a problem. Tolerance is essential to end any war. And we are proceeding on that track.

TS: Mr. President, what is your message to Latin America and the world?

BA: Keep your independence. We, in the Arab region, are celebrating independence in more than one country. But this independence used to mean, in a number of countries in the region, the mere evacuation of occupying forces. But real independence happens when you are in possession of your national decision-making. For us, Latin America was a model of independence, in the sense that occupiers were evacuated, in case there were foreign forces, but at the same time there was national decision-making, openness, and democracy. You provided the world with an important model. So, keep it, because if the countries of the third and developing world wanted to develop, they should follow the model implemented in Latin America.

TS: Mr. President, thank you for giving teleSUR this interview, and thank you for your precious time and all the information that you have provided.

BA: Thank you for coming, and once again I welcome you in Damascus.

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

Featured image: Activist Post

Mayhem broke out across the southern Philippine city of Marawi where militants besieged it and hoisted flags of the so-called “Islamic State.” Located on the southern island of Mindanao, the city is only slightly removed from Al Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayyaf’s primary area of operation on nearby Jolo and Basilan islands.

The UK Independent in an article titled, “Isis-linked militants take priest and churchgoers hostage in Philippines,” would report:

President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in the south because of the militants’ siege on the city on Tuesday and abandoned a trip to Russia to deal with the crisis. 

Mr Duterte vowed to place southern Mindanao island, where Marawi is situated, and its 22 million residents under military rule for up to a year if necessary.

The article would also report:

Troops are battling to contain dozens of militants from the Maute group, which pledged allegiance to Isis in 2015, after they escaped a botched security raid on a hideout and overran streets, bridges and buildings. 

Two soldiers and a police officer are among those killed and at least 12 people have been wounded in the violence, seeing Maute fighters set fire to a school, a church and a prison. 

The security crisis represents a seemingly inexplicable expansion of the Islamic State in Asia – even as the US and its allies claim the organization is being rolled back across the Middle East and its revenue streams are contracting in the wake of defeat.

US-Saudi Sponsored Terrorism Seeks to Coerce Asia 

Both the Maute group and Abu Sayyaf are extensions of Al Qaeda’s global terror network, propped up by state sponsorship from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and fed recruits via a global network of likewise Saudi and Qatari funded “madrassas.” (koranic schools) In turn, Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s state sponsorship of global terrorism for decades has been actively enabled by material and political support provided by the United States.

In this March 7, 2016 file photo, soldiers from the Philippine Marines capture a camp believed held by the local terror ISIS-inspired clan, the Maute Group, in Lanao del Sur (FILE PHOTO BY JEOFFREY MAITEM / INQUIRER MINDANAO)

This arrangement provides for Washington both a global mercenary force with which to wage proxy wars when conventional and direct military force cannot be used, and a pretext for direct US military intervention when proxy warfare fails to achieve Washington’s objectives.

This formula has been used in Afghanistan in the 1980s to successfully expel the Soviet Union, in 2011 to overthrow the Libyan government, and is currently being used in Syria where both proxy war and direct US military intervention is being applied.

Maute and Abu Sayaff activity fits into this global pattern perfectly.

The Philippines is one of many Southeast Asian states that has incrementally shifted from traditional alliances and dependency on the United States to regional neighbors including China, as well as Eurasian states including Russia.

The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, cutting short his meeting with Russia is a microcosm of the very sort of results Maute and Abu Sayyaf are tasked with achieving in the Philippines. Attempts by the US to justify the presence of its troops in the Philippines as part of a wider strategy of encircling China with US military installations across Asia would also greatly benefit from the Islamic State “suddenly spreading” across the island nation.

Likewise, violence in Malaysia and Thailand are directly linked to this wider US-Saudi alliance, with violence erupting at each and every crucial juncture as the US is incrementally pushed out of the region. Indonesia has likewise suffered violence at the hands of the Islamic State, and even Myanmar is being threatened by Saudi-funded terrorism seeking to leverage and expand the ongoing Rohingya humanitarian crisis.

That US-Saudi sponsorship drives this terrorism, not the meager revenue streams of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, goes far in explaining why the terrorist organization is capable of such bold attacks in Southeast Asia even as Russia and Iranian backed Syrian troops extinguish it in the Middle East.

US-Saudi Links to Abu Sayyaf and other Terrorists in the Philippines 

A US diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks dated 2005 would state:

Philippine officials noted their continuing concern about Saudi-origin terrorist financing coming into the Philippines under the cover of donations to mosques, orphanages, and madrassahs. Although three Saudi nationals suspected of being couriers had been detained on separate occasions, Saudi Ambassador Wali had intervened in each case to secure their release.

Yousaf Butt of the Washington-based US National Defense University would reveal in a Huffington Post article titled, “How Saudi Wahhabism Is the Fountainhead of Islamist Terrorism,” that:

It would be troublesome but perhaps acceptable for the House of Saud to promote the intolerant and extremist Wahhabi creed just domestically. But, unfortunately, for decades the Saudis have also lavishly financed its propagation abroad. Exact numbers are not known, but it is thought that more than $100 billion have been spent on exporting fanatical Wahhabism to various much poorer Muslim nations worldwide over the past three decades. It might well be twice that number. By comparison, the Soviets spent about $7 billion spreading communism worldwide in the 70 years from 1921 and 1991.

The leaked cable and reports by Western analysts when taken together, reveal that Saudi-funded madrasas in the Philippines are directly fueling terrorism there.

The answer to why is simple.

For the same purposes the US used Saudi-funded terrorism in Afghanistan in the 1980s and in Libya and Syria beginning in 2011 – the US is using Saudi-funded terrorism to coerce the government of the Philippines amid Washington’s faltering “pivot to Asia” which began under US President Barrack Obama and now continues under President Trump.

Countering US-Saudi Sponsored Terrorism 

With US President Trump announcing a US-Saudi alliance against terrorism – the US has managed to strategically misdirect public attention away from global terrorism’s very epicenter and protect America’s premier intermediaries in fueling that terrorism around the world.

The Philippines would be unwise to turn to this “alliance” for help in fighting terrorism both the US and Saudi Arabia are directly and intentionally fueling.

Instead – for Southeast Asia – joint counter-terrorism efforts together and with China and Russia would ensure a coordinated and effective means of confronting this threat on multiple levels.

By exposing the US-Saudi role in regional terrorism – each and every act of terrorism and militancy would be linked directly to and subsequently taint the US and Saudi Arabia in the hearts and minds of Southeast Asia’s population.

This paves the way for a process of exposing and dismantling US-Saudi funded fronts – including Saudi-sponsored madrasas and US-funded NGOs – both  of which feed into regional extremism and political subversion. As this unfolds, each respective nation would be required to invest in genuine local institutions to fill sociopolitical and economic space previously occupied by these foreign funded fronts.

Until then, Asia should expect the US and its Saudi partners to continue leveraging terrorism against the region. If unchecked, Asia should likewise expect the same progress-arresting instability that has mired the Middle East and North Africa for decades.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image: New Eastern Outlook

This article was initially published prior to the Manchester terror attack on May 22, 2017

Within hours of the launch of the Tory manifesto, the Conservative lead over Labour in the polls was slashed by half. The Tories are in a crisis over their “dementia tax” bombshell, which is a direct attack on the aged and sick, the most vulnerable sections of society. Another manifesto pledge, to axe free school lunches, provoked widespread uproar after a report found it could hit 900,000 pupils. Out of desperation, there has been a feeble attempted U-turn on the “dementia tax”, with promises of some kind of cap. But this is too little too late. Welcome back to the Nasty Party!

The political ground has begun to shift. Consequently, within a single week, Labour’s support jumped by 8 percentage points. With the polls narrowing, Labour has everything to play for. This has set the “nerves jangling in Tory high command”, says the Tory-supporting Sunday Times.

A minister said May should “quickly change the subject from the manifesto — a lot of which is a kick in the teeth for voters”.

The now rattled “stable and strong” Theresa May herself tweeted:

“If I lose just six seats I will lose this election.”

Labour gathers momentum

The Sunday Times admitted:

“Labour’s standing is at its highest since the last general election, suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn’s unashamed socialist pitch is connecting with a growing number of voters.”

Absolutely spot on. Labour has at last got wind in its sails.

“For the first time in my life, we are beginning to hear policies that resonate with our daily lives”, said Stan Webster, a retired teacher from Wigan, who attended a Corbyn rally along with his wife.

This captures the real excitement that has been generated by Labour’s most left-wing manifesto for generations. Young people, in particular, have been enthused and are signing up in droves to vote for Corbyn’s Labour.

The abolition of tuition fees; renationalisation of rail, mail, water and intervention in the utilities; a £10 an hour minimum wage; 100,000 new council houses a year; more bank holidays; an end to zero-hour contracts: all these and much more will certainly transform the lives of millions of people.

In the build up to election day, Labour’s campaign to boot out the Tories is certainly gathering momentum.

Labour’s enemies are clearly alarmed about what is being offered. According to the Financial Times, the mouthpiece of finance capital,

“The leaked manifesto confirms they want a socialist revolution…”

Although that would be very welcome, Labour is certainly offering, if not a socialist revolution, a radical alternative and a clean break from the Blair & Brown years of so-called New Labour.

Cutting through the lies

The vicious campaign by the Tory media and press against Jeremy Corbyn and Labour is not surprising. The newspapers are owned by tax-avoiding billionaires and will always back the establishment. However, their attacks are losing their effect and Labour’s message is getting through to more and more people.

Despite a concerted and coordinated effort by the Tories, the right-wing press, and the Blairites to discredit Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader and his campaign are cutting through the web of lies and slanders by appealing directly to workers and youth on the basis of mass rallies and a bold and radical programme.

As Socialist Appeal has suggested from the start, a left-wing programme involving mass meetings and mass grassroots campaigning is the way forward. This is the only way to circumvent the Tory media and speak directly to workers and youth.

The effect has been amazing. Everywhere Jeremy has gone he has been met by mass crowds of thousands and growing enthusiasm. In Leeds, for example, despite the rain, more than 3,000 gathered expectantly outside of a workers’ social club, filling the building, the carpark and the road outside for hundreds of metres, all to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak. Spectacularly, they came together at only one day’s notice, with the news spread by word of mouth. On a beach in West Derby, an astonishing 5,000 people turned out to hear Corbyn.

A highlight was Corbyn addressing a concert at the Tranmere Rovers’ football ground, where he attacked the wealth of the Premier League clubs. In response, the Labour leader was greeted with a rock star’s reception, with cheering from the rafters and the crowd chanting his name.

The audience was overwhelmingly of youth and students. This is a real testament to the radicalisation of young people, who are sick and tired of business-as-usual, and desperate for a break with the status quo.

It is therefore no accident that nearly 1.5 million young people (under 35s) have registered to vote, not to mention the mass of grassroots campaigners going door-to-door on the streets.

We are within striking distance of defeating the Tories and electing the most left-wing Labour government in generations. We must go all-out to win this election.

Vote for Labour! Fight for socialism!

Jeremy Corbyn’s critics on the right-wing of the Labour Party have been largely silenced. They are currently keeping their heads down. But behind the scenes they have not given up their plan to remove Corbyn and bring back Blairism.

Simon Heffer, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, recently revealed that old Blairites were gathering support and money to organise right-wing Labour MPs as a separate party in parliament, or even to split away. Even Tony Blair has hinted he will lead it.

“The breakaway will come, and it will be far more seismic than the formation of the SDP in 1981”, states Heffer. “But it will have to come soon, if a reformed, moderate party is to have any chance of being credible by 2022.”

Whatever happens on 8th June, we have unfinished business in clearing out the Blairite careerists and transforming the Labour Party into a real socialist party.

We need to learn the lessons of the past. If we are going to overcome the sabotage that will face a Labour government and generate the resources needed to carry through Labour’s programme fully, we will need to put an end to this rigged capitalist economy.

You can’t plan what you don’t control and you don’t control what you don’t own. A Labour government must take over the commanding heights of the economy, the major monopolies and banks, under workers’ control and management. We should not compensate these parasites who have bled us dry. We must introduce a socialist plan of production that will raise living standards and generate the wealth that will pay for the reforms that are badly needed. There is no other road for the workers and youth of Britain.

Such a socialist transformation would be a beacon to workers everywhere to follow suit.

In the meantime, we must ratchet up the campaign against the Tories, mobilising and organising the strength of the entire Corbyn movement in order to deliver a mortal blow to May and her billionaire government.

 

Featured image: In Defence of Marxism

As much as I am revolted by this subject, I feel impelled to tackle it head-on, as I believe it to be the single most important issue of our time, underlying the current malaise permeating almost every aspect of British party politics and deeply afflicting life on this planet as a whole. 

Now that’s an extreme statement, but by the time you read to the end of this article, I believe you will not be able to refute the substance of my assertion.

The fact that the United Kingdom is in the throws of a general election, should serve to focus minds. It had better, because to ignore the plight of the nation at this critical moment, is the surest way to capitulate to outright slavery.

Whereas to examine, analyze, explore and expose the undercurrent of deeply deceitful lies being perpetrated upon the electorate, is to play a key role in helping to liberate, not just UK citizens, but mankind as a whole, from the forces of slavery. Yes, this is a global phenomenon and must be understood as such.

By way of ending this introduction, I feel bound to state that the great majority of evidence suggests that, within UK politics, the “Satanic factor” is most prevalent within Conservative party high command. Underlined by its squandering of the democratic process in favor of dictatorship by a largely bloodless and deeply corrupted pseudo-elite.

Fear Is the Key

At the top of the list of all “Satanic procedures” (diabolical procedures)  for mass public indoctrination, is ‘fear’. To keep a nation in a permanent state of stress and fear provides the fuel which both the seen and unseen forces of evil need so as to maintain their powers of oppression over others.

‘Terrorism’ is the ace card of the political fear pack. The relentless perpetuation of the notion that basic civil liberties must be sacrificed in exchange for ‘protection’ from terrorism, opens the way for the full imposition of a police state. Although most can’t see it, we are right in the midst of such an imposition today.

Next comes the replacement of human thinking by technologies that ‘do your thinking for you’. This is a sure way to create sterile automatons out of red-blooded human beings. It enables the powers that be to take a controlling influence over all sentient people and dictate the outcome of every last detail, concerning the day to day functioning of human society.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and Transhumanist movements that promote it, see a computer programmed mind as superior to the natural mind. They see such technology as man’s ‘salvation’; claiming that by 2030 computer driven artificial thought creation will take over as ‘the new intelligence’. It is of note that governments throughout the world show little interest in countering this agenda.

Mass Surveillance 

The Conservative party has been quick to capitalize on this usurping of human liberty by computer science, by welcoming the development of ‘smart technologies’ in all areas of domestic and military life. You understand of course, the ‘smartware’ does the thinking for you; you plug yourself into a programme, designed by the equivalent of laboratory technicians, who specialize in playing with and ‘inverting’ the human mind for ends that lead into an abyss of truly vast proportions. Such uses of cutting edge technology are highly symptomatic of the Satanic agenda: posses, control, enslave.

Engineers developed a billboard, Next Generation Digital Signage Solution, that uses built in cameras to instantly identify a shopper’s age and gender. (Source: The Telegraph)

All this is relentlessly accompanied, under current and previous political regimes, by mass public surveillance programmes, largely conducted from GCHQ, that have already broken all the rules carefully put in place during previous decades, when individual civil liberties were held to be at the core of the democratic process.

Now no one today is free from being subjected to highly invasive monitoring by police forces, banks and corporations, building-up vast files of highly sensitive information on every aspect of citizens’ lives.  I suggest that this has now exceeded the ‘Big Brother’ central control predicted by George Orwell in his seminal work ‘1984’. Smart technology is the latest silent weapon of war, one eagerly sought after by the super indoctrinated masses.

Moving away from technology for a moment, let’s examine another and more recent exercise in attacking the fundamental fabric of what constitutes a healthy society. This this time via an attempt to undermine the foundation of natural procreation and family life as we know it: the ‘gender bending/gender ending’* agenda,  now being covertly pushed forward by the British government. This also goes under the monica ‘gender neutral’. What it is proposing is that sexuality somehow imposes a block on the freedom of individuals to decide for themselves what gender, if any, they are. The ultimate narcissism?

The Neutering of Humanity 

In promoting this truly bizarre notion amongst the young of both sexes, the aim appears to be to undermine their sense of who they are, at the most basic level possible. Not only undermine, but deliberately distort and abort, the very building blocks of life itself: sexuality and procreation. As exposed by The excellent UK Column*, hundreds of schools in the UK are already encouraging their pupils to explore this agenda and act according to their ‘feelings’. At Highgate School in London, for example, the board is currently looking at plans for pupils to have a ‘gender neutral’ uniform.

Many will no doubt just laugh; but this is no joke. One needs to use one’s full faculties of awareness to penetrate what’s going on here. The covert attempt to neuter the natural instincts and desires associated with reproduction/procreation, via a mass propaganda exercise designed to re-set the sexual agenda, is perhaps the ultimate tool in the Satanic tool box. It is designed to render humanity sterile and play a substantial role in the infamous ‘depopulation agenda’ so beloved of the secret society networks, such as the Bilderbergers. We need to understand this and act on our understanding. We must help save young people from a life of confusion, misery and control.

The psychology of slavery to a powerful central controlling body, has long since been a powerful opiate; one that gives the illusion of releasing the individual from having to take responsibility for his/her life. Passing instead that role over to the established authority of the day. It’s called Fascism.

Fascism is always tied-in with mass propaganda and mind control. It always involves the media being fully under the (editorial) control of the established authority, as it is today.

It uses the waging of war on foreign countries and engaging in endless military exploits, as the key  diversionary tactic on keeping public focus on what appear to be ‘heroic exploits’ and the defeat, or relentless demonization (Russia), of what are held to be ruthless despotic regimes.

But in reality, it is, itself,  the despotic regime it accuses others of being. It is the number one terrorist organization that heads the entire show, deliberately provoking those it chooses to attack into sporadic acts of desperate retaliation. A diabolic slight of hand which, unbelievably, continues to fool millions and millions who follow state and corporate controlled media with a completely uncritical mindset.

Fascism Laid Bare

The truth is always reversed in Fascism. Hitler reversed the design of the Swastika from its original, an ancient Eastern symbol of peace. It is done to satisfy the cold blooded ambition of what amounts to ultimately taking control over life on Earth, in all spheres. Satanic agenda: posses, control, enslave.

In the context of ever unfolding new angles on the same theme, let’s look at the introduction of the ‘driverless car’ as yet another example of the usurping of our human propensity to manage our destinies. The driverless car is something the Conservative party says it will go all out to make a mass reality by 2022.

UK’s autonomous vehicle development (Source: Autocar)

A driverless car? What is this? Why would anybody have any interest in such a ludicrous notion. One of the few pleasures left to an increasingly constricted humanity is to be able to use four wheels an engine and some brakes to get from A to B, using one’s own judgment, skill and sense of purpose. But no, we are told that such abilities are largely redundant and not in the long term interests of society. One should abandon them in favor of letting a satellite drive your car for you; so you can sit in what was the drivers seat, playing with your smart phone and watching other satellite controlled cars glide past on their phantom like journeys. All of which you can already do on a train, of course.

But no, the government must be right, mustn’t it. After all, it knows best that if you can relieve the public of their human faculties of judgment, skill and coordination, then you can exert ever greater control over them.

Is it not blindingly obvious what’s going on here? Is it not crystal clear that this is just one more deliberate deletion of sentient human beings God given capacity to control their destinies and to take a creative approach to the life which we are gifted from birth. Nobody, but nobody, has the right to steal that life from you and I, for their own ends or any ends. Satanic agenda: posses, control, enslave.

GMO

The science, state and corporate controlled think-tanks and laboratories, came-up decades ago, with the idea that the DNA of life could and should be genetically modified; so as to respond only to human command and by-pass nature. So we got GMO, genetically modified organisms, and growing food crops, whose genes have been laboratory engineered to accept heavy doses of carcinogenic pesticides, and not die.

Never mind that all other green matter in the field withers away to nothing, the only thing that matters to these psychopathic ‘scientists’ is that their patented crop remains standing and is consumed by man, animals, birds and insects, whose lives will then be observed to see what happens to their health and welfare. Not for nothing were GM products labeled Frankenstein Foods.

Source: True Activist

And true to form, the present government, as well as its predecessors, stand completely behind this chilling form of mass ecocide – and ultimately genocide. Readers surely don’t need any further prompting to see the truth. All the examples in this article (and they only represent the tip of the iceberg) have just one end: the total control of life on earth by less than human entities possessed by forces that can only be called ‘anti-life’.

Forces that stand at the opposite end of the spectrum from love, compassion, empathy and joy. Entities that do not feel or respond to these great gifts of life. Entities that will go to any and all lengths to achieve their ends; to possess and nullify that which is ultimately un-possessible; the innate creativity of universal consciousness, the supremacy of creation over desolation.

The Delusion of Omnipotence

But their tragic grand delusion is, that they believe they can. And never forget, these are the people who are running this country and most of the world. Their citadels are the City of London, Washington DC and the Vatican, all of which, uniquely, operate as separate countries with their own police force, tax laws (none) and corporate status.

The infamous big-chiefs of banking, are prime examples of those utterly possessed by such materialistic megalomania; covertly – and indeed overtly –  carving up the world.

Such global bankers and corporate CEO’s collude with government, the global trading blocks (European Union /NAFTA /Pacific Rim), the military industrial complex, the secret societies and the phony global institutions that set corporate approved ‘standards’ for trade, health, energy, food and so forth. They are all party to the same ‘anti-life’ agenda.

So are the social media giants Google, Facebook et al, who collude in the information gathering process which aims to get every living person on this planet on their record books.

Heroes of the Resistance

Heroic figures, who have suffered under such regimes, yet dared to speak out about deliberate police and government attempts to hide the facts, have been put under appalling pressures not to reveal the full extent of the criminal behavior that is taking place. One such victim, Malanie Shaw, herself a victim of physical abuse, has suffered solitary confinement in a Northumberland prison for attempting to expose the truth about who stands behind these heinous crimes against humanity.

It is largely thanks to the work of the UK Column journal and internet  news site – and its supporters – that Melanie has now been moved to a prison where she can, at least, mix with other inmates.

There are many others like her struggling to get the truth out. Melanie Shaw’s jailer in Prime Minister Theresa May. Melanie’s knowledge is dynamite. She was imprisoned under no recognized charge. If her full story should get out and be accompanied by thousands of other unabridged horror stories still buried under the stinking carpets of a mass cover-up, this government would instantly be brought to its knees and life in Britain would start the long slow process of recovery towards that which resembles a human society.

Those children who have led what is called ‘a normal life’ and have escaped being physically brutalized, have nevertheless been psychologically brutalized by being given open access (by parents and teachers alike) to mind numbing video war games designed to kill-off all subtle sensibilities before they ever get a chance to develop. In other words, to ready the child for a world of violence, greed and chaos.

No better are the sickly TV programmes pouring out their poisoned agenda and mind numbingly superficial ‘game shows’; including over-sexed or sexless pop icons performing their sinister ritualistic and emotionless routines, in front of thousands of adoring fans. Satanic agenda: possess, control, enslave.

I have not enjoyed writing all this, but I wish to play my part on behalf of truth and I very much want my readership to do the same. I have only taken you a small way into the rabbit warren of deception, corruption and outright lies that appear to be hallmark of ‘the new normal’ within political institutions during these extraordinary times.

Britain, of the fair and ancient British Isles, is a country bathed in great beauty of nature and populated by many, many thoughtful caring and generous people. Those demonic beings described in this article, represent a very small minority, likely less than 1%. But their quasi-hypnotic influence extends into all avenues of society.

We must save our country from them and bring her back to life. Indeed, citizens of every country must explore and expose the deeply ingrained ills at the heart of their nations. It is all our duties to put heart and soul into this unprecedented mission. No one who has reverence for life can stand aside and let this torment continue indefinitely into the future.

We are gifted with the courage necessary to face this, our darkest hour, with full confidence of victory. Use this courage now and never look back.

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK Organic farming, a writer, actor, social entrepreneur and international activist. During the 1970’s he worked in experimental theatre as actor and assistant director, co-founding the The Institute for Creative Development, in Belgium, teaching holistic thinking and dramatic art.  In the 1980’s he returned to the UK to take over the family farm and convert it to an organic system. His experience helped him to a leadership role in reviving rural economies.  During the 1990’s, he was  invited to join the advisory board of the South East of England Development Agency, and the Country Land Owners Association. He also served on the Oxfordshire Economic Partnership and was founder-chairman of The Association of Rural Businesses in his home county of Oxfordshire. In 2,000 he led an innovative project to revive regionally important market towns as hubs of vibrant local activity and rejuvenated local food initiatives.

Julian is a prolific writer and broadcaster, his articles appear in a wide diversity of journals and on-line sites. Visit www.julianrose.info  to find out about Julian’s highly diverse life and acclaimed books ‘Changing Course for Life’ and ‘In Defence of Life’.

Notes

*http://www.julianrose.info/2017/02/the-gender-ending-agenda/

**http://www.ukcolumn.org/

Author’s Note

This article entitled the Criminalization of the State first published by Global Research in February 2004 examines the relationship between terrorist attacks (resulting in the tragic loss of life) and the transition in Western countries towards a totalitarian police State.  The article –which focusses on the role of a “massive casualty producing event”– is of particular relevance to an understanding of the terror attacks in Paris (January and November 2015), Brussels (March 2016), Nice (July 2016), Berlin (December 2016), Manchester (May 2017). According to Stephen Lendman:

“UK police state laws already are some of Europe’s most draconian before Monday’s Manchester blast, including the 2005 Prevention of Terrorism Act, eviscerating longstanding legal protections.

Perhaps tougher legislation is coming. Following an emergency meeting, Prime Minister Theresa May acted as expected – elevating Britain’s threat level from severe to critical.

Claiming another attack “may be imminent” is part of her fear-mongering strategy, an effort to convince Brits they’ll be safer by sacrificing fundamental freedoms.

“Massive Casualty Producing Events”

Former CENTCOM Commander, General Tommy Franks predicted in a 2003 interview with cynical accuracy a scenario, which would result in the repeal of civil liberties and the installation of a de facto totalitarian state:

“a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world … that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event.”1

A “massive casualty producing event” as described by General Franks will invariably result in a campaign of fear and intimidation, “creating a useful wave of indignation” (Operation Northwoods).  In turn, politicians in high office will use the tragic loss of life as a justification for the implementation of sweeping police state measures including the enactment of martial law.  

Flash Forward to Paris, November 13, 2015 and Brussels March 22, 2016.

The above scenario accurately describes  the tragic “massive casualty producing event” in Paris, depicted by France’s media as “Le 11 septembre à la française” (9/11 French Style).  

Announced in a midnight speech (local time) by the French president, the November 13 terrorist attacks were immediately followed by the enactment of a State of Emergency, the closing of France’s borders and the suspension of civil liberties as a means — according to president François Hollande– to safeguarding democratic values.  

In this context, the tragic loss of life was used by the Hollande government (with the support of the media) to harness the public into accepting the implementation of police state measures in the interest of French Republic, namely protecting France’s national security against an illusive self-proclaimed “Islamic State” based in Northern Syria. 

Is this the end of the French Republic?

Similarly in Brussels, the tragic loss of life is being used to justify drastic police state measures. Critical analysis is repealed. Within hours of the attacks, the European media went into overdrive.

Berlin, December 2016

In Berlin, according to a scanty political investigation, the Christmas terror attack was allegedly perpetrated on behalf of the Islamic State (ISIS), which happens to be a creation of US intelligence, covertly supported by several Western countries and their Middle East allies. 

It is worth noting that the release of the Hillary Clinton email archive as well as leaked Pentagon documents confirm that the US and its allies are supportive of ISIS, which according to European press reports, were the alleged architects of the Brussels as well as Berlin terror attacks.

Moreover, a  7-page Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document dated August of 2012, points to US complicity in supporting the creation of an Islamic State.(Excerpt below)

The governments of the countries whose citizens are the victims of terror attacks are supporting ISIS-Daesh.

“You are either with us or with the terrorists”, said George W. Bush in an address to the US Congress in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Western leaders are so to speak “with themselves as well as with the terrorists”.

Most people in Western countries are unaware that their own governments  are supporting and funding the terrorists.

When France provides (covert) military aid to both the Libya Islamic fighting Group (LIFG) and ISIS-Daesh in Syria, does this not suggest that the French government might at some future date be “held accountable” for the terror attacks in Paris and Nice (allegedly carried out by the ISIS), which have resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians?

Germany sells large amounts of weapons to Turkey and Saudi Arabia which in turn provide military aid to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Does this not signify –to put it mildly– that Angela Merkel’s government should take “some responsibility” for the Berlin terror attack allegedly conducted by ISIS-Daesh?

Combating ISIS on the one hand, Supporting ISIS on the other hand? A criminal undertaking.

Western Governments are State Sponsors of Terrorism

Despite the evidence, it is very difficult for people to accept the fact that their own government is supporting terrorism.

Most people will dispel this as an impossibility. But it is the forbidden truth.

The established consensus is that the role of a government is to protect its people. That myth has to be sustained.

The media’s role is to ensure that the truth does not trickle down to the broader public.

If that were to occur, the legitimacy of Obama, Hollande, Merkel, et al would collapse like a house of cards.

Michel Chossudovsky, December 26, 2016, updated May 25, 2017

*     *     *

The Criminalization of the State

by Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, February 3, 2004

America’s leaders in Washington and Wall Street firmly believe in the righteousness of war and authoritarian forms of government as a means to “safeguarding democratic values”.

According to Homeland Security “the near-term attacks will either rival or exceed the 9/11 attacks”.

An actual “terrorist attack” on American soil would lead to the suspension of civilian government and the establishment of martial law. In the words of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge: “If we go to Red [code alert]… it basically shuts down the country,”

“You ask, ‘Is it serious?’ Yes, you bet your life. People don’t do that unless it’s a serious situation.” (Donald Rumsfeld)

The “Criminalization of the State”, is when war criminals legitimately occupy positions of authority, which enable them to decide “who are the criminals”, when in fact they are the criminals.

A terrorist attack on American soil of the size and nature of September 11, would lead —according to former CENTCOM Commander, General Tommy Franks– to the downfall of democracy in America. In an interview last December, which was barely mentioned in the US media, General Franks outlined with cynical accuracy a scenario, which would result in the suspension of the Constitution and the installation of military rule in America:

a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event.1

Franks was alluding to a so-called “Pearl Harbor type event” which would be used to galvanise US public opinion in support of a military government and police state. The “terrorist massive casualty-producing event” is presented by General Franks as a crucial political turning point. The resulting crisis and social turmoil is intended to facilitate a major shift in US political, social and institutional structures.

It is important to understand that General Franks was not giving a personal opinion on this issue. His statement very much reflects the dominant viewpoint both in the Pentagon and the Homeland Security department as to how events might unfold in the case of a national emergency.

The statement comes from a man who has been actively involved in military and intelligence planning at the highest levels. In other words, the “militarisation of our country” is an ongoing operational assumption. It is part of the broader “Washington consensus”. It identifies the Bush administration’s “roadmap” of war and Homeland defense.

The “war on terrorism” which constitutes the cornerstone of Bush’s national security doctrine, provides the required justification for repealing the Rule of Law, ultimately with a view to “preserving civil liberties”. In the words of David Rockefeller:

We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order. 2

A similar statement, which no doubt reflects a consensus within the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), was made by former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book, The Grand Chessboard:

As America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstances of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.”]

Similarly, the NeoCons’ Project for the New American Century (PNAC), published in September 2000, barely a few months before George W. Bush’s accession to the White House, called for:

some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor. 3

What is terrifying in these assertions is that they emanate from the architects of US foreign policy. In other words, America’s leaders in Washington and Wall Street firmly believe in the righteousness of war and authoritarian forms of government as a means to “safeguarding democratic values”.

The repeal of democracy is portrayed as a means to providing “domestic security” and upholding civil liberties. Truth is falsehood and falsehood is truth. Realities are turned upside down. Acts of war are heralded as “humanitarian interventions” geared towards upholding democracy. Military occupation and the killing of civilians are presented as “peace-keeping operations.”

This dominant viewpoint is also shared by the mainstream media, which constitutes the cornerstone of the propaganda and disinformation campaign. Any attempt by antiwar critics to reveal the lies underlying these statements is defined as a “criminal act”.

In other words, the “Criminalization of the State”, is when war criminals, supported by Wall Street, the “big five” defense contractors and the Texas oil giants, legitimately occupy positions of authority, which enable them to decide “who are the criminals”, when in fact they are the criminals.

From Orange to Red Code Alert

The “terrorist massive casualty producing event” has become an integral part of the Bush administration’s propaganda campaign. The Administration has put the country on “high risk” Orange Code terror alert five times since September 11, 2001. Without exception, Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda has been identified as “a threat to the Homeland”. The official announcement invariably points to “significant intelligence reports” or “credible sources” of a terrorist attack “from the international terrorist group al-Qaeda”.

Since 9/11, Americans have accepted these terrorist warnings at face value. Al Qaeda is viewed as an enemy of America. The terror alerts have become part of a routine: people have become accustomed in their daily lives to the Orange Code terror alerts. Moreover, they have also accepted the distinct possibility of a changeover from Orange to Red Code Alert (as stated time and again by Homeland Security) in the foreseeable future, which would result from an actual terrorist occurrence.

Needless to say, the disinformation campaign, which is fed on a daily basis into the news chain, supports this process of shaping US public opinion. The hidden agenda ultimately consists in creating an environment of fear and intimidation, which mobilizes public support for an actual national emergency situation, leading to the declaration of martial law.

The Terror Alerts were based on Fabricated Intelligence

The evidence suggests that the Orange Code “high risk” alerts on February 7, 2003, and December, 21, 2003 were based on fabricated intelligence.

Orange Code Alert had been ordered on 7 February 2003, one day after Colin Powell’s flopped presentation on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction to the UN Security Council. Powell’s intelligence dossier had been politely dismissed. The rebuttal came from UN Inspector Hans Blix, who showed that the intelligence used as a pretext to wage war on Iraq had been blatantly fabricated.

Colin Powell addressed the UN Security Council on the 6th. On the 7th, the Bush administration declared an ‘Orange Code’ Terror Alert. This “save face operation” contributed to appeasing an impending scandal, while also upholding the Pentagon’s planned invasion of Iraq.

Media attention was immediately shifted from Colin Powell’s blunders at the UN Security Council to an (alleged) impending terrorist attack on America. Anti-aircraft missiles were immediately deployed around Washington. The media became inundated with stories on Iraqi support to an impending Al Qaeda attack on America.

The objective was to present Iraq as the aggressor. According to the New York Post, (11 February 2003):

The nation is now on Orange Alert because intelligence intercepts and simple logic both suggest that our Islamic enemies know the best way to strike at us is through terrorism on U.S. soil.

Another story allegedly emanating from the CIA on so-called ‘radioactive dirty bombs had been planted in the news chain.4 Secretary Powell warned that “it would be easy for terrorists to cook up radioactive ‘dirty’ bombs to explode inside the U.S. … ‘How likely it is, I can’t say… But I think it is wise for us to at least let the American people know of this possibility.’” 5 Meanwhile, network TV had warned that “American hotels, shopping malls or apartment buildings could be al Qaeda’s targets as soon as next week…”

The hidden agenda in the weeks leading up to the invasion of Iraq was to link Baghdad to Al Qaeda, muster unbending support for President Bush and weaken the anti-war protest movement. Following the announcement, tens of thousands of Americans rushed to purchase duct tape, plastic sheets and gas-masks.

It later transpired that the terrorist alert was fabricated by the CIA, in all likelihood in consultation with the upper echelons of the State Department. 6

The FBI, for the first time had pointed its finger at the CIA.

This piece of that puzzle turns out to be fabricated and therefore the reason for a lot of the alarm, particularly in Washington this week, has been dissipated after they found out that this information was not true,” said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism chief and ABCNEWS consultant.

(…)

According to officials, the FBI and the CIA are pointing fingers at each other. An FBI spokesperson told ABCNEWS today he was “not familiar with the scenario,” but did not think it was accurate. 7

While tacitly acknowledging that the alert was a fake, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge decided to maintain the ‘Orange Code’ alert:

Despite the fabricated report, there are no plans to change the threat level. Officials said other intelligence has been validated and that the high level of precautions is fully warranted. 8

A few days later, in another failed propaganda initiative, a mysterious Osama bin Laden audio tape was presented by Sec. Colin Powell to the US Congress as ‘evidence’ that the Islamic terrorists “are making common cause with a brutal dictator”. 9 Curiously, the audio tape was in Colin Powell’s possession prior to its broadcast by the Al Jazeera TV Network.10

Tom Ridge’s Christmas Terror Alert

On December 21st, 2003 four days before Christmas, the Homeland Security Department, again raised the national threat level from “elevated” to “high risk” of terrorist attack. 11

In his pre-Christmas Press Conference, Homeland Security department Secretary Tom Ridge confirmed in much the same way as on February 7, 2003, that: “the U.S. intelligence community has received a substantial increase in the volume of threat-related intelligence reports”. According to Tom Ridge, these “credible [intelligence] sources” raise “the possibility of attacks against the homeland, around the holiday season…”12

While the circumstances and timing were different, Secretary Tom Ridge’s December 21 statement had all the appearances of a “copy and paste” (Déjà Vu) version of his February 7 announcement, which according to the FBI was a hoax, based on fabricated intelligence..

What is disturbing in the December 21 statement is the fact that an “actual” or “attempted” Al Qaeda terrorist attack seems already to be in the official pipeline. Al Qaeda is once again identified as “the Outside Enemy”, without of course mentioning that Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda is a creation of the CIA and an “intelligence asset” controlled by the US.13

Needless to say the atmosphere of fear and confusion created across America, contributed to breaking the spirit of Christmas. According to the media reports, the high-level terror alert is to “hang over the holidays and usher in the New Year”.

Terrorists still threaten our country and we remain engaged in a dangerous – to be sure – difficult war and it will not be over soon,” warned Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. “They can attack at any time and at any place.”

With America on high terror alert for the Christmas holiday season, intelligence officials fear al-Qaeda is eager to stage a spectacular attack – possibly hijacking a foreign airliner or cargo jet and crashing it into a high-profile target inside the United States. 14

The official Christmas announcement by the Homeland Security Department dispelled any lingering doubts regarding the threat level:

the risk [during the Christmas period] is perhaps greater now than at any point since September 11, 2001;

It also warned Americans, in no uncertain terms, but without supporting evidence, that there are:

indications that [the] near-term attacks … will either rival or exceed the [9/11] attacks.

And it’s pretty clear that the nation’s capital and New York city would be on any list…

Following Secretary Ridge’s announcement, anti-aircraft missile batteries were set up in Washington:

And the Pentagon said today, more combat air patrols will now be flying over select cities and facilities, with some airbases placed on higher alert.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “You ask, ‘Is it serious?’ Yes, you bet your life. People don’t do that unless it’s a serious situation. 15

According to an official statement: “intelligence indicates that Al Qaeda-trained pilots may be working for overseas airlines and ready to carry out suicide attacks.” 16

More specifically, Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists were, according to Homland Security, planning to hijack an Air France plane and “crash it on US soil in a suicide terror strike similar to those carried out on September 11, 2001.”

Air France Christmas flights out of Paris were grounded. F-16 fighters were patrolling the skies.

Yet it turned out that the stand down orders on Air France’s Christmas flights from Paris to Los Angeles, which were used to justify the Code Orange Alert during the Christmas holiday, were based on fabricated information.

According to the official version of events, Washington had identified six members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban on the Air France passenger list:

U.S. counter-terrorism officials said their investigation was focusing on the “informed belief” that about six men on Air France Flight 68, which arrives in Los Angeles daily at 4:05 p.m., may have been planning to hijack the jet and crash it near Los Angeles, or along the way.

That belief, according to one senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, was based on reliable and corroborated information from several sources. Some of the men had the same names as identified members of Al Qaida and the Taliban, a senior U.S. official said. One of the men is a trained pilot with a commercial license, according to a senior U.S. official.

U.S. law-enforcement officials said the flights were canceled in response to the same intelligence that prompted… Homeland Security… to ratchet up the nation’s terror-alert level to orange…

With that information, U.S. authorities contacted French intelligence … They prevailed upon Air France to cancel [their flights], because the original intelligence information warned of more than one flight being commandeered. 17

Other media confirmed that “the reports gathered by American agencies were ‘very, very precise'” Meanwhile Fox News pointed to the possibility that Al Qaeda was “trying to plant disinformation, among other things to cost us money, to throw people into panic and perhaps to probe our defenses to see how we respond?”18

“Mistaken Identity”

Needless to say these fabricated media reports served to create a tense atmosphere during the Christmas holiday. Los Angeles International airport was on “maximum deployment” with counter-terrorism and FBI officials working around the clock.

Yet following the French investigation, it turned out that the terror alert was a hoax. The information was not “very very precise” as claimed by US intelligence.

The six Al Qaeda men turned out to be a five year old boy, an elderly Chinese lady who used to run a restaurant in Paris, a Welsh insurance salesman and three French nationals.19

On January 2nd, the French government confirmed that the intelligence communicated by Washington was erroneous: There “was not a trace of Al Qaeda among the passengers.”

Yet, these “inconsistencies” regarding US intelligence had already been uncovered on the 23d of December by France’s antiterrorist services, which had politely refuted the so-called “credible sources” emanating out of the US intelligence apparatus.

France’s counter-terrorism experts were extremely “sceptical” of their US counterparts:

We [French police investigators] showed [on 23 December] that their arguments simply did not make sense, but despite this the flights were cancelled… The main suspect [a Tunisian hijacker] turned out to be a child… We really had the feeling of unfriendly treatment [by US officials] (ils nous appliquent un traitement d’infamie). The information was not transmitted through normal channels. It wasn’t the FBI or the CIA which contacted us, everything went through diplomatic channels… 20

The decision to cancel the six Air France flights was taken after 2 days of intense negotiations between French and American officials. They were cancelled on the orders of the French Prime minister following consultations with Sec. Colin Powell. This decision was taken following the completion of the French investigation. Despite the fact that the information had been refuted, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge insisted on maintaining the stand-down order. If Air France had not complied, it would have been prevented from using US air space, namely banned from flying to the US.

It was only on January 2nd, once the holiday season was over that the US authorities admitted that they were in error, claiming that it was a unavoidable case of “mistaken identity.” While tacitly acknowledging their error, Homeland Security insisted that “the cancellations were based on solid information.”

Emergency Planning

Needless to say, had the flights not been cancelled, the Administration’s justification for Orange Code Alert would no longer hold. In other words, Homeland Security needed to sustain the lie over the entire Christmas holiday. It also required an active Orange Alert to launch emergency planning procedures at the highest levels of the Bush Administration.

The day following Secretary Ridge’s Christmas announcement (December 21st), President Bush was briefed by his “top anti-terror advisors” in closed door sessions at the White House. Later in the day, the Homeland Security Council (HSC) met, also at the White House. The executive body of the HSC, the so-called Principals Committee (HSC/PC), headed by Secretary Tom Ridge. includes Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft , FBI Director Robert Mueller and Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary, Emergency Preparedness and Response, who overseas the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 21

In the wake of the HSC meeting held on 22 December, Secretary Ridge confirmed that:

we reviewed the specific plans and the specific action we have taken and will continue to take 22

According to the official statement, which must be taken seriously, an “actual terrorist attack” in the near future on American soil would lead to a Red Code Alert. The latter in turn, would create conditions for the (temporary) suspension of the normal functions of civilian government, as foreseen by General Tommy Franks. This scenario was envisaged by Secretary Tom Ridge in a CBS News Interview on December 22, 2003:

“If we simply go to red … it basically shuts down the country,” meaning that civilian government bodies would be closed down and taken over by an Emergency Administration. 23

Preparing for Martial Law

In preparation for a Red code Alert, the Homeland Security department had conducted in May 2003 a major “anti-terrorist exercise” entitled TOPOFF 2. The latter is described as “the largest and most comprehensive terrorism response and homeland security exercise ever conducted in the United States.”

In a Strangelovian logic, this “national response capability” translated into a military style exercise by federal, State and local level governments, including Canadian participants, establishes various “scenarios” under a Red Code Alert. In essence, it was conducted on the same assumption as military exercises in anticipation of anactual theater war, in this case, to be waged by foreign terrorists, examining various WMD attack scenarios and the institutional response of State and local governments:

It assessed how responders, leaders, and other authorities would react to the simulated release of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in two U. S. cities, Seattle, WA and Chicago, IL. The exercise scenario depicted a fictitious, foreign terrorist organization that detonated a simulated radiological dispersal device (RDD or dirty bomb) in Seattle and released the pneumonic plague in several Chicago metropolitan area locations. There was also significant pre-exercise intelligence play, a cyber-attack, and credible terrorism threats against other locations. 24

The terror exercise including the WMD scenarios is based on a big lie.

Let us be very clear on what is happening in America. We are no longer strictly dealing with a fear and disinformation campaign. Actual “terrorist massive casualty producing events” constitute the basic premise and driving force behind the Homeland Emergency response system, including its Ready.Gov instructions to citizens, its “anti-terrorist” legal framework under the Second Patriot Act, etc.

What we are dealing with is not only a criminal act, but a carefully engineered act of treason emanating from the highest levels of the US State apparatus. In short, what we are dealing with is “the Roadmap to a Police State” in America, to be implemented in the wake of an national emergency, either under a military form of government or under a police state, which maintains all the appearances of a functioning two party “Democracy”.

Notes

1. Tommy Franks Interview, Cigar Aficionado, December 2003
2. David Rockefeller, Statement to the United Nations Business Council, 1994
3. See http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NAC304A.html
4. ABC News, 13 February 2003.
5. ABC News, 9 February. 2003.
6. ABC News, 13 February 2003, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CRG302A.html .
7.  Ibid
8. Ibid
9. US official quoted in The Toronto Star, 12 February. 2003.
10.  Ibid
11. See Department of Homeland Security at http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/index.jsp
12. For complete statement of Secretary Tom Ridge, 21 December 2003, http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/
13. See Selected References at http://globalresearch.ca/articles/11SEPT309A.html
14. Boston Globe, 24 December 2003
15. ABC News, 23 December 2003
16. quoted by ABC News, 23 December 2003.
17. Seattle Post Intelligence, 25 December 2003.
18. Fox News, 28 December 2003.
19. Le Monde, Paris and RTBF TV, Bruxelles, 2 January 2004
20. quoted in Le Monde, 3 January 2003.
21. White House Briefing, 22 December 2003.
22. AFP, 23 December 2003.
23. The scenario is presented in detail at the Homeland department’s Ready.Gov website at http://www.ready.gov/
24. 24. For full text see, Department of Homeland Security, Summary Conclusions From National Exercise, Office of the Press Secretary, December 19, 2003,http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?content=2693

 

On May 26, the US-backed and formed of Kurdish and Arab units Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that they are ready to guarantee safety for ISIS terrorists if they leave Raqqa within the next few days, ARA News reported.

Besides, according to a source in the SDF command, who preferred to remain anonymous, the Kurds in cooperation with U.S forces are setting corridors to allow terrorists move towards Palmyra and other towns controlled by the Syrian government. Washington is attempting to lure terrorists and their families out of the city to get them eliminated with mass airstrikes either by the international coalition or Syrian troops with the assistance of the Russian AF, the source added.

Such incidents have already occurred. Today, an Iranian news agency MEHR reported that the Russian Air Force eliminated 32 pickup trucks mounted with high-caliber guns and more than 120 IS terrorists fleeing from Raqqa to Palmyra. Notably, a news website The Baghdad Post wrote on Thursday that terrorists had left a number of Raqqa neighborhoods for unknown reasons. Militants seem to have been trying to use the corridors set by the U.S. to leave for Palmyra when they were hit by Russian jets.

Possible ways of ISIS running away (Source: Inside Syria Media Center)

Regarding this, our experts believe that Washington has taken a perfect position concerning ISIS in Raqqa. On the one hand, by shaping ‘safety corridors’ for terrorists and their families, the Americans want to show the world their ‘humanitarian mission’ in Syria, while on the other they push the militants out of the IS stronghold to doom them to death under the air bombs.

Sophie Mangal is a special investigative correspondent and co-editor at Inside Syria Media Center.

Featured image: Inside Syria Media Center

Image: Salman Abedi, alleged perpetrator

Despite numerous inconsistencies in the official UK government narrative and police reports, the “False Flag” question mark has largely disappeared from the realm of public debate.

Consider this:

• Since 9/11 – and increasingly so – any mass event in the West, notably in Europe and the US, like the pop concert by US singer Ariana Grande in Manchester on 22 May, would be cordoned-off and super secured. How can the terrorist with his artisan bomb (under the arm or under his belt?) get through security? In any case, he is conveniently dead, another witness done away with.
• It is a mystery, how the ‘perpetrator’ was identified in the US, by an unnamed source, when the murderous explosion happened in Manchester, some 8,000 km across the Atlantic – and, when – most important – the ‘suicide bomber’ left again his by now ‘legendary ID’ behind, his plastic bank card – at the crime scene – not in the US?
• Alone the fact – or the supposed fact – that the young Muslim murderer left his notorious ID behind, has become a ridiculous pattern which not even the staunchest supporter of the mainstream reports can ignore. Or can he? How come hardly anybody of the public at large questions such nonsense?
• Terror drills took place in several UK cities shortly before the 22 May Manchester concert explosion. This is a typical pattern seen just before other ‘terror’ scenes, i.e. the Boston Marathon bombing.

Are there still any blue-eyed doubters out there? Those who bask in their comfort zone, undisturbed by facts, rather believing a lie than the truth? – Confronting the truth means often confronting your own life, and that is for most people hard. Admitting that your life has been a farce, because you have always believed in a farce and never sought the truth, even though you knew, or felt it in the back of your mind, the truth was right there, but the comfortable lie and deceit is easier to swallow than the hard and inconvenient reality.

Critics and pundits who believe that these ‘terror’ attacks are blowbacks from our western wars – think again. ISIS / Daesh, Al-Qaeda and whatever else these Islamic terror groups are called, are the creation of the west, i.e. CIA, MI6, Mossad. They are basically funded by Washington, Israel, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf Kingdoms, and Turkey.

What is the role of  these secret services? Are these horrific killings under the guise of an Islamic ‘terror attack’, being  used as a pretext and a justification, so that the Western powers can engage in more wars, more atrocities, more killings in the Middle East, and wherever else it pleases them. That’s what’s called ‘False Flags’.

We, the People, must wake up to these facts. Only conscious awareness may eventually stop them. International law is coopted and corrupted by the swamp of the establishment. As long as we don’t have a Nuremberg-type justice system that pursues and puts away these war instigators, western societies will be subjugated to an ever increasing police state apparatus.

See previous article:

ISIS Terrorist Attack in Manchester? 17 Days Before Crucial UK Elections

By Peter Koenig, May 24, 2017

 

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.

During his 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump propagated the reductive slogan America First, which has since translated into the lens his administration uses in framing policy. Perusing the Issues page of the White House website immediately gives way to showing how the Trump administration articulates governance—nationalistically. This is evidenced with the first two policy areas from which to select: “America First Energy Policy” and an “America First Foreign Policy”.

In his terse, yet erudite article “A Short History of ‘America First’”, Krishnadev Calamur details why using the seemingly patriotic “America First” slogan matters. Calamur writes:

The phrase in itself might provide comfort for those of Trump’s supporters who have long railed against what they see as lawmakers in Washington catering to special interests, corporations, and other countries at the expense of, in their view, the American worker. But the phrase “America first” also has a darker recent history…

That history descends from the now dissolved “America First Party” that ran Gerald L.K. Smith as its presidential nominee in 1944. Smith’s campaign brimmed with implied notions of anti-Semitism, isolationism, socio-political imperialism, and, most ostensibly, the perpetuation of a dark species of narcissistic nationalism—all views with which he was proud to associate himself.

The party eventually reorganized as the Reform Party in 1992, advocating for traditionally conservative values, including: minimizing the role of government, establishing stronger borders, inculcating Judeo-Christian values, and legislating for English as the national language. In 1999, Trump, a Reform Party Member, was courted by the Party to be its Presidential nominee. However, he eventually removed himself from consideration. This gave way to Pat Buchannan becoming the party’s nominee, whom Trump called a “Hitler Lover” because of Buchanan’s view that Hitler presented no serious threat to the United States prior to the US entering World War II.

Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan speaks at a rally at the Tennessee State House in Nashville, Tennessee. Buchanan is campaigning across Tennessee, trying to win the state’s primary 12 March. (Source: nationaljournal.com)

Given the checkered historical context of the “America First” socio-political ideology, and President Trump’s associated connections with the party’s 1944 derivative, how these points translate into educational policy is already taking form.

With the confirmation of Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary earlier this year, cultural changes within the department have already caused substantive shifts in educational policy.In February, Secretary DeVos acknowledged her plans for continuing enforcement of the Every Student Succeeds Act; thereby, ensuring states have ongoing autonomy in setting educational policies.

The extent of that autonomy was recently brought into question during Secretary DeVos’ testimony before the House subcommittee on labor, health and human services. Referencing an actual situation, Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass) asked whether private schools receiving school vouchers in Indiana can deny admission to a student based on sexual orientation or that of the student’s parents. Her response was to simply acknowledge that schools have broad authority under Title IX to include such stipulations, circumventing the acknowledgement of situations where she would step in to prevent the enforcement of similar discriminatory measures.

She also said she would cut the “unnecessary” programs within the department to ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent “efficiently and effectively”. How the administration defines unnecessary is now clear with their release of the 2018 Proposed Education Budget. As a messaging signal, President Trump’s agenda plainly expresses his vision for funding, administering, and nesting educational policies locally, nationally, and internationally. In sum, his vision requires education funding cuts by $345 billion over the next 10 years, primarily in the areas of secondary, post-secondary, training & employment, and educational research. However, it is the correlation of the proposed budget to the Reform Party platform and the long-term effects of the proposed cuts that is troublesome.

The philosophy behind the budgetary cuts is in congruent in observing the need for programs that foster multiculturalist experiences in both educational and the workplace settings. Below are three cases-in-point:

• Elimination of the public-service loan forgiveness program: This is an economically regressive cut that de-incentivizes graduates to seek a career in public service. Instead of a mix of graduates from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds, those with the financial means of repaying their loans and those without loans because of scholarship opportunities or personal means are favored.
• Elimination of programs that foster foreign language study: This creates a natural barrier to students traveling abroad in learning the value of the cultural norms of other countries.
• Substantial reductions in spending for international-education programs and exchanges (i.e. the Fulbright Fellowship program): Reducing funding for these programs will discourage some of America’s brightest students from applying to partake in opportunities that dually benefit students or researchers as well as the countries where they would otherwise study.

When reflecting on the origins of the “America First” platform, these policies echo a strategy of homogenic isolationism, succeeding only in sponsoring socio-cultural hegemony instead of multicultural diversity. This makes it difficult to foster democratized learning contexts both inside and outside of the classroom. Yet, democratization remains the essence for preserving dynamic and transformative learning environments if students are to succeed in today’s diverse professional spaces.

Working-class adults and college/trade school students are also negatively affected by the proposed budget’s elimination of more than 24 adult education and vocational training programs. Included among these programs are:

• The Perkins Act: This law assists states in enhancing and improving trade-focused education and professional development opportunities through issuing quality assurance standards and ensuring the compliance of institutions accordingly.
• Federal Work Study: This federal program allows students to work at their educational institution for a pre-determined number of hours each semester, while earning money to cover some of the costs of attendance.

During his campaign, and even as President, Trump has repeatedly emphasized his unwavering support for the working class in their individual and collective plights. However, the proposed budget cuts are seemingly nonsensical in aligning with the needs of President’s voter block. In fact, such cuts would mitigate improvements in labor-market preparation and remove 700,000 students from being eligible for working campus jobs. This would leave unemployed and displaced workers needing to re-train/re-educate themselves, and students willing to work towards paying for their education,without the proper financial support to be successful.

The combination of incoherent budgetary cuts and the elimination of multicultural learning opportunities frames an ominous portrait following in the tradition of the Reform Party. While it is clear the current posture of the nation’s educational priorities is seemingly introverted, there is also a lack of clarity in the vision of how education is to be administered, save the expectation of formidable cost reductions. That is why the steps that Congress takes with the President’s proposed budget will be the litmus test in determining if America is being placed first.

Anthony C. Clemons is a curriculum development manager and a graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University (M.A. ’15; Ed.M. ’17). His forthcoming book “Multicultural Andragogy for Transformative Learning” is in press with IGI Global and scheduled for release in Spring 2018. He can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: Business Insider

1917 was not a good year for any of the belligerent countries, but for the members of the Entente – France, Britain, and Russia – it was nothing less than catastrophic. The main reasons for that were the mutinies in the French army, which made the situation on the western front extremely precarious, as well as the revolution in Russia, which raised the spectre of Russia exiting the war, leaving Britain and France bereft of the ally that forced Germany to fight on two fronts. Add to this the fact that civilians as well as soldiers in France and Britain were desperate for peace, and one understands why the political and military authorities in London and Paris had plenty of reasons to be concerned.

They had wanted this war and wanted desperately to win it, and to achieve this they needed the support of the population and of all their allies. But in 1917, victory was nowhere in sight, and had never seemed so far away. And what would happen if the war was not won? The answer was provided by the events in Russia, and it was a grim warning: revolution!

The only ray of hope in 1917, from the viewpoint of the Entente, was that in April of that year the United States declared war on Germany, something Paris and London had fervently been hoping for. It would obviously still take some time before American troops would disembark in Europe to help turn the tide in favour of the Entente, but hope for a final victory was thus revived.

To Order Jacques Pauwels Book click here 

For the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States, however, the entry of their country into the war was hardly a wonderful thing. They realized that the war raging in Europe had been a disaster, and that in all belligerent countries civilians as well as soldiers longed for a return to peace. The Europeans wanted to exit this war as soon as possible; why would Americans want to enter it? And why would they have to fight on the side of the British and the French against the Germans? Why not on the side of the Germans against the countries of the Entente? Let us examine the factors that caused many Americans to ask such questions.

For a long time already, the United States had enjoyed good relations with Germany. It was not Germany but Britain that was the traditional enemy and great rival of Uncle Sam. The British were former colonial masters against whom the country’s war of independence had been fought during the 1770s, and against whom another armed conflict took place between 1812 and 1815, the so-called War of 1812; and throughout the 19th century relations with Britain had remained tense on account of issues such as the border of the US with British North America (to become the Dominion of Canada in 1867), influence and commerce in the Pacific, South America, and the Caribbean, and British sympathy for the South during the American Civil War. (Until the 1930s, in fact, Washington would have plans ready for a possible war against Britain.)

The Americans did not regard the British as beloved “Anglo-Saxon” twins. Clearly, many Americans were of English origin and supported Albion and its allies. But the majority of Americans – unlike the elite of the country’s northeast, consisting to a large extent of WASPs – were not “Anglo-Saxons” at all but came from all over Europe, including many from Ireland and Germany. In 1914, when the war broke out in Europe, Americans of Irish or German origin had good reasons to hope for a German victory and a defeat of Britain. As for France, the Americans who disembarked there in 1917 held banners proclaiming “Lafayette, here we are!,” an allusion to the aid the Americans had received from France during their war of independence against Britain, aid that was personified by the Marquis de Lafayette. The slogan suggested that the Americans were now paying back a debt of gratitude to the French, but why had they not rushed to support their old Gallic friend in 1914? In reality, hypothetical gratitude towards the French had nothing to do with the US entry into the war, the more so since many Americans were very religious and had little or no sympathy for a republic that was anticlerical if not atheistic. The Protestant Americans sympathised with Germany, ruled by the Lutheran Hohenzollerns, and Catholic Americans had a soft spot for Austria-Hungary, whose rulers, the Habsburgs, had been the great white knights of Catholicism ever since the time of the Reformation. And Russia? That empire was viewed by many Americans as a bastion of autocratic, old-fashioned monarchism, as the antithesis of the democratic republic the United States was (at least in theory).

Numerous Americans such as Jews and Ukrainians were refugees from the Czarist empire who had about the same feelings for Russia as the Irish had for Britain. In the United States, Germany was not the object of such rivalry, dislike, or outright hostility. Moreover, many Americans, for example Theodore Roosevelt, considered themselves to belong to the superior “Nordic race” and therefore to be close relatives of the “Aryan” Germans, presumably an equally superior breed. The fact that Germany was hardly a democracy did not constitute a problem for elitist types such as Roosevelt, who looked down on the popular “masses.” As for the Americans who did not belong to the elite and did in fact favour democracy, even they had little or nothing against Germany. Indeed, with its social legislation and universal suffrage, the Reich loomed in some ways as more democratic than Britain, for example, and the United States itself. American democracy was indeed a kind of “Herrenvolk democracy,” that is, a democracy for an ethnic elite, namely the “white man,” a system from which Indians and blacks, a large part of the population, were ruthlessly excluded – de facto and/or de jure. This “democracy for the few,” as the political scientist and historian Michael Parenti has called it, featured a kind of apartheid avant la lettre, in which blacks were the victims of segregation and lynchings and Indians were cast aside in wretched reservations. In comparison to that, the Reich of William II was an egalitarian paradise. President Woodrow Wilson’s claim that the US went to war for the sake of democracy, a claim that even today many consider to be sincere, was not only totally false, but even ludicrous. If Wilson had really wanted to do something to promote the cause of democracy, he should have started in his own country, where there was still an awful lot of work to be done.

Lynching in Nebraska, 1919 (Source: williambowles.info)

One can say that in early 1917 the American population was divided with respect to the war. Some Americans – and above all the WASPs and other citizens of English origin – rooted for the Entente, while others sympathized with the Central Powers; and countless Americans probably had no particular opinion about what was going on in distant Europe. But sympathy is one thing, and fighting is something else. Most of the citizens tended to be pacifist or “isolationist,” wanted nothing to do with the war raging in Europe, and were against their country becoming involved in it. It is in this context that the song I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier, which originated in 1915 and had already enjoyed a lot of success in Britain, become the musical icon of pacifism in the United States (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQwEqhtGcW0). The song was deeply offensive to those Americans who did favour intervention in the war, the bellicose type of Americans whose figurehead was “Teddy” Roosevelt. The presidential elections of 1916 were won by Wilson, the incumbent. He was perceived as the peace candidate, opposed to America’s entry into the war. As happens more often in the case of US presidents, he was to do exactly the opposite of what was expected of him: on April 2, 1917 he persuaded Congress to declare war on Germany, and this decision became official on April 6. Wilson claimed that Western civilization might collapse and mankind perhaps even become extinct if the United States did not intervene in the conflict; with the US involved, he suggested, the war would become a “war for democracy,” a “war to end all wars.”

It is understandable that many historians have failed to take these Wilsonian declarations seriously and have sought elsewhere for the real reasons that caused America to join the war against the will of the overwhelming majority of its people. Germany is usually blamed for this, namely because in 1917 the Reich responded to the British blockade – and the fiasco of the Battle of Jutland in the previous year – with an escalation of submarine warfare. By means of this strategy, Berlin hoped to be able to force the British to capitulate within six months. From January to April 1917, an enormous tonnage of ships was sent to the bottom of the sea, but from May on, when the British introduced the convoy system, their losses declined drastically. Submarine warfare also antagonized neutral powers, including the United States, and spoiled relations between Washington and Berlin, eventually leading to war. It is in these terms that numerous historians try to explain America’s entry into the conflict. In this context the name Lusitania is inevitably mentioned. This great British ocean liner left New York for Liverpool but was sunk by a German U-Boot, and American citizens were among the victims. Stateside, this fanned the flames of anti-German sentiments. The attack proved to be grist for the mill of the “interventionists,” the partisans of entry into the war, and this allegedly led to an American declaration of war on Germany.

The problem with this explanation is that the Lusitania had already been sunk on May 7, 1915, that is, no less than two years before Washington went to war. Also, the 1,198 victims included only 128 Americans, the others being British and Canadian. Moreover, the Lusitania transported munitions and war materiel, something that, according to prevailing norms of international law, made the ship “fair game” for the Germans to target. (The German consulate in New York had in fact warned potential passengers via newspaper advertisements that this might happen). Finally, it is likely that the British authorities, including Churchill, had intentionally arranged for the ship to take on ammunition in the hope that it would be attacked by the Germans, thus triggering an American entry into the war. It is understandable that under such questionable circumstances, the US government failed to take the bait. In early 1917, on account of the intensification of submarine warfare, relations between the United States and Germany were admittedly deteriorating. Even so, it was not for this reason that Wilson declared war in April.

Newspaper headline from Columbia, Missouri on April, 6, 1917 (Source: Pinterest)

It was not the American people but the American elite – of which Wilson, a former president of Princeton University, was a typical representative – that wanted war; and the war that was wanted was a war against Germany. The reason for this is that in 1917 the US elite, like its European counterpart in 1914, expected war to bring considerable advantages, and also help to dodge a major threat. The US was a great imperialist power, different from Britain, France, Russia and Germany in one small but important aspect: the US had developed a new imperialist strategy, later to be known as neo-colonialism. This involved acquiring raw materials, markets, sources of cheap labour, and investment opportunities not via direct colonial control of a country, but via an indirect, mostly economic penetration, combined with the establishment, usually with the collaboration of local elites, of preponderant political influence. The US thus no longer used colonies and protectorates to achieve imperialist aims, as the European powers continued to do.

The Great War was a conflict between great imperialist powers. It was clear that the powers that would emerge triumphant from this war would also be the great winners with respect to imperialist interests. And it was equally clear that, as in a lottery, those who did not play could not win. It is highly probable that at the time of its declaration of war on Germany, the US government was aware of a statement made shortly before, on January 12, 1917, by the French Prime Minister, Aristide Briand, had thought about it, and had drawn conclusions from it. Clearly alluding to the United States, Briand had let it be known that

“it would be desirable, at the peace conference, to exclude the powers that had not been involved in the war.”

Was it not obvious that there would be much to gain for those who would in fact be present at this conference? The vast possessions of the losers would be divided: “German” real estate in Africa, the oil-rich regions of the Ottoman Empire, and influence in China were all at stake. (The imperialists had been ogling this gigantic but weak country, determined to be present when more concessions could be carved out of its territory, when rights to exploit its mineral wealth or construct railways there would come up for grabs, and when the green light would be given for other ways to penetrate it economically.) In this respect, Japan had already shown its hand by pocketing the German concession in China. A relatively small country inhabited by members of a presumably inferior race, Japan nonetheless revealed itself as an aggressive and pesky rival of the United States in the Far East. Thanks to their “splendid little war” against Spain, the Americans had been able to establish a foothold in this part of the world in the form of tutelage over the Philippines, a Spanish colony they had “liberated.” If the United States stayed out of the war, it would not be present when the Chinese prizes were distributed among the victors, and there loomed a very real danger that Japan might end up monopolizing China economically, so that American businessmen would not find the “open door” there that they were longing for. In any event, stateside it was feared that not only Japan, but also Britain and France – all of them rivals in the “rat race” of imperialism – would take advantage of victory in the war to keep the US out of China and elsewhere. Even a Wikipedia contributor acknowledges this on the topic “American entry into World War I”:

[I]f the Allies had won without [American] help, there was a danger they would carve up the world without regard to American commercial interests.They were already planning to use government subsidies, tariff walls, and controlled markets to counter the competition posed by American businessmen.

With his declaration of war on Germany in April 1917, Wilson neatly eliminated this danger. Much later, in the 1930s, an inquiry by the Nye Committee of the American Congress was to come to the conclusion that the country’s entry into the war had been motivated by the wish to be present when, after the war, the moment came “to redivide the spoils of empire.”

The US went to war in order to achieve imperialist objectives: more specifically, to be able to share in the rich booty that awaited the victors of the slugfest among imperialists that the Great War happened to be. Remaining neutral would not only have meant not profiting from victory but, conversely, running the risk of becoming the object of the imperialist appetite of the victors. In the case of the US, that risk was admittedly virtually non-existent, but for small neutral countries it was very real. On March 9, 1916, Portugal thus entered the war on the side of the Entente to prevent its colonial possessions from being redistributed by the victorious powers. Lisbon was particularly worried about the intentions of the British, who did in fact entertain such thoughts and were therefore allegedly keen to keep Portugal out of the conflict. Its participation in the war, opposed by the great majority of the population, would cost Portugal 8,000 dead, 13,000 wounded, and 12,000 men taken prisoner, and brought the country zero benefits. Other countries were also forced to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of neutrality. Like the US, the Netherlands could hope that abandoning neutrality might bring advantages. On the other hand, like Portugal, its government feared that maintaining neutrality would be risky. By rallying to the side of Germany, the Netherlands could perhaps acquire Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and this possibility was in fact conjured up by Berlin through its ambivalent “Flemish policy” (Flamenpolitik) in occupied Belgium. Conversely, remaining neutral meant that after the war the victors might force the Netherlands to cough up some of its colonies or even part of its own territory. During the war and during the Paris Peace Conference, some Belgian politicians actually pursued such a goal – vainly, as it turned out – hoping to annex some Dutch territories.

There was a second reason why war was wanted by the US elite, which consisted almost exclusively of the big industrialists and bankers of the northeast of the country. In the years before 1914, the United States had been hit by a major economic recession. But the war that broke out in Europe generated orders for all sorts of materiel, and on account of this increase in demand, production and profits also increased. Between 1914 and 1917, the nation’s industrial production grew by at least 32 percent, the gross national product by about 20 percent, and American exports to the belligerent countries rose spectacularly. Agricultural products were also exported, naturally, but it was primarily the big industrialists – the capitalists, to use that terminology – who made fortunes thanks to the war that, to their great advantage and joy, seemed destined to go on indefinitely. It was hardly a source of concern that in that war an average of 6,000 men died daily and that countless others were mutilated. What mattered were the profits, and those were fabulous. As illustration, one can cite the profits made by a number of big American corporations thanks to the Great War:

Corporation:	Profits, in millions of dollars:
	Before the war:	At the end of the war:
DuPont	6	58
Bethlehem Steel	6	49
US Steel	105	240
Anaconda	10	34
International Nickel	4	73

.

Most of the business generated by the war was done with the countries of the Entente. Between 1914 and 1916, US exports to Britain and France increased dramatically, from approximately 800 million dollars to 3 billion. Conversely, because of the British blockade, it became virtually impossible to supply the Central Powers; the volume of American exports to Germany and Austria-Hungary shrunk during the war to an insignificant 1 to 2 million dollars. But what counted was that the war revealed itself to be good for business, and in the end it mattered little if the customer was an old friend or an old enemy, a democratic or autocratic country, an “Anglo-Saxon” relative or not.

Still, not all was well. Business was done above all with the British and, to a lesser extent, with the French, and the lion’s share of these purchases was based on credits and loans extended to these countries by American banks. In 1917, the US banks had already made a total of 2.3 billion dollars available in this manner. The loans to France alone rose spectacularly during the war, namely from 50 million francs in 1914 to 1.9 billion in 1915, 1.6 in 1916, 7.5 in 1917, 5.3 in 1918, and 9.2 in 1919. Crucial in this context was the role of J. P. Morgan & Co, the bank that was also known as the “House of Morgan.” With offices in London and Paris, this Wall Street institution was in an ideal position to finance the transatlantic business, and already in 1915 Morgan was designated as the sole agent for stateside purchases made on behalf of Britain of ammunition, foodstuffs, etc. (The British also made purchases in the US on behalf of their French and Russian allies.) Thus there emerged in the US a kind of “circle of friends” of Morgan, consisting of firms such as DuPont and Remington, which obtained the contracts and were thus able to make fortunes. Morgan pocketed a two-percent commission on this business, which in 1917 alone amounted to a total value of 20 billion dollars. The US thus replaced Britain as the world’s financial superpower, New York’s Wall Street took over from London’s City as financial capital of the world, and the dollar replaced the British pound as the leading currency.

As far as Wall Street was concerned, the war in Europe was a kind of goose that laid golden eggs, and the longer it lasted, the better – as long as the Entente ended up being victorious. In other words,

“economic interests placed the United States clearly in the camp of the Allies.”

The financial collaboration with Britain possibly amounted to a de facto violation of American legislation with respect to neutrality, as some US politicians argued at the time and the aforementioned Nye Committee of Congress would acknowledge in the 1930s. In any event, it is understandable that Germany saw things that way and demonstrated a growing hostility to the United States. Morgan could not have cared less, but in 1916 Wall Street began to worry about the fact that the British debt was becoming extravagant. And in early 1917 the situation became truly worrisome when the revolution in Russia conjured up the spectre of a Russian exit from the war, likely to be followed by a German victory. In this case, Britain might not be able to pay off its debt, which would mean a financial catastrophe for Morgan. It became all too obvious that only an American entry into the war on the side of the British could forestall such a scenario. In March 1917, the US ambassador in London warned Wilson that “the imminent crisis” constituted a grave menace for Morgan and that

“a declaration of war on Germany was probably the only way to maintain an excellent commercial situation and to prevent a panic.”

Naturally, Morgan and the bank’s influential circle of friends likewise started to lobby in favour of entry into the war. A few weeks later, in early April 1917, the United States did declare war on the Reich, and so Wall Street had achieved its goal. “Money talks,” says an American proverb; in 1917, money talked and President Wilson listened.

Wilson’s radical critics were convinced, writes Adam Hochschild, that

“the real reason the U.S. was fighting for an Allied victory was to ensure that massive American war loans to Britain and France would be paid back.”

And by this decision, adds Niall Ferguson, Wilson saved not only Britain and the Entente in general, he also “bailed out” the House of Morgan. The nasty reality of German submarine warfare was invoked to camouflage this indecent truth. Henceforth, Morgan was to make even more money via the sale of war bonds, euphemistically referred to as “Liberty bonds,” whose aggregate value would rise to 21 billion dollars by June 1919, when the Versailles Treaty officially put an end to the war.

In contrast to the country’s industrial and financial elite, the American people never displayed the slightest enthusiasm for the war. American blacks, in particular,

“hesitated to give their support to a project they considered hypocritical.”

One of them, a resident of the New York district of Harlem, declared that the Germans had never done anything wrong to him, and if they had done so, he forgave them. Alluding to Wilson’s slogan to the effect that America went to war for the sake of democracy, some Afro-American leaders asked him publicly “to start by introducing democracy into America itself.” Precious few volunteers signed up to go serve as cannon fodder on the other side of the Atlantic. The authorities were hoping for one million volunteers, but only 73,000 men responded to the call. Already on May 18, a law was therefore passed, the Selective Service (or Selective Draft) Act, which introduced a selective system of compulsory military service, the “draft”, making it possible to recruit the required number of soldiers. But the draft faced much opposition, and more than 330,000 men were classified as draft evaders.

Black Americans served in the First World War (Source: Pinterest)

It is not surprising that members of the upper classes as well as skilled workers, whose presence in the factories was indispensable, remained mostly exempt from the draft. It was primarily the poor who were targeted because they were considered redundant. As in the case of the armies of the other belligerent countries, ordinary American soldiers came overwhelmingly from the lower classes of the population; they were mostly blacks, recently arrived immigrants, illiterates, and other people with little or no education. Afro-Americans were called up in large numbers, but they were mostly drafted into separate work battalions so that white soldiers would not have to consider them as their equals. In their segregated units the blacks received clothing, food, and accommodation of inferior quality. Of the total of 370,000 Afro-Americans who served in the army, 200,000 went to Europe, but only 40,000 of them received weapons and were permitted to join one of the two black combat divisions. Thus was scraped together an army that presumably went to war to fight for democracy.

That America was going on a crusade for the benefit of democracy and/or to end all wars is what Wilson wanted the American people and the rest of the world to believe. In order to achieve this aim, an enormous propaganda machine was set up, which would make use of press articles, speakers, Hollywood productions, etc. to convey the Wilsonian message to American households. The headquarters of this machine was the euphemistically named Committee on Public Information (CPI, headed by the presumably “progressive” journalist George Creel). The objective was to make Americans accept and even applaud a war they did not want and from which they would not derive any benefits, but for which they would pay a high price with their blood, their sweat, and their money, in other words, to “fabricate the public’s approval or at least agreement.” A collaborator of Creel, the journalist Walter Lippmann, called this the “manufacture of consent” – a term that would later be echoed by Noam Chomsky. What needed to be manufactured from scratch, so to speak, was an anti-German sentiment in the American population. It was done by following the example set by the British, that is, by atrocity mongering, especially by a shameless exaggeration of the atrocities committed by the Germans in 1914 in Belgium.

Creel and his team did an excellent job and the country soon witnessed the blossoming of a veritable anti-German hysteria. Sauerkraut, which was a popular dish in the US at the time, was rebaptised “freedom cabbage,”and the disease known as German measles became “liberty measles.” Hollywood was persuaded to crank out a collection of propaganda films, for example a blockbuster with the unsubtle title The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin. (Later, other enemies of the US, such as Saddam Hussein and Colonel Kaddafi, would be demonised in the same fashion.) More serious was the fact that Americans of German origin were obliged to wear a distinctive yellow sign and often had their property confiscated, a fate that would later befall the Jews in Nazi Germany. The churches also made propaganda for the war. The Protestant Churches, in particular, claimed that the conflict was a “crusade” against imperial Germany. The Catholic Church revealed itself to be slightly less enthusiastic, because the Vatican discreetly sympathised with the Central Powers, especially with the Empire of the Habsburgs, and it did not want to offend the numerous Catholic Americans of Irish and German origin, who supported the Berlin-Vienna axis.

There was yet another reason why the American elite longed for war in 1917. Like the European elites in 1914, the US elite in 1917 was convinced that a war would consolidate its power and prestige, halt and possibly even roll back the trend towards democracy, and finally, liquidate the danger of revolutionary change. Indeed, during the years preceding 1914 the nation’s elite had been traumatised by grave social tensions, numerous strikes, and the apparently irresistible rise of the Socialist Party and of the militant trade union IWW. This agitation culminated in April 1914 in the so-called “Ludlow Massacre.” A camp of strikers in one of the coal mines of the Rockefellers in Ludlow, Colorado was attacked by troops and more than twenty persons were killed, including wives and children of the strikers. The entire country was up in arms, and in Denver an army unit even refused to intervene against the strikers.

Fortunately, the public’s attention would soon be diverted by the fact that President Wilson suddenly found it necessary – on a ludicrous pretext – to shell the Mexican seaport of Vera Cruz and to wage a mini-war against this neighbouring country, where a revolution happened to be taking place. The American historian Howard Zinn feels that this was not a coincidence. He suggests that “patriotic fervor and the military spirit [served to] cover up class struggle,” that “guns [were supposed to] divert attention” and that focus on “an external enemy” might “create some national consensus” at home; he concludes that the aggression against Mexico was “an instinctual response of the system for its own survival, to create a unity of fighting purpose among a people torn by internal conflict.” The war against Mexico may also be considered to be a class struggle. It was in fact a conflict between two “classes” of countries. It was a conflict that reflected the oppression and exploitation of a poor and powerless country by a powerful and rich country.

Wilson’s declaration of war on Germany may similarly be viewed as a stratagem to preserve social peace at home by means of war abroad. Wilson certainly did not opt for war solely for this reason, but he eagerly took advantage of the opportunity offered by the war to repress all forms of radicalism in word and deed – to the advantage of the nation’s elite. Wilson, a “democrat” only in the sense that he belonged to the Democratic Party, accomplished this objective in a most undemocratic fashion, namely by awarding himself all sorts of exceptional powers that enabled him to “legally” violate the democratic rights of Americans, and to do so with impunity.

May 1917 witnessed the promulgation of the draconian Espionage Act, a law that officially purported to combat German espionage, and in 1918 Congress would provide the president with even greater special powers by means of the Sedition Act.These laws would remain on the statutes until the summer of 1921, that is, until the United States signed a peace treaty with Germany. Some historians have described these laws as “the country’s most repressive legislation” and as “quasi-totalitarian measures.” The government was henceforth free to censor, close down periodicals, and arrest and incarcerate people ad libitum, on the pretext that the country was at war against a particularly vicious enemy who disposed of all sorts of spies and agents within the US. Those who opposed the war were deemed to oppose America, in other words, to be “un-American”; pacifism and its twin, socialism, were viewed as enemies of  “Americanism.”

These laws obviously aimed to scare the American people, to motivate them in favour of the war, and to repress doubts about the righteousness of the war, anti-war protests, and obstruction of the draft. Under this legislation, it became a criminal offence to speak in “disloyal” or other negative or condescending terms of the nation’s government, flag, or army. It was now risky not to agree with the policies of the Wilson administration. Voicing a moderate criticism of his war, even in the privacy of one’s home, might lead to imprisonment. (The Espionage Actwas to be amended repeatedly after the war, but it was never totally abolished; whistleblower Chelsea – born Bradley – Manning was indicted on the basis of military codes that are themselves based at least in part on this law.)

During the First World War, more than 2,500 Americans were persecuted on the basis of these draconian laws, and about one hundred were convicted and condemned to sentences of 10 to 20 years in prison. This is not a large number in comparison to the country’s total population, but it is important to consider that the fear of persecution caused Americans to stop thinking and expressing critical thoughts and to adopt instead an unthinking conformism – and this in a country where rugged individualism had always been glorified. Countless journalists thus abandoned their earlier “muckraking” practices in favour of auto-censorship and a bland but safe regurgitation of government announcements. Too many of America’s citizens, previously known to be critically inclined, adopted the habit of swallowing with hook, line and sinker whatever their leaders told them and of unthinkingly following whatever orders arrived from above.

The repressive legislation was used selectively, first and foremost against radicals and dissidents of the lower classes, America’s own “classes dangereuses,” in particular Afro-Americans and Jews. But the radicals and dissidents par excellence were the American socialists, then still numerous and militant, who pursued more or less revolutionary democratic reforms and who were opposed to the war. Like their reformist comrades in Europe, some US socialists revealed themselves to be partisans of the war, but the majority of America’s socialists were convinced pacifists, and for this they would pay a heavy price. Their figurehead, Eugene Debs, openly spoke out against the war and encouraged the rank-and-file to follow his example. In June 1918, he would be thrown into prison on the basis of the Espionage Act, and the same fate befell hundreds of other socialists who were found guilty of treason, incitement to rebellion, espionage, use of violence, etc.

The big trade unions, for example the American Federation of Labor (AFL), were traditionally allies of Wilson’s Democratic Party, and Wilson defended their interests, at least to a certain point, in exchange for their support. Not surprisingly, in 1917 they supported his entry into the war, just as the European unions had supported their governments when they went to war in 1914. The famous union leader Samuel Gompers turned out to be a particularly useful ally to Wilson, and he collaborated closely with Creel and his Commission of Public Information. One trade union failed to warm up to Wilson and his war, however, namely the radical and even revolutionary IWW. Its leader, “Big Bill” Haywood, would be thrown in jail, just like Debs, for having dared to criticize the war. The IWW had been a thorn in the side of the US establishment for a long time, so the latter took advantage of the war to destroy that nest of revolutionaries via physical attacks on its headquarters, confiscation of documents, arbitrary arrest of many of its leaders and their conviction of the basis of fabricated evidence, etc.

In the US, as in Europe, socialism, or at least its radical, non-reformist version, was allied with pacifism. Most socialists were pacifists and a considerable percentage of the pacifists were socialists. But not all pacifists were socialists; there were also countless bourgeois pacifists with political convictions that may be described as progressive or, as they also say in the US, “liberal.” Among these bourgeois pacifists were courageous people who openly expressed their opposition to Wilson’s war, and in many cases they paid dearly for this, for example by losing their job or even their seat in the legislative assembly of a state. Paul Jones, an Episcopalian bishop from Utah, was divested of his high ecclesiastical function because he spoke out against the war. And in the universities, which revealed themselves to be “homes of intolerance,” the highly touted academic freedom was de facto suppressed for the duration of the war, and pacifist professors were systematically removed from their chairs.

The US is supposed to be the land of free enterprise, which means that the state believes, at least in theory, in the benefits of the traditional liberal laissez-faire approach and therefore intervenes as little as possible in economic and social life, allowing the private sector to “do its thing.” In the context of America’s entry into the war, this implied that the repression of pacifists, socialists, union leaders, etc. was at least “privatised,” that is, turned over to individuals and groups favouring the war, and in general these were people who happened to be simultaneously anti-democratic, anti-socialist, anti-Semitic, and “anti-Hamitic” (i.e. hostile to blacks) and presented themselves as champions of “Americanism.” Prominent among these groups were the American Patriotic League, the Patriotic Order of Sons of America, and the Knights of Liberty, a branch of the Ku Klux Klan. The methods used by these “vigilantes” included denunciations, beatings, tarring and feathering, painting houses of pacifists yellow, and lynchings. In particular, these vigilantes targeted Wobblies, members of the IWW; one of its leaders, Frank Little, was lynched in Montana in August 1917.

On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean too, a kind of twin war broke out in 1917, consisting of a “vertical” war in which the US as a country confronted another country, Germany, but also a “horizontal” war in which two classes of American society – the elite and the rest of the population – clashed with each other. In the latter conflict, the elite, directed by Wilson, immediately went on the offensive, namely via repressive laws as well as “vigilantism,” and thus it pushed back the plebeian forces much as the Germans had pushed back the French and the British in 1914. But, as in 1914, that early success did not bring the conflict to an end, and we will later see how it developed during the rest of the war. As for the “vertical” war against Germany, the US elite appeared to be in less of a hurry: it would take quite some time, namely until early 1918, before American troops showed up in significant numbers on the western front and started to make their presence felt.

Featured image: commons.wikimedia.org

Today is the first day of Ramadan. Muslims in many parts of the world begin their month-long fast today. Most of them are not aware that 1500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are on a hunger strike that began almost six weeks ago.

These prisoners have undertaken a hunger strike to protest the denial of their basic human rights in prison. When they began their strike, they were only drinking salt water to survive. It is reported that many have stopped drinking water altogether. Their health is deteriorating rapidly. They are in dire straits.

Their hunger strike is not just about prison conditions. In a larger sense it is against the occupation of Palestine and the oppression and injustice that have occurred through the decades. It is a strike for liberation from Israeli domination. It is a strike for human dignity. This is why the strike has been described as the Dignity Strike.

The world has to all intents and purposes ignored this mass strike partly because the media both mainstream and alternative have given so little coverage to it. It is a reflection of Zionist power over the global media.

Faced with this situation, civil society groups with a conscience should speak up. They should use the channels available to them to express their support for the Dignity Strike. As more and more groups and individuals take a stand, the Israeli authorities will be forced to respond.

By giving support to the Strike those of us who are fasting will be enhancing the meaning of our own fast. For our fast is also about dignity and justice. It is not just Ramadan that carries this meaning. In the Jewish tradition itself exemplified by the teachings of the Prophet Isaiah fasting is also about justice.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

More details have emerged about the prior familiarity of British intelligence agencies with the Manchester suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, whose murderous assault Monday evening left 22 people dead.

Given Abedi’s connections and his travel movements leading up to the attack, the only explanation for him being able to remain at large for so long is that he was a protected asset—part of a broad network of operatives utilised by Britain and the US to conduct their nefarious operations in the Middle East.

It is the exposure of these operations which accounts for the fury of Prime Minister Theresa May over the US leaking of intelligence information about the UK’s investigation into the bombing. Whatever the specific reasons for these leaks, they have completely undermined the British authority’s original claims that Abedi was an unknown, “lone wolf”.

We know now that British intelligence had received warnings, on at least five separate occasions in the last five years, that Abedi presented a danger, including that he had discussed committing a suicide bombing.

According to new leaks Thursday, Abedi had traveled extensively in the run-up to the attack, including flying from Istanbul to the UK via Germany’s Dusseldorf airport. For years, Turkey has been used as a transit point into Syria by European jihadists, joining Western-led efforts to topple the regime of Bashar Al-Assad.

Several sources, including French intelligence, have made public their conclusions that Abedi had been to Syria and received training there. The Financial Times also reported that a “Turkish official” said that Abedi had traveled through Istanbul on at least two other occasions over the past year. The newspaper reported,

“In mid-April he flew from Amsterdam to Libya, while in late May 2016 he flew from Manchester to Libya, transiting through Istanbul Ataturk airport both times.”

Abedi may have traveled through at least two European Union countries on his way from Turkey to Manchester. Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel reported that Abedi flew from Dusseldorf to Manchester on May 18—four days before the attack. The newspaper cited German intelligence sources who said that he arrived in Germany from Libya via Prague.

The Guardian reported,

“It is known that the 22-year-old travelled to Germany at least twice, including a visit to the financial city of Frankfurt.” It added, “Düsseldorf is in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Anis Amri, the Berlin Christmas market attacker, spent time.”

Further leaks were reported by the German magazine, Focus. Citing German intelligence sources, it said Abedi flew to Frankfurt from Britain in 2015. Focus said that Germany’s intelligence agency BKA had been told by police in the UK that this visit took place before Abedi undertook paramilitary training in Syria. It reported that he had not been apprehended in Germany, as he was not on any watch list.

There is no innocent explanation for the fact that Abedi was able to travel to Libya, Syria, Turkey and the UK unhindered. It has nothing to do with the spurious claims about the UK having “leaky borders”, or too few border guards. Abedi’s ability to pass through customs without interference can only mean that he had been given the all clear.

For decades, successive British governments have worked with jihadi groups, prepared to use atrocities to achieve their objectives. This has meant that, behind the “war on terror” and the relentless assault on democratic rights that it has entailed, UK authorities have been harbouring Islamist extremist operatives and groups who can be set into motion at the required time, in line with British imperialist foreign policy objectives.

Groups such as Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda all had bases in London. Al-Qaeda considered London the nerve centre of its operations in Europe, with the security services collaborating with some of these organisations and their leaders, the most well known being Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada.

Likewise, British imperialism worked closely with Libyan Islamists, supporting them in their opposition to then Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. As former MI5 agent David Shayler revealed, MI6 collaborated with one such organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, in the attempted assassination of Gaddafi in 1996.

For years, a group of LIFG members were active in the Whalley Range district of Manchester, close to Salman Abedi’s home. Salman Abedi’s father, Ramadan Abedi, an airport security officer, was an LIFG member. He and his wife, Samia Tabbal, a nuclear scientist, fled Tripoli in 1991 after he was arrested by the Gaddafi regime. He had been employed in the regime’s internal security service and was reportedly suspected of tipping off members of anti-Gaddafi Islamist groups about pending police raids. The Daily Mail reported,

“It appears that Ramadan’s life revolved at several points around toppling Gaddafi…”

After fleeing Libya, Ramadan and his wife lived in Saudi Arabia for a period. They both then went to the UK and applied for and were granted political asylum. They lived first in London and then moved to the south Manchester area, which had become a centre for many anti-Gaddafi elements with which British intelligence maintained the closest links.

Ramadan returned to Libya some time in 2011 in order to fight in the imperialist proxy war that resulted in the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi in October of that year by US/UK-backed “rebels”. This took place after a NATO bombing campaign in which untold numbers were killed nationwide over the preceding eight months. Ramadan went on to become an administrative manager of the Central Security Force in Tripoli, one of the many militias vying for control of the country.

Samia, Abedi’s mother, is a close friend of Umm Abdul Rahman, the widow of a former Al Qaeda commander, Abu Anas al-Libi. Accused of involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings, the Daily Mail reported that al-Libi

“spent five years in Manchester—having won political asylum in Britain in 1995.” The Mail said that “Abdul Rahman went to college in the Libyan capital with Abedi’s mother, who was studying nuclear engineering. She [Rahman] said the two women also lived together in Manchester for a number of years.”

Al-Libi was seized by US forces in Tripoli in October 2013 and died in 2015 of liver cancer before coming to trial. Following the Manchester bombing, Ramadan Abedi and his youngest son, Hashem, were arrested in Tripoli Tuesday night.

Salman Abedi was also known to have been a close associate of one of the main Islamic State recruiters in the UK, Raphael Hostey, who was killed in a drone strike in Syria in 2016. Hostey grew up in Moss Side, just a mile away from Abedi’s home in the Fallowfield district of the city.

In a statement on the bombing, the government of Abdullah Thinni in Bayda, Libya said it had warned the British government it was harbouring terrorists. Thinni’s government was driven out of Tripoli in 2013 by Islamic extremists, including UK-based Libyan exiles.

It accused May’s predecessor David Cameron of backing terrorist groups who

“have been destroying our cities and towns in an attempt to shape Libya into an exporter of terror to the whole planet.”

Featured image: True Publica

During the election campaign Donald Trump argued for better relations with Russia. He wanted to engage in a common fight against the Islamic State and other terrorists. Hillary Clinton argued for a confrontational policy against Russia and a new cold war. The foreign policy establishment, the media and the CIA were solidly on Clinton’s side. The people of the United States made their choice. It was Trump and his views of policies that were elected.

After Trump had won the election, he advised his staff to set up a confidential track-2 communication channel with the Russian government. He rightfully did not trust the established official channels through the State Department and the CIA. His incoming National Security Advisor Flynn and his foreign policy advisor Kushner worked on his behalf when they soughed contacts with Russian officials. Such diplomacy is by nature not acted out in public.

But now the U.S. people are told by their media that it is a scandal, A SCANDAL, that President Trump’s advisors pursue the policies the candidate Trump had argued for. Today’s headlines: NYT – Kushner Is Said to Have Discussed a Secret Channel to Talk to Russia; WaPo – Russian ambassador told Moscow that Kushner wanted secret communications channel with Kremlin; The Hill – Kushner wanted secure line with Kremlin before inauguration: report; The New Yorker – Jared Kushner’s Russia Problems; Reuters – Exclusive: Trump son-in-law had undisclosed contacts with Russian envoy – sources.

The various formulations in those pieces are painting the discrete diplomatic contacts as something sinister and illegal:

NBC News reported on Thursday that Kushner was under scrutiny by the FBI, in the first sign that the investigation, which began last July, has reached the president’s inner circle.

…

FBI investigators are examining whether Russians suggested to Kushner or other Trump aides that relaxing economic sanctions would allow Russian banks to offer financing to people with ties to Trump, said the current U.S. law enforcement official.

But paragraphs down from that:

While the FBI is investigating Kushner’s contacts with Russia, he is not currently a target of that investigation, the current law enforcement official said.

…

There may not have been anything improper about the contacts, the current law enforcement official stressed.

The WaPo author has at least the honesty to note:

It is common for senior advisers of a newly elected president to be in contact with foreign leaders and officials.

The scandal here are not various contacts by whatever means of Trump advisors with Russia and with other country’s diplomats. The scandal is the undermining of the constitutional prerogative of the elected President of the United State to set foreign policy:

Under the Constitution, the President serves as head of state and head of government. [..] As head of government, he formulates foreign policy, supervises its implementation and attempts to obtain the resources to support it. He also organizes and directs the departments and agencies that play a part in the foreign policy process. Along with the Vice President, he is the only government official elected nationally. This places him in a unique position to identify, express and pursue the “national interests” of the U.S.

The scandal here is not Trump and are not his adviors’ contacts with Russian officials. The scandal are the leaks by “officials” about confidential diplomacy, the sham FBI “investigations” and the general undemocratic hostility and resistance of the foreign policy establishment, the security services and the media towards the president’s chosen policies.

The question we need to be asking is: who turned Libya — which as recently as July 2010 was being lauded in the British press as one of the top six cruise ship holiday destinations — into a “Daesh stronghold” — and a training ground for terrorists like Abedi? 

It’s not a question that the West’s political elites and their media stenographers want us to be asking. And that’s hardly surprising. Because it was they — and the military alliance they support, who transformed Libya from a modern progressive country which acted as a bulwark against Salafi-jihadism, into a haven for al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Let’s cast our minds back to March 2011. NATO’s “liberation” of Libya during the so-called “Arab Spring” was cheered on by “liberal interventionists,” regime-change obsessed neocons and most of the mainstream media. The “evil” Gaddafi was going to carry out a “Srebrenica style” massacre of civilians in Benghazi, the likes of David Cameron and William Hague told us. We simply had to intervene to stop the dictator “killing his own people.”

Gaddafi’s warnings that many of the so-called “rebels” were actually fanatical extremists linked to al-Qaeda were haughtily dismissed by the West’s endless war lobby as the ravings of a madman. But — as I later wrote:

“It wasn’t the ‘mad’ Gaddafi who was telling lies in 2011, but the regime changers in suits.”

At home, those of us who warned that forcibly ousting the long-standing Libyan leader would greatly strengthen al-Qaeda — and give them and affiliated extremists a base on the Mediterranean — were shouted down as “apologists for dictators'” by the Euston Manifesto brigade.

When I wrote a comment piece for the Daily Express newspaper on July 27, 2011, calling for UK to end its involvement in the Libyan war, my obsessed neocon stalker Oliver Kamm of the London Times newspaper attacked me the same day for saying that Gaddafi had given Libya stability and higher living standards.

Absurd Milosevic supporter, Neil Clark in Express, cites Gaddafi's giving Libya stability and higher living standards: http://t.co/OEPujEz

— Oliver Kamm (@OliverKamm) July 27, 2011

But I — and others who opposed the NATO action — were right and the serial “regime changers” were wrong — once again.

Libya is now a failed state. The country which had the highest Human Development Index in Africa in 2009, has seen the return of slave markets.

Stability? In place of Gaddafi there’s utter chaos. There is no unitary government authority — in fact, there’s competing governments. The main beneficiaries of the NATO “intervention” have been Daesh and al-Qaeda, who established a presence in the country that they never had before.

“Libya today is a bewildering chaos of competing militias and jihadi groups broadly following IS, al Qaeda and affiliates such as Ansar al-Sharia, and the Muslim Brotherhood in several guises and shadowy forms” writes Robert Fox in the Standard.

Yet just seven years ago, before NATO got going, it was a perfectly safe place for Western tourists to visit.

The instability in Libya has spilled over into neighboring Tunisia — with deadly consequences for western tourists. In June 2015, 38 people — including 30 Britons, were massacred on the beach at Port El Kantaoui. The gunman, Seifeddine Rezgui, was reported to have trained at a Daesh base in Libya. A base that — it must be pointed out — did not exist when Muammar Gaddafi was running the country.

Will anyone ask Theresa May if her support for the 2011 Libya intervention has made us more or less safe? https://t.co/EiM2VE6GJc

— Ian Sinclair (@IanJSinclair) May 24, 2017

While the consequences of NATO’s Libya intervention have been so catastrophic, and so far-reaching, those responsible have never been held to account. Quite the opposite — those who helped turned the country into a jihadists playground and in doing so greatly increased the terror threat to Europeans — are positively thriving.

The politicians who ordered the bombing of Libya are raking it in on the conference circuit. Earlier this year it was revealed that David Cameron, British Prime Minister in 2011, was paid a mind-boggling £100,000 (US$130,000) for one speech to Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

This is after a damning report of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons which declared:

“the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence.”

Like Iraq, Libya was a war sold to us on a lie.

Yet even after the destruction of Libya, the deceit goes on.

The same bunch of warmongers who voted for and cheer-led the military action to topple Gaddafi (image on the right, source: Sputnik) are hell-bent on toppling another secular Arab leader who’s fighting the very same people who have claimed responsibility for and celebrated the horrific bomb attack in Manchester.

The serial regime changers want Bashar al-Assad‘s head on a plate, so they can then move on to Iran. Again, the main beneficiaries of this policy will be Daesh and al-Qaeda. It’s worth nothing that British Prime Minister Theresa May not only voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but also for the bombing of Libya in 2011 — and for Syrian government forces to be bombed in 2013.

Had David Cameron got his way then, its quite probable that Salman Abedi’s co-ideologists would be in control of all of Syria today.

At the time of writing, there’s also reports that Abedi himself may have been in Syria too. Once again, he’d be on the same side of the neocons — ie. working for “regime change.”

The unpalatable truth is that very people who claim to be making us safe, have in fact greatly increased the terror risk to ordinary citizens on account of their criminally reckless regime change operations against governments that acted as a bulwark against the jihadists. And unless we have a proper grown up, no-holds barred debate on Western foreign policy double standards, and ask who it was who turned Libya from a top cruise ship destination which was getting praise in the Daily Telegraph, into a “Daesh stronghold,” the nightmare will only continue.

Follow @NeilClark66 on Twitter.

Featured image: AP Photo

“I’ve heard it’s one of the toughest deals of all, but I have a feeling we’re going to get there eventually. I hope.”

-US President Donald Trump, on prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal [1] (May 22, 2017)

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Beleaguered by ongoing accusations of being a Kremlin agent, protests, and calls for his impeachment, President Trump has finally seen fit to embark on a multi-state visit abroad.

Trump’s first stop was in Saudi Arabia, where he signed a weapons deal worth $109.7 billion, the largest in history. This princely sum is expected to mushroom to $380 billion within 10 years. [2]

The second stop was Israel. Aside from the multiple photographs circulating through media of him and his entourage visiting the Western Wall, the trip was notable for public statements by both the US President and the Israeli Prime Minister indicating that the president’s “strong position on Iran” advances the prospects for peace in the region.

The subject that should have been front and centre however, was the nearly forty day hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, spearheaded by Marwan Barghouti. The more than 1000 prisoners were attempting to raise concerns about the poor treatment of prisoners in Israeli jails. These included the practices of administrative detention allowing detentions on ‘secret evidence’, excessive use of solitary confinement, and the severe restriction of family visits. (source: Al Jazeera report) [3]

According to press reports, as of Saturday May 27th, the hunger strike has finally been suspended following talks involving the International Committee for the Red Cross and the Palestinian Authority concluding in a deal with Israel. [4]The Free Barghouti Campaign put out the following statement:

This is an important step towards full respect of the rights of Palestinian prisoners under international law. It is also an indication of the reality of the Israeli occupation, which has left no option to Palestinian prisoners but to starve themselves to achieve basic rights they are entitled to under international law.[5]

On the occasion of both the Trump visit and the end of “one of the widest and longest Palestinian hunger strikes in history of the prisoners’ movement” the Global Research News Hour looks at the prospects for peace and justice in the Middle East.

Richard Silverstein is a political writer and commentator. Since 2003 he has authored the progressive Jewish blog Tikun Olam, which focuses on exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. He has contributed to the Independent Jewish Voices essay collection, A Time to Speak Out (Verso, 2009), and to Israel and Palestine: Alternate Perspectives on Statehood (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). He contributes regularly to Middle East Eye, and has contributed in the past to Truthout, Alternet, Haaretz, Mint Press News, Jewish Forward, Los Angeles Times, Comment Is Free and Al Jazeera English. In the first part of the show, Silverstein probes some of the dynamics of Trump’s visit to the region, what is on the table in terms of Israeli-Palestinian peace, and the major players involved. His site is www.richardsilverstein.com

Richard Falk is a professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University. From March 2008 to March 2014 he served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967. He also co-authored with Virginia Tilley a recent report, released in March 2017 and since suppressed at the insistence of the UN Secretary General, that evaluated Israel’s practices toward the Palestinian population as essentially apartheid. In the second half of the program, Professor Falk discusses the findings of his report, and the repudiation it received at the UN level. He also discusses how the Palestinian prisoners hunger strike coming on top of an effective boycott, divestment, sanctions campaign holds promise for precipitating an optimistic outlook for justice movements in the region. His blog is featured at richardfalk.wordpress.com Many of his articles are posted at Global Research.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca . The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in everyThursday at 6pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca 

Notes:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrQuiMX7BZ8
2. Rachael Revesz (May 21, 2017) “Donald Trump Signs $110 Billion Arms Deal with Nation He Accused of Masterminding 9/11” Independent; http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-arms-deal-saudi-arabia-110-billion-911-terrorism-international-law-war-crimes-a7747076.html
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_04njk5vxps
4. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/05/palestinian-prisoners-israel-suspend-hunger-strike-170527074751097.html
5. ibid

Arguably one of the most influential thinkers and authors of the 20th and early 21st centuries, Brzezinski is regarded by many as the vanguard of modern globalism and the architect of the new world order.

Brzezinski’s two seminal publications, Between Two Ages and The Grand Chessboard are near blueprints of how globalization and geopolitics has progressed in the post-WWII world under an international system of Anglo-American economic and political hegemony.

Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland and attended university in both Canada and the US. In mainstream politics, Brzezinski first came to prominence in the early 1960’s as adviser to president John F. Kennedy and later with his successor Lyndon B. Johnson.

During his tenure as chief national security advisor to president Jimmy Carter began in 1976, Brzezinski is said to have helped to broker the Panama Canal treaty, as well as Camp David negotiations between Israeli and Egyptian leaders, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. He is also credited with opening up China to the West, and helping to topple the Soviet Union.

In his final years, Brzezinski’s efforts focused on the US-EU project to encircle and isolate Russia by pulling former Soviet republics and Balkan countries under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Featured image: 21st Century Wire

On Thursday, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies announced start of the Operation “Grand Dawn” in eastern Syria. The aim of the operation is to expel militants from the eastern desert and to set a foothold for a push to Deir Ezzor. The declaration followed a major success of government forces in southeastern Homs where they had liberated about 5,000 km2 and got a full control over the Damascus-Palmyra highway.

ISIS deployed a force for a counter-attack but its formidable military convoy was fully destroyed by the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Syrian Air Force en route to the Zaza triangle area. Thus, the terrorist group defense lines just collapsed.

The government advance south of the Homs-Palmyra highway also allowed government forces to isolate Jaish al-Islam militants in eastern Qalamoun and to prevent their attempt to unite efforts with US-backed militant groups operating near the Syrian-Jordanian border.

A new photo appeared online showing a Russian-made self-propelled 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzer with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in Syria. The modern howitzer was supplied to the Syrian government by the Russian military.

The photo shows the howitzer deployed is a desert area, most likely somewhere in the countryside of Palmyra or north of Suweida. The presence of these weapon systems is another argument contributing to a success of pro-government forces in the area.

In the province of Aleppo, the SAA Tiger Forces and their allies further outflanked the strategic ISIS-held town of Maskanah liberating the villages of Fariyah, Khirbat Ghudraf, Jubab Masudiyah, Shumriya, Batushiya, and Salemiyah.

Meanwhile, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) continued steadily isolating the city of Raqqah from the western direction.

Summing up the recent developments, the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance have taken the initiative in its hands and now is aiming to achieve own strategic goals in eastern Syria, while the US-led coalition attempts to make some gains along the Jordanian and Iraqi borders and prepares for a storm of Raqqah.

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Alternative energy company Tesla which includes US-based electric car development and production, battery production, and now also includes residential solar panel and battery systems previously under SolarCity, represents a simultaneous threat to several cornerstones of Western corporate-financier monopolies.

Openly seeking to replace big-oil and big-auto, it was only a matter of time before Tesla’s co-founder, CEO, and product architect Elon Musk attracted the negative attention of both of these deeply rooted and corrupt industries.

The genuine enthusiasm for Tesla and its products versus the paid-for media campaign to obstruct or even reverse Tesla’s influence on energy and transportation has been a see-sawing battle unfolding just beneath the surface.

More recently, attempts to further complicate Tesla’s US-based manufacturing facility in California have been spearheaded by the United Automobile Workers (UAW), an organization that attempts to pass itself off as a labor union.

Part of this campaign has included several “investigations” carried out by both the corporate media and various organizations like Worksafe – an opaque organization claiming to advocate workplace safety – which recently published a report regarding worker safety at Tesla’s California factory. The report was widely promoted across the corporate media in what appears to be a concerted attempt to single out and undermine Tesla.

Source: LocalOrg

Attempts to ascertain Worksafe’s affiliations and funding yielded only an ambiguous disclosure on its website stating:

Worksafe is allied with a advocacy groups, scientists and academic experts, unions and labor activists, diverse working communities, like nail salon technicians and car wash workers, environmentalists, legal aid programs – and you.

That UAW featured Worksafe’s report prominently on the front of its website gives us clues to just which “unions” Worksafe is “allied with.” It appears to be part of a wider campaign by UAW to create a “union” at Tesla, described in a Bloomberg article titled, “Tesla Workers’ Union Push Gets UAW Support at California Plant,” which states:

The United Auto Workers has sent organizers to help employees organize Tesla Inc.’s electric-car plant, a move that — if successful — would give the union the presence it’s long sought beyond legacy U.S. automakers’ factories. 

A group of Tesla workers have contacted the union to seek assistance organizing, and the UAW is in discussion with them, Dennis Williams, the union’s president, told reporters during a roundtable Thursday in Detroit. He said union organizers have received complaints about long hours and potentially unsafe conditions at Tesla’s plant in Fremont, California.

Is the UAW is a Wall Street Trojan Horse Disguised as a Labor Rights Advocate?

While UAW poses as a labor union, in reality, UAW is nothing of the sort.

It is an American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) affiliate, with AFL-CIO representing perhaps the most successful Wall Street-devised attempt to date to infiltrate, co-opt, and commandeer legitimate labor unions and movements not only in the United States, but through funding and association with the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), all across the entire planet.

A more in-depth example of this can be examined via Democracy Now’s 2005 report, “Unholy Alliance? The AFL-CIO and the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela,” and specific mention of the UAW within NED programs can be found on NED’s own webpages for Russia and Asia.

The National Endowment for Democracy represents some of the largest, deepest entrenched corporate financier interests on Earth, including big-oil and big-auto. The conflict of interest – even at face value – should be prominently featured in any and all news regarding UAW’s growing  row with Tesla. Yet it is not.

Big-oil and big-auto are both well represented by NED’s corporate sponsors and chairpersons. That its affiliates through the AFL-CIO and UAW are applying pressure on up and coming competitor Tesla is precisely why NED and its network of faux rights and labor advocacy fronts were created for. (Source: LocalOrg)

The UAW specifically is listed throughout the NED’s various international programs as being in direct cooperation with NED in supplanting and dominating foreign labor movements.

Just as NED exploits and abuses human rights advocacy to advance US special interests across the globe, it uses AFL-CIO and faux-unions like UAW to exploit and abuse labor issues to hide its self-serving agenda behind. Key to the success of such schemes is complicity across the corporate media – which goes far in explaining why obvious conflicts of interests regarding UAW and entrenched big-auto corporations are never mentioned in corporate media reports.

Undermining a relatively independent, disruptive company like Tesla by leveraging alleged labor concerns is par for the course regarding AFL-CIO and UAW – and is in fact why fronts like NED, AFL-CIO, and UAW were created for in the first place.

While labor issues are a legitimate concern upon every factory floor on Earth, attempts to address them must be done in a transparent and honest manner via legitimate and independent third parties. The AFL-CIO and UAW attempting to push labor issues regarding Telsa, and even attempts by both to create a “labor union” at Tesla are neither legitimate nor independent.

The UAW – a faux-labor union created by and for the very special interests organized labor is supposed to serve as a check against – would be comparable to Elon Musk creating a labor union at a General Motors or a Ford factory.

Wider public awareness of both this current attempt to target Tesla, and the wider corruption, exploitation, and abuse of labor advocacy by AFL-CIO and UAW will help remove this insidious tool from the hands of special interests and place labor advocacy back into the hands of the workers where it belongs.

Featured image: LocalOrg

During a press conference on May 24, NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, said that NATO does not intend to take part in military operations against the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria. Instead, the alliance plans to concentrate on training certain ‘local forces’.

Actually, Jens Stoltenberg still could not hide the fact that NATO leadership, first of all, solves the serious issue of deploying its units in Syria and Iraq. In fact, such plans as ‘training local forces’ and ‘large-scale military operation’ are very close to each other in their essence.

It is easy to imagine how the events will develop. First, a decision is made to train local forces, which are the Syrian opposition in fact. In the framework of this step, dozens, and then hundreds of NATO ‘experts’ are deployed in the country. Then the next stage to be implemented, the military is transferred closer to the war zone.

The latest events are the following: during a full-scale campaign in the media started immediately, the fabricated information about the death of several NATO representatives (who were illegally engaged in training the opposition representatives on the Syrian soil) is spread.

It cannot be ruled out that something like that may happen somewhere in Idlib, where Western-controlled radical groups are located. Some human rights organizations accuse then government troops of using chemical weapons, bombing hospitals, maternity homes and schools, and of other atrocities and mass murders.

Thus, under the specious pretext of combating IS, the Allied Forces of NATO countries may enter Syria and begin a large-scale campaign against Bashar Assad. Such a scenario can be easily carried out if they wish. In connection with the growing number of terrorist attacks in Europe, Western society is extremely frightened. Continuous flows of refugees also threaten the EU. It turns out that the citizens of the European Union are so much afraid of all these Middle Eastern troubles that they will agree with everything that NATO would offer them, up to participation in full-fledged military operations, just not to let bombs explode in Europe.

Syrian experts, in their turn, were skeptical of the contradictory statements of Stoltenberg. In their opinion, the coalition already includes 12 member countries of NATO. It is their combat aircraft that daily participate in military operations in Syria and Iraq and regularly carry out deadly air strikes. In particular, recently, the coalition strikes in Syrian Raqqah killed at least 16 civilians.

Obviously, the actions of the coalition forces in Syria and Iraq, one way or another, are coordinated with the command of NATO. Apparently, Washington is again trying to lull the vigilance of the international community and is developing new plans to overthrow the Syrian government by force.

Sophie Mangal is a special investigative correspondent and co-editor at Inside Syria Media Center.

Featured image: Inside Syria Media Center

Despite all the promises of the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, about the imminent end of the operation in Mosul, it is obvious that the U.S. armed forces are not hurrying to leave the city.

Contrary to the expectations of the Iraqis, on May 25, the Iraqi army’s press service reported that the ‘counter-terrorist’ operation wouldn’t finish before the holy month of Ramadan.

Undoubtedly, this is facilitated by the coalition’s indiscriminate air strikes on residential areas. These strikes usually killed not terrorists, but civilians.

According to CNN, the results of a U.S. military investigation found that at least 100 Iraqi civilians were killed in west Mosul because of the U.S. air strike in March.

It should be mentioned that because of the U.S.-led coalition’s actions in Mosul a number of the civilian casualties is daily increasing. According to Turkish news agency Anadolu with reference to the Iraqi police, earlier, the U.S. air strikes on a building in the western part of Mosul led to the death of 13 people.

In connection with this, if the U.S. military were making more efforts on reconnaissance and establishing exact locations of ISIS positions, the deaths of civilians could be avoided, and the military campaign would be much more successful.

In addition, according to Syrian experts, the operation in the Iraqi city is dragging on as ISIS terrorists managed to seize the U.S. military equipment, which was supposed to be transferred to the Iraqi army.

Source: Fort Russ News

On May 24, Amnesty International reported that tens of thousands of assault rifles (worth $28 million), hundreds of mortar rounds and hundreds of Humvee armored vehicles, and a significant number of mortar shells fell into the hands of terrorists.

It is noteworthy that the Joint Forces Command has not yet commented on this information on failures to monitor over $1 billion worth of arms transfers. Obviously, this shows that the campaign conducted by the United States in Iraq is another badly planned military operation.

Apparently, the Pentagon’s promises regarding the imminent end of the operation in Mosul will remain just words. Moreover, Washington seems to repeat its failure in Syria’s Raqqa. However, no one seems to be caring about the fact that the actions of the US-led coalition lead to the death of hundreds of civilians and the destruction of cities.

Anna Jaunger is a freelance journalist at Inside Syria Media Center.

In a strong speech at the American Islamic Summit, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi exposes the supporters of terrorism in the Middle East.

Stop Supporting Terrorism, says president Al-Sisi.

“Comprehensive Counter-terrorism means confronting all terrorist organizations without differentiation

Those who provide terrorists with media and financial support are partners in their crimes.

The criminal is not only the militant but also those who finance them train and arm them.”

 

We shouldn’t be examining the Manchester bombing tragedy in isolation because we’ve seen all this before. While it is possible that the official explanation of what happened in Manchester, England on May 22, 2017 is correct, other possibilities should not be overlooked.

Dr. Graeme McQueen, author of The 2001 Anthrax Deception, argues that the prime suspects in transformative, domestic terror cases, should be intelligence agencies.

Naomi Klein argues in The Shock Doctrine that when people are shocked by a real or man-made event, they can be easily manipulated to support wars, or neoliberal market schemes, or any number of toxic agendas.

A simple formula underpins the logic of synthetic terror operations: problem, reaction, solution. An analysis within this framework would look like this:

The problem for the NATO warmongers is that their terrorist proxies in Syria are losing, and they need more military support.

The public reaction that the warmongers want to elicit is shock, and fear.

The engineered solution is the militarization of society, and a corporatist, warmongering government.

Currently, the U.K is being militarized, and an escalation of war on Syria is being proposed.

This solution to the problem makes no sense, but apparently the agencies tasked with indoctrinating the public seek to exploit the public’s shock and its suspension of common sense.

The twisted logic is that terrorism is the problem, so we should therefore support more terrorism in Syria and the problem go away.

Janice Kortkamp explains what the West’s support for terrorism in Syria has so far produced:

The alleged bomber was linked to al Qaeda forces that were NATO proxies in Libya as NATO criminally bombed that secular state into ruin for the benefit of terrorists.

Additionally, the alleged bomber has links to British intelligence services.

If the broad-based population were to decode the Manchester bombing within the aforementioned framework, common sense and reason would better inform their decisions.

Currently, common sense and reason are being suppressed by shock and panic …and the UK government.

Featured image: Billboard

The majority of American citizens have never heard of the U.S. Treasury agency known as FinCEN – short for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. But for those who work for Wall Street brokerage firms or the mega Wall Street banks like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup or German banking giant Deutsche Bank, just the mere mention of FinCEN can quickly produce beads of sweat dripping onto those expensive Canali suits. That’s because FinCEN is the Federal agency where suspicious financial activity that might turn out to be money laundering gets reported. All three banks, and numerous others, have had their share of scandalous run ins with money laundering.

In recent weeks, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee and the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee have all shown an interest in what FinCEN might have in its database that would shed sunshine on involvement of the Trump business empire or Trump campaign and Russian money inflows.

Senator Sherrod Brown, the Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, sent a letter on March 2 to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, asking for documents and explaining his rationale as follows:

“…Russia has been subjected to a number of international and US sanctions, as have many prominent Russian leaders and business people. Investors from Russia have, in the past, played a significant role in the Trump organization. example, President Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. stated at a conference in 2008 that President Trump’s businesses involved substantial Russian investments. He reportedly said: ‘And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.’

“Such statements raise important questions about whether any Trump firms, including those now controlled by his children, retain ownership interests in Russian entities, or have business ties or projects elsewhere that include Russian investors. If so, what is the nature of those ownership or investment arrangements?  Might they provide opportunities for economic leverage over the President or any of his family members or associates?  Do they put the President or his family in danger of violating U.S. statutes, regulations, or simply prudent standards of conduct for the leader of our nation?”

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin appeared before the Senate Banking Committee on an unrelated matter on May 18. During the hearing, Senator Brown told Mnuchin that he had not received an appropriate response to his March 2 letter. He asked Mnuchin to provide “a complete list of Trump business associates and financial ties to ensure that any foreign entanglements are benign…” Mnuchin denied that he hadn’t been responsive to Brown’s letter.

To read the complete article on Wall Street on Parade, click here

This article first published on July 12, 2014 provides a historical understanding of the wave of Islamophobia sweeping across the United Kingdom since 7/7.

This article is of particular relevance in understanding the May 2017 Manchester bombing and its tragic aftermath. (M. Ch. GR Editor) 

Nine Years Ago, the 7/7 London Bombing

This article is dedicated to former South Yorkshire terror analyst Tony Farrell who lost his job but kept his integrity, and with thanks to the documentation provided by the July 7th Truth Campaign

“:One intriguing aspect of the London Bombing report is the fact that the MI5 codename for the event is “Stepford”. The four “bombers” are referred to as the “Stepford four”.

Why is this the case? … the MI5 codename is very revealing in that it suggests the operation was a carefully coordinated and controlled one with four compliant and malleable patsies following direct orders.

Now if MI5 has no idea who was behind the operation or whether there were any orders coming from a mastermind, why would they give the event the codename “Stepford”? ” (Steve Watson, January 30, 2006 Prison Planet)

Background

The word was out that there was easy money to be made by Muslims taking part in an emergency- preparedness operation. Mohammad Sidique Khan — better known by his western nickname “Sid” —  had been approached by his contact, probably Haroon Rashid Aswat who was in town, about a big emergency preparedness operation that was looking for local Pakistanis who might take the part of pretend “suicide bombers” for the enactment.  The call was somewhat unusual: not just anyone was to be asked.  The people running this wanted “young men who were conservatively and cleanly dressed and probably had some higher education”. It looked as if it might be one of the ones related to Visor Consultants, which had a history of holding such events.   Sid’s wife, Hasina Patel, had been experiencing complications in her second pregnancy; he wondered if she might be better off getting help through expensive, private doctors.  He agreed to take part in it and to recruit others.

Did he smell a rat?  Khan asked only men of Pakistani descent who were single.  His friend and younger sidekick Shezad Tanweer, who had just graduated from university, agreed.  He had just racked up a big car repair bill on his beloved red Mercedes and could use the money.  Eighteen-year old Hasib Hussain was a good guy who was awaiting his exams for entry into Leeds University that September; he could use the money for a car he had been looking at for the commute. Ejaz Fiaz, who was known for sometimes dyeing his hair blonde for parties, also agreed.  He was a bit flakey but he seemed to fit the bill.  Khan gave their names as volunteers.

What could go wrong?  Aswat was well connected with British security and had to be reliable. But he had felt somewhat compromised by his and Tanweer’s work with security people the previous year.  No one was more patriotic than he and Tanweer.  They loved their country and wanted to help their government in any way.  They had allowed themselves to be taped in 2004, but he didn’t feel good about it.  He and Tanweer had been acting in good faith in getting other Muslims, like Omar Khyam, to talk on tape, but he started to realize that security people were basically trying to find Muslims to set up for their “War on Terror.” It had become dangerous for Muslims, even for patriots like him and Tanweer. He wondered whether the work they did for security had made them safer or put them in a more precarious position. Tapes the two of them had made for security guys the year before bothered him, tapes that had made them look like some kind of crazy terrorists, dressed up half like pirates and half like Palestinians, with red kifieh’s wrapped around their heads. They had been talked into being photographed like that against his better judgement — of course, they had also gotten paid for it.  He  hoped that those tapes were lying somewhere, forgotten.

But what could anyone do to him?  Everybody knew him; his reputation was such that he had to be untouchable.  He had been featured in a Sunday Times educational supplement for his excellent work in counseling children of immigrants; he was known for fixing dangerous situations, including conflict resolution with troubled teenagers, and he had even been able to help get kids off drugs. Kids knew he cared about their problems when he talked to them.   He also knew important people and was even a friend of his Member of Parliament.  His mother-in-law knew the Queen and had special recognition for her progressive work with Muslim women. If there was anyone in the Muslim community who had to be beyond any suspicion for any funny business, it had to be him.

Still, it would be naive to think that there were no risks at all involved.  It chilled him, wondering why an emergency preparedness operation really needed fake “suicide bombers”.   Khan got the word out that he and Hasina had separated.  He didn’t want her harassed if anything went wrong and he was being set up.

Fiaz, the party guy, ended up cancelling out in the end, so Khan contacted Jamal (or, using his non-Muslim name, Germaine) Lindsay, a burly, black bodybuilder who had been born in Jamaica, to take Fiaz’s place.  He wasn’t of Pakistani origin, but he was Muslim, anyway.  His wife Samantha Lewthwaite was about to deliver their second child, so Lindsay was happy to get extra money.

All of the guys volunteering knew the security contacts; it looked as if it might be fun while they were helping out and making a bit of extra money.

Timeline

Thursday, July 7th, 2005, is a day people still talk about in London, England.  A meeting of the G8 had started in Gleneagles and London had just been named as the city for the next summer Olympics. It was all good.

At about 8:50 am, Scotland Yard’s office put a call through to their Mossad contacts at the Israeli embassy. (Sheva, 2005)  Benjamin Netanyahu, then serving as Israel’s Finance Minister, was in London to address a conference near Liverpool Station.  They warned the Israeli officials that explosions were about to happen.  Netanyahu remained in his room that morning.

London’s commuters weren’t as lucky.  About five minutes later, explosions started to rip through London Transport subway cars and busses.  At around 9 a.m., London Transport put out the word that there seemed to be a “power surge” problem.  The Gold Team of London’s Metropolitan police (the “Met”) shut down the mobile phone system for at least an hour in central London — which they initially denied.

At 9:47 a.m., an explosion ripped through a No. 30 bus in Tavistock Square, near the office of the British Medical Association and also the offices of various security operations.  Featuring a giant ad for a terror film, the bus seemed to be the only one that had strayed off of its normal route that day. The driver had just stuck his neck out to ask directions, when the back of the upper deck exploded.  Photographs of the bus show it with varying degrees of damage. (Antagonist, 2005)

Soon after the Bus No. 30 explosion, the public was notified about that as well as about explosions on subways over the past 50 minutes; the entire London Transport system would be shut down

There had been reports of explosions in three busses and at least six subway cars.  The subway explosions seemed to be on trains which could have started from King’s Cross station, although that would not be clear, given witness accounts, with some travelling in opposite directions or even on different subway lines.  In addition, the FBI’s Vincent Cannistraro would report the further discovery of two unexploded bombs as well as mechanical timing devices. (Muir et al, 2005)

At 11 a.m. there were reports about police marksmen having killed from 1-4 “suicide bombers” at Canary Wharf, a media center. (Shortnews, 2005)  The story made it to numerous international newspapers, including Toronto’s Globe & Mail. (Rook, 2005) The New Zealand Herald also reported that Canary Wharf workers were told to remain away from windows for six hours.  (N Z Herald, 2005)

By noon,

• Ÿ  Police Commissioner Ian Blair noted that there had been “about six” explosions and  people were asked to stay out of London.
• Ÿ  Also around noon, police inexplicably moved Lindsay’s parked car, with a valid parking ticket on it, from Luton’s commuter parking lot to a restricted parking lot at Leighton Buzzard.
• Ÿ  And around that time, “Sid” Khan’s wife Hasina Patel called the police Missing Persons hotline to report her husband missing; she had lost the baby;
• Ÿ  Some hours later, Hasib Hussain’s mother joined 115,000 frantic hotline callers to report Hasib missing.

Later that afternoon, the head of the security-related Visor Consultants, Peter Power, spoke on radio and TV.  Incredibly, his company had been commissioned to carry out an emergency preparedness operation for simultaneous bombings at 9 a.m. at the very stations that were affected by the blasts: Edgware, Aldgate and Piccadilly.  (Statisticians have noted that the probability of that being a coincidence are close to zero.)  Power, it turned out, had practice making this announcement.  He had been part of a mock exercise in April 2004 with the same bombing scenario of three subways and a bus that had been featured on a BBC Panorama program.  He had also taken part in joint US/UK London emergency preparedness operations as recently as two months before. (Chossudovsky, 8/8 2005) Power was a veteran of British intelligence until his founding of Visor Consultants in 1995.

Everyone “knew” it was Al Qaeda

By the end of the day, the government claimed that “Islamic extremists” were responsible for four explosions in London that morning. ” Prime Minister Tony Blair was “incensed” at the suggestion by the head of the Opposition that an independent investigation might be appropriate.  Since “everyone” knew that the Muslims had done it, it would be an insult to the security services, as well as a waste of time and money.  Besides, one month before, The Inquiries Act became law, giving the Prime Minister full control of all inquiries; a truly independent inquiry would not be possible.

The London explosions — which Scotland Yard claimed it had had no advance notice of — was claimed to have killed 52 commuters and injured 700 — 300 of them seriously.  The death toll from the bus was initially declared to be two but mysteriously increased to “13 or 14”; Ian Blair called it a complicated situation — without further elaboration.  It took several hours for some of the injured to receive help, a possible factor in the death toll that would be investigated at the 2010 Hallett Inquest.  The government had not only rejected any inquiry, they were also busy destroying evidence.  The bombed vehicles were immediately taken off and disposed of — apparently sent out of Britain to be sold as scrap — without any photographs or documentation of the damage.  There were no autopsies of the dead, and no records collected of the survivors’ injuries for forensic purposes.

The day after the explosions, Friday July 8th,  Scotland Yard sent off its voluminous “Operation Crevice” files on Omar Khyam and his group, which included information on Khan and Tanweer, to the RCMP in Canada for the Khawaja trial;  not long after that, police removed an electronic monitoring device from Khan’s car;   Hasib Hussain’s exam results arrived; he had scored high marks in four out of the five exams;

Ÿ  There was a big police operation in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Lindsay’s home:

Chief Superintendent Simon Chesterman, the most senior police officer in Bucks, arrived at his office at Aylesbury Police Station [on Friday, July 8th] to be confronted by Scotland Yard’s counter terrorism unit. Detectives believed that Lindsay, the Kings Cross bomber who killed 26 people, was, in fact, a fifth bomber, was still alive and posed an immediate threat to public safety. Officers had discovered the car of Germaine Lindsay, who lived in Northern Road, abandoned at Luton train station, where he travelled to London with three other bombers. What followed, said Chief Supt Chesterman, was the biggest police operation he had ever witnessed in 22 years on the force.” (Bucks Herald, 2005)

Christophe Chaboud, a French anti-terrorism expert called in to help with the investigation, quickly noted the expertise of the London bombs. He reported that the bombmaker was sophisticated and the explosives high-grade, and specifically not homemade.  That evaluation was shared by other explosives experts and confirmed with the identification of an unusual variant of the military plastic explosive C4 at all four bomb sites.  The remains of timing devices were also found at the subway blast sites, which meant that no one had to die in those explosions.

 Identifying the accused

On Monday, July 11th, 800 detectives gathered to watch 5,000 Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) tapes to see if they could spot something suspicious: people walking in with large bags and walking out — perhaps at another station — without them.  The exercise, which looked like mission impossible, was expected to take a couple of weeks. That night, however, they claimed they were lucky; they spotted four to five men of Asian descent — four with identical backpacks — (similar to those used by the British military) at Luton Station on their way to King’s Cross, which they took to be the origin point of the subway bombings.

Police claimed they had a “lucky break” with Hussain’s mother’s call, which put a name to one of the four men shown in the footage, (which they refused to show to the public.)  Police claimed that they then found the identity cards of three of the men, which they could connect to the various blasts: a Mohammad Sidique Khan at Edgware, a Shezad Tanweer at Aldgate, and Hasib Hussain, on the bus. Police claimed that all were “clean skins” or, unknown to the police. (Scotland Yard was embarrassed when Nicholas Sarkozy, then French Minister of the Interior, publicly reminded them that Khan and Tanweer had been known through their “Operation Crevice”.)  After the announcement, police noted that Khan’s body was not to be found at the Edgware Road site where he was supposed to have died.  (BBC, 7, 2005) Only his ID, which was subsequently found on the bus and, reportedly also at Aldgate. Tanweer’s ID, was not only found at Aldgate, but also on the bus, which exploded almost an hour after he was supposed to have died.  Police did not bother with ID cards of others also found at the sites.

The Piccadilly site’s “fourth bomber”

At first, the identity of the fourth bomber was a mystery.  One paper named Ejaz Fiaz as the fourth bomber, but noted that the name had not been confirmed.  Police claimed that the body of the fourth “suicide bomber” had been so “shredded” at the Piccadilly blast that his identity required DNA analysis. The DNA sample was reportedly taken from the parking stub from the car the police had towed on July 7th (J7 Profile: Lindsay)

The next morning, Wed., July 13th,  The Independent published a stunning article that challenged the previous day’s DNA claim. “The suicide plot hatched in Yorkshire” quoted Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch:

“The investigation is moving at great speed. “We are trying to establish the movements of the suspects in the run-up to last week’s attack and specifically to establish whether they all died in the explosions.” The article noted: “The four young British men, all thought to be of Pakistani origin, are believed to have blown themselves up with rucksack bombs” … [the body of the fourth bomber] “is thought to be among the remains in the wreckage on the Piccadilly line…” (Bennetto, Herbert, 2005) (emphasis added)

On July 12th, police did not appear to have a body to do DNA testing on!  People were wondering why it was taking British police so long to identify the London bombing victims.  While the 190 victims of the Madrid bombings had been identified within 24 hours, it would take almost another week, until July 19th, for police to identify the 52 victims of the London bombings.  Was it because British police could not find bodies they were looking for?

On Tuesday, July 12th, Lindsay’s wife Samantha Lewthwaite had called police to report her husband Germaine (“Jamal”) missing.  Police searched their home immediately. The next day, on July 14th, police announced that they had Lindsay’s ID and he was the fourth bomber. Lewthwaite was incredulous and refused to believe the accusation without DNA proof.  The police identification was stunning because they had been claiming that all of the suspects looked Pakistani; there was no way anyone could mistake the big, black Lindsay for an Asian. What had police been looking at?

After Lindsay’s identification was “confirmed”, police provided Lewthwaite with “protection,” presumably monitoring those who tried to contact her.  They also arrested Naveed Fiaz, Ejaz’s brother.  He was held for one week before being released with no charges.

The Fallout from “Homegrown suicide bombers”

The British public was incensed at the news that British-born citizens could have turned on them; one Muslim man was kicked to death soon after that announcement.  The public abuse of Pakistani- British was so ugly that within two months, two thirds of them considered leaving the UK.

Tony Blair, on the other hand, was riding high. The headlines up to July 7th described the political “humiliation” Blair faced from his “anti-terror” (and anti-civil-liberties) legislation.  Civil libertarians had been amassing a public war chest of one million pounds Sterling to fight his new legislation. Suddenly, he found the vast majority of the public behind him.  Buoyed by the polls, he made vicious comments about Islam and described further legislation he would like: criminalizing speech describing why those under occupation might want to kill themselves; criminalizing the word “martyr”; criminalizing “extremism” — which seemed to mean only “anti-Israeli”. “The game has changed,” Blair declared, and he started to produce legislation that would jettison Britain’s obligations under international humanitarian law.

Identifications of the accused “confirmed”

The fast identification of the accused seemed to be confirmed by the police identification of two cars connected to the accused, one in Luton car park reportedly with “home made” explosives in the trunk, the other parked in Leighton Buzzard.  Police had also raided what they claimed was the “bomb factory” — a bathtub filled with what they also claimed was “explosives” in an apartment in Alexandra Grove, Leeds.  While Police Commissioner Ian Blair quickly backed off the identification of the explosives that police claimed they had found in the Luton car and Leeds’ bathtub, the story of the London bombs nevertheless changed to “homemade” — bombs which would have left a TATP residue. Despite the fact that TATP residue was not identified, the previous identification of C4 was buried.

The Alexandra Grove apartment with the “bomb factory” bathtub was found to belong to Magdy al-Nashar, an Egyptian who had just received his PhD in biochemistry from Leeds University and was on the list of Leeds’ faculty. He had been forced to leave Britain because of a visa problem the previous month, but was trying to return to resume his job. His apartment had been vacant for about a month.  Banner headlines throughout the media claimed that al-Nashar would demonstrate the al Quada link. It fizzled when he was immediately exonerated, and his name was forgotten. While the fingerprints of the accused were identified at their friend al-Nashar’s apartment, they were not found on any containers of chemicals or “explosives.” (Investigating the terror, 2012)

Police came out with further confirmation of the identity of the accused; they claimed that they had both CCTV footage as well as eyewitness confirmation that the accused caught either the 7:40 a.m. or 7:48 a.m. Luton commuter trains to King’s Cross on the morning of July 7th.  People wondered why police refused to show any footage that showed any of the men in London that day. The reason became apparent when commuters claimed that those trains had not been running on schedule (if at all) that morning!  If the men had expected to catch those particular trains, they could not have made it onto the exploding subway cars.  The police refusal to show their footage publicly was becoming increasingly clear: they couldn’t have been looking at CCTV footage! And their earlier claim that the CCTV footage only showed suspicious Asians was confirmation of that fact.

Hasib Hussain and the No. 30 bus

Witnesses claimed that the bus explosion seemed to come from under a seat, possibly from a backpack lying on the ground.  The coroner examining the bodies from the No. 30 bus noted that two bodies were particularly badly damaged; either one of them might have been responsible for bringing a bomb.  People remarked that a terrorist trying to inflict maximum damage would have chosen to bomb the front bottom of a bus, not the rear top; this placement did not made sense. When Hasib Hussain was named as the bus bomber, witnesses came forward with descriptions: Hussain was either clean shaven or had stubble; he had a huge bag or a small bag; he was wearing a dark suit or a flashy top; he was either fidgeting with his bag or something exploded when he sat down.  It became clear that the most publicized witness, a Richard Jones, could not have seen Hussain on the bus.

The bus should have had four CCTV cameras operating; police claimed that they had no footage from any of them, so there was no proof that Hussain had been on the bus and there was no indication of what had caused the explosion.

Because the bus explosion came about 50 minutes after the subway explosions, Hussain became separated from Khan, Tanweer and Lindsay.  According to phone records, Hussain tried repeatedly to call the three of them around 9 a.m. — after the explosions —  without success, with the phone system shut down.  He clearly assumed they were all alive and wondered what was going on.  Hussain’s actions between 9 a.m. and the No. 30 explosion at 10:47 a.m. should have been picked up by dozens if not hundreds of CCTV cameras.  Although many witnesses claim they saw Hussain at 9 a.m., the July 7th pictures of Hussain appear to have all been  “photo-shopped”– digitally created or altered.  No  one knows what actually happened to Hussain.  (Kollerstrom, pp. 57, 64)

Hasib Hussain’s family and friends found the accusation against him unbelievable; his family insists that he will be shown to be innocent when further information comes out.

 The events of July 21st

On Thursday, July 21st, two weeks after the London bombings, Police Commissioner Ian Blair met with Prime Minister Tony Blair to discuss an urgent matter of business. A situation needed to be dealt with.  Police had to be sure that their officers would be fully protected legally from killing what might be described as “suspected suicide bombers.” Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigators, mandated by law to investigate police killings — had to be blocked from the scene of such a killing.  The meeting went smoothly.

At around noon that day, four North African immigrants tried to blow up three London subways and a bus.  These bombs were laughable duds; they made a popping sound like champagne being opened then started oozing like wet bread dough. They had been made with chapati flour.  The men scattered when they realized that the bombs didn’t work.  One donned a burqa and fled to Birmingham. But on that day, all of the CCTVs were working and produced 18,000 hours of footage.  All of the men were quickly picked up with the exception of Hussein Osman, who reached Italy.

Although the official police story was that they had no foreknowledge about the attempted bombings, The Mirror’s July 22, 2005 edition showed detailed foreknowledge demonstrated by the British government.  Nafeez Ahmed quotes the article,

“Despite the government’s official insistence that it had no prior knowledge of the attacks of 21 July 2005, anonymous British security sources revealed that Scotland Yard had obtained precise advanced warning of replica bomb attacks on the Tube network that would almost certainly be executed on Thursday of that week. . . Indeed, only two hours before the terrorist strikes, Home Secretary Charles Clarke ‘warned senior cabinet colleagues the capital could face another terror onslaught’ in a confidential briefing. … Most surprisingly, the Home Secretary had specifically ‘hinted at fears there could be copycat attacks in the wake of the July 7 atrocities’…. Indeed, police were racing on the morning of the 21 to locate at least one of the bomber suspects, several hours before the detonations … .’ At 9:29 a.m. an armed unit raced to Farrington station as they closed in on the suspected bomber — but narrowly missed him.’

The incident indicates the extent of the detail apparently available to the police.  How did they know that a suspect would pass through Farrington?  If they had information of such precision, did it extend to other elements of the plot?'”  (Ahmed, pp. 103,104)

The grooming of the would-be “copycat” bombers

Before Hussein Osman was extradited from Italy, he gave interviews which provided some insights into the operation.  He claimed that he, along with four others were fed for “some weeks”– a steady diet of graphic films that portrayed mutilated Iraqi victims of American and British military actions.  The men were instructed not to tell anyone about these mysterious films, which reportedly came from the banned al Mouhajiroun, a group that many believe was linked to British intelligence.  By July 21, four of the men were prepared to act in unison to protest the atrocities that the US and UK were committing in Iraq. Although Osman claimed that he only intended to scare people and not cause actual damage, at least some of the men did expect to die: Ramzi Mohammed wrote a suicide note to his girlfriend and the mother of his children.

A report by Italian judges authorising Osman’s extradition to Britain confirmed that the devices, ” which were created with flour, hair lotion, nails, nuts and bolts, and attached to a primitive device with a battery and unidentified powder which could be used as a detonator when attached manually to electrical wires —  contained no chemical explosive material.” This description missed a key ingredient: hydrogen peroxide.

The explosive link between the London bombings and the “copycat”

The most interesting part of this story is the recipe for the dud bombs: the only time such a recipe had ever been seen before was the “explosive” found in the Luton car and Leeds’ bathtub.  This recipe turned out to a unique use of hydrogen peroxide that explosives experts had never seen before. The discovery that the unique explosive connected to both the July 7th and the July 21st operations was known only to “government scientists” (Casciani,2007) indicates the role of the British government in both operations, and contradicts the British government’s claim that laymen concocted this recipe.

The other significant part of the “copycat bombings” was the police cover story of Hussein Osman’s gym bag that he left behind.  According to police, they didn’t get to examine Osman’s gym bag until 4 a.m. the next day, at which time they found a gym membership card belonging to Osman’s friend Abdi Omar.  According to some sources, there was no such card in his bag. Also, the two men were members of the same gym club and would not have needed to share cards.  In any case, police claimed that Abdi Omar lived at 21 Scotia Road, and they wanted to stake out his apartment in order to question him about Hussein Osman.

The July 22 stakeout at 21 Scotia Road “for Abdi Omar”

By 6 a.m. the morning of Friday, July 22, several of Britain’s most elite intelligence units were operating around 21 Scotia Road. A surveillance unit had a video feed to the Metropolitan Police’s Gold Team unit with Designated Service Officer (DSO) Cressida Dick in charge.  While they were supposedly on the lookout for the North African man, Dick activated the tracking units — one on foot, the other by car — when a man described as a “Northern European” white male exited the building around 9:30 am.  The targeted man, who would later be identified as a freelance Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, strolled to a nearby bus stop and took a bus to a subway station.  The subway station was closed “for security reasons”, so he called his uncle to tell him he would be delayed, then retraced his steps to get back on the next bus to reach the next subway.  By the time he reached the Stockwell subway station, it had taken him about half an hour.

He might have noticed a police car parked in front of the station; a marksman was awaiting his arrival.  Suspecting nothing, he picked up a free newspaper, showed his identifying “Oyster” subway card at the ticket office and strolled to the subway platform.  The subway car seemed to be parked there, so he made a quick call on his mobile before taking his seat in the car and settling in with his newspaper.  The subway driver had arrived at 10 a.m. to find the light red, so he wasn’t moving.  The light remained red until the 10:06 killing.

 The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes

There were about 17 other passengers in the subway car.  One witness, Anna Dunwoodie, noticed a jumpy, frightened-looking man sitting near her.  When what looked like a bunch of rowdies approached their car, he jumped up and pointed de Menezes out to them. Without a word, they surrounded de Menezes, who looked up at them calmly questioningly.  He was suddenly pinned down and the shots started.  The “rowdies” pumped eleven dumdum bullets into de Menezes, with at least five hitting his head. According to an eye witness who had to insist that her testimony be included in the IPCC report, the shots came at about three-second intervals and lasted for 30 seconds.

The other passengers ran for their lives. One of the police killers chased the terrified subway driver into the tunnel, where he ran across live subway wires and the paths of oncoming trains to escape the “terrorists”.

Pathologist Dr. Kenneth Shorrock was called to look at de Menezes’ body when it was still on the train floor.  He claimed that the police officers at the scene — including the senior investigation officer — lied to him about the circumstances of de Menezes’ death (Morgan, Davis, 2008) claiming that de Menezes had been running away from them.  When he looked at the contents of Jean Charles’ pockets, only his passport and loose change remained; police had taken De Menezes’ cell phone.

There was a sign at the scene of the murder which read: ‘Directed by Detective Superintendent Wolfenden not to allow access to the IPCC, authority of commissioner and prime minister.” (Percival, 11/2008).  Chief Inspector Stephen Costello claimed that the Prime Minister was consulted over a decision to bar to IPCC from entering Stockwell subway station after the shooting and issued a directive. In fact, the police not only banned the IPCC from the site of the execution, but they also refused to turn over their internal documents, as required by law. (Mitchell, 2007)

The police killers, meanwhile, headed for a lawyer’s office to come up with a story that would protect them all.  They had been assured before the operation that whatever happened they would be protected legally. Their story — repeated subsequently under oath by all of them — was that they had called out that they were “police” to de Menezes but that he then reacted in a threatening way which led them to make the decision to kill him. That they had been fitted out with the banned dum dum bullets, used for lethal encounters, was overlooked.

Abdi Omar, the supposed target of the stakeout at 21 Scotia Road, had been out of the UK on business for the past week.  A swat team knew where his wife and children were, however, and paid them a visit later that day, putting the mother-in-law in hospital with a heart attack.  Omar returned some days later and asked police if they wanted to speak with him; they didn’t.

Police realized at some point that they had a problem: Abdi Omar had only been wanted for questioning and had not been a suicide bombing suspect.  For their legal protection — their “get out of jail free card” —  they had to have been chasing Hussein Osman, who had made it to Italy. Luckily, their last names both started with “O”.  There was disappointingly little notice taken when police changed the name of their supposed target from “Omar ” to “Osman”.

The evening of the killing, a retired Scotland Yard officer on BBC News challenged the government’s claim that the killing had been done by a Scotland Yard officer and there would be no investigation.  Impossible, he said; if the killing had been done by a Yard officer, there would automatically be an investigation. Evidence began to indicate that at least two elite British intelligence units had been involved in the murder, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) which specializes in surveillance and “false flag operations” and the newly-formed police marksmen’s unit, C019 (or referred to as S019), trained by the elite SAS. The weapons pictured on the agents as well as the manner of the killing pointed to British special forces carrying out the de Menezes’ execution.  (Norton-Taylor, 8/2005)

When people heard about the public police killing of a suspected terrorist, they assumed that the victim had to be black and Muslim. A self-proclaimed eyewitness quickly came forward to say that the targeted man was wearing a “puffy jacket with wires hanging out” and had been chased by police into the Stockwell Subway station, a chase that sounded no more than a few minutes.  Police claimed that the CCTV cameras were not operating. Unfortunately for them, this time they were.

There was shock as the news dribbled out that the victim had been a young white man who had been followed by elite units for half an hour, allegedly mistaking him for a North African.  Police tried to smear him: he was an illegal; he looked suspicious. One after another, they turned out to be lies.  A whistleblower released a photo of the dead De Menezes; he had been wearing a light denim jacket — not any “puffy jacket” with wires.  She was quickly fired and harassed. The CCTVs showed him strolling leisurely into the subway; it had been the police leaping over barriers, not de Menezes.  The police version was that an interminable number of miscommunications had occurred leading to the deadly mistake. If one believed that the Gold Team had been as incompetent as they claimed, the person in charge would have faced a career disaster.  Instead, Cressida Dick was promoted to Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police; her associate was also rewarded with a promotion. No one was to be held accountable in any way for Jean Charles’ murder.

Slowly, over a period of years, the police lies were exposed despite their refusal to give their information to the IPCC.  The truth came out as easily as the pulling of police teeth, painfully with small parts of the story being extracted with the various official inquiries. The most dramatic would be the 2008 inquest into Jean Charles de Menezes’ death, the first time witnesses would be heard.

Meanwhile, what had happened to the bodies of the accused?

By August, people started to ask questions about what had happened to the bodies of the accused.  None of the families had been allowed to identify them; they had not even been given the bodies for burial.  Khan’s family, suspicious, asked for an independent autopsy to be performed; it was not done.  On August 24th, when the corpses would have been over six weeks old, The Guardian reported that the Metropolitan police claimed that they were holding the bodies of the accused  to reassemble their body parts to analyse their positions on the bombs’ detonations.  It would not be until the 2010 Hallett inquest that the shocking details would come out.

Of the accused, only Tanweer and Hussain had family burials.  In both cases, the burials were accompanied by security personnel.

• Ÿ  At the end of October 2005, Tanweer’s body was taken to Pakistan for interment in a family grave; security personnel accompanied the body to Pakistan and guarded the site for days after the interment.  The family never saw the remains.
• Ÿ  Six police oversaw the funeral of Hasib Hussain, “ensuring the service remained private.”

The Khan Tape (Sept. 1, 2005)

British newspapers had been slowly coming out with stories that questioned whether the accused men thought they were going to die.  All of the men had round-trip tickets and they had paid for their cars to be parked for the day.  There were no suicide notes and their families all expected them home. And then there was the question of motive: there was none. The men were known to be secular and even apolitical. Khan and Tanweer were both known to be particularly patriotic; all were peace-loving.

Khan’s wife Hasina Patel said she had never heard “Sid” criticize the actions of the British government or its role in world events. In excerpts from an interview with Sky news, Patel said  “… I kept thinking that something was wrong, I don’t know, that maybe it was a set up, … I didn’t even have any inkling towards his views even going in that direction  … I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams, never.”  (Sky, 2007)

On September 1st a short video surfaced showing Khan dressed up in red Palestinian-like scarf used as a head bandana.  A crude, hand-woven rug was in the background and he was stabbing the air with a pen, complaining about British crimes towards Muslims.  There was no mention of any action that would be taken. The tape, which included an edited-in clip of Al Qaeda’s al Zwahiri, was not shown in its entirety.

It was obvious that at least in some sections, Khan’s words did not match his lip movements.  His friends noticed that judging by Khan’s appearance, the tape had to have been made in  2004, the year Khan and Tanweer were taped by police.  They also claimed that the tape didn’t sound like Khan and was a fraud.

 The government responses

The government claimed that the four accused had worked alone, with Khan as the “ringleader”, and that the tape showed that Khan’s motive was to martyr himself for Islam. They also claimed that a tape of Tanweer existed.  Their claims that the accused worked alone begged the question of who released the tape of Khan, how they knew of Tanweer’s tape and who controlled it.

The following May, two government reports confirmed their official version of the July 7th bombings and recommend a higher security budget.

The Tanweer tape (July 6, 2006)

On July 5, 2006, a U.S. broadcaster with a reputation for security links claimed that a tape of Shezad Tanweer was expected to be shown the next day on Al Jazeera.

On July 6, 2006, the eve of the anniversary of the London bombings, al Jazeera showed part of a video of Tanweer. The shots, also taken in 2004, are strikingly similar to the one released the previous year of “Sid” Khan; Tanweer is wearing the identical Palestinian-like red scarf around his head, with the identical background rug and making the same strange stabbing movements with a pen.  The video includes edited-in clips of the al Qaeda leader al Zwahiri as well as a self-proclaimed American member of al Qaeda, Adam Gadahn. (While Gadahn is also known to the FBI as “Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, Abu Suhayb, Yihya Majadin Adams and Yayah”, he was born Adam Pearlman.) There were also silly shots meant to appear ominous such as a disembodied hand on maps, etc.   Again, words do not match the lip movements.  Shezad Tanweer’s family has not publicly commented on it.

Both the Khan and Tanweer tapes were released at politically opportune times for the British government. So while the tapes supposedly show Khan and Tanweer’s support for Al Qaeda, and perhaps Palestinians, the tapes’ origins and releases both implicate British security services.

 The 2008 De Menezes’ inquest

The De Menezes’ family had kept up their pressure on the government for an inquest into their son’s murder; finally, in September, 2008, the inquest opened.  The purpose of this inquest, presided over by Coroner Sir Michael Wright, was to allow jurors to decide whether or not the police had killed Jean Charles de Menezes lawfully. Previous inquests had established that no one, including DSO Cressida Dick, would be held personally responsible for Jean Charles’ death.

Sir Ian Blair, who had been hanging onto his job as Police Commissioner, toughing out troubling challenges to his integrity on this issue, finally quit at the start of that inquiry. He must have figured that the jig would be up when certain information came out — information that included his meeting with Tony Blair to give police legal protection for a killing, police perjury, police manipulation of events around the death and tampering with police records. It would be the first time that eye witnesses to this event were allowed to testify.  Over fifty agents were given identity protection for testifying and the identity-protected killers were not allowed to be either seen or photographed at the site.

Despite the profoundly shocking information that came out at this inquest, Sir Michael Wright did his best to ensure jurors gave the police a favorable ruling. His actions included:

Ÿ  informing jurors that they would only be allowed to return a verdict either of lawful killing or an “open” verdict: they were not permitted to rule against the police;

Ÿ  warning jurors that they were not to attach criminal or civil fault to responsible individuals such as DSO Cressida Dick;

Ÿ  giving the jury secret advice and suggesting that police perjury might have been committed for selfless motives.

The De Menezes’ inquest results

The jury returned an “open” verdict, much to the relief of the police.  Given the evidence, they had been prepared for an “unlawful” verdict, despite the Coroner’s charge to the jury.  Despite the agents’ perjury and admitted destruction of evidence, they will not face charges.

The De Menezes’ family finally gave up their fight for justice on November 23, 2009 with a settlement with the Metropolitan police for one hundred thousand pounds plus legal expenses.

The Jean Charles de Menezes inquiry exposed the government betrayal of the public through manipulation of the police, of the justice system and the media:

The media obediently played along as the facts came out.  While they did report the stories that showed that de Menezes had been the real target, that police perjured themselves, and that Tony Blair had apparently played a role, each article ended with the mantra that De Menezes’ killing had merely been the result of unfortunate mistakes.  The story that the most elite security teams in Britain claimed that they thought a “North European” white male was a North African after a half hour surveillance was not challenged.

The papers never asked why Jean Charles had been targeted. Could a recent job have related to the July 7th “power surges”? No one knew where he had been working.  The Guardian approached that subject obliquely in December, 2008, noting that de Menezes’ friends were “terrified”; they understood that the public killing of their friend was a warning not to talk.

 The 2010 Hallett Inquest into the security services

In May 2010, Lady Justice Hallett called for an inquest into the activities of the British security services the year prior to the July 7th bombings. The inquest, which the security services warned would “encourage terrorists,” was held in the fall of 2010; the hearings were public but there was no jury.  The families of 52 of the victims were allowed to take part; the families of the accused were barred from participating, and so unable to challenge any witnesses.  Lady Hallett said she might consider a future inquest to include them. Lady Justice Hallett and QC Hugo Keith controlled the proceedings.

The inquest was expected to answer questions on the timing, the location and the makeup of the bombs; instead, it raised even more questions:

Ÿ  Since the discovery of the “homemade explosive”, the government had claimed that the London bombs had been homemade; in fact, the traces of TATP that should have been found if they had been homemade were not identified at the blast sites;

Ÿ  While the government produced some new CCTV evidence, investigators noticed suspicious cuts at key parts of much of it, especially when the accused were meeting other people;

Ÿ  The scope of the missing CCTV evidence was staggering, with none of dozens (if not hundreds!) of CCTV cameras allegedly functioning at any of the affected subway stations until after the bombings were over;

Ÿ  The government’s destruction of evidence and lack of documentation made it impossible to resolve discrepancies between the government’s claims of damage and witnesses’ accounts.

Ÿ  The absence of autopsies and documentation of injury made it difficult to confirm eyewitness accounts that the train explosions originated under the floors.

Ÿ  One investigator noticed that the Metropolitan Police diagrams reconstructing the subway explosions did not match the official Home Office description of those killed and injured. Taking the Liverpool/ Aldgate explosion as an example, he noted that the Met diagram only showed a total of 43 people in the carriage while the Home Office narrative claimed that “the blast killed 8 people, including Tanweer, with 171 injured.” According to the police diagram, the two standing on either side of Tanweer survived, one with only minor injuries. The investigator noted that if the blast killed 8 of the 43, that left only 35 potentially- injured in that carriage.  The implication is that the other 136 injured at that site must have been occupants of another three cars in that train with a similar occupancy. ”  (Investigating the terror, 2012)

Ÿ Evidence pointed to more than three damaged subway cars; Did the government reduce the number of events to correspond to the number of Muslims that volunteered for this event?

While this inquest did produce stunning information about the death counts and the state of the corpses of some accused, it specifically excluded how police came to identify the accused.

 On Hasib Hussain and the No. 30 bus

Ÿ  The inquest was shown photos which were claimed to be of Hussain’s body separated from other bodies and under a blue blanket. No one knew who had identified him, who placed him there, or who put the special blanket on him. Or if his body was, in fact, under it.

Ÿ  Lisa French, a witness seated no further than five seats in front of the explosion, testified that when she was getting off the bus, police discouraged her from helping a “pile” of people, indicating that they were already dead. (Addley, 2011)  Could these have been the extra bodies?

Ÿ  At the 2010 inquest, it was discovered that another Asian youth had been sitting at the back of the top deck at the time of the explosion.

 On Khan and Tanweer

Witnesses testified that the initial death counts at the Edgware and Aldgate sites included only commuters, not the bodies of “suicide bombers”. Police added one to each of these tallies later that day so that the accused would be included in the count.  A day or two after the bombings, body parts of the accused would be located at the private, off-limit subway sites.

 Ÿ  “Sid” Khan’s remains at Edgware:

Ÿ  A large part of Khan’s corpse –without hands, head, or even teeth– was found on 6 am July 8th; police turned over the remains at an unspecified date, identifying it when presented to the Home Office Forensic Science Service as belonging to Mohammed Sidique Khan, with a request to confirm the identification through DNA links his parents. (Police apparently were not aware that Khan’s father had married a woman with the same name as Khan’s biological mother.)  The identification was not done using DNA known to be Khan’s.  (J7 blogspot: Khan)

Ÿ  The Edgware death count confirms what had been published.  Police had identified Khan as a “suicide bomber” on Tuesday, July 12 even though police then acknowledged that Khan’s body was missing from the Edgware site. (BBC, 7,2005)

Ÿ  Khan’s intact ID papers were apparently planted at Edgware, Aldgate and on the bus.

 Shazad Tanweer’s remains at Aldgate:

Ÿ  On Saturday, July 9th, only a 1.8 Kg spinal fragment allegedly belonging to Tanweer was found on the train; the DNA lab work, dated July 13 to 28th, included no indication of how police had already identified the remains as belonging to Tanweer; (J7 blogspot: Tanweer)

Ÿ  Note that Tanweer’s identification cards – found at both Aldgate and the No. 30 bus — survived the virtually total disintegration of his body.

The damage to Khan’s and Tanweer’s bodies was not consistent with the state of the other corpses.  Despite the fact that others – the dead as well as survivors — had been close to the sources of the explosions, the bodies of all other victims had remained basically intact and easily identifiable.  It was ironic that the police had initially implied that the bodies of Khan and Tanweer were easy to identify and did not require the assistance of DNA analysis.  Could the state of their corpses be explained as efforts to hide bullet wounds the men might have sustained at Canary Wharf?

On Germaine/”Jamal” Lindsay

Interestingly, there was reportedly no “life extinct” count at Piccadilly taken on July 7th as there had been at the other sites; there had to have been a count of the dead at some point, why did it not made it to this inquest?

According to the original police story, the identification of Lindsay required DNA analysis. Although his wife understood that this analysis had confirmed Lindsay’s participation in the events of July 7th, a BBC article on July 14th, 2005, “Fourth bomber’s name disclosed” implied that police might not have had the DNA results that Samantha Lewthwaite thought they did.

The absence of similar DNA information that was provided for Khan and Tanweer appears to be significant, particularly because police admitted that they did not possess Lindsay’s body on July 12th (Bennetto, Herbert, 2005); and that police believed that Lindsay survived July 7th (Jones, 2005) and (Bucks Herald, 2005).  Were police marksmen at Canary Wharf looking only for Pakistanis?

 The Hallett verdict and outcomes

In May 2011 the Hallett Inquest determined that 52 of the 56 London deaths had been “unlawful”, the fault only of the “bombers” rather than of the hours-long medical response time or a lack of diligence of the security services. Hallett refused to hold any investigation for the families of the accused.

The Hallett Inquiry ultimately demonstrated pervasive government manipulation and/or mistreatment of the evidence.  On August 2, 2011 a legal challenge by victims’ families to force the British government to hold a public inquiry into the July 7 attacks was abandoned “acknowledging that the proceedings would likely be unsuccessful.”

In 2012-2013, Jamal Lindsay’s wife Samantha Lewthwaite, now remarried and the mother of three (the father of her third child, born in 2009, was not identified), is described in the media as a major terrorist living in East Africa and is reportedly hunted —  to be killed on sight — by dozens of MI5 and MI6, the CIA, police from Kenya and detectives from South Africa! This hunt appears to relate to the 7/7 bombings: police claim they found “key chemicals” [sic] related to the London bombings such as “acetone and hydrogen peroxide” at a raid on her home.  Does she possess information that makes such a hunt worth the  cost?

The evidence of responsibility points to the British government

There was a history of government-run terror exercises in London, including ones that closely mirrored the London bombings’ scenario;

Ÿ There was extensive evidence of police foreknowledge, including Scotland Yard’s warning to the Israeli embassy before the blasts; the police allowed the London bombings to happen;

It was only “government scientists” that knew the recipe of the “unique” hydrogen-peroxide based “explosives” that were in the Luton car, the Leeds bathtub and the “copycat” “bombs;”

Ÿ  The government removed, destroyed and neglected to keep important evidence; evidence shown to the public has been shown to be falsified or tampered with;

Ÿ  The government has refused to hold any independent, public investigation into the bombings;

Ÿ  The government labelling of the London bombings as “suicide bombings” (and the accused, “homegrown suicide bombers”) with no evidence that there had been suicide bombs demonstrated the agenda that allowed Tony Blair to then follow through with his “anti-terror” legislation:

As a result of the July 7th London bombings, the British government eliminated traditional civil liberties and expanded its security services.

In 2007, the July 7th Truth Campaign described the post-7/7 state of British freedoms in “Capitalising on Terror”:  In less than two years the UK has descended into a police state. Taking photographs of landmarks is now classified as ‘terrorist reconnaisance’, being caught in possession of a map has been prosecuted as ‘having information likely to be useful to a terrorist’. Protesting outside the people’s Parliament is now a crime unless the state has first granted permission and you can be arrested for wearing a t-shirt a policeman doesn’t like. Your DNA and fingerprints will be taken and stored indefinitely. Everyone from young children to old age pensioners are actively being targeted under anti-terrorist legislation and this legislation is being used to suppress dissent and opposition to the government, its policies and the way it enforces them. Blair has talked of implementing private police forces and police powers have been given to thousands of non-police entities including amongst others traffic wardens, landlords and council officials. …

Recently the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, suggested that modern day Britain is comparable to Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda. Around the same time the leader of Birmingham Central Mosque, Dr Mohammed Naseem, compared life for Muslims in the UK to that of the life of Jews in Nazi Germany. In among the furore that ensued among the liberal intelligentsia, the leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, gently reminded everyone that the laws don’t just apply to Muslims, or terrorists, the laws apply to everyone. If you are reading this in Britain, that means you. (J7,2007)

Notes:

Addley, Esther.  2011. “7/7 bus bomber jostled passengers with deadly backpack, inquest told” The Guardian. January 12. Retrieved August 25, 2012 at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jan/12/77-july-7-bomber-inquest?INTCMP=SRCH

Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. 2006. The London Bombings, London: Duckworth p103/104/274

BBC, 7/2005. Police release bus bomber images. 14 July, 2005. BBC News. retrieved July 6, 2008 at:

Http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4683555.stm

Antagonist. 2005.  London 7/7: Number 30 Bus Explosion – Photos & Questions.  1 September 2005. Anything that defies my sense of reason. , retrieved July 5, 2008 at:

Http://antagonise.blogspot.com/2005/09/london-77-number-30-bus-explosion.html

Bennetto, J, Herbert, I, 2005. The suicide bomb plot hatched in Yorkshire. 13 July. The Independent. Retrieved July 9, 2008 at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-suicide-bomb-plot-hatched-in-yorkshire-498616.html

Bucks Herald, The. 2005. Aylesbury was ’30 minutes from evacuation’.  Tuesday, 25 October. The Bucks Herald. Retrieved July 28, 2011 at:

http://www.bucksherald.co.uk/news/aylesbury_was_30_minutes_from_evacuation_1_600516

Casbolt, J. A Message of Love to my Asian Brothers and Sisters: The true inside facts about the 7/7 London bombings,  February 18, 2007. Jamescasbolt.  retrieved June 26, 2008 at: Http://www.jamescasbolt.com/bombings.htm

Casciani, Dominic, 2007. Was it linked to 7/7?  Wednesday, 11 July 2007. Retrieved at:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6249118.stm 21/7

Chossudovsky, Michel. 8/8 2005.  7/7 Mock Terror Drill: What Relationship to the Real Time Terror Attacks? 8 Aug.  Centre for Research on Globalisation. Retrieved June 26, 2008 at:

Http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050808&articleId=821

Televised interview “Peter Power 7/7 Terror Rehearsal” at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKvkhe3rqtc

Chossudovsky, 8/1 2005. Chossudovsky, M, London 7/7 Terror Suspect Linked to British Intelligence? August 1, Centre for Research on Globalisation. retrieved July 7, 2008 at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20050801&articleId=782

J7 blogspot Khan. The identification of Mohammed Sidique Khan.:J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign.  Tuesday, November 30, 2010.  retrieved on July 4, 2013 at:

http://77inquests.blogspot.com/2010/11/identification-of-mohammed-sidique-khan.html

J7 blogspot Tanweer. 7/7 Inquests: The Disintegration of Shezad Tanweer. J7: The 7/7 Inquests Blog.  Monday, Nov. 8, 2010. Accessed July 28, 2011 at:  Http://77inquests.blogspot.com/2010/11/77-inquests-disintegration-of-shehzad.html

July 7th Truth Campaign. Capitalising on Terror: Who is Really Destroying our freedoms?  Feb. 25, 2007. Retrieved on July 3, 2012 at: http://julyseventh.co.uk/july-7-article-capitalising-on-terror.html

J7 Profile: Jamal/Germaine Lindsay. J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign, 2006 retrieved July 6, 2008 at:    Http://julyseventh.co.uk/7-7-profile-germaine-lindsay.html

Jones, Sam 2005. Aylesbury house is searched in effort to find associates. Thursday, July 14. The Guardian. Retreived on July 28, 2011 at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/14/july7.uksecurity11

Kollerstrom, Nick. 2012. Terror on the Tube. Palm Desert, California. Progressive.

McGrory, D., and Evans, M. 2005. Hunt for the master of explosives. 13 July. The Times. retrieved June 26, 2008  at:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1692033,00.html

Mitchell, P. Police Chief “Cleared” of De Menezes Killing. February 26th, 2007. Ukwatch. retrieved June 26, 2008 at: http://www.ukwatch.net/article/police_chief_%2526quot%3Bcleared%2526quot%3B_of_de_menezes_killing

Morgan, Tom and Davis, Margaret, 2008. Pathologist given false details over Menezes death, inquest told. November 5. The Independent retrieved Nov. 6, 2008 at: Http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/pathologist-given-false-details-over-menezes-death-inquest-told-993987.html

Norton-Taylor, R. 2005. New special forces unit tailed Brazilian. August 4. The Guardian retrieved June 26, 2008 at: Http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/04/july7.menezes

N Z Herald, 2005.  ‘Police shot bombers’ reports New Zealander. July 9, 2005. New Zealand Herald. retrieved on July 7, 2008 at  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10334992

Pallister, David 2005. UK-based dissident denies link to website that carried al-Qaida claim. The Guardian. Saturday July 9. Retrieved at July 28 at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/09/july7.uksecurity11

Percival, Jenny and agencies, 11/2008. Orders given to police who shot Jean Charles de Menezes were ‘ambiguous’ November 5. The Guardian retrieved Nov. 7, 2008 at:  Http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/nov/05/de-menezes-pathologist-inquest

Rook, Katie, 2005. A massive rush of policemen. July 7. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved on July 7, 2008 at: Http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050707.wcanar0707/PPVStory?URL_Article_ID=RTGAM.20050707.wcanar0707&DENIED=1

Sheva, Arutz. 2005. Report: Israel Was Warned Ahead of First Blast.  7 July 2005. Propaganda Matrix.  retrieved July 2, 2013: Http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/july2005/070705israelwarned.htm

Investigating the terror, 2012. ” 7/7: Seven Documents that Prove that the Official Story Cannot be True”. www.investigatingtheterror.com. June 30 . Retrieved July 4, 2013 at: www.investigatingtheterror.com/articles/7_7__seven__documents_that_prove_the_official_story_cannot_be_true.htm

Shortnews, 2005.  ‘Suicide Bomber Neutralized’ in Canary Wharf, London. July 10, 2005. Shortnews. retrieved June 25, 2008 at: http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=49029

Sky, 2007. Full Text Of July 7 Widow’s Interview With Sky: Here is the full transcript of Hasina Patel’s interview with Julie Etchingham.  Friday July 27. Sky News.  retrieved April 14, 2009 at http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Full-Text-Of-July-7-Widows-Interview-With-Sky/Article/20070741277315

Sparrow, Andrew. 2005.  “New law to stop flow of volunteers to terror camps.” Sunday July 16, Daily Telegraph. Retrieved Sept. 10, 2012 at:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1494129/New-law-to-stop-flow-of-volunteers-to-terror-camps.html

Woods, R, Leppard, D., Smith, M. 2005. Tangled web that still leaves worrying loose ends: The arrest of Haroon Rashid Aswat sets numerous questions.  July 31. The Sunday Times. retrieved June 26, 2008:   http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article549996.ece)

Karin Brothers is a freelance writer who was in England throughout the events related to the London bombings.

The current commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, known as SOCOM, General Raymond A. Thomas, addressing the Senate Committee on Armed Services said that Special Operations Forces (SOF) are not able to maintain the current intensity of operations. He stated the servicemen are psychologically exhausted, which is reflected, among other things, in a large percentage of suicides.

The general stressed that 8,000 U.S. Special Forces fighters are now participating in special operations in more than 80 countries around the world. At the same time, 55.3% of servicemen are in the Middle East, 17.3% in Africa and 12.7% in Europe. About 500 commandos are in Syria. Such active involvement of Special Forces has a negative impact on the stress-resistance of the units.

General R. Thomas expressed concerns about the number of suicides among military personnel. At the same time, he did not cite specific data, deciding not to go into the ‘terrible statistics’.

In this situation, attention is drawn to the information of several media, according to which the peak of suicides among servicemen of special units of the United States took place in 2012. Then, an agreement on strategic partnership in the military sphere was concluded between the United States and Afghanistan, and an active phase of confrontation in Syria began. According to Reuters, more than 350 cases of suicide were officially registered then. In 2014 – the beginning of the military intervention of the international coalition in Syria and Iraq – 275 servicemen committed suicide. In 2016, more than 400 cases were recorded.

Moreover, the head of the Special Forces expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that recently Special Forces have been increasingly used as universal means to solve any problems. He believes that U.S. SOF are currently forced to solve tasks that go beyond their usual functions.

According to the American general, the SOCOM experiences difficulties with the staffing, which are caused by the wide geography of troop’s deployment, as well as the long terms of their missions. As an example, Thomas pointed out the operation in Afghanistan, which, according to plan, was to end as early as 2014.

The general stressed that in recent years, the SOCOM command has doubled and even tripled its efforts to provide psychological assistance. With this purpose, two years ago, a contract was signed with the American Association of Suicidology to develop a program to prevent suicides and identify early signs of possible tragedies.

These tragedies are unfortunately not surprising, after almost 16 years of uninterrupted wars. As early as 2015, the former commander of the Special Forces, General Joseph Votel, as well as Adm. William McRaven in 2014, warned of the excessive pressure on them. Now the soldiers of the U.S. SOF negatively speak about the rules of combat, their small number and high mortality in Iraq and Syria.

Special Forces were eagerly waiting for the inauguration of Donald Trump. In December 2016, Trump, speaking in North Carolina, said that the U.S. will concentrate on combating terrorism and defeating the IS, and not at overthrowing governments. It seems that these plans will not come true, as at such a pace, the United States may soon disable its most combat-ready forces.

Read about the real situation in U.S. SOCOM and try to analyze the great delusion at the stenographic transcript of the meeting between General Raymond A. Thomas and the Senate Committee on Armed Services that is available here.

Sophie Mangal is a special investigative correspondent and co-editor at Inside Syria Media Center.

Featured image: Inside Syria Media Center

Contradicting a version of events presented by the U.S. military and reported widely by the corporate press, a human rights group and a journalist in Yemen are citing witnesses who said a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs on Monday night killed multiple innocent civilians and not just “Al Qaeda militants” as the Pentagon claimed.

Reprieve, a UK-based human rights group, cited witnesses from the village of Al-Jubah in Marib province, where the raid took place, and offered the names of five civilians killed as Nasser Ali Mahdi Al-Adhal; Al-Ghader Saleh Salem Al-Adhal; Saleh Al-Taffaf; Yasser Al-Taffaf Al-Adhel; and Shebreen Saeed Salem Al-Adhal.

The witnesses said that none of those five were fighting for al-Qaeda and that Nasser al-Adhal, identified as being approximately 70-years-old and partially blind, was the first one shot by the U.S. soldiers when he mistook them for arriving guests and came out to greet them. According to Reprieve:

The four other villagers were killed when they started to argue with the Navy Seals after the shooting of Nasser al-Adhal. Six villagers were seriously injured, including another elderly man who was around 69-years-old.

Al-Qaeda fighters gathering nearby, who are thought to have been the original target of the raid, were alerted by the gunshots in the village and firefight ensued in which at least two of them were killed. The Navy SEALs then left with the help of air support from a helicopter.

Independent journalist Iona Craig, who has reported from the ground in Yemen for years, helped corroborate the version of events provided to Reprieve.

“Five tribesmen amongst killed in US raid last night were not AQ,” Craig tweeted on Tuesday. “They were tribesmen of young activists who drove me from Mareb into Yakla.”

Part of the wider “global war on terror” that the U.S. began in the wake of the September 11th attacks in 2001, Yemen has been a target of drone strikes and clandestine operations for years. But as foreign policy experts and the people of Yemen have repeatedly stated, the use of drones and clandestine raids have only hardened Al-Qaeda’s position in the country and the killing of innocent civilians as provided a nearly perfect recruiting tool for the militant group.

In addition to backing the ongoing Saudi-led war against Yemen, the military under President Donald Trump has continued to target Al-Qaeda aligned forces in the country. In January, just days after his inauguration, Trump was roundly criticized for a botched raid that led to the death of one U.S. soldier and as many as thirty civilians, including children.

Kate Higham, head of the Assassinations Programme at Reprieve, said this week’s killing of more innocent Yemenis proves that Trump is no better than his predecessors when it comes to protecting civilian lives.

“This new flawed raid by President Trump shows the US is not capable of distinguishing a terrorist from an innocent civilian,” Higham said in a statement. “When even a 70-year-old is shot dead, it is clear these attacks are not targeted or precise. President Trump must order an immediate investigation into what went wrong and halt all raids and drone strikes before more innocent Yemenis are killed.”

Graffiti at a Yemeni village (Source: The National)

Yemen, of course, is not the only place where the U.S. military is claiming innocent lives. On Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks casualties amid Syria’s ongoing civil war, reported the number of civilians killed by U.S. bombings over the last month has been the highest ever recorded over a 30-day time period. According to the group, 235 civilians were killed in U.S. airstrikes from April 23 to May 23. That number includes 44 children and 36 women.

“The past month of operations is the highest civilian toll since the coalition began bombing Syria,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence-France Presse in an interview. “There has been a very big escalation.”

According to Rahman’s group, which is also based in the U.K., the U.S.-led coalition has now killed 1,481 civilians since operations against the Islamic State (ISIS) began in 2014. Of that total number, the groups says, 319 were children.

And as people mourned the horrific loss of life in Manchester this week, where innocent children and other concert-goers were targeted by a suicide bomber, it was difficult not to notice the difference between the attention various killings—all of them horrific and none of them possible to justify—received in the dominant western press.

As journalist and columnist Glenn Greenwald, citing the killings of those civilians in Yemen on Monday, asked,

“More reporting that US killed 5 more innocent Yemenis yesterday. Will the media tell their stories, hear from their grieving relatives, etc?”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Featured image: Reuters

According to Scotland Yard, the attack on the crowd leaving the Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena, 22 May, has been perpetrated by Salman Abedi. A bankcard has been conveniently found in the pocket of the mutilated corpse of the ‘terrorist’.

This attack is generally interpreted as proof that the United Kingdom is not implicated in international terrorism and that, on the contrary, it is a victim of it.

Salman Abedi was born in the UK of a family of Libyan immigrants. He has travelled to Libya several times in the last couple of months, with or without his father.

His father Ramadan Abedi, with whom Salman lived, is a former officer in [Gaddafi’s] Libyan Intelligence Services. He specialised in the surveillance of the Islamist movement, but two decades later has failed to notice that his son has joined Daesh (IS).

In 1992, Ramadan Abedi was sent back to Libya by Britain’s MI6 and was involved in a British-devised plot to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi. The operation having been readily exposed, he was exfiltrated by MI6 and transferred back to the UK where he obtained political asylum. He moved in 1999 to Whalley Range (south of Manchester) where there was already resident a small Libyan Islamist community.

In 1994, Ramadan Abedi returned again to Libya under MI6’s direction. In late 1995 he is involved in the creation of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a local branch of Al-Qaeda, in conjunction with Abdelhakim Belhadj. The LIFG was then employed by MI6 again to assassinate Gaddafi, for a payoff of £100,000. This operation, which also failed, provoked heated exchanges within British Intelligence, leading to the resignation of one David Shayler.

Other former members of the LIFG have also lived at Whalley Range, including Abedi’s friend Abd al-Baset-Azzouz. In 2009, this last joined Al-Qaeda in Pakistan and became a close associate of its chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri. In 2011, al-Baset-Azzouz is active on the ground with the NATO operation against Libya. On 11 September 2012, he directs the operation against the US Ambassador in Libya, Christopher Stevens, assassinated at Benghazi. He is arrested in Turkey and extradited to the US in December 2014, his trial still pending.

Nobody pays attention to the fact that Ramadan Abedi has linked LIFG members to the formation of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and, in 2011, he takes part in MI6’s ‘Arab Spring’ operations, and in LIFG’s role on the ground in support of NATO. In any event, Abedi returned to Libya after the fall of Gaddafi and moves his family there, leaving his older children in the family home at Whalley Range.

According to the former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, Abdelhakim Belhadj (image on the left, source: The Rendition Project) was involved in the assassinations in Madrid of 11 March 2004. Later, he is secretly arrested in Malaysia by the CIA and transferred to Libya where he is tortured not by Libyan or American functionaries but by MI6 agents. He is finally freed after the accord between Saif al-Islam Gaddafi [Gaddafi’s son] and the jihadists.

During the Libyan war, Belhadj, who had been living in Qatar, returned to Libya, courtesy of the Qatari Emir, and commanded the operations on the ground in league with NATO. On 28 July 2011, he organised the assassination of General Abdul Fatah Younis who claimed to have joined the ‘rebels’, but who Belhadj accused of overseeing the struggle against the LIFG during the 1990s.

In September 2011, Belhadj was named military governor of Tripoli by NATO. In 2012, seconded by the Irish-Libyan Mahdi al-Hatari, he created the Free Syrian Army, then returns again to Libya. On 2 May 2014, he is received officially at the Quai d’Orsay [the French Foreign Ministry].

In December 2013, following the discovery in the archives of Gaddafi’s Libyan regime of a letter from the former chief of MI6, Belhadj launches proceedings in London against the UK for having kidnapped and tortured him nine years earlier. British Intelligence then illegally places his lawyers under phone-tapping, although it is ultimately constrained to destroy the intelligence obtained.

According to Egypt’s Prosecutor General, Hisham Barakat, in May 2015, Belhadj becomes Daesh’ most senior figure in North Africa, this claim taken up by Interpol. Belhadj installs three training camps for Daesh in Libya at Derna (in the former property of Abd al-Baset-Azzouz), at Syrte and at Sebrata. In October 2016, he launches in London new legal proceedings regarding his kidnapping and torture, this time nominally against the former director of MI6, Sir Mark Allen.

Daesh has claimed responsibility for the Manchester attack, but without describing Salman Abedi as a ‘martyr’. After the assassination, Ramadan Abedi has declared his opposition to jihad in a telephone conversation with journalists. He has also claimed that his son had intended to spend the month of Ramadan [beginning 26 May] with him in Libya and that he is convinced of his innocence.

Featured image: Voltairenet.org

ISIS terrorists are on the run in the eastern part of the Syrian province of Aleppo as government forces are rapidly advancing in the Maskanah countryside.

On May 24th, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces liberated 5 more villages taking control of Battushiyah, Salihiyah, Jabab Musaid Kebir, Jabab Musaid Segirr, and Shummari. Tiger Forces also advanced on Mushayrifat Bani Jamil and Kherbet Ghudraf.

[On] the same day, the Syrian Defense Ministry released a statement describing the current achievements of the operation against ISIS in Aleppo. According to the ministry, the army liberated 30 villages, the Jirah Military Airbase, killed some 3,000 ISIS terrorists, destroyed 19 battle tanks, 5 BMP vehicles, and 11 VBIEDs. Concurrently, the Syrian Air Force destroyed 9 ammunition depots. To say the least, ISIS losses in man-power provided in the report seem overestimated.

Syrian troops also neutralized a number of ISIS top members during the operation, including ISIS Minister of War, Abu Mosaab al-Masri. If confirmed, this constitutes a major blow to ISIS ahead of the expected government push in the direction of Deir Ezzor and the US-backed advance on Raqqah.

The SAA 5th Assault Corps has taken control of the Arak gas field east of Palmyra as well as the Abtar mountain, the missile battalion, the Hillabat Palace area, and Tal Al-Fari south of the ancient city.

According to local sources, ISIS intends to withdraw from the entire area south of Palmyra and eastern Qalamoun. This comes amid the SAA push against ISIS in the eastern Homs countryside and the US-backed Free Syrian Army advance in the direction of Al-Bukamal.

According to local sources, the US-led coalition carried out an air landing operation in the area of Hamidiya near the city earlier this week. During the operation, US Special Forces reportedly killed 8 ISIS fighters.

Meanwhile, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have captured the villages of Hamra Balasim, Nasira, and Al-Furqun in the Raqqah countryside.

The SDF is aiming to capture the Baath dam west of Raqqah in order to cut the last ISIS logistical line in the area.

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On Thursday, units of the Syrian Army, backed by allies, managed to regain full control over Al Bardeh area, located 32 km east of the town of Qaryatein in the eastern countryside of Homs province.

Control was also established over Zaqaqiyeh Khalil Mountain, located 6 km east of Al Bardeh area and Al Bassiri village, located 8 km south of Al Bardeh area.

Dozens of ISIS terrorists were killed during operations, in addition to destruction of larger quantities of equipment, weapons and ammunition stockpiles.

Engineering units of the Syrian Army have already been dispatched to the newly liberated area and are currently dismantling explosive device and mines, left over by ISIS terrorists.

Army units are also pursuing the remaining terrorists who are running towards the region of Al Badia.

Meanwhile, Syrian forces discovered US and Israeli-made weapons and equipment, among the things that showed up while conducting searches in the district of Al Waar in Homs city.

US-made LAWs, Israeli mortar shells, Cobra and B10 missiles were found, in addition to Katyusha rockets, RPG rounds, rocket launchers, protective masks, binoculars, sniper rifles, automatic rifles and large quantities of ammunition.

Al Waar is the last district of Homs that remained under terrorist control, following liberation of Homs city by the Syrian Army back in May 2014.

However, earlier this year, a ceasefire agreement came in power, according to which, all terrorists and their family members had to leave the district and head towards the jihadist-occupied areas in eastern Aleppo countryside and Idleb.

Just this week, the very last terrorists left Al Waar. The authorities have already declared control of the area and maintenance work has already started.

Featured image: Fort Russ News

TIME Magazine’s Bill Powell is a gifted journalist. Anyone who reads the LinkedIn recommendations for the former Newsweek bureau chief will assuredly be impressed. Dozens and dozens of senior editors and journalistic colleagues are there, as are people like Dorinda Elliott, who is the Editorial and Communications Director at Harvard’s prestigious Paulson Institute. Yes, Bill Powell is an American storyteller. And his latest piece for Newsweek hits like an expertly wielded meat clever.

“Inside Putin’s Campaign to Destroy U.S. Democracy”, that’s the expertly stylized headline Newsweek’s bosses must have desperately needed this week. Reading the introductory paragraphs on how Vladimir Putin more-or-less rescued a chaotic Russia from the Russian robber barons, and how the America and the world reveled in the former KGB operative’s deft potential, I found myself captivated. “Here is the Newsweek I remember”, I caught myself thinking. But that title? I should have known – Powell interjects:

“We forget now, in the midst of the intensifying hysteria in Washington, D.C., about all things Russia, that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin—now commonly portrayed as a cartoon villain by Western politicians and press—had a honeymoon period. Many people back then chose to disregard Putin’s career in the KGB and focused instead on the fact that he had been an energetic aide to the reform-minded mayor of his native St. Petersburg in the immediate post-Soviet era.”

Then masterfully, like a Houdini magician with a keyboard Powell (image on the right) creates the “set up”, he inserts the fallibility of former US presidents, then draws back on the well used wooden handle of the glistening cleaver… Set to cut the meaty brain tissue that connects reality from fiction and PR, The TIME veteran lowers the boom!

“Now Russia is again public enemy No. 1 in the United States, and Putin is on offense around the world. He is the primary backer of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, thanks to his audacious deployment of Russia’s military to combat the anti-Assad Islamic rebels. He annexed Crimea and sent Russian troops and special operators into eastern Ukraine, where they remain today. In the Far East, he is moving Russia closer to a military alliance with Beijing. And in Europe and the United States, Putin’s cyberwarriors are wreaking havoc.”

In a single paragraph the wordsmith recounts the Obama White House rhetoric, he severs once again the thin tendril of hope that links western nations to an oh-so logical alliance for peace. America’s “thinkers” are forced to think again. Europe is pinned in the middle, as always. And Russia is left with the nagging realization nothing has changed since the Tsar was murdered. Russophobia, the “Great Game”, the globalist quest for all those Russia riches is still on. Newsweek puts familiar Putin quotes under the subtitle “Shining Tsar” – which is strangely appropriate given it’s coming up on the centennial of the October Revolution of 1917.

For his ending, Powell manages to insert Russian ousted Yukos billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky (image on the left) once again. And I am snapped back into reality where Newsweek is concerned. The media outlet now owned by IBT Media, which is in turn owned (supposedly) by Etienne Uzac and Johnathan Davis, was the subject of several of my stories in the past. Most pointedly, “Is Newsweek Led by Jesus, or Mikhail Khodorkovsky?” calls to question who really owns IBT, the man some say is the second coming of Jesus himself, the right Korean reverend David J. Jang. Now here I am reverting to familiar themes to combat a perverted mainstream. It’s sad we’re still caught in an inescapable maelstrom of expert paid journalists versus willing narrators of a dissenting view. Some call Russia sympathetic writers like me “Kremlin Trolls”, when the reality of this geo-political situation is a simple matter of choosing the status quo versus the world we were told to dream of. For those who see Russia as the needless victim in all this mess, NATO snatching up one former Soviet boundary after another is the clincher.

Finally, journalists like Bill Powell are brought in as the “go-to” people who either snatch or just maintain credibility for these “owned” media outlets. While the west hammers on state owner RT and others for being Putin’s propaganda bull horns, five thousand times Russia’s media budgets are wagered in the same old crisis game. At the end of Powell’s piece the chips fall into place. Forget the lead and the middle, it’s the title or the ending readers will remember. Here’s his ending:

“Putin may have restored Russian pride, and a semblance of its Great Power status, but the former spymaster may well have overplayed his hand in trying to tilt the 2016 U.S. election to his preferred candidate. He may have gotten the result he wanted—but someday wish he hadn’t.”

Russia as a “great power” equals a new Soviet Union for Newsweek readers. The “former spymaster” in charge labels Vladimir Putin the KGB assassin of old Hollywood. Then saying Putin “tilted” the election, without any proof to back the claim, simply galvanizes the globalist claims. The rest is fortification, and gloating like a Clinton fanatic. Powell should have been paid well for this one, for Newsweek surely retained thousands of liberal readers and Putin haters. Why the “Jesus” owned magazine even got certified Kremlin agents to read. But I’m not ready to subscribe just yet. My guess is that Putin could care less about destroying something that does not exist – something like American democracy. Let’s hear your thoughts.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image: New Eastern Outlook

Aggression against neighboring countries, endless wars, dismantling states, violent border modifications? Does this remind us of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage or of their political opponents, Clinton and Bush clans, or of Tony Blair and David Cameron?

In the Western countries, more and more often the public is hearing the words “fascism” and “fascists”. Those words are reserved for Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Marine le Pen and other “right populists”. In addition, the use of such heavy words is justified by the fact that these politicians refer to national values, because they ask mass immigrations to their countries to stop and because of xenophobic outbursts of their supporters.

Fascism is, however, a term whose meaning cannot be quickly and easily determined. After all, it is the same with all political ideologies. There is no generally accepted definition of liberalism, socialism and conservatism. It is well known that the term “fascism” hides very diverse movements such as the Italian fascists, the German Nazis or the Croatian Ustashas. All this, however, should not get us confused and prevent us from understanding this important historical phenomenon.

It is the historical experience that could help us in this task, more than any political simplification or a theoretical explanation. There is one key feature about fascism that is intentionally or not, too often forgotten in the general tumult against Donald Trump or Marine le Pen. The “fascists”, however, are still remembered for their aggressions against other sovereign countries, the endless wars, dismantling states and violent borders modifications. Louis XIV and Napoleon also committed acts of aggression against their neighbors, they led continuous wars, they dismantled countries and changed borders. Hitler’s aggression, however, was followed by the mass destruction of entire populations, such as Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. As such, fascism is especially remembered in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe.

Aggression against neighboring countries, endless wars, dismantling states, violent borders modifications? Does this remind us of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage or of their political opponents, Clinton and Bush clans, or of Tony Blair and David Cameron? Should we remind you of destructions of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the encirclement of Russia, the provoking of China, Iran? Trump, on the contrary, according to the published statements, is advocating for a traditional diplomacy of interests and negotiations between sovereign states, such as the one widely known since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which is the contrary of endless crusades in the name of “values” assiduously conducted by their liberal opponents.

Ethnically motivated mass destructions of entire populations? These people succeeded in what seemed to be an unattainable ideal for Hitler and Pavelic: they killed and expelled the Serb population from Croatia and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Metohia. All this, of course, was conducted by their local collaborators, the same way it was done with the Christians in Iraq or Syria. We should not forget the anti-Serb hysteria in the media that allowed unpunished, mass crimes against Serbs. This operation is comparable only with what the Nazi Europe did to the Jews.

Chauvinist terror and war crimes against the Serbs in the Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) (Source: Serbian Defence League)

Mark Mazower, a professor at Columbia University in New York, stated in his book Hitler’s empire, that Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by the colonial experience of liberal states, the United Kingdom and the United States, for the crimes they committed in Eastern Europe. They simply did to the Europeans what the liberal colonizers did in Africa and Asia. Hitler admired the British foresight and mercilessness in India, as well as the US racist brutality against black people and the Indians. He openly said that the Slavic countries, especially Russia, would be in the future, the India of the united German Europe. During the Germanic colonizing of the Slavic territories in eastern Europe, Hitler was inspired by the experience of the United States. Enclaves of “racially and civilizationally superior people” in the Indian sea, progressively bound together, merged and plundered the lands of the natives.

According to Mazower, the liberal empire’s attempts to force the colonized countries to adopt their modernization and cultural models, are just another side of the indestructible ancient racism. Hitler, as well as Goebbels called for the unification of Europe around Germany, in order to protect and defend its racial and cultural values. In doing so, they openly claimed that the key purpose of uniting Europe was the protection from Russia and the march on Russia. The rhetoric of defense against the Soviet Union was useful in the post-war process of uniting Europe, where, as Mazower proves it, Hitler’s former supporters assiduously worked as senior officials. The Russian threat was an important part of the campaign of the EU supporters during the Brexit referendum in Britain, as well as of the of Hillary Clinton’s supporters campaign during the presidential elections in the United States.

Some people will say that, after all, NATO liberals do not conquer the world in the name of race, but in the name of human rights. However, the bombs were dropped on Republika Srpska, Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Syria, along with the American and the British rock and roll, and not with the German military marches. It is, indeed, a beautiful consolation for millions of their victims.

Translated from Serbian by Svetlana Maksovic

Milos Kovic is a Serbian historian, Doctor of Historical Sciences and Assistant professor at the Department of History, Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, Serbia.

The areas of his research are international relations (late 18th – early 20th century), history of political ideas (late 18th – early 20th century).

He was at the Oxford University for professional development in 2004-2005. He participated in international conferences in London, Florence, Jena, Sofia, Belgrade.

Source: Belgrade daily newspaper POLITIKA

Featured image: Buka/Politika

Below is a selection of recent articles which bring to the forefront the process of media disinformation which supports a corrupt and criminal political agenda.

In the words of award winning investigative reporter Robert Parry (see article below):

“The mainstream U.S. media is congratulating itself on its courageous defiance of President Trump and its hard-hitting condemnations of Russia, but the press seems to have forgotten that its proper role within the U.S. democratic structure is not to slant stories one way or another but to provide objective information for the American people.”

What this suggests is that more than ever we need to stand together to continuously question politics, false statements, and the suppression of independent thought.

Global Research is firmly committed to Truth in Media. 

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

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The Assassination of Seth Rich, the DNC Emails and the Russia Probe

By Caitlin Johnstone, May 25, 2017

This is unsurprisingly getting zero mainstream attention, but all the Russia hysteria that has engulfed American discourse has actually placed all terrestrial life in grave danger. Dr. Stephen Cohen, easily the foremost American authority on US-Russia relations, said in an interview with RT last week that this may be the most dangerous that tensions between the two nations have ever been in his lifetime. Cohen was born in 1938.

Never Mind the Real Russia, This Is All About Trump

By David Swanson and Ann Garrison, May 25, 2017

I jumped in and said, “Yes, you’re absolutely right. Get rid of these statues. There are some other reasons, too, to get rid of these statues. They’re war statues. The only statues we have here in Charlottesville are war statues. There are no peace statues. There are no anything else statues. There are no civil rights statues, no women’s rights statues, no labor movement statues.

Truth Has Become Un-American

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, May 24, 2017

Democracy in America has been destroyed by special interest groups, by a US Supreme Court decision that gave the reins of power to special interest groups, and by a hoax war on terror that has destroyed the US Constitution. And here we have the presstitutes saying that Putin is destroying American democracy. Clearly, there is no extant intelligence anywhere in the Western media. The Western presstitutes are either corrupt beyond belief or ignorant beyond belief. Nothing else can be said for them.

US Journalism’s New ‘Golden Age’?

By Robert Parry, May 24, 2017

The mainstream U.S. news media has neither corrected the false assertion about the 17 intelligence agencies nor demanded that actual evidence be made public to support the key allegation that Russia was the source of WikiLeaks’ email dumps.

Why Americans Distrust the Press More Than They Distrust Trump

By Eric Zuesse, May 05, 2017

Trust in the ‘news’ media is sinking, but remains unrealistically high, unrealistic especially amongst Democrats (since they still overwhelmingly trust the ‘news’); and this trust is the chief thing that keeps the U.S. regime — both the “Democratic” and the “Republican” wings of it — in power, as a two-Party dictatorship, both of whose Parties represent the same aristocracy.

Years ago James Jesus Angleton left me with the impression that when an intelligence agency, such as the CIA, pulls off an assassination, bombing, or any event with which the agency does not wish to be associated, the agency uses the media to control the explanation by quickly putting into place a cover story that, along with several others, has been prepared in advance. I suggested that the new story that “the Saudis did 9/11” was put into play to take the place of the worn and battered first cover story.

When the Oswald cover story for JFK’s assassination came under heavy suspicion, other cover stories appeared in the media. One was that the Mafia killed JFK, because he was having affairs with their molls.

The fact that it made no sense did not stop many from believing it. It did not occur to people more gullible than thoughtful that a gangster would simply get another woman and not take the risk of assassinating the US president over a woman. The last thing the Mafia would want would be for Attorney General Robert Kennedy to bring the law down on the Mafia like a ton of bricks.

Another cover story was that Castro did it. This made even less sense. JFK had nixed the Joint Chiefs/CIA plan to invade Cuba, and he had refused air cover to the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion. JFK would certainly not be on Castro’s hit list.

Another cover story was that Lyndon Johnson was behind Kennedy’s assassination. As I wrote, there is no doubt that LBJ covered up the Joint Chiefs/CIA/Secret Service plot against JFK, as any president would have done, because the alternative was to destroy the American people’s confidence in the US military and security agencies. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court also covered up the plot, as did the Warren Commission, the media, and the Congress.

The “Johnson did it” story is the most preposterous of all. The Joint Chiefs, CIA, Secret Service, Chief Justice, Congress, and Media are not going to participate in the murder of a President and its coverup just for the sake of the VP’s personal ambition. The idea that so many strong institutions would permit a VP to murder a President for no reason other than the personal ambition of the VP is beyond absurdity.

Speaking of cover stories, I wonder if that is what we are witnessing in the leaked information to the New York Times about the Manchester Bombing. The only point of the leak is to set the story in place. The British complaints about the leaked information serve to disguise the leak’s purpose.

Setting a story in place early crowds out other explanations. Remember, the government claims to have had no warning of 9/11 but knew instantly who did it and set the story in place. The same for the Paris events, the Nice event, the Boston Marathon bombing, and I think all the others.

Authorities quickly come up with a story and names of those responsible. The alleged perpetrators or patsies, take your choice, are always dead and, thereby, unable to deny that they did it or say who put them up to it. The only exception that comes to mind is the younger brother who has been associated with the Boston Marathon bombing. Despite two police attempts to shoot him to death, he inconveniently survived, but has never been seen or heard from. As his orchestrated trial, his court appointed attorney confessed for him, and the jury convicted on her confession.

Remember, Oswald was shot dead by Jack Ruby before Oswald was questioned by police. There is no explanation for an armed private citizen being inside the jail with Oswald and positioned to shoot him at close range. Clearly, Oswald was not to be permitted to give his story. And no patsie since has either.

Featured image: The New Yorker

It took less than 24 hours for Prime Minister Theresa May’s claim that Manchester suicide bomber Salman Ramadan Abedi was known to British intelligence only “up to a point” to be exposed as a lie.

Reports from acquaintances of Abedi and a series of leaks from US and French intelligence sources make clear that the security services knew that the 22-year-old who took the lives of 22 people at the Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena Monday night was a serious threat to public safety.

British intelligence had been warned about Abedi being a possible suicide bomber as far back as five years ago. The BBC reported that two college friends of Abedi had made separate calls to the police at that time because they were worried that “he was supporting terrorism” and had expressed the view that “being a suicide bomber was OK.”

Among a plethora of leaks, NBC reporter Richard Engel tweeted that a US intelligence official told reporters that Abedi’s family had warned British security officials that he was “dangerous.”

Later that day his father and brother were arrested in Libya, accused of being long-time supporters of Al Qaeda and planning further atrocities.

France’s interior minister, Gerard Collomb, revealed that Abedi (image on the right) had “proven” links with Islamic State, and that both the British and French intelligence services had information that Abedi had been in Syria, from where he had only recently returned.

British Home Secretary Amber Rudd and May’s office have both denounced US intelligence and others for leaks they maintain will damage the “operational integrity” of the investigation into Abedi. Their real concern is that these revelations have undermined their efforts to portray anyone questioning the official account of the Manchester bombing as a “conspiracy theorist.”

Events now unfolding fit a well-established pattern. After an atrocity occurs, it soon emerges that the assailants were known to the security/intelligence agencies, which without fail and for reasons never explained allowed them to “slip through the net.” But claims of incompetence carry no weight. The only plausible explanation is that these individuals are protected by forces within the state.

From a political standpoint, the origin of these atrocities is clear. In every case the roots can be traced to the catastrophic wars launched since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 through to the present day—in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and beyond. The result is a political and social disaster in these countries that provides fertile soil for the proliferation of terrorist groups and individuals.

Crucially, those primed for murderous violence on the streets of Britain, France, the US and elsewhere are products of reactionary terror networks that are intimately involved in these imperialist wars for regime change.

Abedi’s trips to Libya and Syria and his links to Islamist terror forces follow a well-worn path of perpetrators of bombing atrocities being tied in with sectarian terrorist organisations financed, armed and utilised by the Western powers. He comes from an area of Manchester that exemplifies British imperialism’s cultivation of Islamist terror groups for service in its foreign operations.

Abedi is reported to have been a close associate of ISIS recruiter Raphael Hostey from Manchester, who was killed in a drone strike in Syria in 2016. For years, a group of members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group were active in the Whalley Range district of Manchester, close to Abedi’s home. They were allowed to recruit there in return for their role in opposing the Gaddafi regime. The local leader, Abd al-Baset Azzouz, was active until he left for Libya in 2014. He was said to be an expert in bomb making, with 200 to 300 militants under his control.

Just as sinister as the Manchester attack itself is the political use to which it is being put. On Tuesday, May raised the national terror threat to “critical,” its highest level. Amid official warnings that another assault is “imminent,” nearly 1,000 troops have been dispatched to the streets, mainly in London, to reinforce counterterrorism officers. These moves are in accordance with Operation Temperer, a covert plan drawn up by the Tory government in 2015, when May was home secretary.

The latest attack follows a pattern where terrorist outrages coincide with critical ballots—most recently last month’s fatal attack on a police officer in Paris by Karim Cheurfi. This was used to justify holding the first round of France’s presidential elections at gunpoint, amid a massive police and army presence on the streets and at polling places.

France provides a serious warning of what may unfold in Britain.

A state of emergency has been in force in France since 2015 following a series of terror attacks in Paris. It was extended only yesterday, supposedly in response to the Manchester bombing.

Last week, L’Obs magazine disclosed that top members of France’s Socialist Party government had prepared a coup d’état in the event of neo-fascist Marine Le Pen winning the May 7 presidential runoff. The aim was not to prevent a National Front presidency, but to crush left-wing dissent and install Le Pen in power in an enforced alliance with a Socialist Party-led government. In the event, such was the obsequiousness of the nominal representatives of the “left” such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who effectively threw his support behind the banker Emmanuel Macron, that a coup was considered unnecessary—at least for now.

Does anyone seriously believe that similar discussions are not taking place in ruling circles in Britain?

May called the snap June 8 election in an attempt to pre-empt the democratic process by securing a parliamentary majority to ram through measures that have no real popular support—deepening the austerity offensive against the working class and pursuing a course of escalating war alongside the US against Syria, Iran and even Russia.

Less than 48 hours ago, her plans appeared to be in ruins. So acute was the political backlash over May’s manifesto proposal to make pensioners sell their homes to pay for social care that even her slavish media supporters worried that she might lose the election to Labour.

Such is the hostility in ruling circles in both Britain and the US to the prospect of Corbyn becoming prime minister—due in particular to Corbyn’s stated opposition to nuclear weapons and criticisms of NATO—that in 2015 an unnamed senior British general warned that there would be a “mutiny” should he become prime minister.

Already May has utilised the Manchester suicide bombing to shift the election agenda back to the question of national security, as she struts around unchallenged and unquestioned—the de facto spokesperson for the police, the MI5, the MI6 and the military. But things might not end there.

The most recent historical precedent in the UK for a snap election was that called by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1974. At a time of enormous political and social tensions internationally, including a militant miners’ strike in Britain, Heath called the election to decide “who runs the country?”

Heath lost, but remained in Downing Street for four days. It is now acknowledged that discussions were being held between senior military officers on a possible coup.

Instead, the state decided it could rely on the incoming Labour government to help re-establish its control. Today, there is no reason to assume that Corbyn’s political prostration—his readiness to give the right wing everything they demand, from support to nuclear weapons and Trident to a refusal to reverse welfare cuts—will make a turn to state repression unnecessary. The shift towards dictatorial forms of rule flows from the deep class antagonisms wracking the UK and the utter putrefaction of British capital.

Featured image: USA Today

Was it mistakenly?

Or was it deliberate on the part of CNN? i.e. a rather unsubtle (subliminal) initiative to associate Russian Orthodox Christianity with Islam with a view to “integrating” the “Russia Bashing” with the hate campaign against Muslims.  (Michel Chossudovsky, GR Editor) 

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The depiction of the White House covered in iconic Russian onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral on Time magazine’s upcoming issue seems to have confused the CNN, which wrongly referred to the onion domes as “Russian minarets.”

Social media users immediately reacted to the editorial entitled “White House overtaken by Russian minarets on new Time cover” published on Thursday, mocking the CNN for the mistake.

 

The new issue of Time magazine features a picture of the White House covered in two iconic Russian landmarks, including the Kremlin Walls and the St. Basil’s Cathedral, in efforts to criticize Trump’s alleged ties with Russia.

@rprose @DavidWright_CNN you might google your architectural term BEFORE you use it. Those are Onion Domes NOT Minarets.

— Brenda Barnes (@BrendaKBarnes) May 18, 2017

CNN quickly fixed the headline and issued a clarification saying:

“This story has been updated to more accurately describe Russian architecture.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has slammed media outlets for carrying out “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history” while he denies any links to Moscow.

Featured image: Destination 360

Sometimes you come across a story that seems so unbelievable that you simply can’t absorb and process the information properly. It doesn’t compute or make much sense – until an investigation produces evidence.

The allegation is this. David Cameron sold three nuclear weapons of a foreign state, put them in unsafe hands and the Conservative party banks nearly £19 million which then sets the pretext for a conflict that kills a million people. Conspiracy theory? Fake news? Read on.

South Africa – A nuclear state armed by Israel 

Although UN Security Council Resolution 418 of 4 November 1977 introduced a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa, requiring all states to refrain from “any co-operation with South Africa in the manufacture and development of nuclear weapons”, it was with the help of the Israelis that the apartheid regime designed and built a total of 10 fully operational nuclear weapons.[1]

One device was successfully tested in 1979, which left 9 nuclear weapons in South Africa’s stockpile.[2][3] In August 1988, foreign minister Pik Botha announced that South Africa had “the capability to make one [a nuclear weapon]” should it want to do so. A month later, in September 1988, South Africa sent a letter to IAEA Director-General Hans Blix expressing willingness to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if certain conditions were met, primarily that South Africa be allowed to market its uranium subject to IAEA safeguards. 

In summary, South Africa operated a covert nuclear ballistic missile program. The United Nations introduced a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa in the development and manufacture of such weapons. Israel assisted anyway. The result was that nine nuclear weapons were left after testing. The purpose was to prove to international markets it had that capability and was willing to sell that capability to willing buyers.

Bomb casings at South Africa’s abandoned Circle nuclear bomb production facility near Pretoria (Source: Wikipedia)

David Cameron’s Sanction Busting Trip

Peter Eyre is a documentary film maker who specialises in Middle-Eastern wars, weapons technology, terrorism and human rights abuses. He wrote a series on the subject of the UK’s involvement in the selling of South Africa’s nuclear weapons.

Eyre writes that David Cameron visited South Africa in 1989 accompanied by Conservative MP, Sir Kenneth Warren, and nuclear weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly. Kelly had made a number of earlier visits having been given access to the covert nuclear weapons research facility at Pelindaba, near Pretoria.

An excerpt from part two of his documentation [4]:

“I find it amazing that David Cameron and others traveled to South Africa during the embargo period and not only violated international law but also violated international law in dealing with nuclear weapons that were not known to the UN. In 1989 David Cameron and others went down to South Africa to carry out some sinister plan that resulted in only 6 operational nuclear weapons going back to the US for de commissioning.The other three were to be purchased by the British Government as a standby mechanism against Saddam. Remember this is all under the radar of the United Nations!”

Eyre stated that David Cameron’s trip, although officially ‘a fact-finding mission,’ [5] which was heavily criticised at the time, was to arrange for three of South Africa’s nuclear weapons to be shipped to the Arabian peninsular, where they would be stored in case they were required in Iraq. This fact alone is alarming. These weapons were not only stored unsafely but they were stored in a volatile region and subsequently went missing.

Thatcher’s illegal nuclear weapons deal

More from Wikispooks: The remaining six nukes were destined to travel from South Africa to Chicago in the US. The next phase of the operation was that, once the weapons had left South African soil, the British Government would reimburse the South African firm Armscor [6] and the British firm Astra through the middle man John Bredenkamp [7] At Government level it would be dealt with primarily by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) using Ministry of Defence money. In order to keep this out of Parliament and out of the public domain, Margaret Thatcher was asked to sign off these weapons in late 1990 under a special Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) describing them as metal cylinders rather than nuclear bombs.

Excerpts from part 4 of Peter Eyre’s documents:

“These weapons were then shipped in standard 20 foot containers and manifested as metal cylinders and not nuclear weapons. This would have been in violation of international regulations regarding the shipment of dangerous goods. The weapons were then placed into private storage and left for Dr.David Kelly to carry out an inspection in order to accept the consignment prior to final payment. Dr David Kelly was the only person in mainstream UK MOD tasked with being in the loop for that covert offshore procurement of battlefield nukes from Apartheid South Africa.” 

Eyre’s (image on the right) documents show that the final inspection was then carried out, the final payment made by the British Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) using money from the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and it was subsequently revealed that £17.8 million was siphoned from this secret nuclear deal into Conservative Party funds. Eyre is unequivocal about this:

“It should also be pointed out that David Cameron managed to siphon off £17.8 million pounds of tax payer´s money into the Conservative Party Election Fund.”

Nuclear weapons go missing?

Veterans Today claim [8] they actually had personnel there for the trip from South Africa with the three nuclear weapons disguised in cylinders:

“There, the bombs were loaded onto Blatchford cradles and moved into blue 20 foot containers.  VT personnel were along for the ride to Durham where they were put on a ship, a ship arranged for by John Bradenkamp, a Rhodesian/Zimbabwean arms trader only recently off the terrorist lists. This represented David Cameron’s “blooding” as a real “insider.”

VT then makes a really big statement:

“What was the nature of that deal?  Britain was to simply unload the weapons, leave them unguarded and walk away.  They never mentioned them again, never looked for them and never asked questions even when one of the bombs supposedly belonging to Britain was exploded by North Korea on May 25, 2009.” [9]

Analysts have generally agreed that North Korea’s nuclear test was successful and despite uncertainty of the exact yield, Russia placed the yield of the test at 10 to 20 kilotons. The Defence Minister of South Korea confirmed similar findings. The description of these weapons were: 3 x Pelindaba Pretorea, Battlefield Ready 20kt Nuclear Bombs.

The VT article goes on to say that Britain and the US invaded Iraq to seize these weapons back stating:

“There are 3 nuclear weapons in Iraq, only 45 minutes from assembly and use.”

Tony Blair – Weapons of Mass Destruction and 45 minutes

The damning document that led to war is described as the “September Dossier” [10] which says:

“However, two sections later became the centre of fierce debate: the allegation that Iraq had sought “significant quantities of uranium from Africa”, and the claim in the foreword to the document written by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that “The document discloses that his military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.”

The dossier also alleged that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons programme. Without exception, all of the allegations included within the September Dossier have been since proven to be false, as shown by the Iraq Survey Group. No nuclear weapons were subsequently found, leaving open-ended questions of their whereabouts.

On 8 February 2015, it was revealed that the Chilcot Inquiry had been tasked specifically with tracking down those responsible for “misplacing” three nuclear weapons obtained from apartheid South Africa 25 years ago. Both David Cameron and Dr David Kelly are understood to have been involved in the diversion of these WMD which eventually became the pretext for the Iraq War [11].

Dr David Kelly was found dead in controversial circumstances in July 2003. A group of doctors later published reports that stated the cause of death was unsound and illogical.

In the meantime the documents displayed on the VT website appear to back up the selling of a nuclear weapon to North Korea:

Click here to see bigger picture

Click here to see bigger picture

(The documents above are expanded below to make them readable.)

Recorded in Parliament

HANSARD JUNE 22 1993 starting from Column 197

Statements regarding these facts entered  and recorded by LORD DOUG HOYLE and Derby South MP MARGARET BECKETT.

I make record in this legal communication, that these Conservative Government Corruption Facts were disclosed and exposed in “Classified” Document form to the then Labour Party leadership by a senior civil servant, Ms TARA ANDREA DAVISON then an ARMS to IRAQ Investigator who went on to be Senior INTELLIGENCE ADVISOR to the Select Committee of the Department of Trade and Industry under Kenneth Warren and MP Peter Lilley.

From my research:

Ms TARA ANDREA DAVISON ex Sister-in-Law of MP Peter Lille and one of Four Daughters of Senior Conservative SIR JOHN BIGGS-DAVISON

That you have further used your respected official position as Attorney General to protect those involved, by covering up the official involvement of DR DAVID KELLY, who was ordered by the then Conservative Government to oversee this covert Nuclear WMD operation that turned into a CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL disaster when John Bredenkamp and his ex SAS Group stole the Nuclear Weapons in OMAN and sold at least One Nuclear Bomb to North Korea.

To use your Office to further protect the expose of those MP’s, Grandees and VIP’s involved in the Criminal Covert government / Private finance purchase in 1991 of 3 x Pelindaba Pretorea, Battlefield Ready 20kt Nuclear Bombs.

I include as an attachment the one page article disclosure and accusations of Conservative Government Corruption by:

 Ms TARA ANDREA DAVISON.

This document supports the allegation that £17.8 million of taxpayers money was illegally laundered into Conservative party funds to fight the election of 1992:

One page of over 400 “Classified” I recovered without copyright from the personal web blog of Ms TARA ANDREA DAVISON on the Internet before they were removed.

I make record:

Given Ms TARA ANDREA DAVISON gives clear statement in the attachment, that the Derbyshire Police have acted beyond their official remit and acted as a Conservative Political Party agent, to seize and withhold vital criminal evidence required by the “PUBLIC” CHILCOTT IRAQ Inquiry.

I also understand, that you replaced MP Tim Smith in the Constituency of Beaconsfield

I am also informed, it was Tim Smith who had inside information regarding the LAUNDERING of the deliberate criminal overcharge to the Treasury of £17.8 Million (A theft of TAX PAYERS assets)  via a front Company of John Arnold Bredenkamp into the “EMPTY” 1991 Tory accounts to fight the 1992 General Election: HANSARD JUNE 22  1993 from Column 197

I await your official reply.

Mr Gordon Bowden

As further evidence, old Labour Oxford Economist Martin Summers talks about what he believes was the secret and highly illegal nuclear arms deal involving a young and ambitious David Cameron as well as Doctor David Kelly. Done behind the back of Nelson Mandela and the ANC, designed to raise £17.8m Tory funding for the 1992 General Election Campaign in this video:

References

1 wikispooks: David Cameron 1998 South Africa Trip

2 States should refrain from co-operation with South Africa in the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons

3 South Africa’s covert ballistic missile programme

4 US/UK Lose nuclear weapons

5 David Cameron’s Freebie to Apartheid South Africa

6 Armscor – Armaments Corporation of South Africa

7 John Bredenkamp – Trader/arms dealer

8 Veteran’s Today: If Cameron was “dirty” at age 25, could he be filthy now?

9 North Korean nuclear test May 25th 2009

10 The September Dossier – 45 minutes WMD and Nuclear Warheads

11 Chilcot Report: Damning conclusions

Featured image: True Publica

Copyright of all original documents and quotes: Peter Eyre, 2017

Teams of United States Special Forces are carrying out “nearly 100 missions at any given time” in the continent of Africa, according to American military documents released to the media. Operating under the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), US Special Forces are trained to carry out missions using unconventional tactics.

Much of their work is classified. However, a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York-based Vice News has revealed extensive deployment of US Special Forces in Africa in recent times.

Information provided to Vice News by the USSOCOM appears to show that operations by US Special Forces in Africa have seen dramatic growth in recent years, possibly more than any other region of the globe.

According to documents, US Special Forces in Africa represented just over 1 percent of all US Special Forces personnel stationed abroad in 2006. By 2010, that number had risen to approximately 3 percent —a significant increase but still relatively low in comparison to USSOCOM deployment in other regions of the world. But by 2016, over 17 percent of US Special Forces stationed abroad were based in Africa. Information unearthed by Vice News shows that 1,700 US Special Forces troops were stationed in 20 different African countries in 2016.

This number indicates that there are now more US Special Forces troops stationed in Africa than in any other region of the world barring the Middle East.

Vice News said it obtained a report by US Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA), which states that US Special Forces were deployed in “at least 32 African nations in the 12 months of 2016”. Only the Middle East saw more deployments of US Special Forces than Africa.

The report’s author, General Donald Bolduc, the commander of SOCAFRICA, wrote that the increasing presence of US Special Forces in the continent reflects the significance of the region for the US. “Africa’s challenges could create a threat that surpasses [that faced] from conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria”, wrote General Bolduc.

The report does not specify how many missions USSOCOM carries out per year. The US Department of Defense did not respond to questions on the subject.

Featured image: True Publica

The country is in shock after the worst terrorist attack in 12 years. The deranged extremist who detonated the bomb bears sole responsibility for the outrage and is not a soldier – for Islam or whoever – but a murderer. The Manchester suicide bombing is an act of barbarism inflicted on entirely innocent people.

This wave of terrorism driven by Islamic State, which has claimed responsibility for the attack, derives from a complex infrastructure of forces, working over time. But it springs ultimately from the ideology promoted by the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, who were at least until recently funding and backing IS: they have done so to support their goal of overthrowing Assad in Syria and championing Sunni Islam in the face of rivalry with Iran. These are Britain’s allies. Whitehall has a deep, long-standing special relationship with the extremist Saudis: it is arming them, backing them, apologising for them, and supporting their regional policies. At the same time, the Saudis have been helping to create the monster that now threatens the British public. So, too, have the policies of the British government.

This is terrible, in the true sense of the term: the British establishment is putting our lives at risk in its obsessive obsequiousness in backing the Saudi state. We have to recognise that we are caught between two extremisms – that of IS and that of our own state’s priorities.

The British elite is perfectly aware of the insidious role that Saudi Arabia plays in fomenting terrorism. In October 2014, General Jonathan Shaw, a former Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff, told the Telegraph that Saudi Arabia and Qatar were primarily responsible for the rise of the extremist Islam that inspires IS terrorists. He said:

“This is a time bomb that, under the guise of education, Wahhabi Salafism is igniting under the world really. And it is funded by Saudi and Qatari money and that must stop.”

He noted that UK/US bombing of IS would not “stop the support of people in Qatar and Saudi Arabia for this kind of activity” because:

“It’s not addressing the fundamental problem of Wahhabi Salafism as a culture and a creed, which has got out of control and is still the ideological basis of Isil – and which will continue to exist even if we stop their advance in Iraq.”

Shaw added:

“My systemic worry is that we’re repeating the mistakes that we made in Afghanistan and Iraq: putting the military far too up front and centre in our response to the threat without addressing the fundamental political question and the causes. The danger is that yet again we’re taking a symptomatic treatment not a causal one.”[1]

Last December Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in off-the-cuff remarks, accused Saudi Arabia of ‘puppeteering and playing proxy wars’ in the Middle East by ‘abusing religion and different strains of the same religion in order to further their own political objectives’.[2]  Johnson was correct and it was a rare public admission of British awareness of the Saudi role, in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere, which, as he and other officials must know full well, has had terrible consequences.

Saudi support for extremism

The Saudi role in exporting Wahhabism is surely well-known by now. In the past few decades, the Saudi regime has spent billions spreading its extremist interpretation of Islam worldwide, funding mosques and free madrassas – religious schools – supplying them with imams and textbooks. In 2013, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a private speech (leaked in 2016) that

“the Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth over the course of the last 30 years.”[3]

This Saudi funding has included support for terrorism. EU intelligence experts estimate that 15 to 20 per cent of Saudi funding for its Wahhabist causes has been diverted to al-Qaeda and other violent jihadists.[4] A June 2013 report by the European Parliament deemed Wahhabism the main source of global terrorism. A classified 2009 cable signed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (also released by WikiLeaks) acknowledged:

“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”[5]

IS executed the followers of the Egyptian Church (Source: Imgur)

A State Department cable of 2009 released under Clinton’s name in December 2009 states that

“Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan].”[6]

The Saudis have been funding terrorism for decades while Whitehall (and Washington) has been supporting them. In May 1974, for example, the US State Department warned Britain not to go ahead with its reported offer to sell Blowpipe surface-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia, for fear of “seepage of this type of weapon into the hands of terrorists”.[7] The US ambassador to Saudi Arabia told his British equivalent that the US had refused to sell similar equipment, the Redeye, for fear of their ending up in the hands of terrorists and being “used against civil aircraft or similar targets”.[8]

Islamic State

IS, which is believed to have been formed in 2006, has grown out of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the terrorist infrastructure built up with Saudi money and Western covert action seeking to oust Assad of Syria. IS is certainly not a creation of the UK, US and its allies, but the latters’ policies have contributed to its growth.

Donors in the Gulf, including Saudis, have funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to rebel groups in Syria in recent years, including to IS.[9] A secret memo written by Hillary Clinton in August 2014 (which appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2016) noted that the Saudi and Qatari governments “are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [IS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region”.[10] Following IS’s capture of Mosul in northern Iraq in June 2014, former Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told US secretary of state John Kerry that

“Daesh is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa,” the Shia Islamist party the US installed in power in Iraq.[11]

Saudi Arabia’s neighbour Qatar, the world’s only other predominantly Wahhabi state with whom Theresa May’s government has recently signed large commercial deals, may have been the biggest funder of the Syrian rebels, with some estimates suggesting the amount may be as much as $3bn.[12] In 2012, the New York Times reported, based on military sources, that

“most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups… are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster”.[13]

This was of course all well-known to officials in London and Washington as they pretended to their publics to be supporting only ‘moderate’ rebel groups. In October 2014, Obama’s Vice President Joe Biden harshly criticised Saudi Arabia and Turkey in a talk at Harvard University. He noted that “they were so determined to take down” Assad that they:

“poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad – except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra, and al-Qaida, and the extremist elements of jihadis who were coming from other parts of the world.”

He added,

“We could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”[14]

As Nafeez Ahmed has argued, Western governments have deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Assad. A 2012 Defence Intelligence Agency document notes that

“the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” and that “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition”.

The document stated that

al-Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor to IS, “supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media.”

But the document also forecast the probable declaration of “an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.” Nevertheless, “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts” by Syrian “opposition forces”. Further the document noted that:

“there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

As Ahmed comments, the document provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting IS had previously welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran.[15]

US journalist Rania Khalek has written[16] that it was not until 2014, when IS started beheading westerners on video, that the group became a major concern for the West. Prior to that, Western covert operations in Syria were so focused on weakening Assad, they acquiesced as Saudi Arabia and Qatar funded and armed IS, following which IS brutally swept across swathes of Syria and Iraq.[17] The US then put heavy pressure on Saudi Arabia and Qatar to stop their support to IS and other radical groups in Syria, which is believed to have happened. However, Saudi Arabia still supports anti-Assad groups in Syria, which has been reported as including the Islamist Jaysh al-Islam.[18] Now, the Saudi regime is pledging support, including military operations, for the fight against IS in Syria. But the point is: the genie has long been out of the bottle.[19]

Britain’s covert role in Syria has served to prolong the war and, in alliance with the US and Saudi Arabia, de facto helped strengthen the hard-line groups who are now our enemies. There is some evidence that Britain had planned covert action in Syria to oust Assad as early as 2009, even before the uprising began in 2011.[20] But Britain is reported to have begun training Syrian rebel forces from bases in Jordan in 2012.[21] Although focused on ‘moderate’ rebels, the ever-changing nature of the opposition forces and inter-operability between them has blurred any useful distinctions between ‘moderate’ and ‘hardline’. In 2015, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told parliament that

“the vast majority of [Syrian] opposition groups are Islamist”.[22]

Foreign Office Minister Baroness Anelay said in 2017 that the situation among the opposition groups in Syria “can indeed be fluid” and that “there can be splintering of those groups and some which appeared in the past to be moderate then change their view and join up with those with whom this country will have no truck”.[23] There is some evidence that some Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels receiving elite training from British and French forces went straight into IS, with one IS commander quoted as saying:

“Many of the FSA people who the west has trained are actually joining us.”[24]

Support for Saudi Arabia

All the while the Saudis have been exporting Wahhabism and backing Islamist groups and terrorists, they have enjoyed a special relationship with London and Washington. The history is so long and deep it is hard to summarise: basically the relationship is characterised by extreme sycophancy, total military support, constant apologias and carefully-controlled media lines that serve to keep the public in the dark about the true extent of relations and the nature of the Saudi regime. It is hard to pinpoint whether Saudi Arabia is a client of the UK or the other way round: probably both, since both set of elites have been happily joined at the hip.

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Prince Turki al-Faisal and Prince Al-Waleed (Source: PressTV)

The terrible bombing of Yemen by Saudi aircraft supplied by Britain, armed by Britain and conducted by British-trained pilots is but the latest episode in extreme UK support for Saudi foreign policy. The blood covers the hands of the entire British establishment. As Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has pointed out, the Royal Family, successive governments, parliamentarians, a good number of institutions and people with clout collectively suck up to the Saudi ruling clan.[25]

The result of all this is catastrophic. The ‘war on terror’ is a joke when your leading ally is the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism. Independent journalist Patrick Cockburn has written that in the 20 years between 1996 and 2016, the CIA and British security and foreign policy agencies have consistently given priority to maintaining their partnership with powerful Sunni states such as Saudi Arabia, the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Pakistan over the elimination of terrorist organisations such as al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, Isis and the Taliban.[26]

That is completely correct, and this is not just turning a blind eye. As I try to show in my book, Secret Affairs[27], the backing of Saudi Arabia is part of a broader story: that British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called ‘national interest’ abroad, colluded for decades not only with the arch-sponsor of radical Islamism in Riyadh but sometimes with radical groups themselves, including terrorist organisations. They have connived with them, and often trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain’s global power in the face of increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will and lacking other local allies. Thus the story is intimately related to that of Britain’s imperial decline and the attempt to maintain influence in the world.

Theresa May’s government, as previous governments, have endangered the British public by the relationship they choose to have with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. In recent months, May has signed up Britain to a new generation of special relationships with these states, based on selling more arms and providing more training of their militaries and security forces to keep the ruling families in power. All this has been done on the quiet, with scant government or media reporting. We are set for another generation of domestic tyranny in Gulf and foreign Islamist adventures, all now helped by raising the enemy of ‘Iran’ – a foreign policy agenda being set by Riyadh and recently helped by President Trump’s preposterous invocation of Iran as the major sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East.

We are in serious trouble unless this all changes. Our leaders’ policies are endangering us, and are among our major threats. The terrorism that we, ordinary people, face, derives from an ideology and infrastructure to which our leaders, claiming to protect us, have contributed. We desperately need another foreign policy entirely, one based on support for those promoting democracy and human rights – rather on than those with contempt for them.

Sources

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11140860/Qatar-and-Saudi-Arabia-have-ignited-time-bomb-by-funding-global-spread-of-radical-Islam.html

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/07/boris-johnson-accuses-saudi-arabia-of-twisting-and-abusing-islam

[3] http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/hacked-clinton-said-saudis-responsible-for-exporting-extreme-ideology/article/2604049

[4] http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/isis-having-spent-billions-the-wahhabists-of-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-find-they-have-created-a-monster-30533853.html

[5] http://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-emails-show-u-s-allies-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-supported-isis/

[6] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-email-isis-saudi-arabia-qatar-us-allies-funding-barack-obama-knew-all-a7362071.html

[7] US State Department to US embassy, Jedda, 4 May 1974, National Archives, FCO8/2344

[8] A.Rothnie to Ministry of Defence, undated [March 1974], National Archives, FCO8/2343

[9] http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/saudi-funding-of-isis

[10] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/hillary-clinton-emails-leak-wikileaks-saudi-arabia-qatar-isis-podesta-latest-a7355466.html

[11] https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/us-support-syrian-rebels-drove-refugee-crisis

[12] http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/isis-having-spent-billions-the-wahhabists-of-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-find-they-have-created-a-monster-30533853.html

[13] http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/12/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state/

[14] http://www.salon.com/2016/10/11/leaked-hillary-clinton-emails-show-u-s-allies-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-supported-isis/

[15] https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092

[16] https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/us-support-syrian-rebels-drove-refugee-crisis

[17] http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/isis-having-spent-billions-the-wahhabists-of-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-find-they-have-created-a-monster-30533853.html

[18] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/21/saudi-arabia-isis-riyadh-terror-threat

[19] http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/isis-having-spent-billions-the-wahhabists-of-saudi-arabia-and-qatar-find-they-have-created-a-monster-30533853.html

[20] http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/12/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state/

[21] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/08/west-training-syrian-rebels-jordan

[22] http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2015-10-19/12468/

[23] https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2017-03-20/debates/7B7DBFFE-DEC4-471E-BD2A-5709AB4B7289/Syria

[24] http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/09/12/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state/

[25] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-evil-empire-of-saudi-arabia-is-the-west-s-real-enemy-a6669531.html

[26] http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/confused-about-the-us-response-to-isis-in-syria-look-to-the-cias-relationship-with-saudi-arabia-a7087791.html

[27] http://markcurtis.info/2010/07/20/secret-affairs-britains-collusion-with-radical-islam/

Featured image: gov.uk

Sadly, President Trump’s visit to the Middle East only confirmed my skepticism about what might come out of it. Trump went to the region with nothing to offer to mitigate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and received no commitment from either Israeli or Palestinian leaders to resume the peace negotiations in earnest, but he received lots of platitudes and empty good-will gestures.

In his meeting with the Saudi King Salman and the rest of the heads of Arab states, he heard the chanting against the Iranian threat and joined the chorus without offering any specific idea as to how he might address Iran’s support of violent extremists and its hegemonic ambitions.

To be sure, however, there were many photo ops. Israeli and Arab officials alike clamored to take a photo with a besieged President who is reveling in the accolades of the moment and doing his best not to think about the dark clouds awaiting him back home.

That said, there is no doubt that the US remains the indispensable power in the Middle East, and just about every state in the region relies heavily on the US’ political support and protection. This, however, does not suggest that the US has a magic wand and can simply wave it and change overnight the dynamics of the multiple conflicts sweeping and consuming the region. None of Trump’s predecessors has had that kind of power and Trump has even less.

During his meetings with Saudi officials, he said nothing about their gross violation of human rights and the kingdom’s promotion of Islamic Wahhabi extremism. On the contrary, he was delighted to conclude an arms deal worth over $110 billion, becoming more like a merchant of death rather than a messenger of peace.

President Donald Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia talk together during ceremonies, Saturday, May 20, 2017, at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo Shealah Craighead)

On the relationship between the Arab states and Israel, Trump offered no recipe as to how they can reach a comprehensive peace agreement. He stated that

“King Salman feels very strongly and, I can tell you, would love to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians.”

The fact is that the Arab states want peace between Israel and the Palestinians based on a two-state solution, and conditioned normalization of relations with Israel based on that premise, which was articulated in the Arab Peace Initiative introduced by the Arab League in 2002.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Trump seems to have realized that the conflict is far more intractable than when he stated before his trip that

“There is no reason there’s not peace between Israel and the Palestinians—none whatsoever.”

But once he listened to the Israelis and Palestinians, he stated that

“I’ve heard it’s one of the toughest deals of all.”

Whereas he took no initiative to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, to the chagrin of Netanyahu and his cohorts, Trump backtracked on his promise to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem and asked Netanyahu to slow down the building and expansion of settlements. To the disappointment of many in Israel, he refused to allow any Israeli officials to accompany him during his historic visit to the Western Wall.

The statements made by Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas that they are ready and willing to resume negotiations are old, tired, and inconsequential. Both sides have been expressing such a sentiment for years, and nothing that Trump has said or done will change the positions of either Abbas or Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is not committed to a two-state solution, and Abbas is unable to make any concession and politically (if not physically) survive. Trump could have challenged both leaders to take some measures to demonstrate their commitment to peace and create a conducive atmosphere that would pave the way for serious negotiations, but he did not even attempt to do just that.

President Donald Trump participates in arrival ceremonies with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority at the Presidential Palace, Tuesday, May 23, 20217, in Bethlehem. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Among other measures, Trump could have asked Netanyahu to release some Palestinians prisoners, allow for freer movement of Palestinians, and open the door for mutual tourism. Trump could have also leaned on Abbas to stop public incitements and acrimonious public narratives, and end financial aid to the families of terrorists.

Although Trump does want a deal, he assigned his son-in-law Jared Kushner and former Trump Organization attorney Jason Greenblatt, two novice individuals who know even less about the complexity of the conflict than he does, to find a solution that has eluded several presidents before him.

Notwithstanding their desire to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iranian threat assumes greater urgency for both Israel and the Arab states. Both sides have long since concluded that Iran is a common enemy and poses a real danger to their national security. As they see it, although the Iran deal has delayed its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Tehran is still committed to becoming a nuclear power.

Regarding the concern over the Iranian threat, Trump said nothing that was not known before:

“There is a growing realization among your [Israel] Arab neighbors that they have common cause with you in the threat posed by Iran, and it is indeed a threat, there’s no question about that.”

It is true that Tehran is deliberately destabilizing the region by its support of terrorist organizations and by meddling in the Arabs’ domestic affairs (Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen) to serve its hegemonic ambition. Israel and the Arab states have for several years been collaborating strategically by sharing intelligence and developing clandestine security cooperation to stop Iran from realizing its regional objectives.

Other than boasting by stating that

“We are telling you right now that Iran will not have nuclear weapons”, Trump offered no concrete steps as to how to deal with the Iranian menace.

Instead, he encouraged the Sunni Arab states to ally against Shiite Iran, which can only further heighten tensions between the two sides and further destabilize the region, which is already in turmoil.

Trump ignores the basic fact that regardless of Iran’s mischiefs and transgressions, it is here to stay. Tehran has been complying to all the provisions of the nuclear deal and it has just reelected President Rouhani, who is a moderate and expressed on many occasions that he wants improve relations with the US and the Arab states.

However, Trump’s statement to the Sunni leaders was:

“Until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism, and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they so richly deserve.”

Indeed, regardless of the intense objection of the Israelis and the Arab states to the Iran deal, Trump did not tear it up as he promised during his campaign for President, and his administration continues to fully comply with the deal’s requirements by lifting the sanctions as stipulated in the accord.

Wisdom dictates that the US should build on the Iran deal, and work with Iran to help bring an end to the horrifying civil war in Syria and stop the senseless proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia in Yemen and Iraq, from which neither side can emerge victorious.

Trump’s visit to the region was full of opulence and symbolism, with little or no substance. There was no progress in in the search for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Arab states continue to refuse to normalize relations with Israel before resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and they have received no assurance that the US will deal with Iran with an iron fist.

The only thing that came out of Trump’s visit is that he could get a respite from the political turmoil in which he is marred back home. Otherwise, the trip was much ado about nothing.

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

Featured image: whitehouse.gov

You can’t be a real spy and have everybody in the world know who you are and what your drink is. That’s just hysterically funny.” – Roger Moore