Global Research

The Sun claims that CNN has released new footage of last month’s Syrian chemical incident (click link to see video)… and strongly implies that the Syrian government was responsible.

Washington’s Blog asked MIT rocket scientist and chemical weapons expert Theodore Postol^* what he thought of the footage.

Postol replied:

I agree that the footage is harrowing. However none of it is new and none of it proves that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of a nerve agent attack.

As such, this article merely falls into the category of propaganda.

The kindest alternative description of the article is that it might instead be yet another example of bad reporting that mixes ill-considered assumptions with facts that may or may not be relevant to its conclusions.

This kind of reporting could actually be encouraging such attacks.

If there was a false flag nerve agent attack, this tells the perpetrators that when they engage in the murder of children they can build a stronger false case against the Syrian government and thereby increase their chances of creating political pressure on the US Government to intervene militarily on their behalf.

If people are sickened by the inhumanity of these events, they might want to consider alternative explanations of who might be responsible for the immoralities we are seeing.

Click here to watch the video.

*Theodore Postol is  professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at MIT. Postol’s main expertise is in ballistic missiles. He has a substantial background in air dispersal, including how toxic plumes move in the air. Postol has taught courses on weapons of mass destruction – including chemical and biological threats – at MIT.  Before joining MIT, Postol worked as an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment, as a science and policy adviser to the chief of naval operations, and as a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory.  He also helped build a program at Stanford University to train mid-career scientists to study weapons technology in relation to defense and arms control policy. Postol is a highly-decorated scientist, receiving the Leo Szilard Prize from the American Physical Society, the Hilliard Roderick Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Richard L. Garwin Award from the Federation of American Scientists.

On May 10th, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces fully liberated the important town of Tabqah and the Tabqah dam from ISIS terrorists in the province of Raqqah. The town of Tabqah is located within 40 km of the ISIS self-proclaimed capital of Raqqah. US-led coalition aviation and US special forces assisted the Syrian rebels in the Tabqa campaign.

Meanwhile, the SDF resumed their anti-ISIS operations north of Raqqah, capturing the villages of al-Jalai and Mayselum that had been held by ISIS.

Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. John Dorrian revealed what kind of arms the United States would supply to Kurdish forces (a core of the SDF) when he told reporters,

“…..what we are talking about here is ammunition, small arms, heavy machine guns, and mortars….”

Earlier this week, the Pentagon announced that US President Donald Trump had approved a plan to directly arm Kurdish forces operating in Syria.

Government forces, led by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Tiger Forces, resumed anti-ISIS operations in the eastern Aleppo countryside, liberating the village of Al-Mahdoum and advancing further against ISIS near the Jirah Military Airport.

Russian Aerospace Forces supported the SAA advance by bombing ISIS gatherings and vehicles in the area between the Al-Jirah Military Airport and the town of Maskana.

Pro-ISIS sources claimed that ISIS members had destroyed a 23mm gun with an ATGM in the village of Kharaj Daham and a T-72 battle tank and BMP-1 vehicle in the village of Jarrah Saghir.

A number of Syrian soldiers were allegedly killed or wounded in the village of Atshana as a result of 2 VBIED attacks on SAA troops there.

ISIS also damaged an SAA T-72 battle tank in the village of Ma’moura after targeting it with an armed drone.

Russia has sent some 21 Soviet-made M-30 howitzers [122 mm] to Syria government forces, Fox News reported citing US officials. The artillery pieces arrived via cargo ship in the Syrian port city of Tartus in the past few days, according to the article.

The media outlet also speculated that Russia is sending more missiles for the advanced S-400 air defense system. The step is allegedly aimed at increasing the Russian air defense capabilities in Syria.

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April 2017 was another month of mass slaughter and unimaginable terror for the people of Mosul in Iraq and the areas around Raqqa and Tabqa in Syria, as the heaviest, most sustained U.S.-led bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam entered its 33rd month.

The Airwars monitoring group has compiled reports of 1,280 to 1,744 civilians killed by at least 2,237 bombs and missiles that rained down from U.S. and allied warplanes in April (1,609 on Iraq and 628 on Syria). The heaviest casualties were in and around Old Mosul and West Mosul, where 784 to 1,074 civilians were reported killed, but the area around Tabqa in Syria also suffered heavy civilian casualties.

In other war zones, as I have explained in previous articles (here and here), the kind of “passive” reports of civilian deaths compiled by Airwars have only ever captured between 5 percent and 20 percent of the actual civilian war deaths revealed by comprehensive mortality studies. Iraqbodycount, which used a similar methodology to Airwars, had only counted 8 percent of the deaths discovered by a mortality study in occupied Iraq in 2006.

Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meets with members of the coalition at a forward operating base near Qayyarah West, Iraq, April 4, 2017. (DoD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro)

Airwars appears to be collecting reports of civilian deaths more thoroughly than Iraqbodycount 11 years ago, but it classifies large numbers of them as “contested” or “weakly reported,” and is deliberately conservative in its counting. For instance, in some cases, it has counted local media reports of “many deaths” as a minimum of one death, with no maximum figure. This is not to fault Airwars’ methods, but to recognize its limitations in contributing to an actual estimate of civilian deaths.

Allowing for various interpretations of Airwars’ data, and assuming that, like such efforts in the past, it is capturing between 5 percent and 20 percent of actual deaths, a serious estimate of the number of civilians killed by the U.S.-led bombing campaign since 2014 would by now have to be somewhere between 25,000 and 190,000.

The Pentagon recently revised its own facetious estimate of the number of civilians it has killed in Iraq and Syria since 2014 to 352. That is less than a quarter of the 1,446 victims whom Airwars has positively identified by name.

Airwars has also collected reports of civilians killed by Russian bombing in Syria, which outnumbered its reports of civilians killed by U.S.-led bombing for most of 2016. However, since the U.S.-led bombing escalated to over 10,918 bombs and missiles dropped in the first three months of 2017, the heaviest bombardment since the campaign began in 2014, Airwars’ reports of civilians killed by U.S.-led bombing have surpassed reports of deaths from Russian bombing.

Because of the fragmentary nature of all Airwars’ reports, this pattern may or may not accurately reflect whether the U.S. or Russia has really killed more civilians in each of these periods. There are many factors that could affect that.

For example, Western governments and NGOs have funded and supported the White Helmets and other groups who report civilian casualties caused by Russian bombing, but there is no equivalent Western support for the reporting of civilian casualties from the Islamic State-held areas that the U.S. and its allies are bombing. If Airwars’ reporting is capturing a greater proportion of actual deaths in one area than another due to factors like this, it could lead to differences in the numbers of reported deaths that do not reflect differences in actual deaths.

Shock, Awe … and Silence

To put the 79,000 bombs and missiles with which the U.S. and its allies have bombarded Iraq and Syria since 2014 in perspective, it is worth reflecting back to the “more innocent” days of “Shock and Awe” in March 2003. As NPR reporter Sandy Tolan reported in 2003, one of the architects of that campaign predicted that dropping 29,200 bombs and missiles on Iraq would have, “the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on Japan.”

At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”

When “Shock and Awe” was unleashed on Iraq in 2003, it dominated the news all over the world. But after eight years of “disguised, quiet, media-free” war under President Obama, the U.S. mass media don’t even treat the daily slaughter from this heavier, more sustained bombardment of Iraq and Syria as news. They cover single mass casualty events for a few days, but quickly resume normal “Trump Show” programming.

As in George Orwell’s 1984, the public knows that our military forces are at war with somebody somewhere, but the details are sketchy. “Is that still a thing?” “Isn’t North Korea the big issue now?”

There is almost no political debate in the U.S. over the rights and wrongs of the U.S. bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria. Never mind that bombing Syria without authorization from its internationally recognized government is a crime of aggression and a violation of the U.N. Charter.  The freedom of the United States to violate the U.N. Charter at will has already been politically (not legally!) normalized by 17 years of serial aggression, from the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.

So who will enforce the Charter now to protect civilians in Syria, who already face violence and death from all sides in a bloody civil and proxy war, in which the U.S. was already deeply complicit well before it began bombing Syria in 2014?

In terms of U.S. law, three successive U.S. regimes have claimed that their unconstrained violence is legally justified by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed by the U.S. Congress in 2001. But sweeping as it was, that bill said only,

“That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11th, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.”

How many of the thousands of civilians the U.S. has killed in Mosul in the past few months played any such role in the September 11th terrorist attacks? Every person reading this knows the answer to that question: probably not one of them. If one of them was involved, it would be by sheer coincidence.

Any impartial judge would reject a claim that this legislation authorized 16 years of war in at least eight countries, the overthrow of governments that had nothing to do with 9/11, the killing of about 2 million people and the destabilization of country after country – just as surely as the judges at Nuremberg rejected the German defendants’ claims that they invaded Poland, Norway and the U.S.S.R. to prevent or “preempt” imminent attacks on Germany.

U.S. officials may claim that the 2002 Iraq AUMF legitimizes the bombardment of Mosul. That law at least refers to the same country. But while it is also still on the books, the whole world knew within months of its passage that it used false premises and outright lies to justify overthrowing a government that the U.S. has since destroyed.

The U.S. war in Iraq officially ended with the withdrawal of the last U.S. occupation forces in 2011. The AUMF did not and could not possibly have approved allying with a new regime in Iraq 14 years later to attack one of its cities and kill thousands of its people.

Caught in a Web of War Propaganda

Do we really not know what war is? Has it been too long since Americans experienced war on our own soil? Perhaps. But as thankfully distant as war may be from most of our daily lives, we cannot pretend that we do not know what it is or what horrors it brings.

This month, two friends and I visited our Congresswoman’s office representing our local Peace Action affiliate, Peace Justice Sustainability Florida, to ask her to cosponsor legislation to prohibit a U.S. nuclear first strike; to repeal the 2001 AUMF; to vote against the military budget; to cut off funding for the deployment of U.S. ground troops to Syria; and to support diplomacy, not war, with North Korea.

When one of my friends explained that he’d fought in Vietnam and started to talk about what he’d witnessed there, he had to stop to keep from crying. But the staffer didn’t need him to go on. She knew what he was talking about. We all do.

But if we all have to see dead and wounded children in the flesh before we can grasp the horror of war and take serious action to stop it and prevent it, then we face a bleak and bloody future. As my friend and too many like him have learned at incalculable cost, the best time to stop a war is before it starts, and the main lesson to learn from every war is: “Never again!”

Photos of victims of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam galvanized public awareness about the barbarity of the war. (Photo taken by U. S. Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle)

Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump won the presidency partly by presenting themselves as “peace” candidates. This was a carefully calculated and calibrated element in both their campaigns, given the pro-war records of their main opponents, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The American public’s aversion to war is a factor that every U.S. president and politician has to deal with, and promising peace before spinning us into war is an American political tradition that dates back to Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.

As Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering admitted to American military psychologist Gustave Gilbert in his cell at Nuremberg,

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” Gilbert insisted, “In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

Goering was unimpressed by Madison‘s and Hamilton’s cherished constitutional safeguards.

“Oh, that is all well and good,” he replied, “but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Our commitment to peace and our abhorrence of war are too easily undermined by the simple but timeless techniques Goering described. In the U.S. today, they are enhanced by several other factors, most of which also had parallels in World War Two Germany:

–Mass media that suppress public awareness of the human costs of war, especially when U.S. policy or U.S. forces are responsible.

–A media blackout on voices of reason who advocate alternative policies based on peace, diplomacy or the rule of international law.

–In the ensuing silence regarding rational alternatives, politicians and media present “doing something,” meaning war, as the only alternative to the perennial straw man of “doing nothing.”

–The normalization of war by stealth and deception, especially by public figures otherwise seen as trustworthy, like President Obama.

–The dependence of progressive politicians and organizations on funding from labor unions that have become junior partners in the military industrial complex.

–The political framing of U.S. disputes with other countries as entirely the result of actions by the other side, and the demonization of foreign leaders to dramatize and popularize these false narratives.

–The pretense that the U.S. role in overseas wars and global military occupation stems from a well-meaning desire to help people, not from U.S. strategic ambitions and business interests.

Taken altogether, this amounts to a system of war propaganda, in which the heads of TV networks bear a share of responsibility for the resulting atrocities along with political and military leaders. Trotting out retired generals to bombard the home front with euphemistic jargon, without disclosing the hefty directors’ and consultants’ fees they collect from weapons manufacturers, is only one side of this coin.

The equally important flip-side is the media’s failure to even cover wars or the U.S. role in them, and their systematic marginalization of anyone who suggests there is anything morally or legally wrong with America’s wars.

The Pope and Gorbachev

Pope Francis recently suggested that a third party could act as a mediator to help resolve our country’s nearly 70-year-old conflict with North Korea. The Pope suggested Norway. Even more importantly, the Pope framed the problem as a dispute between the United States and North Korea, not, as U.S. officials do, as North Korea posing a problem or a threat to the rest of the world.

Pope Francis

This is how diplomacy works best, by correctly and honestly identifying the roles that different parties are playing in a dispute or a conflict, and then working to resolve their disagreements and conflicting interests in a way that both sides can live with or even benefit from. The JCPOA that resolved the U.S. dispute with Iran over its civilian nuclear program is a good example of how this can work.

This kind of real diplomacy is a far cry from the brinksmanship, threats and aggressive alliances that have masqueraded as diplomacy under a succession of U.S. presidents and secretaries of state since Truman and Acheson, with few exceptions. The persistent desire of much of the U.S. political class to undermine the JCPOA with Iran is a measure of how U.S. officials cling to the use of threats and brinksmanship and are offended that the “exceptional” United States should have to come down from its high horse and negotiate in good faith with other countries.

At the root of these dangerous policies, as historian William Appleman Williams wrote in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy in 1959, lies the mirage of supreme military power that seduced U.S. leaders after the allied victory in the Second World War and the invention of nuclear weapons. After running headlong into the reality of an unconquerable post-colonial world in Vietnam, this American Dream of ultimate power faded briefly, only to be reborn with a vengeance after the end of the Cold War.

Much as its defeat in the First World War was not decisive enough to convince Germany that its military ambitions were doomed, a new generation of U.S. leaders saw the end of the Cold War as their chance to “kick the Vietnam syndrome” and revive America’s tragic bid for “full spectrum dominance.”

As Mikhail Gorbachev lamented in a speech in Berlin on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 2014,

“the West, and particularly the United States, declared victory in the Cold War. Euphoria and triumphalism went to the heads of Western leaders. Taking advantage of Russia’s weakening and the lack of a counterweight, they claimed monopoly leadership and domination of the world, refusing to heed words of caution from many of those present here.”

This post-Cold War triumphalism has predictably led us into an even more convoluted maze of delusions, disasters and dangers than the Cold War itself. The folly of our leaders’ insatiable ambitions and recurrent flirtations with mass extinction are best symbolized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, whose hands once again stand at two and a half minutes to midnight.

The inability of the costliest war machine ever assembled to defeat lightly-armed resistance forces in country after country, or to restore stability to any of the countries it has destroyed, has barely dented the domestic power of the U.S. military-industrial complex over our political institutions and our national resources. Neither millions of deaths, trillions of dollars wasted, nor abject failure on its own terms has slowed the mindless spread and escalation of the “global war on terror.”

Futurists debate whether robotic technology and artificial intelligence will one day lead to a world in which autonomous robots could launch a war to enslave and destroy the human race, maybe even incorporating humans as components of the machines that will bring about our extinction. In the U.S. armed forces and military industrial complex, have we already created exactly such a semi-human, semi-technological organism that will not stop bombing, killing and destroying unless and until we stop it in its tracks and dismantle it?

Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapters on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

Palestinian refugee camps are up in flames, across the country, a result of the disputes between the rival factions, but also of ‘unsavory’ influences from abroad. As everyone knows here, there are, for instance, the Al Qaida-affiliated militants hiding in the South.

There are Israeli incursions into Lebanon, both by land and by water. There are also drones, flying habitually from Israel into and through the Lebanese airspace.

There is great tension between Israel and Hezbollah, over Syria, but not only.

Lebanese forces are fighting DAESH, mainly in the Northeast of Lebanon, on the mountainous border with Syria. Hezbollah is fighting DAESH, too, but ‘independently’.

In the 7th year into the war in Syria, there are still more than 1 million Syrian refugees living on Lebanese territory, some in awful conditions and many with extremely uncertain future. The exact number is unknown (UNHCR stopped the registration of all new arrivals approximately 2 years ago), but is believed to fluctuate between 1 and 2 million.

There is mounting tension between the Syrian and the Lebanese communities, as they are now competing for already sparse jobs and public services (including such basic utilities like water), while Palestinian refugees have been stranded in Lebanon already for decades, with very little social, political and economic rights.

There is a drug epidemic, from its production (mainly in the Bekaa Valley), to its unbridled consumption in Beirut.

A new government has finally been formed in December 2016, after more than 2.5 years of absence of any functioning administration. However, the Prime Minister is a Sunni Muslim, Saad Hariri, who is openly hostile to Syria and has directly expressed support for the recent US attacks against the neighboring country. Mr. Hariri has long been accusing Hezbollah and Syria of assassinating his father, Rafik Hariri, in February 2005. Mr. Hariri has dual citizenship, that of Lebanon and also of Saudi Arabia where he was born (in Riyadh). On the other hand, the President of Lebanon is now a Maronite Christian, 83-years old Michel Aoun, who came to power thanks to the unfailing support given to him by Hezbollah, the fact that puts him at odds with the Prime Minister.

There is an ongoing struggle, even deadlock, amongst the ‘political parties’ (in Lebanon often synonymous with sectarian divisions), over such varied issues as the electoral law, waste management, international political alliances, foreign military funding, gender-based discrimination, employment as well as all basic social services (or acute lack of them).

*     *     *

Lebanon is literally surrounded by perpetual conflicts. Syria, the country in great agony is right ‘next door’, north and east of tiny Lebanon, while mighty and aggressive Israel is threatening the country from the south. The United Nations troops are patrolling the so-called “UN 2000 Blue Line” or the de facto border between Lebanon and Israel. In fact, UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon) has for years been ‘covering’ a large part of the country’s territory. It all feels like a war zone.

In fact the region consists of a series of temporarily dormant conflicts that are ready to explode again, at any moment, with destructive, murderous force.

The occupied and devastated Golan Heights is just across the borderline, too. Officially, The Golans are still part of Syria, but the Israelis have already purged most of its population, resettling it with their own citizens. During my visit, some 4 years ago, the situation was already dire, the area scarred by barbed wires, with Israeli military posts and vehicles everywhere. Many local houses were destroyed, as ‘punishment’. If you drive to the geographical extreme, you can see the Golan Heights from Lebanon. You can also see Israel, while Syria is ‘always there’, right behind the majestic and bare mountains.

The UN peacekeepers come from all parts of the world, including South Korea, Indonesia and Europe. Right before the Coastal Highway ends, near the city of Tyre, the motorists pass through the last Lebanese checkpoint. The UNIFIL protected area begins, with armored vehicles, sandbags and watchtowers. It reads, on the concrete blocks intended to slow down the traffic:

“Peace to Lebanon, Glory to Korea!”

Palestinian refugee camps are overflowing. Syrian refugees (some in awful conditions) are working like slaves in the Bekaa Valley, begging for money in Sidon and Beirut, or if they are wealthy, renting lavish seafront condominiums on the Corniche of the capital city.

*     *     *

Despite all the bravado, Lebanon is scared; it is petrified.

Everybody knows that Israel could hit at any moment, again. It is said that Israelis are already stealing Lebanese oil from the seabed, but the weak and almost totally defenseless country can do almost nothing against one of the mightiest military forces on Earth.

All over the country, there are ‘dormant cells’ of ISIS (DAESH) and of other extremist militant groups, overflowing from war-torn Syria. The ISIS is dreaming about a ‘caliphate and the access to the sea’. Lebanon is right there, a ‘perfect location’.

Both Russia and China are keeping a relatively low profile here, not too interested in operating in this divided and uncertain political climate. In Lebanon, there are very few permanent loyalties left;allegiances are often shifting andare frequently dependent on outside ‘funding’.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are always present here, and so is the West. Hezbollah (on several ‘lists’ of the terrorist organizations of the West) is the only pan-Lebanese force capable and willing to provide at least some basic social services for the poor, as well as determined military and ideological defense against Israel.

Many political analysts are predicting that Lebanon will collapse, totally, and soon. But it is still here, determined and defiant. How, nobody knows. For how long, is a total mystery!

Patrolled by the UN, overflowing with refugees, Lebanon is shining into the night. Its Ferraris are roaming through its streets, without mufflers, until early morning hours. Its nightclubs are seducing hedonist visitors from the Gulf. Its art cinemas are as good or even better than those in Paris. At the AUB Medical Center, the best Middle Eastern surgeons are treating the most horrid war injuries from the area.

Here, war and self-indulgence are living side by side. Some say it is nothing else other than a bare cynicism. Others would argue:

“No, it is life! Life of the 21st century world; exposed, brought to the extreme, but in a way honest.”

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

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” (Albert Einstein, 1879-1955.) 

The cynic might wonder if, when UK Prime Minister Theresa May spent so much time clutching Donald Trump’s hand on her January visit to the White House, she contracted a virulent strain of Trumpitis, an apparently incurable and uncontainable desire to erase swathes of fellow human beings from the planet, if not all life on earth. 

Trump, various Generals with incomprehensible psychedelic bits of cloth adorning their clothing and varying spokespeople, terrifyingly, will not “rule out” a nuclear strike on North Korea (population just 25.16 million v US population 321.4 million, incidentally) which could ignite a nuclear war. 

Five times draft evader Donald Trump seemingly lacks even a miniscule concept of the apocalypse even “conventional” weapons unleash. When he launched – arguably illegally – forty nine Cruise missiles which rained down on Syria (Thursday 6^th April) whilst having dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he remembered he was eating “a beautiful piece of chocolate cake”, but forgot the country he was attacking, muddling Syria with Iraq, so lightly was the unthinkable undertaken. Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross was quoted as calling the strike “after dinner entertainment.” 

If Trump read and was thoughtful (the first apparently absent from his activities and the second seemingly fatally flawed) he might have reflected on North Korea’s genuine fears. Near erased from the earth by the US (1950-1953) constantly threatened over subsequent decades, Trump might have recalled the words of Joseph Rotblat, co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize with the Pugwash Conferences, for:

“their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international affairs and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms.” 

Rotblat observed that: 

“If the militarily most powerful and least threatened states need nuclear weapons for their security, how can one deny such security to countries that are truly insecure? The present nuclear policy is a recipe for proliferation. It is a policy for disaster.” 

Another aspect of Theresa May’s Trump-like affliction is her equal lack of reflection. Determined apparently that she can play the world annihilation game with Trump led her Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, to announce that she would fire the UK’s nuclear weapons as a “first strike”, if necessary. (1) 

“In the most extreme circumstances, we have made it very clear that you can’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike”, he told the BBC’s Radio 4. 

The reaction of Russian Senator Frants Klintsevich, Deputy Chairman of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament’s Defence and Security Committee, was to call Fallon’s comments “disgusting”, saying they deserved a ”tough response.” He gave it in no uncertain terms pointing out that: “Britain, not having the biggest territory”, would “literally be erased from the face of the earth”, were it to launch a preemptive strike. He asked pointedly:

“Against whom is Great Britain going to preemptively use nuclear weapons?” 

In context, there is no proof whatsoever that North Korea has an integrated nuclear weapons programme (ie the weapons with the system to fire them.) It certainly has a nuclear bluster programme developed out of fear resulting from near seven decades of threats, with a vast US arsenal just across it’s border with nearing 30,000 US military personnel, twelve US bases, one provocatively named “Red Cloud” – and since 2006 further isolation in the form of sanctions. Now of course, there are also Donald Trump’s threats and declared “armada” of war ships, bristling with more nation erasing armaments. 

Senator Klintsevich added witheringly that if Britain intended to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state:

“then probably English people desperately want to share the laurels of the USA who threw nuclear bombs at defenceless Hiroshima and Nagasaki” (in 1945.)

“But those times have gone for good, as has the era of the greatness of the British Empire.” (2) 

However, undeterred by Russia’s warning, in a speech at London’s Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House) the following day, Fallon again confirmed:

“ … we have made it very clear that you can’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike.” 

The authoritative political on line publication The Canary, asked in what circumstances impending Armageddon would be triggered, he replied:

“They are better not specified or described, which would only give comfort to our enemies and make the deterrent less credible.”

The Canary’s article (3) is in stark contrast to the casual talk in Washington and London of unleashing the unthinkable, it is headed:

 “The Conservative government just signed the UK’s death warrant. Quite literally.” 

It opens: 

“It’s already clear that part of the Conservative government’s general election strategy is to peg itself as ‘militarily tough’. And to prove that, Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon has made an astonishing claim. One that essentially signs the UK’s death warrant. 

“The UK will, he asserts, not hesitate to fire nuclear weapons in a first strike. That means the Tories won’t wait until the UK is under attack in some way to start a global nuclear war. It will just start firing at will. This is a complete break from the UK’s historical stance. And it’s one that, considering the UK’s size, could conclude with the country lying at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. 

“The UK’s nuclear arsenal (Trident) is up for renewal, which will potentially cost taxpayers over £200bn. Its renewal is in violation of the UK’s commitment to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). But a number of politicians and their backers profit from Trident’s existence. So, unsurprisingly, it’s quite popular in parliament. (Emphasis added.) 

“The largely US-owned Trident system puts two hundred and fifteen nuclear warheads at the UK’s disposal, according to the Arms Control Association (ACA).” 

The Canary article also throws up the further unthinkable and leads to wondering if the threats to North Korea are either a red herring or a proposed practice run in this new, legally unconstrained, morally and reason-free political zone: 

“… in terms of defence, there has been one country firmly at the forefront of UK ministers’ minds over the last few years: Russia. It was the hot topic at a Commons Defence Committee meeting in December 2016. A session where Fallon asserted we’d be ready for war with Russia by 2018/19. In 2015, meanwhile, the country received a listing as a top-tier threat in the UK’s National Security Strategy (NSS). And, of course, NATO has stationed troops (including ones from the UK) directly on Russia’s borders.” 

However, Mrs. May-hem and Defence Secretary Fallon have apparently forgotten that:

“Russia … has seven thousand nuclear warheads (with) four thousand five hundred either deployed or stockpiled … around thirty three times more warheads than the UK has.” 

Further, for example, Russia’s Satan 2: “can allegedly carry up to a dozen warheads and level an area the size of the UK in one hit.” The UK’s population (2015) is 65.14 million. (Emphasis added.) 

Prime Minister May’s endlessly repeated mantra “Brexit means Brexit” (ie., Britain leaving the European Union) takes on a whole new meaning: she is prepared to trigger the UK departing the planet.

This week she announced that her government is to install psychiatric care workers in schools across the country. It would seem they are more urgently needed in the Cabinet, the Defence and Foreign Office Ministries and most essentially in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Notes

1. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-nuclear-weapons-first-strike-michael-fallon-general-election-jeremy-corbyn-trident-a7698621.html

2. http://www.forces.net/news/britain-would-be-erased-earth-if-it-dropped-nuke-warns-russian-mp

3. https://www.thecanary.co/2017/04/27/conservative-government-just-signed-uks-death-warrant-quite-literally-image/

The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) and the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) have issued a strong statement calling for the U.S. government to stop its attempts to destabilize the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro. The statement serves notice that the U.S. antiwar movement will oppose any attempts on the part of the U.S. government at “regime change” in Venezuela, whether by economic pressure, coup attempts, or military intervention.

According to Ajamu Baraka, National Organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace,

“The U.S. led destabilization project in Venezuela is an attack on all progressive peoples and movements in the Americas, including the over 150 million Black people in the region. The Black Alliance for Peace understands that there can no peace without justice, and so we stand in solidarity with the people of Venezuela who are defending their project for social justice, self-determination and national sovereignty. In our joint statement with UNAC, we are calling on the Trump Administration to immediately cease its subversive activities in Venezuela.”

Joe Lombardo, Co-coordinator of UNAC, stated,

“Today the U.S. has military bases in over 130 countries. It has around 20 times the number of military bases as all other countries in the world combined. Through military force, economic sabotage and other means, it seeks to impose Wall Street’s will on all countries. The brave people of Venezuela have resisted these attempts in their country, and so UNAC and BAP stand with them.”

UNAC will use its upcoming national conference (http://UNACconference2017) to express support for Venezuela.

*     *     *

Statement on Venezuela by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) and the Black Alliance for Peace 

The United States has been conducting a brutal, 20-year-long campaign of destabilization against Venezuela in an attempt to cause “regime change” in that country.  This has taken the form of economic sabotage and financial manipulation as well as support for the mobilization of right-wing forces in increasingly violent demonstrations.

This is not a recent policy but one that has also been carried out under the Obama and Bush administrations as well as the present Trump administration. In 2002, right-wing forces inside Venezuela attempted a coup against then-President Hugo Chavez. Many sources have confirmed that the U.S. gave the go-ahead to the opposition to orchestrate the coup and promised support.  Soon after the coup, the people of Venezuela turned out in the streets in massive numbers and restored Chavez to the presidency.

Barack Obama continued the assault on the Venezuelan revolution by imposing crippling sanctions and asserting that Venezuela was a “security threat” to the United States. These attacks from the U.S. exemplify attempts to realize full-spectrum dominance, the epitome of imperialist intervention which has brought so much suffering to the world.

Some of the very same opposition leaders who were involved in the 2002 coup attempt are today behind the present unrest, which has seen well-financed opposition forces leading violent protests against the government of Nicolas Maduro. The U.S. corporate media has reported on these actions but has blamed the violence on the Venezuelan government and has not reported the huge mobilizations in defense of the Maduro government.

Now a bipartisan bill has been submitted in the Senate (S.1018) with the intention of further destabilizing Venezuela.  For more information on this bill and some actions you can take to oppose it, please go to http://afgj.org/take-action-today-to-support-venezuelas-democracy.

The economic crises in Venezuela is severe. The Venezuelan economy is dependent on its large oil resources.  The oil has been nationalized since 1976, but there has been a continual push from U.S. interests as well as wealthy Venezuelans to privatize it. Though the oil remains nationalized, the refining, transportation, and markets are all private and have been used to undercut the ability of the oil industry to support the economy. Additionally, in the past few years, with the encouragement of Wall Street, oil production around the world has been kept high, driving down the price, which hurts oil-dependent economies, including those of countries that the U.S. opposes, such as Russia and Iran, in addition to Venezuela.

The U.S. media also has been full of stories of Venezuelan supermarkets with near-empty shelves and long lines of people seeking basic necessities. What hasn’t been reported is that the privately owned food corporations are deliberately hoarding supplies intended for working-class neighborhoods while making sure that food and other goods are readily available in the wealthier areas.

The Bolivarian Revolution has always endeavored to be an ally of the people of United States and to extend a hand of friendship and solidarity.  When the U.S. government turned its back on the people of the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Venezuelan government offered humanitarian aid but was rebuffed. Venezuela provided fuel assistance to low-income Black and Brown people when the U.S. government would not.

These acts reinforced the strong support that many in the Black community had for the process in Venezuela and deepened the commitment of Black activists to stand in solidarity with the people of Venezuela and their process. This support is in line with the long-standing Black radical tradition of defending nations under imperialist attack by the U.S. government. 

The defeat of the Bolivarian Revolution at the hands of U.S. imperialism and its reactionary right-wing allies in Venezuela would be a defeat for progressive forces all over the world and a disaster for the people of Venezuela and its people, as it has been in Libya and Ukraine and Haiti and every nation that has lost its sovereignty to the two-party commitment to imperialist intervention.

UNAC and the Black Alliance for Peace demand:

End US interference in the affairs of Venezuela!

Self-determination for the Venezuelan people!

End the sanctions and economic warfare now!

Tyrants and despots have never required justification for their actions. In the 17th century, as political philosophers began to reject the classic Catholic doctrines of politics and ethics, The Prince was viewed as more relevant: truths are more important than ideals.

It is probably not an accident that The Prince has been misinterpreted for 300 years. Taken literally, there is no better justification for tyranny, whether political or economic, than the universal misinterpretation of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. This small pamphlet, written in 1513–1514, addressed to the new Medici prince, if taken literally, outlines the best practices to attain and maintain power by using cruelty, fear, lies, deceptions, and the appearance of benevolence to hide the immoral actions required to achieve one’s goals. It names Caesar Borgia as the ideal prince to emulate.

The misunderstood, literal translation of The Prince has been used by philosophers, politicians, dictators, academics and business leaders for hundreds of years as a justification for acquiring and extending power using any immoral, unethical, and illegal means. In a word, it is the doctrine that the end justifies the means—that doing whatever is necessary in order to secure the glory of your country or company is justified.

The literal interpretation of The Prince has crystallized into a permanent political theory, a work that fits any age and will continue to fit any so long as it is not exposed as a fraud.

This misinterpreted pamphlet is loved because it emancipated politics from theology and moral philosophy. In so doing, it created a justification for specious behavior in practically every field of human endeavor. Millions of men and women have been duped into believing “the ends justify the means” and have blindly followed this “modern political philosophy” and its immoral, unethical and illegal principles like a Bible.

The Prince contradicts everything else Machiavelli ever wrote and everything we know about his life, his other books and writings. Based on his positions in government and his lasting friendships, Machiavelli was whole-heartedly a defender of the Republic of Florence. This contradiction and the knowledge of Machiavelli’s opinions provide evidence that most probably The Prince is a satire.

Philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot and Sir Francis Bacon interpreted The Prince as a satire to warn the citizens of Florence about the tactics to expect from their newly installed Medici prince. U. S. Founding Father John Adams viewed Machiavelli as a defender of mixed government.

The neoconservative political movement has deliberately misinterpreted, misquoted, twisted and subverted Machiavelli’s books and in particular,The Prince, to accomplish their political goals.

The neoconservative political movement owes its genesis to Irving Kristol (1920–2009) a journalist, columnist, and writer who is dubbed the “godfather of neo-conservatism.” Irving Kristol took Leo Strauss, PhD (1899–1973) a twentieth-century philosopher, as his philosophical master. “From Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), Kristol absorbed the message that philosophers needed to conceal their dangerous doctrines from the masses. . . . Philosophers form an intellectual elite, and they rank far superior to those lacking their wisdom.”[i] Kristol also developed a fascination for Machiavelli as did Strauss. Kristol penned the article “Machiavelli: Men and Ideas,” which ran in Encounter, the December 1954 issue. http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1954dec-00047

 In the article, he calls Machiavelli “master,” but “what he had to teach is far from clear.” Essentially, Kristol treats Machiavelli as a philosopher who needed to conceal his “dangerous doctrines” from the masses. Kristol claims that Machiavelli’s irony and satire were techniques to conceal Machiavelli’s “new element in political thinking.” Quite the opposite is true. Machiavelli wrote The Prince to warn the citizens of Florence about the tactics to expect from their newly installed dictator.

Kristol also writes of Machiavelli’s “hero worship” of Caesar Borgia (the model of an ideal prince). In fact, choosing Cesare Borgia (1475/76–1507) as a “model prince” to emulate can only be seen as satirical. A Medici prince, was being advised to emulate Caesar Borgia, a foreigner, a Spaniard, a bastard, convicted, in the court of public opinion of fratricide, incest, and a long rote of abominable crimes, a man specially hated in Tuscany for treachery and extortion and for the gross misconduct of his troops on neutral Florentine soil, and a man, to boot, who as a prince had been a notorious and spectacular failure. Machiavelli made his distaste for Borgia very clear in many works.

In justifying Machiavelli’s The Prince as “political science” as opposed to rhetoric in the form of satire, Kristol quotes Machiavelli:

“It is a sound maxim that reprehensible actions may be justified by their effects”.

Kristol continues:

“It is nonsensical to say that reprehensible actions are to be justified by their affects, for if they are so justified, they are not “reprehensible”.

This short statement evolved to “the ends justify the means” and summarizes how the literal interpretation of The Prince, a satire, has crystallized into a permanent political theory. It has become the justification for any action whether immoral, unethical, or illegal.

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was a twentieth-century philosopher who was born in Germany and received his PhD from the University of Hamburg.

In 1937, Strauss moved to the United States. Following a brief fellowship at Columbia University, he held a position at the New School for Social Research from 1938 to 1948. . . . In 1949, Strauss received a professorship at the University of Chicago. The publication of Natural Right and History (1953) brought lasting renown along with intense controversy.<http://contemporarythinkers.org/leo-strauss/biography/>.

His first extensive studies of Plato and Machiavelli were printed in the mid-1940s. Strauss went on to write fifteen books, including Thoughts on Machiavelli. In 1958, Leo Strauss wrote:

Machiavelli is the only political thinker whose name has come into common use for designating a kind of politics, which exists and will continue to exist independently of his influence, a politics guided exclusively by considerations of expediency, which uses all means, fair or foul, iron or poison, for achieving its ends—its end being the aggrandizement of one’s country or fatherland—but also using the fatherland in the service of the self-aggrandizement of the politician or statesman or one’s party.[ii]

Among the other admirers and students of Leo Strauss was Paul Wolfowitz, who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense for policy from 1989 to 1993 during the administration of George H. W. Bush. Defense Planning Guidance, a document prepared during 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz, is regarded by manyas the “quintessential statement of neoconservative thought.”

C. Bradley Thompson, PhD, coauthor of Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea: argues that neoconservatism’s key philosophical inspiration comes from Irving Kristol, and particularly from Kristol’s engagement with the philosopher Leo Strauss.

In a December 6, 2010, interview with Scott Horton, published in Harper’s,

https://harpers.org/blog/2010/12/the-death-of-neoconservatism-six-questions-for-c-bradley-thompson/,

Thompson argues that under Straussian influence, neoconservatives champion the rule of a philosophically cunning elite over a population that will never be able to understand their intellectual masters. Instead, the populace is steered toward self-sacrifice, war, and nationalism—as well as a set of religious and moral beliefs that the elites in no way share. Such a doctrine, Thompson charges, points disturbingly toward fascism.

The neocons’ “philosophy of governance” is a technique that teaches rulers or potential rulers how to think about politics rather than what to think. It’s about developing pragmatic tactics for getting, keeping, and using power in certain ways. It’s about knowing how to improvise, modify, and adapt one’s principles to changing circumstances. Machiavellian prudence must always trump principle.

In his article “Neoconservatism Unmasked,”

<http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/03/07/c-bradley-thompson/neoconservatism-unmasked>.

Thompson says:

The neocons’ national-greatness philosophy is also the animating force behind their foreign policy. Indeed, neoconservative foreign policy is a branch of its domestic policy. The grand purpose of national-greatness foreign policy is to inspire the American people to transcend their vulgar, infantilized, and selfish interests for uplifting national projects. The neoconservatives’ policy of benevolent hegemony will, according to William Kristol and Robert Kagan, “relish the opportunity for national engagement, embrace the possibility of national greatness, and restore a sense of the heroic.” In other words, the United States should wage war in order to combat creeping nihilism. In the revealing words of Kristol and Kagan, “The remoralization of America at home ultimately requires the remoralization of American foreign policy.” Going to war, sacrificing both treasure and blood in order to bring “democracy” to strangers—this is a mission worthy of a great nation.

The neocons therefore believe that a muscular foreign policy—one that includes military intervention abroad, war, regime change, and imperial governance—will keep the American people politicized and therefore virtuous. By saving the world from tyranny, America will save herself from her own internal corruption. And there’s more. By keeping America perpetually involved in nation-building around the world, neoconservative rulers will have the opportunity to exercise their statesmanlike virtues. There can be no statesmanship without politics and there can be no truly magnanimous statesmanship without war, so the neocons fear and loathe moral principles that might deny them this outlet. A condition of permanent war, a policy of benevolent hegemony, and the creation of a republican empire means that there will always be a need for politics and statesmanship.

Among the other admirers and students of Leo Strauss was Paul Wolfowitz, who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense for policy from 1989 to 1993 during the administration of George H. W. Bush. Defense Planning Guidance, a document prepared during 1992 by Paul Wolfowitz, is regarded by manyas the “quintessential statement of neoconservative thought.”

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/etc/wolf.html>.

Many historians today are seeking to redeem the reputation of Niccolo Machiavelli. They are experts in linguistics, Renaissance rhetorical genres and politics.

Francesca de Bardin has studied geo-politics and the global impact of colonialism and globalization for 25 years. Her conclusion is that many key masculine values that have advanced our civilization have now become harmful. The planet is out of balance and women’s values must be incorporated into our organizational structures worldwide. She writes and speaks about feminine values and leadership. For an article analyzing Machiavelli’s life and work, contact the author at: [email protected].

Sources

[1] David Gordon, “Neoconservatism Taken Down” [Review of Neoconservatism: Obituary for an Idea]. MISIS Daily 16 Sept. 2011.

[2] Leo Strauss, “Niccolo Machiavelli,” History of Political Philosophy, 3d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 297.

At midnight, May 5, a series of four “de-escalation zones” were implemented across Syria. According to the agreement, no warplanes will be allowed to fly missions in territories included in the designated safe zones, including Syrian, Russian, and American warplanes.

The largest safe zone is comprised of Idlib province as well as adjoining districts of Latakia, Aleppo, and Hama, an area that contains around 1 million people. Other “safe zones” are located in the northern part of Homs, East Ghouta, Daraa, and Quneitra. The “safe zones” are slated to exist for six months, with the options of extending them after that time.

Journalist and analyst with The Rabbit Hole, Sarah Abed, wrote,

The memorandum, which comes into effect on May 5, envisages the cessation of hostilities between the sides, conditions for returning refugees, the restoration of destroyed urban infrastructure and the access of humanitarian organizations. Moreover, the checkpoints to control the movement of civilians and the ceasefire regime will be created along the de-escalation zone borders.

Understandably, many observers are wondering just what is taking place in Syria since the United States has long argued for “safe zones” and “no-fly zones” in Syria since very early on in the conflict. Now, “safe zones” are being established in Syria at the behest of Russia, with the cooperation of Iran and Syria. So what exactly is happening?

Russian Zones Different From American Zones

On one hand, Russia’s “de-escalation zones” are essentially the same thing as “safe zones” and “no-fly zones.” For instance, they are geographic areas in which no aerial assaults will be allowed and no military flights are to take place. However, there is a notable difference between the zones envisioned by the U.S. and the zones being implemented by Russia.

First, the Syrian government has agreed to the Russian plan. Second, the U.S. plan for “safe zones” and “no-fly zones” was aimed at the destruction of the Syrian military and the ultimate invasion of Syria by Western NATO forces. It is also notable that the United States was not a party to the negotiation of the zones nor is it allowed to conduct military bombing missions within the zones. In a sense, it is a “no-fly zone” against the United States as well as against other powers.

That being said, the United States does not tend to fly over many of the areas encompassed by the new “de-escalation zone” plan, although it has done so in some isolated instances in the past. These airspaces are protected by Syrian SAM systems as well as Russian forces. The U.S. does fly over Idlib, however, and the Israelis tend to fly anywhere they wish, always confident that they can fight to the last American if Syria responds.

These “de-escalation zones” also have an expiration date of six months.

Zones Are A Plan To Free Up Syrian Military

One other notable difference in the plans set forward by the Russians versus the American version is the apparent purpose of the zones. It appears that the real reason for the establishment of the “de-escalation zones” is an attempt to allow the SAA to free up forces that can then be deployed to eastern and southern Syria so that they can eliminate terrorist activity in these areas, prevent Israeli and Jordanian troops from partitioning the southern and southwestern parts of Syria, and prevent ISIS and the U.S. from establishing their own partition in the eastern part. It is also an attempt to speed up the Syrian military’s progress in the race for Raqqa.

More importantly, the zones appear to be an attempt to free up Syrian military personnel to fight and retake Deir ez-Zour. If the Syrian military can once again reconnect Deir ez-Zour to the Tabqa airbase, which would allow for a more effective staging ground for military operations in the East and around the city. It would essentially alleviate the pressure consistently put on Deir ez-Zour for three years by the United States and its proxy army of terrorists. It would then allow for a stronger staging ground for the SAA to push west.

The Russian Defense Ministry has already announced that Russia will participate in the military operation to lift the siege of Deir ez-Zour. As al-Masdar News reports,

The Russian military will participate in the Syrian Arab Army’s (SAA) upcoming offensive to lift the two year long siege on the Deir Ezzor Governorate, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced today.

The Russian Air Force will likely provide the primary air cover to the Syrian Arab Army in east Homs, while their military advisers embed with the latter.

This announcement from the Russian Ministry of Defense comes just hours after the Syrian Arab Army’s Tiger Forces arrived in the Palmyra countryside to begin this upcoming operation.

The military operation’s first target will be the desert town of ‘Arak, which is located along the Sukhnah-Palmyra Road in eastern Homs.

The Syrian military push east is an urgent necessity in order to foil the U.S./NATO/ Israeli plan to break up Syria and partition it as a result of foreign or terrorist forces firmly planted in specific regions backed by Western, Arabian, and Israeli funds and arms.

In addition, as Syrian analyst Afraa Dagher stated in an interview with Adam Garrie of The Duran, oil is also a major consideration both for the Western imperial powers and the Syrian/Russian alliance. She said,

“The USA along with Jordan and Israel, worked hard to control the southern border of Syria and created mutual military rooms in order to restrain Syria’s anti-terrorist efforts. The US goal is to advance towards Deir AlZour which is rich in oil, and which is important for Qatar to supply its oil to Europe across the Syrian Land , which will impact the importance Russian oil for Europe.”

Kevork Almassian of Syriana Analysis has released a video describing a similar analysis to my own, i.e. that the “de-escalation zones” are merely an attempt to free up Syrian forces, as a result of the ceasefire, to move east and push the U.S./Israeli/Jordanian/Terrorist forces back out of Syria before they can solidify their positions.

Enforcement Mechanism

Despite the apparent strategic nature of the “de-escalation zones,” there has been no discussion as to how the prohibition against flight and bombing over these areas will be enforced. Will violating planes be shot down? Will the agreement fall apart if one party violates this aspect?

If the planes will be shot down, the next question is what, exactly, will happen if the United States violates the no-bombing provision? What will happen when the Israelis inevitably test the boundaries of the world’s patience? If Russia and Syria do intend to enforce the zones with shoot-down orders, will a shoot down of an American or Israeli plane initiate the beginning of World War Three?

In the meantime, relative calm has ensued as a result of the ceasefire and implementation of the “de-escalation zones,” possibly signaling that the plan is working. However, the United States and its allies are not likely to sit idly by as their proxies are annihilated and other straggling terrorist organizations wither on the vine.

Only time will tell whether or not the Russian/Syrian strategy will ultimately lead to an end to the war and an actual deconfliction or whether the United States and its imperialist allies will push forcefully into a heightened state of conflict with another world nuclear superpower. We are obviously hoping for the former.

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.

President Putin has called for justice and an “unbiased probe” into who is responsible for an alleged chemical gas attack at Khan Sheikoun, Syria, on April 4, which the Americans immediately claimed was an attack by the Syrian government, without providing any proof in fact nor any motive nor possible benefit to Syria. Syria and Russia state that it is the western backed terrorists who are responsible for making and storing chemical weapons at a sight the Syrians bombed or that it was a provocation by the terrorists and therefore by the Americans and their allies. Russia has several times called for a joint investigation with the Americans but its initiative has been, curiously, rejected out of hand.

In the days following April 4, the western media followed their usual pattern of jumping to conclusions convenient to the enemies of Syria and Russia. They published a blizzard of denunciations in articles and editorials, in print and television. The crudest insults were thrown against Russians and Syrians, and the trumpets of war sounded over images of indignant, puffed –up, western politicians horrified, absolutely horrified, about these new casualties; the casualties of their war, the war they started, the war they want, the war they wage.

The alleged incident was quickly used as a specious excuse by the Americans to increase their aggression against Syria with a mass cruise missile strike a few days later to show the Syrians, and everyone else in the world, that they are as ruthless as they are arrogant. This criminality was followed in quick succession by their childish demonstration in Afghanistan; the dropping of the “Mother Of All Bombs” on a few guerrillas hiding in some caves and tunnels, or so the Americans claimed. The main point was to have pictures of the big American bomb, and the big mushroom cloud it produced to show us all, once again, in case we had forgotten, that they are the wrath and the vengeance and we resist at our peril.

They continue this colonial gangsterism in Ukraine and Korea, Yemen, and Somalia, from Asia to the Baltic, to Africa, as enthusiastically threatening us with world war and nuclear annihilation as a child kicking over a sandcastle.

Dr. Theodore Postol

The Americans and the French, British and Germans have yet to provide any credible evidence that Syrian forces were involved in the April 4 incident while Dr. Ted Postol, professor emeritus of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has a substantial background in air dispersal, including how toxic plumes move in the air and has taught courses on weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological threats, has published an irrefutable analysis of the existing American and French reports that concludes there is no evidence Syrian forces were responsible. The French intelligence report, presented by the French minister of defence, Jean-Marc Ayrault, on April 27, titled: Chemical Attack in Syria – National Evaluation,” is shown to be as much a biased and distorted document as the Dutch Safety Board reports on the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine.

Dr. Postol’s full reply to the French report is too long to include here so I will quote his conclusions:

“The FIR (French Intelligence Report) attempts to make its case that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of a possible nerve agent attack on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun by citing evidence that is not supported by the known facts.

“It does not report on the details of the attack on April 4 but instead focuses on past attacks which it alleges leads to a strong conclusion that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of the April 4 attack.

“A short summary of the logic used in the FIR is that there is an unexplained attack, and, without valid evidence, the FIR concludes that a perpetrator who might have committed attacks in the past is with certainty the perpetrator of the unexplained attack.”

He also makes the crucial observation that,

“It is also worth noting that French intelligence coordinates with US intelligence and is also fully aware of UN activities. This therefore suggests that the FIR may not have been written by informed professional intelligence analysts in French intelligence.”

And that,

“It therefore seems that there are serious discrepancies in multiple intelligence reports that, at a minimum, raise fundamental questions about the veracity of the White House Intelligence Report and the French Intelligence Report as well.”

The French report is also interesting in that it is subtitled: “Clandestine Syrian Chemical Weapons Programme.” Since the Americans, Russians and UN certified in 2013 that the Syrian government had eliminated all chemical weapons from its arsenal and the means to make them the Americans have a problem with their story. To get around that problem they, and the French, now claim Syria somehow secretly kept chemical weapons, again without any proof that this is so. But the truth for them is irrelevant. It is enough for the media to repeat it ad nauseam and, by simply repeating it, establish it as fact.

The French state that their report is based “on its own sources” but does not identify those sources, the chain of custody of any materials they examined, the reliability of the sources, their motivations or any of the factors that need to be taken into account by objective investigators.

Nor does the French report mention several important facts. The first is that members of the Turkish parliament discovered that Turkish companies and officials were involved in supplying sarin gas to the US backed “rebels” in 2013 and that criminal investigations into it were blocked at a high level. Second, the Turkish involvement was confirmed in April 2014, by the American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who stated that the US Defence Intelligence Agency issued a classified briefing that stated that Turkey and Saudi based “chemical facilitators” were attempting to obtain chemicals to manufacture sarin for the US proxy forces in Syria and that it was determined that the sarin used in the Ghouta attack did not match the batches known to exist in the Syrian arsenal at that time. Further, the UN investigation did not point the finger at Syrian government forces, whereas Carla Del Ponte, working as a UN human rights investigator on the issue stated on Swiss radio in May 2013 that,

“According to the testimonies gathered, the “rebels” have used chemical weapons, making use of sarin gas…it is …the opponents of the “regime” who are using sarin gas.”

The French report contained none of this. But of course the French are far from objective regarding Syria. The French have had their eyes on Syria since before the First World War and after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire took control of all of what is now Syria and Lebanon. They never gave up their ambitions there even when they had to withdraw their forces in 1946 at the end of their “mandate” or colonial rule. Now France is one of the most aggressive countries in trying to crush the Syrian government, and with the Americans and others impose their own agents on the people of Syria. How are we to accept their report when their intentions and motivations are so clear?

France wants to extend its power in the Mediterranean and Middle East, thus extending its influence from west Africa through to Asia. It wants to grab some of the spoils of war with the Americans, such as oil and gas supplies, and, with the Americans, to eliminate Hezbollah in Lebanon, then set up the campaign against Iran which can be more easily carried out if Syria is in western colonial hands. It is no coincidence that France’s aggression against Syria began in 2011 at the same time as the NATO attack on and destruction of Libya in which France played a role as dirty as any of the NATO countries.

The Syrian government responded to the French report by stating,

“The Syrian Arab Republic condemns the frantic campaign of misleading and lies and the fabricated allegations launched by French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault regarding the crime of Khan Sheikhoun which shows without any doubt the involvement of France in preparing this crime in the framework of its full partnership in the aggression on Syria.”

“The French Government doesn’t have legal qualification or competence to decide what took place in Khan Sheikhoun and to jump to conclusions, and what it has circulated of lies and allegations represent a blatant violation of the authorizations of the specialized international organizations in an attempt to hide the truth of this crime and who stands behind it, and the objection of France and its allies at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on the Russian-Iranian draft resolution on forming a neutral and professional investigation committee clearly proves that.

“The Western states have become professional in the art of lying, deception and misleading to implement their policies in imposing hegemony on the world and to return to the eras of colonization, mandate and guardianship.”

On Tuesday May 2, President Putin met with the German Chancellor, Merkel, and, in a joint press conference, stated that the “solution to the crisis of Syria” can be found through the United Nations brokered peace talks that take place in Astana, Kazakhstan and Geneva, Switzerland. Merkel stated that she is ready to support the cessation of hostilities in Syria but did not state on what basis and for whose benefit.

On May 3 it was reported that the peace talks in Astana between the Syrian government, Russia, Iran and the “opposition,” were suspended by the “opposition” on the excuse of Syrian government attacks on them. Once again the hand of the USA is seen pulling strings to block any possible peace initiative. In any event, these are all empty diplomatic gestures since there can be no peace in Syria until the Americans and their allies withdraw their invasion forces and stop supporting their mercenary forces they call “rebels” and stop their attempts to attack Syrian sovereignty. President Trump has clearly shown that this is not going to happen.

No, this is now a war of attrition with the Americans, French, British, Germans and the rest intent on tearing the country apart until the Syrian people and government are brought to their knees or those nations exhaust their treasuries and sow so much chaos in their own countries from all the rippling effects from this war that they crack under the self-imposed strain.

The war on Syria is part of the American global hybrid war to cause world-wide insecurity, to create reliance on American military force, a protection racket, to continue American dollar hegemony, to weaken or destroy any country that threatens or undermines that dominance and to keep the American people, whose lives become more miserable every year, focused on manufactured foreign enemies, instead of focused on their class enemies at home that fleece their pockets every day.

America has become world public enemy number one and with its gang in NATO is running amok destroying and killing wherever its flag is shown. It respects no laws, no morality, no humanity. It’s only purpose is to plunder and pillage so that now the word vandals is replaced by the word americans as a term for barbarism and destruction.

President Putin has called for justice but how is this to be achieved when outside my window the rain pours blood and ashes down upon the fields, the sun and moon have lost their light, Enlightenment stands with Reason hard pressed against a wall, Reaction strangles Progress, and Justice dangles from a tree.

It is as if the Gambino and Genovese crime families were arguing their turf disputes in the courts and the news media. The Democrats are screaming bloody murder over President Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey, whom Hillary Clinton still blames for her defeat at the polls and whom the bipartisan War Party has never forgiven for Comey’s earlier hesitancy to blame the Russians for the same offense.

Now that Trump has cut Comey loose — ostensibly for his handling of the Clinton emails scandal, according to three letters sent by Trump and his two top Justice Department officials – the Democrats have stepped up calls for a special prosecutor to continue the evidence-less crusade against the Kremlin.

It’s the Saturday Night Massacre all over again, cry the Democrats, harkening back to the weekend in 1973 when President Nixon fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. But this is not about the rule of law — quite the opposite: it’s about continuing the momentum of the U.S. military offensive begun in 2011 under President Obama, a wholly illegal aggression that has destroyed Libya, killed half a million Syrians, delivered vast regions to the control of the two feuding factions of al-Qaida, and brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.

“This is not about the rule of law — it’s about continuing the momentum of the U.S. military offensive begun in 2011 under President Obama.”

The War Party is determined to make the offensive permanent, to keep up the pressure on the ultimate targets, Russia and China, until they break or capitulate to U.S. domination of the world. The current, rabid anti-Russian hysteria adds another layer of fake news on top of the wholly fictional U.S. “War on Terror” scenario. But these mega-lies can no longer mask the great obscenity of the 21^st century: that the U.S. is allied with al-Qaida, whose jihadists act as imperialism’s foot soldiers in the Middle East.

Donald Trump thought last month’s attack on Syria had bought him immunity, or at least a respite, from the wrath of the War Party, which was determined to burn him at the political stake — not for his raging racism and hostility to civil liberties, but for his previously stated opposition to “regime change” and never-ending tensions with Russia. Trump’s 59-missile salvo against a Syrian airbase was supposed to wipe the slate clean and forgive his heresies against the extralegal rights of the “exceptional” U.S. empire. But apparently, there is no statute of limitations on even the suggestion of peaceful coexistence with targeted states.

“The current, rabid anti-Russian hysteria adds another layer of fake news on top of the wholly fictional U.S. ‘War on Terror’ scenario.”

US President Donald Trump has accepted a recommendation to ‘dismiss’ FBI director James Comey. Was this a reprisal for the suddenly widened Russia-gate probe into the White House or was there something else at play within the operations of the deep state?

Comey was at the center of a political controversy over much of the last year during the US presidential election cycle in 2016, and well into 2017. Throughout 2016, the former FBI director opened, closed and reopened (only to close again) a probe into Hillary Clinton, her email server and looking into accusations leveled at the Clinton Foundation, while also entertaining a dubious Russian probe into the Trump administration alleged ‘connections to Russia’ that helped mine various stories, including a so-called ‘dossier‘ regarding the newly elected president in early 2017.

In recent years, there have been many highly questionable actions under Comey’s leadership at the FBI, such as the Orlando nightclub shooting incident – who’s main suspect was previously interviewed by the FBI, as well as a highly questionable ‘ISIS inspired’ shooting event in Garland, Texas linked to an FBI informant case run out of Phoenix, Arizona, and the federal agency’s dramatic encroachment on public privacy following a suspicious San Bernardino mass shooting. These are only just a few examples…

Grabien News highlights a list of scandals that were either attached to Comey or perpetuated under his watch:

“Here are 10 of Comey’s biggest embarrassments at the FBI:

1. Before he bombed the Boston Marathon, the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev but let him go. Russia sent the Obama Administration a second warning, but the FBI opted against investigating him again.

2. Shortly after the NSA scandal exploded in 2013, the FBI was exposed conducting its own data mining on innocent Americans; the agency, Bloomberg reported, retains that material for decades (even if no wrongdoing is found).

3. The FBI had possession of emails sent by Nidal Hasan saying he wanted to kill his fellow soldiers to protect the Taliban — but didn’t intervene, leading many critics to argue the tragedy that resulted in the death of 31 Americans at Fort Hood could have been prevented. 

4. During the Obama Administration, the FBI claimed that two private jets were being used primarily for counterterrorism, when in fact they were mostly being used for Eric Holder and Robert Mueller’s business and personal travel. 

5. When the FBI demanded Apple create a “backdoor” that would allow law enforcement agencies to unlock the cell phones of various suspects, the company refused, sparking a battle between the feds and America’s biggest tech company. What makes this incident indicative of Comey’s questionable management of the agency is that a) The FBI jumped the gun, as they were indeed ultimately able to crack the San Bernardino terrorist’s phone, and b) Almost every other major national security figure sided with Apple (from former CIA Director General Petraeus to former CIA Director James Woolsey to former director of the NSA, General Michael Hayden), warning that such a “crack” would inevitably wind up in the wrong hands.

6. In 2015, the FBI conducted a controversial raid on a Texas political meeting, finger printing, photographing, and seizing phones from attendees (some in the group believe in restoring Texas as an independent constitutional republic).

7. During its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified material, the FBI made an unusual deal in which Clinton aides were both given immunity and allowed to destroy their laptops. 

8. The father of the radical Islamist who detonated a backpack bomb in New York City in 2016 alerted the FBI to his son’s radicalization. The FBI, however, cleared Ahmad Khan Rahami after a brief interview. 

9. The FBI also investigated the terrorist who killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Despite a more than 10-month investigation of Omar Mateen — during which Mateen admitting lying to agents — the FBI opted against pressing further and closed its case. 

10. CBS recently reported that when two terrorists sought to kill Americans attending the “Draw Muhammad” event in Garland, Texas, the FBI not only had an understanding an attack was coming, but actually had an undercover agent traveling with the Islamists, Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi. The FBI has refused to comment on why the agent on the scene did not intervene during the attack.”

It’s important to remember that Comey is not the only FBI director who bears responsibility for the controversial aspects of 2013’s Boston Bombing. Under FBI director Robert Mueller “Tamerlan Tsarnaev came to the attention of the FBI on at least two occasions” prior to allegedly being involved in what many researchers have described as a false flag terror event in Boston. A questionable event that has arguably been used as a pretext to further clamp down on individual rights in the US.

We should also be reminded that the FBI has been routinely caught foiling their very own ‘terror plots’ over the past several years.

In recent years, the investigative tactics of various intelligence agencies have come into question, none perhaps more dubious then the Newburgh FBI sting that involved entrapping four men to participate in a fabricated event created by the bureau. Here’s a 2011 passage from The Guardian describing how an FBI informant named Shahed Hussain coerced four others into a fake terror plot:

“The “Newburgh Four” now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals.

Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh’s grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed Florida was a foreign country.

Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot – including $250,000 to one man – and free holidays and expensive cars.

As defence lawyers poured through the evidence, the Newburgh Four came to represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented terrorist plots to lure targets. “There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars?” said Professor Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University.”

The reputation of the FBI has suffered greatly in the recent past as well as over the past couple of decades. Incidentally, the FBI is on record as ‘handling’ Emad A. Salem, a former Egyptian army officer who was a prized undercover operative thrust into confidential informant status and person who played a key role in the 1993 WTC bombing.

All of this has happened under the watchful eye of the FBI…

‘SWORN-IN’ – FBI director James Comey sworn in by former DOJ head Eric Holder. (Image Source: thewhitehousespin)

Over last summer, 21WIRE observed some curious connections between the Clinton Foundation and FBI director James Comey, as well as his questionable handling of other cases related to the Clinton family. Here’s the following passage to consider in light of the new information related to the Clinton investigation:

“Many will also be unaware that before Comey was installed by the Obama Administration as FBI Director, he was on the board of Director at HSBC Bank – a bank implicated in international money laundering, including the laundering of billions on behalf of international drugs and narcotics trafficking cartels.Forbes also points out where Comey was also at the key choke-point during the case involving dodgy auditor KPMG which followed on by the HSBC criminal case:

“If Comey, and his boss Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, had made a different decision about KPMG back in 2005, KPMG would not have been around to miss all the illegal acts HSBC and Standard Chartered SCBFF +% were committing on its watch. Bloomberg reported in 2007 that back in June of 2005, Comey was the man thrust into the position of deciding whether KPMG would live or die for its criminal tax shelter violations.”

Is this just a surface effort by the White House to clean the slate for an agency perpetually embroiled in controversy?

More from RT below…

Trump fires FBI Director James Comey

RT

During the six-year Syrian conflict, the U.S. has repeatedly proved it will stop at nothing to achieve desired goals. Having realized the failure of its chemical weapons provocations, the current administration US began to develop and execute a new escalation plan for Syria.

According to the Pentagon, it isn’t necessary to tarnish Syrian President, Bashar Assad, for the U.S.-led coalition’s large-scale invasion to Syria. It is enough to make ISIS cross the Jordanian border. Such a scenario was discussed by Assad at the end of April this year.

This time Washington decided to rely on the Free Syrian Army (FSA), that began an offensive against ISIS in Syria’s Daraa, located about 13 kilometers north of the border with Jordan, on May 9, 2017. Apparently, according to the coalition command, the FSA will force the Islamists to leave their positions and cross the Jordanian border.

In its turn, this could be an ideal pretext for the coalition’s immediate ‘defense’ of its ally. So, according to our sources, more than 400 units of US military equipment and more than 4,000 soldiers have already been deployed along the border between Syria and Jordan. This fact indicates the ongoing preparation for the operation.

In addition, Washington’s intentions are also confirmed by annual military exercises known as Eager Lion that took place in Jordan, on May 7. According to Al-Jazeera, 20 countries, including the USA and Jordan, participated in the exercises. It should be mentioned that the organizers paid special attention to maneuvers which include border security, cyber-defense, and “command and control” exercises to bolster coordination in response to threats including “terrorism”.

If the US-led international coalition’s command manages to realize its plan, the numbers of the U.S. contingent in Syria will increase significantly.

Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, this will allow the international coalition to continue to violate justice and spread chaos across Syria in the future.

Official Damascus simply can’t stand aside and must prevent the realization of the White House’s aggressive plans.

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

Israel will soon reach on June 5th the grim milestone of fifty years of occupation of the West Bank. Many Israelis have become complacent and succumbed to the government’s argument that the continuing occupation is necessary to safeguard Israel’s national security. Others are lamenting the day, as they view the occupation not only as a gross violation of Palestinian human rights, but a real menace to Israel’s democratic nature and Jewish national character. Whereas right-wing Israeli governments have maintained the occupation by any means available, including the use of force, the Israeli opposition parties from the left and center have failed miserably over many years to advance a unified political platform to end the occupation and resolve the conflict based on a two-state solution.

With every passing day, it is becoming increasingly difficult to establish a Palestinian state with a contiguous land mass, which is a result of legalizing illegal settlements and building new and expanding existing ones. This settlement activity has changed the demographic composition of Israeli Jews and Palestinians inside the West Bank. Should this trend continue for another ten years, it is estimated that the number of Jews living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will grow from the current 650,000 to one million, creating irreversible facts on the ground that will render the two-state solution inviolable.

Successive right-wing Israeli governments, especially the current one led by Netanyahu, have never committed to a two-state solution. Instead, they have determined to manage the occupation by the use of force and intimidation while forcing the Palestinians to live in self-governing cantons and allowing them to manage their own internal affairs as long as they do not pose a security threat.

This dangerous development was largely made possible by two factors: first is the Israeli political system, which encourages the proliferation of parties with various political orientations. On average, there are 12-15 political parties that garner the minimum threshold of 3.25 percent of the votes to be elected. As a result, every Israeli government since the inception of the state is a coalition government consisting of several parties which together enjoy the backing of a majority in the Knesset. The second is the fact that past and current opposition parties from the center and left have been unwilling to form a coalition government with a united platform to end the occupation.

One of the main reasons behind this discord between the parties is not as much their ideological difference but the blind personal ambition of party leaders—including Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, Isaac Herzog of the Zionist Union (along with Tzipi Livni), and others—to become prime minister, as they view themselves as the most qualified to lead the country.

Thus, the political field was left open for Netanyahu and his cohorts to expand the settlements, forcefully claiming that the Jews have a historic and biblical right to the entire “Land of Israel” that God bequeathed to them, and that Israel has every right to build anywhere in Judea and Samaria. Although Netanyahu continues to assert that he supports a two-state solution, he never provided a convincing argument as to how he would square the creation of a Palestinian state with Israel’s claims to the same land and its continued building of settlements where the Palestinians are supposed to establish their own state.

To explain the ‘rationale’ behind this contradiction, however, he argues that Israel’s concerns over security and the Palestinians’ long-term objective to destroy the state compels Israel to maintain its control over the entire territory by whatever intrusive security measures necessary. Moreover, several members of the Netanyahu government openly call for the annexation of much of the West Bank, as from their perspective there must never be a Palestinian state.

The dire consequences of continuing the occupation are extremely damaging to Israel’s character and national security. Other than the intense and growing opposition of the international community, Israel’s loss of its moral compass and continued resistance to the creation of a Palestinian state will be to its detriment. Israel is increasingly becoming a pariah state, deprived of peace with the Arab world and gradually losing its very reason to exist as a Jewish state that ironically Netanyahu and the extreme right insist on characterizing it as such. Finally, the continuing occupation will inevitably intensify the conflict, which will become ever more ferocious as the Palestinians’ prospect of establishing a state of their own fades away.

Israel’s future as a democratic and Jewish state rests on the shoulders of the opposition parties. They must think of what will happen if the current or future right-of-center governments continue with the present policy and maintain the occupation for another 10 years or more.

They must remember that the fate of the country is in their hands. They must set their personal ambitions aside and put the future security and wellbeing of the state first. They must produce a unified political program to end the occupation and explain to the public the disastrous consequences Israel will face unless the occupation comes to an end.

As a single party with unity of purpose, they can successfully challenge the Netanyahu government in the next election. They should learn from 70 years of experience that no political party has been able to garner a majority of the electorate to form a government on its own, but together they can mobilize the public behind the noble cause of unshackling Israel from the self-degrading occupation.

If they fail, they too will be blamed for having betrayed the nation and sacrificed a millennium-old dream of a Jewish state—a state recognized not only because of its unprecedented achievements, but for its high moral standing and the realization that its future as an independent, free, and secure state depends on allowing the Palestinians to enjoy the same rights.

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

The administration of US President Donald Trump has approved a plan to directly arm Kurdish forces operating in Syria, the Pentagon said. Spokeswoman Dana W. White said the president made the decision Monday, describing the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as “the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future.”

The mainstream media and US officials have repeatedly argued that the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are a “multi-ethnic and multi-religious alliance” fighting against ISIS. However, since the formation of the SDF, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) have remained the core of the organization. The upcoming advance on the ISIS-held city of Raqqa has pushed Washington to accept the reality publicly and to make a decision to army YPG and YPJ on an official level.

Meanwhile, Ankara argues that YPG and YPJ are terrorist groups affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The decision to arm Kurdish militias in Syria will further damage the already shaky US-Turkish relations.

Meanwhile, the SDF, backed up by US-led coalition forces, is still fighting against ISIS militants inside the town of Tabqa west of Raqqa. In late April and in early May, pro-SDF sources repeatedly spread reports that the town and the nearby dam were almost under the full control of the SDF. However, videos and photos appearing from the ground contested these reports.

Now, the number of ISIS militants operating in Tabqa and the Tabqa dam is estimated between 100 and 200 fighters and they are in very bad tactical situation. It’s expected that the town and the dam will be fully secured by the SDF this month.

Western backed militants have been trying to counter-attack Syrian army troops advancing in the desert southeast of Damascus. However, government forces were able to defend their gains in the area. Earlier this month, government troops have captured more than 70 square kilometers east of  the al-Seen Military Airbase, setting control over Beir al-Siba, the Mount Sabahiyat and the Rishi, Tal Shahab, al-Sabab Biyar and the Zaza Checkpoint. In case of further advances, the Syrian army will attempt to reach areas controlled by the 5^th Assault Corps south of Palmyra.

In northern Hama, sporadic clashes continued in the area of Zaqilyat. However, the situation remained relatively calm as no sides were launching large attempts in order to change the current status quo.

In eastern Damascus, militants and their families have been evacuating from the area of Qaboun under a fresh deal with the government. The evacuation will include few stages and then the area will be transferred under the control of government forces. So far, about 1,000 have officially left the area to Idlib.

Reports are circulating in various sources that the government advance with a strategic goal to reach the city of Deir Ezzor will be launched soon. This operation will be possible only if the safe zones agreement signed in Astana and implementing a ceasefire in a number of areas in Syria will be kept by all the sides.

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What: Public Vigil to support Dr. Hassan Diab’s right to come home
When: Wednesday May 17, 2017, at 12:00 noon
Where: Office of the Prime Minister, Langevin Block, corner of Elgin and Wellington Streets, Ottawa  — Map

Hassan Diab is an innocent Canadian citizen, a university professor, husband, and father of two young Ottawa children, wrongfully sent to France where he sits in a tiny jail cell 22 hours a day undergoing a years-long investigation for a crime he did not commit. The physical description, the finger and palm prints, and the handwriting of the suspect do not match Hassan’s, and French investigating judges have concluded that Hassan was not even in France at the time of the attack committed in Paris in 1980.

Hassan has been ordered released on bail six times within the past year by the investigating judges, but each time the French Court of Appeal quashed the release order at the Prosecutor’s behest because of the political climate in France.

When will Hassan’s Kafkaesque nightmare end?

We are calling on Prime Minister Trudeau to live up to his words that Canada is back on the world stage and looking out for its citizens. In August 2015, Trudeau said that then-PM Harper

“has an obligation to use the full force of the Prime Minister’s Office to help Canadian citizens when they are unjustly imprisoned abroad. His inaction must end today.”

We believe Prime Minister Trudeau must speak out publicly and use the full force of his office to help Canadian citizen Hassan Diab, who is in the extraordinary situation of remaining behind bars despite being ordered released an unprecedented six times.

This is a critical time in building pressure to support Hassan Diab. Please come out on May 17, bring a friend or two, and sign the Petition to the Government of Canada:

https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/e n/Petition/Details?Petition=e- 833

For more information, contact:
[email protected]
http://www.JusticeForHassanDia b.org

United States National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster released an official statement Saturday expressing the need for a “quick and peaceful solution” to Venezuela’s “ongoing crisis”. 

The press release was made public after McMaster met with Venezuelan opposition leader and current National Assembly President Julio Borges at the White House earlier that day.

It reads:

“They [Borges and McMaster] discussed the ongoing crisis in Venezuela and the need for the government to adhere to the Venezuelan Constitution, release political prisoners, respect the National Assembly, and hold free and democratic elections.”

The statement has sparked alarm in Venezuela and amongst international movements in solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution. They have likened Saturday’s meeting to a series of similar encounters that took place between US officials and opposition figures just before a short-lived coup against former President Hugo Chavez Frias in 2002.

Julio Borges and H.R. McMaster

The meeting comes as Washington hardens its stance vis-a-vis the Maduro government. Last week, a bipartisan group of US senators presented a bill to Congress asking for sanctions on more Venezuelan officials in a bid to further isolate Caracas in the region.

Violent protests have rocked the South American country since the beginning of April when a stand-off between the leftist national government and the opposition-controlled National Assembly came to a head. So far, 42 people have lost their lives in the unrest, which has seen armed opposition protesters block roads, gun down government supporters, set fire to public institutions, and clash with security forces. At least 15 people have been killed by protesters, while a further five have died at the hands of authorities.

Despite the deadly unrest, opposition leaders have said that they will boycott a constituent assembly called by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as a way out of the impasse and have continued to call for their supporters to take to the streets.

The situation was brought to the attention of the United Nations this past Saturday, after Washington’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Hayley, took aim at the Venezuelan government, accusing it of a “crackdown” on dissent in an official statement.

Anonymous sources have told Venezuelanalysis that the US is quietly pushing to table Venezuela as a discussion point at the UN Security Council but the move has so far been met with resistance from other nations.

The move to turn up the pressure on Venezuela comes as the United States escalates its military involvement in the region.

Over the weekend, the head of the Brazilian the armed forces, Theofilo de Oliveira, revealed that the US will also lead multinational military drilling exercises between Brazil, Colombia and Peru later this year as part of a 2015 NATO project.

A temporary military base will also be set up in the Brazilian town of Tabatinga on the Amazonian frontier between the three countries as part of the programme, confirmed the armed forces chief.

The military exercises have been described as “unprecedented” in the region.

U.S. military personnel entered southern Syria at the Tanf Border-Crossing and has begun training units from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in this desert area, the opposition media page Hammurabi’s Justice News reported today.

According to this opposition page, the U.S. military is currently training the Mughaweir Al-Thawra forces in Tanf Mountain region of southeast Homs.

Source: Hammurabi’s Justice News

The U.S. military is allegedly training these rebels to fight the Islamic State (ISIL) forces in southeast Syria.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their allies are concerned about the U.S.’ presence in the area, as they do not believe the latter is interested in fighting ISIL, but rather, imposing a no-fly-zone to fight the government in Damascus, a military source told Al-Masdar yesterday.

In an interview with Adam Garrie from the Duran, Syrian political commentator Afraa Dagher reminds us of the reality in Syria, which is far removed from MSM media mythology.

“the US is not fighting any “ISIS” and the  same goes for  Turkey. They are the real enemies of Syria. The USA along with Jordan and Israel, worked hard to control the southern border of Syria and created mutual military rooms in order to restrain Syria’s anti-terrorist efforts. The US goal is to advance towards DeirAlZour which is rich in oil, and which is important for Qatar to supply its oil to Europe across the Syrian Land , which will impact the importance Russian oil for Europe.

This entire war is about influence, you remember the American air strikes on the Syrian military base in Al Therdehmountain in Deir Al Zour in 2016? Helping “ISIS”  is the real US agenda and then to occupy this province!”

NATO and its allies are the terrorists in Syria. (This has been known and documented for over six years, and it was revealed well before the dirty war started.) Syria and its allies, on the other hand, oppose the terrorists.

Former DIA chief Michael Flynn admitted that the West’s support for terrorism was willful.

In the following video, a former FSA General admits to working closely with Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIL.

In a May 8, 2017 article, “Democracy Now Launches Anti-Syria Propaganda Campaign”, Miri Wood reminds us of other public admissions which have been willfully erased or suppressed from the collective memories of so many in the faux-Left camp.

The accumulated evidence of the West’s support for terrorism in Syria is staggering. Books, including Prof Anderson’s The Dirty War On Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance and the author’s Voices From Syria present enough factual evidence and historical context to remove any reasonable doubt about the true nature of the war, and the West’s unequivocal support for terrorism in Syria.

Despite all of the publicly available evidence, so-called “progressives” in the West have been successfully co-opted.  Feminists are tacitly supporting Wahhabism and Sharia law when they support the war on Syria.  Progressives of all brands are supporting terrorism when they support the war on Syria. Ostensibly progressive shows such as Democracy Now, and iconic “progressive” intellectuals, all serve to coopt the “progressives” when they parrot unsubstantiated propaganda memes that demonize President Assad, Syria, and Syrians.

Ironically, North American faux-Liberals and faux –progressives are advancing criminal neo-con war-mongering and a neo-con agenda when they support the West’s dirty war on Syria. Self-styled “progressives” support refugees but totally ignore the fact that their support for their government’s criminal warfare creates the refugees in the first place. Progressives should be opposing the warfare that creates the refugees.

The warmongering elites intend to destroy Syria, as they destroyed Libya, Iraq, and Ukraine, with a view to enriching narrow interests and serving the diktats of the “market”, all to the disadvantage of humanity. The criminal war on Syria, which could easily escalate into widespread nuclear war, is a war on all of us. It is part the neo-con project of globalization, which requires global militarization, globalized terror proxies, a global bogeyman (ie ISIS), and a global rejection of the rule of international law.

While Iran, Russia and Turkey signed a memorandum on the de-escalation zones in Syria which likely signals a further cessation of hostilities, the US and its allies, on the other hand, continue to advance their destabilization plot in the region.

Global Research brings you the following articles on the crisis in Syria. Will Syria’s national sovereignty prevail or is the US instigated “regime change” pushing through?

Al-Qaeda Leader Praises Syria White Helmets as “Hidden Soldiers of the Revolution”

By Brandon Turbeville, May 10, 2017

Now, a little-known video made by the leader of Tahrir al-Sham (al-Qaeda in Syria), Abu Jaber, on March 16, 2017, is making the rounds of social media, showing Jaber praising the White Helmets as the “hidden soldiers of the revolution” and thanking them for what they do.

Washington Approves Arming Kurdish Forces in Syria, … against Turkey, its NATO Ally

By Press TV, May 10, 2017

The US currently provides air support for members of the SDF — a Kurdish-dominated and anti-Damascus alliance. They have largely surrounded Raqqah and are expected to begin an offensive soon.

Is the US Preparing A Ground Invasion of Syria? Drones Spot Hundreds of US, Jordanian Armored Vehicles at Border

By Chris Tomson, May 09, 2017

Damascus is reportedly on high alert after some 400 American and Jordanian military vehicles were located at a Jordanian military base near the Syrian desert border earlier today.

US Says We Fly Where We Want in Syria

By EN News Front, May 09, 2017

When answering the question whether the Coalition will stop the flights over these security zones, the Pentagon official said that the Coalition will carry on with its operations as usual, with no regard for Russia’s plans to end air strikes in the region.

Syria and the Project to Balkanize the Middle East

By Jonathan Cook, May 08, 2017

The agents trying to overthrow Assad in Syria are no longer civil society groups and democracy activists. They were too small in number and too weak to bring about change or threaten the Assad regime. Instead, whatever civil war there may initially have been has transformed into a proxy war.

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Edu Montesanti

Global climate change policy is in a state of flux, with all other countries waiting for the United States to decide whether to leave or remain in the Paris Agreement.

That treaty, adopted by 195 countries with great fanfare in December 2015 and  came into force in November 2016, symbolizes the efforts of governments to cooperate to avert disastrous global warming that threatens human survival.

On 29 April, the 100^th day of Donald Trump’s presidency, thousands marched in Washington and other cities in the US and around the world to protest against the administration’s about-turn in climate policy.

Trump signed an executive order at the end of March unraveling former President Barrack Obama’s clean power plan, the centerpiece of his policy to reduce emissions causing global warming. The plan would have closed hundreds of coal-fired power plants and replaced them with new wind and solar farms.

Further reflecting the policy changes, the Environmental Protection Agency last week removed climate change information from its website, saying it would be undergoing changes to better reflect the administration’s priorities.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is now meeting for two weeks in Bonn to discuss rules to follow up on the Paris Agreement. Uppermost in the minds of the thousands of delegates and NGOs will be the uncertainty caused by the new US position.

Trump is expected to soon announce if the US will exit the Paris Agreement. The administration is split, with one camp (that includes EPA chief Scott Pruitt and Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon) wanting the US to quit while others (including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner) advocate that the US remains.

The 2015 Paris Agreement

The big change in US climate policy comes at a very bad time. Last month, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the first time reached 410 ppm (parts per million) in the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii.

The level was 280 ppm in 1958 and passed 400ppm in 2013. We are inching closer to the 450 ppm danger level at which there is only a 50% chance of keeping global temperature rise to 2 degrees celsius.

The year 2016 is the hottest on record. Many recent signs of climate change effects include sea level rise; changes in rainfall; more flooding, storms, and drought in different parts of the world; and the melting of glaciers.

The hard-fought Paris Agreement has many flaws, but it is an important achievement. One drawback is that the mitigation pledges made by countries fall far short of limiting warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees. Instead they would bring about 2.7 to near 4 degree temperature rise, according to various estimates, and the effects would be catastrophic.

The agreement also does not contain concrete commitments or plans by developed countries to assist developing countries to tackle climate change. There remains the old promise to jack up climate finance to $100 billion a year by 2020, but no road map on how to get there, nor even an agreed definition of what constitutes North-to-South climate financing.

There is also little left of the old commitment to transfer climate technology to developing countries. And while there is interest to help developing countries to curb their emissions (which is known as mitigation), there is less appetite to help them cope with the effects of climate change (which is termed adaptation and loss and damage).

Despite these deficiencies, the Paris Agreement has positive aspects which make it an important treaty. Almost all countries made pledges to take concrete actions. While participation is thus widespread, differences in obligations as between developed and developing countries remain in the Paris agreement, in line with the Climate Convention.

The agreement mandates that developed countries make greater efforts than developing countries on mitigation, and they are also obliged to provide climate funds to developing countries.

Most important, the Paris agreement is a symbol and manifestation of international cooperation to tackle the climate crisis. Although the overall level of ambition is too low, the agreement has mechanisms to urge members to increase the ambition in both mitigation and in assistance to developing countries in future.

Without a Paris agreement, there would be no global framework or action plan for the coming decades. The world would be adrift even as the crisis worsens.

What would happen if the US leaves the Paris agreement? It would be a big blow to global cooperation, especially since the US is the top emitter after China, and is also by far a bigger emitter per capita than China and most other countries.

There is also a fear of a contagion effect. Some other countries may follow the US and quit the agreement too.

In an opinion article, former UN Secretary General Ban Ki moon and Harvard University professor Robert Stavins have strongly argued that the US must stay inside the Paris agreement, for the sake of the world and for its own interests.

Former US President Barack Obama at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference

They also point out that even if Trump decides the pull the US out, this withdrawal will only take effect after four years, due to the rules of the agreement.

They add that if the US wants a quicker exit, it can quit the Climate Convention, under which the Paris agreement is established. This exit will take effect after a year. But if it leaves the Convention, the US would really become a “pariah” and thus it is unlikely to do so.

In any case, the US will still be a member of the Paris agreement during the rest of Trump’s present term.

It is unlikely to be a passive member, whether or not it gives notice to exit from Paris. There is a growing consensus among Trump’s advisers that the US can’t stay in the Paris agreement unless it negotiates new terms, according to a report in Politico.

While it it is impossible to renegotiate the Paris deal, Trump’s officials are

‘discussing leveraging the uncertainty over the U.S. position to boost the White House’s policy priorities in future discussions,’ said the article.

If this happens, the effect may be really adverse. Since the US will be in the Paris agreement for the next four years at least, it may use this period to weaken further the already low level of ambition of its own actions as well as those of other countries.

The US will also try to weaken or eliminate the commitments of developed countries to support the developing countries. Trump has already made clear there will be no more US contributions to the Green Climate Fund.

It will also dampen any discussions on how climate financing can be jacked up in the years ahead towards the promised $100 billion by 2020.

Some people have argued it may better if the US leaves the Paris agreement and that prevents it from discouraging all the others that remain from taking action.

There might however be a situation of the worst of both worlds: The US announces it is quitting, thus already damaging global cooperation, then plays a spoiler’s game inside, since it will still be a member for four more years.

It was thus heartening that US citizens are protesting against their government’s climate change policies.

It is also important for people and governments in the rest of the world to strengthen their resolve to fight climate change, rather than to relax now that the US leadership is refusing to do its part.

The best solution would be for the US to remain in the Paris agreement, and go along with other countries to meet and improve on their pledges and enable international cooperation to thrive.

That is not going to happen. So we may have to wait at least four years before another US administration rejoins the rest of the world to tackle climate change.  Let’s hope it will not be really too late by then to save the world.

Martin Khor is Executive Director of the South Centre, a think tank for developing countries, based in Geneva.

“Having refused to admit his errors, the [FBI] Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.” – US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein

Any sense that Donald Trump had found some accord with James Comey of the FBI gathered from his investigative zeal regarding Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email server should always have been doubted.

Trump is not a president who likes matters accountable and clear, except in a jaw jaw sort of a way, the brute who wants to avoid surprises while always keeping one in reserve. The language of the hectoring bully is never far, the turn that means genuine conversation is always going to be hard to have.

The language of dismissal regarding the FBI Director was that of an assassination. Comey, came the announcement via Sean Spicer, “has been terminated and removed from office”. The letter to Comey, penned by Trump, cited agreement with US Attorney General Jeff Sessions that “you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.”

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Erratically, Trump had thrown in his weight behind Comey when things suited him. The political winds were favourable in November, when he had Hillary Clinton on the ropes. “What he did,” claimed Trump on the issue of reopening the investigation into the Clinton emails, “brought back his reputation”.

The edifice of support was, however, a rotten one, and the Attorney General’s department was already hatching a plan to undermine and outflank Comey. The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, attempted to find some common ground across the spectrum regarding the FBI director’s yawning faults.

“Almost everyone agrees the Director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.”

As for Rosenstein himself, he found it difficult to “defend the Director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails” and did “not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken.”

From the other side of the stalls, Comey had been harangued over supposedly selective judgements. The Democrats, still smarting from their election loss, found it inexplicable that Comey would first close the case against Clinton without prosecution in July last year only to then declare, 11 days prior to the election, that the inquiry had been reopened because of the discovery of more juicy emails.

The tune from Senator Minority Leader Chuck Schumer altered on Tuesday, modified by a less plaintiff voice and concern that the constitution was not so much being rocked as ravaged.

“We know that the House is investigating Russian interference in our election that benefited the Trump campaign. We know the Senate is investigating. We know the FBI has been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians – a very serious offence. Were those investigations getting too close to home for the president?”

There is little doubt that Comey has been rattled by the attention, which has, for the most part, been negative. In his May 3 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, hyperbole intruded to make certain claims questionable. One related to the material from Clinton’s aide, Huma Abedin, which ran, according to Comey, in the order of “hundreds and thousands” of emails. Among them were more than just smidgens of classified information.

As luck would have it, Comey’s claims that such a mountain of information had manifested itself were rebuffed by his own organisation. There was nothing in the order of hundreds of thousands, merely two email chains containing classified information to husband Anthony Weiner.

The lack of faith shown in Comey by the Democrats packaged a few parcels of ammunition for Trump. The president naturally took to Twitter as the carnage unfolded.

“Cryin’ Chuck Schumer stated recently, ‘I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer.’ Then acts so indignant.”[1]

Such a sacking does show, with some clarity, that the affairs of this Republic are bound to get more sordid before they get better. Trumpland is a truly fractious environment, one where battlegrounds and territory will be fought with primeval ferocity between the executive and its various arms.

“The administration of justice,” claimed Democratic Representative Eric Swallwell Jr., “must remain free of political influence, and President Trump just leaped over that line”.

This line has not so much been leaped over as redrawn. The moment Trump entered the White House he made it clear that conflict with traditional agencies, bureaucracy and institutions was inevitable. Draining the swamp, as he likes to term it, is akin to cracking a few skulls and breaking regulations in the name of reform.

This tarnishing episode has covered few in glory. The White House is hunkering down behind a wall of authoritarian protection, keen to immunise itself frorm disconcerting inquiries that might question its wisdom and probity. The Democrats, having also had their issues with the FBI, are now seeking a separate, independent office to target Trump. The politics of the Republic is moving into another ugly phase.

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

Note

[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/862135824745467905

Ao preparar a visita do presidente Trump à Europa – em 24 maio a Roma, em 25 à Cúpula da Otan de Bruxelas, em 26 e 27 ao G7 de Taormina (Sicília, Itália) – o Pentágono apresentou o seu plano estratégico para o “teatro europeu”. A apresentação foi feita pela boca do general Curtis Scaparrotti que, na chefia do Comando europeu dos Estados Unidos, é automaticamente o chefe da Otan com o cargo de Comandante supremo aliado na Europa.

No Senado dos Estados Unidos, em 2 de maio, o  general recorda que “o teatro europeu continua tendo importância crucial para os nossos interesses nacionais” e que “a Otan nos dá uma vantagem única sobre os nossos adversários”. Tal vantagem, porém, agora é ameaçada por “uma Rússia ressurgente, que busca minar a ordem internacional com direção ocidental e reafirmar-se como potência global”.

O Comandante supremo chama os aliados europeus a cerrar fileiras em torno dos Estados Unidos para defender por todos os meios a “ordem internacional” – esta que é fundada na supremacia econômica, política e militar do Ocidente – posta em perigo pela emergência de novos sujeitos estatais e sociais.

Ele concentra o fogo sobre a Rússia, acusando-a de “atividade maligna e ações militares contra a Ucrânia” (exatamente no terceiro aniversário do massacre de dezenas de russos perpetrado em Odessa, em 2 de maio de 2014, pelos neonazistas ucranianos sob a direção dos EUA e da Otan). Mas, a “ameaça” não provém somente da Rússia: os Estados Unidos – declara o almirante Harris, chefe do Comando do Pacífico – são desafiados atualmente naquela região por “uma China agressiva e uma Rússia revanchista”.

Em resposta a este desafio, anuncia Scaparrotti, o Comando europeu dos Estados Unidos “está retornando ao seu papel histórico de combate, adequando os seus planos às ameaças que diantede nós”. Pede, então, ao Congresso para aumentar os fundos para a “European Reassurance Initiative”, operação lançada pelos EUA em 2014 oficialmente com a finalidade de “reassegurar” os aliados da Otan e parceiros europeus, para a qual foram alocados 3,4 bilhões de dólares em 2017.

“São necessários significativos investimentos – sublinha o general – para aumentar em toda a Europa a nossa presença avançada, o pré-posicionamento de materiais militares, exercícios para a preparação para os conflitos”. O plano é claro e já está em execução: transformar a Europa na primeira linha do  novo confronto com a Rússia.

Confirma isto o anúncio, feito em 4 de maio, de que o Exército dos EUA na Europa constituiu um novo quartel general em Poznan, na Polônia, para comandar os mais de seis mil soldados estadunidenses acantonados na Polônia, Estônia, Letônia, Lituânia, Alemanha, Eslováquia, Hungria, Romênia e Bulgária, a fim de “reforçar o flanco oriental da Otan como contenção à Rússia”.

Na instalação de forças no flanco oriental – entre estas, encouraçados, caças-bombardeiros, navios de guerra e unidades de mísseis inclusive nucleares – partipam as potências europeias da Otan, como demonstra o envio de tropas francesas e tanques britânicos à Estônia.

E o exército europeu? No encontro com os ministros da defesa da União Europeia (UE), em 27 de abril, em Malta, o secretário geral da Otan, Stoltenberg, não deixou dúvidas: “Ficou claramente conveniado  por parte da União Europeia que seu escopo não é constituir um novo exército europeu ou estrutura de comando em competição com a da Otan, mas algo que seja complementar àquilo que a Otan faz”.

Portanto, o bastão de comando continua firmemente nas mãos do Comandante supremo aliado na Europa, um general estadunidense nomeado pelo presidente dos Estados Unidos.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original publicado em Il Manifesto

Tradução de José Reinaldo Carvalho para Resistência

Manlio Dinucci : Geógrafo e jornalista

On Sunday May 14, China’s President Xi Jinping will inaugurate the One Belt One Road summit, the object of which is to to build a “new Silk Road linking Asia, Africa and Europe”, largely focussing on infrastructure investment. Global Research brings to the attention of its readers this carefully researched review by political scientist Zhao Bingxing

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The debate on China’s ambitious “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR, also referred to as “Belt and Road”) initiative seems gradually cooled down in the last year and one plausible reason was the relatively slow and limited progress it made. But recent news released by Chinese government reheated it: The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation will be held in Beijing in the middle of this May and 28 heads of state and government leaders [including North Korea] have confirmed their attendance.

For international observers, at least two factors make this forthcoming meeting eye-catching. On the one hand, it may tell whether China can convince other countries it is capable of playing a leading role in promoting global free trade by implementing OBOR when the U.S. turns to isolationism and protectionism.

On the other hand, three and a half years have passed since this initiative was announced and a mid-term review is required, which should preferably in a summit or high-level forum, rather than by a one-sided progress report, and the conclusion of this review will be a focus. To make judgment on either of the issues, the analysis of the motive, rationale of OBOR are necessary but still not enough. We need to examine how successful this initiative was implemented in those relevant countries so far and what impact OBOR will bring to them. Considering the different national power, developing level, economic institution of these countries, and even their complicated relations with China, an unified or too generalized view without studying of each country should be avoided.

In this article, four countries in the OBOR scope, i.e. Russia, Uzbekistan, Malaysia and Germany are selected to do case studies and it shows that OBOR, though based on  positive principles, which focus on enhancing connectivity, facilitating trade and improving infrastructure, may not bring equal benefit to the relevant countries along this route and its impact on these countries differs significantly from one to another. In the meantime, the response of these countries also differs, which is closely relates to their economic, geopolitical and ideological consideration.

Russia

According to Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (hereafter referred to as Vision and Actions), the official guiding document of OBOR, one of the three routes of the “Belt” passes Russia and two passes Central Asia, whereby Russia considers it to be a part of its historical economic and regional interests.[1][2] Hence, Russia can be viewed as a key to the success of OBOR. In a sense, the construction of the “Belt” will face more challenges if it lacks Russia’s cooperation, or at least consent.

A recent official remark in respect to bilateral relations between Russia and China seems quite optimistic. On Jan 17 and 18, 2017, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and a Chinese spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs respectively stated that Sino-Russian relations were “at their best level ever in the two countries’ history”.[3] Both of them also mentioned OBOR as a part of Sino-Russian cooperation.[4] Though China has consistently been seeking support and cooperation with Russia (and all the other countries along OBOR as well), it is important to note, however, that Russia’s position was not consistent and underwent an obvious shift.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin

Initially the Kremlin didn’t give the OBOR initiative positive feedback and it didn’t show enthusiasm for Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in the first place, either, which reflected a dominant view of Russian elites that these would lead to a mutual distrust between the two countries.[5]

Russia’s concern about losing freight traffic was one reason for its unwillingness because the original route based on Chinese planning was to bypass Russia.[6] More importantly, it worried that the closer economic ties between China and the Central Asian countries would compete with Russia’s own integration plans for this region, which may further make the Central Asian countries drift away from Russia and embrace China.[7] But President Putin soon changed his position when China acknowledged Russia’s concerns and agreed to make some concessions to accommodate Russia’s needs, followed by the Russia’s endorsement of OBOR and its joint declaration with China on coordinating and linking OBOR to Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in the middle of 2015.[8]

In fact, China did show considerable willingness and flexibility to cooperating and this was exemplified by China’s “creation” of an economic corridor with Russia and Mongolia, which would connect the “Belt” to Russia’s transcontinental railroad plan which was not in the initial plan of the OBOR.[9] Besides, China’s “Three Nos” principle in Central Asia, 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, being a policy for dealing with its relations with Central Asian countries, to some extent eased Russia’s concern about China’s involvement in this region, because such showed that China had no intention of changing the status quo (Russia’s dominant influence) even though China didn’t formally acknowledge Central Asia as Russia’s backyard.[10] So far the concessions China made with regards to Russia are probably the most significant ones made during the promotion of OBOR because no other country alone constituted a reason for China to change the route.

Russia’s consideration is also based on the fact that some benefits, including infrastructure construction and cooperation on industrial capacity with China are not a priority and the only significant and substantial benefit to be incurred may be the receipt of funding from China. Rather, apart from the competing interest in Central Asia, some cooperation models as used in other countries such as contracting a construction project and dispatching thousands of Chinese workers there would hardly be acceptable for Russia due to its vigilance on the issue of Chinese migrants, especially in Far East region.

However, there are some reasons that Russia eventually decided to support this initiative. First, there is some tangible benefit that Russia can expect, though it doesn’t seem so imperative for Russia to seek out for the time being. In addition to being another channel for funding of infrastructure, OBOR, after an adjustment to its route as per Russia’s requirements, both in the plan and in practice, has brought some benefits to Russia.

Since Russia’s transcontinental rail was connected to OBOR and China-Mongolia-Russia economic corridor started to build, freight volume rocketed up in the railway routes from China to Russia, and to Europe via Russia, both of which used Russia’s transcontinental railroad, such as Chongqing-Inner Mongolia-Russia (Yu-Meng-E) and Hunan-Inner Mongolia-Europe (Xiang-Meng-Ou), which had positive effects for both China and Russia.[11]

Second, EEU is currently Russia’s priority. Though initially OBOR was viewed more as a rival, China’s clarification and commitment on connecting the two projects eased Russia’s concerns to a large extent. As a concrete step, a document was signed in the middle of 2016 in which the two governments decided to formally start negotiations on an economic partnership, mainly focusing on trade facilitation, merging different standards on intellectual property, customs, and other areas.[12] Third, it might not be wise nor feasible for Russia to contain China’s influence in Central Asia, or larger scope by boycotting this initiative.

For one thing, though the influence of Russia, the “elder brother” in Eurasia is still dominant, which is determined by its close political, economic, cultural, language and even people-to-people ties with the five republics in this region, the latter have long been seeking reducing their overdependence on Russia and striking a balance among big powers. Of course, Russia and China are the most important two in the region. In the past decade, China’s influence in the field of economics in this region grew very quickly and as such China has been able to compete with Russia, if not surpass it.

In 2015, all Central Asian countries have a larger share of their two-way trade with China than with Russia except for China’s exports to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and imports from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.[13] Besides, the build-up of mutual trust and cooperation in other areas such as that of anti-terrorism also increased China’s influence and say in this region. These facts make it very difficult for Russia to sway these countries by one-sided action. It is even interesting that Kazakhstan, where Xi Jinping first announced the “One Belt” initiative, is exactly the country which has the closest relations with Russia in Central Asia. For the other, OBOR is basically based on the actual needs of both China and many other countries. Also, China has enough political will and financial resources to push forward with. These factors mean that it can still proceed even if the support from some of the local big powers is absent.

In addition, it is necessary to examine Russia’s position beyond the calculation of the benefit or loss of OBOR per se and put it in a broader context. After the annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian territory in March, 2014, the West imposed the harshest sanctions since the Cold War was over against Russia and this was a heavy, though not devastating blow to Russia, both in politics and in economy.

Data showed that Russia entered into a recession, with GDP growth of -2.2% for the first quarter of 2015, as compared to the first quarter of 2014, which was regarded as a success of Western sanctions in terms of the proximate goal of inflicting damage on the Russian economy.[14] Under this great pressure, it is no surprise that the Kremlin turned to the East and sought cooperation opportunities from China. Though China didn’t support Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and basically held a neutral position, it did have a great deal of interest in strengthening bilateral cooperation with Russia in economic, military and other areas because China also faced pressure from the West and needed political support from Russia. Admittedly, joining OBOR cannot bring enough benefits to Russia to offset its losses from the sanctions, nor can the closer relations with China.

However, a positive attitude to OBOR is vital for Russia if it hopes to get more financial support from China, whether under the OBOR initiative or other bilateral projects. It is hard to image that the $400 billion USD gas deal between the two countries, which was signed shortly after Russia annexed the Crimea and other cooperation projects can be implemented smoothly if Russia eventually declines this initiative that China attaches the most importance to.

On the whole, the benefit of OBOR seems more symbolic than substantial for Russia and thus Russia still sticks to the EEU project, which can help to bolster its economic and political dominance in Eurasia. This has been evidenced by the wording used when Lavrov mentioned that the Russia-China relations were at the best of all time this January. He emphasized “aligning” the two projects, instead of “joining” OBOR. Nevertheless, Russia still cannot neglect OBOR because the latter is closely related to China, who is able to provide key support to Russia. This support was vital to Russia when it suffered from the sanctions from the West and is expected to continue to play an important role in the near future because the relations between Russia and the West have been in a stalemate and chances of lifting the sanctions look very slim in the near future.

Uzbekistan

It is not a coincidence that Xi chose Central Asia to announced the “One Belt” initiative first. One plausible explanation for such is that this is the region where the ancient Silk Road first passed by when it left West China, but the underlying reason may be that the five republics of Central Asia are the countries who best match the ideas of OBOR and support it most as well. Since they gained independence twenty-five years ago, these landlocked countries had to face a common challenge, i.e. how to develop their economies in the Post-Soviet time?

Although Putin showed a strong desire to play an even bigger role in this region, Russia’s capabilities alone are not enough to ensure the prosperity of these counties. More importantly, such support is not without a price—overreliance on one big power will risk their independence. The rise of China provided an alternative to these countries which enabled them to choose partners from a wider range and benefit from both. OBOR is attractive to Central Asian countries because the focuses of this initiative, such as promoting connectivity, facilitating trade and investment, and improving infrastructure are all imperative to them. In this section, Uzbekistan is selected as an example, which can be a representative of the other four countries.
In May 2014, one year before the Vision and Actions was released, the then Uzbek President Karimov stated that Uzbekistan would actively participate in the building of the Silk Road economic belt when he met with Chinese President Xi.[15] In June 2015 China and Uzbekistan agreed to expand trade and economic cooperation under the framework of the “Belt initiatives”.[16] In June 2016, Karimov and Xi agreed to focus on jointly promoting this initiative.[17] All of which clearly shows Uzbekistan’s positive attitude to OBOR.

Uzbek President Karimov and Chinese President Xi Jinping

The main areas of cooperation under the OBOR framework include economic and trade cooperation, gas pipeline, railway tunnel construction, people-to-people exchange, etc. and much progress has been witnessed since a series of pacts were signed.[18] For example, the Qamchiq Tunnel in Uzbekistan, which is a part of the Angren-Pap railway line that connects Tashkent and Namangan, was completed on June 22, 2016 as a major achievement of OBOR.[19]

There is also some uncertainty about the implementation of OBOR in this country, which not only comes from the death of Karimov in last September, but also comes from local Uzbekistanis’ insufficient knowledge and recognition of OBOR, and too even China’s overall model of economic development.[20] In spite of this, cooperation related to OBOR still seems to be on track and there is no sign that it has been set aside by Uzbekistan.

Admittedly, the five republics in Central Asia differ from each other in terms of levels of democracy, natural resources, economic development levels, even in terms of domestic tensions or conflicts. Nevertheless, their common feature in geographic location cannot be overlooked. Being landlocked states, their trade connectivity with the rest of the world is limited, but they are also the overland juncture between East Asia and Europe, which gives them the potential to become a transportation hub that can connect the East and the West.[21] OBOR looks like a perfect solution to this situation.

If properly managed, it can better the connectivity within their individual country and that with other countries, which will bring triple benefits to them. First benefit is in meeting their local needs. Second is in facilitating their own export and import, and the third is to make profit by providing transshipment services. Also, appealing to Central Asian countries is China’s “no intervention in domestic politics”, “business-is-business” and economic oriented approach. When compared to Russia or other powers, China “is more inclined to perceive the local situation in terms of a sophisticated win-win scenario rather than in terms of aspirations of geopolitical dominance in the region” and such this policy has been approved to be successful.[22]

Overall, OBOR is beneficial to Uzbekistan and joining this initiative can be a reasonable choice. In fact, Uzbekistan can be a typical case with regards to OBOR from two different angles. One is that it represents the other four Central Asian countries which have similar geographic advantages as well as disadvantages and economic status quo. The other is that it can represent many medium or small developing states which have little direct conflicting interest with China in terms of geopolitics and thus can focus more on the economic cooperation they are mutually interested in. Basically, it is not difficult for them to find some areas in which they can cooperate with China on and benefit from them together.

Malaysia

Being an important part of 21st century Maritime Silk Road, or “One Road”, the other half of the OBOR, Malaysia, has its significance in two aspects. First, it is sitting on a strategic spot, in that Kuala Lumpur is quite close to the Malacca Strait, the second busiest waterway in the world. Trade statistics show that almost half of the world’s total annual seaborne cargo passed through this passage, which is jointly administered by Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.[23] Second, Malaysia is now China’s largest trading partner in ASEAN and the third largest in Asia and its policy option can be used as reference for some other countries.[24] In addition, Malaysia is able to help China expand markets in other ASEAN and neighboring countries.[25] All these factors together make Malaysia’s position key to the prospects of “One Road”.

In fact, Malaysia is perhaps the most active country regarding the OBOR in ASEAN, or Southeast Asia. In October 2014, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak voiced his country’s readiness to support both OBOR and AIIB when meeting with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi.[26] In addition, many other high-ranking governmental officials also echoed Najib’s position on OBOR. For example, Liow Tiong Lai, the Minister of Transport of Malaysia reiterated that the OBOR was a win-win project and indicated that Malaysia was ready for that in his speech at the Boao Forum for Asia in June 2015.[27]

Malaysian PM Najib Razak and Chinese President Xi Jinping

Several key areas and projects have been highlighted by both Malaysia and China under the umbrella of OBOR, including infrastructure, transportation, energy, property and even education and some progress have been made on each to date. For example, 60% of the equity of the 1MDB-owned Bandar Malaysia project in Kuala Lumpur was sold to a consortium led by a Malaysian company and China Railway Engineering Corp (CREC, a stated owned Chinese company) at RM7.41 billion in early 2016.[28] In November of the year, following an official visit to China by Najib, Malaysian and Chinese companies saw the signing of fourteen agreements on several iconic and mega agreements worth RM144 billion.[29] Another eye-catching project which China hopes to incorporate into OBOR is the High Speed Rail (HSR) connecting Malaysia and Singapore. Though the final result of HSR bidding will not be available until 2018, it is a general consensus that a Chinese-led consortium is one of the two most promising competitors (the other is Japanese-led consortium) because of its successful precedent as set in Indonesia.

There are several reasons that can explain the positive attitude of both government and business sectors. First, Malaysia has basically maintained friendly relations with China over the past few decades. In fact, Malaysia was the first country in Southeast Asia to build formal ties with China in 1974.[30] Such good relations are also based on the fact that there was little strategic conflict between the two countries after 1980s whereas there was also a frequent people-to-people exchange that occurred because of the large Chinese ethnic population present in Malaysia. It should be noted that territory disputes between the two countries do exist, which is about the waterways in the South China Sea. However, both Malaysia and China seem to be restrained about such and downplay this dispute, which is unlike the situation between the Philippines and China in the last several years. As a result, this dispute didn’t impede the bilateral relations. Second, both Malaysia and China have benefited a lot from previous economic cooperation and thus there is a strong driving force for them to maintain such development. A closer look at the bilateral economic cooperation between the two countries shows that two-way investment and trade involves different sectors, from manufacturing to construction, and different regions in these two countries, which reflects the in-depth and successful cooperation of both. Third, Malaysia believes that much of its needs in infrastructure, transportation and investment can be met by joining OBOR. As Najib notes, for instance,

“[The double-track East Coast Rail Line] will spur socio-economic growth in specific areas and bring great benefit to the people in the East Coast [of Malaysia]”.

Also, with the implementation of OBOR, Malaysia sees more opportunities to attract Chinese investment.[31]
OBOR can be a good opportunity for Malaysia too because it is more likely to succeed in this country than in some other developing countries along the OBOR. Aside from the strategic significance, Malaysia has a relatively stable political environment, well-established legal system and sound economic framework and good infrastructure. Its unique advantages include its large Muslim population as well as its Chinese ethnic population. The latter can help Chinese businesses easily enter into the local market and the former provide a possibility to connect the Chinese halal industry to the Muslim world.[32]

Though geopolitical consideration is not frequently and publicly emphasized when Malaysian high-ranking officials talk about OBOR, there is good reason to believe that Malaysia is trying to seek a balance between the two big powers of the United States and China. While actively getting involved in OBOR, Malaysia is also a member of TPP, a US-led trade agreement.[33] Since OBOR and TPP are widely considered to be part of a rivalry between China and the US, the involvement of both projects clearly shows that Malaysia hopes to benefit from both but not to overly rely on any. In a sense, the choice of “OBOR or TPP” reflects the choice of “US or China”, which is a common issue facing almost all the ASEAN countries, which is largely due to the geographic location of these countries. Although ASEAN countries try to speak with one voice, each of them have different responses to the “US or China” issue — some are more pro-American and others seem more pro-China. Of course, such is subject to change depending on their leadership and certain circumstances and the dispute over the South China Sea plays a key role in the policy option.

Last but not least, skepticism and concerns about OBOR can also be found in Malaysia. In addition to the dispute concerning the South China Sea, the “indifference” of Malay ethnic people as opposed to the “enthusiasm” of Chinese ethnic people and the exaggeration of the potential effect of OBOR are also challenges.[34] However, it seems that the Malay-Chinese cooperation on OBOR hasn’t been influenced much by such opinions.

Germany

China became the biggest trading partner of Germany in 2016 for the first time, overtaking France and the US, and Germany has long been China’s biggest trading partner in Europe.[35] This clearly shows the even closer economic relations between the two countries. From China’s perspective, Germany’s significance for OBOR primarily lies in its geographic location as one of the destinations of OBOR as well as its identity as an important actor among Western countries, which means that cooperation on OBOR, if successfully implemented, may set an example for other Western countries in Europe and attract more Western partners. Overall, the German government holds a relatively positive position towards OBOR and its focus is mainly on the areas of improving connectivity and trade and investment facilitation. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has welcomed the initiative to secure more Chinese investment in Europe.[36] At the same time, reservations and ambiguity can also be read from German government positions. German Consul General in Hong Kong when asked about the position of Germany on OBOR, said that Germany welcomed China’s openness to the rest of the world but he also highlighted that “any roads and any belts should be and will be in both directions”.[37]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping

Although German government is not very willing to provide clear and strong support to OBOR, it didn’t refuse the relevant business opportunities that came with such. However, when compared to the Central Asian countries or some Southeast Asian countries, the result yielded in Germany under OBOR seems rather limited. The most prominent progress related to OBOR made in Germany is the Sino-European freight trains. In fact, the only five big projects to be undertaken by the end of 2016 were those linking the existing railroads. But it should be noted that several of them had been planned long before the announcement of OBOR and were just included in this initiative later.[38]

Unlike some countries which are China’s immediate rivals or have territory disputes with China, Germany can stay away from such tricky problems. As a result, the responses of Germany regarding OBOR, especially those positive ones, including the statements of the government or business sectors and projects discussed or agreed to are almost all based on economic calculations. In fact, the realistic or foreseeable benefits for Germany may also lie in this area. For one thing, the operation of Sino-German freight train provided a new option for the transportation of goods between China and Germany, and other European countries with a shorter timeline and more affordable cost. According to the China Railway, the total freight volume of the Sino-European railway reached 42 million tons in 2016, an increase of 12% and Germany was the main destination.[39] It should be noted that there are other destination countries of eastbound freight trains aside from China, such as Kazakhstan.[40] This demonstrates that the connectivity achieved can be beneficial to all the countries along OBOR. For the other, it did attract more Chinese investors to Germany. So far around seventy enterprises have settled in Duisburg, one of the destinations of Sino-German freight train, and most of them entered the European market within the last two years.[41] Overall trade and investment statistics show a very positive trend for the past three years and OBOR did play “some” positive role in such, though it may not be easy to measure precisely to what extent OBOR contributed to this trend.

Admittedly, the challenge facing OBOR in Germany is huge, and such a challenge is quite different from that in the developing countries or in China’s neighboring rivals. For a Westernized developed economy like Germany’s, infrastructure, one of the key pillars of OBOR, which is also a focus for many of the countries in Central Asia and Southeast Asia, is not a priority, nor even a concern of Germany’s because infrastructure is well-established throughout the country. Foreign investment is generally welcomed but not a pressing need. The cooperation on manufacturing capacity which has been in operation by China and some developing countries along OBOR is not applicable to Germany at all. This explains why the major benefit, if not the only benefit, that is attractive to Germany may be the connectivity created by OBOR and the resultant trade and investment opportunities.

In addition to the mismatch as mentioned, the obvious divergence between Germany and China regarding China’s markets, transfer of cutting-edge technology to Chinese companies, Chinese state-owned enterprises, or ultimately, China’s model of economic development is also a big obstacle for OBOR. For example, Berlin became seriously concerned that Chinese acquisition of hi-tech German companies would make China an even more aggressive competitor while Chinese officials criticized this new protectionist tendencies in Germany in response.[42] Needless to say, this is a common issue between almost all the EU countries and China. Furthermore, the EU’s approach has, to a large extent been based on a democratization and human right paradigm, which can be viewed as one of the root causes of their indifference and skepticism of OBOR.[43]  As a result, Germany’s involvement with OBOR is limited and the influence of OBOR to this country is drastically weakened.

Siemens is a German conglomerate company with headquarter in Beijing, China.

For years Germany’s policy on China has been split between the economic interests and ideological considerations. On the one hand, it cannot ignore the Chinese markets and cooperation with China, which has brought huge benefit to its economy. On the other hand, Germany’s free market capitalism and values can hardly accommodate China’s development and expansion based on the Chinese model and thus deterrence is required. This dilemma has inevitably influenced how Germany looks at OBOR and what impact OBOR will bring to Germany. The result is, not surprisingly, a temporary balance between the two objectives. Of course, such a balance is not unchangeable and the struggle over economic interests and ideological principles will continue. A recent and noticeable event that occurred which may sway Germany’s position might be US president Trump and his isolationism. Before Merkel’s meeting with Trump, Merkel and Xi stressed a commitment to free trade during a telephone call.[44] This move signals that Germany may have to attach more importance to achieving economic cooperation with China, which means OBOR will probably have a more favorable environment in Germany in the future.

The case of Germany can reflect the general European situation to some degree and it basically coincides with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s statement, who also emphasizes the importance of investment and links and holds that this initiative can bring huge benefit to both China and the EU, if it works well.[45] However, the representation of Germany shouldn’t be overestimated. On the one hand, there is no official EU position on OBOR as of yet and EU countries also lack a collective voice.[46] On the other hand, the Germany case is more applicable to Western Europe than Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe. Unlike Germany, most countries in the Central, Eastern and Southeastern parts of Europe are less developed and thus need more infrastructure building assistance and foreign investments, which brings them more opportunities to cooperate with China under OBOR. And this has been evidenced by a series of cooperation between two parties, such as the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO)’s purchase of the Greek port of Piraeus and China’s building of a high-speed railway from Hungary to Serbia.

Conclusion

The analysis of the four countries, though fragmented and not adequate to provide a whole picture of the impact of OBOR for those countries within the scope as well as their response, to some extent reveals the trend of the relations between OBOR and the relevant countries, because each of the four countries can represent a group of countries, or at least reflects some key consideration of the countries with the same features.

First, big powers are more inclined to put OBOR in the context of power rivalry and this inevitably reinforces OBOR as a challenge and usually leads to distrust of this initiative. Russia’s response initially reflected

this relationship but China’s immense move towards making concessions and Russia’s plight in the Ukraine eventually changed Russia’s position. By comparison, India is a case in point to show how another power is wary of China’s OBOR initiative. Since India positions China more as a rival than a partner, and there are no key drivers that emerged like those which occurred in Russia’s case that could reverse the trend, to date India hasn’t endorsed this initiative and there is little hope it will in the future. To some degree, the benefits or losses that OBOR can yield have become secondary to geopolitical considerations. Small or medium states, such as the Uzbekistan and Malaysia cases suggest, however, don’t want to get involved in the great power games and tend to focus on the tangible and immediate gains that can be derived from OBOR. They don’t seem to care whether or not China can get more from the bilateral cooperation than they do. In reality, many of them tend to seize the opportunity as it presents itself and transform it to improve their own country’s economy.

Second, developing countries are meant to benefit more from OBOR. Overall, the trade and investment facilitation, one of main goals of OBOR is universally welcomed by both developed countries and developing countries alike. But only the developing countries have huge demands for infrastructure building and requirements for relevant funding to be invested, which can probably be met by the implementation of OBOR. Then it should come as no surprise that developing countries along OBOR show relatively more positive attitudes towards it.

Third, political and economic institutions and too even ideology can play a important role in the assessment of OBOR as well as the position a country takes on it. Western counties are more concerned about the role of the Chinese government and state-owned enterprises in OBOR and are prone to link the implementation of this initiative outside China to the market environment within China. By contrast, non-Western countries have less concern in this regard partly because some of them are also practicing state capitalism, rather than free market capitalism. Therefore, their judgment is basically centered on what result OBOR can yield and to what degree such is beneficial to them.

In general, the idea of enhancing connectivity and promoting trade, which constitutes the main rationale of OBOR, is positive and this explains why OBOR won quite a bit of recognition after three years of intensive promotion, though it has always been accompanied by skepticism and challenges outside China. However, this initiative is still not a one-size-fits-all solution because its real effect relies heavily on the different situation of each country. Then it is no surprise that each country has different positions, all depending on the consideration of various factors, including economic, geopolitical, ideology, etc. Roughly speaking, OBOR is more of an opportunity for small and medium developing states than big powers or Western countries.

In a sense, Trump’s new policy, Brexit and even the rise of right-wing political force in West Europe provided an unexpected opportunity for China’s OBOR initiative because most countries in the world are still in favor of open and free trade. In the meantime, they also need some kind of mechanism and project to materialize this conception. Intentionally or unintentionally, OBOR may probably play a positive role in this regard, but we also need to realize its limit and avoid too optimistic or unrealistic expectation.

NOTES

[1]National Development and Reform Commission, Vision and Actions on Jointly Building Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road.
[2]Linn, J. F., Central Asian Regional Integration and Cooperation: Reality or Mirage?, 96.
[3]See Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s remarks and answers to media questions at a news conference on the results of Russian diplomacy in 2016, Moscow, and
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying’s regular press conference on January 18, 2017.
[4]Ibid.
[5]Li, X., Silk Road Can Find Common Ground with Eurasian Economic Union.
[6]Wilson, The Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Silk Road: Implications for the Russian–Chinese Relationship, 119.
[7]Yu, China-Russia Relations: Putin’s Glory and Xi’s Dream.
[8]Wilson, The Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Silk Road: Implications for the Russian–Chinese Relationship, 119.
[9]Li, X., Silk Road Can Find Common Ground with Eurasian Economic Union.
[10]Yu, China-Russia Relations: Putin’s Glory and Xi’s Dream.
[11]Xinhua, China Uses Cooperation on Regional Ports to Boost China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor.
[12]Shtraks, China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative and the Sino-Russian Entente: An Interview with Alexander Gabuev.
[13]Central Intelligence Agency. World Factbook,
[14]Christie, Sanctions after Crimea: Have They Worked?
[15]Ministry of Foreign Affairs of PRC, Xi Jinping Meets with President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan.
[16]Xinhua, China, Uzbekistan to Strengthen Cooperation Under the Silk Road Initiative.
[17]Xinhua, China, Uzbekistan Agree to Focus on Belt and Road Development.
[18]Xing, Guangcheng, and Weiwei Zhang, Promote the Building of Sino-Uzbeki “One Belt, One Road”.
[19]Xinhua, Chinese, Uzbek Leaders Hail Inauguration of Central Asia’s Longest Railway Tunnel.
[20]Chen, Julie Yu-Wen, and Olaf Günther, China’s Influence in Uzbekistan: Model Neighbor or Indifferent Partner?
[21]Li, Z. G., Central Asia Embraces “One Belt, One Road” Because of the Matched Interest.
[22]Kozłowski, The New Great Game Revised: Regional Security in Post-Soviet Central Asia.
[23]InvestKL, One Belt One Road: Kuala Lumpur is Sitting on a Strategic Spot.
[24]Foon, “Belt-road” to Benefit Businesses.
[25]Ibid.
[26]Xinhua, China, Malaysia Wow to Promote Bilateral Relationship.
[27]Liow, Speech By YB Dato’ Sri Liow Tiong Lai, Minister Of Transport, Malaysia, Boao Forum For Asia – Luncheon Speech One Belt One Road Strategy, Vision, Action Plan.
[28]Khoo, China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiatives in Malaysia.
[29]Bizhive, Riding the dragon: Harnessing Malaysia-China’s Trade Partnership.
[30]Foon, “Belt-road” to Benefit Businesses.
[31]Bizhive, Riding the Dragon: Harnessing Malaysia-China’s Trade Partnership.
[32]Liow, Speech By YB Dato’ Sri Liow Tiong Lai, Minister Of Transport, Malaysia, Boao Forum For Asia – Luncheon Speech One Belt One Road Strategy, Vision, Action Plan.
[33]With the inauguration of President Trump, the US quitted TPP on Jan 23, 2017. See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38721056
[34]Chen, J.S., Where is “One Belt, One Road” Heading for?
[35]Xinhua, Sino-German Trade Reaches a New Level Based on Mutual Benefit.
[36]Gaspers, Germany Wants Europe to Help Shape China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
[37]Lau, Make China’s Belt and Road Initiative a Two-way Street, Says German Consul General in Hong Kong.
[38]Ibid.
[39]Guan, “One Belt, One Road” Is a Lucky Key for Us.
[40]Ibid.
[41]Ibid.
[42]Larres, China and Germany: The Honeymoon Is Over.
[43]Arduino, China’s One Belt One Road: Has the European Union Missed The Train? 14.
[44]DW, Germany, China Stress Commitment to Free Trade Ahead of Merkel’s Meeting with Trump.
[45]Xinhua, Interview: Europe to Benefit from China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative: EC chief.
[46]European Parliament, One Belt, One Road (OBOR): China’s Regional Integration Initiative.

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Bingxing Zhao is currently a graduate student of the department of political science, University of Windsor, Canada. Prior to his study in this university, he used to work for Chinese government and an American multinational company.

ON 18 SEPTEMBER 2016, warplanes belonging to the American “coalition” carried out air strikes on Syrian government soldiers defending the Deir ez-Zor airfield in northeastern Syria. 

More than 100 Syrian soldiers died in the attack and many more were wounded. Australia’s Department of Defence admitted its involvement in the attack, although it gave no details of precisely what role the RAAF played.

I wrote an article on Independent Australia in September last year doubting whether the attack was a “mistake” as claimed by the Americans and the Australians, and, indeed, whether Australia was actually involved at all.

The basis for the skepticism in respect of the “mistake” claim was the established fact that Syrian troops had been in position defending the airfield for several months from attacking ISIS troops.

The scepticism about Australian involvement arose out of Syrian and Russian reports that the attack, over more than an hour, was carried out by F-16 and A-10 fighters — neither of which are part of the RAAF’s arsenal. The Department of Defence declined further comment as they wished to maintain the “integrity” of the U.S. review of the incident.

Since then, there have been a number of developments that raise further questions about the RAAF’s role and indeed the whole basis of the September attack. These questions have not been answered by the release of the U.S. report on their investigation of the incident, nor by the Australian media’s unwillingness to question the alleged explanation or explore wider issues about Australia’s involvement in the Syrian war.

In order to avoid clashes between Russian forces, legally, in Syria at the request of the Syrian Government and American and “coalition” forces operating in Syria in violation of international law, there exists a communication system, referred to as the “deconfliction line”. Under the protocols governing this system, the Americans notify the Syrians and Russians where and when their forces will be operating.

In respect of the attack on Deir ez-Zor, it appears the Americans did advise the Russians of an impending attack but, in this case, gave false information as to exactly where the attack was to occur.

After the attacks started and Syrian soldiers were being bombed and strafed, the Russians tried urgently to contact the Americans on the deconfliction line. They were unable to do so because for the whole of the attack period the American end of the line was left unattended. This is unlikely to have been a coincidence.

The American report also acknowledged that U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar, which was responsible for the carrying out of the attack, had precise intelligence as to the exact location of the Syrian troops and their ISIS opposition.

Which is where the RAAF comes in. At the time of the attack on 18 September, the RAAF was operating its E-7A Wedgetail aircraft above the battle.

According to the RAAF’s own website, the E-7A provides Australia with

‘… one of the most advanced battle space management capabilities in the world.’

The aircraft is an airborne early warning and control platform that can

‘… gather information from a wide variety of resources, analyse it and distribute it to other air and surface assets.’

Given that the RAAF had the intelligence data as to the exact location of the respective forces on the ground – which as noted were long term fixed positions for the Syrian defences – and that they had sophisticated observation, analysis and transmission capabilities, why is it that the attack continued on the Syrian Army for over an hour?

It is not a question answered by the American report and, beyond the initial statement admitting culpability for the “mistake”, the Australian Department of Defence has refused to provide further comment or explanation.

The suspicion that it was not a “mistake” but rather a deliberate attack on Syrian forces is reinforced by a number of other facts that have emerged. The Australian media has not thought it fit to comment or analyse any of these factors. The default position is always a variation on “we meant well”, “we regret any mistakes” and “any further information is inappropriate on grounds of national security”. International law is a wilderness never to be explored.

The first piece of additional information is that, within seven minutes of the U.S.-led attack commencing, ISIS ground forces commenced a well-organised attack on the Syrian defensive positions that were severely compromised by the air attacks.

The nature of the ISIS attack and its timing are among the strongest possible evidence that, far from being a “mistake”, this may have been an attack coordinated between ISIS and the Americans.

This view is reinforced by the further revelations that the ceasefire then in place (albeit imperfectly) was strongly opposed by U.S. Defence Secretary Carter, as well as Lt General Harrigan, commander of the U.S. Air Force Control Command that authorised the attack. The planned U.S.-Russian joint integration centre to co-ordinate attacks against ISIS was sabotaged by the attack. Carter and Harrigan had the means, motive and opportunity to sabotage a plan of which they both disapproved.

Deir ez-Zor is important for two other reasons. It is the centre of Syria’s largest oil and gas deposits. ISIS has been selling oil from captured sites in the area by transporting it over the border into Turkey.

Both the Americans and the Australians must have been aware of this cross-border trade through ground intelligence, satellites and the aforementioned E-7A’s capabilities. This trade has also been widely discussed in a number of Internet sites. Yet this traffic had continued unhindered by American or Australian air power for months.

The second reason for Deir ez-Zor’s importance is that it lies on the route of the proposed Qatari gas pipeline to Europe. Replacing Europe’s reliance on Russian gas with Qatari gas is a major U.S. geopolitical goal. It was Syrian President Assad’s refusal in 2011 to permit Syria to be used for the transit of Qatari gas that is the direct origin of the war presently being waged in that country.

It will come as no surprise to note that the Australian mainstream media never contemplates the geopolitical significance of the events in which Australia is involved — unless it is to laud the U.S.’s contribution to allegedly advancing peace and stability around the world.

ISIS was and is an instrument of U.S. geopolitical policy in the same way the Mujahideen were used in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s, the MEK in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and al Qaeda in its various manifestations in the Russian Caucasus, the “stans” around the Caspian Sea and in China’s Xinjiang province.

Far from being a “mistake”, the Deir ez-Zor attack was simply another manifestation of the U.S. policy of perpetual war for perpetual profit. The tragedy for Australians is that they are forever the willing pawns.

The contempt shown to Turnbull by Trump on the former’s current visit to the U.S. is a small illustration of the price we pay for unquestioning obeisance. Other and more serious costs will inevitably arise unless Australia develops a foreign policy that places Australia’s national interests first and places that policy in the context of respect for international law that we profess to follow but increasingly disregard.

James O’Neill is a former academic and has practiced as a barrister since 1984. He writes on geopolitical issues, with a special emphasis on international law and human rights. He may be contacted at [email protected].

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License

Update 5: The Spokane Spokesman-Review reports that Gov. Jay Inslee was notified about the tunnel breach by the Energy Department and the White House on Tuesday morning. Inslee called the event “a serious situation.”

“Federal, state and local officials are coordinating closely on the response,” Inslee said, with the state Ecology Department in close communication with the Energy Department. There were no plans for Inslee, who is making several previously planned stops in Skamania County on Tuesday, to go to Hanford, his staff said.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry had been briefed, federal officials said, adding that

“everyone has been accounted for and there is no initial indication of any worker exposure or an airborne radiological release.”

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., released a statement as well:

“Worker safety must be our number one priority, and we need to understand whether there has been any environmental contamination resulting from the subsidence at these tunnels. My thoughts are with the first responders who are working to assess the situation on the ground, monitor any environmental impacts and design next steps for securing the area.”

Update 4: Washington Emergency Management has released a map showing the distances from the incident to various neighborhoods… non-essential employees in 200 East Area have been released. Swing shift north of the WYE Barricade is cancelled.

Update 3: Images of the hole in the roof of the tunnel have been released…

Update 2: An aerial survey midmorning Tuesday showed an opening about 20 feet by 20 feet into the tunnel, which had been covered with about eight feet of soil. As Tri-CityHerald.com reports , the breach could expose the highly radioactive material disposed of in the tunnel to the atmosphere.

No airborne radiation had been detected as of about 10:30 a.m. Radiological surveys were continuing.

Instructions for people to shelter in place were expanded from central Hanford to all of Hanford, including LIGO and the reactor areas along the Columbia River, after the aerial survey. No one is being allowed to enter the site beyond the security barricades.

Earlier in the morning workers near Purex had noticed a 4-foot-by-4-foot depression that was 2 to 4 feet deep over the tunnel.

Workers in Purex were evacuated when the depression was noticed.

About 3,000 workers in central Hanford initially were told to take shelter indoors, including about 1,000 workers at the vitrification plant construction site. Ventilation systems at the vit plant have been turned off as part of the emergency procedure and equipment that could generate heat have powered down.

The DOE announced that secretary Perry is aware of the incident and that there is no initial indication of any worker exposure or an airborne radiological release.

Meanwhile, Private pilots in the area have been told to avoid flying over Hanford. The Hanford Patrol is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to put a formal air restriction in place until the FAA can confirm there is no danger.

Update 1: A robot is being used to sample the contaminated air and soil in the area around the collapse…

And here is a chart of current windflows…

As we detailed earlier, the U.S. Department of Energy activated the Emergency Operations Center Tuesday due to a tunnel collapse at the Hanford nuclear site.

According to KING-TV, a

“tunnel in a plutonium finishing plant collapsed in Hanford early Tuesday morning. The tunnel was full of highly contaminated materials such as hot radioactive trains that transport fuel rods.”

As Breaking911 reports, some workers were being evacuated while others were advised to shelter-in-place. The Hanford Fire Department is on scene and updates will be posted as they are available. Workers in the vicinity are still being sheltered as a precaution.

From the U.S. Department of Energy

“The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Richland Operations Office activated the Hanford Emergency Operations Center at 8:26 a.m., after an alert was declared at the 200 East Area. There are concerns about subsidence in the soil covering railroad tunnels near a former chemical processing facility. The tunnels contain contaminated materials.”

Actions taken to protect site employees include:

• Facility personnel have been evacuated
• As a precaution, workers in potentially affected areas of the Hanford Site have gone indoors
• Access to the 200 East Area of the Hanford Site, which is located in the center of the Hanford Site, has been restricted to protect employees

As we detailed previously, radioactive leak problems at the Hanford Site, a nuclear storage tank in Washington State, are nothing new.

We first wrote about the ongoing radioative leakage at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, created as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, in 2013.

As a reminder, during the Cold War, the project was expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the 60,000 weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Alas, the site has been leaking ever since, as many of the early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate and Hanford’s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the neighboring Columbia River.

Hanford’s weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, but the decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons of high-level radioactive waste, an additional 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste, 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater beneath the site and occasional discoveries of undocumented contaminations.

The Hanford site represents two-thirds of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste by volume. Today, Hanford is the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States and is the focus of the nation’s largest environmental cleanup. The government spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup — one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The cleanup is expected to last decades.

However, as Krugman would say, the government was not spending nearly enough, and after a major documented leak in 2013, over the weekend, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste are estimated to have leaked from the Site once again, triggering an alarm and causing one former worker to label it as “catastrophic.”

As AP reported, the expanded leak was first detected after an alarm went off at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on Sunday, and on Monday workers were preparing to pump the waste out of the troubled area. They were also trying to determine why the leak became worse.

It’s unclear exactly how much waste spilled out, but estimates place the amount at somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 gallons, according to the Tri-City Herald.

The problem occurred at the double-wall storage tank AY-102, which has the capacity to hold one million gallons of the deadly waste, and which has been leaking since 2011. At the time, the leak was “extremely small”, and the waste would dry up almost right after spilling out between the inner and outer walls, leaving a salt-like substance behind.

However, over time the small leak got bigger.

In March, the US Department of Energy began pumping what was left in the storage tank, which originally held some 800,000 gallons of waste. However, after leak detector alarms sounded early Sunday morning, crews at Hanford lowered a camera into the two-foot-wide space between the tank’s inner and outer walls. They discovered 8.4 inches of radioactive and chemically toxic waste has seeped into the annulus.

Pumping work on the tank has been halted as officials reevaluate the situation and figure out how to get to the leaked radioactive waste. It’s possible that the leak was made worse when the pumping began, but that has not been confirmed.

Taking a page right out of the TEPCO playbook, the U.S. Department of Energy released a statement Monday calling the leak an “anticipated” outcome of an ongoing effort to empty the tank in question. The Washington state Department of Ecology said, “There is no indication of waste leaking into the environment or risk to the public at this time.”

But one former tank farm worker said the leak should be considered a major problem.

“This is catastrophic. This is probably the biggest event to ever happen in tank farm history. The double shell tanks were supposed to be the saviors of all saviors (to hold waste safely from people and the environment),” said former Hanford worker Mike Geffre.

He should know: Geffre is the worker who first discovered that the tank, known as AY-102, was failing in 2011. In a 2013 series, “Hanford’s Dirty Secrets,” the KING 5 Investigators exposed that the government contractor in charge of the tanks, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), ignored Geffre’s findings for nearly a year. The company finally admitted the problem in 2012.

Another problem: tank AY-102 is just one of 28 double-shell tanks at Hanford (there are 177 underground tanks total) holding nuclear byproducts from nearly four decades of plutonium production on the Hanford Nuclear Site, located near Richland. Initially the plutonium was used to fuel the bombed dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.

The new leak poses problems on several fronts. The outer shell of AY-102 does not have the exhaust or filtration system needed to keep the dangerous gases created by the waste in check. Workers have been ordered to wear full respiratory safety gear in the area, but the risk remains. And unlike Fukushima where cleanup crews are aware of the danger, in Hanford virtually nobody is aware of the dangers of the radioactive seepage.

“The hazards to workers just went up by a factor of 10,” said Geffre.

The breakdown calls into question the viability of three other double-shell tanks at Hanford that have the exact design of AY-102. It is not clear how many of them may have comparable “extremely small” leaks which have gotten bigger, and even if there was it is likely that the DOD would not reveal them.

“The primary tanks weren’t designed to stage waste like this for so many years,” said a current worker. “There’s always the question, ‘Are the outer shells compromised’”?

Oh, and let’s not forget that the accumulation of waste in the outer shell also means “the deadliest substance on earth is that much closer to the ground surrounding the tank. And currently there is no viable plan in place to take care of it.”

Or, as Ben Bernanke would say, the Plutonium is contained.

“It makes me sad that they didn’t believe me that there was a problem in 2011,” said Geffre. “I wish they would have listened to me and reacted faster. Maybe none of this would be happening now. It’s an example of a culture at Hanford of ‘We don’t have problems here. We’re doing just fine.’ Which is a total lie,” said Geffre.

Dear Mike, if you think that is bad, you should see what they say about the “markets”…

As hard as the Western corporate media works to employ propaganda techniques and tragic narratives with which to convince their respective populations that the terrorists funded by Western governments fight against the Syrian government are actually democracy-loving freedom fighters and selfless activists, more and more revelations come to light showing the true nature of heavily hyped groups like the White Helmets.

Indeed, it seems that, every week, another piece of evidence emerges revealing the White Helmets to be nothing more than a wing of al-Qaeda/al-Nusra designed to produce clever propaganda videos to tear at the usually hardened heartstrings of unsuspecting Americans. After having been exposed for housing themselves in the same building as Nusra/Qaeda, carrying weapons (also see Vanessa Beeley’s article here), using dangerous and erratic rescue and emergency techniques, proudly proclaiming support for terrorists and the desire to see Syrian military personnel killed, the White Helmets went on to sign documents and proclamations in support of Nusra in its effort to prevent civilians from access to drinking water.

Now, a little-known video made by the leader of Tahrir al-Sham (al-Qaeda in Syria), Abu Jaber, on March 16, 2017, is making the rounds of social media, showing Jaber praising the White Helmets as the “hidden soldiers of the revolution” and thanking them for what they do.

“Second, a message of thanks and gratitude to the hidden soldiers of our revolution,” Jaber said. “On top of the list are the parents of the martyrs and the men of the White Helmets.”

The question then becomes, “If the White Helmets are so unbiased, why does Tahrir al-Sham consider them to be heroes of the ‘revolution?’” Certainly, al-Qaeda would not consider any organization who assists civilians instead of solely the bearded soldiers of God as heroes of their movement. The answer, of course, is simple. The White Helmets are nothing more than a propaganda wing of al-Qaeda itself, funded by Western governments and NGOs for the purpose of creating false narratives and shock videos designed to manipulate the Western public.

If there was any doubt about the true nature of the White Helmets, I suggest reading my previous articles on the group as well as Vanessa Beeley’s excellent work on the same topic.

US President Donald Trump has authorized the arming of Kurdish forces in Syria despite fierce opposition from Turkey.

The Pentagon made the announcement on Tuesday, stressing that arming the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is to “ensure a clear victory” in operations aimed at the liberation of Raqqah from the Daesh terrorist group.

The US currently provides air support for members of the SDF — a Kurdish-dominated and anti-Damascus alliance. They have largely surrounded Raqqah and are expected to begin an offensive soon.

The SDF is led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) which Ankara views as a terrorist organization over its alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“We are keenly aware of the security concerns of our coalition partner Turkey,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White. “We want to reassure the people and government of Turkey that the US is committed to preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally,” she added.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer also confirmed the announcement,

“Yesterday the president authorized the Department of Defense to equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces as necessary to ensure a clear victory over ISIL in Raqqah, Syria. The SDF partnered with enabling support from US and coalition forces are the only force on the ground to successfully seize Raqqah in the near future.”

The move was announced after US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Washington will be cooperating with Turkey to liberate the ISIS Daesh-held northeastern Syrian city of Raqqah. [unofficially, ISIS-Daesh were supported by both the US and Ankara ffrom the outset]

“We are going to sort it out and figure out how we are going to do it, but we are all committed to it,” he added.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) female forces carry water supplies on the bank of the Euphrates river, west of Raqqah city, Syria April 10, 2017.

Meanwhile, reports coming out of Syria suggest that a joint military force of US, British, and Jordanian troops, equipped with tanks and helicopters, have been deployed in the war-torn country’s southern border areas.

Different foreign-backed terrorist groups have been wreaking havoc in Syria since 2011.

Over the past few months, Syrian forces have made sweeping gains against Takfiri elements who have lately increased their acts of violence across the country following a series of defeats on the ground.

There was a brief moment of truth on Sky News this morning (9th May), where there was a brief discussion of disquiet among journalists that Theresa May will only take questions that have been pre-vetted and selected in advance by the Tory Party. The Sky reporter even gave the detail that the journalists are not allowed to hold the microphone, which is controlled by a Tory Party functionary so it can be switched off if the journalist strays from the script.

This has been the case right from the start, something I highlighted a few days ago.

But the overall treatment on Sky was that this was not really important, and was simply a matter of ensuring “fairness” in distributing questions between journalists.

This is a desperate situation. I do not know any genuine democracy in the world which would accept this. I have just spent two months in Ghana, where there would be a commendable roar of outrage if the President tried to limit what questions can be asked of him – and he would never dream of doing so. Nowhere in the European Union, not even in authoritarian Hungary, are journalists’ questions pre-vetted.

The idea that the head of the government both gets to choose what they have asked, and gets advance warning of every question so they can look sharp with their answer, is totally antithetical to every notion of democratic accountability. If we had anything approaching a genuine free media, there would be absolute outrage. All genuine media organisations would react by boycotting such events and simply refusing to cover them at all.

The media know perfectly well that the reason May needs protection from difficult questions – and even advance notice of soft ones – is that she is hopeless. Her refusal to debate Corbyn and her car crash interview with Marr illustrate that. But our servile media cover up for her by colluding in entirely fake events.

I learn from a BBC source that in the special Question Time the BBC have organised for May in lieu of a debate, questioners will be selected in advance and May will see the questions in time to prepare.

My observation that the Conservative platform is in its essentials identical to the BNP manifesto of 2005 has received widespread social media coverage. I simply cannot conceive that the UK can have become so right wing. Now add to that, it has become so authoritarian there is no reaction to advance vetting of journalists questions – something Vladimir Putin does not do. And very few people seem to care.

I understand that Theresa May has succeeded in going so far to the right she hoovers up all of UKIP votes. In some ways she has gone further to the right than UKIP ever did. For all his faults, Nigel Farage would be quite genuinely horrified at the idea of pre-vetting of which questions from journalists are permitted. The thing I do not understand, is that it appears that there is no lurch too far into right-wing authoritarianism which causes more liberal conservatives to desert.

I suspect many are deluding themselves she has the ability to control the far right forces to which her every word and action pander. They delude themselves. Firstly, May really is that right wing and illiberal. Secondly it has gone beyond control. Douglas Murray of the Henry Jackson Society has a major article in The Sun today in which he forecasts violence (“deeds not words”) by “the people” if immigration specifically from Muslim countries is not curtailed. He does not state what form precisely these deeds not words by the people would take, but it is hard to see anything he can mean except violence against Muslims. People like Murray are now the mainstream Conservatives.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was also British Ambassador to Uzbekistan. Visit his books page HERE.

Moon Jae-In is poised to become South Korea’s next president – assuming office as soon as Seoul’s Central Electoral Commission certifies final results – after triumphing decisively with over 41% support in a field of 12 aspirants.

His nearest two rivals got 23.3% and 21.8% support respectively. He’ll serve a single five-year term. In 2012, he lost to Park Geun-hye – impeached last December on corruption charges, suspended from office, then ousted in March, arrested and detained.

In April, she was formally charged with abuse of power, bribery, coercion and leaking government secrets. She faces trial and possible imprisonment.

Human rights attorney Moon earlier served as former President Roh-Moo-hyun’s chief of staff. He co-founded The Hankyoreh, a South Korean progressive broadsheet.

He was a Minbun member, South Korea’s organization of progressive lawyers, formed after the country’s military dictatorship ended. He was chairman of the Busan Civil & Human Rights Lawyers group.

In 2015, he was elected leader of New Politics Alliance for Democracy. He favors dialogue with Pyongyang, a return to earlier Sunshine Policy under Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, wants to meet with Kim Jong-Un, along with opposition to provocative US deployed THAAD missiles on South Korean territory.

North Korean media remained quiet about him during the campaign, refraining from hostile invectives usually used against conservative South Korean leaders subservient to Washington.

They called Park Geun-hye a “prostitute…pimped” by US presidents, blaming her “venomous swish of skirt” for heightened tensions.

Ban Ki-moon (right) was insulted after rumors suggested he’d contest for South Korea’s presidency, calling him a “wicked pro-US element and political philistine.”

Moon Jae-In strongly wants DPRK nuclear and ballistic tests ended, saying it’s impossible to have constructive dialogue as long as they continue.

Under favorable circumstances, South Korean companies favor restoring operations in Pyongyang’s Kaesong industrial zone. They support North-South cooperation, benefitting business and peace on the peninsula.

Under ideal conditions, Moon favors reunification of both Koreas. Campaigning he said

“I’m pro-US, but now South Korea should adopt diplomacy in which it can discuss a US request and say no to the Americans.”

He want South Korea taking the lead on policies affecting the peninsula, mostly to prevent conflict, risking possible nuclear war.

How far he pushes the envelope toward improved ties with Pyongyang will determine whether Washington considers him an ally or adversary.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

This week’s bipartisan Venezuela Humanitarian Assistance and Defense of Democratic Governance Act not only seeks to pump US$10 million to Venezuela as part of a “humanitarian assistance” package but also looks to provide millions to efforts to undermine the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

The bill also allots an additional US$10 million for ‘democracy promotion,’ including “US$500,000 to carry out the activities … with the Organization of American States to ensure credible international observation that contributes to free, fair, and transparent democratic electoral processes in Venezuela” and “US$9,500,000 to carry out the activities … directly, or through nongovernmental organizations to defend internationally recognized human rights … support the efforts of independent media outlets … facilitate open and uncensored access to the Internet … and to combat corruption.”

As part of the 11 section plan, the legislation aims to support the move by the head of the Organization of American States, OAS, Luis Almagro, to invoke the “Democratic Charter” against the country. The bill states that Maduro’s government and Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice have “carried out systematic efforts to undermine, block, and circumvent the authorities and responsibilities of the Venezuelan National Assembly as mandated by the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”

President Nicolas Maduro

The bill, introduced by U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ben Cardin (D-MD), also plans to instruct the U.S. Secretary of State to use the U.S. Permanent Mission to the OAS to “take additional steps” to help Almagro, who has had a hostile obsession with the Maduro government while turning a blind eye to human rights violation by right-wing regimes in the region, continue with his attempts to throw out Venezuela from the organization.

In April, Venezuela announced that it would become the first country to officially withdraw from OAS, because of what it claimed were continued attacks against its government.

A deadline of 180 days would be given to the secretary of state to hand down a report to show the involvement of senior Venezuelan government officials for their alleged involvement in corruption and the illicit drugs trade, a witch hunt that has already been used by the Trump to target them with sanctions.

Venezuela’s Vice President Tareck El Aissami, accused by the U.S. government of aiding drug traffickers and Middle Eastern terrorists, has his assets frozen by the United State. El Aissami however, has denied the allegations as slander.

Other parts of the bill, focus on U.S. economic interests, particularly in regard to Venezuela’s role as a regional energy power. As part of a wider international effort, the U.S. would leverage the Caribbean to respond to the crisis, where many Caribbean countries “which depend largely on high cost imported fuel for electricity generation, and many of which have benefited from preferential treatment by Venezuela.”

The bill plans to strengthen the U.S.-backed Caribbean Energy Security Initiative, as well as financially support regional investment energy diversification across the Caribbean and Central America.

The legislation also evokes Russia fear mongering, detailing concerns over Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA and its transactions with Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company. Fearful that PDVSA could default on its US$4 and US$5 billion loans from Rosneft, regardless of Venezuela steadfast debt repayments, the bill warned that Rosneft could come into control of PDVSA’s U.S. subsidiary, CITGO Petroleum Corporation, which “controls critical energy infrastructure in 19 States in the United States.”

The bill states that therefore U.S. President Donald Trump “should take all necessary four steps to prevent Rosneft from gaining control of five critical United States interstate energy infrastructure.”

The bill so far has the backing of Republican Senators John McCain, Dick Durbin, John Cornyn, and their Democratic colleagues Bob Menendez, Bill Nelson, Tim Kaine and Chris Van Hollen.

Despite repeated calls by the Venezuelan government for peaceful dialogue and negotiations with the opposition, large protests have continued in the streets, with more radical elements employing violence in efforts to force an ouster of Maduro.

Marine Le Pen’s defeat, if the vote count was honest, indicates that the French are even more insouciant than Americans. 

The week before the election the Russian high command announced that Washington had convinced the Russian military that Washington intended a preemptive nuclear first strike against Russia. No European leader saw danger in this announcement except Le Pen.

No European leader, and no one in Washington, has stepped forward to reassure the Russians. In the US apparently only my readers even know of the Russian conclusion. Simply nothing is said in the Western media about the extraordinary risk of convincing Russia that the US is preparing a first strike against Russia.

Nothing in the 20th century Cold War comes close to this.

Le Pen, as Trump did prior to his castration by the military/security complex, understands that military conflict with Russia means death for humanity.

Why were the French voters unconcerned with what may be their impending deaths?

The answer is that the French have been brainwashed into believing that to stand for France, as Marine Le Pen does, is to place patriotism and nationalism above diversity and is fascist.

All of Europe, except for the majority of the British, has been brainwashed into the belief that it is Hitler-like or fascist to stand up for your country. For a French man or woman to escape the fascist designation, he or she must be Europeans, not French, German, Dutch, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese.

Brainwashed as the French are that it is fascist to stand up for France, the French voted for the international bankers and for the EU.

The French election was a disaster for Europeans, but it was a huge victory for the American neoconservatives who will now be able to push Russia to war without European opposition.

I’m interested for the sake of the North Korean people. How is the political situation there?

Is it as bleak as described by the western media? Personally, I do not believe that Trump will be foolish enough to attack North Korea. Not with nuclear weapons anyway. That would be a high risk of an immediate strike back, not necessarily from North Korea.  But from her powerful allies.

But the stress and fear the people in North Korea must be going through is just inhuman.  How do you assess the situation.

Peter Koenig

Response by Professor Kiyul Chung

The global media outlets around the world are full of ‘fake news’. This is particularly true about the DPRK, namely  North Korea.

The possibility of nuclear war on the Korean peninsula –which could potentially ignite the first global nuclear war– is ‘real’ and should be taken seriously.

However, the sense of fear is paradoxically much more hyped, frightened and seriously felt by the outside world rather than the people inside North Korea.

They are not afraid of war, any kind of war including nuclear war. They don’t want war. They want peace. But they don’t “beg for peace”. Since the development of a deterrent power in 2006, they don’t beg for peace anymore. In fact they’ve never begged for peace, or anything from the imperialists.

Professor Kiyul Chung

As you know very well, the people in the North have been forcibly going through and living with the real and constant threat of nuclear war emanating from Washington’s never-dying ‘imperialist ambition’ for over 60 some years now.

So, as a result, the people in the North and the whole nation are fully prepared to deal with these constant threats which could potentially lead to the outbreak of a real nuclear war.

The diabolical imperialist nuclear war games carried out incessantly for over 60 some years have pushed them to build their own nukes. That is the underlying causality.

Washington’s nonstop nuclear war threats have forced them to prepare not only to fight back with their own nuclear deterrent power but also to “blow their enemies torn apart,” as they claim.

I believe they are the only and the most prepared nation in the world to readily deal with, I mean both to defend themselves from and defeat Washington’s psychopathic policies and craziness underlying the preemptive first strike nuclear war doctrine, which is directed against a large number of countries.

The DPRK dares to stand on its own feet, refuses to cave in as a subordinate nation; instead Pyongyang fearlessly challenges Washington’s hegemonic, demonic and imperialist ambitions around the world.

That’s why Washington has never been able to enforce their imperialist will against the DPRK, from the very outset when the Korean nation was criminally divided into North and South.

The Korean nation is probably one of the most homogeneous (culturally, ethnically, linguistically, traditionally, etc.) nations in the world. The US sought to divide it into two antagonistic entities in September, 1945.

So, even if the possibility of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula is real, the people in the DPRK are amazingly calm and steady. Instead they are busy as usual with their daily life and work, laughing with their daily chores, while they are as always ‘100% ready’ to deal with any type of outside war threats, either nuclear or conventional.

This danger has been ‘real’ for the last 60 some years ever since Washington initiated its nuclear threat against the North in November 1950 (in the early phase of the Washington’s criminal imperialist war against the Korea nation).

Still hundreds of foreign visitors and tourists from all over the world, however, lately mainly from European countries travel throughout the DPRK.

Out of DPRK’s 25 million population, often the outside world says, there is a “one million military force” in the DPRK. That’s true. However, they know only one thing, one aspect of the DPRK’s military forces. Not the whole picture of the military in the North.

The DPRK medias are all the time saying the “10 million military and the people”[it sounds ‘chon-man(천만: literally meaning, ’10 million’)-gun-min'(군민: literally meaning, ‘military and the people’)].

In addition to their ‘one million’ [both men and women] ‘regular military force,’ they have also another about “9 million paramilitary forces”, i.e., the millions of workers, farmers and students (aged from 16 and above, before they join the regular military force legally at 17).

The military force made out of those millions of workers and farmers is called “Workers and Farmers Red Army Guard”[로농적위대: it sounds like “Ro(workers)-Nong(farmers)-Jeok(red)-Wi-Dae(military guard)”].

Normally they work. They, like anybody else around the world, produce goods, harvest, sow seeds, feed their children, nurture their family and build their nation economically stronger for the future.

But, in abnormal circumstances/situations such as the breakout of a full fledged war, they will take hold of their weapons and join their brothers and sisters in the regular military force to fight back and together defend their nation from foreign invasions.

Those grown students at 16 and beyond do the same thing as their parents do in their duties and services to together defend the nation against US imperialism.

Both boys and girls when they become 16 begin to learn how to use some basic weapons to defend their own schools, work places and villages (i.e., factories, farms, hospitals, etc.).

At 16, a year before they are legally allowed to join the military (BTW, DPRK runs the ‘volunteer military service’) at 17, boys and girls join the Youth Military Force, called, the “Red Youth Guard”[붉은청년근위대: It sounds like “bul-geun(red)-cheng-nyon(youth)-gun-wi-dae(guard)].

It’s a One Year term basic military experience.

Many, after their one year experience with the RYG organization in school, join the regular [voluntary] military service usually 10 years for men, 7 years for women.

Again in the North, the military service is run by the volunteer system, not the mandatory one like in the South.

In the North, many, who are willing, ready and qualified after or in the middle of their military services, go to university-level studies usually in their mid or late 20s. Unlike most other countries in the world, there are no tuition fees  in the DPRK even for their university/college-level studies.

They instead are granted with monthly stipends or scholarships throughout their university years. While they study, they’d therefore pay attention onto their studies only instead worrying about their daily breads. FYI, basic books, university official uniforms, study materials, etc. are free, too. All their medical services, except plastic surgery, some dental and chiropractic (physical therapy) services, are free as well. Of course, housing is also free.

Not only the people are prepared to defend their own territorial sovereignty in land, sea and sky from any outside foreign military invasions, but also the whole nation which is geologically full of mountains, mountain ranges and deep valleys (80 % of the entire land), is known fully capable to wage any kinds of war, including the nuclear war while they protect their people from any sort of harm’s way.

Not only their both tactical and strategic nuclear war capabilities but also their conventional war power have been purposefully, systematically and endlessly disputed or disqualified and/or neglected by both US/Western and SK/Japanese medias as “either not ready, incapable, poor, outdated, old, or dysfunctional,” etc.

However, mostly if not all, it’s propaganda. Full of ‘fake news’ about the DPRK in general, its military in particular.

If the Washington’s arguments/claims were true, then already several decades ago, the international imperialist forces would have invaded many times and completely destroyed the entire Korean peninsula once again as they did in the early 1950s.

However, the historical fact, after the Armistice Agreement was signed in July 1953, is that the US militarily hasn’t been able to do anything for 64 years, which in a sense confirms Washington’s own military ineptitude as well as its baseless claims about the DPRK’s failed military capabilities.

What they’ve been doing all along instead ever since the war temporarily ended in 1953 is nothing more than waging those types of dirty anti-DPRK demonization campaigns for 60 some years now.

Their only remaining weapon available in their repeatedly failed imperialist war against the DPRK for over 70 years is ‘psychological warfare’ which is in large part solely relies on Washington’s (as well as Tokyo/Seoul) hypocritical “North Korea” demonization campaigns as well as their persistent military threats.

What this means is that the DPRK’s military (both nuclear and conventional) capabilities are strong enough to deter Washington’s imperial ambitions, solely with a view to defending the DPRK against foreign aggression.

“Tiananmen Square “Massacre”? The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence“, an e-book by Australian-based author Wei Ling Chua. 

Wei Ling Chua’s E-book can be  downloaded here.

Excerpt from Kim Petersen’s book review:

“Chua has pulled together the western media threads, the disinformation, the recantations, and the biases in a campaign to demonize China – a fast-rising challenger to the hegemony of western capitalism. It is a must-read book for people wanting a perspective outside the controlled negative western media portrayal.

After reading Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence, the second book in the The Art of Media Disinformation is Hurting the World and Humanity series by Chua — I immediately knew I had to read the first book in the series.” Kim Petersen, 9th June 2014

Excerpt from Preface:

The so-called Tiananmen Square “Massacre” is one of the most misleading events the US government and the Western media have used to demonize the Chinese government each and every year since 1989. There was ample silent evidence in the images produced by the Western media that told the story of a highly restrained Chinese government facing a protest similar to those in the West at various stages of their economic development.

However, the West capitalized on the situation in 1989 to fuel the public’s anger, intending to overthrow a CCP government.

How the Western media lied about a massacre given the silent evidence that suggests otherwise, and the moral implications of Western powers making use of common pain and dissatisfaction within an economic cycle of a society to justify the overthrowing of governments across the globe are issues that this book is structured to explore.

The concept of good governance, human rights and freedom is a complex one. Incidents of government crackdowns on protesters are as frequent in the West as anywhere else. The only difference is that the West has a highly sophisticated, well-funded, well-established and well-controlled media industry run by a handful of big corporations with an agenda. Without their agenda-based support, victims of government oppression in the West will hardly ever be noticed by the wider Western community and the world.

To prove such a point, I have included in my analysis the history of protest management in the US and the creative techniques used by the US authorities against the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

One should always bear in mind that the concepts of good governance, human rights and freedom can only be objectively assessed through the power of comparison. The truth can only be found through filtering the indoctrinated messages propagated by the mainstream media. It is important for one to always think for themselves, and to observe the logic and images beyond the media rhetoric.

Can you tell what’s wrong with the following image and narration?

Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence

by Wei Ling Chua 

Click here to download the book.

“Tiananmen Square “Massacre”? The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence“, an e-book by Australian-based author Wei Ling Chu

“Tiananmen Square “Massacre”? The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence“, an e-book by Australian-based author Wei Ling Chua. 

Wei Ling Chua’s E-book can be  downloaded here.

Excerpt from Kim Petersen’s book review:

“Chua has pulled together the western media threads, the disinformation, the recantations, and the biases in a campaign to demonize China – a fast-rising challenger to the hegemony of western capitalism. It is a must-read book for people wanting a perspective outside the controlled negative western media portrayal.

After reading Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence, the second book in the The Art of Media Disinformation is Hurting the World and Humanity series by Chua — I immediately knew I had to read the first book in the series.” Kim Petersen, 9th June 2014

Excerpt from Preface:

The so-called Tiananmen Square “Massacre” is one of the most misleading events the US government and the Western media have used to demonize the Chinese government each and every year since 1989. There was ample silent evidence in the images produced by the Western media that told the story of a highly restrained Chinese government facing a protest similar to those in the West at various stages of their economic development.

However, the West capitalized on the situation in 1989 to fuel the public’s anger, intending to overthrow a CCP government.

How the Western media lied about a massacre given the silent evidence that suggests otherwise, and the moral implications of Western powers making use of common pain and dissatisfaction within an economic cycle of a society to justify the overthrowing of governments across the globe are issues that this book is structured to explore.

The concept of good governance, human rights and freedom is a complex one. Incidents of government crackdowns on protesters are as frequent in the West as anywhere else. The only difference is that the West has a highly sophisticated, well-funded, well-established and well-controlled media industry run by a handful of big corporations with an agenda. Without their agenda-based support, victims of government oppression in the West will hardly ever be noticed by the wider Western community and the world.

To prove such a point, I have included in my analysis the history of protest management in the US and the creative techniques used by the US authorities against the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

One should always bear in mind that the concepts of good governance, human rights and freedom can only be objectively assessed through the power of comparison. The truth can only be found through filtering the indoctrinated messages propagated by the mainstream media. It is important for one to always think for themselves, and to observe the logic and images beyond the media rhetoric.

Can you tell what’s wrong with the following image and narration?

Tiananmen Square “Massacre”?: The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence

by Wei Ling Chua 

Click here to download the book.

“Tiananmen Square “Massacre”? The Power of Words vs. Silent Evidence“, an e-book by Australian-based author Wei Ling Chu

The sea, and bodies of water, are as good as any in creating myths. Out of the water come creation myths: the heaving gorgeousness of Venus, emerging from raised foam, vitality captured in the enduring painting by Sandro Botticelli. 

The idea of Australia being the subject of a Japanese invasion, and the need to have a muscular  paternal Uncle Sam moving in to save the day provide the justifications for Canberra’s official line on the necessity of Washington’s continued presence in the Asia Pacific. That bosom was most amply squeezed during the Battle of the Coral Sea, which saw a relentless string of Japanese successes checked by a US-Australian force.

During the 75^th anniversary commemorations, a persistent theme emerged: that the battle took place to prevent an invasion of the Australian mainland. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull gave an ample demonstration about how, in a desperate attempt to force a point, history is airbrushed of its complexity. In some cases, it is even remade to impress audiences.

In a speech on May 1 in Townsville, Turnbull laced his address with a few points crying out for qualification.

“The pride of the US Navy had been sunk in a surprise attack at Pearl Harbour.”[1]

Little wrong with that statement, apart from the obvious, and critical point, that the attack missed the carrier fleet which was conducting maneuvers at sea, a point which was to prove invaluable for the rest of the Pacific war.

In the lead up to the Coral Sea engagement, Japan had bombed the northern Australian city of Darwin, taken the Dutch East Indies, and the naval base of Rabaul. Port Moresby was threatened, and if taken, the empire of the rising sun “would isolate Australia and take us out of the war to be invaded at the convenience of the new masters of the Pacific.”

This is a stretch, but it is an elastic one Turnbull is happy to take. The Japanese, he claimed, had plans that had been

“discovered by American and Australian code-breakers at the Fleet Radio Unit in Melbourne, coast watchers on the Solomons and surveillance flights from Queensland and Port Moresby.”

All this suggested that the Empire of the Rising Sun was gluttonously heading towards the mainland.

This chestnut has proved to be a particularly hoary one over the years. It is one taken out to be roasted at “special” events, usually at commemorations where history matters less than structured narratives of convenience, often trumpeted by the Returned and Services League of Australia. 

The notion of imperilment and vulnerability must be justified: to suggest otherwise would be to challenge Australia’s losses during the conflict, and its distorting alliance with the United States. Works such as Bob Wurth’s 1942: Australia’s Greatest Peril (2008) do little to bring skepticism to the tale, making the mistake that perception must be its own, self-justifying reality.

In 2002, Peter Stanley, principal historian at the Australian War Memorial, an institution not renowned for its radical thinking, spoke of irritation about the invasion myth.

“I’m sick of the myth; it’s time to knock it on the head. A lie told for war time propaganda stays with us.”[2]

While the Curtin government fantasised in apoplectic panic about Imperial Japan’s intentions, a point evident in cabinet meetings, Tokyo felt otherwise. According to Stanley, there was no Japanese invasion plan prior to 1942.

Even in 1942, drunkenly spurred on by rapid successes in the Asia-Pacific, discussions about invading Australia to prevent it being used as a base for Allied harassment never went beyond middle-ranking naval officers, some pickled by seniority.

“The plans got no further than some acrimonious discussions.”

The army command, more concerned with keeping forces ready and strong in Manchuria and China in the event of Soviet invasion, scoffed at the idea as one verging on lunacy. Ditto the naval high command, accurately concerned that any such an invasion would require an enormous supply commitment potentially unsustainable for the Japanese war effort.

The focus, rather, was isolating, not invading Australia. Such points were recapitulated in Stanley’s Invading Australia: Japan and the battle for Australia (2008), building on the notion that Prime Minister Curtin had been essentially in the business of scaring, not reassuring, the Australian public.  

By April 1942, a point that Turnbull actually misrepresents to his unwary Townsville audience, the broken Japanese codes revealed that Tokyo had little intention of seizing the continent. Curtin, wishing to keep the levels of fear to their suitable, motivating levels, preferred to keep matters quiet as the battles continued to rage. The Curtin in Wurth’s account goes even further, coming across as paranoid and incapable of trusting the intelligence dolled up to him. 

Australian vulnerability remains a matter of necessary symbolism rather than cold steel fact. It seems to have found expression in the DNA of every Australian prime minister since Curtin, the gruel of consumption each leader needs as he or she assumes power. Never entirely self-assured, Australian leaders have either leaned on Britain with childish irritability or the United States with a victim’s insensibility, desperately fearing negation on the chessboard of geopolitics.

Clinging with desperation to the coattails of a great power has also made Australian politicians disgraceful before their mighty patrons, idiotically smiling, as Turnbull did before Donald Trump, in their abode of power. Such figures are not so much guests as tolerable vassals, required to do the fighting and the dying when the United States demands succour in the grand game of empire.

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

Notes

The US-backed military operation against ISIS terrorists in the Iraqi city of Mosul is approaching its final phase.

Iraqi security forces (ISF), backed up by US-led coalition warplanes, attack helicopters, and special operation forces, have made significant progress against ISIS terrorists in the northern and southern parts of western Mosul, out-flanking the Old Mosul area and nearby neighborhoods which remain strongholds of ISIS terrorists in the city.

The ISF advance in western Mosul is on-going amid heavy clashes with ISIS terrorists who actively use suicide bombers and snipers. At the same time, experts note a lower frequency of the usage of suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (SVBIEDs) by ISIS in comparison to the early stages of the battle for Mosul. This means that the terrorist group is suffering from a lack of explosives and vehicles which could be used for creating SVBIEDs. This, as well as the shortage of weapons and ammunition, predetermines the results of the battle.

However, the current progress of ISF, actively backed up by the US-led coalition, shows that ISIS is still capable of defending its positions in heavy urbanized areas. The terrorist group has a motivated infantry. Furthermore, ISIS members actively use the favorable environment of western Mosul.

Meanwhile, ISIS has increased guerilla activity in Syria and Iraq. Earlier this month, 5 ISIS suicide bombers attacked the Kiwan military base operated by Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the US military in Iraq.  The ISIS-linked news agency Amaq claimed that the base was being used by US forces to oversee landing operations against important ISIS sites or commanders in Syria and Iraq. Amaq claimed that ISIS members managed to destroy two Humvee vehicles during the attack after infiltrating the base. One of the attackers blew himself up at the entrance to the base. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up along with some Peshmerga forces inside the base. Amaq argued that the clashes continued for two hours ending with the killing of all the attackers.

Earlier, another group of ISIS suicide bombers attacked several positions inside the Syrian city of Hasaka, controlled by US-backed Kurdish forces.

The collapse of ISIS as a terrorist state in the territory of Syria and Iraq will push the terrorist group to revise its Middle East strategy. It will likely halt attempts to keep formal control over villages and towns and focus on guerilla warfare and terrorist attacks against military and civilian targets.

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The US and Jordanian militaries may be prepping a massive invasion of Syria, intelligence reports gathered from surveillance drones suggest.

Damascus is reportedly on high alert after some 400 American and Jordanian military vehicles were located at a Jordanian military base near the Syrian desert border earlier today.

More pictures of the drone surveillance here:

The foreign convoys may launch an incursion to aid allied Free Syrian Army (FSA) proxies based around the Al-Tanf border crossing.

In 2017 alone, FSA satellite forces have entered Sweida and Deir Ezzor while also coming dangerously near Palmyra and Damascus, areas under Syrian Arab Army (SAA) control.

In response to the looming invasion, the SAA has begun a large-scale offensive along the Damascus-Baghdad highway in a bid to dislodge FSA rebels from the Al-Tanf border crossing are link up with friendly Iraqi border guards.

The photos validate previous reports by an Al-Masdar News military source suggesting a major Jordanian and US buildup at the Syrian border.

UPDATE: The military base is located east of Az-Zarqa, 43 km away from the Syrian border. The tanks are supposedly M60 types.

On their 21st day of hunger strike, Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are facing an ever more serious health situation, as an increasing number of strikers experience loss of balance, muscle wasting and heavy fatigue, reported the strike’s Media Committee.

1500 Palestinian prisoners launched the strike on 17 April, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, for a series of demands, including an end to the denial of family visits, the right to pursue higher education, appropriate medical care and treatment and an end to solitary confinement and administrative detention, imprisonment without charge or trial. Strikers have faced sharp repression, including frequent late-night raids by repressive forces, abusive transfers from prison to prison, solitary confinement, denial of legal and family visits and confiscation of personal belongings, sometimes including salt. Hunger strikers rely on consuming only salt and water to preserve their lives during the strike.

As the strike has grown and more prominent Palestinian prisoner leaders have joined the strike, repression has also intensified. Some prisoners have been transferred four times since the strike began. Today, the Israeli prison administration reportedly plans to transfer 100 prisoners from Ohli Kedar prison to section 10 in Eshel prison. Meanwhile, 30 of those prominent leaders, including imprisoned Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat, fellow PFLP leader Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, Hamas leader Abbas al-Sayyed, longest-held Palestinian prisoner Nael Barghouthi and imprisoned journalist Mohammed al-Qeeq were transferred on Sunday morning to isolation in Ashkelon prison.  All of these transfers also involved barring legal visits for the transferred prisoners.

As the health crisis for hunger-striking prisoners looms ever larger, hunger striker William Rimawi was transferred on Sunday morning, 7 May, to the Ramla prison clinic, according to Ma’an News. The prisoners warned of the threat of forced feeding, especially as Israeli far-right Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan reportedly threatened to import doctors from other countries to forcibly feed Palestinian hunger strikers in military “field hospitals” set up in Israeli jails.

“This trend carries with it preparation for a targeted crime against the prisoners with the intention of murder. It is clear that we are in the next stage now, that of repression, abuse, and attempts to break the strike through threatening the lives of the prisoners. The ongoing preparations indicate that there is a decision taken against the prisoners to their deaths at the hands of a gang of fascists in Tel Aviv. This is what makes this confrontation an extraordinary moment,” wrote the prisoners in their statement.

Meanwhile, on Saturday evening, 6 May, the Media Committee of the Prisoners’ Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society stated that there were still no serious negotiations from the Israeli prison administration aiming to end the strike.

Israeli occupation police in Jerusalem are repeatedly attacking and forbidding events in support of the prisoners organized by their families in the occupied city. Amjad Abu Assab of the Committee of Families of Prisoners of Jerusalem said that the Israeli occupation police declared that they would not allow any event for the prisoners in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and threatened to forcibly disperse any assembly. In addition, on Saturday, 6 May, during a gathering outside the International Committee of the Red Cross building, the police surrounded the families of the prisoners and threatened them with attack as they supported the prisoners’ demands.

Events throughout Palestine and internationally are continuing in support of the prisoners, especially as the prisoners urged a “week of outrage” to demand implementation of their demands and support for the strikers facing harsh repression. Prominent figures like Palestinian resistance icon Leila Khaled and Catholic patriarch Gregory III Laham have joined students around the world on hunger strike in support of the prisoners; in addition, nine mothers of prisoners and a number of former prisoners are continuing their hunger strikes of support.

In Lebanon, four Palestinian youth in Nahr el-Bared camp and six youth from Beddawi refugee camp announced a hunger strike while events and rallies took place on Saturday, 6 May in the refugee camps and in the Khiam former prison in Southern Lebanon, in support of the prisoners’ strike.

Internationally, events and actions were organized in Istanbul, London, Birmingham, Whitstable, Norwich, Sheffield, Oxford, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness, Aberdeen, Uppsala, Dublin, Limerick, Newry, Derry, Berlin, Stuttgart, Cologne, Paris, Auckland and San Diego on Saturday, 6 May in support of the prisoners, while actions are planned on Sunday in Sydney, Amsterdam, Cagliari, Munich, Portland, Fremantle and Quito. Events around the world are available at Samidoun’s global event page.

Graphic by Hafez Omar

The final tally is Emmanuel Macron 66% against 34% for Marine Le Pen, a historic landslide never seen in France’s recent past. Many have voted for Macron because it meant a vote against Le Pen. They were scared. The massive fear-mongering propaganda against her was successful. The choice was clearly between the Devil and Lucifer, and the vast majority voted for Lucifer. He is slyer. He is killing slowly with a smile, vs. Le Pen’s outspoken, confrontational approach. He does it by continuously administering small doses of poison. Taking over the economy from the 99% for the 1%. It’s the old salami tactic, in new clothes. It’s a fascist economy. People don’t notice until it’s too late.

Voter participation has drastically declined since the two previous times, with 65% compared to 72% in 2012 and 75% in 2007. It shows that many disenchanted French have abstained. Intentional abstentions and non-voters accounted for 35%, a record in over 50 years. With 66% of actual voters casting their ballot for Macron, he has actually obtained just slightly above 40% of the eligible voters’ approval, not discounting all those whose vote was a vote against Le Pen. Some estimates conclude it could be as high as 15% – which would leave Macron with a mere 25% of real votes, as compared to the total of eligible French voters. If that’s the making of a President in a key European country, then we are headed for deep dark trouble.

One of the key phrases Macron voiced in his victory speech was that France will be first in line in fighting ‘terrorism’ – in clear text, the militarization of France and by extension of Europe, will continue.

This will bode well with the semi-clandestine effort underway by Germany’s Bundeswehr to train German and NATO troops for war-like offensives against western cities. The project, largely unreported, has been going on since at least 2012. It involves building in Germany’s north-eastern federal state of Saxony-Anhalt an entire ghost town, where German and NATO troops will train to fight and suppress possible social upheavals in western European cities. The camp, budgeted at several hundred million euros, is expected to be ready for training by 2018. The idea is not new. It’s a copy of what’s already going on for years in the US. Clandestine military hubs around ‘vulnerable’ cities, like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles – and more, are in full swing.

Election fraud is difficult to prove. But circumstantial evidence clearly points to electoral “irregularities”. First, the traditional two-party system was purposefully eviscerated and the country was divided into four groups. There were the old-style Republicans and Socialists, represented by François Fillon and Benoît Hamon. Until a few weeks ago, Marine Le Pen from the extreme right-wing National Front was leading all polls. Mr. Fillon came in second. Then a suddenly floated scandal about his wife’s cashing in huge amounts of public money in the form of remunerations for work she had not done, decimated his popularity. Was this part of the game plan?

Both candidates, Fillon and Le Pen, had politically similar positions, except that Le Pen, whom the media called demeaningly a populist, campaigned for FREXIT, exit from the euro and from NATO. All very popular ideas. Let’s face it, 80% of the French want a referendum on FREXIT. Jean-Luc Mélenchon of ‘France insoumise’, had and has a terrific program for a socially and politically independent France, regaining sovereignty from Brussels and exiting NATO, and a France with a direct Democracy. He calls it the 6^th Republic. He consistently ran on the left, but didn’t break ground in 2012. In the last few months, his quick wit and modern campaign technology (hologram speeches at several locations simultaneously) suddenly attracted a lot of followers, especially among the young and students, as well as those disenchanted with the socialist party. He ascended quickly to the top, outranking François Fillon, second only to Le Pen. But a run-off Mélenchon – Le Pen was unthinkable for the powers in Washington and Brussels. The dangers of a Mélenchon win were real.

Then came the meteoric rise out of nowhere by the youthful, 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron, with his non-party political movement “En Marche” (On the Move). The former Rothschild investment banker, never held any elected office, was catapulted in 2014 into the post of Minister of Economy, where he pushed through the controversial and unpopular “Macron Law”, largely a deregulation of industry and service sectors against the interests of labor. Mr. Macron, despite his self-given label of a ‘centrist’, represents the interests of the banksters and of Big Business. He is also a staunch friend of Washington and Brussels, defending the un-defendable euro and European Union. That’s what the elite, the world’s Deep State, wants.

Going into the first round of elections on 23 April, the country was divided into four voter segments, with the front runners Le Pen, Macron, Mélenchon and Fillon clustered closely together. This reminds of the 2015 / 2016 Spanish elections – “divide to conquer” – a division from an essentially two-party system into four parties. The Spanish ‘election’ eventually ended up in a parliamentary coup to make sure Mariano Rajoy, the neoliberal right-winger, would continue the Spanish austerity oppression of the working class, despite a vast majority of Spaniards, with a 23% unemployment rate, being against Rajoy –

see http://www.globalresearch.ca/spain-the-dice-are-cast-another-parliamentary-coup-instigated-from-outside/5553699.

François Fillon, Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Luc Mélenchon

To avoid a similar fiasco, the French election had to be ‘decided’ in the first round, in as much as Fillon and Mélenchon needed to be discarded from the second round, to make sure Macron would confront Le Pen. This was the easiest gamble to have Macron win.

And so it happened. With a massive and well targeted media campaign, very likely using the Cambridge Analytica model of mind manipulation, as was applied to make Trump President –

see http://www.globalresearch.ca/mind-manipulations-to-influence-election-results/5566894 –

And to bring about Brexit, Macron became a front runner, barely outranking Le Pen in the first round, with Fillon and Mélenchon coming in third and fourth on 23 April. That Mélenchon after the first round ended up fourth, with a paper-thin margin behind the scandal-plagued Fillon, is not an accident. Ballot fraud is very likely and has, in fact, been detected by Mélenchon’s people. Had he come in as third, he might have contested the thin margin between him and Macron and asked for a recount. So, he had to be ‘pushed’ back to number four. As such, a recount was not likely.

Whoever would like to understand how elections are made these days, not only in developing countries, but also in our wester so-called democracies should read this

– https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy?CMP=share_btn_tw .

It provides a deep look into who is running the world and with what intent. There is not a shred left of DEMOCRACY. It’s mind control and mind manipulation to the extreme. It is very likely that France did not escape this soft, but super-sharp behind the scene technology.

Macron has now 5 years to continue – and speed up – the work of his predecessor, Hollande: more austerity for the average French, more tax breaks for the Corporate Lords and the rich, more militarization of France and Europe – and especially keep following Brussels’ and Washington’s dictates.

Without arbitrating whether Macron or Le Pen should have won the elections – is this massive media – and Silicone Valley – manipulation for the candidate that clearly defends Big Business, the corrupt EU Brussels construct and the unsustainable, fraudulent European currency, the euro – and membership in NATO – ethically correct? All of it serves the interests of giant corporations and the war mongering on Russia’s borders, against the interests of the people. With today’s neoliberal laws that defy any moral standards as long as they benefit the rich and powerful, it is difficult to say whether the method is legal. Is it legitimate to lie and use mind control tactics to attain a socially indefensible and unjust objective? Or is it an outright criminal act? Let our conscience be the judge.

However, the game is not over yet. There will be two rounds of legislative elections in June. At this point, Mr. Macron will have a hard time forming a government. His movement (not a party), “En Marche”, is new and not established well-enough to gain necessarily enough parliamentary seats to govern. Therefore, a coalition, or as the French call it, a ‘Cohabitation’, is a possibility. With whom? With Le Pen’s Front National, with Fillon’s traditional right wing Republicans? – Or with Mélenchon’s ‘France insoumise’? Le Pen and Mélenchon will likely increase their seats in Parliament. A three-way fairly even split – Macron – Mélenchon – Le Pen – has been suggested by several analysts.

With whom Macron will ’cohabitate’ is anybody’s guess.

The three-way split scenario might leave Macron in a deadlock, unable to form a government. Would that bring about new elections à la Spain? – And if mind control doesn’t work well-enough, end up in a Parliamentary coup, where votes and alliances may be traded, not to say ‘bought’ – to eventually propel the Luciferian Deep State’s darling, Macron, into the Presidency?

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.

In preparazione della visita del presidente Trump in Europa – il 24 maggio a Roma, il 25 al Summit Nato di Bruxelles, il 26-27 al G7 di Taormina – il Pentagono ha presentato il suo piano strategico per il «teatro europeo». Lo ha fatto per bocca del generale Curtis Scaparrotti che, essendo a capo del Comando europeo degli Stati uniti, è automaticamente a capo della Nato con la carica di Comandante supremo alleato in Europa. Al Senato degli Stati uniti, il 2 maggio, il generale ricorda che «il teatro europeo resta d’importanza cruciale per i nostri interessi nazionali» e che «la Nato ci dà un vantaggio unico sui nostri avversari». Tale vantaggio viene però ora messo in pericolo da «una Russia risorgente, che cerca di minare l’ordine internazionale a guida occidentale e di riaffermarsi quale potenza globale».

Il Comandante supremo chiama gli alleati europei a serrare i ranghi attorno agli Stati uniti per difendere con ogni mezzo l’«ordine internazionale» – quello fondato sulla supremazia economica, politica e militare dell’Occidente – messo in pericolo dall’emergere di nuovi soggetti statuali e sociali.

Egli concentra il fuoco sulla Russia, accusandola di «attività maligne e azioni militari contro l’Ucraina» (proprio nel terzo anniversario del massacro di decine di russi perpetrato a Odessa il 2 maggio 2014 da neonazisti ucraini sotto regia Usa/Nato). La «minaccia» non proviene però solo dalla Russia: gli Stati uniti – dichiara l’ammiraglio Harris, capo del Comando del Pacifico – sono sfidati in quella regione contemporaneamente da «una Cina aggressiva e una Russia revanscista».

In risposta a queste sfide, annuncia Scaparrotti, il Comando europeo degli Stati uniti «sta ritornando al suo ruolo storico di combattimento, adeguando i suoi piani alle minacce che abbiamo di fronte». Chiede quindi al Congresso di aumentare i fondi per la «European Reassurance Initiative», l’operazione lanciata dagli Usa nel 2014 ufficialmente al fine di «rassicurare» gli alleati Nato e partner europei, per la quale sono stati stanziati nel 2017 3,4 miliardi di dollari. «Sono necessari significativi investimenti – sottolinea il generale – per accrescere in tutta Europa la nostra presenza avanzata, il pre-posizionamento di materiali militari, le esercitazioni per la preparazione ai conflitti».

Il piano è chiaro ed è già in atto: trasformare l’Europa in prima linea del nuovo confronto con la Russia. Lo conferma l’annuncio, dato il 4 maggio, che l’Esercito Usa in Europa ha costituito un nuovo quartier generale a Poznan, in Polonia, per comandare gli oltre 6 mila soldati statunitensi schierati in Polonia, Estonia, Lettonia, Lituania, Germania, Slovacchia, Ungheria, Romania e Bulgaria, al fine di «rafforzare il fianco orientale della Nato come deterrenza alla Russia».

Allo schieramento sul fianco orientale – comprendente forze corazzate, cacciabombardieri, navi da guerra e unità missilistiche anche nucleari – partecipano le potenze europee della Nato, come dimostra l’invio di truppe francesi e carrarmati britannici in Estonia.

E l’esercito europeo? Nell’incontro con i ministri della difesa della Ue, il 27 aprile a Malta, il segretario generale della Nato Stoltenberg non ha lasciato dubbi:

«È stato chiaramente convenuto da parte dell’Unione europea che suo scopo non è costituire un nuovo esercito europeo o strutture di comando in competizione con quelle della Nato, ma qualcosa che sia complementare a ciò che la Nato fa».

Il bastone di comando resta dunque saldamente nelle mani del Comandante supremo alleato in Europa, un generale statunitense nominato dal presidente degli Stati uniti.

Manlio Dinucci

Washington, Pentagon. The US has responded to Russia’s creation of “no fly zones” in Syria by indicating the US will fly “wherever it wants” and “whenever it pleases” according to Pentagon spokespersons.

The Coalition forces headed by the US will strike at the Islamic State anywhere in Syria, including in the security zones established by Russia, Turkey and Iran, In Russian news agency reports citing a Pentagon representative.

Earlier, Russia, Turkey and Iran signed a memorandum on the establishment of security zones in Syria. According to the memorandum, check points and observation centers will be established along the borders of these security zones. The zones exclude aircraft from hostile action.

When answering the question whether the Coalition will stop the flights over these security zones, the Pentagon official said that the Coalition will carry on with its operations as usual, with no regard for Russia’s plans to end air strikes in the region.

“The Coalition will continue to strike ISIS, wherever they operate, to make sure they have no safe retreat,” the official stated, answering the question whether the US was prepared to cease the flights over these security zones in Syria.

She added that she would not go into the details of how such work was carried out “in the complex and busy military situation in Syria”.

Russian officials have also indicated that the flights of the Western Coalition aircraft will not be allowed over the security zones.

“The flights of the Coalition aircraft in the zones of de-escalation in Syria will not be permitted, as the guarantor countries (Russia, Turkey and Iran) will closely monitor all activities in those areas,” said Alexander Lavrentyev, the Russian President’s special envoy and Russian Chief Negotiator on Syria in Astana.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies are shifting the focus of their military operations following the implementation of the safe zones agreement signed in Astana.

In the eastern Homs countryside, government forces recaptured a number of high points from ISIS terrorists, including the Al-Madraj hill. This advance contributes to a larger government effort aimed at securing the area north of the Tiyas Military Airbase, including the road to Salamiyah. In case of a success, this should allow the Syrian military to shorten a frontline in the area and to improve security of the Ithriyah-Aleppo road, the only government supply line to Aleppo city.

Meanwhile, reports appeared that government forces are going to resume operations against ISIS in the eastern part of the Aleppo province, aiming the Jirah Military Airbase. If the airbase is liberated, the strategic town of Maskaneh will become the next target of the advance.

Earlier it was revealed that the Tiger Forces and the Qalamoun Shield Forces were being redeployed from the province of Hama to other frontlines in order to increase the government forces capabilities in a battle against ISIS on other frontlines. The activity of another elite unit, the Desert Hawks Brgiade, was also reported along the road linking up Palmyra and the Tiyas Airbase.

All these operations and efforts should set a foothold for a widely expected government advance against ISIS along the Palmyra-Dier Ezzor road. Thus, the town of al-Sukhnah will be a mid-term goal of the government operation. This attack will likely be synchronized with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) push towards the ISIS stronghold of Raqqah.

Now, the SDF is still struggling to push ISIS terrorists out from the town of Tabqah and the nearby dam.

South of al-Qaryatayn, the SAA advanced in the area east of the al-Seen Military Airbase, according both pro-government and pro-militant sources. Pro-government fighters reportedly captured al-Sabab Biyar and reached the Zaza Checkpoint. Thus, the SAA cut off one of the important roads that could be used by militants to link up their territory in the Syrian desert with the Qalamoun pocket.

Clashes between government forces and of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham(HTS)-led militant coalition continued in northern Hama countryside despite the safe zones agreement. Last weekend, the SAA and its allies captured Al-Zallaqiyat village and the nearby hill. However, clashes north of Zallaqiyat continued until Monday.

Meanhile, Jaish al-Izza destroyed a BMP-1 in Al-Zallaqiyat and targeted two gatherings of Syrian soldiers using US-made TOW anti-tank guided missiles. Airstrikes and artillery strikes were reported in Lataminah, Morek, Kafrzita, Al Bweida and Lahaya.

HTS (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) is a widely recognized terrorist group. It as well as ISIS and other al-Qaeda-linked terrorists are excluding from the ceasefire. Now, HTS forces are operating in northern Hama alongside with Ahrar al-Sham, Jaish al-Izza and smaller units from other militant groups. Thus, the northern Hama countryside will remain a point of tensions despite efforts to implement cessation of hostilities in the province of Idlib and in the nearby areas.

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More than 200 migrants are believed to have died trying to cross the Mediterranean last weekend, according to the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee organization. They are feared to have drowned when the rubber boats into which they were packed by smugglers deflated and sank.

A group of seven survivors picked up by the Libyan coastguard reported that they were the only ones left from a boat crowded with 170 people. Another 60 are believed to have drowned after a second boat carrying at least 120 migrants sunk on Saturday.

The bodies of some of the dead have washed ashore west of the Libyan capital of Tripoli. Mohanad Krima, a spokesman for the Red Crescent in Zawiya, about 30 kilometers west of Tripoli, reported that 11 bodies had been found on the beaches there.

“All the bodies are of female victims and there is a girl of less than one year old,” he said.

Even before these latest tragedies, the UNHCR reported that more than 1,150 people had died or disappeared trying to make the treacherous crossing from North Africa to southern Italy so far this year.

The UN agency reported Sunday that more than 43,000 migrants have managed to reach Italy so far this year, a 30 percent increase over the same period in 2016. UNHCR Chief Filippo Grandi said that based on these statistics, one out of every 35 people attempting to make the crossing dies. The real death toll, however, is undoubtedly far higher.

The recent surge in the number of people attempting to make the deadly crossing is tied in part to the onset of warmer weather. A far greater role, however, has been played by the right-wing anti-immigrant policies being pursued by capitalist governments throughout Europe.

The sea route from northern Africa to Italy is the most deadly crossing for immigrants anywhere in the world, having turned the Mediterranean into a watery graveyard for countless thousands. It has become, however, virtually the only option for those trying to reach Europe, many of them seeking not only to escape the horrors wrought by imperialism in their homelands, but also to unite with family members already in Europe. More than 90 percent of refugees attempting to reach Europe are now departing from Libya. More than 5,000 of them died in the Mediterranean last year, according to official figures.

Southern Europe migrant routes

The EU has worked to erect a “Fortress Europe,” sealing off its external borders on the so-called Balkan route with barbed wire fences, erecting detention camps to lock up refugees, and carrying out mass deportations. It has also reached a shameful deal with the authoritarian Turkish regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to facilitate the mass deportation of refugees and prevent others from leaving Turkey for Europe, in return for 6 billion euros and political concessions to Ankara.

Now, Italy, with the support of other EU governments, is attempting to replicate these arrangements through a deal struck with the Western-backed Libyan Government of National Accord headed by President Fayez al-Sarraj in Tripoli. This unstable regime exerts control over only a fraction of the country, which has been mired in civil war and dominated by the violence of rival militias since the 2011 US-NATO war for regime-change ended in the toppling and assassination of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In the coming weeks, Italy is set to deliver at least 10 patrol boats, helicopters, four-wheel-drive vehicles, communications equipment and other gear to the Libyan coastguard to carry out operations aimed at stopping boats carrying refugees from ever leaving Libyan waters.

The Libyan coastguard, which is being beefed up to do the EU’s dirty work in hunting down and turning back migrants, is notorious for its brutality and corruption. It has slaughtered migrants on the high seas, sunk boats, attacked humanitarian groups attempting to aid the refugees and profited off of collaboration with smugglers.

By stopping refugees from leaving Libya, Italy and the EU are condemning them to conditions that can only be described as hellish. Refugees are held in a network of detention camps run by the government as well as by militias and criminal gangs, where they are systematically extorted, tortured, raped and summarily executed. Those who fail to come up with the money demanded by their captors are often killed or left to starve to death. Others have been sold—women as sex slaves and men as laborers—in modern-day slave markets set up in parking lots in Tripoli.

The surge in those risking death by crossing the Mediterranean is in large measure a function of the desperation of migrants to escape the conditions in Libya, where Italy and the EU now want to trap them.

Italy has also forged a pact with a group of tribes in southern Libya to block the country’s borders with Niger and Chad, posing the direct threat of armed violence against refugees fleeing war and repression in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, or, at the very least, pushing them back into the Saharan desert and to countries where their lives will be in imminent danger.

Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti portrayed his government’s actions as a humanitarian crusade.

“The people who land in Italy arrive from the violent hands of human traffickers,” he said. “All we are doing is saving them from that fate.”

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Minniti gave no indication as to what fate he expected for these vulnerable refugees at the “violent hands of human traffickers” deprived of the ability to profit from sending them into the Mediterranean.

The Italian parliament, meanwhile, has approved legislation sharply curtailing appeals for rejected asylum seekers, while the government is preparing to open 16 detention centers to hold those slated for deportation.

The number of people escaping to Europe from the horrors of US-backed wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere, along with the crushing oppression and poverty imposed by imperialism throughout sub-Saharan Africa, is a tiny fraction of the record 65.3 million refugees that these conditions have created worldwide. Yet keeping them out, repressing and deporting them has become a focus of capitalist politics in Europe, just as it has in the United States with the demands by the Trump administration for the building of a wall on the Mexican border and the unleashing of Border Patrol and ICE agents in a campaign of persecution and intimidation against immigrants.

On both sides of the Atlantic, and all across the globe, governments and right-wing political movements are attempting to scapegoat immigrants for the conditions of mass unemployment, declining living standards and social crisis created by the capitalist system.

For many Palestinians, President Mahmoud Abbas is seen as something like a Quisling, a timid man who has dedicated himself to selling out to American and Israeli interests in exchange for his remaining in power. Others, recognizing that a return to an intifada would bring down terrible destruction, accept that the enormous disparity of force between Israel and the Palestinians means that a policy of accommodation with Benjamin Netanyahu and his ever-threatening right-wing government is the only possible course, even as West Bank land continues to be stolen by the brutal Israeli settlers. And Abbas is even viewed somewhat sympathetically and somewhat appreciated by that patient minority of Palestinians which hopes that international pressure on Israel will grow until it reaches a point where the Israelis will eventually be compelled to take steps to recognize Palestinian rights.

Abbas did not expect much from his first face to face meeting with American President Donald Trump, but he reportedly came away from the encounter pleased by what he was hearing even though the discussion was light on specifics. According to various media sources, Trump did indeed privately pressure the Palestinians to comply with the usual Israeli laundry list of “concessions for peace,” namely stopping what is regarded as “incitement” of violence, ceasing negative portrayals of Israel in textbooks and the ending of payments to families of Palestinians in Israeli jails, which the Netanyahu government sees as support of terrorism. Abbas might well have noted that most of the violence in the region is instigated by the Israelis, that Israeli textbooks demonize Arabs, and that settlers are subsidized by the Israeli government to steal and build on more Arab land while terrorizing and imprisoning the local inhabitants, but he prudently kept his mouth shut.

But Trump was also upbeat on the potential for an agreement to end the nearly seventy-year conflict and even described his talk with Abbas as “an honor.” Immediately after the meeting with the Palestinian president, he said a deal was

“frankly maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years…We need two willing parties. We believe Israel is willing, we believe you’re willing, and if you both are willing, we’re going to make a deal.” He also offered “to do whatever is necessary,” acting as mediator: “I’m committed to working with Israel and the Palestinians to reach an agreement.”

To put it mildly, Donald Trump has been inconsistent in terms of what he has said about Israel-Palestine. It is generally accepted that he is much closer to Israel and to Jewish interests than he is to seeking justice for the Palestinians. The first foreign leader Trump spoke to after his election was Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister has already been in Washington for a visit and Trump has indeed said repeatedly that he is the best friend as U.S. president that Israel has ever had. He has backed up that claim by appointing leading Zionists David Friedman as U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Jason Greenblatt as special representative for international negotiations. He has also promised to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, even if he has slowed up the process that would lead to actually doing so. His Jewish son in law Jared Kushner and Jewish-by-conversion daughter Ivanka are also believed to be involved in promoting initiatives relating to Israel and American Jews.

So why are some Israelis worried about what will come out of Trump’s visit to Jerusalem at the end of this month? To be sure, he has endorsed Israel’s “right” to “keep going” in building settlements but has also asked Netanyahu “hold back a bit,” noting several times that they are bad for the peace process. It was a warning sign that Donald Trump can be unpredictable, similar to his campaign promise to “love Israel” while also telling Republican Jewish donors that he didn’t need their money and pledging to remain “neutral” in any negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Though it is expected that the president will avoid saying anything dramatic during his day in Israel, there is some fear that he might go off script and press for a new peace initiative, which Netanyahu and those to the right of him in the political spectrum would want to avoid as they currently hold all the cards relative to their Arab opponents. Any American backing for a new discussion on a final settlement of borders or sovereignty would be unwelcome, particularly so for Netanyahu, who is currently believed to be about to face corruption charges and is being pushed by hard liners to be prepared to resign and name a replacement if that takes place.

It has also not gone unnoticed by America-watchers in Israel that Trump has been particularly friendly to Arab leaders, including Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, King Abdullah of Jordan and King Salman of Saudi Arabia. The Arabs have long had a formula to end the Israel-Palestine conflict on the table, ready to go, and it is the sort of thing that Trump might find to his liking as it is very much a “deal,” involving trade-offs of land and recognition. The formula was originally proposed by the 22-member Arab League in 2002. It would involve peace agreements and bilateral relations with the Arab League states as well as with 34 other associated Muslim countries, with only Iran as a hold-out. In return Palestine would become a sovereign state roughly based on the 1967 armistice lines, which would mean the West Bank and Gaza, having East Jerusalem as its capital. Israel would have security and international recognition in exchange for permitting the creation of a small Palestinian state, which would also end Israel’s being labeled an apartheid regime and an occupying power. Details about the return of refugees and mutual defense arrangements between the two states would have to be worked out but were considered to be manageable.

Some reports out of Washington suggest that Trump is intrigued by the prospect of hosting a regional peace conference later this summer using the Arab League document as a framework, inviting not only Israel and Palestine but also the Saudis, Jordanians and Egyptians. It would simultaneously address the issues of normalization, border adjustments and statehood creation so that all parties could benefit from the process as it moved along. It is believed that Netanyahu would find it very hard to refuse such an offer if his “good friend” Trump were to push it hard.

But will Trump be able to push hard even if he is inclined to do so? If Israel gets the faintest whiff of a White House demand for a conference it will unleash its dogs of war. Indeed, it has probably done so already with AIPAC’s Myrmidons roaming the halls of Congress and knocking on doors. Israel still holds the whip hand in the legislative branch and among the media.

Trump is certainly aware of the fact that the end of April two warning shots were fired across the bow of anyone seeking to threaten Israel’s perceived interests. Republican congressmen formed a group called the Israel Victory Caucus to supplement an already existing bipartisan Israel Allies Conference. The new group immediately asserted that

“We believe Israel has been victorious in the war…victory means imposing your will on your enemy.”

This has been interpreted to mean that the Palestinians should now admit defeat and then wait for terms, which will be harsh if there is any resistance.

In a separate development, all 100 U.S. Senators sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary General demanding that the international body end its “unacceptable” anti-Israel bias. An AIPAC official once bragged that he could get the signatures of 70 senators on a paper napkin if he needed to do so, and one wonders whether anyone even broke a sweat in rounding up all 100 in support of Israel. Incidentally, the “bias” being referred to in the letter is the pushback against well-financed efforts to punish the U.N. for its efforts to call attention to Israeli violations of human rights and international law. Israeli partisans in the U.S. Congress persist in exploiting alleged anti-Semitism to defund U.N. humanitarian efforts to alleviate suffering of the Palestinians in their refugee camps and to counter criticism of the continued occupation and colonization of the West Bank. The letter also made reference to and condemned the current Israeli bête noire, namely the non-violent Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement (BDS), a first amendment constitutional right which the U.S. congress and many state legislatures have been actively seeking to make illegal.

Quite frankly, I do not expect Donald Trump to do anything in Jerusalem at the end of the month apart from making the usual noises about how much he loves Israel. The Palestinians will walk away shaking their heads over the usual Washington message, which is pretty much the Israeli message spun a bit for the U.S. audience. But it is interesting to speculate that there might be some surprises down the road and Donald Trump is certainly capable of that. Israel thinks that the status quo of unlimited U.S. support coming from a corrupted political class leading a docile American people will last forever, but it ignores the fact that Israeli and American interests increasingly are in conflict in Syria and elsewhere. Knee-jerk support will not continue, as more and more the message of Israeli savagery in its occupation becomes public knowledge in spite of the media filter. Someday there will come a tipping point and Israel and its kleptocratic leaders will have to figure out how and why they missed out on so many opportunities to make peace with their neighbors over so many years.

Approaching its second general election in two years, with a referendum squeezed in between, you would be forgiven for thinking that Britain was in the midst of a democratic bonanza. Think again, writes Craig Berry. He argues that the Prime Minister’s decision to call a snap election signifies a rather cynical, undemocratic turn in British political culture, alongside a revival of conservative norms of statecraft.

It has become conventional wisdom in British politics since the passage of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act (FTPA) – a final, futile attempt to modernise British democracy – in 2011 that ‘snap’ elections, held at the convenience of the sitting government, are a thing of the past. May’s move exposes the flaws in the FPTA. She was required to gain a two-thirds majority in the Commons to dissolve Parliament’s lower house, but this is hardly insurmountable given that it would clearly be difficult for any opposition party to vote against the prospect – however far-fetched in practice – of replacing the governing party in office.

But it is doubtful that any Prime Minister would have had the audacity to undermine the spirit of the FTPA so unashamedly before the Brexit vote. Respecting the spirit of the FTPA might have meant that May politely requested that the opposition acquiesce to an election, perhaps on the basis that the 2016 referendum had settled the issue of whether to leave the EU, and an election was therefore needed to determine how this decision should be implemented.

Yet May’s tone was defiant rather than deferential. Her remarks in front of 10 Downing Street in announcing the snap election did not speak of asking for guidance from the electorate, but rather of punishing opposition parties for daring to raise concerns about May’s approach to EU withdrawal. Or, in the words of the Daily Mail’s front page, an opportunity to ‘crush the saboteurs’ (helpfully, the Mail later clarified ‘for the avoidance of doubt, neither the [Prime Minister] nor this peace-loving newspaper proposes genocide’).

For May, the referendum provided her with all the mandate she needed, and the election is an invitation to the electorate to simply rubber-stamp her interpretation of the Brexit vote.

That the Labour opposition continues to offer no substantive opposition to Brexit or May’s handling of withdrawal hardly seems to matter. The election, where the Leader of the Opposition is clearly obliged to criticise the Prime Minister’s agenda in hyperbolic terms, is an opportunity to cast May, and May alone, as the bringer of Brexit. Such claims would not withstand the white heat of a leaders’ debate – which is why May has refused to participate in any (as well as appearing to be minimising engagements with pesky journalists).

We are witnessing, in short, the undermining of longstanding democratic norms in the British polity. While the notion of ‘post-democracy’ signals the marginalisation of democratic processes within the policy-making machinery of Western societies, with Britain an exemplary case, the present moment sees ‘the people’ invited back into politics to collaborate in their own subjugation.

Accordingly, the narrow referendum result is treated as the inalterable will of the people. Any attempt to scrutinise the manner in which the newly reconfigured political elite implements the result through normal democratic processes is deemed intolerable. Asking the people to reiterate their apparent instruction less than a year later ensures Brexit acquires further democratic legitimacy, while in practice reinforcing the government’s ability to operationalise Brexit as they see fit. Post-democracy has evolved into undemocracy.

We must keep reminding ourselves of course that May campaigned for remain – whereas Eurosceptic Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was asked to confirm by his own shadow cabinet that he had voted in line with long-settled Labour policy in favour of EU membership. But Brexit has become about much more than EU membership for May and her allies.

Its greatest impact therefore may be in vindicating a conservative revival in British political culture and norms of statecraft. The protestant ethos of British conservatism has long been set in contrast to the continent; only Europe’s apparent crime is now one of liberal inter-governmentalism, rather than Catholicism.

The influence of the Church of England is very much identifiable in the politics of May, the vicar’s daughter. She recently joined Church leaders in condemning the National Trust for removing the word ‘Easter’ from the name of its annual Easter egg hunt (having sold the naming rights to American-owned brand Cadbury’s). Tellingly, as Stephen Bush of The New Statesman reports, the incident was also an opportunity for May to embarrass an old enemy from her Home Office days (Helen Ghosh, now in charge of the Trust). The politics of populism and personal enmity are never very far apart.

The conservative cultural revival is not purely inward-looking. Civil servants may have coined the term ‘Empire 2.0’ in order to ridicule the notion, at the heart of the May agenda, of a ‘global Britain’ centred on the Commonwealth. But the pseudo-imperialist sentiment of British exceptionalism is deeply-rooted in British statecraft.

It is interesting also, especially from a democratic perspective, to see the English local elections completely over-ridden by the general election timetable – and for the election to have been announced barely a month after telling the First Minister of Scotland that now is ‘not the right time’ for a second referendum on Scottish independence. Conservative modernisers such as May’s predecessor David Cameron and former Chancellor George Osborne had been strong advocates for devolution (albeit with many strings attached), but May is clearly using Brexit to re-establish Westminster as the centre of political authority in both formal and informal terms.

For conservatism, democracy has always been something to accommodate rather than embrace. The greatest democratic paradox is that Brexit might not mean Brexit after all: the election to finalise Brexit is also a chance to put some political distance between the May premiership and a strict reading of the Brexit vote. One of the reasons May is keen to secure a larger majority in Parliament is to enable her to emasculate her party’s most ardent Brexiters (as well as the committed Europhiles).

Accordingly, an election victory now, in the name of delivering Brexit, will give May the space she needs to significantly soften her position on Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. It is becoming abundantly clear that single market access of any degree – a red line for the British business elite – will be impossible to achieve without concessions around free movement, budget contributions and European Court of Justice jurisdiction, and certainly not before 2020 when the next mandatory election would have been held, given the remaining EU’s insistence on settling the terms of withdrawal before a new trade relationship is discussed.

This is not an election, rather an inoculation: just a little democracy now so that there is no danger of catching a more virulent strain of democracy later.

Craig Berry is Deputy Director at SPERI, University of Sheffield.

The de-escalation agreement for four fighting zones in Syria has come into effect. The battles between Syrian government forces (red) and the foreign supported “rebels” (yellow) has ebbed in the north, in Idleb and north Hama, in the south round Deraa, around the besieged “rebel” enclaves north of Homs and east of Damascus in east-Ghouta. That does not mean that those areas are peaceful or safe. In the north Turkey is scrimishing with U.S. supported Kurds (purple), in Deraa governate ISIS is infighting with other Jihadi “rebels” and in east-Ghouta various “rebel” groups are trying to eliminate each other.

This de-escalation has freed up Syrian government forces which are now repositioning for a large attack through south-east Syria towards Deir-Ezzor and the Iraqi border. One axis of the attack will be from the capital to the east along the Damascus-Baghdad highway towards the Iraqi border. Another one will aim from Palmyra east through Sukhnah towards Deir Ezzor. (Roughly painted as red arrows on the map).

See bigger picture here

This terrain in-between is largely desert with only a few villages and some oil installations on the way. Large distances can be covert within a few hours. Fighting against ISIS (aka the Islamic State, grey) will be limited to the few build up areas. But the long “lines of communication”, i.e. the supply roads, will be under constant danger of raids from roving ISIS militants and possibly U.S. airplanes.

In parallel to the two large attacks smaller operations (sketched as green arrows on the map) will proceed to eliminate ISIS and “rebel” forces near the government held western heartland. The current U.S.-Kurdish operation against ISIS in Raqqa is pushing ISIS elements towards those western government areas. The (green) “secure the realms” operations are designed to surround and eliminate all enemy areas to the west of the line and to prevent further infiltration into core areas.

The south-eastern desert is currently held by the Islamic State. But U.S. supported “rebel” forces and regular U.S. army troops threaten to take the area in a large attack launched from east Jordan towards the north and onto Raqqa. The build up of such a force has been reported several times and likely has some truth to it. (Though recently published photos of a Jordan armor depot some 50 kilometers from the border are probably unrelated. The depot has existed with nearly the same amount of armor since at least 2010.)

It would be quite risky for Jordan to take part or even allow such a large military operation in Syria. ISIS has infiltrated refugee camps in and near Jordan and has a substantial following within the country. But Jordan depends on U.S. and Gulf country money and can only reject their demands to a certain degree.

Should the U.S. military decide to take all of east-Syria by moving in from Jordan it will come into conflict with the Syrian (red arrow) forces pushing east. These Syrian movements will be accompanied by Russian military elements. Any collision of these maneuver groups could lead to serious escalations.

I doubt that U.S. President Trump has a personal interest in any move in Syria beyond the taking of Raqqa, He needs that success together with the taking of Mosul in Iraq from ISIS for propaganda purposes. Taking Raqqa will be difficult enough. The U.S.-Kurdish forces are still skirmishing ISIS around Taqba city and its dam, (some 30 kilometers from Raqqa) and the Kurds want further political concessions before moving on. Any additional “nation building” will hamper Trump’s other political aims.

The military hawks in his government and in the Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia are aiming further. It is now the National Security Advisor General McMaster who is pushing for regime change in Syria. The recent U.S. cruise missile attack on the Syrian Shayrat air base which was predominantly used to fight ISIS was McMaster’s plan. But it seems that McMaster is now disliked by Trump and the inner White House circles. There is thus some hope that he will leave soon. The Syrian Foreign Minister already detects some change in the U.S. attitude towards the situation in Syria.

The plans of the Syrian government and its allies make sense. But the large moves towards the east can only proceed if the de-escalation schemes in the west keep the battlefields there relative quiet. This again depends on Turkey’s willingness to blockade new weapon flows towards the “rebels” and al-Qaeda especially in north Syria. The Turkish President Erdogan is known for turning on a dime. The Gulf countries will offer him huge bribes to spoil the de-escalation. Russia is offering a pipeline which promises long term profits. It is hard to know which bribe he will prefer and which side he will -in the end- decide to support.

This article was first published in August 2015

In Al Jazeera’s latest Head to Head episode, [2015] former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn confirms to Mehdi Hasan that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West’s backing of an Islamic State in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of radical jihadists (that would emerge as ISIL and Nusra) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.”

Amazingly, Flynn actually took issue with the way interviewer Mehdi Hasan posed the question—Flynn seemed to want to make it clear that the policies that led to the rise of ISIL were not merely the result of ignorance or looking the other way, but the result of conscious decision making:

Hasan: You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?
Flynn: I think the administration.
Hasan: So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?
Flynn: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.
Hasan: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?
Flynn: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.

Hasan himself expresses surprise at Flynn’s frankness during this portion of the interview. While holding up a paper copy of the 2012 DIA report declassified through FOIA, Hasan reads aloud key passages such as, “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.”

Rather than downplay the importance of the document and these startling passages, as did the State Department soon after its release, Flynn does the opposite: he confirms that while acting DIA chief he “paid very close attention” to this report in particular and later adds that “the intelligence was very clear.”

Lt. Gen. Flynn, speaking safely from retirement, is the highest ranking intelligence official to go on record saying the United States and other state sponsors of rebels in Syria knowingly gave political backing and shipped weapons to Al-Qaeda in order to put pressure on the Syrian regime:

Hasan: In 2012 the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups [Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], why did you not stop that if you’re worried about the rise of quote-unquote Islamic extremists?

Flynn: I hate to say it’s not my job…but that…my job was to…was to to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be.

The early reporting that treated the DIA memo as newsworthy and hugely revelatory was criticized and even mocked by some experts, as well as outlets like The Daily Beast. Yet the very DIA director at the time the memo was drafted and circulated widely now unambiguously confirms the document to be of high value, and indicates that it served as source material in his own discussions over Syria policy with the White House.

As Michael Flynn also previously served as director of intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) during a time when its prime global mission was dismantling Al-Qaeda, his honest admission that the White House was in fact arming and bolstering Al-Qaeda linked groups in Syria is especially shocking given his stature.

Consider further the dissonance that comes with viewing the Pentagon’s former highest ranking intelligence officer in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden now calmly and coolly confessing that the United States directly aided the foot soldiers of Ayman al-Zawahiri beginning in at least 2012 in Syria.

This confirmation is significant to my own coverage of the DIA report, as I was contacted by a number of individuals who attempted to assure me that the true experts and “insiders” knew the document was unimportant and therefore irrelevant within the intelligence community and broader Syria policy.

This began after a Daily Beast article entitled The ISIS Conspiracy That Ate the Web  cited former NSA officer John Schindler as an expert source. Schindler concluded of the DIA document: “it’s difficult to say much meaningful about it… Nothing special here, not one bit.”

To my surprise, only hours after I published a rebuttal of Schindler and the Daily Beast article, I was contacted by a current high level CIA official who is also a personal friend from my time living in the D.C. area.

This official, who spent most of his career with CIA Public Affairs, made a personal appeal urging me to drop my comments attacking John Schindler’s credibility, as I had noted that Schindler is a highly ideological and scandal-laden commentator who consistently claims special insider knowledge in support of his arguments. This CIA official further attempted to convince me of Schindler’s credibility as an insider and expert, assuring me that “he has written insightfully.”

Mehdi Hasan’s historic interview with General Flynn should put the issue to rest—the declassified DIA report is now confirmed to be a central and vital source that sheds light on the origins of ISIS, and must inform a candid national debate on American policy in Syria and Iraq.

As it is now already becoming part of the official record on conflict in Syria among respected international historians, knowledge of the declassified document must make it into every American household.

The United Nations Charter, to which all member states are signatories and which prevails over all other treaties and agreements, states that the organization is obligated to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and to take military and nonmilitary action to “restore international peace and security.”

The justices at the Nuremberg trials in 1946 concluded that

“to initiate a war of aggression … is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

The U.S. Constitution’s Article I states that only Congress has the authority to declare war, with the understanding that, per Article II, the president is empowered to respond to a “sudden” or imminent threat only if there is no time to pass such a declaration. An Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) amended in 2016 grants the president blanket authority to respond militarily to threats against the United States, but only if they originated with al-Qaeda and “associated forces.”

So how is it that on April 6 the United States attacked a fellow member state in the United Nations that has an internationally recognized sovereign government? That member state posed no imminent threat, had not attacked the United States, and was not at war with Washington. Nor did that member state consist of or support al-Qaeda or an associated group, and it was not under sanction from the United Nations Security Council to authorize any other member state to act against it. On the contrary, that member state was actively fighting several terrorist groups as defined by the U.S. government that had occupied its sovereign territory.

I am, of course, referring to the cruise-missile attack on Syria, which many critics are belatedly recognizing to be illegal under both international and U.S. law. But illegality being related to the ability to enforce the law, there has been little apparent desire on the part of the United Nations to bring Washington to heel, and the U.S. would surely use its Security Council veto to stop any undesirable UN action.

The United States has been backing various schemes to undermine and force “regime change” on Baathist rule in Syria since 2006, well before the so-called Arab Spring brought protests to the streets of Damascus. More recently, Washington has been arming and training so-called rebels against the Bashar al-Assad regime, ostensibly in unrealistic hopes that some kind of transition to a moderate, pro-Western regime might take place.

Current White House policy appears to consist of putting pressure on ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked al-Ansar, which the Syrian government is fighting, while also demanding the replacement of Assad to permit resumption of all-party peace talks. Apart from those general markers, there has been little attention paid to what might happen on day two, after Assad is gone. Reasonable concerns that the vacuum created might be filled by radical Islamists have largely been ignored.

But even if the United States policy is a muddle, there are others in the region who know what they want and are pretty sure what they have to do to get there. Saudi Arabia and Qatar also have been fighting an unsanctioned and illegal war against Syria with very little in the way of pushback from the international community. They have been hostile to Syria’s government for two decades and began bankrolling and arming dissidents inside the country after fighting began in 2011. Their reasoning is that Syria has become an ally of Iran and Lebanese Shi’ites, including Hezbollah, threatening to create a ring of Shi’ite-dominated territories that will cut across the middle of the Arab Middle East and empower the government in Tehran, which the Saudis in particular see as their regional enemy. It is also possible that the Saudi export of militant Wahhabism also plays a role; Syria, which like Iraq before it is tolerant of most religions, is often accused of being both unacceptably secular and supportive of heretics.

So the Saudis would like to see a Syria in which the Sunni Arabs are dominant, which will presumably lead to discrimination against Shi’ites, Alawites, and Christians—as well as a severing of political ties with Iran. In reality, a broken Syria would likely turn out much like neighboring Iraq, with minorities in trouble and a lack of effective central control. But that would be all right with Riyadh, as it would mean the alliance with Iran would be de facto dissolved. Whether the Syrians would benefit from the change is immaterial as perceived through the optic of Saudi interests.

Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman with Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan.

Turkey would also like to see Assad gone and a Syria in chaos. On April 25, Ankara attacked Kurdish targets in both Syria and Iraq, including members of the YPG militia, who are U.S.-trained and -supplied allies against ISIS. Twenty YPG militiamen were reported killed. The Turks claim that virtually all armed Kurdish groups are terrorists, allied with Turkey’s domestic terrorism problem, the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). Turkey particularly fears that Syria will permit the creation of a Kurdish-dominated entity along their mutual long and difficult-to-defend border. It wants Assad out because it has accused him, perhaps rightly, of supporting the incursions of Kurdish terrorists, but it chooses to ignore the fact that the current problems with the Kurds were in part initiated by the government of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish leader needed a credible enemy for internal political reasons, to discredit a largely Kurdish party that opposed him.

Turkey has supported ISIS in the past, including treating their wounded in Turkish hospitals and allowing them to regroup in safe havens inside Turkey, mostly because the terrorist group is a foe of the Kurds. It has also been plausibly claimed that Ankara supplied the sarin that was used in several attacks on Syrian civilians that have been conveniently blamed on the government in Damascus. The shoot-down of a Russian fighter bomber in December 2015 may have also been a crude attempt to draw the U.S. and NATO into a war against Assad and Moscow. Ironically, playing both sides in an all-too-visible attempt to bring down Assad has destroyed any credibility that Erdogan has. And weakening Syrian central-government control and de facto handing power over to a ragtag of rebels and local tribesmen will virtually guarantee the emergence of a Kurdish statelet, but Ankara is apparently not thinking that far ahead.

Finally, there is Israel. Israel, unlike Syria’s other adversaries, has been seeking to destabilize its neighbor for more than 20 years and has little or nothing to do with either Iran or the Kurds. The Yinon Plan of 1982, drafted when hard-right politician Menachim Begin was prime minister, was outlined in a paper entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s.” It maintained that Israel’s security would be guaranteed only if its neighbors were to be somehow forced or otherwise induced to come apart and return to their tribal, ethnic, and religious constituencies, which had been arbitrarily combined into individual nation-states by the imperial powers after World War I. The Yinon Plan included recommendations for military action to accomplish what might not be done more clandestinely, including an Israeli invasion of Syria to break the country down into Alawite, Druze, Sunni, and Christian communities. A fragmented Arab world creating a “Balkanized” weak-state system for the region, combined with relocation of the Palestinians to Jordan, would remove all the threats to Israel’s survival.

The Yinon Plan never became official Israeli government policy. But it might be seen as a blueprint for the regional actions subsequently undertaken by Tel Aviv, which have persistently sought to weaken Arab governments perceived as being too powerful or threatening. A second paper, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” followed in 1996, during the prime ministry of Benjamin Netanyahu. It was authored by a group of American neoconservatives that included Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Meyran and David Wurmser. It advocated a policy of preemption for Israel and was particularly focused on Iraq and Syria as enemies. Once critic described the document as endorsing “a mini-cold war in the Middle East, advocating the use of proxy armies for regime changes, destabilization and containment.”

More recently, Israeli officials have made clear that they would prefer to have “moderate rebels” in control in Syria than the Assad government. They have reportedly provided medical care for wounded militants, possibly including ISIS. It would appear that there is a de facto truce between the Israeli military and ISIS, as ISIS reportedly apologized when one of its associated groups fired on IDF units in the Golan Heights back in November.

Israel has carried out a number of air strikes against Syrian bases and military units, most recently a missile attack near Damascus on April 27. There are also reports that it is already using its new U.S.-provided F-35 stealth fighters for combat missions against Syria.

Israel would prefer to have a fragmented political situation across its border rather than a unified and capable government. The former constitutes an easily containable threat, while the latter will no doubt continue efforts to regain most of the Golan Heights, which Israel occupied in 1967 and continues to hold. So the choice for the Israeli government is a simple one—and it does not include whatever the United States might currently be envisioning. It is, in fact, much closer to what Turkey and the Saudis want.

Daniel Larison has frequently warned that the U.S. is encumbered with allies that are allies in name but not in reality. In terms of actual national interests, it should be observed that the Saudis, Qataris, Turks, and Israelis are all currently (or have been recently) in bed with terrorist groups that the United States is pledged to destroy. All of them have either directly attacked or arranged for surrogates to attack the legitimate Syrian government, which is opposing ISIS and al-Ansar on the battlefield. Turkey has also attacked Kurdish militiamen allied with and trained by Washington.

The Trump administration will certainly not pressure Israel to change course when the president travels to Jerusalem later this month. Apart from anything else, Trump will be aware that Republicans in Congress have launched an Israel Victory Caucus and that all 100 senators have recently signed a letter to the United Nations demanding that it abandon its “anti-Israel bias.” So there is no wiggle room there. Nor will The Donald squeeze President Erdogan when he arrives in Washington next week, for fear that the already feckless and foundering Syria policy will become even more unmanageable. And the Saudis are always there in the background, using their money weapon to buy influence and manage the narrative.

So the answer to the question “Who is destroying Syria?” must be “Pretty much everyone.” Though there are different motives surfacing regularly by the key players to justify the continued carnage. From the commentary coming out of the foreign and defense ministries in Washington, Riyadh, Ankara, and Tel Aviv, it is more than a bit hard to discern if there might be a way out of this quagmire. Otherwise, it appears that it will continue to be business as usual until everyone gets tired, declares victory, and goes home.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.

As tensions between the United States and North Korea continue to rise, one think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has become a ubiquitous voice on the topic of missile defense, providing Official-Sounding Quotes to dozens of reporters in Western media outlets. All of these quotes speak to the urgent threat of North Korea and how important the United States’s deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system is to South Korea:

• “THAADs are tailored to those medium-range threats that North Korea has in spades—North Korea regularly demonstrates that kind of capability,” says Thomas Karako, the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “THAADs are exactly the kind of thing that you would want for a regional area.” (Wired, 4/23/17)
• But [CSIS’s Karako] called [THAAD] an important first step. “This is not about having a perfect shield, this is about buying time and thereby contributing to the overall credibility of deterrence,” Karako told AFP. (France24, 5/2/17)
• THAAD is a decent option, says Thomas Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, citing a perfect intercept record in trials to date. (Christian Science Monitor, 7/21/16)
• Seeing THAAD as a “natural consequence” of an evolving threat from North Korea, Bonnie Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told VOA that Washington should continue to tell Beijing “this system is not aimed at China … and [China] will just have to live with this decision.” (Voice of America, 3/22/17)
• Victor Cha, a Korea expert and former White House official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, played down the chances that THAAD would be rolled back. “If THAAD is deployed prior to the elections and given the North Korean missile threat, I don’t think it would be prudent for a new government to ask that it be walked back,” Cha said. (Reuters, 3/10/17)
• Thomas Karako, senior fellow with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said China’s indirect, retaliatory measures over the THAAD deployment would only stiffen the resolve of South Korea. He called the Chinese intervention “short-sighted.” (Voice of America, 1/23/17)

The list goes on. In the past year, FAIR has noted 30 media mentions of CSIS pushing the THAAD missile system or its underlying value proposition in US media, most of them in the past two months. Business Insider was the most eager venue for the think tank’s analysts, routinely copying–and–pasting CSIStalking points in stories warning of the North Korean menace.

Omitted from all these CSIS media appearances, however, is that one of CSIS’s top donors, Lockheed Martin, is THAAD’s primary contractor—Lockheed Martin’s take from the THAAD system is worth about $3.9 billion alone. Lockheed Martin directly funds the Missile Defense Project Program at CSIS, the program whose talking heads are cited most frequently by US media.

While it’s unclear how much exactly Lockheed Martin donates to CSIS (specific totals are not listed on their website, and a CSIS spokesperson wouldn’t tell FAIR when asked), they are one of the top ten donors, listed in the “$500,000 and up” category. It’s unclear how high “and up” goes, but the think tank’s operating revenue for 2016 was $44 million.

None of these pieces mentioned that 56 percent of South Koreans oppose the deployment of THAAD, at least until new elections are held on May 9. The person who greenlit the THAAD deployment, former President Park Geun-hye, left in disgrace after a fraud scandal—throwing the legitimacy of the THAAD deployment into question, and turning it into a hot-button issue in the subsequent election.

In light of her impeachment—and, no doubt, the surprise election of a capricious President Trump in the US—most South Koreans understandably want to wait until the new election before making a decision on THAAD. Beyond a few articles making opaque reference to South Koreans having “mixed” reactions, or glossing over local protests, this fact was omitted from US media reports altogether. Trump, the Pentagon and US weapons contractors knew what’s best and were coming to the rescue.

Unlike corporate media outlets, The Nation (2/25/17) felt a need to talk to opponents of deploying new US weaponry.

None of the 30 pieces with pro-THAAD talking heads from CSIS quoted South Korean peace activists or anti-THAAD voices. To find out the concerns of Korean THAAD critics, one had to turn to independent media reports, like Christine Ahn’s in The Nation (2/25/17):

“It will threaten the very economic and social lifeblood of the communities,” [Korean-American policy analyst Simone Chun] said….

“The deployment of THAAD will increase tensions between South and North Korea,” said Ham Soo-yeon, a resident of Gimcheon who has been publishing newsletters about their resistance. In a phone interview, Ham said THAAD would “make the unification of Korea more difficult,” and that it would “place the Korean peninsula at the center of the US drive for dominant power over Northeast Asia.”

None of these concerns made it into the above articles.

Five of CSIS’s ten major corporate donors (“$500,000 and up”) are weapons manufacturers: Besides Lockheed Martin, they are General Dynamics, Boeing, Leonardo-Finmeccanica and Northrop Grumman. Three of it its top four government donors (“$500,000 and up”) are the United States, Japan and Taiwan. South Korea also gives money to CSIS through the governmental Korea Foundation ($200,000-$499,000).

Last August (8/8/16), the New York Times revealed internal documents of CSIS (and the Brookings Institution) showing how think tanks acted as undisclosed lobbyists for weapons manufacturers:

As a think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies did not file a lobbying report, but the goals of the effort were clear.

“Political obstacles to export,” read the agenda of one closed-door “working group” meeting organized by Mr. Brannen that included Tom Rice, a lobbyist in General Atomics’ Washington office, on the invitation lists, the emails show.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin, drone-makers that were major CSIS contributors, were also invited to attend the sessions, the emails show. The meetings and research culminated with a report released in February 2014 that reflected the industry’s priorities.

“I came out strongly in support of export,” Mr. Brannen, the lead author of the study, wrote in an email to Kenneth B. Handelman, the deputy assistant secretary of state for defense trade controls.

But the effort did not stop there.

Mr. Brannen initiated meetings with Defense Department officials and congressional staff to push for the recommendations, which also included setting up a new Pentagon office to give more focus to acquisition and deployment of drones. The center also stressed the need to ease export limits at a conference it hosted at its headquarters featuring top officials from the Navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps.

CSIS denied to the Times that its activities constituted lobbying. In response to FAIR’s request for comment, a CSIS spokesperson “rejected [FAIR’s] assertion entirely” that there was any conflict.

CSIS’s consistent promotion of its funder’s missile system could, of course, be a total coincidence. The bespectacled experts at CSIS could honestly believe the majority of South Koreans are wrong, and Trump’s deployment of THAAD is a wise choice. Or it could be that think tanks funded by weapons makers are not impartial arbiters of whether more weapons are a good idea—and not useful sources to readers who are hoping for neutral analysis of such questions.

Leading European Union (EU) politicians expressed their jubilation in the wake of the substantial victory of Emmanuel Macron over National Front candidate Marine Le Pen.

This episode in French politics was hailed as a major defeat of “populism” in Europe and the Western capitalist world where in the last year right-wing parties and political initiatives have made headway.

There was the vote to leave the EU by the British voters in June 2016. Later in the November presidential elections in the United States billionaire right-wing demagogue Donald J. Trump landed in the White House through a sweeping Electoral College victory over Democratic Party stalwart Hillary Clinton.

Macron, an investment banker and former minister of economic planning in the Socialist government of departing President Francois Hollande, was favored by the corporate media and the European banking institutions.

Official results say that Macron won 66.1 percent of the vote to 33.9 for Le Pen. However, 33 percent, one-third, of the electorate either stayed at home or turned in ballots that were uncountable indicating a strong rejection of both of the dominant tendencies in French politics. Neither party projected any viable solutions to the high unemployment rate and increasing poverty inside the country.

The British Independent newspaper said of the results:

“Mr. Macron earned over 20.8 million votes in the election, while Ms. Le Pen gained a record 10.6 million votes for Front National. But while France had 47.5 million registered voters, a near-record 25 per cent abstained from casting their ballot in this year’s election. A further 8.6 per cent of people who did vote spoiled their ballot or left it blank. The number of people who abstained from voting totaled 12.1 million, already outnumbering the amount of people who chose to vote for Ms. Le Pen.”

Although the En Marche candidate was portrayed as a voice of reason and tolerance the program advanced by the president-elect calls for the elimination of guarantees for working people. Similar reforms in previous years appeared to be aimed at transforming labor relations in France to more closely mirror the U.S.

The EU welcomed the results of the vote as an indication of the stability of the regional system of governance and economic restructuring. Le Pen had suggested that under her presidency a referendum on the future of French membership in the continental body along with the Eurozone would be put before the electorate. This could have continued the disintegration of the European monetary zone and parliament which largely serves as a barometer of what constitutes stability in the region.

Both the Conservative (Les Republicains) and Socialist parties which have dominated the French parliamentary and presidential system for the last six decades did not win enough votes in the first round to qualify for run off status on May 7. An alienation from mainstream political parties in Europe has created a huge electoral vacuum where ultra-right wing parties have made gains.

Results of the elections in France will provide some relief for the German political system where Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing re-election later in the year. In a state election overshadowed by the events in France, Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party won a decisive victory in the northern Schleswig-Holstein gaining 33 percent of the electorate.

The CDU performed better than what was projected in the opinion polls which indicated a greater margin of the vote going to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the far right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD). The SPD won only 26 percent of the vote which will prevent it from leading the state government in Schleswig-Holstein.

Moreover, the status of the AfD continued to deteriorate with the party barely gaining enough votes to earn seats in the Schleswig-Holstein state government. AfD won 5.5 percent just above the necessary 5 percent threshold to enable its presence in the state legislative body.

At present with the weakening of the SPD and AfD, Merkel could very well win an unprecedented fourth term in office as German Chancellor. Her approval rating had declined during 2016 amid the escalating tensions over the huge influx of migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia fleeing the wars initiated by the U.S. and NATO and the economic downturn due in part to instability fueled by conflict and the decline in commodity prices particularly in the energy sector.

France to Maintain Globalist Model of Development

Although the electorate did reject the far right political program of Le Pen which advocated the drastic curbing of immigration from non-European states, the erecting of trade tariffs to ostensibly enhance local production, the withdrawal of France from the Eurozone and the demonization of Islam, many of those who cast their ballots in favor of Macron did so in order to prevent the National Front from winning the presidency.

The political platform of En Marche is a classic neo-liberal approach to the modern-day capitalist crisis. Macron wants to limit the guarantees of employment benefits for French workers, the scaling back of the pension system and large-scale tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

These programs have been tried in numerous western capitalist states leaving a trail on joblessness, increasing poverty, national debt and massive bailouts of the financial institutions to prevent total economic collapse as was the situation throughout Western Europe and the U.S. beginning in 2007. Workers are less secure in their employment prospects while real wages have been in decline for decades.

Reuters press agency reported on a survey of voters which demonstrated the lack of enthusiasm for the Macron emphasizing that:

“A poll of nearly 7,000 voters on Sunday by Harris Interactive found that 59 percent of Macron’s voters had chosen him primarily to stop Le Pen becoming president, reflecting the distaste that still clings to a party long considered a pariah in France for its xenophobic associations. The poll, for M6 television, also found Le Pen’s supporters to be far more convinced by their candidate’s policies and qualities: 56 percent of Le Pen voters found that she spoke to their concerns, while only 21 percent of Macron voters said the same of him.” (May 8)

Trade unions demonstrated under the banner of the “Social Front” on May 8 just one day after the presidential elections against the proposed neo-liberal and pro-banker reforms advocated by Macron. Workers are saying that the government should not be administered as if it were a corporation evoking the background of Macron as a banker and economy minister with close ties to finance capital. Similar protests occurred even prior to the elections on May Day where workers objected to the candidates of both En Marche and the National Front.

According to an article published by Local France, the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), a left-leaning union which is one of the largest in the country, led the demonstrations. The media group noted that these actions involving thousands of workers took place “not long after the news was announced on Sunday night (May 7) that the pro-free market, pro-globalization candidate Emmanuel Macron had been elected France’s president with 66 percent of the vote. Organizers had urged people ‘to take part in the first social mobilization of Macron’s term in office.’” (May 8).

Although the traditional dominant parties did not do well in the presidential races, they are hoping to play a more prominent role in the upcoming two-stage parliamentary contest on June 11 and 18. Pro-Macron candidates will change their name to La Republique en Marche for the lower house elections in an effort to appeal to the both the center-left and center-right constituencies.

One survey indicated that En Marche could win as many as many as 250 of the 290 seats in the overall 577-member chamber of the National Assembly. Any candidate gaining 12.5 percent of the vote will be eligible to continue to the runoff election.

Hindu Rashtra is the goal of Hindu nationalist politics, which is also called as Hindutva. In contrast to Hinduism, Hindutva is a politics of in the name of Hinduism with Brahmanism as the core of the same. In nutshell Hindutva is a politics based on Brahmanical values of caste and gender hierarchy.

The concept of Hindutva-Hindu nation is a modern one, which developed as a parallel to Islamic nationalism, and in opposition to the concept of Indian Nationalism. Indian nationalism developed during colonial period as the inclusive nationalism of people of all religions, different castes, languages and regions based on values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. 

Hindu nationalism developed from the section of Hindu landlords and kings with associated clergy on their side. As Indian nationalism was arguing for equality of all the people, the previous ruling classes, felt threatened socially. Now their social privileges were under threat and so they gave a war cry of ‘Hinduism in danger’. This was a cry which was similar to the slogan of Muslim landlords and nawabs, who when their social status started declining; shouted ‘Islam in danger’.

Hindu Nationalism harped on the ancient glory of the times of Manusmriti and Vedas where the caste system was deeply entrenched in society. While national movement was articulating the need for land reforms, though they could never be properly implemented, Hindu nationalism harped on the earlier systems and was hiding its agenda of social inequality. It called for revival of a glorious period, despite the fact that the condition of women and dalits in those times were abysmal.

The needs of majority of Hindus were expressed in the national movement, which strove for democratic norms and its values got enshrined in Indian Constitution in the form of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. The Hindu nationalists were opposed to these values and also the formation of Indian Constitution, which not only stands for liberation of all people from feudal bondages, it is a path of liberation of large sections of Hindus, barring of course the upper caste ones’, who stand to lose their primacy. Most of the Hindus participated in the freedom struggle while a handful of them wedded to ideology of Hindu Rashtra kept aloof from this massive process which was to pave the path of liberation of all the people including majority of Hindus.

Those standing for cause of majority of Hindus opposed the idea of Hindu Rashtra. Ambedkar points out,

“It is a pity that Mr. Jinnah should have become a votary and champion of Muslim Nationalism at a time when the whole world is decrying against the evils of nationalism… But isn’t there enough that is common to both Hindus and Musalmans, which if developed, is capable of moulding them into one people?… If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country…’ Compare the Sangh Parivar’s view of nationalism with these two conceptions and draw your own conclusions. (https://www.kractivist.org/tag/history/)

Gandhi the greatest Hindu of his times pointed out,

“In India, for whose fashioning I have worked all my life, every man enjoys equality of status, whatever his religion is. The state is bound to be wholly secular”, and, “religion is not the test of nationality but is a personal matter between man and God, and,” religion is a personal affair of each individual, it must not be mixed up with politics or national affairs” (Harijan August 31, 1947)

After Independence, the followers of Hindu nationalists were very small and they kept working for breaking the core pillar of Indian nationalism, Fraternity. They kept spreading hatred against religious minorities. This hatred became the foundation of communal violence in times to come. While majority Hindus were going along with the national policies for building modern India through modern education and modern industries, the Hindu nationalists were criticizing and opposing these policies all through. While the majority of Hindus are faced with the problems of bread butter shelter employment and dignity, Hindu nationalists have been raising the emotive issues to divide the society along religious lines. The result is that in the din of hysteria, in the name of Hinduism and Hindus; they have been sidetracking the real issues of Hindus and substituting them with identity issues.

When BJP led NDA came to power it opened the path of restoring blind faith by introducing courses like Paurohitya (priesthood) and Karmakand (ritualism). Hindus need to be liberated from the clutches of blind faith while these policies are intensifying the retrograde, obscurantist values and undermining the real needs of average Hindus as well.

Last three years (since 2014) Modi-BJP-RSS government has come to power; the identity issues have been hiked up. Attempts have been made to undermine and bypass the issues related to Rights for food, education and health. The attempt was made to grab farmer’s land in the name of land reforms; somehow they could not succeed in that. The attempt to bring in land reform legislation was against interests of Hindus so to say. The labor reforms brought by Hindu nationalists have ruined the lives of workers at large. De-monitisation was propagated as a blow to black money holders, but its real victims have been average Hindus, who have suffered in silence. A series of emotive issues are dominating the social scene, Ram Temple, Bharat mata ki jia, Vande matram, Cow protection, Love Jihad and Ghar vapasi among other. The vigilante culture is getting promoted due to Hindu nationalist agenda. The beneficiaries of these policies have been affluent corporate sector, section of upper and middle classes while average Hindus are suffering the pain and anguish.

The society is suffering as age old values of love and amity are being demolished; the issues of poverty, illiteracy, hunger and health are being relegated to the margins of policy making. All this is against the interests of Hindus at large. Average Hindus are a big victim of this agenda.

According to Ellen Brown, “the health benefits of cannabis are now well established. It is a cheap, natural alternative effective for a broad range of conditions, and the non-psychoactive form known as hemp has thousands of industrial uses. At one time, cannabis was one of the world’s most important crops.

There have been no recorded deaths from cannabis overdose in the US, compared to about 30,000 deaths annually from alcohol abuse (not counting auto accidents), and 100,000 deaths annually from prescription drugs taken as directed. Yet cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance (“a deadly dangerous drug with no medical use and high potential for abuse”), illegal to be sold or grown in the US.”

Read more on The War of Weed: Monsanto, Bayer, and the Push for “Corporate Cannabis” published on Global Research on July 8, 2016.

Additionally, infographic below introduces to us Cannabidiol, its nature and use.

EdWeek Market Brief today released an exclusive report that takes stock of educator perceptions of four giants in the technology world, and how they stack up against each other and versus four major education-focused companies. The report—Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft: How 4 Tech Titans Are Reshaping the Ed-Tech Landscape—finds that Google consistently earns top marks from K-12 teachers and administrators asked to rate the companies’ devices, productivity tools, and ability to improve student achievement.

Source: EdWeek Market Brief 

Across nearly every category, the nationally-representative survey of 1,000 K-12 teachers and district administrators identifies Google (GOOGL) as the clear winner.

Google beat out fellow tech titans Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), and Microsoft (MSFT) and also eclipsed four large education industry players examined in the study, Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt (HMHC), McGraw-Hill, Pearson (PSO), and Scholastic (SCHL).

Even though Google is a large, multi-national corporation with interests that extend well beyond K-12 schools, survey results suggest that educators view it as a bona fide education company.

“Educators and industry analysts say Google has gained major ground in the market by meeting schools’ demand for simple, easy-to-integrate products,” says EdWeek Market Brief Senior Editor Sean Cavanagh. “Apple and Microsoft, meanwhile, are convinced that their products meet the needs of teachers and students in richer ways than Google does, and that their products will eventually win out.”

Key report findings include:

• More than half of educators (52 percent) said they would hire Google, when asked which of the eight companies they would choose to improve student achievement in their school districts. Just 13 percent favored the next most popular option, Apple Education. Scholastic finished third with 9 percent and was the top choice among the four education-focused companies included in the survey.
• Google’s low-cost Chromebooks are the school-provided devices used most often for instructional purposes in U.S. schools. Forty-two percent of educators identified Chromebooks as the most-used device in their districts and classrooms.
• And G-Suite/Google Classroom is the hands-down favorite when it comes to productivity tools. More than two-thirds of educators (68 percent) said these Google products are their most-used productivity solutions for school-related purposes. By comparison, 17 percent of educators said the same of Microsoft’s Office 365 and Classroom products, while Apple’s iWork and Classroom reached just 1 percent.
• Google’s dominance shows no signs of disappearing any time soon. More than three-quarters of educators predict that that they will use Chromebooks and Google tools “more” or “a lot more” for instructional purposes over the next five years. Fewer than 5 percent predict usage will decrease during that period.

To help tell the story behind these exclusive survey results, EdWeek Market Brief produced in-depth reporting and analysis examining just how Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft are providing schools with operating systems, devices, tools, and platforms that educators believe are having a powerful influence on student learning.

The original reporting behind the project is available at the EdWeek Market Brief website here.

A detailed report with analyses from the national survey of teachers and district leaders is available to download here.

The Israeli government held a debate on Sunday, vowing to kick out UN and affiliated agencies from its longstanding offices in East Jerusalem, as proposed by a minister of culture, after UNESCO passed a strongly-worded resolution, labeling Israel “the occupying power.”

A report from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has concluded that terrorists who formerly operated in Aleppo prior to its liberation by Russian and Syrian troops, had used illegal chemical weapons on civilian populations. 

The terrorists, referred to as ‘moderate rebels’ by western mainstream media were found to have used sulphur mustard gas during their criminal occupation of East Aleppo.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that it is satisfied with the OPCW’s findings.

While the Russian Foreign Ministry praised the OPCW for its exhaustive investigation in Aleppo, Russia blasted the same organisation for refusing to even visit the site of the infamous alleged chemical weapons attack in Idlib Governorate, said to have occurred on the 4th of April, 2017.

In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated,

“So-called investigations into the Khan-Shaykhun (attack) and the above-mentioned Human Rights Watch do not stand up to any criticism. All relevant conclusions are mostly made on witnesses’ testimonies, with practically all of them given online. What is more, the witnesses are exclusively members of Syrian opposition”.

The statement continued,

“We insist that experts of the OPCW-UN Joint Mission (on the elimination of Syrian chemical weapons) should be immediately dispatched to Khan-Shaykhun and Shayrat air base, where bombs with sarin nerve agent were allegedly stored, to carry out a professional and impartial investigation at the scene.

The goal could be reached given all the procedures stipulated in the Chemical Weapons Convention are observed”.

The United States appears to have no interest in investigating an incident that is widely believed to be a false flag.

The Japanese Government has been ordered to pay tens of millions in compensation after it was found guilty of negligence causing the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Reports also claim that the ruling could also include other pacific nations like the US who could also be eligible for compensation from the Japanese government who has effectively poisoned the entire Pacific Ocean and damaged the world’s food chain beyond repair. YNW reports: The nuclear plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings, was also found guilty of negligence that led to the disaster that nuclear experts say will likely continue affecting wildlife and humans for the next 250,000 years.

Friday’s stunning ruling by the Maebashi District Court was the first to recognize negligence by the state and Tepco. Previously the Japanese government and Tepco, a subsidiary of General Electric, had strongly denied any wrongdoing, arguing they were the victims of bad luck. The judge called the massive tsunami “predictable” and said the major nuclear disaster, which is responsible for 300 tons of radioactive water entering the Pacific Ocean every single day, could have been avoided. According to Japan Times:

The district court ordered the two to pay damages totaling ¥38.55 million to 62 of 137 plaintiffs from 45 households located near the plant, which suffered a triple meltdown caused by the tsunami, awarding ¥70,000 to ¥3.5 million in compensation to each plaintiff. The plaintiffs had demanded the state and Tepco pay compensation of ¥11 million each — a total of about ¥1.5 billion — over the loss of local infrastructure and psychological stress they were subjected to after being forced to relocate to unfamiliar surroundings.

Citing a government estimate released in July 2002, the court said in the ruling that

“Tepco was capable of foreseeing several months after (the estimate) that a large tsunami posed a risk to the facility and could possibly flood its premises and damage safety equipment, such as the backup power generators.”

It pointed out that the state should have ordered Tepco to take bolstered preventive measures, and criticized the utility for prioritizing costs over safety. Fukushima radiation has contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean. The nuclear disaster has contaminated the world’s largest ocean in only five years and it’s still leaking 300 tons of radioactive waste every day. According to a True Activist report:

Radioactive Debris from Fukushima approaching North America’s western coast.

If that weren’t bad enough, Fukushima continues to leak an astounding 300 tons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean every day. It will continue do so indefinitely as the source of the leak cannot be sealed as it is inaccessible to both humans and robots due to extremely high temperatures. It should come as no surprise, then, that Fukushima has contaminated the entire Pacific Ocean in just five years. This could easily be the worst environmental disaster in human history and it is almost never talked about by politicians, establishment scientists, or the news. It is interesting to note that TEPCO is a subsidiary partner with General Electric (also known as GE), one of the largest companies in the world, which has considerable control over numerous news corporations and politicians alike. Could this possibly explain the lack of news coverage Fukushima has received in the last five years? There is also evidence that GE knew about the poor condition of the Fukushima reactors for decades and did nothing. This led 1,400 Japanese citizens to sue GE for their role in the Fukushima nuclear disaster – and now have been found guilty.

Even if we can’t see the radiation itself, some parts of North America’s western coast have been feeling the effects for years. Not long after Fukushima, fish in Canada began bleeding from their gills, mouths, and eyeballs. This “disease” has been ignored by the government and has decimated native fish populations, including the North Pacific herring. Elsewhere in Western Canada, independent scientists have measured a 300% increase in the level of radiation. According to them, the amount of radiation in the Pacific Ocean is increasing every year. Why is this being ignored by the mainstream media? It might have something to do with the fact that the US and Canadian governments have banned their citizens from talking about Fukushima so “people don’t panic.”

Further south in Oregon, USA, starfish began losing legs and then disintegrating entirely when Fukushima radiation arrived there in 2013. Now, they are dying in record amounts, putting the entire oceanic ecosystem in that area at risk. However, government officials say Fukushima is not to blame even though radiation in Oregon tuna tripled after Fukushima. In 2014, radiation on California beaches increased by 500 percent. In response, government officials said that the radiation was coming from a mysterious “unknown” source and was nothing to worry about. However, Fukushima is having a bigger impact than just the West coast of North America. Scientists are now saying that the Pacific Ocean is already radioactive and is currently at least 5-10 times more radioactive than when the US government dropped numerous nuclear bombs in the Pacific during and after World War II. If we don’t start talking about Fukushima soon, we could all be in for a very unpleasant surprise.

Over the past 15 years, fighting-talk has periodically flared over ‘what to do about that alleged “crazy Asian dictator”   in North Korea. Today’s round of brinkmanship by the US/Western ‘deep state’ against North Korea will – in all probability – unfold the same way as in previous episodes; it will fizzle out. China is a guarantor of North Korean security, so the US will not go to war with North Korea. Period.

The battle between Trump and the Washington Crazies for control of the reins of empire continues, however, and the ‘Krazy Korean’ is relevant to that. I hope to get to that in a later article, but in the meantime, take note of the contradictory messages coming from the US.

One minute, US Navy battle-groups are ‘en route to North Korea’; the next they’re heading in the opposite direction. One minute, THAAD missile systems are ‘installed and operational in South Korea’; the next, Trump wants South Korea to pay for them.

One minute, someone on the US National Security Council is telling NBC News that the US is considering ‘decapitating the North Korean regime’; the next, Trump announces he’d be honored to meet Kim Jung Un…

All of which has provoked the South Korean and Japanese governments to denounce Trump’s confusing and contradictory statements. Is there a method in Trump’s apparent madness?

I recently read The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia by James Bradley, a breathtaking panorama of US and Chinese trajectories from the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century to the birth of ‘Communist’ China and ‘Pax Americana’ a hundred years later. This naturally encompassed US involvement in Korea, so in this article I’d like to share some historical context that is either incomplete or missing from summaries of US-Korean relations I’ve seen online so far.

The US has a long history of propping up crazy Asian dictators – from imperial Japan to ‘Christian’ Chiang Kai-shek in ‘New’ China to Catholic Diem in the short-lived US invention of South Vietnam. ‘North’ Korea is similarly a US invention. After existing for hundreds of years as a sovereign country, Korea fell under Japanese imperial influence in the late 19th century. The Japanese had by then become the ‘Yankees of the Far East’ and so accepting were they of civilized Western ways (and Anglo-Saxon values in particular), that the US and British empires were able to convince the Japanese that they should expand their empire as a check against Russian economic expansion in the Far East and as a vehicle through which to ‘Americanize’ China and the wider region.

In 1882, the US signed a treaty with the Emperor of Korea, declaring that there “shall be perpetual peace between Korea and the US.” If Korea was ever threatened by a third party, the US would intervene on its behalf. In the East, such commitments are both legally and morally binding. Not so in the West, however. Behind Korea’s back, then-US president Theodore Roosevelt (whose family, like all the US patrician families, got rich illegally smuggling opium into China), gave Japan the green light to take over Korea in 1905 (under the fabricated pretext that if they didn’t, the Russians would beat them to it) and use it as a staging ground to launch war on Russia. Bradley recounts this treachery in The China Mirage:

In March of 1905, when wave after wave of Japanese soldiers ran directly into Russian bullets during Japan’s victory at the Battle of Mukden, Roosevelt wrote, “The Japanese are the most dashing fighters in the world!” For the first time in modern history, an Asian country was besting a white Western Christian country. Roosevelt wrote [Baron] Kaneko [Japanese envoy to the US] on White House stationery, “Judging by the state of affairs, all is going well and your army is advancing at full speed and power. Banzai!!” When the baron later arrived at the White House for a celebration of the Mukden victory, Roosevelt’s “face shone with joy over the unprecedented victory.” After his chat with Kaneko, Roosevelt told Secretary of War William Howards Taft, “I heartily agree with the Japanese terms of peace, insofar as they include Japan having the control of Korea.” [p.72]

Korea found few advocates. John Ford, the secretary of the American Asiatic Association, a major trade group, defended Japan’s takeover of Korea because “the true peril of Asia and of the world is the Muscovite, and not the yellow peril.”

The ‘yellow peril’ refers to the late 19th century realization in Anglo-American power circles that – sooner or later – the vastly more populous East Asia would industrialize and eclipse their Western-led global domination. And yet, it wasn’t that which frightened them most – it was imperial Russia, a fear that echoes down to the present time.

Thus began Korea’s descent into hell, and Japan’s imperial march across the region. Only later would the US have a problem with this; at the time, Japan was being encouraged to apply a ‘Japanese Monroe Doctrine for Asia’ by Roosevelt – a doctrine that was guaranteed – financially, militarily and politically – by the Anglo-Americans. The Japanese occupied Korea, Nazi-style, for the next 45 years, during which time they also invaded and occupied Manchuria, northeast China, in 1931. They then spread further southwards into China in 1937, slaughtering millions of people as they went (35 million, according to Chinese sources).

By the time WW2 broke out, the Japanese war machine was heavily reliant on Californian oil, which then-US president Franklin Roosevelt (cousin of the first Roosevelt) was loathe to choke off for fear the Japanese would declare war against the US at a time when it was focused on the situation in Europe. To hedge its bets, imperial Japan spread further south into Indochina and Indonesia to take over oil fields and other raw materials.

And that’s where it crossed the Anglo-Americans’ red line: the Japanese were eyeing up key resources in Western colonies. In a move they knew would collar Japan’s regional ambitions, and thus likely be interpreted by the Japanese as a declaration of war, the so-called ‘wise men’ around Roosevelt (who we might today recognize as actors of the ‘deep state’) went behind his back to embargo oil shipments to Japan, which hadn’t yet secured much-needed resources in South-East Asia, triggering its decision to attack the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. There is some debate as to whether or not Japan’s surprise Pearl Harbor really surprised the Americans, but in any event, history records that once the US military entered the west Pacific, it planned to stay there.

While the rest of the world celebrated the end of the second ‘war to end all wars’, US elites watched aghast as ‘dirty commie’ Mao Zedong took control of all China by 1949, forcing their crazy Asian dictator (the actual Chinese one, Chiang Kai-shek) to flee to Taiwan, which the US then recognized as ‘the real China’.

This brings us to the second US ‘sell-out’ of Korea. After the US invited the USSR to defeat the remnants of the Japanese military in N.E. China on its behalf (‘better their boys do the fighting than ours’), the Soviets pushed the Japanese into the Korean peninsula, but only as far south as 38 degrees north, an arbitrary line drawn by the US that split Korea in two. As Bradley points out,

“no one in the US thought to consult the Korean people about this division of their ancient land.”

General Douglas MacArthur, who led ‘UN’ forces in Korea – too insane, even for Washington, DC

‘Wise Man’, by the way, is a moniker for the handful of US strategists at the State Department and elsewhere who did the most to chart American foreign (really, imperial) policy during and after WW2. These are the ‘geniuses’ who came up with the plans to ‘contain’ the USSR away from western Europe, and likewise China from its neighbors by re-instituting Japan as the region’s dominant power. Bradley continues:

Koreans were even more outraged to learn that US officials would govern South Korea with help from the Koreans’ former Japanese colonial masters. North Koreans watched uneasily as South Koreans who had cooperated with the Japanese occupation now helped the US gain influence on the Korean Peninsula. Koreans had just suffered 40 years of Nazi-like domination by the Japanese. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung had begun his military career fighting the Japanese in the spring of 1932, and his government was first of all, and above all else, anti-Japanese.

A major concern of Dean Acheson’s [then US Secretary of State] was reinvigorating the world economy after the devastation of WW2. In Europe, the US would adopt a program of economic aid called the Marshall Plan; in Asia it was known as Policy for Asia, National Security Council document 48/2. According to NSC-48/2, Japan would become Asia’s industrial economy, fired by US companies. Washington would ‘connect up’ other Asian economies to Japan’s industrial machine and as markets for Japanese goods (thus isolating and containing China). […] Their plan called for Korea, Vietnam, and other Asian countries to be the supply/consumption machines within the US-Japanese orbit. The American military would provide an umbrella of security for Japan and keep the other Asian countries in line.

The Wise Men didn’t understand that their Policy for Asia looked to many Asians alarmingly like imperial Japan’s recent attempts at empire. To them, it was as if the US was green-lighting another era of Japanese dominance with American backing. When North Korean leaders realized that Washington wanted Japan to once again dominate Korea, they perceived a mortal threat. […]
A good friend of English economist John Maynard Keynes, Acheson wondered if a huge Keynesian expansion of US military spending could prime the worldwide pump.

Acheson’s top secret policy was laid out in National Security Council document 68, which called for something new in American history: an enormous US military encircling the globe to protect ‘war-making capabilities’ of its allies, a euphemism referring to countries with resources that American industry needed to manufacture arms to contain Communism worldwide. […]

Acheson urged Truman not only to go to war in Korea with no congressional consultation, but also to send covert military aid to the French in Indochina for their war against Ho Chi Minh. With no debate – and none was sought – a Wise Man, rattled by events in Asia he little understood, committed the US to current and future wars. [p.344]

One of the great ironies of this set-up to ‘contain China’ is that Mao wanted his country to be included in US post-WW2 development plans; he wanted US industry and capital to develop China, something that wouldn’t begin until Henry Kissinger ‘saw the light’ in 1972.

Kim Il Sung realized that the reanimation of his arch enemy (Japan) meant that the imaginary war-time line would become a permanent hard border. It’s well-known that North Korean troops invaded (liberated from Japanese collaborators, in their view) the South, sparking the Korean War of 1950-1953. Left out of the narrative is the nature of the ‘good guys’ that the US rushed to defend. Australian human rights lawyer James O’Neil writes:

The US felt able to leave South Korea in 1948 because they had installed the US-educated Syngman Rhee as dictator. He ruled as dictators do, killing, jailing or driving into exile tens of thousands of his political opponents. Rhee was finally overthrown in a popular revolution in 1960. In scenes later to be replicated in Saigon in 1975, he was plucked from his palace by a CIA helicopter who ferried him to safety while the crowds converged on the palace.

Rhee also had ambitions to forcefully bring about the reunification of the two parts of Korea. Thanks to the scholarship revealed in Professor Bruce Cumings‘ two volume history of the Korean War we now know that the standard Western line about the Korean War starting with an invasion of the South by troops from the North is at best an approximation of the true history of the conflict. The truth is considerably more complicated.

For years preceding the Northern troops crossing the border in July 1950, Rhee had been staging incursions into the north, carrying out killings, sabotage and other forms of asymmetrical warfare. On the island of Cheju-do for example, as many as 60,000 people were murdered by Rhee’s military forces.

Reflecting the ‘game theory’ paranoia of the time, the US elite misread the North’s invasion as a plot hatched in Moscow and Beijing to ‘test’ America’s new global strategy and ‘break out of containment’. Acheson was sure it was a ruse to distract from an imminent invasion of western Europe by Stalin. It wasn’t. It was just the Koreans wanting their country whole again – and foreigners’ influence gone from their peninsula.

“Hit anything that moves,” US pilots were told. Here, thatched huts go up in flames after B-26 bombers unload napalm bombs on a village near Hanchon, North Korea, on May 10, 1951

In the summer of 1950, the North Koreans quickly overran nearly all of the South. The US raised a hue and cry, organized its first ‘UN coalition of the willing’, and countered with a combined force of over 1.7 million troops to defend the brutal regime of Syngman Rhee. They just as quickly pushed the North Koreans all the way back up the peninsula, past the 38th parallel, and approached the Chinese border. Despite being exhausted by decades of civil war and fighting the Japanese, 2 million Chinese troops – with a relatively small air force and no nuclear weapons – entered North Korea and pushed General Douglas MacArthur’s troops out of North Korea, returning the status quo of the north-south divide by 1951.

O’Neill explains what this first ‘war against communism’ did to North Korea:

What is scarcely acknowledged in the West was the devastation the Korean War wrought upon the North. The US-led UN Command dropped more bombs on the North than the US had dropped in the whole Pacific theatre in World War 2.This included the dropping of 20,000 tonnes of napalm, a particularly gruesome way of killing people. This method was later used to equally horrific effect in Vietnam.

We now also know that the US waged bacteriological warfare, building upon Japanese expertise garnered in their war on China and further developed by US scientists at Fort Detrick.

An estimated two million people, or 20% of the total population, were killed.The bombing flattened every city in the country. In addition, the bombing targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River. The intention was to destroy the rice crop and thereby starve the population into submission. Only emergency assistance from, among others, the Soviet Union and China prevented widespread famine and death.

All 78 North Korean cities were leveled, along with thousands of villages. The US quite literally wiped ‘North Korea’ from the face of the Earth. Another estimate puts the loss of North Korean lives at one third of the population – so, about 3 million dead. So the Korean War was hell for Koreans, but for the US deep state, North Korea’s invasion of South Korea ‘confirmed’ to them that their policy of containing China was correct, and was the catalyst for transforming the US into a global empire. The Wise Men had powerful incentives to read the situation their way: if this was a global Communist plot to ‘break out of containment’, then both containment theory and practice were correct, justifying the reconfiguration of US military and industry to a permanent, global war-footing. Bradley continues:

The irrational fear of worldwide communism as a result of the Wise Men’s misunderstanding of a small Asian civil war persuaded Congress to dramatically increase funding for the military. Martin Walker wrote,

The first defense budget presented by President Truman after the war began was for $50 billion, the precise figure Acheson had hoped for. The US Army doubled, to over 3 million men. The number of Air Groups doubled to 95, and were deployed to new bases in Britain, Libya, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Everything changed with Korea. American diplomacy, defense budgets and military reach exploded across the globe.

Bruce Cummings concludes,

The Korean War was the crisis that finally got the Japanese and West German economies growing strongly, and vastly stimulated the US economy. American defense industries hardly knew that Kim Il Sung would come along and save them either, but he inadvertently rescued a bunch of big-ticket projects. […]

The Korean conflict would transform the US into a very different country than it had ever been before: one with hundreds of permanent military bases abroad, a large standing army and a permanent national security state at home.

Survivors of a bombed out North Korean village.

US Air Force bombers destroy warehouses and dock facilities in Wonsan, North Korea, 1951. Source: US Dept of Defense – USIA

US Air Force attacking railroads south of Wonsan on the eastern coast of North Korea.

Now we understand why North Korea distrusts the US so much. The message behind its apparent belligerence is simply: ‘Stay Away!’

On the other side of the Pacific, through the distortion field of US ‘strategic thinking’, you see why North Korea is the ‘gift that keeps on giving’: from their perspective, it’s the place that ‘made America great’.

Today’s situation, where a prosperous and westernized South Korea stands in stark contrast to an impoverished North, was exactly the reverse until relatively recently. ‘Communist’ North Korea rebuilt after the Korean war and was the economic success story. For all its secrecy, isolation, and ‘weird ways’, North Korea is still a pretty highly developed country.

It was only after South Korea removed its (actual) crazy Asian dictator in 1960 and became one of the ‘Asian Tiger’ economies by industrializing that foreign investment, development and ‘democratization’ took place in the South. In conjunction with later US-led international sanctions on the North, the Koreas’ trajectories switched directions. The South today does best according to all the indicators of economic orthodoxy, but there’s room for debate as to which population enjoys the better quality of life. The South may have wealthy elites and plenty of consumer goods, but it also has an overworked, stressed-out workforce, and based on numerous visitors’ testimonies in recent years, North Koreans’ love of country is substantially more genuine than ‘forced’.

On May 9th, South Koreans go to the polls. If you remember back during the battle between Trump and Clinton for the US presidency, massive rallies took place at that time against the South Korean president, Park, after it emerged that she had assembled some weird clique conducting ‘dark arts’ to chart her government’s course. Now Park has been impeached, triggering snap elections.

The upshot of the Park scandal last November’s and the current election campaign is that after 10 years of very pro-US rule in Seoul, the political climate in South Korea has swung back to seeking friendly neighborly relations with the North rather than continual antagonism. The leading contender for the leadership of South Korea is calling for the installation of THAAD to be delayed until after the election, which is why the US urgently wants it installed, before a new South Korean government can change its mind.

Others have written about the intrigues surrounding the installation of US missile systems in South Korea. The upshot of it is that it’s happening – with or without a liberal, pro-peace government in Seoul, and regardless of who pays for it. Just as everyone knows that US missile systems in eastern Europe to ‘defend Europe from Iran’ were actually there to ‘contain’ Russia, everyone knows that US missile systems in eastern Asia to ‘defend it from North Korea’ are actually there to ‘contain’ China.

It’s the same old 70-year-long US ‘Policy for Asia’. And, judging by China’s meteoric rise, it’s still not working, and isn’t ever going to work. But North Korea holds fond memories for the US ‘wise men’ of today, because their New World Order was born amid the charred corpses of millions of North Koreans.

Niall Bradley has a background in political science and media consulting, and has been an editor and contributing writer at SOTT.net for 8 years. His articles are cross-posted on his personal blog, NiallBradley.net. Niall is co-host of the ‘Behind the Headlines’ radio show on the Sott Radio Network and co-authored Manufactured Terror: The Boston Marathon Bombings, Sandy Hook, Aurora Shooting and Other False-Flag Terror Attacks with Joe Quinn.

President Trump is about to embark on his first foreign trip, where he will stop in Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican, before attending a NATO meeting in Brussels and the G-7 summit in Sicily. The media and pundits have loudly wondered why hasn’t he gone on a foreign trip sooner. I wonder why go at all?

What does the president hope to achieve with these meetings? This is a president who came into office with promises that we would finally start to mind our own business overseas. In December, he said that the policy of US “intervention and chaos” overseas must come to an end. Instead, he is jumping into a region – the Middle East – that has consumed the presidencies of numerous of his predecessors.

On Saudi Arabia, President Trump has shifted his position from criticism of the Saudi regime to a seemingly warm friendship with Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammad bin Salman. He has approved weapons sales to Saudi Arabia that President Obama had halted due to Saudi human rights abuses, particularly in its horrific war on Yemen.

President Donald Trump and Prince Mohammad bin Salman

While visiting Saudi Arabia, one of the most extreme theocracies on earth – where conversion to Christianity can bring the death penalty – President Trump will attend a meeting of Muslim leaders to discuss the threats of terrorism and religious extremism. No, not in Saudi Arabia, but in Iran, where Christianity is legal and thriving!

Perhaps President Trump’s flip-flop on Saudi Arabia was inspired by the ten separate Washington, D.C. public relations firms the Kingdom keeps on the payroll, at a cost of $1.3 million per month. That kind of money can really grease the policy wheels in Washington.

From there, the US President will travel to Israel. Does he believe he will finally be able to solve the 70 year old Israel-Palestine conflict by negotiating a good deal? If so, he’s in for a surprise.

The problem persists partly because we have been meddling in the region for so long. Doing more of the same is pretty unlikely to bring about a different result. How many billions have we spent propping up “allies” and bribing others, and we’re no closer to peace now than when we started. Maybe it’s time for a new approach. Maybe it’s time for the countries in the Middle East to solve their own problems. They have much more incentive to reach some kind of deal in their own neighborhood.

Likewise his attendance at the NATO meeting is not very encouraging to those of us who were pleased to hear candidate Trump speak the truth about the outdated military alliance. We don’t need to strong-arm NATO members to spend more money on their own defense. We need to worry about our own defense. Our military empire – of which NATO is an arm – makes us weaker and more vulnerable. Minding our own business and rejecting militarism would make us safer.

Many pundits complain that President Trump spends too much time golfing. I would rather he spend a lot more time golfing and less time trying to solve the rest of the world’s problems. We cannot afford to be the policeman or nursemaid to the rest of the world, particularly when we have such a lousy record of success.

A decade ago I published a book, Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, that examined Israel’s desire to Balkanize the Middle East, using methods it had refined over many decades in the occupied Palestinian territories. The goal was to unleash anarchy across much of the region, destabilising key enemy states: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

The book further noted how Israel’s strategy had influenced the neoconservative agenda in Washington that found favour under George Bush’s administration. The neocons’ destabilisation campaign started in Iraq, with consequences that are only too apparent today.

My book was published when efforts by Israel and the neocons to move the Balkanisation campaign forward into Iran, Syria and Lebanon were stumbling, and before it was clear that other actors, such as ISIS, would emerge out of the mayhem. But I predicted – correctly – that Israel and the neocons would continue to push for more destabilisation, targeting Syria next, with disastrous consequences.

Today, Israel’s vision of the region is shared by other key actors, including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and Turkey. The current arena for destabilisation, as I predicted, is Syria. But if successful, the Balkanisation process will undoubtedly move on and intensify against Lebanon and Iran.

Although commentators tend to focus on the “evil monsters” who lead the states targeted for destruction, it is worth remembering that before their disintegration most were also oases of secularism in a region dominated by medieval sectarian ideologies, whether the Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia or the Orthodox Judaism of Israel.

Syria’s Bashar Assad, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi are or were ruthless and brutal in the way all dictators are, against opponents who threaten the regime. But before their states were targeted for “intervention”, they also oversaw societies in which there were high levels of education and literacy, well-established welfare states, and low levels of sectarianism. These were not insignificant achievements (even if they are largely overlooked now) – achievements that large sections of their populations appreciated, even more so when they were destroyed through outside intervention.

These achievements were not unrelated to the fact that the regimes were or are more independent of the US than the US and Israel desire. The rulers of these states, which comprise disparate sectarian groups, had an interest in maintaining internal stability through a carrot and stick approach: benefits for those who submitted to the regime, and repression for those who resisted. They also made strong alliances with similar regimes to limit moves by Israel and the US to dominate the region. Balkanisation has been a powerful way to isolate and weaken them, so the process can be expanded to other renegade states.

This is not to excuse human rights violations by dictatorial regimes. But it is to concentrate on an even more important issue. What we have seen unfolding over the past 15 years is part of a lengthy process – often described in the West as a “war on terror” – that is not designed to “liberate” or “democratise” Middle Eastern states. If that were the case, Saudi Arabia would have been the first state targeted for “intervention”.

Rather, the “war on terror” is part of efforts to violently break apart states that reject US-Israeli hegemony in the region, so as to maintain US control over the region’s resources in an age of diminishing access to cheap oil.

Although it is tempting to prioritise human rights as the yardstick for which sides we prefer, by now there should be little doubt that the conflicts unfolding in the Middle East are not about the promotion of rights.

Syria offers all the clues we need.

The agents trying to overthrow Assad in Syria are no longer civil society groups and democracy activists. They were too small in number and too weak to bring about change or threaten the Assad regime. Instead, whatever civil war there may initially have been has transformed into a proxy war. (In a closed society like Syria, it is of course almost impossible to know what drove the initial opposition – was it a fight for greater human rights, or growing dissatisfaction with the regime concerning other issues, such as food shortages and population displacements that were themselves a consequence of long-term processes triggered by climate change?)

A coalition of the US, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Turkey and Israel exploited those initial challenges to the Syrian regime, seeing them as an opening. They did not do so to help democracy activists but to advance their own, largely shared agendas. They used Sunni jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS to advance their interests, which depend on the break-up of the Syrian state and its replacement by an anarchy that empowers them while disempowering their enemies in the region.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states want Iran and its Shia allies weakened; Turkey wants a freer hand against Kurdish dissident groups in Syria and elsewhere; and Israel wants to foster the forces of sectarianism in the Middle East to undermine pan-Arab nationalism, thereby ensuring its regional hegemony will go unchallenged.

The agents trying to stabilise Syria are the regime itself, Russia, Iran and Hizbollah. Their concern is to use whatever force is necessary to repel the agents of anarchy and restore the regime’s dominance.

Neither side can be characterised as “good”. There are no “white hats” in this gunfight. But there is clearly a side to prefer if the yardstick is minimising not only the current suffering in Syria but also future suffering in the region.

The agents of stability want to rebuild Syria and strengthen it as part of a wider Shia bloc. In practice, their policy would achieve – even if it does not directly aim for – a regional balance of forces, similar to the stand-off between the US and Russia in the Cold War. It is not ideal, but it is far preferable to the alternative policy pursued by the agents of anarchy. They want key states in the Middle East to implode, as has already happened in Iraq and Libya and has been partially achieved in Syria.

We know the consequences of this policy: massive sectarian bloodspilling, huge internal population displacement and the creation of waves of refugees who head towards the relative stability of Europe, the seizure and dispersal of military arsenals that spur yet more fighting, and the inspiration of more militant and reactionary ideologies like that of ISIS.

If Syria falls, it will not become Switzerland. And if it falls, it will not be the end of the “war on terror”. Next, these agents of anarchy will move on to Lebanon and Iran, spreading yet more death and destruction.